Xh Q I Wn9T HH AHVHan lOHAv law :;*Tf DR. WILLIAM WHEWELL. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. CONDUCTED BY E. L. YOU MANS, VOL. VII. MAY, 1875, TO OCTOBER, 1875 NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 & 551 BROADWAY. 1875. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, By D. APPLETON & CO., In the Office of the Librarian ol Congress, at Washington. lo^X ^ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. MAY, 1875. SEA-ANEMON'ES. By Rev. S. LOCKWOOD, Ph.D. EVEN in minds the most illiterate you will find a sort of pbiloso- pliy, if you but look for it. Among the dwellers by the shore is a class known as Watermen. These men, with great irregularities of toil and idleness, obtain the support of their families wholly from the bounteous, though sometimes precarious, harvest of the sea. Often one finds among them men of the roughest mould, yet with generous natural gifts, but without either education or culture. Of natural phenomena, in a practical way, they are shrewd observers. They know a good deal, too, about many queer forms and strange habits belonging to the denizens of the deep. In their way, they are positive men, and real empiricists too — for, from their limited lookout, and their small stock of facts, they will generalize as broadly as do some scientists upon a few experiments. An old waterman, who could not read a word, said to us : " Sir, Nature works the same in every place. There's nothing on the land what isn't in the sea ; and I've even seen ships in the sky ! " Here, then, although not a little empirical, in our fisherman's philosophy was a splendid generalization. And how broad it was ! It covered every ])rovince possible for human experience, in his conception — the earth, the sea, and the air. And empiricism begotten of a spirit in no wise nobler, abounded in the elder science. Thence have come down to us those heated con- troversies on the supposed vegetable nature of the polyps that build the corals, and other similar structures in the great deep. And there was that temporary calm which set in upon that stunning clincher of that empiricist, who declared that the coral polyps were, and must be, plants, for — "I have see^i the flowers!" And Sir Wiseman was true. And so was the fisherman true, when he said, " he had seen ships in the sky." Each in his own way had seen a mirage. But that clincher would not stay clinched. As concerned their external forms, all admitted them to be sea-flowers. Still, these flow- VOL. TII. — 1 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ers of the ocean would insist on behaving themselves in divers ways, looking strangely in the direction of sentient things, albeit their plant- like aspect looked contrariwise. Could Nature, just here, Janus-like, look two ways at once ? Might it not be that these mysterious things were the habitants of a certain border-land of life ? Another empiri- cism— a generalization as splendid as that of the fisherman. So in com- placent wisdom they called them zoophytes, namely — Animal-Plants. — Time, and a love of truth, will set a good deal right that seems inveterately wrong. Even this brilliant compromise must yield to the verdict that accrues from the patient study of facts generously collected and carefully collated. So this Janus myth, the zoophyte, which had become a cant word in science, turns out to be of no value as representing a fact in Nature. Thoiigh flower-forms they were, yet they were really animate things, and capable of acts indicative of will. Our object now is to say something of one of these flower-like types of marine life, namely, the Sea- Anemone. It is significant, as showing the suggestiveness of these creatures, that, however diverse the no- menclature of science may be in regard to them, it is often almost poetical, and the words used are always expressive, and even possess pictorial significance. De Blainville named them Zoantharia, from which comes Animal Flower. Dr. Johnson's term took a wider lati- tude, and, although quite formidable-looking, and not in the best taste, was very significant. He gave the name, Zoophyte helian- thoidea, which is to say, the Sunflower-like animal-plant. In these terms the animal nature and the flower-like form are intended. The creature is really a polyp, a soft, almost pulpy, sac-like structure, with a fringe of tentacles, like a halo of rays, around the upper end ; in the centre of the circular fringe, the mouth, or oral aperture, being situated. Hence it is often spoken of as an actinia, which really means possessing rays. The word is now worked into another word, Actino- zoa, meaning rayed-animals, that is to say, animals with rays around an oral disk. But the term is used to designate a class ; hence it in- cludes all the polyps, those that construct coral, and the others. This class is again divided into several orders, one of which is named Zocm- tharia, or, as it is sometimes called, the Helianthoid polyps. It is in this order that the actinia proper is found; and, therefore, it is there that we must find our sea-anemone. Having found for this pretty object, in a system of science, " a local habitation and a name," let us see if we can make out the struct- ure of a sea-anemone, or, as it is often called, an Actinia. Taken in the hand, the sea-anemone imparts a slippery feeling, and it seems to have the consistency of leather. To get at its precise form, look at the cut given of Actinia rosea, a British species. Now, please follow closely our description a little while. As the actinia erects itself, attached to a rock or stone, it looks like one of the purses SEA-ANEMONES. 3 formerly fashionable, if one such could be made to stand of itself erect, and have the frill around the upper end to project in a circle. But we must be more particular than this. The upright part, that which is called by naturalists the column, is hollow, like a sack. Its base is really a sucking-surface, enabling it to adhere to any hard object. By this sucking base it can glide, or travel along, much like a snail. Fig. l.—a, Ap.achnactis Albida; b. Actinia Rosea. And as it thus moves, it can keep its flower spread out, and its many tentacles in constant play — in fact, fishing on the way. Their move- ment is, however, very slow. Indeed, a " snail-pace " would be alarm- ingly fast for an actinia. We have watched them attentively, and have found that an inch in an hour was a very satisfactory perform- ance. At the top is an opening, called the oral cavity, which, in the rosea, is surrounded just inside with a beading of little dots. This opening may be called the mouth, because the food is passed at this aperture into the stomach, which is a cylindrical sac, suspended below, and reaching about half-way down the great cavity of the col- umn. Around the oral cavity, and external to it, is a plain surface, which is technically known as the " disk." Around the disk, on its outer edge, is the fringe of tentacles. Each one of these is a little hollow cylinder, opening into the great cavity of the column imme- diately Tinder the edge of the disk. In fact, these tentacles, or feelers, connect with the interior of the stem of the Anemone, just as the fin- gers of a glove do with the interior of the same. We should also mention that, at the bottom of the sac, which is here called the stomach, is an opening into the general cavity. Now, around this suspended stomach, that is, between its outer wall and the inner wall of the column, is a system of compartments in series. These vary as to number in the different species. By looking at the cut showing a cross-section of an actinia's stem, we observe that six of these com- partments are complete, and reach from the stomach to the walls of 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the column. These six compartments are made by as many radiating vertical plains, whose edges on the one side are in contact with the inner walls of the column, and tlie edges on the other side touch upon the outer walls of the stomach. Between these compartments are others of less capacity. It is noticeable that these are, in like manner, formed of vertical plains, of different widtlis ; and, further, that they are only attached on one edge, and that to the inner walls of the Fig. 2.— Ckoss-Sectiok op an Actinia-Stem. great column, that is to say, they do not connect with the stomach. To understand the relation of these different walls of the compart- ments to the entire structure, a glance at the diagram will suffice, when it is borne in mind that the transverse section, thus represented gives also a section of the inner cylindrical sac, or stomach. The upright walls of these compartments which we have described are known in science by the name mesenteries. Of what use are they ? The most obvious service they perform for the animal when erect is, as we think, the stiffening of the structure. And this is done at will, as if it were a sort of erectile tissue. Now, as the cardinal plains connect both the inner and the outer cylinder, that is, the stomach and the column, it will be seen that the efficiency in the direction of imparting strength is considerable. The column is by so much the more strengthened, as it has the more of these upright planes or septse attached to it by one of their respective edges. But it is in these compartments, and on the mesenteries them- selves, that the origin of life for the actinia's progeny begins — for there the ova and the spermatozoa are found. On the mesentery- walls are borne in series certain reddish bands. These are the repro- ductive organs, and contain the ova and the spermatozoa. Generally actiniae are what the botanists call dioecious ; that is, the ova are found in an individual — that we may call the female ; and the sperma- tozoa in one that we may in like manner call the male. As to the time, and even the method of propagation, mother actinia is very capricious, there being, so far as our observations may determine, no regularity, but at the right time doubtless, for her convenience, the actinia evicts her young. Usually these are discharged at the mouth. SEA-ANEMONES. 5 They are tiny little things, clad with cilia, with which they move freely in the water for a little while, then settle on some stone, and give themselves up to a sedateness worthy the parent that gave them birth. It often happens that mother Anemone sends out her little ones in a very rough way into the world. In fact, they are introduced into actinian society sadly sans ceremonie. From the mesentery cham- bers are certain little ducts which open into the neck of the orifice, which we have called the mouth ; and this orifice, it will be remem- bered is directly over the open stomach. So it sometimes happens that when one actinia is sending out a litter of her babies from the mouth, she, just at that very moment, takes a notion to empty her stomach of the indigested leavings of her last meal, so that these in- di'i-esta and two score innocents are evicted in a dreadfully execrable and unmeally-mouthed manner. <^.-J Fig. 3.— Vertical Section of Actinia.— a. Stomach-sac ; b. Mesentery ; c, Craspedum ; d. Tentacle. We must now notice a remarkable apparatus known as the lasso- cells. It has been repeatedly observed that an actinia has a stinging, or, as it is called, an urticating power over the tissue of other animals. Now, there are in different parts of the body of an actinia innumerable cells, from which, especially the cells on the tentacles, it can dart an invisible thread. The microscope can see it, and has made known its structure. In some species this delicate thread thus shot out is a mar- velously-complex affair. It is coiled up, and when necessity urges, at the will of the animal, it is darted like a cord from a spi-ing-trap. Now, this is just the simplest part of it ; for, strange to say, when this thread is shot forth, just at the striking instant, out of the sides of this invisible thread other threads or snares spring, and these last are barbed. What a wonderful mechanism is this ! Let me invite you to a sight I have many times beheld. I have in captivity a hungry sea-flower. Know^ing well what suits its palate, I take a delicate morsel like a pilule, and let it fall into the water. It descends upon the waving petals, or tentacula, on the point of one of which the pretty creature has caught it in an instant. How delicate the adjustment upon its more than fairy fingers ! For a few moments it is THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. balanced with the nicest poise on that dactylic petal. Ah ! a voracious and unmannerly little bummer of a minnow sees the delicious morsel, and makes a rapid dash to snatch it from my pet. " Good ! good ! Well done, my bonnie ! " I did not see the slightest motion of that indignant flower-creature ; yet assuredly there was a movement, and an efiective one, too: for the zoophyte had shot one of its invisible shafts ; and the ichthyic thief dashes off like one frantic with pain. Is he hurt ? Likely. His is an urticated experience. He is stung in the snout ! See how he seems to shake his nose ! He fairly seems to sneeze again, and actually conducts himself much like a puppy that, uninvited, has put his nose into a bowl of hot soup. Ah, ha ! He is rubbing his fishy proboscis against a frond of sea-lettuce. Perhaps the salad may cool his burning pain. Mr. Fish soon recovers his equanimity of mind ; and it is observ- able that his deference to Mrs. Actinia since that affair has been of a decidedly distant character. But we return to mention certain organs attached to the free edges of the mesentery-walls, those perpendicular septse, or membranous partitions, which we have taken some pains to describe. Says Nichol- son : " Along the free margins of the mesenteries there also occur certain singular convoluted cords, charged with thread-cells, and termed ' craspeda,' the function of which is not yet understood. It Fig. 4.— METBiDnrM Marginatum.— Fringed Actinia (ea^anded). is believed, however, that the apertures, termed ' cinclides,' in the column-walls of some of the Actinidoe, are for the emission of the craspeda." Now, some observers say that they have seen these urti- cating phenomena take place from the side of the column of an actinia. Is it not, then, very likely that herein is the function of the craspeda ? These " cinclides," or openings in the walls of the living column, are the portholes of the little tower, whence the "craspida"- like archers launch their invisible shafts. That is an enviable experience when one is favored with the dis- SEA-ANUMONES. 7 covery of one of Nature's secrets. "We recall one such made in 1858 or 1859. Though we at that time prepared an account for publication, yet it never saw the light. In order to refresh our memory, we to-day have taken from our desk this old manuscript, and given it a perusal. We had among our aquarian pets a fine fringed actinia, Metridium marginatum^ from Newport. To our glad surprise, we noticed one day that, as it adhered to the glass side of the tank, it was surrounded by a number of tiny young ones. The question was, where did they come from? That they came from the ova I had weighty reasons for doubt- ing. So we set ourselves to find out, if j)Ossible. One day we were watching tliis anemone as it was gliding on the glass. Of course, the entire base was moving. But no — that is just where we at first were in error, for there was a little speck of its base that would not go along with the rest. There that little bit of the sucking-base stuck and held its place stubbornly. The great base kept at it — pulling, as it seemed, until a mere thread-like shred of matter connected the main mass and this little stubborn, speck-like remnant. And that connecting shred stretched like a thread of India-rubber. For nearly an entire day did this sort of thing continue, when at last the shred snapped, and the one pai't was drawn up into the base and the other part into the adhering speck or fi-agment. With our pocket-lens, we watched that tiny bit which had seceded from the body politic, or rather, from which the body politic had itself withdrawn. It soon gathered itself up into a plano-convex speck. The next day we observed a depression setting in at the convex point. In a day more we detected movement. It was dividing, and there was a pulling in two directions. This did not last over a day, and there were now two specks instead of one. In about three days, at top of each, five little tentacles appeared, and a tiny mouth. Wonderful to say, each was a young actinia. And Fig. 5.— Fringed Actinia (dosed). how strangely begotten, too ! Sloughed off— actually exscinded from the base — a veritable bit of that dear old mother ; not bone of her bone, since bones she had none; but verily flesh of her flesh. This was, indeed, to us a new sort of fission. How we did watch that pair of self-made twins ! Very diminutive they were, truly ; but very great pets for all that. 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. These young actinia very rapidly increased in size, and soon had doubled the numher of their feelers. Supposing that this argued an increase of feeling on their part, we found ourselves feeling an increase of interest in their ways and welfare. Just as this mutual understand- ing had been established, an incident occurred which filled us with anxiety. The mother-actinia began gliding back toward our little ones. That firmly-adhering base, sticking fast as the boy's sucker with which he lifts a brick, came slowly but surely, advancing toward her children. On, and on, now she is right upon them ! Good-by, my twin babies, it is all-day with you now ! That sucker of a mother has taken you in beyond all hope of redemption. How we did wish that that cruel parent would move on and let us see our pets again, even if dead ! But no, now she would not move at all ; and for nearly a day she retained that position. At length we detected movement — the gliding had begun. But, oh, how provokingly slow it was ! Ah ! we begin to see them at the peripheral edge of that mother's base. How flat the poor things look ! No wonder, such a squeezing maternal embrace as that was. They are fairly out now— dead ! dead ! See, their little tentacles are pi'Otruding. It looks as if they were in a hurry to shake out their crumpled frills. Well, well, they have come out of this singular occultation as brilliantly as ever emerged a binary star. The question whether these beautiful creatui'es have a nervous sys- tem seems not settled. That they manifest phenomena indicating a will, cannot be doubted. On one occasion my pets were all sulky, like " Jack in the doldrums." Every one was closed, which means it had shriveled up into a mere gelatinous lump. Each one in this con- dition had a disgusting look, resembling nothing so truthfully as a Fig. 6.— Anthea Cereus {Opelet). ripened boil when the fotid core is ready for extraction. And we have often seen even this repulsiveness intensified, by evolving in threads a white, stringy slime, that peculiar mucous lining of which, in parts at least, the creature often takes occasion to divest itself when in repose. {See cut of Fringed Actinia closed.) As above, when in repose, these sea-anemones look like clots of gelatine, and, as many of the actinia are very small, we have known SEA-ANEMONES. 9 fishermen who have handled them, when adhering to oysters, for years, and never knew that they were aught else than spots of slime. Once, when out on the shore at a very low tide, and busy overturning stones, in search of creatures thus concealed, a fisherman, wondering what we were about, came and accosted us : Fisherman — " What have you got, mister ? " Self — " Some little sea-flowers ; " and we pointed to certain little hemisjiheres of pellucid but limpid pearl, on a stone held in our hand. Fisherman — " What ! them grease-spots ? " Self — "Yes. And you should see them when the tide's up. Then every one opens into a little flower. They're only shut up now." With an expression that indicated doubt of our veracity, or sanity, Piscator turned away, muttering as he left, " Guess you'd better shut up, my blossom ! " However, Ave took our " grease-spots " home, proud enough of them. After time given for rest they came out finely. Pretty things they were. There was one especially, over which we Lad both joy and sorrow — the one to have found it, and the other when it died. It was a wee but winsome thing, about a third of an inch when unfolded, and all parts of it, column, and disk, and petals, were each and all of a soft, limpid emerald. Oh, we thought, if that could be transformed into a hai-d substance, what a gem it would be! That was the only time we ever saw an entirely green anemone. The green opelet of Great Britain is only so as to its tentacles, and even these are tipped with red. We have often obtained from the rocks in the East River very pretty small anemones, of an orange hue. Generally the sea-anemone will not spread her beautiful form in a bright light. Often, when all seemed sulky and there was a general collapse, we have restored the whole coterie to good-humor, simply by covering up the aquaria for an hour or two, and then uncovering, when the flowers will fully open. It was a great transformation to see, when this change took place with our favorite — a fine, large, fawn- colored Metridium, marginatum, obtained from Newport. When in healthful expansion it was larger than a good-sized dahlia; and al- though of a subdued neutral tint, yet in form and color we thought our marine-flower the superior of its terrestrial rival. Somewhere we read the lucubration of a philosopher that there was no humor in Nature, but all was serious. The observation struck us as very learned, but very silly. No humor in Nature ? Nonsense ! Come out from your candle-light cogitations unto some real observa- tions in the sunny light of Nature's beaming face, and I can show you humor. Ay, fun, if you will — yes, even practical jokes. A large actinia took a notion to swallow a large scallop, which it had captured. After considerable stretching it got the bivalve down into its stomach, and in due time the contained mollusk was digested. But what about the shell ? Why, this — it could not .get it up again ! It was a double lo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. disaster — literally as to the scallop, and metaphorically as to the polyp: both were sadly taken in. Actinia now looked very serious — comically so — like one in an evil strait. Perhaps it felt as bad as a hen-pecked subject, for it had got itself around a pecten, and a, pecten maxirnus at that. If a guest at tea should swallow the tea-saucer, matters would look alarming. And this bolted scallop was as big as a saucer. The effect upon the actinia's looks was ludicrous, since there was a narrow, bulging, equatorial belt, strongly significant of an undue centrifugal force in activity at that place. Get rid of the saucer it could not ; so it seemed, with a saucy air, to have made up its mind to resort to an expediency that should fairly checkmate the strange exi- gency. And this expediency was a change of base. In fact, it trans- formed its old base entirely. Tentacles grew out around it, an oval aperture appeared, and, in a word, it became a double actinia, and the large scallop shell was made a double base, and was accepted ever after as the demarcation of the two individualities. No fun in Nature ? If this, despite a smack of sauciness, was not a practical joke of the first water, then bring out your specimen-brick, old Sober-sides ! But the time is up, and so much must be left unsaid. In the cuts is the white Arachnactis, a baseless actinia, which, stuck in the mud, waves its few snaky tentacles about. And there is the waxy Anthea, or opelet, with its snaky or gorgon hair. But we must stop, without telling of the singular varieties of forms, and the rich diversities of tint and color, and the sometimes queer, yet normal functions per- formed by these marine animal mimics of the floral structures of the land. THE FIEST TKACES OF MAN" IN EUEOPE. By Peof. ALBKECHT MUELLEE. translated feom the german, by prof. joseph millikin. II. WE have been concerned heretofore with the human and animal remains of the older Diluvium. We come now to the upper and more recent lavers of that formation. In these, the formerly so abundant remains of the cave-bear are wholly wanting, those of the mammoth very rare. The common animals are the giant-elk, primitive ox, aurochs, horse, chamois, steinbok, moose, monkey, and various species at present confined to arctic and high Alpine and Pyrenean tracts. The characteristic animal of the time, however, is the reindeer, heretofore absent or very rare, and hence the name — the Age of Reindeers. The continued prevalence of a northern and Alpine fauna in the i THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN IN EUROPE. n lowlands of Europe, proves the continuance of the severity of climate ; we are still dealing with the Ice period, or probably with a second ice- period, as many infer from the peculiarities of the more recent drift. Of course the retreat of the glaciers of this later Ice period — glaciers apparently less in mass and extent than those of the former one — would produce fresh floods and all the phenomena previously explained as the results of such floods. Men were still troglodytes, but also to some extent lived out-of- doors in so-called stations at the foot of sheltering cliffs. The domes- tication of animals was not yet practised, even the reindeer being used for food only, though this is disputed by some writers. Of the use of metals there is not a trace. This age is shown by every indi- cation to be separated from our own, the historic age, by not less than 10,000 years, as to its initial point, at least, for some writers believe it to have been continued until the beginning of historic times. The knives, axes, and spear-heads, are still rough-worked, but more carefully and skillfully than before. The material for them was brought from considerable distances; those found in Belgium, for instance, being made from flint-bowlders found in the chalk of the Champagne district. Very many kinds of implements wei'e in use. The pieces of iron-stone found among them were probably used there, as they are now, by many tribes, for painting the face and figure. Bright stones, shells, and the teeth of animals, were perforated and strung into necklaces and bracelets — personal vanity thus anciently assertinsc itself. Skins and furs were used for clothinsr. Needles of horn and bone, and pieces of horn and stones manifestly used for smoothing down the seams, are often met with. The dead were buried at full length in caves. The station at Solutre, department of Saone-et-Loire, is rich in memorials of this remote age, such as carefully-wrought articles of flint, and bones of the species named, especially of the reindeer; and near by is a burial-cave in which are several perfectly-preserved skel- etons, with skulls of the Mongol type, according to Dr. Pruner Bey. In this instance the bodies of the dead were inclosed between flag- stones. Pottery had now come into use, but it was roughly made by hand and unburnt. The beginnings of art are now met, as in pictures upon bone, ivory, and slate, of the mammoth, aurochs, horse, etc., and even sketches of the human fisfure. In some of these drawingfs, shadows are rudely but not badly shown by peculiar linings. At Bruniquet, also, in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, such engrav- ings of the mammoth and reindeer have been found. One of the most interesting collections of relics of this age was found in the Station de la Madeleine, in the department of Dordogne. Bones and flints from another locality seem to show the marks of an iron hammer. 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The cave of Cro-Maguon, in the same department, was rich in human skulls, skeletons, and handiwork ; among other articles were perforated shells, evidently once worn in necklaces. Contrary to rule, bones of the mammoth were here associated with those of the reindeer. At Chavaux, Belgium, was a deposit of remains, the disposition and other indications of which almost compel the belief that the place was the scene of a cannibal feast. The human skulls and bones are all of young women and boys, witnessing to a decided preference for young and tender flesh on the part of our anthropophagic ancestors. These bones were split open longitudinally, as was the custom with those of animals, for the extraction of marrow. This and similar discoveries in other caves throw a singular light upon the habits and culture of the men of this time. Many Belgian caves, and notably that of Chaleux on the Lesse, yield large collections of mammal bones and stone implements. The digging of a mill-race through a peat-bed at Schussenried, a village not far from Ravensburg, revealed a station very rich in archae- ological relics of this age. It was probably little more than the rub- bish-heap of a station near at hand. There was here a profusion of flint articles, and bones and antlers of the reindeer. The mosses and snail-shells of the peat of this vicinity belong, like the mammals men- tioned, to arctic and Alpine species, and are thus another evidence of the rigors of the climate of that time. A station at Saleve, near the Swiss frontier, contains reindeer-bones of the Reindeer age, and stone axes, and human bones of the preced- ing Age of Mammoths.' Switzerland and the Rhine valley below Basle have furnished but few relics of the Reindeer age, while France has many localities yield- ing quantities from both this and the Mammoth period, which are the two earlier Stone ages, the third and last of which will be next discussed. So far, we have found human bones, skulls, skeletons, axes, knives, spear-heads, needles, ornaments, etc., of the periods discussed, in almost every country of Europe — in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the soil of classic Rome itself, as well as in the northern regions. The Age of Polished Stone. — This name has been given by French writers to the third era of prehistoric human existence, on account of the characteristic smoothness and polish of the stone im- plements. The distribution of land and sea, the relief of the surface, the climate, and the flora and fauna of this age, were substantially as they are now. Among its oldest memorials — and the age probably ended about ' After a new and critical study of this deposit, Prof. Riitimeyer believes it to be a confused mingling of remains from various epochs. THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN IN EUROPE. 13 B. c. 5000 — are the Kjokken-modding * of Denmark, found at stations adjacent to tlie sea, and consisting of immense collections of empty mussel and oyster shells. Similar heaps are found in the United States." The late Prof, von Mulot made careful studies of those of Europe, and the reader is referred to his valuable works for details. Comparatively barren as we have stated Switzerland to be in human memorials of the two preceding eras, it is the land ricliest in those of this age ; for to it belong the oldest of the pile-dwellings found in most Swiss lakes and lacustrine peat-beds. They were first discovered at Meilun, on Lake Zurich, during the winter of 1834-35, when the level of most Swiss lakes was exception- ally low. Of course the mere existence of piles in our lakes had long been known to fishermen, but their real meaning and their significance for science was there first recognized by that keen-witted observer, Dr. Ferdinand Keller, of Zurich. We can ofier nothing like an ade- quate description of these remarkable lake-villages, and shall speak of them only with reference to the indications they afibrd as to the man of this as compared with that of former prehistoric periods. In addition to the rough-worked implements heretofore so abun- dant, we now have smooth, even polished axes, etc., of various hard stones, especially of greenstone, a term including diorite, syenite, and the peculiar serpentine which the Italians call gabhro. These axes were in various ways, and sometimes very ingeniously, attached to bone, wood, or horn handles. Besides these larger articles are many smaller ones, made of wood and horn, with arrow-tips and spear-heads of flint, jasper, and rock-crystal, often made with remarkable skill and carefulness of finish. With the Age of Reindeers ends the Diluvial period proper, of which most of the characteristic animals, the reindeer among them, were by this time extinct, or else had wandered to distant regions. Hence the absence of their remains in later formations. Evidences of the domestication of animals now appear for the first time. Pottery is still rude and unburnt, but ornamented with odd stripes and rows of dots. The pieces are mostly conical, the bottom being the truncated point. No trace of writing, drawing, or sculpture, is to be found — a fact the more remarkable in view of the existence of the works of art mentioned as beloncjinor to the precedinsc ag;e. The literature of the pile-dwellings is already quite extensive. Keller, Desor, Ti-oyon, Morlot, and others, have written valuable man- uals, while Heer and Riitimeyer have given in extenso the results of their thorough study of the vegetable, animal, and human remains, found in these curious habitations. Those of the age we are considering are found in the edges of many ' Literally, Hicken-refuse-heaps. — Translator. " They were capitally described in the American Naturalist for January, October, and November, 1868.— Trans. 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. lakes, and in peat-bogs near Pfeffikon, Inwyl, Wauwyl, and Moossee- dorf. Often they are grouped into considerable villages, as on Lakes Constance, Neuchatel, Geneva, Zurich, and Morlat. These dwellings are found not only in Switzerland, but also in Bavaria, Carinthia, Moravia, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg, in Germany; and in France, England, Ireland, and the north of Italy. Of these some belong to the Stone age, some to the Bronze age, which we will next de- scribe, and some were inhabited during both the Stone and Bronze ages. With the pile-dwellings are to be classed the cranochs or cranogues — artificial islands, built upon piles in the peat-bogs and lakes of Ire- land ; the burial-places of Monsheim, near Worms ; and land-stations in wellnigh every country in Europe, as well as in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Japan, Java, India, North Africa, Egypt, and North Ameri- ca. It must not be forgotten, however, that the polished-stone imple- ments of some of these various localities may belong to later times, as there are now living tribes at about the grade of culture that was attained in the Stone age.^ At Grand-Presigny, south of Tours, and at Charbonnieres, in the Macon district, are places abounding with the nuclei of flint-boulders, and articles made therefrom in every stage of finish, with many spoiled in making — places evidently once devoted to this manufacture. Some caves in the departments of Yonne and Ariege show layers of loam upon calcareous tufa, the human and ani- mal remains of each of which are exactly those of the successive ages we have discussed, viz., of the Mammoth, of the Reindeer, and of Pol- ished Stone. That is, they constitute a succession of deposits, each with its peculiar animal remains, and hence ofi^er the same kind of evidence as to their relative antiquity as do the older geological strata. And like the earlier geological eras, the various ages of prehistoric human existence are not sharply defined and severed, each from the preceding and succeeding one, but one merges into the other by gradual progressions of thousands of years. Not only certain species of plants and animals, but entire races of man, have thus slowly vanished from off the earth, or retreated to lands far remote, while others have as gradually come in to occupy their places. Some animal species, as for instance Speller's Borken-thier^ the dodo, and the auk or great diver, have died out within historic times; others in very recent times, as for example the huge birds of New ^ Long after metals were in common use among them, many ancient peoples (of which the Jews were one, as the Bible informs us) employed stone knives in all religious sacrifices, etc. The Indians of North America and the Greenlanders yet use stone imple- ments exactly similar to those of the lake-dwellings. ^ Literally, bark-ani>7ial, or bark-eater, as we would say in English. I am utterly at a loss for the English or scientific synonym. The best guess I can offer is that it is a Castoroid, or Castor proper — possibly the giant beaver of the species Discopyhis. {See Dana, " Geology," pp. 562, 563.)— Trans. THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN IN EUROPE. 15 Zealand and Madagascar.' And there is going on before our eyes the sad spectacle of the extinction ot some of the nobler savage races of men, incapable of persistence in life in an age like ours, opposed by the superior forces of European civilization. From the beginning civilization has spread from the East to the West, and such is still its line of march, as illustrated by the Teutonic race's steady pressure into the ever-receding "far West." So, too, with the people of the pile-dwellings. They probably came from Asia to Europe some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, being doubtless affect- ed, as is every people, by the powerful modifying influences either produced or put in full play by such long and vast migrations. And the l^eople who made the stone axes and the pile-dwellings is probably the same that reared the huge funeral piles known as dolmens."^ A dolmen consists of two immense blocks of stone placed on end,^ upon which a third is laid, forming a sort of table. The dead were buried beneath, with various implements and weapons at hand. How a people, with- out engineering skill and contrivances,- could rear such masses into position, is a problem yet unsolved. They are found in Brittany, Southern France, Great Britain, Portugal, North Africa, Nubia, Pales- tine, and the East Indies, those of Brittany being the largest. Thus, instead of the golden age, that fancy represents as lying far back in the race's childhood, we find the dull realities of a long Stone age, during which man endured all and more than all the perils and sufferings of the present. And yet, for each of us, as years steal over us, the days of our own vanished youth are ever " the good old days." The Age of BRO^rzE. — The predominance of bronze, as the mate- rial of the articles found in the later pile-dwellings, has given to the fourth prehistoric human epoch its name — the Age of Bronze. While some of these lake-villaofes continued in use from the Stone a^e, others — usually those farthest out in the lakes — evidently originated in the Age of Bronze. There is no longer room to doubt that the bronze articles of Switz- erland were made near the places of their discovery, and were not brought from the East, according to the common view. Some of the very moulds in which they were formed have been discovered, and at Nantes the remains of a foundery have been plainly made out. Whether the bronzes of Northern Europe are of Phoenician origin is yet in doubt. Their symbolisms and religious adaptations are in favor of that view. ' To wit, the dodo, solitaire, nioa {Dinornis giganteus), and ^piornis maximus. (For description, see Dana, pp. 578, 579.)— Teans. * Or cromlechs. ^ In some instances there are three or more uprights. The covering stone of one specimen is 18 feet long by 9 broad. In the Anglesea cromlechs are stones weighing 30 tons each. — Trans. i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The native origin of those of Switzerland is settled by the analyses of Prof, von Fallenberg ; for, whereas the metal of Phoenicia, Egypt, and the East generally, contains lead in considerable quantities, that of Switzerland is of tin and copper only. So much artistic taste and mechanical skill are shown in these various articles — needles, rings, armlets, etc. — that many of them might be used by modern ladies with- out discredit to their work-boxes or toilets. But, in singular contrast to the Stone age, there is no relic of any portrayal of man or beast or plant. We meet, for the first time, with pottery turned on the lathe and well burned. Instead of dolmens we now have mounds, in which the dead are laid at full length, with weapon* and ornaments by their side. Some localities oiFer indications that the burning of the dead was practised. Here belong the so-called Celtic mounds, and the Terremare or Emilian mounds near Parma abound in relics of this age. Rutimeyer and others show that, although the characteristic ani- mals of this and the preceding age are identical as to their species, in this age the domesticated animals predominate, another evidence of advancing culture. We may ascribe the introduction of bronze manufacture into Eu- rope to a great race immigrant from Asia some 6,000 years ago, called Aryas or Aryans. And this Bronze age reaches to and overlaps the beginning of the historic period in some countries, and so includes the great epochs of the Assyrian and Egyptian Empires (b. c. circOj 1500), and the earlier eras of the next succeeding Age of Iron. The Age or Irojj. — The nearer we approach the present, with its rapid growths and changes, the shorter become the several ages into which we divide the history of man as to his physical surroundings and peculiarities, and the successive grades of spiritual and social development through which he has passed. Last of the prehistoric eras is the Age of Iron, represented in some of the pile-dwellings and their contents, but best, and with least ad- mixture from earlier and later times, in the station of La Tene on Lake Neuchatel. This age considerably overlaps the historic period of several countries. We can but mention some peculiarities of its earlier portions. In the determination of its initial and terminal points we must re- member that the civilization of the East preceded that of the West by several centuries. There are many proofs that a considerable degree of culture existed at its very beginning. Mounds were still used for burial. Bronze, also, was yet in use, but iron as well. Pottery was now not only shaped on the lathe, but burned a good red. Manufactures in glass, gold, and silver, are found for the first time. In lonely moun- tain-places are yet found dross and the remains of iron-furnaces of tlie time. To be sure, this dross is sometimes ascribed to volcanic action, but it is met with where volcanoes never could have existed. SCIENTIFIC PROPHECY. 17 To the former part of this a^e belong the wea{)on8 found in the Tiefenau, near Jjerne, plainly indicating that it was the field of a bat- tle fought sOnie OUO years u. c. Of great interest, also, is the ancient city of graves near Hallstadt, where the Burgomaster Rauisauer and others found over 900 graves and an immense quantity of iron and bronze weapons. But, interesting as such discoveries are, they lie too far outside the special topic of our treatise to be further discussed. If a name, descriptive of the age in which we live, be sought for, " the Age of Paper " is perhaps as good as any that can be discussed. If we name it not from its present but its near future characteristic, we may perhaps best adopt that suggested by an eminent geologist — "the Age of Steel." Even this hurried retrospect of the various prehistoric ages makes prominent the fact that in Europe, if not over all the earth, humanity has progressed, with various temporary baitings, from beginnings very rude and, in some respects, almost animal-like — that it is only after the lapse of many millenniums it has attained its present high physical and spiritual development. In the progress of these studies we have perhaps become the poorer by more than one fair dream's evanishing. We have not found — we could not find — either the lovely paradise of our first parents, uor the much-sung, much-blessed golden age. But one thing, at least, such investigations secure to us — thje con- viction, namely, of the limitless perfectibility implanted by the Crea- tor in the very germs and essence of all his creatures, and preemi- nently in man. And this conviction it is that opens to the eye and hope the pre- cious, the inspiring prospect of an ever richer, fairer development for races vet to come. ♦»♦■ SCIENTIFIC PROPHECY. PHOPHECY is the prediction of an event — the declaration of some- tliing to come. When future events — either in the history of the world or in the life of man — have been foretold from no known data and from no law, the prophecy must have been divine, for none but God can know the future of man. When such events in the history of Na- ture and in the life of matter have been predicted from known data and from established laws, the prophecy is human and scientific. Every science in its growth passes through three stages: First, we have the stage of observation, when facts are collected and registered by many minds in many places. Next, we have the stage of general- TOL. TH. — 2 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ization, when these well-ascertained and carefullv-veiified facts are ar- ranged methodically, generalized systematically, and classified logi- cally, so as to deduce and elucidate from them the laws that regulate their rule and order. Lastly, we have the stage of prophecy, when these laws are so applied that events can be predicted to occur with un- erring accuracy. Astronomy is said to be the only science which has thoroughly reached the last stage. Other sciences are in various stages of growth. Electricity in some branches has reached the third stage, but in many branches it is still in its infantine period. As- tronomy predicts eclipses, transits, occultations, for any period in the future, and the " Nautical Almanac" is the most wonderful example of prescient knowledge: a sailor may go away for a five years' cruise, and yet in this book he will find every event in the motion of the planets, the movements of the tides, the rotation of the moon, the eclipses of the sun, etc., faithfully and unerringly foretold. But astron- omy has produced greater wonders than these. The planet Uranus was found to suffer from some slight disturbances in her path round the sun. Adams in England and Leverrier in France simultaneously and independently, from the known laws of gravity, predicted the existence and position of another unknown planet. Galle, of Berlin, directed by Leverrier, found the planet in the spot indicated, and it was called Neptune. Newton, the grandest scientific man the world has perhaps ever seen, and the founder of the laws that led to the prophecy just nar- rated, in his investigations on light, ])redicttd the fact that the dia- mond was formed of some combustible material — from its verv hiiih index of refraction. The combustion of diamond is now an ordinary, though expensive, lecture experiment. Light has given us one or two other scientific prophecies. Poisson, from theory, pronounced that, in the case of an opaque circular disk, the illumination of the centre of the shadow caused by diffraction at the edge of the disk would be precisely the same if the disk were altogether absent. Arago proved this to be true. Again, Sir William Hamilton predicted that in bi- axial crystals there were four points where the refraction of the crys- tal upon an incident ray produced a continuous conical envelope. Dr. Lloyd took a crystal of aragonite, and, following Hamilton's direc- tions, discovered what the mathematician had predicted. Whewell predicted from theory that there must be a certain point in the North Sea, midway between Lowestoft and the coast of Holland, where there was no rise or fall of the water, because the crest or high- water mark of the tidal wave, and the trough or low-water mark of the same waA' e, reached the same point at the same time, but by differ- ent routes. Captain Hewett, R. N., found that it was so. Electricity has its prophets. Faraday, examining Sir Charles Wheatstone's beautiful experiment on the velocity of electricity by means of a rotating mirror, said : " If the two ends of the wire in THE CHEMICAL RADIATIONS. 19 Prof. Wheatstone's experiments were immediately connected with two large insulated metallic surfaces exposed to the air, so that the pri- mary act of induction — after making the contact for discharge — might be in part removed from the internal portion of the wire at the first instant, and disposed for the moment on its surface jointly with the air and surrounding conductors, then I venture to anticipate that the middle spark would be more retarded than before. And if those two plates were the inner and outer coatings of a large jar or Leyden bat- tery, then the retardation of the spark would be much greater." The experiment was not made for sixteen years. It was then shown as the explanation of the retardation of the current in our subterraneous and submarine wires. Sir Francis Ronalds, with wonderful prescience, had in 1823— fif- teen years before Faraday — suggested "the probability that the elec- trical induction which would take place in a wire inclosed in glass tubes of many miles in length (the wire acting like the interior coat- ing of a battery) might amount to the retention of a charge, or at least might destroy the suddenness of the discharge." Faraday's pro- phetic vision and Konalds's far-sighted knowledge are Terified in every working cable. The accuracy with which our cable-repairers are directed by our electricians to the spot where the wire is broken, the exactitude with which the working speed of a cable is predicted, the unfelt and invisible supervision which is exercised over the care and maintenance of our telegraphs — even though they pass through dis- tant countries and different climes — are evidences that electricity, in this particular field, is approaching the last and prophetic stage of its growth. This field is resistance, and Ohm is its prophet. — Telegraphic Journal. -♦♦♦- THE CHEMICAL RADIATIONS. By W. J. YOUMANS, M. D. WITH that proneness to go wrong, which we notice in most things human, and which crops out in science as well as elsewhere, the art of making pictures by the chemical action of I'adiant forces has got a false name. This is all the worse, as it was at first correctly designated, and that too by him who had the clearest right to give the process a title. Davy and Wedgwood, early in the century, had la- bored to produce sun-pictures by means of the camera-ohscura^ but had met with little success. In 1814 M. Neipce, of Chalons, in France, took up the subject, and, in the course of ten years' assiduous work, he succeeded in a method of forming sun-pictures on chemically-pre- pared copper, pewter, and glass plates, by which the lights, semi-tints, and shadows, were represented as in Nature, and he also succeeded in 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. making the impressions lasting. In 1827 he sent a paper to the Royal Society, accompanied with si)ecimens; but, as he kept the process a secret, the communication could not be received. The process, how- ever, he named heUogra})hy, or sun-drawing, a term by wliich it was truthfully characterized. M. Daguerre, another Frenchman, had been working at the same problem, and in 1829 these two men, with a common purpose, formed a partnership to carry on their researches jointly. Neipce died befoi'e the work was matured, and Daguerre, very naturally, reaped the honor of it. The French Government bought his secret, paying wdth a life-pension, and promulgating it to the world, without restriction of patent, in August, 1839. The new pictui-es were at once known as dagtierreotypes, and the mode of making them the daguerreotype process. These uncouth terms en- dured for a while, but were at length supplanted by the word 2^hotog- raphy, or light-drawing, which has become esiablished. Yet the ap- pellation is incorrect, and the error is as broad as the difference b<. - tween light and darkness. It is not light that makes the picture, but dark radiations that are associated with it, and that have the peculiar effect of producing changes in certain chemical compounds. Although photography, in its wonderful development as an art, belongs to the past generation, yet the knowledge of the chemical effects ascribed to light is as old as chemical science. The subject began to be inquired into, experimentally, about 100 years ago. In fact, like most other modern chemical results, it had not escaped the notice of the alchemists, but, like every thing else they discovered, it was subordinated to their mystical speculations. In the multiplicity of their manipulatory processes they stumbled upon a combination which they called luna cornua., or horn-silver, and which is now known as silver chloride. The alchemists knew nothing of its composition, but only that there was silver in it which had undergone a change. They noticed, however, that when this horn-silver was exposed to light it underwent a blackening, and, as they taught that " silver only differed from gold in being mercury interpenetrated by the sulphur- ous principle of the sun's rays," they concluded that this change, effected by light, was the commencement of the process by which sil- ver was to be transmuted into gold. It was in 1777 that the illustrious Swedish chemist, Scheele, pub- lished the fii'st results of investigations upon the subject undertaken simply for the extension of chemical knowledge. He found that, when powdered horn-silver is spread over paper, and the colors of the solar spectrum are made to fall upon it, the powder in the violet ray turns black sooner than that exposed to the other colors. Senebier after- ward showed that the silver chloride was darkened in the violet ray in fifteen seconds to a shade which required the action of the red ray for twenty minutes ; that is, the chemical intensity of the violet ray was eighty times greater than the red. THE CHEMICAL RADIATIONS. 21 The next step was one of great scientific importance, indicating, not only the differentiation of the different modes of action in the sun- beam, but the actual separation and isolation of the different agents. This took place just at the opening of the present century. It was shown by Sir "VYilliara Herschel, in 1800, that, when the sunbeam is decomposed by a glass prism, as shown in Fig. 1, tlie heat is distrib- Fia. 1. — Positions op the Three Spectra. uted unequally through the series of colors — is lowest in the violet, increases in the yellow, but is most intense in the red. This he deter- mii>ed by the use of delicate thermometers, and, in the same way, he proved that the thermal rays of the sunbeam are not all thrown into the visible spectrum, but are of such low refrangibility that they ac- cumulate in the dark space below the red. There is therefore a spec- trum of dark rays, producing heating effects, which, beginning at A^ Fig. 1, increases in strength till it approaches the red, and then fades away in the upper region of the spectrum. These results of Herschel were followed by the discovery of Ritter, made the next year (1801), that the chemical rays, which had been shown to be most active in the violet portion of the spectrum, were also thrown by refraction into the dark space beyond the violet. As a thermometer was the test in the case of heat, so an appropriate chemical substance has to be used to test the distribution of this force. 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. If a solution of silver nitrate is washed over a large sheet of paper, which is then placed upon the wail or sci-een so as to receive tlie spec- trum upon its surface, and is also made to cover the space consider- ably above it, a transformation occurs where the radiations fall, pro- ducing a blackening which defines the outline of the chemical spec- trum. It is now found that the chemical rays are more refrangible than the luminous, and that, wliile the darkening takes place in the colored spectrum, it it strongest in the violet of all the colors, and extends also through the dark space up to JB, as shown in the figure. It is now exactly 200 years since Newton published his " Optics," in which was described the capital experiment of resolving white light into its constituent colors by the prism. It was the first great step toward showing that what was regarded us perfectly simple turns out to be inexhaustibly complex ; and every succeeding step of re- search, while clearing up some points, has led to others which are still unresolved. One thing, however, seems to be quite clear : the mode of action throughout the spectrum is fundamentally the same. There are three sjjectra, one of which, the thermal, takes action upon all kinds of matter ; another of which, the luminous, acts only upon a cer- tain special foi-m of nerve-matter; while a third, the chemical, produces changes in certain compounds. Although the luminous force acts only upon the nerve of the eye to stir up a sensation, yet we know how intinitely complex and varied is the world of color that results. Tliere is evidence that the dark thermal and chemical radiations are of equal variability and complexity, yet there can be no doubt that all these multitudinous efiects are due to a sinole mode of action. The differ- ence between the thermal and the chemical rays is simply the difi'er- ence between the red and the green ; that is, a difference of wave- length and degree of vibration. The unequal distribution of the forces of the spectrum is well illus- trated by Fig. 2. The middle curve shows the varying intensity of the luminous force. The maximum is at £, in the yellow space ; and from this point the intensity of the light rapidly declines each way, its extent being shown by the space shaded with oblique lines. The curve -4, with the vertical lines, represents the position and varying force of the heat ; and the curve (7, horizontally shaded, exhibits the distribution and unequal energy of the chemical force. The three maxima are widely separated as if there were some antagonism among them, and it is noticeable that where the light is strongest the chemi- cal force quite disappears. Different prisms give somewhat diffei-ent effects but do not change their order. It thus appears that, so far from light being the agent which pro- duces sun-pictures, the intensest light is powerless upon the chemically prepared plate. It looks as if the illumination neutralized or ex- tinguished the chemical energy. Nevertheless, liglit and the chemi- cal force are so intimately associated in reflection and refraction that THE CHEMICAL RADIATIONS. 23 the colors become the guides of the artist in conducting his processes. When a person sits before the operator's camera, ready to be "taken," the radiations which are reflected from his face into the instrument, and collected to a focus by the lens, form three pictures, one behind the otlier, the thermal, the luminous, and the cliemical image. The luminous image is visible upon the ground-glass plate, giving all the R o Y G B I V Fig. 2.— Intensities op the Forces op the Spectkum. colors of the object, but the chemical image is now blurred, and the focus has to be readjusted so that the chemical picture will be clearly and sharply defined ; but, as this image is invisible to the operator, be has to make his readjustments by rule. As he cannot reproduce the colors in the photograph, he has to substitute for them tints and shades; but the chemical force is so unequal in the diiferent coloi'S that the natural eflfects of gradation in tone and shade are not brought out in the picture. This is one of the embarrassments of the process. From the representation In Fig. 2, we should infer that blue colors would act energetically upon the photographic plate and the yellow and red feebly, or not at all, because the chemical rays abound in the former and are absent in the latter. Of this false workintr of lio-hts Prof. Vogel says : " Blue generally works clear, yellow and red work like black. The yellow freckles appear, therefore, in a picture as black spots, and a blue coat becomes perfectly white. Dark-blue flowers on a light-yellow ground produce in photography light flowers on a dark ground. Red and also fair golden hair become black. Even a very slight yellow shade has an unfavorable eifect. A photograph from a drawing is often blemished by little iron-mould specks in the paper, invisible to the eye. These specks frequently appear as black points. There are faces with little yellow specks that do not strike the eye, but which come out very dark in photography. A few years ago a lady was photographed in Berlin whose face had never ])resented specks in photography. To the surprise of the photographer, on tak- ing her poi-trait, specks appeared that were invisible in the original. A day later the lady sickened of the small-pox, and the specks, at first invisible to the eye, became then quite apparent. Photography in this case had detected, before the human eye, the pock-marks, very feebly tinged yellow." 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The chemistry of light first became, in the full sense, a branch of science capable of thorough investigation when Dr. Draper devised a method of measuring the force of the chemical rays, and thus brought the subject within the sphere of quantitative research. He showed that these rays are absorbed in the cliemical combination, and that the rate of absorption corresponds to the amount of chemical change. He apf)lied mixtures of chlorine and hydrogen gases for this j)urpose, wliich combine under the action of the chemical radiations, the meas- urable rate of combination becoming tiie index of radiant activity. Professors Roscoe and Bunsen subsequently employed sensitive i^apers which were blackened in certain times to certain shades, as measurers of the chemical force, and these Avere used at the Kew Observatory, ■Bggga— BSSI mill III fllflBl ill Figs. 3 and 4. — Variation of Chemical Eats at Kew. near London, to trace the variations of chemical activity in the solar rays. For, as the chemical force is not light, neither does it follow the laws of light in producing its effects. Dr. Draper had previously shown that, as we go southward toward the equator, and the light increases in brilliancy, there is an increasing interference with the chemical rays, the yellow space of no-chemical action widening with the progress southward. It is also well known that there is much greater difficulty in obtaining good photographic pictures under the full blaze of a tropical sun than in our own latitude. The investiga- tions at Kew were accordingly directed to the variations that the chemical rays undergo at different hours of the day and at different seasons of the year. The graphic diagrams, Figs. 3 and 4, show the results that were arrived at in 1866. The curves exhibit the rise and fall of the average monthly chemical intensity with the hour of the day, from 6 A. M. to 6 p. m., throughout the year. We see from these curves that the raaximum of chemical action occurs at twelve o'clock, and that the forenoon rise and afternoon decline are very nearly equal, while the chemical intensity of July is fully seven times as great as in December. The statements that have been made that in Mexico, where the light is very intense, from twenty minutes to half an hour is required THE CHEMICAL RADIATIONS. 25 to produce pbotogriiphic effects which in New York require only a minute; and the further statement of travelers, engaged in copying the antiquities of Yucatan, that they frequently have been obliged to abandon the use of the camera, and take to their sketch-books, have led to some investigations, similar to those at Kew, for determining the intensity of the chemically-active rays in the tropics. Prof. Thorpe experimented at Para, situated nearly under the equator, in the northern province of the Brazils, and lying on a branch of the Ama- zon. Of the results. Prof, lloscoe remarks: "Owing to the rainy sear son having commenced when the experiments were made, the changes in the chemical intensity, as observed from hour to hour, and even from minute to minute, are very sudden and remarkable; this is well shown by the zigzag lines of Figs. 5 and 6 ; and these, compared with the dotted lines below, indicating the corresponding action on the same Figs. 5 and 6— Variation of Chemical Eays in the Tropics. day at Kew, show the enormous variation in chemical intensity which occurs under a tropical sun in the rainy season. Regularly every afternoon, and frequently at other hours of the day, enormous thun- der-clouds obscure the sky, and, discharging their contents in the form of deluging rain, reduce the chemical action nearly to zero. The storm quickly passes over, and the chemical intensity rapidly rises to Its normal value. By comparing the curves for Para and Kew on the same days, we obtain some idea of the energy of chemical action at the tropics, and it is at once evident that the alleged failure of the photographer cannot at any rate be ascribed to a dimimition in the sun's chemical intensity, which, in the month of April, 1866, was nearly seven times as great at Para as at Kew." 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. OK" SOME OF THE EESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION OF H. M. S. CHALLENGER. Bt PKor. THOMAS H. HUXLEY, F. K. S. IN May, 1873, I drew attention, in the pages of this Meview, to the important problems connected with the pliysics and natural his- tory of the sea, to the solution of which there was every reason to hope the cruise of H. M. S. Challenger would furnish important con- tributions. The expectation then expressed has not been disappointed. Reports to the Admiralty, papers communicated to the Royal Society, and large collections which have already been sent home, have shown that the Challenger's staff have made admirable use of their great op- portunities ; and that, on the return of the expedition in 1874, their performance will be fully up to the level of their promise. Indeed, I am disposed to go so far as to say that, if nothing more came of the Challenger's expedition than has hitherto been yielded by her explora- tion of the nature of the sea-bottom at great depths, a full scientific equivalent of the trouble and expense of her equipment would have been obtained. In order to justify this assertion, and yet, at the same time, not to claim more for Prof. Wyville Thomson and his colleagues than is their due, I must give a brief history of the observations which have pre- ceded their exploration of this recondite field of research, and endeavor to make clear what was the state of knowledge in December, 1872, and what new facts have been added by the scientific staff of the Challen- ger. So far as I have been able to discover, the first successful at- tempt to bring up from great depths more of the sea-bottom than would adhere to a sounding-lead, was made by Sir John Ross, in the voyage to the arctic regions which he undertook in 1818. In the Ap- pendix to the narrative of that voyage, there will be found an account of a very ingenious apparatus called " chlams " — a sort of double scoop — of his own contrivance, which Sir John Ross had made by the ship's armorer; and by which, being in Baffin's Bay, in 72° 30' north, and 77° 15' west, he succeeded in bringing up from 1,050 fathoms (or 6,300 feet), " several pounds" of a "fine green mud," which formed the bottom of the sea in this region. Captain (now Sir Edward) Sabine, who accompanied Sir John Ross on this cruise, says of this mud that it was " soft and greenish, and that the lead sunk several feet into it." A similar " fine green mud" was found to compose the sea-bottom in Davis Straits by Goodsir in ] 845. Nothing is certainly known of the exact nature of the mud thus obtained, but we shall see that the mud of the bottom of the antarctic seas is described in curiously similar terms by Dr. Hooker, and there is no doubt as to the composition of this deposit. EXPEDITION OF THE CHALLENGER. 27 In 1850 Captain Penny collected in Assistance Bay, in Kingston Bay, and in Melville Bay, which lie between 73° 45' and 74° 40' north, specimens of the residuum left by melted surface-ice, and of the sea- bottom in these localities. Dr. Dickie, of Aberdeen, sent these ma- terials to Ehrenberg, wlio made out ' tliat the residuum of the melted ice consisted for the most part of the silicious cases of diatomaceous plants, and of the silicious spicula of sponges; while, mixed with these, were a certain nvimber of the equally silicious skeletons of those low animal organisms, which were termed Polycistincce of Ehrenberg, but are now known as Radiolaria. In 1856 a very remarkable addition to our knowledge of the nature of the sea-bottom in high northern latitudes was made by Prof. Bailey of West Point. Lieutenant Brooke, of the United States Navy, who was employed in surveying the Sea of Kamtchatka, had succeeded in obtaining specimens of the sea-bottom from greater depths than any hitherto reached, namely, from 2,700 fathoms (16,200 feet) in 66° 46' north, and 168° 18' east; and from 1,700 fathoms (10,200 feet) in 60° 15' north, and 170° 53' east. On examining these microscopically, Prof. Bailey found, as Ehrenberg had done in the case of mud ob- tained on the opposite side of the arctic region, that the fine mud was made up of shells of Diatomacem, of spicula of sponges, and of Itadiolaria^ with a small admixture of mineral matters, but without a trace of any calcareous organisms. Still more complete information has been obtained concerning the nature of the sea-bottom in the cold zone around the south pole. Be- tween the years 1839 and 1843, Sir James Clark Ross executed his famous antarctic expedition, in the course of which he penetrated, at two widely-distant points of the antarctic zone, into the high lati- tudes of the shores of Victoria Land and of Graham's Land, and reached the parallel of 80° south. Sir James Eoss was himself a nat- ui-alist of no mean acquirements, and Dr. Hooker, the present Presi- dent of the Royal Society, accompanied him as naturalist to the ex- pedition, so that the observations upon the fauna and flora of the antarctic regions made during this cruise were sure to have a pecul- iar value and importance, even had not the attention of the voyagers been particularly directed to the importance of noting the occurrence of the minutest forms of animal and vegetable life in the ocean. Among the scientific instructions for the voyage drawn up by a committee of the Royal Society, however, there is a remarkable letter from Von Humboldt to Lord Minto, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in which, among other things, he dwells upon the significance of the researches into the microscopic composition of rocks, and the discov- ery of the great share which microscopic organisms take in the forma- tion of the crust of the earth at the pj-esent day, made by Ehrenberg ^ " Ueber reue Auschauunc;en des kleinsten nordlichen Polarlebens," Monatsberichte der Koniglichen Akadcniie, Berlin, 1853. 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MO^^THLY. in the years 1836-39. Ehrenberg, in fact, had shown that the exten- sive beds of " rotten-stone " or " Tripoli " which occur in various parts of the world, and notably at Bilin in Bohemia, consisted of accumula- tions of the silicious cases and skeletons, Diatomacem, sponges, and HacUolaria ; he had proved that similar deposits were being formed by Dlatomacece in the pools of the Tliiergarten, in Berlin and else- where, and had pointed out that, if it were commercially worth while, rotten-stone might be manufactured by a process of diatom-culture. Observations, conducted at Cuxhaenv in 1839, had revealed the exist- ence, at the surface of the waters of the Baltic, of living diatoms and Madiolaria of the same species as those w^hich, in a fossil state, con- stitute extensive rocks of Tertiary age at Caltanisetta, Zante, and Oran, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Moreover, in the fresh-water rotten-stone beds of Bilin, Ehrenberg had traced out the metamorphosis, effected apparently by the action of percolating water, of the primitively loose and friable deposit of organized particles, in which the silex exists in the hydrated or solu- ble condition. The silex, in fact, undergoes solution and slow rede- position, until, in ultimate result, the excessively tine-grained sand, each particle of which is a skeleton, becomes converted into a dense opaline stone, with only here and there an indication of an organism. From the consideration of these facts, Ehrenberg, as early as the year 1839, had arrived at the conclusion that rocks, altogether similar to those which constitute a large part of the crust of the earth, must be forming, at the present day, at the bottom of the sea ; and he threw out the suggestion that even where no traces of organic struct- ure is to be found in the older rocks, it may have been lost by meta- morjjhosis.* The results of the antarctic exploration, as stated by Dr. Hooker in the " Botany of the Antarctic Voyage," and in a paj^er which he read before the British Association in 1847, are of the greatest im- portance in connection with these views, and they are so clearly stated in the former work, which is somewhat inaccessible, that I make no apology for quoting them at length : " The waters and the ice of the South Polar Ocean were alike found to abound with microscopic vegetables belonging to the order DiatomacecB. Though much too small to be discernible by the naked eye, they occurred in such count- less myriads as to stain the berg and the pack-ice wherever tliey were washed by the swell of the sea ; and, when inclosed in tlie congealing surface of the water, they imparted to the brash and pancake-ice a pale ochreous color. In the open ocean, northward of the frozen zone, this order, though no doubt al- ' " Ueber die noch jetzt zahlreich lebenden Thierarten der Kreidebildung und den Organismus der Polytbalamien," Abhandlungen der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissen- schaften, 1839. Berlin, 1841. I am afraid that this remarkable paper has been some- what overlooked ia the recent discussions of the relation of ancient rocks to modern deposits. EXPEDITION OF THE CHALLENGER. 29 most universally present, generally eludes the search of the naturalist ; except when its species are congregated among that mucous scum which is sometimes seen floating on the waves, and of whose real nature we are ignorant ; or when the colored contents of tlie marine animals who feed on these algse are exam- ined. To the south, however, of the belt of ice which encircles the globe, be- tween the parallels of 50" and 70° south, and in the waters comprised between that belt and the highest latitude ever attained by man, this vegetation is very conspicuous, from the contrast between its color and the white snow and ice in which it is embedded. Insomuch, that in the eightieth degree, all the surface- ice carried along by the currents, the sides of every berg, and the base of the great Victoria Barrier itself, within reach of the swell, were tinged brown, as if the polar waters were charged with oxide of iron. " As the majority of these plants consist of very simple vegetable cells, in- closed in the indestructible silex (as other algse are in carbonate of lime), it is ol)vious that the death and decomposition of such multitudes must form sedi- mentary deposits, proportionate in their extent to the length and exposure of the coast against which they are washed, in thickness to the power of such agents as the winds, currents, and sea, which sweep them more energetically to certain positions, and in purity, to the depth of the water and nature of ^he bottom. Hence we detected their remains along every ice-bound shore, in the depths of the adjacent ocean, between 80 and 400 fathoms. OflT Victoria Barrier (a perpendicular wall of ice between 100 and 200 feet above the level of the sea) the bottom of the ocean was covered with a stratum of pure white or green mud, composed principally of the silicious shells of the Diatomacem. These, on being put into water, rendered it cloudy like milk, and took many hours to sub- side. In the very deep water off Victoria and Graham's Land, this mud was particularly pure and fine ; but toward the shallow shores there existed a greater or less admixture of disintegrated rock and sand ; so that the organic compounds of the bottom frequently bore but a small proportion to the inor- ganic. ..." " The universal existence of such an invisible vegetation as that of the Ant- arctic Ocean is a truly wonderful fact, and the more from its not being accompa- nied by plants of a high order. During the years we spent there, I had been ac- customed to regard the phenomena of life as diifering totally from what obtains throughout all other latitudes, for every thing living appeared to be of animal origin. The ocean swarmed with Mollusca, and particularly entomostratous Crustacea^ small whales, and porpoises ; the sea abounded with penguins and seals, and the air with birds ; the animal kingdom was ever present, the larger creatures preying on the smaller, and these again on smaller still ; all seemed carnivorous. The herviborous were not recognized, because feeding on a micro- scopic herbage, of whose true nature I had formed an erroneous impression. It is, therefore, with no little satisfaction that I now class the Diatomacem with plants, probably maintaining in the South Polar Ocean that balance between the vegetable and animal kingdoms which prevails over the surface of our globe. Nor is the sustenance and nutrition of the animal kingdom the only function these minute productions may perform ; they may also be the purifiers of the vitiated atmosphere, and thus execute in the antarctic latitudes the office of our trees and grass-turf in the temperate regions, and the broad leaves of the palm, etc., in the tropics. ..." With respect to the distribution of the Diatomacece, Dr. Hooker remarks: 30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. " There is probably no latitude, between that of Spitzbergen and Victoria Land, where some of the species of either country do not exist : Iceland, Brit- ain, the Mediterranean Sea, North and South America, and the South-Sea Islands, all possess antarctic Diatomacem. The silicious coats of species only known living in the waters of tlie South Polar Ocean, have, during past ages, contributed to the formation of rocks ; and thus they outlive several successive creations of organized beings. The phronolite stones of the Ehine, and the Tri- poli stone, contain species identical with what are now contributing to form a sedimentary deposit (and, perhaps, at some future period, a bed of rock) extend- ing in one continuous stratum for 400 measured miles. I allude to the shores of the Victoria Barrier, along whose coast the soundings examined were inva- riably charged with diatomaceous remains, constituting a bank which stretches 200 miles north from the base of Victoria Barrier, while the average depth of water above it is 300 fatlioms, or 1,800 feet. Again, some of the antarctic spe- cies have been detected floating in the atmosphere which overhangs the wide ocean between Africa and America. The knowledge of this marvelous fact we owe to Mr. Darwin, who, when he was at sea off the Cape de Verd Islands, col- lected an impalpable powder which fell on Captain Fitzroy's ship. He trans- miflled this dust to Ehrenberg, who ascertained it to consist of the silicious coats, chiefly of American Biatomacece, which were being wafted through the upper region of the air, when some meteorological phenomena checked them in their course and deposited them on the ship and surface of the ocean. " The existence of the remains of many species of this order (and among them some antarctic ones) in the volcanic ashes, pumice, and scorias of active and extinct volcanoes (those of the Mediterranean Sea and Ascension Island, for instance), is a fact bearing immediately upon the present subject. Mount Ere- bus, a volcano 12,400 feet high, of the first class in dimensions and energetic action, rises at once from the ocean in the seventy-eighth degree of south lati- tude, and abreast of the Diatomacem bank, which reposes in part on its base. Hence it may not appear preposterous to conclude that, as Vesuvius receives the waters of the Mediterranean, with its fish, to eject them by its crater, so the sub- terranean and subaqueous forces which maintain Mount Erebus in activity may occasionally receive organic matter from the bank, and disgorge it, together with those volcanic products, ashes and pumice. " Along the shores of Graham's Land and the South Shetland Islands we have a parallel combination of igneous and aqueous action, accompanied with an equally copious supply of Diatomacem. In the Gulf of Erebus and Terror, fifteen degrees north of Victoria Land, and placed on the opposite side of the globe, the soundings were of a similar nature with those of the Victoria Land and Barrier, and the sea and ice as full of Diatomacem. This was not only proved by the deep-sea lead, but by the examination of bergs which, once stranded, had floated off and become reversed, exposing an accumulation of white friable mud frozen to their bases, which abounded with these vegetable remains." The Challenger has explored the antarctic seas in a region inter- mediate between those examined by Sir James Ross's expedition; and the observations made by Dr. Wyville Thomson and his col- leagues in every respect confirm those of Dr. Hooker : " On the 11th of February, latitude C0° 52' south, longitude 80° 20' east, and March 3d, latitude 53° 55' south, longitude 108° 35' east, the sounding instru- caent came up filled with a very fine cream-colored paste, which scarcely efier- EXPEDITION OF THE CHALLENGER. 31 Tesced with acid, and dried into a very light, impalpable, white powder. This, when examined under the microscope, was found to consist almost entirely of the frustules of diatoms, some of thera wonderfully perfect in all the details of their ornament, and many of them broken up. Tlie species of diatoms entering into this deposit have not yet been worked up, but they appear to be referable chiefly to the genera Fragillaria, Coscinodiscus^ Chcetoceros, Asteromphalus, and Bictyocha, with fragments of the separated rods of a singular silicious organ- ism, with which we were unacquainted, and which made up a large proportion of the finer matter of this deposit. Mixed with the diatoms there were a few small GlohigerincB, some of the tests and spicules of radiolarians, and some sand- pnrticles ; but these foreign bodies were in too small proportion to affect the formation as consisting practically of diatoms alone. On the 4th of February, in latitude 52° 29' south, longitude 71° 36' east, a little to the north of tlie Heard Islands, the tow-net, dragging a few fathoms below the surface, came up nearly filled with a pale-yellow gelatinous mass. This was found to consist en- tirely of diatoms of the same species as those found at the bottom. By far the most abundant was the little bundle of silicious rods, fastened together loosely at one end, separating from one another at the other end, and the whole bundle loosely twisted into a spindle. The rods are hollow, and contain the character- istic endochrome of the Diatomacem. Like tlie Glohigerina ooze, then, which it succeeds to the southward in a band apparently of no great width, the ma- terials of this silicious deposit are derived entirely from the surface and inter- mediate depths. It is somewhat singular that diatoms did not appear to be in such large numbers on the surface over the diatom-ooze as they were a little farther north. This may perhaps be accounted for by our not having struck their belt of depth with the tow-net ; or it is possible that, when we found it on the 11th of February, the bottom deposit was really shifted a little to the south by the warm current, the excessively fine flocculent debris of the diatoms taking a certain time to sink. The belt of diatom-ooze is certainly a little farther to the southward in longitude 83° east, in the path of the reflux of the Agulhas current, than in longitude 108° east. " All along the edge of the ice-pack — everywhere, in fact, to the south of the two stations — on the 11th of February, on our southward voyage, and on the 3d of March, on our return, we brought up fine sand and grayish mud, with small pebbles of quartz and feldspar, and small fragments of mica-slate, chlorite- slate, clay-slate, gneiss, and granite. This deposit, I have no doubt, was derived from the surface hke the others, but in this case by the melting of icebergs and the precipitation of foreign matter contained in the ice. " AVe never saw any trace of gravel or sand, or any material necessarily derived from land, on an iceberg. Several showed vertical or irregular fissures filled with discolored ice or snow ; but, when looked at closely, the discoloration proved usually to be very slight, and the effiect at a distance was usually due to the foreign material filling the fissure reflecting hght less perfectly than the gen- eral surface of the berg. I conceive that the upper surface of one of these great tabular southern icebergs, including by far the greater part of its bulk, and cul- minating in the portion exposed above the surface of the sea, was formed by the piling up of successive layers of snow during the period, amounting perhaps to several centuries, during which the ice-cap was slowly forcing itself over the low land and out to sea over a long extent of gentle slope, until it reached a depth considerably above 200 fathoms, when the lower specific weight of the ice caused an upward strain which at length overcame the cohesion of the mass, -32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and portions wore rent off and floated away. If tliis be the true history of the formation of these icebergs, the absence of all land debris in the portion exposed above the surface of the sea is readily understood. If any such exist, it must be confined to the lower part of the berg, to that part which has at one time or other moved on the floor of the ice-cap. "The icebergs, when they ai"e first dispersed, float in from 200 to 250 fath- oms. When, therefoi'e, they have been drifted to latitudes of 65° or 64° south, the bottom of the berg just reaches the layer at which the temperature of the water is distinctly rising, and it is rapidly melted, and the mud and the pebbles with which it is more or less charged are precipitated. That this preci[)itation takes place all over the area where the icebergs are breaking up, constantly, and to a considerable extent, is evident from the fact of the soundings being entire- ly composed of such deposits; for the diatoms, Glohigerinw, and radiolarians, are present on the surface in large numbers ; and unless the deposit from the ice were abundant it would soon be covered and masked by a layer of the exuvia of surface organisms." The observations which have been detailed leave no doubt that the antarctic sea-bottom, from a little to tlie south of the fiftieth parallel, as far as 80° south, is being covered by a fine deposit of silicious mud, more or less mixed, in some parts, with the ice-borne debris of polar lands and Avith the ejections of volcanoes. The silicious particles which constitute this mud are derived, in part, from the diatomaceous plants and radiolarian animals which throng the surface, and, in part, from the spicula of sponges which live at the bottom. The evidence respecting the corresponding arctic area is less complete, but it is sufficient to justify the conclusion that an essentially similar silicious cap is being formed around the northern pole. There is no doubt that the constituent particles of this mud may agglomerate into a dense rock, such as that formed at Oran, on tlie shores of the Mediterranean, Avhich is made up of similar materials. Moreover, in the case of fresh-water deposits of this kind, it is cer- tain that the action of percolating water may convert the originally soft and friable, fine-grained sandstone into a dense semi-transparent opaline stone, the silicious organized skeletons' being dissolved, and the silex redeposited in an amorphous state. Whetlier such a meta- morphosis as this occurs in submarine deposits, as well as in those formed in fresh water, does not appear; but there seems no reason to doubt that it may. And hence it may not be hazardous to conclude that very ordinary metamorphic agencies may convert these polar caps into a form of quartzite. In the gi'eat intermediate zone, occupying some 110° of latitude, which separates the circurapolar arctic and antarctic areas of silicious deposit, the diatoms and RacUolaria of the surface-water and the sponges of the bottom do not die out, and, so far as some forms are concerned, do not even appear to diminish in total number ; though, on a rough estimate, it would appear that the proportion of Madiola- EXPEDITION OF THE CHALLENGER. 33 rla to diatoms is much greater than in the colder seas. Nevertheless the composition of the deep-sea mud of this intermediate zone is en- tirely different from that of the circumpolar regions. The first exact information respecting the nature of this mud at depths greater than 1,000 fathoms was given by Ehrenberg, in tlic account which he published in the " Monatsberichte " of the Berlin Academy for the year 1853, of the soundings obtained by Lieutenant Berry man, of the United States Navy, in the Nortli Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores. Observations which confirm those of Ehrenberg in all essential I'espects have been made by Prof. Bailey, myself. Dr. Wallich, Dr. Carpenter, and Prof. Wyville Thomson, in their earlier cruises ; and the continuation of the Glohigerlna ooze over the South Pacific has been proved by the recent work of the Challenger, by which it is also shown, for the first time, that, in passing from the equator to high southern latitudes, the number an.\ variety of the Foramimfera diminish, and even the Glohigerince become dwarfed. And this re- sult, it will be observed, is in entire accordance with the fact already mentioned that, in the sea of Kamtchatka, the deep sea mud was found by Bailey to contain no calcareous organisms. Thus, in the whole of the " intermediate zone," the silicious deposit which is being formed there, as elsewhere, by the accumulation of sponge-spicula, MacUolaria, and diatoms, is obscured and overpowered bj^.the immensely greater amount of calcareous sediment, which arises from the asist'es-ation of the skeletons of dead Foraminifera. The similarity of the deposit, thus composed of a large percentage of car- bonate of lime, and a small percentage of silex, to chalk, regarded merely as a kind of rock, which was first pointed out by Ehrenberg,' is now admitted on all hands; nor can it be resouably doubted that ordinary metamorphic agencies are competent to convert the " modern chalk" into hard limestone, or even into crystalline marble. Ehrenberg aj^pears to have taken it for granted that the Glohi- ' The following passages, in Ehrenberg's memoir on " The Organisms in the Chalk which are still living" (18o9), are conclusive: " 7. The dawning period of the existing living organic creation, if such a period is distinguishable (which is doubtful), can only be supposed to have existed on the other side of, and below, the chalk formation ; and thus, either the chalk, with its wide-spread and thick beds, must enter into the series of newer formations, or some of the accepted four great geological periods — the quaternary, tertiary, and secondary formations — contain organisms which still live. It is more probable, in the proportion of three to one, that the transition or primary period is not different, but that it is only more difficult to examine and understand, by reason of the gradual and prolonged chemical decomposition and metamorphosis of many of its organic constituents." " 10. By the mass-forming Infusoria and Poli/thalamla, secondary are not distinguish- able from tertiary formations ; and, from what has been said, it is possible that, at this very day, rock-masses are forming in the sea, and being raised by volcanic agencies, the constitution of which, on the whole, is altogether similar to that of the chalk. The chalk remains distinguishable by its organic remains as a formation, but not as a kind of rock." VOL. VII. — 3 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gerince and otlier Forcmilnifera y;h\Qh. are found in the deep-sea mud, live at the great depths ia which their remains are found ; and he sup- ports this opinion by producing evidence that the soft parts of these organisms are preserved, and may be demonstrated by removing the calcareous matter with dilute acids. In 1857 the evidence for and against this conclusion appeared to me to be insufficient to warrant a l^ositive conclusion one way or the other, and I expressed myself, in my re|>ort to the Admiralty on Captain Dayman's soundings, in the following terms: ""When we consider the immense area over which this deposit is spread, the depth at which its formation is going on, and its similarity to chalk, and still more to the marls of Caltanisetta, the question, 'Whence are these organisms derived? ' becomes one of high scientific interest. 'C^ " Three answers have suggested themselves : "In accordance with the prevalent view of the limitation of life to compara- tively small depths, it is imagined either : 1. That these organisms have di-ifted into their present position from shallower waters ; or 2. That they habitualiy live at the surface of the ocean, and only fall down into their present position. " 1. I conceive that the first supposition is negatived by the extremely marked zoological peculiarity of the deep-sea fauna. "Had the GloMgerincB been drifted into their present position from shallow water, we should find a very large proportion of the characteristic inhabitants of shallow water mixed with them, and this would the more certainly be the case, as the large GloMgerinw^ so abundant in the deep-sea soundings, are, in proportion to their size, more massive and solid than almost any other Foi'a- minifera. But the fact is, that the proportion of other Foramimfera is exceed- ingly small, nor have I found as yet, in the deep-sea deposits, any such matters as fragments of molluscous shells, of EcTiiniy etc., which abound in shallow waters, and are quite as likely to be drifted as the heavy Globigerince. Again, the relative proportions of young and fully-formed Globigerhice seem inconsistent with the notion that they have traveled far. And it seems difficult to imagine why, had the deposit been accumulated in this way, Cosciiiodisci should so almost entirely represent the Diatomacem. "2. The second hypothesis is far more feasible, and is strongly supported by the fact that manj Poly cist inecB (Badlolaria) and. Coscinodisci are well knov^n to live at the stu-face of the ocean. Mr. Macdonald, Assistant Surgeon of 11. M. S. Herald, now in the Southwestern Pacific, has lately sent home some very val- uable observations on living forms of this kind, met with in the stomachs of oceanic moUusks, and therefore certainly inhabitants of the superficial layer of the ocean. But it is a singular circumstance that only one of the forms figured by Mr. Macdonald is at all like a Globigerina, and there are some pecuharities about even this which make me greatly doubt its affinity with that genus. The form, indeed, is not unlike that of a Globigerina, but it is provided with long radiating processes, of which I have never seen any trace in Globigerina. Did they exist, they might explain what otherwise is a great objection to this view, viz., how is it conceivable that the heavy Gloligerina should maintain itself at the surface of the water? " If the organic bodies in the deep-sea soundings have neither been drifted, nor have ftiUen from above, there remains but one alternative — they must have lived and died as they are. EXPEDITION OF TEE CHALLENGER. 35 "Important objections, however, at once suggest themselves to this view- How can animal life be conceived to exist under such conditions of light, tem- perature, pressure, and aeration as must obtain at these vast depths ? " To this one can only reply that we know for a certainty that even very higlily-organized animals do continue to live at a depth of 300 and 400 fathoms, inasmuch as they have been dredged up thence ; and that the difference in the amount of light and heat at 400 and 2,000 fathoms is probably, so to speak, very far less than the difference in complexity of organization between these animals and the humbler Protozoa and ProtophyUi of the deep-sea soimdings. " I confess, though as yet far from regarding it proved that the Gloligerinm live at these depths, the balance of probabilities seems to me to incline in that direction. And there is one circumstance which weighs strongly in my mind. It may be taken as a law that any genus of animals that is found far back in time is capable of living under a great variety of circumstances as regards light, tem- perature, and pressure. Now, the genus Gloligerina is abundantly represented in the Cretaceous epoch, and perhaps earlier. "I abstain, however, at present from drawing any positive conclusions, pre- ferring rather to await the result of more extended observations." ' Dr. TTallich, Prof. Wy ville Thomson, and Dr. Carpenter, concluded that the Glohigerinm live at the bottom. Dr. Wallich writes in 1862 : " By sinking very fine gauze-nets to considerable depths, I have re- peatedly satisfied myself that Glohigerina does not occur in the super- ficial strata of the ocean." * Moreover, having obtained certain living star-fish from a depth of 1,260 fathoms, and found their stomachs full of " fresh-looking Glohigerinm " and their debris^ he adduces this fact in support of his belief that the Glohigerince live at the bottom. On the other hand, Miiller, Hiickel, Major Owen, Mr. Gwyn Jefl^ries, and other observers, found that Globigeri?iw, v^ith. the allied genera Orhulina and Pulmnidina. sometimes occur abundantlv at the surface of the sea, the shells of these pelagic forms being not unfrcquently provided with the long spines noticed by Macdonald ; and in 1865 and 1866 Major Owen more especially insisted on the importance of this fact. The recent work of the Challenger fully confirms Major Owen's statement. In the paper recently published in the i^roceedings of the Royal Society,^ from which a quotation has already been made. Prof. Wyville Thomson says: " I had formed and expressed a very strong opinion on the matter. It seemed to me that the evidence was conclusive that the i^^<7V/f?/e /oJe' marked oft* from the anterior l)y the fissure of Sylvius." To these soon are added X\\e '■^ convolu- tions,'''' or corrugation of the outer or cortical layer of the hemis])heres, so as to secure more surface of active nerve-material without addi- tional bulk ; and lastly, in the apes, appears the commencement of tlie third or ^^ posterior lobe.'''' In the human brain no addition of parts is presented, but only im- provements in those parts found in animals next below. One of these improvements is the more perfect communication established between the diftcrent parts composing the brain ; the great " transverse com- missure " connecting the two hemispheres is much better developed than in any of the preceding races, also the fibres connecting the cere- brum with the sensorium upon which it lies ; the " convolutions," only indicated by slight depressions even in monkeys and ajjes, become con- spicuous in the human brain, giving it the appearance of being gath- ered up in deep folds; and the "posterior lobe," which, as we have seen, first makes its appearance in the highest apes, is much increased in man, even in the uncultivated tribes, as is also the comparative bulk of the whole cerebrum. Fig. C— Human Brain: 1. Cerebrum: 2. Cerebellum: 3. Spinal Cord. ScDSorium covered by Cerebrum ; a, b, c, Anterior, Middle, and Posterior Lobes of the Cerebrum. These various improvements, gradually succeeding each other, are accompanied by psychical developments equally marked ; gradually the strong instincts and limited perception of surroundings, which EVOLUTION AND THE AFTER-LIFE. 57 tend to make all the indivitlnals of a class alike in physical and pyschical endowments, give place to more complex sensations, gath- ered from a wider ransre of surroundings. The cerebrum bosrins to take cognizance of these sensations, and to give its approval, before tliey are translated into actions ; memory dawns — hatred, fear, anger, and revenge, are born ; a certain adapting of means to ends gives evidence of commencing reason ; affection, love of approbation, joy, and sorrow, all these appearing in the races most associated witli man, proclaim the presence of faculties and endowments far above tlie plane of mere instinct, and bordering close upon attributes usunlly applied to soul alone, and in its more dignified estates. Exami)les of such endowments in the brute races can hardly have escaped the notice of any intelligent observer. In the faithful dog, who at a Vt'ord from his master collects the stray flock in the stormy Highlands, or brings in the helpless and perishing traveler from the snowy Alps ; who shields his child playmate from the passing danger, or rescues him from threatening death; who, himself hungry, guards food for others ; -who Avith quick perception notes and shares his mas- ter's varying moods, and who metes out justice for the weak against the strong, we behold in humble guise a dawning soul, with which no truly noble soul need wish to ignore kinship. To note all the improvements in the physical organ of mind in man, and point out the vast psychical advances which are found in him, compared with the best of the races beneath him, would far exceed our limits. We may, however, notice here that, as in his ner- vous organization, no distinctly new parts are discoverable, but only general growth and development, and especially vast increase in the size and working capacity of the cerebrum, together with improved lines of communication between the different parts of the brain, so in the psychical manifestations which this enlarged and better-developed brain exhibits, no faculties are discovered beyond what these various developments in structure render possible. Does man possess intelli- gence ? It is found also in the lower tribes. Memory ? Many races of animals possess it. Reason ? No definition of it can be formed, consistent with its exercise in man, which can debar it from some fee- ble exercise in his more lowly companions. Up to the point which their organization permits, they possess and exercise faculties akin to those of man. But it is in the degree and perfection to which these faculties attain that the superiority of man is evident ; and here the difference is vast indeed. The intellectual superiority of an ordinary man over the most sagacious animal, which nevertheless can scarcely be taught the simplest relation of numbers, is too vast to be readily comprehended ; but so is the difference immense between tlie reason- ing powers of an infant and a man, or a Hottentot and a Cuvier or Laplace. If a dog cannot be taught simple arithmetic, neither can a Hottentot be taught optics nor analytical geometry, nor be made to 58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. take in tlie idea of " quantitive reasoning " nor " correlation of forces." The dog is capable of improvement, limited only by his organization; the Hottentot only by liis, and the child, of a large-brained and culti- vated ancestry by his. The difference in these possibilities, however, can only be comprehended upon reflection. The most intelligent ani- mal, or even tlie savage man, bears relations to no surroundings be- yond the mere seeming of things upon the few acres or miles traversed by his race or tribe ; the sun and moon are only what they appear ; they rise just beyond the mountain, and they go down in the forest. The thunder and the tempest are incomprehensible, or are the voice and breathings of an angry God. The philosopher, or man of science, on the contrary, holds converse with all objects, animate and inani- mate ; all peoples and their works, both present and past, upon the surface of the earth. He explores its dej)ths, and calls up before him the generations which peopled it ages on ages past. The microscope brings before him the world of the infinitely small, and the telescope reveals the worlds of space. With the spectroscope he questions the stars, and they give intelligible reply. Such, and a thousand-fold more, are his surroundings ; and it is to express his relations to these, to the complex impressions and sensations to which they give rise, and the reflections and aspirations which they inspire, that the brain of the philosopher must be adequate. We Ijave thus noticed the more prominent structural changes as they occur in the nervous system, from its simplest form to its highest development, and also the corresponding psychical manifestations, which each advance in structure rendered possible. We have seen the lowly creature, endowed with its single nerve-centre, and its radi- ating nerve-filaments, expressing all its relations to the outer world by simple reflex action ; and, if, as we should expect, the order of appear- ance in ISTature corresponded with the order of development, for un- told ages all over the silent, ocean-clothed cai'th, no higher form of life, and no higher expression of soul, was present. Gradually, by mar.y a minute addition, in response to improved surroundings and new requirements, new organs appeared, until at length there existed a creature of definite form, with organs of sight and hearing, as well as touch and locomotion. The old ganglionic nerve-system, with its simple reflex movements, was still retained; but, to express the many new relations to the outer world which its gradually-acquired organs made possible, additional nerve-centres were required, and the senso- rixim assumed form and use. The scries of actions performed through its promptings we call instinctive. Then for unknown ages sense- impressions, stimulating to instinctive action, were the highest ex-' pressio'.is of soul upon the slowly-emerging earth. But, again, improved surroundings — tlie dry earth, with forest, field, and floAver, the brighter sunlight and the purer air, demanded new organs to appropi'iate and \\e\y senses to enjoy; and a race a])- EVOLUTION AND THE AFTER-LIFE, 59 peared with improved organs of sense to receive impressions irom this better outer workl, improved modes of action, and above all in place, and superior to all in function, an organ of intelligence was added. The old methods of soul-manifestation continue; both reflex and instinctive action find their appropriate place in the higher organ- ization ; but they are not sufficient for the numerous and complex re- lations which now existed between the creature and the outer world ; then the cerebro-spinal system comes into being, consciousness becomes perfected, intelligence established, and reason dawns. Again, ages elapsed in gradual changes, until at length man, the crowning excellence, appeared — an upright form, a powerful brain, a soul capable of tracing causes, and even seeking to find out the First Cause. He was the first to place an ideal — his highest conception of good — before himself, and say, " Now for this will I strive ;" the first of all the long line of sentient beings to aspire after a higher life ; the first to say v/ithin himself, "I shall die," or ask, witli ever-increas- ing interest, "Shall I live as^ain?" And what is the relation of science, especially as rejjresented by the doctrine of evolution, to this asi:)iration after a future life ? The objections raised against the doctrine by the religious Avorld — the un- instructed part, at least — are that it banishes Deity and tends to materialism. If by banishing Deity is meant that conception of him which par- ticular sects or peoples have obtained, and are eacli desirous that all the world should have, the objection may or may not have founda- tion ; but, if it is meant that the doctrine shuts out a great first and adequate cause for all the grand and orderly series of events and ex- istences in Nature, nothing could be further from the truth. The desire to seek for causes is one .of the developments of the human mind, increasing in direct ratio with the increase of intelligence. Brute intelligence exhibits no such desire. The savage mind does not rise far into that sphere of intelligence which demands causes ; it is only as a higher reasoning power dawns that analysis commences, and causes are sought after; and the higher the intelligence and stronger the power of reason, the more imperative the demand for causes, and the more perfect the comprehension of them. What is true of causes in general is true in a still greater degree of remote causes, and of a first cause; and hence that which we should expect to occur is found to be the fact, namely, that the scientific men of the present time, the well-developed and well-cultivated minds in all departments of learning, but especially in physical science, are the ones most fully established in an intelligent belief in an adequate first cause. The time is past in which the feeblest artificial works found upon the surface of a single planet, even to the fiiut-hewn weapons of an unknown race, must have assigned for them a competent originator, and yet man himself, with liis complex organization, the long line of organ- 6o TlIK POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. isms of wliioli lie is cliit-f, tlie planet on which he dwells, the system to which it belongs, and the whole vast system of systems sweeping in unimagined circles through space, all be supposed to exist, and have no architect and no supporter. Such is not the deduction of science, and such is not tlie conclusion at which the most skilled interjjreters of Nature have arrived. In examining any artificial work, it is an in- stinct wuth man, and his reason approves, to assign for it a conscious and intelligent cause ; and he knows that the cause exists in onind, for without mind nothing could be planned or originated. Not only so, but in every instance Ave judge of the character of the originating mind by the product. A great and noble work is not originated by a feeble and undevelo]>ed mind, nor a crude and imperfect work by a large and well-disciplined one. We judge similarly in regard to every work, from the crude uten- sils of the " cave-dwellers " to the mighty products of a Michael An- gelo, a Shakespeare, or a Laplace. So, in judging of works compared with which the mightiest works of man are as mole-hiils, Avhose beauty it is the higliest exercise of his genius feebly to copy and represent, whose method and arrangement it is the life-work of the most exalted intellects to discover, and whose extent, either in time or space, he still gropes to find the unit of, we assign for cause a corresponding soul ; and he who comprehends best the work is capable of under- standing best the architect. The gods of sects and specialties may perhaps be failing of their accustomed reverence, but, in the mean time, there is dawning on the w^orld, with a softer and serener light, the conception, imperfect though it still may be, of a conscious, originating, all-pervading, active soul — the "Over-Soul," the Cause, the Deity; unrevealed through human form or speech, but filling and insi^iring every living soul in the Avide universe according to its measure: whose temple is Nature, and whose worship is aspiration. Science, then, so far from excluding God from the universe, de- mands him as an ever-active power ; but, as man can only know him through his works, and as the universe is yet comparatively unknown to him even in his highest condition, and must remain so while he is confined to earth, it follows that our knowledge, and even our concejv tions of him, must be limited and imperfect, and our appreciation of him correspondingly so. Is there, then, reason, in harmony Avith science, to expect an exist- ence under more favorable circumstances for a knowledge and appre- ciation of this orio-inatinGf soul whom science itself demands ? As interpreted by the docti'ine of evolution, we find man, as he now exists, with his physical organization and advanced psychical being, the product of a long series of develojiments. lie has arrived, however, only at a certain point in the ascending series ; from that point he easily reviews the whole long line beneath him from tlic very EVOLi'TIOX AXn THE AFTER-LIFE. 6l begiuiiiiigs of organization and life, and admires its grand and orderly procession ; but, i-eaching out forward, he seems to tind notliing within the scope of his pliysical senses. He sees, however, that the series is not ended, for reason assures him that even for the material universe there is, somewhere beyond, an architect whose skill and Avisdom he is only commencing to appreciate, but still more, when he beholds the gradual unfolding of the world of soul, with its instinct, conscious- ness, intelligence, memory, reason, feeling, and aspiration, and coii- siders the possibilities Avhich still may lie enfolded there, is he lost in admiration and wonder at the great centre-soul, the author of all these^ attributes. And what is to span over the abyss, or even roach out toward this ineflable soul ? Is he himself to cease when the mate- rial organization wears out ? — and consciousness, memory, reason, and, higher, nobler and purer tliau all, heaven-born aspiration, the crown- ing development of countless ages, do they all go out in darkness just at the dawning ? or, rather, do not the organization of elements and their development into life and movement, the gradual dawning of in- stinct and ]-eason, and, lastly, of an aspiring soul, give promise of fur- ther development under more favoring circumstances for approach- ing, knowing, and appreciating the great central, causal, all-pervading soul ? For scientific proof of this after-life and future development, the whole world is looking, nor is there any thing unreasonable in the ex- pectation. The orderly steps in the series of development suddenly end with the birth of a soul capable of inquiring after its Author, and aspiring to a continuous life. Is it, then, the end of the series, or must there not be further steps approximating tow^ard the central soul, and observers have not searched aright, or means of observation been im- ])erfect or misused ? As, in our solar system, the " law of distances," found to exist among the planets, caused astronomers to look for another body in the huge space between Jupiter and Mars, who were rewarded by the discovery of the Asteroids ; or as perturbations in the motions of Uranus caused them to look for a planet beyond its orbit,, and Xeptune was found ; so, with equal reason, may psychologists infer the existence of a whole series of superior beings reaching on- ward toward the Infinite ; and who shall deny the possibility of their discovery ? The development of man is constantly leading on to the appreciation of more and more subtile elements and effects ; the laws which govern the atmosphere — light, sound, and magnetism — which could not have been understood in the infancy of the race, are being- unfolded ; colors which our remote ancestors could not perceive, are being difterentiated ; and sounds, which to them were unmeaning noises, or were not discerned at all, to our more refined and better- developed senses convey impressions of pitch and harmony. Sucli advance in the development of the ordinary senses, not to discuss the possibilities of an internal and still higher sense, o-ives in-oniise of 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. future kuowu relations to that which is subtile in the domains of biol- ogy and i^sychology, beyond that which lias hitherto been attained. In this view Science need not desjiaii-, and has no right to give over its efforts nor neglect its opportunities to obtain appreciable evi- dence, however slight it may at first appeal*, of a future life — one which the doctrine of evolution demands should be a higher development, one of greater possibilities than this. The aspiration after such a life is as mxich a develojoment of the soul as is intelligence, or reason, or a de- sire to know causes, and there is the same reason to believe tliat it has its foundation in a corresponding reality. And, great as have been the triumphs of science hitherto — great as has been the light which the grand thought of evolution has thrown u]5on the whole plan and system of the universe — nothing hitherto ac- complished could compare in grandeur with the physical demonstra- tion of a higher mode of life and action than that attainable with our present organization and present limitations ; a demonstration which would enable man to lie down to sleep with the Jcnowledge that he will awaken to an enlarged and ever-enlarging, conscious, future life. -♦«♦- ADDEESS TO MEDICAL STUDEA^TS.' By Eev. E. a. WASHBUEX, D. D. I AM glad of the privilege, gentlemen of the Medical College, of meeting to-day so many who are masters and students in the school of science. For if, as I believe, all our studies, whether of Natiire or mind, are only chapters of one book, there can be nothing wiser in our day, when the growing mass of learning almost compels a microscopic research and somewhat of a microscopic bias — nothing wiser than at times to interchange our points of vievr. It is, indeed, one of the phases of that heredity, of which so much is said at present, that our callings bequeath their mental habits, so that the clergyman seems often born Avithout the power of inductive reasoning, and the nat- uralist with a suspicion of all that cannot be analyzed by his blow-pipe. Yet I am sure that you are of a larger school than this ; and in that feeling I venture to put before you a few thoughts on the mutual rela- tions of scientific culture. I shall not try your patience by a treatise on the Mosaic cosmogony or evolution ; and, indeed, I must ask your allowance beforehand, if I betray in my remarks that surface knowl- edge of gases or nervous tissues, not strange to one more busied with Greek aorists and primitive-church deposits. It is your noble calling to be students in that branch of science, perhaps the most fruitful of ' Delivered recently to the graduating class of the New York College of Physicians and Sursreons. (.1 ADDRESS TO MEDICAL STUDENTS. 63 .liscovci-y to-day, which explores the laws of the highest organic life. If I can point out a few of the common features which give a mceting- o-round Avith you for one who is, like myself, a physician of the soul— for studies that bear on the riddles of our mental life and the largest aims of moral education— my essay will not he throY/n away. It is plain to all that the marked feature of our modern culture is the enthusiastic study of Nature ; and the fact demands our impartial thought. This change, even within the last thirty years, is a striking one. It comes in part from the magnificence of the discoveries gained in every part of natural inquiry. It comes again from the reaction of the mind, after a time of overstrained ideal pursuits ; nor is it strange, when the philosophy which began with noble thinkers had evaporated at last into a misty pantheism, that we should ask a more robust sense, and a positive knowledge. It is amusing to meet to-day those who awhile ago were talking of the infinite soul in man, and are now quite proud of their pedigree from a West-African ape. But I attrib- ute this feature of our culture not merely to such reaction. It betok- ens a solid growth in the method of inquiry. Although I distinguish it from many of the theories which call themselves science, yet the principle which begins with the study of facts, verifies them by sure experiment, and rests in ascertained laws, is the key of all discovery. Our modern intellect did not, indeed, originate it. Nor can I ever admit that the great thinkers of the past have not done immeasurable service in their spheres of knowledge ; rather, I claim that there is not a single foundation truth, in regard to the mind or moral nature, which was not known, even before a Plato or an Augustine. Our philosophy does not give essential truth ; it only opens it in its clearer relations. The fixed stars have shed the same light aforetime, although the glasses of to-day have pierced into the nebulous fields. But it is the peculiar character of natural science, and the grandeur of its mai'ch on this high-road, which have established, as never before, its critical method. You are familiar with this in the wide range of in- ductive study. The knowledge of the heavens is quite another thing to us than in the day when Aristotle reasoned from the ideal perfect- ness of the circle to the planetary motions ; and " made the world," in Bacon's phrase, " out of his categories." Or, to illustrate from your own field, the ancient theories of material and spiritual sub- stance, which led to such fruitless speculation even to recent days, have been exchanged for exact analysis. But this method is not confined to the interpretation of Nature; it is the common law of advance in all knowledge. Mental science must now begin with the related facts of biology and psychology, in order to rise by clear analysis to the laws of thought or will. His- tory obeys the same principle, and it has so passed, since the day of Niebuhr, out of the cloud-land of legend to terra Jlrma. Our vast researches into languasre have come from the dismissal of the old 64 THE rOPLLAU SCJEXCE MONTHLY. hypothesis of a primiiive tongue and tlie correlation of all the facts gathered from all the kindred forms of speech. It is the same with social science. And although I am aware of the notion of many doc- tors, both of divinity and medicine, that theology is a fixed deposit, as distinct from inductive knowledge, and indeed that there is an eternal conflict of religion and science, yet I am bold to say that it is a vulgar eri'or. There is a more palpable movement in the science of Nature, because it has to do wnth material forces, while the theologian explores the more subtile laws of thought and moral history. "We do not deal with scalpel or microscope, yet we recognize the method of analysis. It might be a curious pursuit if you should study medical history from the day of Galen, through the middle age, and note how the same speculative notions of soul and body entered into the current dogmas of the Church and the healing art. The central truths of Christianity are always the same; but Biblical criticism, the compara- tive study of Hebrew^ or Christian epochs, the domain of doctrinal thought, are growths of the human mind, and every advance has been the fruit of experimental searching. And if we have some clergymen as guiltless of modern ideas as the Englishman who moved the i-isibles of a scientific circle by claiming that the fossils of the caves were the bones of the rebel angels, jDOSsibly you may have a few doctors of medicine almost unable to appreciate the scientific criticism of the four Gospels. But, as we have thus recognized this law of method as the fruit of our cidture, we shall be able to see the interdependence of all these branches of knowledge. All our gains are helpful to each other. I might sum the vast history of science in a Avord — that it has taught us the harmony of law, not only in the correlation of natural forces, but of the moral and social forces of human life. But I look more especially at the studies which employ your profession, as they have shed such light on the marvelous secrets of the inner man. The cun- ning laws of cerebration ; the wondrous rhytlim that runs between the several powers of memory, feeling, will, and the sensitive nerve- centres ; the dependence of thought on the supply of the chemical brain-food; the explanation of the riddles of our dream-life; the re- lation of our mental functions to the loss or decay of our organs ; the phases of disease as aftecting voluntary action — all these are as need- ful a study for the intellectual or the Christian thinker as for the nat- uralist. These researches have not only cured many mistakes of our psychology, but have given us sounder views of life and education. It is not too much to say that our theories of social and religious cult- ure have been far too often aflected by a partial view of our spiritual nature, which lost sight of its dependence on the body and the healthy laws of action. But while I gratefully acknowledge this debt, I hold that our scientific culture will, if faithful to its aim, lead us to a nobler knowledge of those truths that pass beyond a bald materialism. I ADDRESS TO MEDICAL STUDENTS. 65 can only touch here upon this wide subject. If I were to seek an argument against the modern deniers of a Divine Maker and Provi- dence, I should turn to science itself as furnishing its best ground. The result of our study of Nature, it is justly claimed, is only the knowledge of phenomena ; but in this claim science has rid us forever of the notion of material substance; it has resolved all into one orisi- nal, persistent Force ; it has thus lifted matter into a domain above the physical, and by its own induction brought us back to the neces- sary truth, which we can only interpi'et by our own personal intelli- gence and will. If evolution, whatever its amazing chain of growth, is forced to admit that the principal world-stuff has in it the capacity of all the thinking, conscious, moral being begotten from it, evolution is but a vague name for the living action of a living God. And when I sum, again, our results as to the human organism, all our knowledge of the fitness of the cerebral mass and each fibre of the spinal net-work to the motions of the unseen life, so far from proving thought a func- tion of the brain, or will a shock of the nerve-power, has only refined the body into the perfect vehicle of the indwelling sj)irit. Nothing is more satisfying to a believer in facts above Nature than that chapter on the " Substance of the Mind," where the apostle of English Posi- tivism, Mr. Spencer, gives ixs as the outcome of his analysis, that when we talk of material or spiritual substances, it is indifferent whether "we express those in terms of these, or these of those;" yet, as thought cannot be dissected like the gray matter of the brain, it is sounder science to say that the living force is another than the physi- cal fact. But I cannot linger on these questions. Enough if I look forward in this light to the most harmonious results. We need not expect at once a reconciliation of all discords. Much must be done before that is reached. The clergyman has to learn fully that the Word of God is to be studied as the oracle of the great truths of man's spiritual history, not rashly made the rule of exact science. The naturalist must learn that there are facts of conscience and of human life more sacred than the guesses of his theory, which he must touch with rev- erent hands. Indeed, I have sometimes thought if the clergy could ramble with Mr. Huxley over the glaciers, and Mr. Huxley would take an excursion into the fields of Christian history, we should have better clerical sermons, and better " lay sermons." Science will work its own cure at last. It is not probable that there will be less prayer on account of Mr. Tyndall's "prayer-gauge," so long as it is the bidding of the heart of man. It is not probable, if, as a witty doctor has lately hinted, we measure the varied genius of Homer, Spenser, or Beranger, by the slower or quicker respiration, that we shall read the "Iliad" or "Faerie Queene" with less delight. It is not probable that all our discoveries of the ape period will kindle our interest so much as the history we remember far better of the struggles and divine triumphs VOL. VII. — 5 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the full-grown man. Let Science go on with its keenest analysis. It will return, when it is completed, to the living synthesis. If, with all our processes, we cannot manufacture a man, if even the mineral water we concoct is not quite the same as Nature brews in her labora- tory, much more sliall we give up the fruitless task of dissolving the ultimate facts of mind and life. I have been struck with a sentence of the late Mr. Mill, in his autobiography, where he speaks of a long stage of mental depression which destroyed his zeal for all his favor- ite studies. " I saw," he says, " that the habit of analysis tends to wear away the feelings. My education Iiad failed to create these feel- ings in sufficient strength to resist this dissolving influence, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made such analysis the inveterate habit of the mind. I was thus left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail ; without any desire for the ends I had been so carefully fitted to work for." That is the autobiography of our time, of its strength and of its weakness. Let such experience teach us the honest pursuit of science, but teach us also its limit. Our age will gather up the real gains of its knowledge. We shall have learned many of the laws of our being ; we shall apply ourselves to a broader culture of the mind; we shall feel a more earnest interest in all aims for the im- provement of the race. But we shall prize no less the treasures of letters and art bequeathed us by the past ; the ideal truths which have employed the wise and good ; and, above all, that Christian faith which has inspired the richest knowledge of mankind, and without which our best culture will be as dead as the fossils of a prehistoric cavern. Such, gentlemen, is the result I anticipate for the next period of our scientific growth. Pardon me if I have given you too long or too dry an essay ; but let me beg you to receive it as the conviction of one who feels a generous sympathy with all the real aims of his time. This is the best spirit of your noble profession. If you so pursue it, as honest interpreters of Nature and reverent worshipers of Him who is above Nature, you will make it a sacred ministry for not only phys- ical kiiowledjre, but for the service of God and man. ■♦»» THE DEEPER HAPvMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.' THERE are two very opposite parties among us at the present day, whose language is in one respect very strikingly similar. The Christian Church has from the beginning spoken Avith a certain con- tempt of learning. " The wisdom of the world," " oppositions of ^ This article appeared in Macmillaii's Magazine under the title of " Natural Religion." DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 67 science falsely so called," "to tlie Greeks foolishness;" these are the phrases of one of the earliest and highest of Christian authorities. In our own country the two most powei-ful of Christian movements, Puritanism and Evangelicalism, have been distinctly marked with this characteristic feature, although it might be possible to mention one or two learned Evangelicals and several learned Puritans. That there have been, and ai-e, a vast number of men at the same time Christian and learned, does not affect the fact that Christianity holds itself aloof from and in a manner superior to learning. Such men, where their Christian feeling has been intense, have often spoken disparagingly of their own learning, as of a thing of little value, and have taken a pride in placing themselves on a level with the ignorant. If it is true that eloquent vindications of learning from the Christian point of view might be quoted, lofty assertions of the sympathy of Christian- ity for whatever is true and elevated, such assertions do not prove so much as is proved by the necessity of making them. If we admire them, it is rather because we love learning than because we love Chris- tianity. We admire them as noble deviations from the Christian tra- dition, in a point where we have a misgiving that Christianity may be narrow. Yet this contempt for learning no Christian would admit to be equivalent to a contemj^t for knowledge. Knowledge, a certain kind of knowledge. Christians maintain to be the only thing worth having. Wealth, power, every thing that is counted desirable, they despise in comparison with a certain kind of knowledge. It is among these things comparatively despicable that they class what is com- monly called learning. They despise it not as learning, but as learn- ing comparatively worthless in quality, as being but a counterfeit of the true learning which it is happiness and salvation to possess. Now, in this respect quite an opposite school hold the very same language. Scientific men resemble Christians, in treating with great contempt what goes by the name of learning and philosophy, in com- parison with another sort of wisdom which they believe themselves to possess. Like Christians, they are no contemners of knowledge ; on the contrary, in praise of knowledge they grow eloquent, and use lan- guage of scriptural elevation. " Wisdom is the principal thing, there- fore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding." It is their unceasing cry that all good is to be expected from the increase of true knowledge; that the happiness, both of the race and individ- uals, depends upon the advance of real science, and the application of it to human life. Yet they have a contempt for learning, which is just as Christian in its tone as their love for knowledge. "Erudition" and "philosophy" are terms of contempt in their mouths. The first they consider to be, for the most part, a criminal waste of time ; philos- ophy they denounce as consisting mainly of empty words, and offer- ing solutions either imaginary or unintelligible of problems which are either imaginary or unintelligible themselves. In some scientific 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. men this feeling of contemj^t for learning is concealed; they will pro- fess to admire scholarship and erudition, speaking of it as a graceful accomplishment ; and it is only in unguarded moments that they be- tray their conviction that it is nothing more ; others proclaim it loud- ly, and some even wish to bring piiblic opinion to bear upon the mat- ter, so as to i^revent as an immorality the acquiring of useless knowl- edge. Thus, the old religious school, and that new school whose convic- tions we see now gradually acquiring the character of a religion, agree in combining a passionate love for what they believe true knowledge, with a contempt for so-called learning and philosophy. The common enemy of both is what the one school calls, and the other might well call, " the wisdom of the world." But though agree- ing so far, these two schools hate their common enemy much less than they hate each other. For each regards the " true wisdom " of the other as worse and more mischievous than the wisdom of the world which each rejects. To the scientific school the Christian yvQaig is a mystical superstition, compared with which " learning and philoso- phy" are science itself. To the Christian, modern science is a dark- ness compared with which the science that St. Paul rejected might almost be called Christianity. Nothing is so terrible as this clashing of opposite religions. Dif- ferences on important subjects are always painful, but the direct shock of contrary enthusiasms has something appalling about it. That one man's highest truth should be another man's deadliest falsehood ; that one man should be ready to die in disinterested self-dcA^otion for a cause which another man is equally i*eady to oppose at the sacrifice of his life ; this is a horror which is none the less horrible becavise it has often been witnessed on this perplexed planet. But often it has been seen, long after the conflict was over, that there had been misappre- hension ; that the difference of opinion was not really any thing like so complete as it seemed. Nay, it has often happened that a later generation has seen the difference to be very small indeed, and has wondered that so much could have been made of it. In such cases the mind is relieved of that fancy of a radical discord in human na- ture. We see that self-devotions have not really clashed in such fell antagonism. We see that with self-devotion there may mix less noble feelings, and that the immitigable hostility of religious strife may be caused by a mixture of ardent conviction with some impulses less noble, with some that are blamable and some that are even ludicrous, with mere pugnacity, with the passion of gratifying self-importance, with the half-noble pleasure that there is in fighting, and the ignoble pleasure that there is in giving pain. It would certainly be hard enough to show that the present strife between Christianity and science is one in which insignificant differ- ences are magnified by the imagination of the combatants. The DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 69 question is nothing less than this, whether we are to regard the grave with assured hope, and the ties between human beings as indissoluble by death ; or, on the other hand, to dismiss the thought of a future life as too doubtful to be worth considering, even if not absolutely chimerical. No reasoning can make such a difference into a small one. But even where the differences are so great, it may still be worth while to call attention to the points of agreement. In our penury of truth we ought to make the very utmost of our agreements. Let us rescue whatever we can from the waves of doubt; sailors thrown shipwrecked on a desert island must save what they can, not what they would. If there is some truth, however small, upon which all can agree, then there is some action upon which all can unite ; and who can tell how much may be done by any thing so rare as absolute unanimity? Moreover, if we look closely, we shall always find our agreement to be more than we had expected. It seems as if men valued difference of opinion for its own sake. We seem not to care for any doctrine that is not controvertible, "VYe talk with contempt of platitudes and truisms. Platitudes and truisms do not work up into interesting books; but, if our object is to accomplish something for human life, we shall scarcely find any truth serviceable that has not been rubbed into a truism, and scarcely any maxim that has not been worn into a platitude. But men seldom apply to truths this test of practice ; they try them by the other test, which is the test of talk and debate. Thus it happens that ten points of agreement seem less important in most assemblies than one point of difference. Why is it men do not discover by experience the waste that is caused by this method ? Either they must have a great deal of time on their hands, or else they have most unreasonable expectations from controversy. But I return to my point. We are all familiar with the language used by Christians in dis- paragement of learning. God, they say, has revealed to men all that is essential for them to know. By the side of revealed knowl- edge what the human intellect can discover for itself is of little im- portance. If it seem to clash with revelation, it is mischievous ; if not, it may be useful in a subordinate degree. But at the best it is contemptible by the side of the " one thing needful ; " and the great- est discoverer that ever lived is a trifler compared with the most simple-minded Christian who has studied to fulfill the requirements of the gospel. There are indeed a true erudition and a true philosophy, the subject of which is God's revelation itself. Scholars, profoundly read in the sources of theology, whether they be supposed to be the Bible or the Fathers of the Church; philosophers who have made the Christian revelation their basis, or have collected and elucidated the evidence of it— these are truly wise, and escape the censure of frivolity under which secular learning lies; but even these, illustrious and venerable 70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. as they may be, will acknowledge that there is a wisdom beyond their own, which the humblest Christian may possess, the wisdom of simple belief and love. We are less familiar as yet with the invectives of scientific men against what has long passed for learning and philosoj^hy in the world. Difterent sections of the scientific school bring the accusation in dif- ferent language. Yet the same feeling, the same strong and con- temptuous conviction, pervades the whole school. "What they reject and assail is, in two words, knowledge based on authority, and knowl- edge wanting an inductive basis. That the utterances of great and famous philosophers are to be taken as truth ; that in science, as in the civil law, the responsa pru- dentum have a binding force ; has been accepted in some departments of knowledge up to the present day. Long after the authority of Aristotle had been shaken, new thinkers were allowed to occupy a similar place in some brandies, and from Descai'tes to Hegel a sort of monarchical rule has prevailed in metaphysics. The scientific school tolerates notliing of this kind. Not that it refuses to reverence su- perior minds, not perhaps that it is altogether incapable of yielding to the temptation of trusting a particular authority for a while too much, or following a temporary fashion. But as a general rule it rejects as a superstition the notion that the most superior mind is at all infal- lible ; it dissents without scruple from those whom it reverences most ; and on the other hand the most eminent members of it encourage this freedom, are well pleased to be conti'adicted, and avoid assuming an oracular style as a mark of charlatanry. Such a cotip (Tetat in phi- losophy as that of Auguste Comte is resolutely resisted, and the autocracy of Hegel comes to an end, not by the accession of a new monarch, but rather by the proclamation of a republic in German philosophy. By the introduction of this new principle a large proportion of the doctrine current in the world is branded with the mark of spurious- ness. In theology, metaphysics^ moral philosophy, history, politics, the princij^le of authority has reigned hitherto with more or less exclusiveness. The repudiation of it is a revolution in those depart- ments of knowledge. It converts whole libraries into waste-paper, silences controversies that have raged for ages, reduces to worth- lessness the whole store of learning hived np in many capacious memories. It throws discredit at the same time upon the very name of erudition ; not as such, for there is a kind of erudition much appreciated by the scientific school; but because erudition, as hitherto understood, has commonly gone along with, has in a great degree grown out of, an excessive reverence for the opin- ions of famous men. All that part of erudition, in particular, which is to knowledge what relic-worship is to religion, the laborious col- lection of minute facts that concern illusti'ious men, begins to seem BEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 71 superstitious aud cliildisli when the general estimate of liumau wisdom so decidedly sinks. But the more important change is in the extension of the Baconian method to the whole domain of philosophy. While one part of the " wisdom of the world " has been discredited as resting solely on authority, another large division of it is now rejected as resting on inductions insufficient or untrustworthy, and another as resting on groundless assumptions, disguised under the name of necessary truths, truths of the reason, truths given in consciousness, etc. The long habit of trying experiments, the vast experience which has been gained of the mistakes which may be made about matters of fact and of the infinite carelessness of the unscientific mind, have exposed to doubt whatever has been deduced in past ages from facts not recurrent or capable of being reproduced at will. The steady prog- ress of discovery in the experimental sciences has stood out in contrast with the oscillating and unprogressive character of the sciences of mind. Moreover, in their process of extension the ex- perimental sciences have constantly trenched on the domain which was supposed to lie definitively beyond their limit. Physiology has brought us close to mind, and the old distinction between matter and spirit begins to be slighted as a superstition. The old psychology also is assailed as not properly based on physiology. Moral phi- losophy does not escape. It, as well as the philosophy of law, has suffered through the influx of new knowledge about remote races of men. Duties and rights, which once appeared axiomatic, and inseparable from human nature, now appear the artificial products of special conditions. The very notion of duty itself is represented as such an artificial product. All these new ideas gathering upon our minds produce a skepticism with regard to current philosophy which extends much further than the particular beliefs with which they seem to conflict. We have grown so accustomed to find so-called incontrovertible axioms resolve themselves into inveterate prejudices, that we have grown shy of all those facile generalities which captivated former ages. Those current abstractions wliich make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have become suspicious and dangerous to us. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honor and inter- est, virtue and vice, all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that homely and popular wisdom by which common life is guided. This, too, it appears, instead of being the sterling product of plain expe- rience, is the overflow of a spurious philosophy, the redundance of the uncontrolled speculations of thinkers who were unacquainted with scientific method. 72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. This second change leads to self-distrust, as the first led to distrust of other men. As we learn not to take our truth at second-hand from other thinkers, so we learn that we must not take it, if the expression may be used, from ourselves. Truth is not wliat ice think, any more than it is what famous men have thought. That which irresistibly strikes us as true, that which seems self-evident, that which commends itself to us, may nevertheless, we learn, not be true at all. It is not enough to judge for ourselves, to examine the facts independently. We must examine the facts according to a rigorous method, which has been elaborated by a long series of investigators, and without Avhich neither candor nor impartiality would save us either from see- ing wrong, or from receiving unsound evidence, or from generalizing too fast, or from allowina: some delusive name to come between us and the reality. Distrust of others, distrust of ourselves — if the first of these two factors of the scientific spirit were separated from the second, the result would be mere self-conceit, inere irreverence. As it is, the scientific spirit is simply a jealous watchfulness against that ten- dency of human nature to road itself into the universe, which will show itself both in each individual and in the very greatest investigators, and which can only be controlled by rigorously adhering to a fixed process, and rigidly verifying the work of others by the same. Knowledge, not scientifically obtained and verified, might very fitly be called by the name which Christianity uses. It might be called "human knowledge," or "the wisdom of the world." For the diff'er- ence between it and genuine knowledge is just this, that it is adulter- ated by a human element. It is not the result of a contact between the universe and the naked human intelligence. The perceiving mind has mixed itself up with the thing perceived, and not merely in the way in which it always must, in the way which constitutes cognition, but in quite other and arbitrary ways, by wishes, by prejudices, by crotchets, by vanities. Such humanized views of the universe have a peculiar though cheap attractiveness. They naturally please the human mind, because, in fact, they were expressly contrived to do so. They adapt themselves readily to rhetoric and poetry, because, in fact, they are rhetoric and poetry in disguise. To reject them is to mortify human nature; it is an act of vigorous asceticism. It is to renounce the world as truly as the Christian does when he protests against fashionable vices. It is to reject a pleasant thing on the ground that it is insincere — that it is not, in fact, what it professes to be. The moral attitude of the man who does it is just such as Hebrew prophets assumed toward the flattering and lying court-prophets of their day; just such as Christianity itself assumed toward Pharisaism ; just such as Luther and Knox assumed toward mediaevalism ; just such as the Puritans assumed toward prelacy. It is an attitude of indignant sin- cerity, an attitude marking an inward determination to face the truth of the universe, however disagreeable, and not to allow it to be adul- DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 73 tcrated and drugged, so as to suit our human feebleness. If we can- not produce from the authoritative documents of religion texts directly sanctioning it, this is because the particular problem was not presented in ancient times to the nation which gave us our religion. Those doc- uments are full of passages expressing in poetic forms and in language suited to another age the spirit of modern science. Notably, the book of Job, not in occasional passages only, but as its main object and drift, conti-asts the conventional, and, as it were, orthodox view of the universe, with the view which those obtain who are prepared to face its awfulness directly. Thus the religious view and the scientific view of the universe, which are thought to be so opposite, agree in this important point. Both protest earnestly against human wisdom. Both wait for a mes- sage which is to come to them from without. Religion says, " Let man be silent, and listen when God speaks." Science says, " Let us interrogate Nature, and let us be sure that the answer we get is really Nature's, and not merely an echo of our own voice." Now, whether or not religion and science agree in what they recommend, it is evident that they agree in what they denounce. They agree in denouncing that pride of the human intellect which supposes it knows every thing, which is not passive enough in the presence of reality, but deceives itself with pompous words instead of things, and with flattering eloquence instead of sober truth. Here, however, it will be said, the agreement between religion and science ends, and even this agreement is only apparent. Science pro- tests against the idols or delusions of the hximan intellect, in order that it may substitute for them the reality of Nature ; religion sacri- fices all those idols to the greatest of them all, which is God. For what is God — so the argument runs — but an hypothesis, which religious men have mistaken for a demonstrated reality ? And is it not pre- cisely against such premature hypotheses that science most strenu- ously protests? That a Personal Will is the cause of the universe — this might stand very well as an hypothesis to work with, until facts should either confirm it, or force it to give way to another either dif- ferent or at least modified. That this Personal Will is benevolent, and is shown to be so by the facts of the universe, which evince a providential care for man and other animals — this is just one of those plausibilities which passed muster before scientific method was under- stood— but modern science rejects it as unproved. Modern science holds that there may be design in the universe, but that to penetrate the design is, and probably always will be, beyond the power of the human understanding. That this Personal Will has on particular occasions revealed itself by breaking through the customary order of the universe, and performing what are called miracles — this is one of those legends of which histories were full, until a stricter view of evi- dence was introduced, and the modern critical spirit sifted thoroughly 74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the aiuials of the world. But if modern science be right in these opinions, the very notion of God is removed altogether from the domain of practical life. So long as God appeared certainly to exist, he necessarily eclipsed and reduced to insignificance all other exist- ences. So long as it was held possible to discover his will and mind, all other incpiries might reasonably be pronounced frivolous. But all is changed as soon as we begin to regard his existence as a mere hypothesis, and his will as inscrutable and beyond the reach of the human understanding. Not only is all changed, but all is reversed. Instead of being the one important question, God's will now becomes tiie one W2important question, because the one question which it is essentially impossible to answer. Whereas, before we might charge men with frivolity who neglected this inquiry for inquiries the most important in themselves, now we may pronounce the shallowest dilet- tant, the most laboriously idle antiquary, a solid and sensible man, compared to the theologian. They pursue, to be sure, very minute objects, but they do or may attain them ; the theologian attempts an impossibility — he is like the child who tries to reach the beginning of the rainbow. It would appear, then, that that which I have called "human wis- dom," and which is the butt, at the same time, of theology and science, is so because it is a kind of middle party between two mortally hostile factions. It is like the Girondins between the Royalists and the Jacobins ; both may ojipose, and may even in a particular case com- bine to oppose it, and yet on that account they may not have the smallest sympathy with each other. And the middle party once crushed, there wull follow no reconciliation, but a mortal contest between the extremes. Is this so or is it otherwise ? The question is whether the statement given above of the theological view of the uni- verse is exhaustive or not ? Is it all summed up in the three proposi- tions that a Personal Will is the cause of the universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the universe ? If these propositions exhaust it, and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end in the destruction of one or the other. It may be remarked, in the first place, that these propositions are not so much an abstract of theology as of the particular theology now current. That God is perfectly benevolent is a maxim of popular Chris- tianitv, and it mav be found stated in the Bible. But it is not neces- sary to theology as such. Many nations have believed in gods of mixed or positively malignant character. Other nations have indeed ascribed to their deities all the admirable qualities they could conceive, but benevolence was not one of these. They have believed in gods that were beautiful, powerful, immortal, happy, but not benevolent. It may even be said that the Bible and Christianity itself have not uni- DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 75 formly represented God as perfectly benevolent. In the Old Testament he is described as just, but at the same time terrible and pitiless against the wicked ; and at least one form of modern Christianity, Calvinism, takes a view of the Divine character which it is impossible to reconcile with infinite benevolence. Moreover, if almost all theologies have introduced what we should ascribe as miracle, yet it would be very incorrect to class many of them in this respect with that current view of Christianity, which represents God as demonstrating his existence by occasional interruptions of the order, otherwise invariable, of Na- ture. Probably, in the majority of theologies, no other law of Xature, except the will of God, is recognized ; miracle, when it is introduced, is not regarded as breaking through any order; the very notion con- veyed by the word supernatural is unacknowledged ; miraculous occur- rences are not distinguished from ordinary ones, except as being rarer, and not distinguished from rare occurrences at all. To an ancient Jew probably an earthquake and the staying of the sun on Gibeon were occurrences of precisely the same character and not distinguished as they are in our minds, the one as rare but natural, the other as super- natural and miraculous. All that was miraculous might have been removed from the creed of an ancient Jew without shaking his theology. Two out of the three propositions, then, are not necessary to the theo- logical view of the universe. But surely the third is. Surely all theol- ogy implies that a Personal Will is the cause of the universe. I cannot admit even this. In the first place it is a very shallow view of the- ologies which represents them as having in all cases sprung from spec- ulation about causes. Undoubtedly we can trace this speculation in our own religion. The phenomena of the world are accounted for very manifestly in the book of Genesis by the fiat of a Personal Will. But this is not at all an invariable character of theology. The Deity of a thing is often regarded in theologies not at all as the cause of it, but in quite another way, perhaps I might say as the imity of it. No one has ever supposed that the Greeks regarded Poseidon as the cause of the sea. Athena seems to have been suggested to them by the sky, but she is not the cause of the sky. And it would be easy to conceive a theology which did not occupy itself at all with causes, but which at the same time conceived the separate phenomena of the universe, or the universe itself alto^eihQY personally May we, then, alter the proposition thus — instead of saying. It is characteristic of the theological vieAV of the universe to suppose a personal will or wills to be the cause of all phenomena, may we say, Theology invariaVdy conceives the universe under the form of per- sonality, a personal will being assumed as either the cause or the law of phenomena ? Even this would be to go too far. Personality is only known to us as belonging to human beings. Personality is properly the abstraction of the qualities common to man, woman and child. Of these one of the principal is what we call the will. 76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Now, the utmost tliat can be said is that theology has asserted an analogy more or less strong between the phenomena of Nature and human beings. Personality entire has never been attributed in any theology to deities. Personality, as we know it, involves mortality. Deities are always supposed immortal. Personality in- volves a body. The highest theologies have declared God to be incorporeal. We are brought back, then, to the will. Theologies attribute to deities a loill like that of human^ beings. They do so ; but again the highest theologies assert that the Divine Will is high above the human; that there is "no searching" of it; "that as the heaven is high above the earth, so are his ways than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts." If the possibility of miracles were entirely given up, and the order of Nature decided to be as invariable as science inclines to consider it; if all the appearances of benevolent design in the universe were explained away, it might be true that the belief in God would cease to be consoling. Instead of being a spring of life and activity, it might — I am not now saying it would — become a depressing and overwhelming influence. And this, no doubt, is what people mean when they identify, as they commonly do, the belief in God with be- lief in an overruling Benevolence, and in the supernatural. They mean to say, not exactly that the belief in God is necessarily this, but that to be in any way useful or beneficial it must necessarily be this. But for my present purpose it is important to distinguish be- tween the God in whom ordinary people at the present day believe, and a God of another character in whom they might conceivably believe. I desire to insist upon the point that when science speaks of God as a myth or an hypothesis, and declares the existence of God to be doubtful, and destined always to remain doubtful, it is speaking of a particular conception of God, of God conceived as benevolent, as outside of Nature, as personal, as the cause of phenomena. Do these attributes of benevolence, personality, etc., exhaust the idea of God ? Are they — not merely the most important, the most consoling of his attributes, but — the only ones? By denying them do we cease not merely to be orthodox Christians, but to be theists ? Science opposes to God Nature. When it denies God it denies the existence of any power beyond or superior to Nature ; and it may deny at the- same time any thing like a cause of Nature. It believes in cei'tain laws of coexistence and sequence in phenomena, and in de- nying God it means to deny that any thing further can be known. God and Nature, then, express ideas which are difierent in an impor- tant particular. But it is evident enough that these ideas are not the opposites that controversy would represent them to be. On the con- trary, they coincide up to a certain point. Those who believe in Na- ture may deny God, but those who believe in God believe, as a matter of course, in Nature also. The belief in God includes the belief in DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 77 Nature, as the whole inchides the part. Science would represent theoloj^y as disregarding Nature, as passing over those laws which govern the universe, and occupying itself solely with occasional sus- pensions of them, or with ulterior, inscrutable causes. But this ac- count of theology is derived from a partial view of it. It is prac- tically to some extent true of the theologies of recent times, which have been driven out of the domain of Nature by the rival and vic- torious method of physical science. But it is not true at all of the older theologies. They occupied themselves quite as much with laws as with causes ; so far from being opposed to science, they were in fact themselves science in a rudimentary form ; so far from neglecting the natural for the supernatural, they recognized no such distinction. The true object of theology at the beginning was to throw liglit upon natural laws ; it used, no doubt, a crude method, and in some cases it attempted problems which modern science calls insoluble. Then, when a new method was introduced, theology stuck obstinately to its old one, and when the new method proved itself successful, theology gradually withdrew into those domains, where as yet the old method was not threatened, and might still reign without opposition. Thus it began to be supposed that law belonged to science, and suspension of law, or miracle, to theology ; that the one was concerned with Na- ture, and the other with that which was above Nature. Gradually tlie name of God began to be associated with the supernatural, and scientific men began to say they had nothing to do with God, and tlieologians to find something alien to them in the word Nature. Yet theology can never go further than this in repudiating Nature. It can never deny that Nature is an ordinance of God ; it caa never question that the laws of Nature are laws of God. It may indeed treat them as of secondary importance ; it may consider that they reveal God in an aspect in which it is not most important that we should know him. But it cannot and does not deny that Nature, too, is a revelation of God ; it ought not to deny that natural phi- losophy is a part of theology, that there is a theology which may be called natural, and which does not consist in a collection of the evi- dences of benevolent design in the universe, but in a true deduction of the laws which govern the universe, whatever those laws may be, and whatever they may seem to indicate concerning the character of God. But, if, on the one hand, the study of Nature be one part of the study of God, is it not true, on the other, that he who believes only in Nature is a theist, and has a theology? Men slide easily from the most momentous controversies into the most contemptible logomachies. If we will look at tilings, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man has a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God who feels himself in the presence of a Power apart from and im- measurably above his own, a Power in the contemplation of which he 78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness. And such now is Nature to the scientific man. I do not now say tliat it is good or satisfying to worship such a God, but I say that no class of men since the world began have ever more truly believed in a God, or more ardently, or with more conviction, worshiped him. Com- paring their religion in its fresh youth to the present confused forms of Christianity, I think a by-stander would say that though Christian- ity had in it something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so many Christians the idea of God has been degraded by childish and little- minded teaching ; the Eternal and the Infinite and the All-embracini; has been represented as the head of the clerical interest, as a sort of clergyman, as a sort of school-master, as a sort of philanthropist. But the scientific man knows him to be eternal ; in astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the countless millenniums of his lifetime. The scientific man strains his mind actually to realize God's infinity. In the fixed stars he traces him, " distance inexpressible by numbers that have name." Meanwhile, to the theologian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty words when apfdied to the object of his worship. He does not realize them in actual facts and definite computations. But it is not merely because he realizes a stupendous Power that I call the scientific man a theist. A true theist ought to recognize his Deity as giving him the law to which his life ought to be conformed. Now, here it is that the resemblance of modern science to theology comes put most manifestly. There is no stronger conviction in this age than the conviction of the scientific man, that all happiness de- pends npon the knowledge of the laws of Nature, and the careful adaptation of human life to them. Of this I have spoken before. Luther and Calvin were not more jealous of the Church tradition that had obscured the true word of God in the Scriptures than the mod- ern man of science is of the metaphysics and conventional philoso- phy tliat have beguiled men aAvay from Nature and her laws. They want to remodel all education, all preaching, so that the laws of Na- ture may become known to every man, and that every one may be in a condition to find his happiness in obeying them. They chafe at the notion of men studying any thing else. They behave toward those who do not know Nature with the same sort of impatient insolence with which a Christian behaved toward the worshipers of the em- peror or a Mohammedan toward idolaters. As I sympathize very par- tially with the Mohammedan, and not quite perfectly with the early Christian, so I find the modern scientific zeal narrow and fanatical; but I recognize that it is zeal of the same kind as theirs — that is, that, like theirs, it is theological. An infinite Power will inspire awe and an anxious desire to obey DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 79 its laws on the part of those Avho feel themselves dependent on it. But such awe and fear, it may be said, do not constitute worship ; "worship implies admiration, and something which may be called love. Now, it is true that the scientific man cannot feel for Xature such love as a pious mind may feel for the God of Christians. The highest love is inspired by love, or by justice and goodness, and of these qualities science as yet discerns little or nothing in Nature. But a very gen- uine love, though of a lower kind, is felt by the contemplator of Na- ture. Nature, if not morally good, is infinitely interesting, infinitely beautiful. He who studies it has continually the exquisite pleasure of discerning or half discerning and divining laics ; regularities glimmer through an appearance of confusion; analogies between phenomena of a different order sus^est themselves and set the imao-ination in motion ; the mind is haunted with the sense of a vast unity not yet discoverable or namable. There is food for contemplation which never runs short ; you are gazing at an object which is always grow- ing clearer, and yet always, in the very act of growing clearer, pre- senting new mysteries. And this arresting and absorbing spectacle, so fascinating by its variety, is at the same time overwhelming by its greatness ; so that those who have devoted their lives to the contem- plation scarcely ever fail to testify to the endless delight it gives them, and also to the overpowering awe with which from time to time it surprises them. There is one more feeling which a worshiper should have for his Deity, a sense of personal connection, and, as it were, relationship. The last verse of a hymn of praise is very appropriately this — " for this God is our God forever and ever ; He will be our guide even unto death." This feeling, too, the worshiper of Nature has. He cannot separate himself from that which he contemplates. Though he has the power of gazing upon it as something outside himself, yet he knows himself to be a part of it. The same laws whose operations he watches in the universe he may study in his own body. Heat and light and gravitation govern himself as they govern plants and heav- enly bodies. "In him," may the worshiper of this Deity say with intimate conviction, " in him we live and move and have our being." When men whose minds are possessed with a thought like this, and whose lives are devoted to such a contemplation, say, " As for God, we know nothing of him ; science knows nothing of him ; it is a name belonging to an extinct system of philosophy ; " I think they are playing with words. By what name they call the object of their contemplation is in itself a matter of little importance. Whether they say God, or prefer to say Nature, the important thing is that their minds are filled with the sense of a Power to all appearance in- finite and eternal, a Power to which their own being is inseparably connected, in the knowledge of whose ways alone are safety and well- being, in the contemplation of which they find a beatific vision. 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. "Well! this God is also the God of Christians. That the God of Christians is something more does not aifect this fact. Nature, ac- cording to all systems of Christian theology, is God's ordinance. Whether with science you stop short at Nature, or with theology be- lieve in a God who is the author of Nature, in either case Nature is divine, for it is either God or the work of God. This whole domain is common to science and theology. When theology says, Let us give up the wisdom of men and listen to the voice of God, and when science says. Let us give up human authority and hollow a priori knowl- edge and listen to Nature, they are agreed to the whole extent of the narrower proposition, i. e., theology ought to admit all that science says, though science admits only a part of Avhat theology says. The- ology cannot say the laws of Nature are not divine ; all it can say is, they are not the most important of the divine laws. Perhaps not, but they gain an importance from the fact that they are laws upon which all can agree. Making the largest allowance for discoveries, about which science may be too confident, there remains a vast mass of natural knowledge which no one questions. This to the Christian is so much knowledge about God, and he ought to rejoice quite as much as thei'man of science at the rigorous method by which it has been separated from the human prejudice and hasty ingenuity, and de- lusive rhetoric or poetry, which might have adulterated it. By this means we have been enabled to hear a voice which is unmistakably God's. And if it seems to be God speaking about matters not of the greatest importance, still perhaps it may be as well to listen. So much, at least, reverence seems to dictate; and, if it did not, the ui'gent necessity for more agreement on fundamental questions would dictate it imperiousl3^ This train of thought will be followed a little further in future numbers of this magazine. — Macmillaii's 3Iagazine. MODEEN STKEET-PAYEMENTS. By ADOLF CLUSS, C. E. THE most distinguished sanitarians of the age have established the fact that our modern cities are mostly so located that pub- lic health depends much less upon climate and position than upon rational conditions and modes of life. Enforced cleanliness, and the progress of sanitary woi'ks in cities, are followed by an en- hanced vitality and elasticity of mind still more than by longevity of the inhabitants. Among sanitary works, improved pavements are classed along with sewerage, watei'-closets, and water-supply under pressure ; since it is a prime condition of public hygiene that every MODERN STREET-PAVEMENTS. 8i street and alley should drain as promptly and thoroughly as the houses erected on it. A proper observance of these maxims has ma- terially contributed to the reduction of the annual death-rate of Lon- don within the last two centuries from forty-two to twenty-two per thousand, notwithstanding the unprecedented increase in the num- bers and density of the population. An average decrease of thirteen per cent, in the death-rate has been traced directly to the influence of modern sanitary works, introduced into cities mostly during the last twenty years ; and a thorough reform in pavements must give still more striking results. The material for pavements is mostly decided upon by non-profes- sional municipal authorities, and upon these an enlightened public opinion must exert a beneficial influence. A condensed review of the subject, in the light of history, technical science, hygiene, and finance, will help excite reflection, and to mature rational views, and will fur- nish a timely contribution to the literature of the day. Manufactur- ing industry, commerce, and railroads, those important motors of mod- ern civilization, have combined to increase the number and size, and to concentrate the internal trafiic of large cities, so that horses and ve- hicles have steadily increased, absolutely as well as in proportion to the population. Under the same influences an enonnous wealth, for- merly unknown, has been amassed in the cities, and whole streets have risen, lined by majestic buildings, in uninterrupted succession ; while, even in the older or less pretentious streets, houses of a mere utili- tarian character disappear, to make way for structures with an ele- vated standard of architecture. What at an earlier epoch was the proud privilege of the famous capitals of Italy, the exceptional luxury of their dwellings and mansions,, is now to be found in most modern cities, though the effect be not as overpowering, on account of a want of harmony in the style. Simultaneously with the higher wants resulting from greater wealth and closer contact, whole cities have been transformed from loose aggregates of irregularly-scattered houses into well-organized systems, all the elements of which, though serving individual pur- poses, are intimately connected by the complicated net-works of pipes supplying fresh water, discharging waste water and soil, and furnish- ing light during the night to the streets as well as to the houses, from cellar to roof; to which, perhaps, the inventive genius of the age may add, before long, the supply of heat for domestic necessities and per- sonal comfort. In such a complex organism, the roadways and side- walks are not merely spaces set apart for light, air, and traffic, but they are component parts of the wonderful machinery devoted to these purposes, and bear close relations to the dwellings which they separate and connect, and the restorative veins of which they cover as a pro- tecting crust. Of all these cooperating agencies, the least attention, until recent- VOL. TII. — 6 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ly, was paid to the construction of roadways. Cobble-stones were re- sorted to for paving-purposes, since they were easily obtainable in the alluvial plains in which most modern cities are founded. They were succeeded by irregular quarried stones of such quality as was within easy reach ; then by larger square blocks, mainly of trap-rock or gran- ite, such as were thought necessary in streets with heavy traffic. But experience has proved that the jarring against them compelled the construction of heavier wagons, and that their peculiar smoothness by wear caused the horses to fall, and so this material was modified to uniform oblong blocks in narrow courses. These, after severe tests, have maintained a truer surface, have been found to offer a greater resistance against wear, to lessen the noise, and to decrease consider- ably the number of accidents to horses. They are called, in common with the former, Belgian blocks. A most important sanitary feature, almost entirely neglected be- fore the rapid concentration of population in the cities, now demanded attention. The cubical stone blocks are displaced under the prodi- gious traffic, the corners and edges are worn away, the surface gets to be irregular, the joints are widened. The filth of the streets gathers in ruts and joints, is recruited constantly by new acces- sions of urine, horse-dung, and silt, and, diluted by the rain, it fer- ments, and forms a putrescent organic mire, becoming in course of time a source of noxious miasmas. In hot and dry weather these nauseating deposits pass into the atmosphere in the form of unhealthy vapors, or, pulverized and drifted by the wind, cause inconvenience and poison our lungs. Indeed, in repairing old pavements, a black layer of ground, saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen, is found be- low the stone blocks, and bears witness to the infection of the sub- soil by the soakage of contaminated water. Prof. Tyndall has estab- lished by experiments that a large proportion of the particles of dust in the rooms of London houses is of organic origin, and other experi- ments have demonstrated that horse-manure, in a state of decomposi- tion, is a permanent ingredient. Vapors still more noxious than those from the road-bed of the streets rise from the gutters, the subsoil of which is saturated to a con- sidei-able depth by more concentrated matter of the described compo- sition, and also from the surface of alleys on which are the houses of great numbers of people of limited means. Crowds of dirty children, whose tender lungs breathe the air immediately over this miasmatic soil, here contract constitutional predispositions, which doom them to a languishing and miserable life, and render them an easy prey to epidemics. This infection of the subsoil has been prevented, .with a certain defjree of success, bv foundations of concrete. There is still another feature of stone pavements in the heart of cities, which affects the inner man more than the physical frame, viz., the rattling and noise, imder heavy traffic, accomj)anied, in alluvial soil, by vibrations MODERN STREET-PA VEMENTS. 83 of the adjoining buildings. People with strong nerves, and accus- tomed to this rattle from early youth, may to some extent become hardened, but they will never get to be insensible to it ; any indispo- sition is aggravated by the nuisance, and for recovery they hurry to the country. People with weak nerves, especially delicately-organized women, suifer great and permanent injury to the health. Nothing but the constant torment has partially dulled us to this evil. If cities had never been afflicted with this noise, and if, in a competition with other more suitable materials, stone pavements were adopted, a storm of opposition would soon sweep them out of existence again. Some of these difficulties have been obviated by using smaller and harder stones ; but the objection to the improved Belgian pavement in gen- eral use, on account of the germs of disease stored in the wide joints and under the blocks, still remains. To do away with the objection to stone pavements, effiarts were made to introduce into cities the macadamized roads, which had proved eminently successful as country roads ; these efforts have proved sig- nal failures, though, when properly made, and in thoroughly good order, macadamized roads approach perhaps more nearly the desiderata than most others that have been tested, and are among the pleasant- est and safest roadways in ordinary use. But the constant outlay for repairs, the difficulty of traction over them when recently laid, and considerations of hygiene and comfort, are such serious objections that they are gradually being displaced by other kinds of pave- ment. Whoever is doomed to live on a macadamized street needs no description of its horrors. These streets have justly been nick- named crushing-mills for granite. Six hundred and fifty thousand tons of granite are annually pulverized on the streets of London, of which but one-sixth is due to the wear of paving-stones, the rest is attributable to the macadamized roads. This dust has to be scrubbed, washed, and brushed ever so often from clothes, furniture, stairs, and floors, before it is finally removed through silt-basins and carts, or sewers and river. A little rain transforms these streets into broad slush-beds from which every thing within reach is bespattered by the hurrying wheels of vehicles. Ladies with modern garments cannot cross them, and who- ever visits along such streets must leave a certain quantity of dirt on floors and carpets. But mud is not the worst affliction, for this mash, consisting of stone-dust, sand, and horse-dung, is transformed into dust by dry and hot weather, is whirled up by the rolling wheels, or, still worse, is drifted by wind, rendering the air unfit for respiration, pen- etrating into the tender, sensitive cavities of the lungs, settling on skin, hair, and clothes ; suffocating the flowers and green leaves of plants along parked streets ; forbidding the opening of windows, foul- ing the glass, and driving through the joints of the sash ; lodging in curtains and blinds, spoiling the costly products of industry and man- 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ufacture in the show-windows, and haunting the anxious housewife in kitclien, pantry, and cellar. The devoted denizen finds but a partial protection against the shocking nuisance, when he mixes this dust with an abundance of water — by sprinkling the street. A modification of the macadam is the Telford road ; it consists of a bed of firmly-wedged quarry-stones, with an even surface as a foundation, upon which a layer of larger and a layer of smaller broken stone, mostly trap-rock, are spread, each being rolled by horse and steam rollers. Upon the well-compacted surface a binding of screened gravel is applied, moistened and rolled in, so as to present one solid mass, which, while hard and durable, yet retains some elasticity. This variety, superior for country-roads, though still open to the vital ob- jection of dust, is equal in price to the costly modern city pavements, and therefore has found but a limited application within city limits — for instance, on the Boulevards of New York. Wood pavements which, at one time, were much used in Britain, especially in London, and also in New York in 1835 and 1836, but were abandoned for weighty reasons, and especially on accoimt of their rapid decay, were revived in the rising cities of the great West, notably Chicago, where stone was scarce, lumber was cheap, and a porous, sandy subsoil retarded the decay of the perishable wood- blocks by dry rot from below, as happens on retentive soil. These wood pavements, smooth, noiseless, and advantageous for traction, were rather hastily adopted by municipal committees or boards in Eastern cities, where the conditions were difierent, and where decom- position commenced after two or three years' use. The heavy profits made induced a desperate fight in their favor by interested parties, a renewed effort in behalf of "treated" wood gave them a respite and a second harvest before final disuse, which was accelerated, how- ever, by the overwhelming complaints of the offensive and unhealthy effluvia emitted from them ; so that, in a sanitary point of view, the advantage of the absence of stone-dust was much overbalanced by the decomposition of the material itself. The wood-blocks during treatment have been mostly impregnated, by pneumatic processes, with chloride of zinc, sulphate of iron, or oily, creosotic substances ; and, though railroad-sleepers, telegraph- poles, etc., have been satisfactorily preserved through these agencies, such methods have failed, for various causes, to render an equivalent for the expenses incurred in treating the paving-blocks. But the pa- tience of the people is not yet exhausted, and, in Northwestern cities, a new and costly revival is being arranged by the substitution of sul- phate of copper for impregnation, a substance used in France, under M. Boucherie's patent, for thirty-five years past. The District of Colum- bia has been preeminently the experimental ground for treated wood pavements. An investment of about $5,000,000, a sum far in excess of that in any other city of the globe, has been made there within MODERN STREET-PAVEMENTS. 85 little more than three years in wood pavements, nearly all treated ; many of them are now in an advanced state of decay, and, from the degree of preservation after two or three years' use on suburban streets with hardly any wear, one cannot approve of any of the pro- cesses applied, since none of them have effectively neutralized the destructive local agencies, or made up for inferiority in the quality of lumber used. Square, polygonal, wedge-shaped, and undressed round blocks, of pine, spruce, and juniper wood, set in rows, interlocking or parted by interstices, upon sand, board, or concrete foundations, were tried, so that all classes of patentees had chances to trot out their hobbies and gratify their passion to serve the community. Though this is an interesting study, we cannot in this place do full justice by entering into details. The idea of ranking expensive wood pavements, treated and un- treated, as valuable standard pavements, where more substantial ma- terials can be procured at the same or lower prices, will, before long, hardly more than elicit a smile from the critical expert. In this state of the problem, it may be considered as a new epoch in city-life that the increased facilities of commercial intercourse, by cheapening the cost of transportation, liave brought a relief within reach, namely, asphaltum for roadways. The nature of asphaltum is frequently misunderstood, because the mineralogist, in speaking of asphaltum, has reference to the brittle bitumen usually found in Na- ture, while the civil-engineer designates by mineral asphaltum a po- rous limestone, in combination with tough bitumen. This limestone was primarily impregnated by volcanic action with petroleum, which appears to have oxidized within the structure of the stone by the slow action of many centuries. Thus both ingredients have been united so thoroughly in the asphaltum that neither heat nor water, nor the combined action of both, in causing decay, can render it hard and brittle by abstracting the tough bitumen from the limestone. It is not strange that the efforts artificially to imitate this intimate union have often produced materials witli quite different powers of resistance against the various destructive agencies and vicissitudes of climates ; and that the lack of durability — not to speak of numerous dead failures in various compounds of raw or treated coal-tar and coal-pitch with coal-ashes, saw-dust, cinders, sand, gravel, etc., com- monly called concrete pavements, which have reduced moderately dii'ty streets, under the influence of the heat of summer, to vast sticky quagmires — has formed a serious drawback to the introduction of bet- ter material, and especially the well-tested native asphaltum, which will probably, in our climate, many times outlast the best artificial composition yet known, as it has done in other countries. The admixtures and distillations from coal-tar and pitch have been amply relied upon as the base for artificial concrete, on account of a sup- posed resemblance to the native asphaltum. This idea, however, is 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. not sustained by modern scientific tests. Seen in thin layers under the microscope, the bitumen, the color of which is otherwise a deep black, shows a transparent yellowish mass, while coal-pitch is visible as a mass of coherent black points on an orange-colored ground. This investigation of the mastic relied upon suffices to explain in the one case the quality of toughness and binding power, and in the other that of brittleness. Efforts are now being made to jn'oduce concrete pavements based on mixtures of silicate of soda with Portland cement. The latter, along with native asphaltum, is undoubtedly the most important mod- ern building-material, but it has its separate province, and lacks just those qualities of the native asphaltum which are so highly appre- ciated for paving-purposes. It will hardly ever be successful in the long-run when encroaching on the sphere of the competing material which it has fairly outrivaled as a cement for brickwork and masonry, for which, in ancient times, asphaltum enjoyed a ju^t celebrity, as attested by the remnants of the walls of Babylon and Nineveh. This class of pavement has been tested carefully in France with the well- known hUon coignet and has failed. While the artificial mixtures soon require expensive surfacing, the native asj^haltum when taken up for piping, or otherwise, after many years' wear, may be used again by simply heating and treating it as at first. In this aspect it bears such a relation to the artificial concretes as a copper roof does to a common tin roof. ISTature has unfortunately produced this valuable mineral deposit in but very few cases, and it has not yet been found in America, for the so-called Trinidad asj^haltum consists mainly of bituminous scoriae, cemented together with vitrified sand and earth ; and even the more esteemed Cuban asphalts contain from 27 to 34 per cent, of earthy substances. The deposits from Tyrimont-Seyssel, on the banks of the Rhone, in France, were the first to be used for pavements. But, as they contain only from 6 to 8 per cent, of bitumen, the powdered rock was foimd rather too dry, and thei*efore was superseded by the exten- sive deposits of the Val de Travers, the most important valley de- bouching from the Jurassic mountains of Switzerland into the Lake of Neufchatel. These, with steady march, have conquered the mar- kets of the world. The deposits known as Neufchatel rock contain, with a constancy not found anywhere else, from 11 to 12 per cent, of bitumen — a most favorable proportion. Besides, they have absolutely greater toughness as a result of their degree of oxidation. They were foi*merly extensively used as a mastic for sidewalks, and form an excellent material for carriage-ways. They liave been used since 1854 in Paris, and since 1868 in the principal thoroughfares of London and other European capitals. The success of this bituminous rock pavement is by no means due to the lucky hit of one individual; it is the legitimate result of MODERN STREET-PAVEMENTS. 87 the persistent efforts of some of the best engineers of the age, by which all obstacles have been gradually overcome. The first trials were made with mastic, consisting of the powdered rock melted with mineral tar as a flux, and mixed with sea-grit which was laid upon an ordinary concrete foundation ; they were followed by experi- ments with mastic, cast into blocks at the workshops, and laid with wide joints, which were filled in again with heated mastic. Next we hear of tests with broken asphaltic rock, rammed in a cold state upon a macadam foundation. And finally these intelligent labors were crowned by the splendid improvement of the compressed rock pave- ment, for which the rock, reduced by heat to powder and rammed and rolled while yet hot, into a homogeneous, tight covering, is laid upon a perfectly dry ordinary concrete foundation composed of crushed stone and cement. This simple improvement virtually adapts the old principle of a barn-floor of rammed clay, for thrashing, to the requirements of the open air, by making it water-proof. In place of the mastic, which attains consistency, by the congelation of the melted mass, without application of pressure, this " merely compressed body, in which the molecules of bitumen and limestone are soldered together by heat and ramming," obviates all tendency toward brittleness, with- out in the least interfering with the advantages of perfect homogeneity or water-proof qualities. It stands to reason that the mastic, which, notwithstanding its mixture with grit, is more or less pitchy, would be surpassed in elasticity and pliability by a merely kneaded mass. These pavements are reported to have withstood the extreme heat of Bombay, Hindostan, as well as the greatest known cold. Not afford- ing any escape to the terrestrial heat through joints, they are kept warm and open from below in most cases when block-pavements pre- sent an icy surface. Their smooth, seamless face, being almost entirely free from abrasion by attrition or atmospheric action, meets the me- chanical and hygienic objections to block-pavements, both of stone and wood, as well as of macadamized roads. The asphaltum pavement is clean and fit for traffic a few hours after being laid, while new or repaved stone roadways must be cov- ered for months with heavy layers of sand, to be drifted by the breeze in dry weather and added to the mud in rainy spells. Repairs can be made to the asphaltum pavement in dry days of a cold winter, while with stone pavements any defects must be endured until spHng. Be- sides the sanitary advantages, the saving in temper, clothes, shoes, and furniture, is not to be overlooked. The popularity of this pave- ment in the two largest cities of Europe, where, with immense traffic and most extensive experience on the relative value of pavements, the demands on the municipal authorities are inexorable, serves as a proof that smoothness of surface does not cause any danger with this mate- rial. Being elastic but not soft in summer, and hard but not brittle in winter, it possesses with a slight yield the power of readjustment in 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. a high degree, so that horses and drivers ever seeli it, if it is " laid in- telligently by practised bands, with a low crown" or flat piofile. A low crown is practicable because there are no surface-obstacles to drainage. It is also needful to prevent horses from falling on any spaces with a heavy decline toward the gutter. What is essential for the transverse profile of these streets is no less essential for their longitudinal profile : they must have easy grades — say a pitch of less than two per cent. — since the momentum of inertia of the masses in motion enters the problem. The smooth surface intensifies the down- ward motion of the wheels while decreasing the friction of the hoofs of the horse, which furnishes the power of resistance against the downward motion of the vehicle, or serves for afiixing the power necessary to move the vehicle up-hill. "With these precautions relief is afibrded to the horse, this faithful companion of man, which, being dumb, is so often brutally ill-treated and abused. It would lead too far to enlarge upon the numerous official experi- ments and observations made in Paris and London by which, though made under circumstances most unfavorable for the new pavements, the proportion of accidents to horses and vehicles has been shown to be considerably less on the asphalt than on stone pavements, except in the rare case of a muddy street during wet weather. Ordinary care can achieve much, in that direction. When driving on to an isolated asphaltum road, to which, in wet weather, mud has been dragged from adjoining streets of old construction, the change ought to be managed by checking the horses and gradually returning to full speed. As, by degrees, the regeneration of the streets becomes general, this tempo- rary precaution will become unnecessary. Allusion to these minor details was deemed d propos, since the human mind is so constituted that little is generally thought of accidents of daily occurrence, while we are apt to be severe and even unjust against novel improvements, which, of course, in the beginning present more or less difficulties to be overcome under actual tests. The same man who unconcernedly sees a horse fall on a stone-paved street, or blames the driver, and even the horse itself, regardless of the pavement, might be loud with complaints or fears about the falling of a horse if traveling on a road of new construction. During the careful examinations as to the merits of the new pave- ment, questions were raised regarding its fire-proof qualities. Indeed, we hear that, during the siege of Paris by the Germans, the popula- tion, visited by cold, and short of fuel, tore up the asphaltum roads to enjoy fires fed therewith. But, on the other hand, it is also recorded that, during the eventful time of the Commune, when incendiarism was frequent and ingenious, these pavements never caught or spread the fire, the proportion of the combustibles to the incombustibles in the asphaltum of the streets being too small to feed the fire. The matter-of-fact people of London were not satisfied with any thing MODERN STREET-PAVEMENTS. 89 less thaw severe direct tests: their engineers had to pile wood upon the asphaltum pavement, pour petroleum over it, and light it. When the fire burned most lively, and there were plenty of red- hot coals underneath, the space was cleared and nothing but little flames were noticed, which immediately died out. G. A. Shaw, the head of the London fire-brigade, who attended, declared expressly his faith in the harmless nature of the pavements during conflagra- tions. There is no doubt that asphaltum pavements may occasion- ally fail, but, when they do, this is attributable not to the material, if unadulterated, but rather to the method of its application, which requires skilled workmen, whose eyes and hands are quick and directed by an intelligent mind. The District of Columbia has about $1,750,000 invested in concrete and asphalt pavements, including the various patented mixtures and the natural asphaltic rock, and, though a certain degree of success has been attained under some of the patents, this does not appear to be uniform and under control of the engineers; nearly all show clear evidences of disintegration, and are periodically in need of repairs or resurfacing, which latter means virtually a failure of the patented process, while the pave- ments of natural rock rather improve by wear, and their first cost, in depreciated securities, was but $4.25 per square yard against $3.20 for the patented admixtures. After these explanations, based on personal observations, as well as on the results of the experience of the leading engineers in this branch, the conclusion may well be drawn that asphaltum roads are destined to be the city pavements of the future — a destiny which is deter- mined by the progressive spirit of the age, and which cannot be re- tarded for any lengtli of time ; it involves the interests of all, both high and low. If the most elegant and most frequented streets have the privilege to lead the van, it ought to be appreciated that the luxurious life of the higher classes depends upon the strength and activity of the children of the industrious classes as much as upon the toil of the farm-hand who, fortunately enough, is enabled to recruit his sti-ength in open fields ; hence, justice should be done likewise to the demands of health for the poorer classes, who, in consequence of the highly improper laying out of the cities, as bequests of by-gone genera- tions, are frequently doomed to live in alleys and lanes, and these should be drawn into the vortex of a reform which, when accomplislied, will gladden the humanitarian, whose head and heart are in sympathy with civilization in its noblest aspect. Washington, March 26, ] 875. 90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. DISCOUKSE ON THE DEATH OF LYELL. Bt Dean STANLEY. DEAN STANLEY selected for bis sermon the words of the sec- ond verse of the first chapter of Genesis : " The earth was with- out form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The sermon was, in fact, a discourse on the religious aspect of geology. The words of the text, the dean said, have a sense wider than the mere literal transcript. They express the transition from that gulf which the Greeks called chaos, to the order of the universe which a modern philosopher described under the head of " cosmos." The words in the original, which portray the formless void of the earth, convey most precisely the image of warring elements, while the words used for the moving of the Divine Spirit on the face of the waters express the gentle brooding, as it were, of a bird of peace. The language, however poetic, childlike, parabolical, and unscientific, impresses upon us the principle which applies, in both the moral and iu the material world, that the law of the divine operation is the gradual, peaceful, progressive development of discord into hannony, confusion into order, dai'kness into light. It chanced that within the short month of February, by a most unusual coincidence of mortality, twice had the gates of the abbey been opened to pay the last honors to two men widely apart in all else, but alike in the share they took in unfolding and exemplifying this divine law, the one the acknowledged chief of the English musi- cians of our time, the other the acknowledged head of those who, whether here or elsewhere, have devoted their talents to the study of the history of our motlier earth. Of all the branches of art and letters, none more reveals the hidden capacities of the human soul, or the fearful and wonderful structure of the human frame, than the slow process through which, from the most barbarous sounds, the spirit which brooded over the harp of David, and inspired the genius of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, has gained its majesty and glory. This passing allusion to a great musician, this indication of the latent capacities for spiritual emotion brought out by abstract and in- animate things, elements seemingly without form and void, was no unfitting prelude to the consideration of the study of Nature, of wliich he who has just gone was so bright an example. It is well known that, when the study of geology first arose, it was involved in interminable schemes of reconciliation with the letter of Scripture. There were and dre two modes of reconciliation, which have eacli totally and deservedly failed. The one attempts to wrest the words of the Bible from tlieir real meaning, and force them to DISCOURSE ON THE DEATH OF LYELL. 91 speak the language of science ; and the other attempts to falsify sci- ence to meet the supposed requirements of the Bible. The " seventy," finding that the hare was described as chewing the cud, inserted the word " not ; " and on the other hand, the Jesuits, in editing Newton's " Principia," announced in the preface that they were constrained to treat the theory of gravitation as a fictitious hypothesis, else it would conflict with the decrees of the popes against the motion of the earth. But there is another reconciliation of a higher kind, or rather not a reconciliation, but an acknowledgment of the affinity and identity which exist between the spirit of science and the spirit of the Bible. First, there is a likeness of the general spirit of the Bible truths ; and, secondly, there is a likeness in the methods. For instance, the geo- loo-ical truth which our illustrious student was the chief instrument in clearly setting forth and establishing was the doctrine, wrought out by careful, cautious inquiry in all parts of the world, that the frame of this earth was gradually brought into its present condition not by sudden and violent convulsions, but by the slow and silent action of the same causes which we see now, but operating through a long suc- cession of ages beyond the memory and imagination of man. There need be no question whether this doctrine agrees or not with the letter of the Bible. We do not expect it should. For, had there been no such scientific conclusions, we now know perfectly well, from our increased insight into the nature and origin of the early biblical records, that they were not and could not be literal, prosaic, matter-of-fact descrip- tions of the beginning of the world, of Avhich, as of its end, no man knoweth or can conceive except by figures or parables. It is now clear to all students of the Bible that the first and second chapters of Genesis contain two narratives of the creation side by side, diifering from each other in almost every particular of time and place and or- der. It is now known that the vast epochs demanded by scientific observation are incompatible both with the 6,000 years of the Mosaic chronology and the six days of the Mosaic Creation. No one now infers from the Bible that the earth is fixed, tliat it cannot be moved, that the sun does literally go forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, or that the stars sung with an audible voice in the dawn of the creation. But when we rise to the spirit, the ideal, the general drift and purpose of the biblical accounts, we find ourselves in an atmosphere of moral elevation which meets the highest requirements- philosophy can make. The discoveries of geology are found to fill up the old religious truths with a new life, and to derive from them in turn a hallowing glory. When the historian of our planet points out that the succes- sive layers of the earth's surface were formed by such agencies as we know of now, by the constant action of wind and wave, of floating ice and rolling stones — that there were not separate centres of crea- tion, but one primeval law which formed and governed all created things — what is this but the echo of those voices which of old de- 92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. clared that in the beginning the heaven and earth were created, not by a thousand conflicting deities, but by one supreme and indivisible, and that He hath given all things a law that shall not be broken ? And we may compare the vast infinities of time and space, that long ascend- ing order, that gradual progress demanded by geology, with the words in the sublime ninetieth psalm, read at the burial service: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday which is past, and as a watch in the night." Surely the view of the gradual preparation of the earth for mankind is grander than that which makes him coeval with the beasts which perish, and we ought to honor the archseologist who by un- hasting, unresting research revealed in all their length and breadth the genealogy and the antiquity of man and of his habitation. He rent the veil and showed the long vista of the temple of the Most High, not made with hands — '■^ Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt^ Not the limitation but the amplification of the idea of God is the result of the labor of such a student, and not the descent but the ascent of man is the outcome of his speculations. If, as he used to say, we have in our bones the chill of the contracted view of the past in which till now we were brought up, the enlargement which he eifected of that view ought to give a warmth, a fire to our soul of gouls, in proportion as we feel that we are indeed not the creatures of yesterday, but the heirs of the ages and worlds that have perished in the making of us. As to the likeness of the general spirit of the method of science to that of the Bible, the Bible is a model to the student in its slow but increasing purpose of revelation, through sundry times and divers manners, warning each succeeding age to have its eyes open and every member of the human race to be the disciple — that is, " scholar," as the founder of Christianity called his followers. To invest the pursuit of truth with the sanctity of a religious duty is the true reconciliation of religion and science. Such a union has been the special glory of the great school of English geologists, and the two pioneers of the science at the time when it had to fight its way against prejudice, ignorance, and apathy, were both honored dignita- ries of the English Church ; and now within these walls there rests beneath the monument of Woodward one who was the friend of Sedgwick and the pupil of Buckland. He followed truth with a sanctified zeal, a childlike humility. For discovering, confirming, rec- tifying his conclusions, there was no journey he would not undertake. From early youth to extreme old age it was to him a religious duty fearlessly to correct all iiis own mistakes, and he was always ready to receive from others and reproduce that which he had not in himself. In his mind science and religion were indivisible. The freedom of re- ligious inquiry in the national Church, the cause of humanity in the world at large, were to him as dear as though they were his own per- sonal and peculiar concern. There is unusual solemnity in the thought of his passage into the eternal world, on which, as in a shadow or THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. 93 mirror, he had so long meditated, in those long ages of which he was, as it were, the first discoverer. The " lofty and melancholy strain," the ninetieth Psalm, which old tradition ascribes to Moses, the man of God, whether it be or not the funeral hymn of the great lawgiver, well represents the feeling of one grown gray with vast experience, who at the close of his earthly journeyings contrasts the fleeting gen- erations of man with the granite forms of the mountains at the feet of which he has wandered, and contrasts those mountains and man alike with Him who existed before, beyond, and above them all. It sums up with peculiar force the inner life of the Christian philosopher who concluded his chief work with the contrast between the finite powers of man and the attributes of an infinite God, and who felt persuaded that, after all tlie discoveries on earth or sea or sky, the re- ligious sentiment remained the greatest and most indestructible in- stinct of the human race. -♦♦♦- THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. Bt e. e. fkancillon. THERE is a botanical theory that a flower is nothing more than a leaf in' which full development has been arrested. It is more beautiful than the leaf by reason, not of its perfection, but of its im- perfection. Even so the leaf is a degenerate twig and the fruit a degenerate flower : so that productiveness comes from the loss of vital strength, and not, as would be assumed at first sight, from its in- crease. This is not, I believe, the orthodox scientific doctrine, but it is plausible enough to suggest an analogy. The history of a plant, according to the theory of degeneration, is strikingly like the pedi- gree of literary and artistic genius, according to any of the hundred definitions of that indefinite word. So far as known facts combine into a probable law, a creative intellect is never generated spontane- ously. Like dukes and princes, men of imaginative genius have an- cestors between themselves and Adam. Bon chat chasse de race. The lives of the mothers of great men form an important branch of biographical literature : and it is usual, even in the paternal line, to find traces of hereditary taste or talent tending toward original pro- duction. The mute, inglorious Milton finds a glorious tongue in his great-grandson : the great statesman is the heir of the village Hamp- den, The theory, though more than merely probable, is by its nature incapable of exhaustive proof: but instances are notorious enough to found thereon a reasonable assumption that family talent precedes individual genius even if the tendency has never made itself conspic- uous, or, like the gout, has passed over a generation or two here and there. But, on the other hand, it is yet more certain that genius, like 94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the blossom with its fruit, closes while it crowns the family tree. The man of talent is the ancestor of tlie man of genius, but the man of genius is the ancestor either of nobodies or of nobody. Descendants of great authors, painters, and musicians, who lived two or three gen- erations ago, are hardly to be found. While the families of great sol- diers and statesmen swarm, there is scarcely a man in Europe who can boast of a great poet or other artist in the direct line of his pedi- gree : probably there is not even one who can boast of two such fore- fathers. The rough stem runs into the leaf, the leaf to the flower, and the flower to the fruit of good work, or — to seed. To pursue the analogy to its end, the full beauty and productiveness of imaginative genius correspond to the efiect of decaying vitality. Analogy, built upon an unscientific metaphor, is of course no ar- gument : but it is a fair explanatory illustration of a theory that rests upon surer ground for its foundation. That the creative imagination or any other mental gift so far resembles disease as to require non- natural conditions for its exercise is not the popular doctrine. The well-known and often-quoted couplet about the near alliance of great wit to madness is directly opposed to the far more pleasant belief in sound minds in sound bodies as the most favorable condition for the production of the best work of all kinds. The tone of hero-worship- ers themselves is, to deplore eccentric indulgences as weaknesses of genius rather than to recognize in them the artificial atmosphere necessary for production and creation. The popular doctrine is thor- oughly wholesome, because it is taught by the many for the many, and to teach otherwise, in a broad way, would risk the popular con- fusion of genius with its accidents. But all safe, wholesome, popular doctrines have an unfortunate tendency to turn men at large into a great flock of sheep — infinitely better worth owning than a herd of red deer, but proportionately less full of individual character. The history of how imaginative work is done reads very like a deliberate and apparently insane efibrt to keep up the action of brain-fever by artificial stimulus, as if creative genius were literally an unsound habit of mind requiring an unsound habit of body — mens insana in Gorpore insano. Balzac, who had the disease of creative genius in its most outrageous form, "preached to us," says Theophile Gautier, "the strangest hygiene ever propounded among laymen. If we de- sired to hand our names down to posterity as authors, it was indis- pensable that we should immure ourselves absolutely for two or three years : that we should drink nothing but water and only eat soaked beans, like Protogenes : that we should go to bed at sunset and rise at midnight, to work hard till morning: that we should spend the whole day in revising, amending, extending, pruning, perfecting, and polishing our night's work, in correcting proofs or taking notes, or in other necessary study." If the author happened to be in love, he was only to see the lady of his heart for one half-hour a year: but. he THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. 95 might write to her for the cold-blooded reason that letter-writing im- proves the style. Not only did Balzac preach this austere doctrine, iDut he practised it as nearly as he could without ceasing altogether to be a man and a Frenchman. Leon Gozlan's account of the daily life of the author of the " Comedie Humaine " has often been quoted. He began his day with dinner at six in the afternoon, at which, while he fed his friends generously, he himself ate little besides fruit and drank nothino- but water. At seven o'clock he wished his friends good- night and went to bed. At midnight he rose and worked — till din- ner-time the next day : and so the world went round. George Sand calls him, " Drunk on water, intemperate in work, and sober in all other passions." Jules Janin asks, " Where has M. de Balzac gained his knowledge of woman — he, the anchorite?" Love and death came to him hand-in-hand : so that he might be taken as an example of the extreme result of imaginative work obtained by the extreme avoid- ance of artificial stimulus, and therefore as a fatal exception to the general theory, were it not for one little habit of his which, though a trifle in itself, is enough to bring his genius within the pale of the law. When he sat down to his desk, his servant, who regarded a man that abstained even from tobacco as scarcely human, used to place coffee within reach, and upon this he worked till his full brain would drive his starved and almost sleepless body into such self-forgetfulness that he often found himself at daybreak bareheaded and in dressing- gown and slippers in the Place du Carrousel, not knowing how he came there, and miles away from home. Now, coffee acts upon some temperaments like laudanum upon others, and many of the manners and customs of Balzac were those of a confirmed opium-eater. He had the same strange illusions, the same extravagant ideas, the same incapacity for distinguishing, with regard to outward things, between the possible and the impossible, the false and the true. His midnight wanderings, his facility for projecting himself into personalities utter- ly unlike his own, belong to the experiences of the " English Opium- Eater." On this assumption, the exaggerated abstinence of Balzac is less like an attempt to free the soul from the fetters of the flesh than a preparation for the fuller efiect of a stimulus that instinctive experi- ence had recommended. In any case his intemperate temperance is the reverse of the conditions in which wholesome unimaginative work can possibly be carried on. Byron affords a similar, though of course less consistent, illustra- tion of a tendency to put himself out of working condition in order to work the better. " At Disdati," says Moore, " his life was passed in the same regular round of habits into which he naturally fell." These habits included very late hours and semi-starvation, assisted by smoking cigars and chewing tobacco, and by green tea in the evening without milk or sugar. Like Balzac, he avoided meat and wine, and so gave less natural brain-food room for more active play. Schiller 96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. was a night-worker and a coffee-drinker, and used to work on cham- pagne. Not only so, but he used an artificial stimulus altogether pe- culiar to himself: he found it impossible, according to the well-known anecdote, to work except in a room filled with the scent of rotten ap- ples, which he kept in a drawer of his writing-table, in order to keep up his necessary mental atmosphere. Shelley's practice of continual- ly munching bread while composing is not a mere piece of trivial gossip when taken in connection with more striking and intelligible attempts to ruin the digestion by way of exciting the brain, and when it is remembered that his delicate and almost feminine organization might require far less to throw it off the balance than naturally stronger frames. At all events, it seems to point to the same in- stinctive craving for abnormal aids to work when the imagination is called upon — as if it were not intended that the creative power should be a function of the natural man. Of course there is no need to sup- pose that the stimulus is always or even often adopted with the delib- eration of the actor, who used to sup on underdone pork-chops to in- spire himself with the mood proper to tragedy. Nor need the stimu- lus be of a kind to produce intoxication, in the vulgar sense of the word. So long as it puts the body into a non-natural condition, in the way pointed out by individual instinct, it seems that the physical con- ditions of imaginative work are fulfilled. Unfortunately for any complete treatment of the question, a suflB- cient body of data is not easily gathered. Great artists, in all fields of work, are notoriously shy of publishing their processes, even when they themselves know what their processes are. It is, however, always legitimate to argue from the known to the probable ; and if it can be gathered that all great imaginative work, whenever the process is known, has been accompanied with some abnormal habit, however slight, it is fair enough to assume that the relation of cause and effect has something to do with the matter, and that some such habit may be suspected where processes are not known. There are, however, two great imaginative authors of the very first rank whom believers in the pleasant doctrine that the highest and freest work can be done under the healthiest conditions of fresh air, early hours, daylight, and temperance — which does not mean abstinence — have always claimed for their own. One of these is Goethe. He and Balzac are at pre- cisely opposite poles in their way of working. Here is the account of Goethe's days at Weimar, according to Mr. G. H. Lewes : He rose at seven. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup of chocolate was then brought, and he worked on again till one. At two he dined. " His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry he ate much more than most men. ... He sat a long while over his wine, chatting gayly, for he never dined alone. ... He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles." There was no dessert — Balzac's principal meal — nor THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. 97 coffee. Then lie went to the theatre, where a glass of punch was brought him at six, or else he received friends at home. By ten o'clock he was in bed, where he slept soundly. " Like Thorwaldsen, he had a talent for sleeping." No man of business or dictionary- maker could make a more healthy arrangement of his hours. The five or six hours of regular morning work, which left the rest of the day open for society and recreation, tlie early habits, the full allowance of sleep, and the rational use of food, are in glaring contrast to Balzac's short and broken slumbers, his night-work, and his bodily starvation. But he who imagined " Faust " is not to be so easily let off from his share in illustrating a rule. There is no need to quarrel with Mr. Lewes for going out of his way to prove that Goethe was not necessarily a toper because he liked wine and had a good head. Though a great deal of wine was no doubt essential to his general working power, it was in his case rather a tonic than an immediate stimulant, because it came after instead of during work-hours. But this is significant of the same result, only in a different way. Goethe differed from almost every great poet in not doing his greatest work at a white heat; and not only so, but he differed also in constantly balancing his reasoning against his creative faculties. I doubt very much if those long morn- ings of early work were often spent in the fever of creation. He was a physiologist, a botanist, a critic ; and the longer he lived he became more and more of a savant^ if not less and less of a poet. His imagina- tion was most fertile before he settled down into these regular ways, but not before he settled down into a full appreciation of wine. Bal- zac would write the draft of a whole novel at a sitting, and then de- velop it on the margins of proofs, revises, and re-revises. Goethe acted as if, while art is long, life were long also. Till the contrary is proved, I must consistently hold that Goethe was the philosopher before dinnert-ime, and the poet in the theatre, or during those long after-din- ner-hours, over his two or three bottles of wine. That these later hours were often spent socially proves nothing one way or the other. Some men need such active influences as their form of mental stimulus. Al- fieri found or made his ideas while listening to music or galloping on horseback. Instances are common in every-day life of men who can- not think to good purpose when shut up in a room with a pen, and who find their best inspiration in wandering about the streets and hearing what they want in the rattle of cabs and the seething of life around them, like the scholar of Padua, whose conditions of work are given by Montaigne as a curiosity. " I lately found one of the most learned men in France . . . studying in the corner of a room, cut off by a screen, surrounded by a lot of riotous servants. He told me — and Seneca says much the same himself — that he worked all the better for this uproar, as though, overpowered by noise, he was obliged to withdraw all the more closely into himself for contemplation, while the storm of voices drove his thoughts inward. When at Padua he VOL. Til. — 7 98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. had lodged so long over the clattering of the traffic and the tumult of the streets, that he had been trained not only to be indifferent to noise, but even to require it for the prosecution of his studies." So we learn from Mr, Forster that " method in every thing was Dickens's pecu- liarity, and between breakfast and luncheon, with rare exceptions, was his time of work. But his daily walks were less of rule than of enjoy- ment and necessity. In the midst of his writing they were indispen- sable, and especially, as it has often been shown, at night," When he had work on hand he walked all over the town, furiously and in all weathers, to the injury of his health. And his walks, be it observed, were frequently what Balzac's always were — at niglit ; so that in the matter of hours he must be taken as having conformed in some im- l^ortant respects to Balzac's hygiene. Now, Goethe was also an essen- tially out-of-doors man by nature — not one to let his pen do his imagin- ing for him. He was no slave of the ink-bottle as some are, who can- not think without the feather of a goose in their hands, by way of a sometimes appropriate talisman. There is a well-known passage in one of the Roman Elegies to the effect that inspiration is to be sought more directly than within the four w^alls of a study, and that the rhythm of the hexameter is not best drummed with the lingers on a wooden table. And if it is true, as he tells, that " youth is drunken- ness without wine," it seems to follow, according to his experience, that those two or three bottles of wine are not altogether needless as an aid to inspiration when youth is gone by. The fellow-instance of imaginative work triumphantly carried on under the most admirable healthy conditions is that of Scott, He used to finish the principal part of his day's work before breakfast, and, even w^heu busiest, seldom worked as late as noon. And the end of that apparently most admirably healthy working-life we also know. " Ivanhoe" and "The Bride of Lammermoor" were dictated under the terrible stimulus of physical pain which wrung groans from him be- tween the words. The very two novels wherein the creative power of the arch-master of romance shows itself most strongly were com- posed in the midst of literal birth-throes. It was then he made that grimmest of all bad puns — " When his audible suffering filled every pause, ' Nay, Willie,' " addressing Laidlaw, who wrote for him and implored him to rest, " ' only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves ; but as to giving over work that can only be done when I am in woolen.' " So far from affording any argument to the contrary, the history of the years during whicb his hand was losing its cunning seems to illustrate the penalty of trying to reconcile two irreconcilable things — the exercise of the imagination to its fullest extent, and the observance of conditions that are too healthy to nourish a fever. Apropos of his review of Ritson's " Caledonian Annals," he himself says, " No one that has not labored as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. 99 tbe comfort aiForded by walking on all-fours and being grave and dull." There spoke the man who habitually and without artificial help drew upon his imagination at the hours when instinct has told others they should be employing not their fancy but their reason. The privi- lege of being healthily dull before breakfast must have been an intense relief to one who compelled himself to do unhealthy or abnormal work without the congenial help of abnormal conditions. Herder, in like manner, is accused by De Quincey, in direct terms, of having broken down prematurely because he " led a life of most exemplary temper- ance. . . . Surely if he had been a drunkard or an opium-eater, he might have contrived to weather the point of sixty years." Tliis is putting things pretty strongly, but it is said of a man of great imagi- native power by a man of great imaginative power, and may therefore be taken as the opinion of an expert all the more honest because he is prejudiced. A need must be strongly felt to be expressed with such daring contempt for popular axioms. At the same time " the German Coleridge" did not manage so very badly, seeing that he worked hard till sixty, and he allowed himself as much coffee as his excep- tionally delicate nervous system would stand ; so that in reality he seems to conform to the general rule by example rather than by way of exception. Scott is a far better type of the excejition that approves the rule. Genius has been defined in as many different ways as there have been people who have tried to define it. But perhaps the most suggestive I have ever heard is the attempt to destroy an exception- ally strong constitution for the gratification of a mental tendency — the physique of an elephant, as I heard it roughly jjut, and the conduct of a slave-driver who is his own slave. There must be the exception- ally strong constitution to bear an abnormal strain and the efibrt by every means to do more than Nature when kindly treated will allow. The true working-life of Scott, who helped Nature by no artificial means, lasted for no more than twelve years from the publication of " Waverley " till the year in which his genius was put into harness ; so that, of the two men, Scott and Balzac, who both began a literary life at nearly the same age, and were both remarkable for splendid constitutions, the man who lived abnormally beat the man who lived healthily by full eight years of good work, and kept his imagination in full vigor to the end. That night and not morning is most appropriate to imaginative work is supported by a general consent among those who have fol- lowed instinct in this matter. Upon this question, which can scarcely be called vexed, Charles Lamb is the classical authority. " No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. The mild internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Milton's morning-hymn in paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight, and Taylor's rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of the taper." "This loo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. view of evening and candle-light," to quote his commentator, De Quincey, once more, " as involved in the full delight of literature," may seem no more than a pleasant extravaganza, and no doubt it is in the nature of such gayeties to travel a little into exaggeration ; but sub- stantially it is certain that Lamb's sincere feelings pointed habitually in the direction here indicated. His literary studies, whether taking the color of tasks or diversions, courted the aid of evening, which by means of physical weariness jjroduces a more luxurious state of repose than belongs to the labor-hours of day; they courted the aid of lamp- light, which, as Lord Bacon remarked, gives a gorgeousness to human })omps and pleasures such as would be vainly sought from the homeli- ness of daylight." Those words " physical weai'iness," if they do not contain the whole philosophy of the matter, are very near it, and are at all events more to the point than the quotation from Lord Bacon. They almost exactly define that non-natural condition of the body which, on other grounds, appears to be proper to the non-natural exer- cise of the mind. It will be remembered that Balzac recommended the night for the artist's work, the day for the author's drudgery. Southey, who knew how to work and how to get the best and the most out of himself as well as anybody who ever put pen to paper, and who pur- sued the same daily routine throughout his whole literary life, per- formed his tasks in the following order : From breakfast till dinner, history, transcription for the press, and, in general, all the work that Scott calls " walking on all fours." From dinner till tea, reading, let- ter-writing, the newspapers, and frequently a siesta — he, also, was an heroic sleeper, and slept whenever he had the chance. After tea, poe- try, or whatever else his fancy chose — whatever work called upon the creative power. It is true that he went to bed regularly at half-past ten, so that his actual consumption of midnight oil was not extrava- gant. But such of it as he did consume was taken as a stimulant for the purely imaginative part of his work, when the labor that required no stimulant was over and done. Blake was a painter by day and a poet tjy niglit ; he often got out of bed at midnight and wrote for hours, following by instinct the deliberate practice of less impulsive workers. ISTow, bodily weariness is simply bodily indolence induced artificially ; its production by hard walking, hard riding, hard living, or hard study, looks like an instinctive effort on the part of energetic men to put themselves for the time and for a purpose into the chronically unhealthy condition of naturally indolent men. Indolence, that is to say chronic fatigue, appears to be the natural habit of imaginative brains. It is a commonplace to note that men of fertile fancy, as a class, have been notorious for their horror of the work of formulating their ideas even by the toil of thought, much more by passing them through the crucible of the ink-bottle. In many cases they have needed the very active stimulant of hunger. The cacoethes scrihendi is a disease com- mon, not to imaginative, but to imitative minds. Probably no hewer THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. loi of wood or drawer of water undergoes a tithe of the toil of those whose work is reputed play, but is, in fact, a battle, every moment, between the flesh and the spirit. Campbell, who at the age of sixty- one could drudge at an unimaginative work for fourteen hours a day like a galley-slave, " and yet," as he says in one of his letters, "be as cheerful as a child," speaks in a much less industrious tone of the work which alone was congenial to him : " The truth is, I am not writing poetry but projecting it, and that keeps me more idle and abstracted than you can conceive. I pass hours thinking about what I am to compose. The actual time employed in composition is but a fraction of the time lost in setting about it." " At Glasgow," Ave read of him even when a young man, " he seldom exercised his gift except when roused into action either by the prospect of gaining a prize or by some stirring incident." Campbell, if not a great man, was a typical worker. Johnson — who, whatever may be thought of his imaginative powers, was another type — struck oif his Ramblers and Idlers at a heat when the summons of the press forbade his indolence to put ofl' his work another moment ; he did not give himself even a minute to read over his papers before they went to the printers. He would not have written " Rasselas " except for tlie necessity of paying for his mother's funeral ; and yet he was a laborious worker where the imagi- nation was not concerned. The elder Dumas had to forbid himself, by an effort of will, to leave his desk before a certain number of pages were written, in order to get any work done at all. Victor Hugo is said to have locked up his clothes while writing " Not re-Dame," so that he might not escape from it till the last word was written. In such cases the so-called " pleasures of imagination " look singularly like the pains of stone-breaking. The hardest part of the lot of gen- ius, I suspect, has been not the emotional troubles popularly — and with absurd exaggeration — ascribed to it, but a disgust for labor dur- ing the activity of the fancy, and the necessity for labor when it is most disijustins:. And, as it is not in human nature to endure sufier- ing willingly, the mood in which such labor is possible calls for artifi- cial conditions by which it can be rendered endurable. The passing mention of Blake indirectly suggests an objection. Nature has thought fit to place an insuperable bar between painters and night-work: and yet the work of the painter is as imaginative in character as that of the poet, while painters have shown no tendency, as a class, to break down under the strain. Artists in form have not often followed the example of Michael Angelo, who stuck a candle in a lump of clay, and the lump of clay on his head, and chiseled till morning. But then writing is the exercise of the imagination, including conception as well as execution ; painting is the record of previous imagination, and so belongs to the daylight, even according to Balzac's rule. Skill, intelligence, the eye and the hand, which work best under natural and healthy conditions, have to bear the 102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. strain. Because his hand and mind work by day, it does not follow that the painter's fancy is not a night-bird — only, happily, it is not called upon to labor in its dreaming hours. Musicians, who might be expected to demand the conditions of imaginative literature in a tenfold degree, have, in fact, breathed as common air the stimulating and unhealthy atmosphere that authors only enter when they need it. Musical genius is, so to speak, a self-supporting fever, tbat finds in every sort of exciting stimulus not its artificial but its natural and healtliy atmosphere. Exceptions, like John Sebastian Bach, prove the notoriety of the rule by the stress which is laid upon them. The manners and customs of great artists in sound tend to support the general rule concerning all imaginative work to an infinite extent, but it would be unfair to argue from those who breathe poison for their native air to those who merely use poison in order to escape from the common air of the unimaginative world. It is notorious that creative genius is essentially of the masculine gender. Women are the imaginative sex, but the work, which Nature seems to have distinctly allotted to them, has been done by men. This really strange jihenomenon is not due to the fact that women have written comparatively little, because, if it were, the little imagi- native work they have done would have been great in quality, and would surpass in quantity the other Avork they have done. But it has not been great in quality compared with that of men, and, com- pared with the rest of their own work, has been infinitesimally small. Xo woman ever wrote a great drama ; not one of the world's great poems came from a woman's hand. In their own domain of fiction women have been, and occasionally are, great realists, great portrait- painters, great masters of style, great psychologists — but not great inventors, and very seldom inventors at all. Probably everybody will be able to name off-hand one or two exceptions to what looks like a very dogmatic and sweeping piece of criticism — and probably everybody will name exactly the same one or two. Nobody dreams of looking for absolutely great imaginative work, in any branch of art, from a woman ; and, when by chance it comes, the admiration it excites is multiplied by wonder. People say, " See what a woman can do" — not "See what women can do." In music, the typically imagi- native art, wherein they have had a free and oj)en career, it is legiti- mately dogmatic to deny them any place at all. Seeing, therefore, that the natural imagination of women is comparatively barren while the ordinary unimaginativeness of men is absolutely fertile, it is impossible to doubt that the way of work has something to do with the matter. And if examples tend to prove that creative genius among men instinctively works under artificial and unhealthy con- ditions of body, while work wherein the imagination is not tasked is for the most part carried on under the calmest and healthiest con- ditions, it would follow that women at large fail to produce great THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP. 103 creative work by reason of their good working qualities — because they do not in general use artificial stimulants and irregular modes of life to helj) their brains to wear out their bodies. They keep them- selves broad awake in order to dream ! They seek to do imaginative work, and take as models the lives of men who do unimaginative work — that is to say, precisely the opposite routine to that of men by whom imaginative work is done. These prove negatively wliat the examples of creative genius prove positively. If scholars toil late into the early hours, it is to continue their day's work, not to begin it. It is interest that chains them to the desk at midnight, not im- pulse that calls them there. All philosophers have not always been sober men ; but they have taken their indulgences as refreshments and recreations — as interruptions to work, and not as its necessary accompaniments. If Balzac's may be taken as [the type of the artist's life, Kant's may be taken as the type of the student's. The habits of both are equally well known. Kant also gave a daily diimer-party ; but when his guests were gone he took a walk in the country instead of seeking broken slumbers in a state of hunger. He came home at twilight, and read from candle-light till bedtime at ten. He rose punctually at five, and, over one cup of tea and part of a pipe, laid out his plan of woi-k for the day. At seven he lectured, and wrote till dinner-time at about one. The regularity of his life was auto- matic. It was that of Balzac save in fulfilling all the accepted con- ditions of health — early rising, early lying down, moderate daily work, nightly rest, regular exercise, and a diet regulated with the care not of a lunatic but of a physician. A cup of tea and half a pipe in the morning cannot be looked upon as stimulants to a man in such perfect health as Kant always enjoyed ; and, if they can be, let it be observed that it was while engaged with these he thought about his work — it was his hour for what Campbell called his '•'■fuyning meditations." He certainly used no other stimulant to work, in the common sense of the word ; but even he illustrates, in another point, the need of the mind for artificial conditions, however slight they may be, when en- gaged in dreaming. During the blind-man's holiday between his walk and candle-light he sat down to think in twilight fashion ; and, while thus engaged, he always placed himself so that his eyes might fall on a certain old tower. This old tower became so necessary to his thoughts that, when some poplar-trees grew up and hid it from his window, he found himself unable to think at all, until, at his earnest request, the trees were cropped and the tower brought into sight again. Kant's old tower recalls Bufibn's incapability of think- ing to good purpose except in full di-ess and with his hair in such elab- orate order that, by way of external stimulus to his brain, he had a hair-dresser to interrupt his work twice, or, when very busy, thrice a day. It is curious to note the touch of kindred between the imagina- tive savant Bufibn and the learned artist Haydn, who could not work 104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. except in court-dress, and who used to declai-e that, if, wlien he sat down to his instrument, he had forgotten to put on a certain ring, he could not summon a single idea. How he managed to summon ideas before Frederick II. had given him the said ring we are not informed. But even these trivial mstances of caprice help to suggest that, wben the fancy is called upon, the ordinary conditions of straightforward work must be considered at an end. Fancy dictates the terms on which she condescends to ajjpear. Of Dickens we are told that " some quaint little bronze figures on his desk were as much needed for the easy flow of his writing as blue ink or quill pens." But, unhappily, the terms dictated by creative fancy have not been and are not always so innocent as blue ink, coffee, late hours, or rot- ten apples. A true and exhaustive history of how great imagiuative work has been done would be too sad a chronicle, and would be good for nothing but to recall biographical memories that are better for- gotten. No doubt most readers will be able to supply from memory instances enough to judge for themselves how far the well-known ex- amples here given exemplify and account for the connection of cre- ative genius with a tendency to chronic suicide. And if the necessity of this connection be admitted, then the question arises, "How far is any man justified or not justified in adopting in intellectual matters the doctrine that the end iustifies the means ? If he feels — and biocr- raphy speaks vainly if he is held to be mistaken in feeling — that the work for which Nature intended him must be left undone unless he deliberately elects to ruin his health, to become an awful warning to the white sheep of the social sheepfold and a stumbling-block to would-be imitators, which is he to choose?" All the branches of the question, all its most trifling illustrations, lead to that broad issue which has never yet been boldly faced or fairly answered. The strange manners and customs of men of genius have often enough been de- fended as unfortunate weaknesses by their apologists : it seems to me they ought either to be condemned as unworthy of men of sense and will, or else boldly asserted as the necessary instruments of the work that owes its birth to them — as the artificial means of producing strength out of weakness which a man who lives for his work ought to use. If creative genius is really an unhealthy condition, it must require unhealthy methods to produce and sustain its action. It is not the healthy oyster that breeds the j^earl. Nor is this a dangerous theory. The oyster does not deliberately produce in itself the disease of pearl-bearing, nor can any man — it need hardly be added — give himself genius by adopting and abusing the artificial means that enable genius to work when it is ali'eady there. The disease suggests its appropriate conditions : the conditions clearly cannot bring about the disease. The morality of the whole question, and its application to any particular case, must be settled by everybody for himself; but a story of a hurdle-race at Gadshill, told in Mr. Forster's life of Dick- SKETCH OF BR. WILLIAM WHEW ELL. 105 ens, contains in a homely way the summing up of its philosophy. "Among other oddities we had a hurdle-race for strangers. One man — he came in second — ran a hundred and twenty yards and leaped over ten hurdles in twenty seconds, with a pipe in his mouth and smoking it all the time. 'If it hadn't been for the pipe,' I said to him at the winning-post, ' you would have been first.' ' I beg your par- don, sir,' he answered, ' but if it hadnH been for my pipe I should have been nowhere.'' " — Gentleman'' s Magazine. -♦♦♦- SKETCH OF DR. WILLIAM WHEWELL. DR. WILLIAM WHEWELL stands highest in the literary world as the historian of science. His " History of the Inductive Sciences " is not a mere bald narration of the facts and details of sci- entific progress, but is a philosophical treatment of the subject, which shows the growth and advancement of principles or general truths. It is, in fact, an elaborate historical review of the processes of gener- alization, such as had never before been attempted. This work stands eminent among the scientific contributions of the past age, both on account of its historic erudition and its trustworthy representation of the broad inductions of modern scientific inquiry. It is a permanent work of reference in every scientific library ; and the extent to which it has influenced the philosophical mind of the age is well illustrated by the acknowledgment of John Stuart Mill : that, if Whewell had not w^ritteu the " History of the Inductive Sciences," the " Logic, Ratio- cinative and Inductive," might never have appeared. Dr. Whewell was born in Lancaster, May 24, 1794. His father was a joiner, and intended to have his son follow his trade. But while at school he showed such a remarkable talent for mathematics, together with evidences of more than ordinary ability in other branches, that it was decided to send him to Cambridge. He entered Trinity Col- lege, as Freshman, in 1813, at the age of nineteen. The following year he distinguished himself by winning the English Poetical Prize. He was graduated B. A. in 1816, with the honors of second wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos, was elected a Fellow, and soon afterward Tutor of Trinity College.' He rapidly earned a reputation as a suc- cessful teacher, both in the class-room and as " coach," or private tutor. He applied himself to mathematics and vigorously went to work to bring about a radical reform in the methods of teaching the physi- cal sciences in England. In 1819 he published his first work, "An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics," designed for the use of students of the university. In 1820 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal So- ciety, and we now find him contributing to the " Transactions " of io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. learned and scientific societies, and to scientific journals, papers on the tides, beat, electricity, and magnetism ; and to the literary journals and reviews miscellaneous papers on subjects literary, historical, and meta- physical. In 1828 he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy in the university. In order to perfect his knowledge of that branch of natural science, he visited Gei*many and spent some time at the celebrated mining-schools of Freiburg and Vienna. He resigned his mineralogi- cal professorship in 1833; published his treatises on "Statics," "Me- chanics," and " Dynamics," and bi'ought out his first great work, en- titled "Astronomy and General Physics considered in their Relations to Natural Theology." In this work Dr. Whewell breaks connection wath the traditions of the experimental school, and abandons Bacon and Locke, to range himself on the side of Kant, to whose philosophy he had become a convert while in Germany. He also endeavored, during this time, to make his countrymen acquainted with German literature and art, of which he was a warm admirer. He translated several gems of German literature, such as Goethe's " Hermann und Dorothea," and "The Professor's Wife," of Auerbach, and published "Notes on the Architecture of German Churches," which met with great success in England. Among other works of less importance published soon after, his "Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as Part of a Liberal Education," and, particularly, his "Mechanical Euclid," gained considerable note. In 1837 he published his "History of the Inductive Sciences from the Eai-liest to the Present Times." Dr. Whewell's thinking now seems to enter upon the road of phi- losophy. During this same year he published " Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals," and in the following year (1838) he was ap- pointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the university. From this time forward he occupied himself almost wholly with moral questions. In 1840 he published a sequel to, or commentary on, his " Plistory of the Inductive Sciences " under the title of " The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," which was afterward enlarged and published as three sep- arate works under the titles of " History of Scientific Ideas," " Novum Organon Renovatum," and " On the Philosophy of Discovery." We may add to these a fourth, "Indications of tlie Creator," consisting of extracts bearing upon theology, from the " History " and " Philos- ophy of the Inductive Sciences." In 1841 he was appointed Master of Trinity, and was President of the British Association at its meeting in Plymouth, The same year he also put out another mathematical work, entitled the "Mechanics of Engineering." In 1845 he published his " Elements of Morality, including Polity," " Lectures on Systematic Morality," " On Liberal Education in General, and with Particular Reference to the Leading Studies of the University of Cambridge." The following year he issued another mathematical work on " Conic Sections; their Principal Properties proved Geometrically." In 1852 he published " Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in Eng- SKETCH OF DR. WILLIAM WHEW ELL. 107 land," and soon afterward, among others, a translation of Grotius's "Rights in Peace and War," a translation of Plato's ''Dialogues," and, anonymously, a work entitled "The Plurality of Woiids," in which he argued that none of the planets, except the earth, are inhab- ited. This book had a great popularity, and excited much discussion. In 1855 he became Vice-Chancellor of the university, and retired from the professorship of Moral Philosophy, remaining, however. Master of Trinity. Among the last of his works was the editing, in 1861, of the mathematical works of Dr. Isaac Barrow, Master of Trinity in 1672. Dr. Whewell died May 5, 1866, from the eifects of injuries re- ceived in a fall while riding on horseback. He was one of the most distinguished men that Trinity College has produced, and one of the best of its masters. He was a munificent benefactor to the college, to which he added one new court during his life, and at his death be- queathed his large fortune to the building of another, and to the founding of a professorship of International Law. Dr. Whewell was a large, strong, erect man, of the Johnsonian type, with a red face and a loud voice, an effective preacher, a vigorous controversialist, and a man of extensive and varied attainments, which were always at ready command. His memory was remarkable, but it was rather special, and took chiefly the direction of his studies. He could remem- ber all about books and their contents with the greatest accuracy, but could not recollect the names of the Fellows of his own collesre. This was of course often wrongly interpreted ; and very naturally so, it must be confessed, for Dr. Whewell's manner was marked by no lit- tle assumption of superiority. He was naturally aristocratic in feeling, and his pompous bearing among the college oflicials gave him the rep- utation of being arrogant. Still, he understood his own strength, and was not without excuse for a considerable degree of self-regard. A story is told of him which illustrates both his varied knowledge and his personal relations to his brother Fellows : He used frequently to so overwhelm the company at the Fellows' table with his learning, that a conspiracy was at length formed to put him down. A number of them, on one occasion, crammed up on Chinese music, from scattered ar- ticles in old reviews, which they supposed he would not be acquainted with, and then made the state of music among the Chinese the subject of a seemingly casual conversation at dinner. They were highly grati- fied with the apparent result ; for, contrary to his usual custom, Dr. Whewell remained silent. When, however, they had nearly talked themselves out, he remarked : " I was imperfectly and to some extent incorrectly informed regarding Chinese music when I wrote the arti cles from which you have drawn your information." The conspiracy was a failure ; the Fellows were disgusted, and the dignified doctor remained acknowledged master of the situation. io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, CORRESPONDENCE. TO WHAT EXTENT IS EVOLUTION YISIBLEf To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly : "It is less unphilosophical to suppose that each species has been evolved from a predecessor by a modification of its parts, than that it has suddenly started into ex- istence out of nothing. Nor is there much weight in the remark that no man has ever witnessed such a transformation taking place."— (Draper, " History of the Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 192. "International Scientific Series," No. 12.) There stands, in a window of my wife's sitting-room, a potted slip of geranium. To-day, I heard her remark, " I can see that this grows now, every day." In what sense is this true ? By remembering its size and condition of yesterday, and comparing it with its present dimensions and conditions, an increase and change are demonstrable. It certainly has grown. But, if we were to sit down at sunrise and watch unceasingly until sunset, or by lamplight continue the vigil until sunrise again, we would in all this time have seen no enlargement of the main stem — no unfolding of a leaf-bud ; still, both these changes have taken place within twenty-four hours, and, of course, in full view. Is it not true in the same way, but far less rapidly, that the changes in animal life are constantly occurring — so gradually, that we cannot mark and measure the prog- ress, but, like the plant, can appreciate the changes when considerably advanced ? Tlie birds, the fishes, the insects of to-day are the same that our grandparents knew. Linnaeus would recognize our white-headed eagle, if he could see one now ; yet, in truth, they are not wholly the same. Just as we will realize, in the coming May, a great change in the forest-trees, then clothed in verdure, and now bare and seemingly lifeless, will not, in the life-giving spring of a coming geon, the changes not now discernible be seen, admired, and studied, by the people of that time? Taking up some of the more familiar objects about me, I have en- deavored to see if there was not a possibil- ity of detecting some trace of changes now in progress, reminding one of the changes of a growing plant. The change now in progress in any spe- cies, say of fishes, is to become, if I am correct in my surmise, visible in fifty centu- ries or more. From what we can now learn of the fish, can we determine the direction of the change ; can we predict its charac- ter? Our slip of geranium has to-day a small outgrowth at one side of the stem ; elsewhere the bark is smooth and unbroken. If, by the microscope's aid, we study the character of the structure of the main stem, if we learn every detail of the physiology of the plant, we conclude that it is a living, healthy organism, not depending upon the leaf-bud. As a mere bud, it is not a neces- sity ; but, as a full-blown leaf, it is. If, now, we carefully study the habits of any of our common fishes, we will find in them certain peculiar habits, which may be compared to the leaf-bud ; and I believe these habits, in many cases, are only faint traces of a com- ing change that will expand like the open- ing leaf-bud, into a fully-established char- acteristic in the far-distant to-morrow of a coming age. In this way — to this extent — is not evo- lution visible ? As an example, let me call your atten- tion to our well-known mud-minnow {Mela- nura Umi). This fish I have very carefully studied for several years, and s-eldom fail to see something peculiar in its habits, every additional hour I spend in watching them, whether in an aquarium or their na- tive haunts. On observing the movements of some remarkably large specimens lately, in an aquarium, I was forcibly struck with the pecuhar use they made of their pectoral fins. These fins, in most fishes, are kept parallel, or nearly so, with the body, and are usually thin, transparent, and with very flexible rays. These conditions, which vary CORRESP ONDENCE. 109 in the thousands of species of fishes, do not obtain iu the case of the mud-minnow The membrane is dense, the rays numerous and strong, and the fin is held at a right angle with the body when the fish is in an horizontal position, and nearly so whatever other position may be assumed. The ven tral fins, likewise stiff and strongly rayed, when the fish is swimming, are not much used, but as soon as the animal comes to a rest they are spread out, and, with the pecto- ral fins, now stifi" and motionless, they form four legs that support the body, just as a salamander does. Indeed, the likeness goes further, and the body is curved frequently when at rest, and remains so ; the head turned to the right or left, the tail in the opposite direction. No one can fail to see the salamandrine appearance of this fish in this position. Now, if we follow up the habits of the fish, what unfish-like — if I may use the expression — habit other than this can we detect ? Knowing its predilec- tion for thick and muddy waters, I find it not only conceals itself in the mud during the summer, but it deeply embeds itself and regularly hibernates ; and in times of drought will live, as I have determined by experiment, twenty-eight days, in stiff mud, far less moist than the usual ditch-bottom, during a dry summer. This must be recol- lected in connection with its salamandrine aspects when in water. Again, by experi- ment, I find that this minnow, out of water, will outlive all other fishes of our streams, except the eel and possibly the catfish. My experiments showed it outlived a common sunfish just 500 per cent. ; a roach, 1,500 per cent. ; and a catfish and mud-minnow, taken from the water together, and kept thirty- five minutes in the air, were both very sick when replaced in the aquanum. The cat- fish revived in three minutes ; the minnow in eleven. This unusual ability of retain- ing life out of its natural conditions and surroundings is just such a peculiarity as one might look for, in this species, having once noticed the peculiarity of the fins I have mentioned. To-day, however, I no- ticed for the first time a movement on the part of the mud-minnows, in my aquarium, never before detected, and which made the fins more leg-like than ever. Two speci- mens were resting, as we have described, on the tips of the pectoral and ventral fins. Coming near them suddenly, one, and then the other, moved several " steps," i. e., they gave their fins a leg-like motion, which left ( ( ( ( faint impressions, thus ( ( ( ( upon the sand. I had never seen such fin-move- ments on the part of this fish before, nor have I since, although for a week past I have carefully watched them. Taking, now, into consideration the hab- it of resting on the tips of the fins ; of giving the body a serpentine position, often main- tained for many minutes ; of burrowing in the mud ; and able to withstand the atmos- phere for a remarkable length of time ; to which I think I may add walking on its fins — may we not see in all these a " leaf- bud," as it were, which in the far future will expand into an air-breathing, salaman- drine animal ? Have we here really caught a faint glimpse of evolution ? Since the above was written, I have re- ceived and read Schmidt's "Descent and Darwinism." On page 130 he quotes from Lyell, as follows : " In a word, the move- ment of the inorganic world is obvious and palpable, and might be likened to the min- ute-hand of a clock, the progress of which can be seen and heard ; whereas the fluctua- tions of the living creation are nearly invisi- ble^ and resemble the motion of the hour- hand of a timepiece. It is only by watching it attentively for some time, and comparing its relative position after an interval, that we can prove the reality of its motion.'''' This quotation is the same idea far more lucidly expressed ; and, had I been aware of its ex- istence, my remarks would have remained unwritten. As it is, are they not a confirma- tion of my belief that evolution is, after a manner, visible, and do we not find an in- stance of this in the mud-minnow ? Charles C. Abbott, M. D. Peospkct Hill, Trenton, N. J., March 16, 1875. no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. EDITOR'S TABLE. TO OUR PATRONS. SIX volumes of The Popular Sci- ence Monthly are now published, and with this number it enters upon its fourth year. We remind our friends of this, that they may renew their sub- scriptions, and we trust they will urge their neighbors to join them in taking the Monthly, as thereby it may be ob- tained at a cheaper rate. The public press has been saying these three years that this is the most valuable and in- structive magazine in the country. Yet our subscription list by no means com- ports with such a standard of excel- lence ; for the best thing ought certainly to be the best sustained. Although our circulation is fair, it is still far behind that of those periodicals which leave science out or consign it to the depart- ment of scraps. Let no one suppose that in helping this Monthly to new readers they are ministering to a specu- lation; the time is a long way off when a first-class scientific magazine will en- rich anybody. We have before us the more urgent question of making the Monthly pay moderate prices for the work that is done on it, and earn the means of its own improvement — objects which can be secured exactly in pro- portion as it is sustained by the public. It should be remembered that The Popular Science Monthly stands alone in doing a special and important work. It was not started merely to add another to the list of magazines, the chief of which are so nearly alike that they are mutually replaceable ; but it was started to furnish a very different magazine from any the people could get. In so far as our age is an age of ideas, the first great fact about it undoubtedly is, the ascendency of science as a power that is moulding the mind of the period. The extension of scientific knowledge is affecting all the interests of society. Agriculture, the manufacturing arts, locomotion, the physical conditions of health, the economy of the vital and mental powers, are all influenced by it to a degree never before experienced. These are confessedly within the circle of interests embraced by science, but that circle is steadily enlarging. Higher questions are being constantly brought under scientific treatment. To this great movement of thought character- istic of the time, our periodicals gave no adequate expression ; and it there- fore became necessary to begin a mag- azine that would put its readers in hon- est possession of the broadest conclu- sions of scientific study, as well as the im- mediate results of experimental research. Without being an organ of propagand- ism, or representing any clique or school of doctrine, we shall continue, as we have done, to give the fresh facts and the advanced conclusions of science, and we ask the earnest cooperation of all who sympathize with this work. LACTOMETRY AND MORALS. There is an old disagreement be- tween society and the milkman. The latter is alleged to be depraved, and, as a consequence, to adulterate his mEk with water. Ethical considerations do not seem to influence him. Though commanded to sell unto others only such milk as he Avould have others sell unto him, he prefers what he considers as a still more golden rule. Now, we are inclined to regard the milkman with becoming charity. We cannot believe that he is a sinner above all other men. What he needs more than any thing else is, to be delivered from EDITOR'S TABLE. Ill temptation. His evil opportunities are too many for him. Nor is it of much use to preach to him from the door-steps concerning the wickedness of his ways ; because he will ask you to read from the newspaper you have in your hand the last reports about the rings, frauds, corruptions, stealing and plunder on a grand scale, in high places, and on the part of representative men whom the people delight to honor. Pecula- tion, misappropriation, overreaching, and sharp practice, he tells you, are the order of the day — the rule, the fashion, and that a man "might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion." He tells you that business rivalries are des- perate, that men must live, and that the world must be taken as it is. The milk- man is of opinion that, if the business standards of the community could be raised to a level with his own practice, a long stride would be taken toward the millennium. He refers you to a report to the Board of Health in this city, in which it is stated that chalk, flour, starch, emulsion of almonds, sugar, gum, dextrine, borax, turmeric, annotto, soda, and sheep's brains, have been used for doctoring milk; but that, in hun- dreds of examinations of milk furnished to the citizens of this metropolis, none of these ingredients have been detected. Water, to be sure, is alleged to have been used, but what is more wholesome ? and what are the secluded spring and the ready pump for, if not to supply it? He reminds you that societies are organ- ized all over the world to get people to drink more of it ; that milk is mainly aqueous, to begin with ; that there is no natural standard of the proportions of this constituent; that the business of dispensing it is a detestable drudgery; that the milkman must be astir and abroad while other people slumber; that he has to rout the lazy servant- girls with unearthly screeches, and then wait till they are pleased to make their appearance ; that there is waste with every pint delivered ; that bills are hard to collect ; that though his conscience be as white as the contents of his can, yet is he ever charged with cheating; that his rascally competitor is under- selling him and he perfectly understands the cause; and, finally, that the losses and drawbacks of business have to be covered in ditferent ways, while, if a little innocuous water is added to the milk, nobody is worse for it, and nobody can find it out. Now, it is useless to reason with the milkman, or to exhort him to raise his conduct to the standard of pure and ab- solute rectitude, for, even if he should repent, he would be pretty sure to back- slide. Yet the case against him is not to be given up ; where homilies fail, science comes to the rescue ; and, if its indications are followed, the milkman and his customer may be brought into tolerably harmonious relations. How far the craft have wandered away from the paths of rectitude in this region, and how their venial transgres- sions swell into an immense daily burden upon the community, are well illustrated by the following statement from Prof. Chandler's report to the Metropolitan Board of Health in 1870. He says : " The average percentage of pure milk, in the adulterated article with which the city is supplied, is 73.28 ; or, in other words, for every three quarts of pure milk, there is added one quart of water. It was stated at the convention of milk-producers and deal- ers, held at Croton Falls, in March, 1870, that the total amount of milk supplied to the cities of New York and Brooklyn, from the surrounding country, was about 120,- 000,000 quarts per annum. To reduce this to the quality of our city supply, requires an addition of 40,000,000 quarts of water, which at 10 cents per quart, costs us the snug sum of $4,000,000 annually, or about §12,000 per day." Now, granting that there is a great deal of money spent in New York, in worse ways than in buying water at ten cents a quart retail, it is still desirable to introduce more equity into these lac- tic transactions. The milk-consumer is 112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. entitled to have what he pays for, and lie can find out very satisfactorily what it is that he pays for, by the employ- ment of the lactometer. Good milk consists of about 88 per cent, water, combined with about 12 per cent, of solid matter dissolved or dif- fused in it, which makes it heavier than water. This increased relative weight is known as its specific gravity, and water being taken as 1000, the specific gravity of milk varies from 1023 to 1034. "Without inquiring into the pro- portions of its several solid constituents, the lactometer determines their amount by indicating the specific gravity of the sample tested. The instrument is sim- ply a glass tube closed at the lower end, and properly weighted, with a scale af- fixed, which shows the result when it is floated in a sample of milk. Milks from different cows and at different times vary in richness and poorness, so that it becomes important to fix such a standard that all samples which fall be- low it shall be classed as adulterated, or condemned as unmarketable. The Xew York Board of Health has been engaged for a considerable time, under the intelligent direction of Prof. Chan- dler, in investigating this subject, and, as a result of very extensive observa- tions, they have fixed upon a specific gravity of 1029 as a fair minimum stand- ard for pure milk, so that, " when- ever the gravity falls below this num- ber, the milk may be considered as containing ah excess of water and con- sequently as poor in quality, or adulter- ated." The standard adopted is, beyond doubt, sufficiently low. A German chemist tested the milk of 124 cows, and found the maximum specific gravi- ty to be 1034.3, the minimum specific gravity to be 1029.5, and the mean 1031.7. Hence the standard of mer- chantable milk adopted by the New York Board of Health is lower than the poorest milk from these 124 cows. It may be remarked that milk of 1034 will bear an addition of 16.67 per cent, of water to reduce it to 1029. This standard has been made legal in New York — that is, a dealer selling milk below 1029 is hable to a fine. Whatever may be the result of this policy, a most important step has been taken in fixing a minimum standard, and thus making it possible for milk- buyers, quickly and certainly, by the use of the instrument, to ascertain whether the character of the article they are purchasing is above or below it. We say, then, to every householder inter- ested, get a lactometer. Taglibue, of 69 Fulton Street, New York, makes and sells them for $1.25 apiece, with the scale adopted by the New York Board of Health. The instrument is perfectly simple, and will last a hundred years, with care, but it is not a good thing for children to play with. On a card ac- companying it, we read : " Fill the jar with the milk to be tested ; allow it to cool to the temperature of 60° Fahr., then immerse the lactometer and notice the mark on the scale that is level with the surface of the milk, which will show the quality." The standard of pure milk adopted is marked P, and is taken as 100 on the scale. If the lac- tometer stands at that point, the milk is legal. If it sinks below it the milk is too thin, and the point in the scale at which it stands indicates its excess of water. If the mark P stands above the surface, the milk is richer than the standard, and the scale shows its supe- rior quality. Of course, the instrument cannot give an analysis of the milk, and if a milkman reduces a high grade of milk to a somewhat lower standard, by admixture of water, the lactometer cannot show it ; but it will tell exactly the quality of the milk every time, so that the buyer may know how he is being served. The general use of the lactometer could not fail to exert a beneficial influence upon the morals of the milk-trade. EDITOR'S TABLE. 113 DEAK STANLEY'S SERMOK In another part of the Monthly will be found a report, derived from the London Times, of a late discourse of the Dean of Westminster, which has made a profound sensation in England. It was delivered in Westminster Abbey, on a very impressive occasion, the funer- al of a philosopher who had done more than any of his contemporaries to vindi- cate the sharply-contested doctrine of the government of the world by unva- rying law rather than by providential interventions ; and who, through evil report and much denunciation, had suc- cessfully asserted the vast antiquity of the earth and of the human race. To add to the solemnity of the occasion, if it were possible, the queen, the "De- fender of the Faith," and the head of the English Church, caused to be laid on the coffin a memorial-wreath, as a mark of her esteem. The guiding principle of Lyell's geo- logical opinions was, that there never has been any variation in the laws and operations of Nature. This principle had long previously been established as the corner-stone of scientific astrono- my, both in the prediction of future celestial events and in the verification of old observations. If an eclipse of the sun or moon be recorded by Greek, or Chaldean, or Chinese historians, the astronomer, without hesitation, resorts to retrospective calculations, and deter- mines its exact date. Epochs in chro- nology have been settled in that way. Or, looking forward with prophetic eye, he declares that, at a specified mo- ment, there shail be such and such a conjunction of the satellites of Jupiter, or, a century hence, a transit of Venus. Implicitly relying on forecasts of the kind, the position of the moon among the stars, and other phenomena of the celestial bodies, the mariner trustfully finds the place of his ship at sea, and determines his proper track. Nautical almanacs teach us what prophecy real- ly ought to be. VOL. vn.— 8 Lyell transferred the principle from the heavens to the earth. He discov- ered that the modeling of her surface had been accomplished by forces that are now, and ever have been, in opera- tion ; that the summer sun and wintry frosts, that rains, and winds, and riv- ers, and glaciers, and the ocean, worked always as they work now. But this implied the lapse of enormous periods of time. The six days of the orthodox creation, and the 6,000 years of ortho- dox chronology, were absolutely inade- quate. Unwilling needlessly to give offense to those who were not emancipated from the legends of their childhood, who still linger among jjopular theo- logical conceptions, and find difficulty in enlarging their field of view, he nev- er offensively, but always modestly, put forth the consequences of his new facts, very often suggesting rather than pro- claiming them. When the first dis- covery of the vast antiquity of the hu- man race was made — a discovery in which he took a leading part — he scru- pulously observed the same course, and in this set an example to those obstrep- erous theologians whose insolent de- nunciations of science are founded often on ignorance, and not infrequently on less excusable grounds. " We now know," says Dean Stanley, "perfectly well, from our increased insight into the nature and origin of the early bibli- cal records, that they were not, and could not be, literal descriptions of the beginning of the world. It is now clear to all the students of the Bible that the first and second chapters of Genesis contain two narrations of the Creation side by side, differing from each other in almost every particular of time, and place, and order. It is now known that the vast epochs de- manded by scientific observation are incompatible with the 6,000 years of the Mosaic chronology and the six days of the Mosaic creation." We ask attention, in the interests of truth, to the grave import of these 114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. words from one of the most learned and religiously earnest divines of our time. "What do they imply? Two things inevitably: first, the abandon- ment to Science of those cosniological problems over which Theology has hitherto claimed a divine right ; and, second, the surrender to critical inves- tigation of the nature and source of those narratives which have been hith- erto so implicitly trusted. Dean Stanley is far from being alone in his views ; they are shared by many other eminent clergymen who recognize that the Mo- saic account of the Creation is without authority ; and yet no part of Dr. Dra- per's celebrated book on the " Conflict between Religion and Science" has been so bitterly denounced by theolo- gians as his remarks on the authenticity of the Pentateuch. He ventured a bold prophecy that the originals of the le- gends of the creation, the garden of Eden, the development of Eve from one of the ribs of Adam, the fall of man, the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, would be discovered in the clay libraries of the revived Mesopota- mian palaces, as that of the Deluge had been ; and, already, though only a few weeks have elapsed, it appears that they have been so found. How are they to be interpreted? When the legend of the Deluge was discovered by Mr. Smith, the agent of the London Tele- graph newspaper, in these cuneiform tablets, it was hailed with triumph by biblical scholars, who looked upon it as a wonderful and unexpected testimony vouchsafed to these later days in be- half of the story of Genesis and the authenticity of the Pentateuch. It was supposed that the universal deluge had now been proved to have taken place. But another and very different view of the case has emerged, which is, that these legends, instead of being corrobo- rative testimonials of the Pentateuch narration, are rather the originals from which it was derived. Into the ques- tion thus opened, although of great in- terest, we do not enter, but may say that, if this view proves the correct one, Assyrian explorers will hereafter be at a discount. Their discoveries will be classed with those of astronomers, ge- ologists, and anthropologists. The the- ologians will find in them matter for merriment; and the digger into the mounds of the Tigris must get ready to be denounced as an atheist. And yet Dean Stanley's sermon in- spires us with hope that a better day is dawning. In the highest ecclesiastical ranks — and remembering the flowers that were laid on the coffin — in the highest political ranks, there is arising a spirit of liberality which more than sympathizes with the life of those great and good men, who, like Sir Charles Lyell, do not hesitate to encounter the prejudices and ignorance of their con- temporaries for the sake of the truth, who invest its pursuit with the sanctity of a religious duty, and consider prac- tical piety to consist, not in the noisy clamor for dogmas about which the hu- man race will never agree, but in a sub- missive study of the revelation of Na- ture, and a courageous declaration of what thev find in its records. LITERARY NOTICES. Nature and Life. Facts and Doctrines relating to the Constitution of Matter, the New Dynamics, and the Philosophy of Nature. By Fernand Papillon. Translated from the second French edi- tion, by A. R. Macdonotjgh, Esq. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 363 pages. Price, $2.00. The readers of The Popular Science Monthly cannot fail to learn with pleasure that the complete essays of this gifted young author are now accessible in a single compact volume to the American public. Several of Papillon's masterly articles have appeared in our pages, and they awakened so deep an interest in the subjects consid- ered, and were read with so much admira- tion, that it was felt to be important that all his principal papers should be repro- duced in a separate issue. Of the charac- LITERARY NOTICES. 115 ter of these compositions it is hardly neces- sary to speak. They are not only written with great clearness, force, and eloquence, but they evince a subtile perception and a strong grasp of the higher problems of modern scientific thought. Beyond doubt the French lead the world in the arts of lucid and attractive scientific exposition ; and Papillon stands eminent among his countrymen in the display of this excellence. Although dealing with the most complex questions, and surveying the great phenom- ena of life on all sides, and especially in its dynamical aspects, yet there are a glow and a fascination in his pages which we do not hesitate to say are unsurpassed in mod- ern scientific literature. Nor has the work lost aught of these impressive character- istics in its English dress. Papillon has passed prematurely away, but Mr. Macdon- ough has done justice to his memory by this brilliant reproduction of the French- man's work, by which a distant and foreign people will be able to appreciate his genius. Papillon's view as a thinker, and the spirit of his scientific studies, are so admi- rably presented in his brief preface, that we quote it in full : '' This volume contains a series of essays written and published at difierent times, some of a general character, and others more special, and all relating to the activity of natural forces, especially those of life. The mere bringing together of these frag- ments has presented an opportunity of completing a methodical and uniform whole, combining exactness in details with gener- ality of doctrines, and distinctly tracing the precise aspect of each group of phenomena in the picture of the close and universal re- lations that bind the whole together. An exposition is thus offered under an element- ary form, in language freed from technical dress, of the most essential truths estab- lished of late by physics, chemistry, and biology, regarding the mechanism of natu- ral forces, and the arrangement and combi- nation of the fundamental springs of being in the world, especially in the living world. I indulge the hope that such a work might meet a kindly welcome from minds, ever increasingly numerous, that regard science as the subject neither of idle curiosity nor of passing entertainment, but as the object of earnest sympathy and of serious exami- nation. Such, at least, is the principal pur- pose of this book. " It has another, also. The evident dis- position of the present day is to repose in- finite hopes on the natural sciences, and to expect unlimited benefits from them. I certainly shall not view this inclination as an illusion, and this volume sufficiently at- tests the high value I set upon all that can encourage and foster such feelings. But precisely because I am not suspected of en- mity to those sciences, it has seemed to me the more necessary to indicate a fatal mis- take accompanying those commendable sen- timents ; I mean the mistake of those who, after loudly praising the excellence of sci- ence, denounce the weakness and deny the authority of metaphysics. " Now, my reader will come upon more than one page manifestly inspired by the conviction that science, properly so called, does not satiate the mind eager to know and to understand, and that therefore meta- physics holds a large and an authorized place in the activity of human thought. While I have retouched every thing in these essays which seemed to me, from an exclu- sively scientific point of view, susceptible of a higher degree of exactness and pre- cision, I have, on the contrary, preserved with jealous care the literal tenor of all the pages expressly written under the influence of that conviction. And I have done so, not because of any peculiar value in those reflections, many of which are nothing more than a very imperfect representation of my way of seeing, but because those re- flections were then made for the first time, with absolute spontaneousness, and without the slightest system or premeditation. The reader will thus be able to see how general ideas naturally emerge from deep and close contemplation of a group of various details, how forcible their unsought impression is ; in other words, hoAV surely thought, follow- ing orderly and regular evolution, without studied intention as without dogmatic aim, arrives at the loftiest philosophic certainties. " The thinker who tYeely seeks for truth, continuously changes his position in his aspirations toward mind and the ideal. He deserts the regions of phenomena and concrete things, to rise to those of the abso- lute and eternal. The farther he withdraws from the former, which had at first absorbed all his attention, the more strikingly does the perspective in which he viewed them alter. At last, he discerns nothing else in them but spectres without substance, and delusive phantoms. And in the degree and extent of his drawing near to the eternal and the absolute, reality comes more surely ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY witLin his ken, and he gains a more vivid feermg and a keener conception of it. He measures the distance he has traversed, and values the worth of his own contemplations by the fullness of lucid clearness -which en- lightens his faint view of the first princi- ples of things, and by the depth of humble reverence with which he bows before the mysterious Power which created all ! " CoNCABNEAir (Flsisterre), May, 1878." The Microscope and its Revelations. By William B. Carpenter, M. D., F. R. S. Fifth edition. 848 pp. Price $5.50. Philadelphia: Lindsay &Blakiston, 1875. This standard work on the microscope has been carefully revised by the author, so as to present the latest improvements in modern instruments. It also includes the new methods and principles of Dr. Roy- ston-Piggott, which have lately been the subject of so much discussion among micro- scopists ; it likewise gives the latest results of microscopical study. It is a volume of goodly size, containing 449 woodcut-illus- trations, and 25 plates illustrative of its wide range of subjects, and forming a standard and complete guide to the use of the micro- scope. The author's object throughout is to direct the possessor of a microscope in the intelligent study of any department of natural history for which he may have a taste, or his circumstances afford him the facilities of pursuit ; and, again, to meet the wants of those who, coming to the study of mi- nute animal and vegetable life with no sci- entific preparation, yet want something more than a mere sight of them. Of his use of scientific terms the author says : " Some . . . may think that he might have rendered his descriptions simpler by employing fewer scientific terms. But he would reply that he has had much opportu- nity of observing among the votaries of the microscope a desire for just such informa- tion as he has attempted to convey; and that the use of scientific terms cannot be easily dispensed with, since there are no others in which the facts can be readily ex- pressed. As he has made a point of e.xplain- ing these in the places where they are first introduced, he cannot think that any of his readers need find much difficulty in appre- hending their meaning." Dr. Carpenter recognizes the impossi- bility of keeping pace with the rapid exten- sion of knowledge over every part of the constantly- widening field of microscopic research, to say nothing of furnishing an exhaustive treatise on each of its many de- partments, in the limited compass of his book, the original purpose of which is to impart general guidance, rather than special instruction ; and, instead of attempting the impossibility of teaching his reader all there is to be learned, he is put in the way of learning it from that best of all teachers, experience. And so, in the appli- cations of the microscope, the proportion of space allotted to the dififerent depart- ments has been determined more from their special interest to the amateur micro- scopist than their physiological importance, and more space and treatment in detail are given to subjects having no special sources of information than to such as are the sub- jects of special treatises. The first five chapters, embracing 269 pages of the work, treat respectively of the principles of the microscope, its construc- tion, accessory apparatus, management of the microscope, preparation of objects, etc., while the rest of the work is devoted to the practical applications of the microscope in the study of minute forms of animal and vegetable life, and its uses in geology, min- eralogy, and chemistry. Health ; A Hand-book for Households and Schools. By Edward Smith, M. D., F. R. S., Author of " Foods," etc. 198 pages. Price ^1.00. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Under the general title of " The Popu- lar Science Library," it is proposed to issue a series of neat and attractive volumes at the modei-ate and uniform price of a dollar each, that shall treat of the most important and interesting scientific subjects in a way suited for general readers. The books will be original, translations, reprints, and abridg- ments, with illustrations when necessary, and will take a free range in the selection of subjects, giving prominence to those that are pi-actical, but aiming to represent all the aspects of science which are of general or of prominent interest. Dr. Smith's vol- ume on " Health" was issued first, and is a plain, practical, useful book, which aims only to give valuable information for every- body, in a form which anybody can under- LITERARY NOTICES. 117 stand. Dr. Smith never paid much atten- tion to the elegances of literature, and cared only to make his statements clear, intelli- gible, and adapted to the wants of his read- ers, and, while the pages of this little volume will be found to contain no fine writing, they are filled with compressed and simplified statements of extreme importance in rela- tion to Food, Diet, Clothing, Exercise, Rest and Sleep, Cleanliness and Bathing, Venti- lation, Mental Work, the Hygiene of the Senses, Personal Habits and Conduct, Sick- room Management, etc., etc. The volume is freely illustrated, and we know of no hand-book of health that contains within its compass more of the knowledge that should be universally difl'used than this. It would be an excellent primary text-book of health for adoption in schools. The Natural History of Man. By A. De Quatrefages. Translated from the French by Eliza A. Yocmans. r2mo. Pp. 152. With Numerous Illustrations. New York : D, Appleton & Co. popular science library, no. II. This volume contains the substance of a course of lectures delivered to working- men by A. De Quatrefages, a distinguished Professor of Natural History at the Museum, in Paris, and one of the eminent founders of anthropological science. These lectures have been extensively circulated on the Continent, in different languages ; and the translations of several of them, printed in this magazine, were received with such favor as to induce their republication in a connected form. Prof. De Quatrefages is an acute and discriminating observer, and an ardent cultivator of science, but with strong conservative tendencies of thought. At the outset he announces that he shall treat the subject not as a philosopher or a theologian, but in the pure light of natural science. Contrary to Agassiz, he takes the ground that all men form but a single species, though of different races. He holds that the origin of man must be re- ferred to a date much more remote than has usually been allowed, and that his origi- nal locality was confined to a narrow spot in Central Asia. As to the origin of man, Prof. De Quatrefages believes that science is unable to furnish any clew to the mys- tery, although he insists that, if science cannot say whence man came, it can say positively whence he did not come, and as a teacher of science he opposes the idea that man is a transformed and perfected animal. That the book may fairly repre- sent the present state of opinion upon this subject the arguments on the other side of this question are briefly given in an appen- dix. As an elementary work upon this sub- ject, these lectures will be found remarkable for clearness and simplicity of statement, felicity of illustration, vivacity of style, and skill in bringing large questions within the range of ordinary apprehension. It is the most admirable popular introduction to the races of mankind that has yet appeared. Heredity : A Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes, and Conse- quences. From the French of Th. Ri- BOT, author of " Contemporary English Psychology." New York : D. Apple- ton & Co. Pp. 393. Price, $2.00. We cannot be too often reminded that it is the essential character of science to win- now, limit, verify, and extend the ordinary knowledge of mankind. The germs of sci- ence are given in common experience, and undergo gradual development, until they take the shape of proved and formulated principles. The subject of the volume be- fore us forms an excellent illustration of this tendency. Heredity, or the transmis- sion of qualities from parents to offspring, has been vaguely recognized as a verity of Nature for thousands of years ; but it was at the same time considered so obscure and capricious a thing, that it could never be reduced to law, or become the proper sub- ject-matter of science. But all that is now past. The principles of physiological her- edity have been elucidated, and are now so clear and well established that they are brought to the test of every-day practice ; and the law is so sure, that the skillful breeder is able to mould his stock in any direction, and to realize almost any ideal of desirable physiological characters. In the world of mind, also, there has long been an uncertain recognition of the fact of heredity, and the descent of special mental traits in families is within nearly everybody's observation. But it was cur- rently believed that such observations were ii8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. rare exceptions, and that nothing like a gen- eral law of the descent of mental traits could be established in the field of mind. But this error must now be regarded as abandoned. With the establishment of heredity as a biological law, or in the field of life, the presumj^tion immediately be- came strong that it must also hold in tlie field of psychological phenomena. From the metaphysical point of view in which mind is regarded as an abstraction de- tached from organization, the law of heredity would probably never have been arrived at ; but modern scientific psychology, which re- gards psychical phenomena as rooted and based in vital phenomena, passes natural- ly to the question as one of the necessary correlations of the higher organic science. And so it has come about that this princi- ple of inherited mental predispositions and character, from being universally discredit- ed as a baseless doctrine, is now admitted as a great truth, and not only so, but as a truth which forms the corner-stone of the latest philosophy. Among the students of mind, there is an old and inveterate quarrel about the origin of our ideas — one school holding that they are intuitions existing in an abstract mental world, and independent of all experience ; and another school hold- ing that all ideas are derivable from the ex- perience of individuals. Herbert Spencer has shown that there is a partial truth in both these views, and that they are capable of essential reconciliation through the prin- ciple of the evolution of faculties by in- herited experience. So prominent has this doctrine become in recent inquiry, and so profound is its im- portance, that there has been an impera- tive need of some work that should deal distinctly and broadly with the subject, and present its scientific aspects in a form suit- able for popular study. Such a work we now have from Prof Ribot. Mr. Galton's work on " Hereditary Genius " is a valuable contribution to the subject, but it is very far from being complete in its exposition, and its main facts are presented in a form somewhat difficult for the reader to deal with. Prof. Ribot's work is systematic and full, taking up the subject under the four successive departments of the facts, the laws, the causes, and the consequences of hereditv. The following passage, from the conclu- sion of the work, will give an idea of the author's style, and of the method of his argument. In summing up all /ac/s in favor of psychological heredity, he says : "As regards specific characteristics " (i. e., those ■which distinguish one species from another), " heredity comes before us with the evidence of an axiom. In the physical, as in the moral order, every animal necessarily inherits the characteristics of its species. An animal which should possess, with the organ- ism of its own species, the instincts of an- other, would be a monster in the psychologi- cal order. The spider can neither liave the sensations nor perform the actions of the bee, nor the beaver those of the wolf. Just so in one and the same species, whether ani- mal or human, the races preserve their psy- chical precisely as they do their physiologi- cal characteristics. . . . Under the specific form, then, mental heredity is unquestion- able, and the only doubt possible would have reference to individual characteristics. We have shown, from an enormous mass of facts, that the cases of individual heredity are too numerous to be the result of mere chance, as some have held them to be. We have shown that all forms of mental activity are transmissible — instincts, perceptive fac- ulties, imagination, aptitude for the fine arts, reason, aptitude for science and abstract studies, sentiments, passions, force of char- acter. Nor are the morbid forms less trans- missible than the normal, as we have seen in the case of insanity, hallucination, and idiocy." The book consists of four parts, as we have remarked, under the headings indi- cated in the sub-title. In Part I. we have chapters on the Heredity of Instincts ; of Sensorial Qualities ; of Memory ; of Imagi- nation ; of Intellect ; of Sentiments and Pas- sions ; of Will ; of Natural Character ; of Morbid States. In Part II. the author de- votes four chapters to a discussion of the Laws of Heredity, the titles being: "Are there Laws of Heredity ? " the " Laws of Heredity ; " " Essays in Statistics " (con- taining a criticism of Galton's great work); " Exceptions to the Law of Heredity." Part III. shows the dependence of psycho- logical upon physiological heredity. In Part IV. we have chapters on " Heredity and the Law of Evolution ; " " The Psycho- logical Consequences of Heredity ; " " Moral Consequences;" "Social Consequences." LITERARY NOTICES. 119 Annual Report upon the Surveys and Ex- plorations WEST OF THE ONE HUNDREDTH Meridian. By Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. Witli a Map showing the Areas surveyed up to the Close of the Field Season of 1873. This is a pamphlet of 130 pages, issued from the Government Printing-Office, being Appendix F F of the Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1874. It contains the report of Lieutenant Wheeler, in charge of the expedition, together with the reports of scientific researches made in connection with the survey. In addition to topographi- cal work proper, the survey combines the establishment of numerous points astro- nomically ; observations in meteorology and hypsometry ; investigations in geology, min- eralogy, and natural history ; together with the collection of many other facts bearing upon the industries and resources of the regions traversed. Notes on the Natural History of Por- tions OF Montana and Dakota. This is a pamphlet of 61 pages, emanat- ing from the Boston Society of Natural His- tory, and is the substance of a report made to the Secretary of War on the collections made by the Northern Pacific Railroad Ex- pedition of 1873, by J. A. Allen, naturalist of the expedition. It comprises a descrip- tion of the mammals, birds, reptiles, plants, and butterflies, met with in their route from the Missouri River to the Yellowstone, be- tween the 46th and 47th parallels, and the 100th and 109th meridians. Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Building Fund of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phil- adelphia to the Contributors to the Fund. January, 1875. This Report gives the list of subscrib- ers from December, 1865, to December, 1874, as 461, of whom 39 are ladies. The total subscription is given at $203,965.24. This building fund is the result of a call made in 1865 for means to provide a new build- ing, as their former limited space was be- coming inconveniently crowded by new col- lections. The new building was begun July 9, 1872, on the north wing, which is expected to be ready to receive its collections in time for the Centennial, if the now nearly-ex- hausted treasury be sufficiently replenished for that purpose, an appeal for which is made in this Report. On the Murid^. By Dr. Elliot Coues, U. S. A. Reissued with Additions from the Proceedings of the Academy of Nat- ural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1874. The present pamphlet of 28 pages is the first of a series of preliminary zoological reports to be elaborated from the material secured by the United States Commission for the survey of the northern boundary, and of which Dr. Coues was the naturalist. The ground covered is the northern border of the Territories of Dakota and Montana, along the parallel of 49°, from the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains. English Grajlmar. By the Rev. Richard Morris, LL.D. 115 pp. 18mo. Price, cloth, 40 cents ; paper, 80 cents. Mac- millan & Co., 1875. This little book is the first of a forth- coming series of " Primers of History and Literature," edited by J. R. Green, M. A., Examiner in the School of Modern History at Oxford. It presents in a handy and con- cise form the practical principles of English grammar, together with much information seldom found in grammars of greater pre- tensions. Preliminary Report upon Invertebrate Fossils collected by the Expeditions OF 1871, 1872, AND 1873^ with Descrip- tions of New Species. By C. A. White, M.D. Government Printing-Office, Wash- ington, 1874. 27 pages. This preliminary report upon inverte- brate fossils collected by Lieutenant Wheel- er's expedition is made in order that the expedition may obtain due credit for prior- ity of discovery, as nearly all the species noted are new. The pamphlet contains a full description, together with location, of some forty new invertebrate fossils. Migrants and Sailors considered in their Relation to the Public Health. From Reports and Papers of the American Public Health Association. This pamphlet, of 21 pages, comprises two papers : A. " Some Defects in the Im- migration Service ; Suggestions of Remedy therefor, with Reference to the Sanitary In- 120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. teiests of the Country. By John M. Wood- worth, M. D., Supervising Surgeon United States Marine Hospital Service." B. " Sail- ors as Propagators of Disease ; " Abstract of a paper entitled " The Hygiene of the Forecastle." By Heber Smith, M. D., Sur- geon-in-charge United States Marine Hos- pital Service, Port of New York. The latter author gives diagrams of some representa- tive forecastles, the sight of which is enough to condemn them. He shows how many of the gravest diseases are introduced and dis- seminated through communities to a greater extent by sailors than by any other agencies. PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED. An Analysis of the Life-form in Art. By Harrison Allen, M. D. Pp. '71. Phila- delphia : McCalla & Stavely. The Next Phase of Civil Progress. Pp. 43. New York : Button & Co. The Glacial Epoch of our Globe. By Alexander Braun. Pp. 40. Price, 25 cents. Boston : Estes & Lauriat. Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. Pp. 190. Price, $1.25. New York : Putnams' Sons. Comparison of Certain Theories of So- lar Structure with Observation. By S. P. Langley. Pp. 9. Water in the Treatment of Disease. By V. Zohiowski, M. D. Pp. 39. Vital Statistics and the " Military Re- construction" of Louisiana, By S. E. Chaille, M. D. Pp. 20. Flora of Nebraska. By S. Aughey, Ph. D. Pp. 31. Our Currency. By J. G. Drew. Pp. 43. Price, 20 cents. New York : Hinton & Co. Irredeemable Paper Currency. Abridged from J. S. Mill's " Principles of Political Economy." Pp. 51. Price, 20 cents. New York : Hinton & Co. The Cremation Theory of Specie Re- sumption. By David A. Wells. Pp. 19. Measurement of Air-Angle of Micro- scope-Objectives. By R. B. FoUes. Pp. 8. Elements of Embryology (Foster & Bal- four), Macmillan. Elements of Mechanics (Nystrom), Por- ter & Coates, Philadelphia. Birds of the Northwest (Coues), Gov- ernment Printing-Office. Improvement of Health (Knight), Put- nams. Lectures on the Teeth (Chase), Gray, Baker & Co., St. Louis. Catechism of the Locomotive (Forney), Railroad Gazette, New York. Maintenance of Health (Fothergill), Put- nams. New Manual of Physiology (Kiiss, Du- val, and Amory), Campbell, Boston. Philosophy of Breeding (Sturtevant), Wright & Potter, Boston. Composition of the Ground-Atmosphere (Nichols), Wright & Potter, Boston. Brooklyn Journal of Education. Population of an Apple-Tree (Packard), Estes & Lauriat. Geological Survey of Alabama (1874). Physical Features of Minnesota River Yalley (Warren). The Mammoth Cave and Some of its Animals (Putnams). The Family Nemophidse (Putnams). Stevens Institute of Technology (18*74). MISCELLANY. The Fog-Signal Question. — The elabo- rate articles on " The Atmosphere in Rela- tion to Fog-Signaling," by Prof. Tyndall, which appeared in our March and April numbers, embodied the interesting results of a new and important research, and have attracted much attention, both on the part of our men of science and of many unsci- entific readers. There has been some dis- sent from his views, but Prof. Tyndall is quite easy about that. In a recent private letter he says : " A copy of the report of the United States Light-house Board, for 1874, has just reached me. I read certain por- tions of it with regret, but the questions it raises may be safely left to the judgment of the scientific men of the United States." MISCELLANY. 121 A New Order of Mammals. — At a recent meeting of the Connecticut Academy, Prof. 0. C. Marsh called attention to the very pe- culiar character of the extinct animal type, I'lllofherium,. So remarkable, indeed, are these characters that Prof. Marsh considers them suflBclent to constitute a new order, for which he proposes the name Tillodontia. In Tillotherium, the type of the proposed new order, the skull has the same general form as in the bears, but in its structure it resembles that of the ungulates. The molar teeth are of the ungulate type, and in each jaw there is a pair of large scalpriform in- cisors, as in rodents. The articulation of the lower jaw with the skull corresponds to that in ungulates. The skeleton mostly resembles that of carnivores, especially the UrsidcB, but the scaphoid and lunar bones are not united, and there is a third tro- chanter on the femur. The feet are planti- grade, like those of the bears. Thus these singular animals combine the characters of three distinct groups — carnivores, ungu- lates, and rodents. The order comprises two distinct families — Tillotheridce, in which the large incisors grew from persistent pulps, while the molars have roots ; and Sti/linodontldce, in which all the teeth are rootless. Animal Intelligence. — The following re- markable examples of animal intelligence are sent us by correspondents who vouch for their truth : A lady living in this city relates that the house occupied by herself and family became so infested with rats that, in the failure of all other means, they were obliged to resort to poison to exter- minate them. Phosphorus-paste was used, spread thickly over meat, which was then placed where the rats could readily get at it. Pursuing this plan for a long time, they were surprised to find that, while the meat regularly disappeared, the rats re- mained, their numbers apparently increas- ing instead of diminishing. One day a man in charge of an adjoining stable asked who was trying to poison rats, and, being told, replied, " the rats are too smart for you." He led the lady to the alley along- side the house, where there was a hydrant, the nozzle of which being broken off, left the water constantly running. Under the hydrant they saw several pieces of meat, some partially covered with, and others en- tirely destitute of, any traces of the phos- phorus-paste. After watching sometime, the lady actually saw the rats not only eat the washed meat, but carry the coated pieces carefully in their mouths from her back-door around into the alley, and deposit them under the running stream of the hy- drant. Our correspondent says that the rats may not have known the character of the coating on the meat, but that their course argues a knowledge of the properties of water, and a power of adapting means to ends, akin to reason. An esteemed friend writes us of a dog, that had been savagely set upon by a neigh- bor's dog, rousing up with a growl when the circumstance was spoken of in his presence. This was noticed, and, on repeat- ing the circumstances, when the neighbor's name and that of his dog were mentioned, the growling was repeated. No effort was made to attract the dog's attention, and it was easy to excite the animal at any time by mentioning these names in his hearing. A lady in Troy has a terrier, whose abil- ity to understand what is said to him seems remarkable. The lady sent him one day to drive some chickens out of the yard, but doing it roughly the lady said, " See, some of the chickens are little, you must be care- ful not to hurt them." The dog immedi- ately flew at the large ones, but drove the little ones with great care, and always after- ward observed the same caution. This ter- rier attended church regularly with his mis- tress, but one Sunday another dog attracted his attention in church, and he ran out, afterward returning to the pew. After get- ting home the lady said, " Whiskey was naughty to-day ; he mustn't go to church any more." The dog hung his head and went to his bed. He made no attempt to go to church that afternoon nor ever again, though ready to go anywhere else. The Deep-Sea Bottom. — Prof. W. B. Carpenter, in a paper recently published in Nature^ dissents from the conclusions of Prof Wyville Thomson, that the organ- isms Glohigerince, whose shells compose the ooze of the deep-sea bottom, live and mul- tiply in the uj^er waters only. He has 122 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. found the water takca from 750 fathoms depth, and just above the ooze upon the bottom, turbid from the presence of muUi- tudes of young Globigerince. The evidence is satisfactory to him that they live and propagate on the sea-bottom, as well as near the surface — that the young rise to the surface in the earlier stages of their exist- ence, and become inhabitants of the upper waters, and in their adult stage sink to the bottom in consequence of the increasing thickness of their shells. The cause of their sinking, therefore, is not death of the creatures, but weight of their shells. The thickening consists in a deposit of calcareous matter upon the out- side of the proper wall after the creatures' full growth, which not only increases the weight, but alters the contour of the shell. Prof. Carpenter cites the fact, noticed by himself, that, in cold areas of the sea- bed north of Scotland, no GlohigerincB were found, while the warm areas adjoining are covered with this peculiar ooze to an un- known depth. Why is this, he asks, if the surface only is their habitat, where the tem- perature of the cold and warm areas is the same ? Priestleyana. — The recent celebrations at Northumberland and Birmingham of the centenary of the discovery of oxygen by Dr. Priestley brought out many curious in- cidents in his career, and numberless anec- dotes; we select the following as character- istic : While he was minister at Leeds, a poor woman, who labored under the delusion that she was possessed by a devil, apphed to, him to take away the evil spirit which tormented her. The doctor attentively lis- tened to her statement, and endeavored to convince her that she was mistaken. All his efforts proving unavailing, he desired her to call the next day, and, in the mean time, he would consider her case. On the morrow the unhappy woman was punctual in her attendance. His electrical appa- ratus being in readiness, with great gravity he desired the woman to stand upon the stool with glass legs, at the same time put- ting into her hand a brass chain connected with the conductor, and, having charged her plentifully with electricity, he told her very seriously to take particular notice of what he did. He then took up a discharger and applied it to her arm, when the escape of the electricity gave her a pretty strong shock. " There," said she, " the devil's gone; I saw him go otf in that blue flame, and he gave me such a jerk as he went off! I have at last got rid of l)im, and I am now quite comfortable." The destruction of Dr. Priestley's house and laboratory, by the riotous mob, at Bir- mingham in 1791, proved most disastrous, and the maddened crowd met with little op- position. " There was a small attempt by a few people to drive off the rabble, but they were compelled to show their heels by a shower of brickbats." The following amus- ing doggerel poem, which was published at the time, refers to this incident : " The famous Dr. Priestley Though he preached to admiration, Yet he never could persuade The unruly cavalcade Not to show their detestation. " They burned down both the meetings, His manuscri[ ts and papers, And they swore it in their wrath That they would not leave him worth A single farthing-taper. — " His house and all the utensils, Out-ofBces and stable ; Nor durst the doctor stay. But prudently got away, And rejoiced that he was able." The following epitaph, having reference to Dr. Priestley's peculiar religious views, was composed, before his death, by Rev. David Davis, one of the wits of the time. Dr. Priestley is said to have laughed heart- ily over it. " Here lie at rest In oaken chest Together packed most nicely, The bones and brains, Flesh, blood, and veins, And soul, of Dr. Priestley." — Prof. H. C. Bolton, in American Chemist. Effects of Compressed Airt — From Bert's researches it appears that meat does not oxidize and putrefy in compressed air — merely undergoing a change of color, con- sistency, and taste. But, on the other hand, muscular and nervous excitability disappear very rapidly in compressed air. MISCELLANY. 123 Thus the conditions of the two phenome- na are different. Again, certain fermenta- tions may be arrested by oxygen at high pressure ; the mycoderma of vinegar is de- stroyed or killed by the action of com- pressed air. Wine may be preserved from acetous fermentation by submitting it to compressed air. It is necessary, then, to distinguish in fermentation various phenom- ena belonging to chemical actions, and those belonging to the action of ferments, properly so called. M. Bert adds that com- pressed air stops the putrefaction of meat even where the latter has been impregnated with putrid germs. Viaicalturc ia California. — This was the subject of a paper recently read before the California Academy of Sciences by Dr. James Blake. The author analyzed the juice of four different varieties of grapes, grown in the vineyard of the California Vinicultural Society at Sonoma, viz., the Zinfindel, the Reimer, the Riessling, and the Mission grape. The last-named grape was introduced into California by the Francis- can missionaries, during the Spanish domi- nation ; the others are recent importations. The method of analysis was to ascertain the specific gravity of the juice, which was then heated, to coagulate the albuminous matters, and filtered through a Bunsen filter. Then the juice was brought up to the original quantity, and neutralized with a standard solution of potash or ammonia, so as to ascertain the amount of free acid. Another portion was evaporated to about one-third, mixed with alcohol and ether to precipitate the tartrates, and the ether and alcohol distilled off from the filtered juice, which was then neutralized to ascertain the amount of malic acid. The amount of su- gar, as indicated by the specific gravity, was controlled by direct analysis of a por- tion of the juice, cleared by acetate of lead, by means of Fehling's copper-test. The re- sult was as follows : GEAPE8. Sp. Gr. Sugar. Free Acid. Malic Acid. Zinflndel Riessling Reimer Mission grape. . . 1072 1088 1057 10S8 16.6 13.7 14.0 21.5 1.73 1.10 1.30 0.60 0.60 0.57 0.80 0.11 The small proportion of malic acid in the Mission grape explains the absence of aroma in the wine. The author attributes the failure to make first-class wine in Cali- fornia to two causes, viz. : 1. Bad quality of the grapes ; 2. Injudicious choice of soil for vineyards. " Tlie Successor of Steam." — An article under the above title, by Dr. H. Beins, of Groningen, has appeared in the Chemical News. The successor of steam is liquid carbonic acid. The author says: "For many years I have, with the collaboration of my brother, who is director of the Neth- erlands Soda Manufactory at Amsterdam, considered the question, ' How to transpose heat into mechanical power more advanta- geously than it is done in our common steam and other engines ? ' It occurred to me to make an experiment to see what de- gree the tension of the carbonic acid given off by natrium bicarbonate would amount to when heated in a closed space. We were surprised and much gratified to find that when natrium bicarbonate in a dry, pulverized state, or in a watery solution, is heated in a closed space, a part of the car- bonic acid is given off and condensed in a not-heated portion of that space, so that, at a temperature of 300° or 400° C, liquid carbonic acid can be distilled out of this salt with a tension of from 50 to 60 atmos- pheres." He then points out certain highly-im- portant aspects of this fact : I. Carbonic acid of high tension, and, in particular, liquid carbonic acid, is an excellent motive- power for small and great industries. The weight of a carbonic-acid engine for ships, with 100 horse - power, and combustible stores for 240 hours, would be one-fifth less than the weight of a steam-engine of the same power. The former engine, too, will occupy less space. " I have experimentally found," he writes, "that a carbonic-acid engine is easily constructed. Taps and joints can be made to answer perfectly. A year ago I filled a tube of hammered cop- per with carbonic acid of 50 atmospheres, and not the least loss is as yet observed. Wrought metals are therefore not perme- able for gases of that tension. For the great industries the carbonic - acid engine can, in almost every case, substitute the steam- engine. For the small industries, especially 124 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. for engines working with intermissions and during brief spaces of time, the property of liquid carbonic acid, of being always ready for work, is of much importance. By this same property, and since the mechani- cal equivalent of electricity is very small, such au engine is a very fit and cheap source of electrical light. My method of compression furnishes easily the required tension for the conveyance of letters in tubes, and the modern break-apparatus for railways." Further, the author suggests that his discovery might be turned to ac- count in artillery, and in the construction of submarine vessels. New Eocene Mammals. — Prof. Marsh is now contributing to the American Jour- nal of Science a series of notices on new and hitherto undescribed mammals found in the Tertiary strata of the West. In the March number of the Journal he describes some new forms of quadrumana, a species of his new order Tillodontia, three species of rhinoceros, a new species of Brontothe- rium, and various other extinct animal forms. Among the quadrumana here de- scribed, we have a new genus, Lemuravus, closely resembling the lemurs in skeleton and in the general structure of the skull. The species L. distans was about the size of the largest squirrels. During the late raid into the "Bad Lands" of Nebraska, Prof. Marsh found the lower jaw of a mon- key, which indicated an animal about the size of a coati ; it is the first specimen of the order Primates found in that region, and forms a new genus and species — Zao- vithecus robudus. The order TiUodonlia is represented by the new species Tillotherium fodiens. The animals of this order are among the most remarkable yet discovered in American strata. They seem to combine characters of several distinct groups, viz,, carnivoi'es, ungulates, and rodents. The Tillotherium fodiens would appear to have been about two-thirds as large as a tapir. The rhinoceroses described are Dicerathe- rium armai^im, D. nanicm, and D. advenum. These animals had a pair of horns placed transversely, as in modern ruminants,- as is clearly indicated by large, bony protuber- ances on the anterior portion of the nasal bones. The D. aTmuitum, would appear to have been about two-thirds as large as the Indian rhinoceros ; the D. nanum was scarcely more than half the bulk of the preceding ; while the D. advenum was half the bulk of the Indian rhinoceros. The new genus of Brontolkeridce is denominated An- isacodon, and it is represented by the new species A. montanus. According to the author, this family consists of four well- marked genera, viz., titanotherium, megace- rops, brontotherium, and anisacodon. The name Diplacodon elatus is given to a new genus and species intermediate between Limnohyus and Brontotherium. Two new equine species from the Miocene are de- scribed, and three new species allied to the collared peccary. Prematnre Criticism. — Mr. Proctor, in the English Mechanic, calls attention to a very curious piece of literary criticism occurring, of all places in the world, in the Atlantic Monthly. The critic is very severe in his sentence upon " The Sun," " The Orbs around Us," and other works by Mr. Proc- tor, but the value of his judgment is im- paired by the evidence Mr. Proctor fur- nishes to show that it is not based on a knowledge of what is contained in the books. Among the works thus adversely criticised is " Other Suns than Ours." Of this Mr. Proctor says : " It may be as bad as he says ; it may be ' trash,' and it may ' confirm the evil prognostic of its title,' but he might have waited till it was pub- lished. Three years ago, when it was half written, it was announced for early publica- tion. Unfortunately for my critic (but fortunately for me), he has been led to sup- pose that the work accordingly appeared, and might safely be abused. But a great pressure of work prevented me from com- pleting some stellar observations necessary for its illustration, and the MS. still lies unfinished in my desk. What a savage lit- erary Herod a man must be who would thus slaughter the book unborn ! " Fossils in Trap-Rock. — The occurrence of fossils in trap-rock, though not uncom- mon, still awaits a satisfactory explanation. Mr. E. A. Wiinsch, writing in a late number of Nature, mentions several instances of the presence of both plant and animal remains MISCELLANY. 125 in such rocks, and then has the following as to how they came there : " There is every probability that originally the enveloping matrix must have reached the fossils in the shape of volcanic ash, or, more likely still, in the shape of a thick fluid sediment envelop- ing the trunks of the trees as they stood erect, with their broken branches, leaves, and fruit scattered around them. We have nu- merous instances of ash-beds overlying lime- stone-beds containing corals, and I suspect Mr. Honeyman's ' trap rock in a fiuid state ' would resolve itself into a rock of the na- ture above indicated ; at all events, it would be very interesting to geologists on this side to receive specimens for closer examination. With regard to the possibility of fossils being inclosed and preserved in fluid lava, I may mention that when at Catania, in 186Y, I was informed by Prof Sylvestri that oak- trees on Mount Etna, when overtaken by lava-streams, are not actually annihilated, but the lava forms a sort of hollow cylin- der around the trees, in which they are car- bonized, and the silex contained in the wood collects in a fused mass at the bottom of the trunk. Such fused masses I met with at the foot of some of the stems of trees excavated by me at Arran, and numerous pebbles, evidently derived from the same source, are to be picked up on the shore between the Fallen Rocks and the Scriden at the north end of Arran." Carioas Method of captaring Mnsk-rats. — The American Sportsman describes the ingenious method followed by trappers in catching musk-rats : These animals often travel great distances under ice. In their winter excursions to their feeding-grounds they take in breath at starting, and remain under water as long as they can. They then rise to the ice and exhale the air in their lungs ; this remains in bubbles against the under surface of the ice. They wait till this air recovers oxygen from the water and ice, and then, reinhaling it, go on till the operation has to be repeated. In this way they can travel almost any distance, and live any length of time, under the ice. The trap- per takes advantage of this habit. When the marshes and ponds where musk-rats abound are frozen over, and the ice is com- paratively thin and clear, they can be seen swimming about beneath. Following one for some distance, the trapper sees it come up to renew its breath in the manner de- scribed. After the animal has exhaled, and before it has time to take in the reoxygen- ized air in the bubbles again, he strikes with his hatchet directly over it, scattering the bubbles, and driving the musk-rat away. In this case the rat drowns in swimming a few rods, and the trapper, cutting a hole in the ice, takes it out. Mink, otter, and bea- ver, travel under the ice in the same way, and hunters, it is, stated, frequently take otters in the same manner. Edacation of Telegraph-Operators. — In Holland the applicant for apprenticeship in a telegraph-office is required to present a thesis in Dutch; to be acquainted with French, English, and German; to know the first principles of arithmetic, common and decimal fractions, and the metrical system of weights and measures ; to have mastered the rudiments of algebra and geometry, and in geography to be familiar with the situa- tion of the various countries and principal towns. When an apprentice applies for the position of a telegraphist of the third class, he is required to pass an examination in mag- netism, electro-magnetism, etc. — in short, to prove his familiarity with every detail of telegraph administration. Remarking on this, the Journal of the Telegraph says that in this country the person who enters the telegraphic service "must certainly know his telegraphic letters and make them cor- rectly ; must write a clear hand ; must have a knowledge of circuits and office connec- tions ; and must be informed respecting the company's rules. Yet these simple require- ments are objected to. 'I fear,' says the manager of a large ofl5ce, ' if this were re- quired here, I should be left almost alone.' We ask, ' Can this ignorance of the com- monest knowledge of a great business be true ? ' We fear it is." How Water is injnred by Organic Mat- ter.— In a recent work entitled " Scientific Conversations," by M. Porville, of Paris, the reason why organic matter becomes a dangerous constituent of water is thus set forth : " How does organic matter become dangerous? We must not beheve that it 126 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. constitutes, as is superficially said, a toxic element. The phenomenon is more com- plex. The organic matter in suspension or in solution creates in the water a peculiar medium, suitable for the development of exceedingly small beings of the genus Vibrio. It is no longer mere water — it is a world of microscopic animals and plants which are born, live, and increase with bewildering rapidity. The infusoria find in the water cal- careous, magnesian, and ammoniacal salts, and their maintenance is thus secure. Drink a drop of this liquid, and you swallow mill- ions of minute beings. But there are vib- rios and vibrios. There are those which are capable of setting up putrefaction in our tissues. These are our enemies, often our mortal enemies. Let water be placed in contact with organic remains capable of nourishing these malignant vibrios, and it at once becomes more dangerous than any poison." A Motherly Fish. — There is found, in the clear, pebbly streams which descend to the plains from the mountain-ranges of Trini- dad, a small fish of the perch tribe, which in its great care for its young presents a singular contrast to all other known fishes. A writer in Nature states that on one occa- sion, as he approached the water for the purpose of takiug his morning bath, his at- tention was attracted by the eccentric move- ments of one of these little fishes. In gen- eral they are very shy, scudding off into deep water on the approach of man ; now, however, when a hand was put into the water, the fish darted forward again and again, striking the hand with considerable force. The explanation of this conduct was soon found : in a small hollow near by, about the size of half an egg, artistically excavated in the bright quartz-sand, a multi- tude of tiny fish were seen huddled together. They had apparently been very recently hatched, and were no larger than common house-flies ; the parent-fish kept jealous watch over her progeny, resenting every at- tempt to touch them. Returning to the same spot on the following day, the writer of this narrative searched there in vain for the fish and her young. At length, how- ever, a few yards farther up stream the par- ent was discovered guarding her fry with zealous care in a cavity similarly scooped out in the coarse sand ; any attempt to in- troduce one's finger into the nest was vigor- ously opposed by the watchful mother. Arsenical Colors. — A Swedish chemist, Dr. Hamberg, has made some important re- searches on the arsenical coloring-matters of wall-paper. The paper of the room in which the experiments were conducted had a light-green ground, with an ornamental pattern of brownish-yellow color ; this yel- low was probably derived from an ochre, but the green resembled Schweinfurt green, and was strongly arsenical. An arrange- ment was made for drawing a current of air through a series of U-shaped and bulbed tubes, suspended on the wall. The pas- sage of air was continued from July 16th to August 16th, and it was calculated that during this time about 2,160,000 cubic centimetres of air had traversed the sys- tem of tubes. Some of the tubes had been plugged with cotton-wool, while others con- tained a solution of nitrate of silver, and at the termination of the experiment the contents of the tubes were separately ex- amined. The results showed that there had been an arsenical exhalation. The fam- ily living in the house had never suffered any marked injury from breathing this I poisoned air ; but Dr. Hamberg, after sleep- ing in a room by the side of the apartment in which his experiments were made, and with the door open, frequently experienced, on the following morning, a sense of heavi- ness in the head, and a general feeling of weariness. Distribution of Water in Aquaria. — In constructing aquaria it is important to bear in mind the fact that, for aquatic animals which breathe without lungs, the value of water does not depend so much on its amount, as upon its distribution in such a manner that it may be sufiiciently oxygen- ated by contact with the atmosphere. Mr. W. A. Lloyd, who calls attention to this matter in the Zoologist., says that when the amount of surface of water exposed to air, as well as the actual quantity of water, is regulated according to the known require- ments of the animals to be kept, the well- being of the creatures is promoted, and the NOTES. 127 cost of constructing and maintaining aqua- ria considerably diminished. This princi- ple is applied in the transportation of living aquarium animals to considerable distances. Take, for example, a fish paciied in damp, freshly-gathered sea-weed. Its gills are kept wet by such very thin films of water that their tliiniiess, otherwise shallowness, enables them to be constantly oxygenated by contact with the atmospheric air. Thus the gill-filaments are kept wet and separate from one another, and the blood flows un- interruptedly through them, being aerated as it does so. The Origin of the Potato. — Mr. Mee- han, of Philadelphia, has for eight years cultivated Solanum Fendleri, a solanaceous plant which has much in common with the potato {Solanum tuberosum). His object was to ascertain whether the former could be transformed into the latter by cultiva- tion, and so to settle the vexed question of the origin of our common esculent tuber. It was not till last year that the plant be- gan to vary in the direction of the potato. Previously, the tubers were round, about the size of a large bullet, and rugose from the imperfect tube-cells on the surface. Last season, however, the roots began to resemble those of the potato. They were oval and compressed, and one was an inch wide and two inches long, with a clear, semi-transluscent skin, as in the more deli- cate potatoes. Mr. Meehan, however, does not expect to develop potatoes from his wild solanum ; according to him the facts so far obtained do no more than suggest the possibility of the unity of origin of the Solanum Fendleri and the S. tuberosum. Caltiration of Jnte in the Sonth.— The cultivation of jute in the southern portion of the United States seems destined to be- come, at no distant day, a highly-profitable industry. Notwithstanding the many difii- culties and drawbacks of the past season — deluging rains, overflows of rivers, and droughts — it was expected that the harvest in Louisiana would be satisfactory. In a letter to the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Emile Lefranc, of New Orleans, Presi- dent of the Southern Ramie Association, describes some of the fields as splendid, growing eight feet high, and as thick as wheat. The forthcoming report of the De- partment will contain a description, with illustrative drawings, of Lefranc's jute- clcaning machine. This machine will pro- duce over a ton of clean fibre per day, with four attendants only. It cleans jute, ramie, and okra radically, and without waste, and it is believed that hemp and flax may also be treated with it with equally satisfactory results. NOTES. S. AuGUSTO GuATTARi, of Castcllamare, Italy, has devised an improvement in pneu- matic telegraphs, consisting of an instrument which will serve either as a transmitter or receiver. By means of two such instru- ments, placed at different stations and con- nected by a single air-conducting tube, mes- sages may be transmitted in either direction. There is but one dial, which serves to indi- cate both the signals sent and received, so that the same instrument is made to answer both purposes, thereby dispensing with one of the two required in all other pneumatic telegraphs, and lessening the cost of appa- ratus. The invention has been patented here. Dr. John Edward Gray, F. R. S., natu- ralist of the British Museum, died March 6th, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He was a voluminous writer on zoological and botani- cal subjects. He was connected with the Natural History Department of the British Museum for over fifty years. In addition to his strictly scientific work, he took part in the discussion of various questions of so- cial importance, such as public education, prison discipline, the postage system, and the organization of museums and galleries of art. DiKD at Bonn, on the lYth of February, Prof. Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander, the celebrated astronomer. Deceased was born in 1790, and in 1820 became the ofii- cial assistant of Bessel at the Konigsberg Observatory. From 1845 till his death, he was in charge of the observatory of the Bonn University. His " Celestial Atlas," lately published, ranks among the best works of its kind. " The isolated study of any thing in nat- ural history is a fruitful source of error. . . . . No single experiment in physiology is worth any thing." — Dr. Jeffries Wtman. A MANUAL is to be prepared for the use of the British Arctic Expedition of next sum- mer, consisting of reprints of papers in the transactions of learned societies not other- wise accessible, and other materials, the ob- 128 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ject being to furnish an exact view of the state of existing knowledge of Greenland and the surrounding seas. In Osage County, Kansas, the fruit-trees which had been stripped by the grasshop- pers all put forth leaves again, and many of them bloomed with double flowers ; most of the embryo fruit was double. From the researches of Charles Violette on the distribution of the saccharine and saline principles in the beet, it appears that the former increase considerably by arith- metical progression from the collar to the point of the root. The saline constituents do not show a regular variation in quantity from one end of the beet to the other, still the chlorides are more abundant at the col- lar than at the point. The Agassiz Memorial Fund has been accepted by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, for the use of the Museum of Comparative Zoology founded in that university by Agassiz. The continuous growth of the museum is thus assured. "MuMBo Jumbo " is commonly supposed to be the proper name of an African god ; in reality he is a sort of policeman, an insti- tution peculiar to the Mandingoes on the river Gambia. A traveler in Africa informs us that he is the terror of the Mandingo women, for whose special benefit and disci- pline he has been established. A strong, athletic man, dressed from head to foot in dry plantain-leaves, appears when invoked by an injured husband. He goes through all sorts of antics and pantomime among the assembled villagers, all of whom are there under pain of suspicion. Suddenly he pounces like a tiger upon the offending wife, and thrashes her severely with a long rod with which he is armed. The crowd, especially the women in it, drown her cries with jeers and laughs. In other parts of Africa a similar domestic policeman exists. M. d'Ommalius d'Halloy, the distin- guished Belgian geologist, died at Liege, January 15th, at the age of ninety-two years. He was the author of several text-books on geology, as also of numerous memoirs con- tributed to learned societies and scientific periodicals. An aquarium-car containing 300,000 fishes for California waters was wrecked last year en route, and its living freight pre- cipitated into the Elkhom River. Another attempt at introducing into the streams of the Pacific slope some of the valuable food- fishes of the Atlantic coast was more suc- cessful. Mr. Livingston Stone, of the United States Fish Commission, started from Albany on the 25th of June with about 40,000 young shad. Of these, 5,000 were placed in tlie Jordan River, a tribu- tary of the Great Salt Lake, and the re- mainder in the Sacramento. The monthly report of the Department of Agriculture states that last year the "chinch-bug," which usually restricts its ravages to growing Indian-corn, in Johnson County, Missouri, attacked potato-vines, and even the tobacco-plant. In the peat-bogs of Northwestern Ger- many a peat-cutting machine is employed, consisting of a large, flat-bottomed steam- vessel, which, when set to work, is able to cut a canal 20 ft. in breadth and 6 ft. in depth, while proceeding at the rate of from 10 to 12 ft. per hour. The soil thus cut out is lifted into the vessel by steam-power, there thoroughly ground, and deposited, by means of a pipe running out of the side of the vessel, on the bank of the canal, where it is subsequently cut into bricks and dried. By this method about 55 tons of very good peat may be manufactured per day. A similar machine is also in use in Canada. A MEDICAL officer of the British Xavy recommends that each member of the pro- jected Polar Expedition have fitted to his sacrum a flat spirit-lamp, from which a tube should pass up the spine beneath the clothes to the occiput, so as to maintain the heat of the trunk and vital organs ! By invitation of the Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh, Prof. Hux- ley will perform the duties of the chair of Natural History in the coming summer ses- sion, in the jjlace of Prof. Wyville Thomson, who is absent with the Challenger Expedi- tion. A QUARTERLY revicw of scientific psy- chology and philosophy will be issued in London in the course of the present year. It will discuss many subjects at present but little attended to in psychological journals, such as language, primitive culture, com- parative psychology, etc. The title of the new periodical will be Alind. A MONUMENT is about to be erected in Stockholm to Scheele, the great Swedish chemist, who discovered tartaric acid, chlo- rine, baryta, and glycerine ; he also discov- ered oxygen in 1777 in the course of his own independent researches, though the honor of prior discovery belongs to Priestley. A monument is also to be erected in Brussels, to Quetelet, the illustrious statistician. In the Freedmen's Mission Chapel at Green Cove Spring, Florida, a circular saw, about three feet in diameter, serves as a bell to call the people to prayers. The saw is suspended from a rafter, and it is sounded by means of a wooden mallet. This " bell" is heard, in calm weather, at the distance of a mile and a half. I THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. JUNE, 1875. TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. By Miss E. A. YOUMANS. IN taking " toadstools " as the text of a little botanical discourse, we start with a familiar notion if not a scientific one ; but all science begins with common ideas which it corrects, extends, and de- velops. Everybody knows what toadstools are, odd-looking things that grow up in the fields and are often kicked aside in rural rambles, of no use to man or beast, and " pizen " to eat. This is the oldest, the widest, and the lowest state of mind upon the subject. But many have got beyond this, and recognize that some of these queer-looking things are actually eatable ; these they distinguish as mushrooms, and all the rest are lumped together as toadstools. A step forward, and we become slightly scientific ; that is, the different kinds begin to be noted, and compared, and classed with reference to their particular characters. When so much is gained, it soon appears that the subject is much wider than was supposed, and that all these growths are but parts of an extensive division of peculiar plants caWed fungi / and, having reached this state of intelligence, toadstools have disappeared. While, then, the popular term may answer to indicate generally what we are talking about, it conveys no exact meaning. The group of plants represented upon the plate is not merely a family of toadstools, but a collection of fungi. By their unlike characters they belong to separate groups in this class, and each has its separate name ; ^ for nomen- ^ Names of Species shown in the Plate : 1. Fly-blown mushroom — Agaricus muscarius. 2. Common mushroom — Agaricus campestris. 3. Round-headed morel — Morchella esctc- lenta. 4. Small-headed morel — Morchella hyhrida. 5. Tall cylindrical agaric — Agaricus comatus. 6. Variable wood agaric — Agaricus gilvus. 7. Shaggy agaric — Agaricus Jloc- cosus. 8. Spangled watery agaric — Agaricus micaceous. 9. Warty false puff-ball — Sclero- derma verrucosum. 10. Large bladder-like peziza — Peziza vasculosa. 11. Alpine amanita — Amanita nivalis. 12. Red-stemmed boletus — Boletus luridus. 13. Scaly hydruim — Hydruim, imhricatum. 14. Hairy earth-tongue — Geofelossum hirsutum. 15. Hispid poly- porus — Folyporus hispidtis. 16. Sulphur-colored polyporus — Polyporus sulphureus. 17. Carmine peziza — Peziza coccinea. 18. Scaly hydruim — Hydruim imbricatum. 19. Pale- TOL. TIT. — 9 130 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. clature must keep pace with science, and its higher discriminations require separate technical terms to mark them. Some people cry out against a lew strange words in botany, and make it an excuse for neg- lecting the study ; but the real reason is, a lack of interest in the knowledge of Nature, for they are generally ready enougli to spend whole years in the acquisition of strange words by the thousand in. foreign languages, living and dead. Scientific terms have an educa- tional value, because they involve and give precision to new ideas, while in acquiring an additional language we are only obtaining new terms for old ideas. Fig. 1.— Section op Common Musheoom. Of all the common objects of the country, toadstools seem to be least related to surrounding things. Neither in form, nor color, nor apparent origin, nor distinguishable parts, do they resemble otlier plants ; and scientific scrutiny must replace common observation before the first step in their classification can be taken. At the very outset of study the botanist is struck by their paradoxical character. In rapidity of growth and speedy decay they are more allied to low animal than to vegetal forms. Like animals, they feed upon organic matter. Their substance is rich in nitrogen, has a savory meat-like taste, and when decomposing gives out a strong, cadaverous smell. They absorb oxygen and disengage carbonic acid, and by their avoid- ance of light they present a striking contrast to the rest of vegetation. Nevertheless, careful observation shows that they consist of parts, and crested agaric — Agaricus cristatus. 20. Mitral helvela — Ildvela mitra. 21. Tuberous agaric — Agaricus tuberosum. 22. False puflf-ball — Scleroderma cepa. 23. Large-stemmed peziza — Peziza macropus. 24. Green and yellow agaric — Agaricus psittacinus. 25. Crisped helvella — Helvella leucophcea. 26. Reticulated peziza — Peziza reticulata. 27. Yellow spatliulavia — Spathularia favida. TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 131 perform functions, by which they are allied to all other plants and closely related to one of the largest groujjs of the vegetal kingdom. They stand, in fact, at the head of the class of fungi, of which there are at least as many species as of all flowering plants put together. These singular forms, though low in the scale when compared with the green and blossoming world around us, are yet complex and im- posing when contrasted with the world of plant-life revealed by the microscope. They have a distinct vegetative system, and a highly- organized reproductive system. On examining tlie common cultivated mushroom, a species which grows wild in meadows and pastures, these separate systems may be readily distinguished. The vegetable mould or decaying substance on which it grows is penetrated with grayish- white delicate interlacing filaments which are represented by the root- like fibres shown in Fig. 1 . This w^ebby mass constitutes the vegetative portion of the plant. It is called the mycelium, or, among dealers, the spawn, as by its means the plant is propagated in cultivation. In a dry state it may be kept dormant for a long time, and wall grow into a perfect plant under the influence of heat, moisture, and other favor- ing conditions. From this mycelium arises the reproductive system — that portion of the mushroom which is seen above-ground and which may be com- pared to the inflorescence of higlier plants. It consists of the long thick stem or sti^ye and the umbrella-like toj?, called the cap or pileus. On the lower surface of this cap vertical plates are seen radiating from the stem, though not connected with it. These plates are known as gills, and in a living specimen they will be found covered on all sides by a delicate membrane called the hymenium. Upon this hymenium are borne the reproductive bodies or spores, which are analogous to seeds. Fig. 2.— Mushroom in Process of Growth. To make our conception of the structure of this mushroom more complete, we will trace its growth from the beginning. The first vis- ible portion is the mycelium, at certain points of which there appear, at an early stage, round tubercles not larger than a mustard-seed, which rapidly increase in size, push through the soil, and become more or less elongated, resembling the shaded cut in Fig. 2. There is yet no external sign of cap or gills, but a section of the tubercle will reveal 132 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. a pair of dark-colored spots near the top {see 2 and 3, Fig. 2), which mark the position of the future gills. A little later the cap begins to take shape, the gills develop, and a membrane may be seen stretching from the stem to the edge of the growing cap. As matu- rity approaches, this membrane is ruptured and forms a ring around the stem, as shown in Fig. 8. This membrane is called the veil or Fig. 3.— Common Meadow Mushboom. volva. The parts to be borne in mind, then, are the mycelium or veg- etative portion, and the stem, cap, gills, hymenium, ring, and volva, all of which belong properly to the reproduction of the plant, and all, except the hymenium, may be readily traced in Fig. 3, If, when the mushroom is mature, you cut off the stem close to the gills, and place the cap, gills downward, upon a sheet of paper for a few hours, or all night, it will leave behind a likeness of itself in the shape of radiating lines that correspond to the spaces between the pairs of gills. These lines are formed by minute microscopic spores that have been thrown down in profusion from the hymenium, and in greatest number from the opposed surfaces of the gills. In making the experiment with this mushroom use white paper, but for light- spored species black paper should be taken. These little germinal bodies are cellular in structure, and of the extremest minuteness ; thousands of them are required to form a body the size of a pin's- head. Their color is constant, and is used as a means of identifica- tion ; but among the higher plants color is a character that cannot be thus relied upon. The spore is a simple cell, and the entire mushroom is cellular in composition. The delicate threads of the mycelium are foi'med of rows of cells placed end to end, and microscopic inspection of thin slices from the stem and cap show, that they also are composed of cells alone. TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 133 The rank of this plant in the vegetal kingdom is settled by the direction of growth of its vegetative system and by the nature of its tissues. All flowering plants, as well as the ferns and mosses, have their vegetative part made up of root, stem, and leaves. The root grows downward and the stem upward. But the growth of the myce- lium, the vegetative system of tlie mushroom, is horizontal ; there are no signs of such organs as root and stem. In this respect it is on a level with lichens and sea-weeds, and belongs at the foot of the scale in vegetation. As respects the nature of its tissues and the absence of woody fibre in its composition, it resembles all the flowerless plants except ferns. But where are its immediate kindred ? Have mush- rooms no nearer relations than mosses, lichens, and sea-weeds? To answer this question intelligently we must further observe the structure of fleshy fungi. In the common mushroom, as we have seen, the hymeniura is spread out upon the lamellated structure of the gills — an arrangement, however, which is not general. It is peculiar to a single group known as agarics. This group has also tlie further gene- ral characteristic of preferring to grow in shady places. But in this latter respect the common mushroom is an exception. In its wild state it flourishes best in meadows and pastures. Its scientific name is com- posed of two words : one tells us the immediate group of toadstools to which it belongs, and the other expresses this exceptional feature in its constitution. The one which is put first is its family or surname, Agaricus^ and the specific name, or what we may call the "given " name, is ea')npestTi& (meaning field). These names are written in Latin for the convenience of the botanists of different nations speaking dif- ferent tongues, but for whom the Latin is a common medium of com- munication. Fia. 4.— PoLTPORua Giganteus (reduced). Now, the structure of the imder portion of the cap in some toad- stools is porous instead of lamellar. The surface of the spore-bearing hymenium is multiplied by means of pores or tubes which penetrate tlie substance of the cap, as seen in Fig. 4. Two stetnless species of this sort are shown in the plate as growing upon an old tree. Sometimes this under surface is seen to be quite smooth, or it 134 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, may bo simply wrinkled; sometimes it is warty or prickly, and in Fig. 5 it is represented as covered with spines. Again, in some species of fungi, tlie liymenium, instead of being situated externally, is in- closed in a membrane which bursts when its spores are ripe, and scatters them like a cloud of smoke to the winds. Of such is the pufl-ball. Fig. 6, with which everybody is familiar. Fig. 5.— Htdnxjm Eepandum. Fig. 6. — Sclekoderjia Vulgaee. These fleshy forms, however, although very numerous, constitute but a small part of this immense group. But most of the species in- cluded in it are either quite invisible, or else the parts which charac- terize them as fungi are so small as to be indistinguishable. The fea- ture by wliich a fungus may always be known is the mycelium. Every plant of which this structure forms a part, spreading its web through- out the substance on, or in, which it grows, belongs among fungi. They differ among themselves in such comparatively unimportant re- spects as the mode of growth of the hymenium, or the degree of com- plexity of tlie reproductive system, but mycclia and spore production are their essential characters. In these diminutive organisms, the deli- cate mycelium is so minute as to traverse living plants and the pores of solid wood. The potato-rot is such a fungus — a sort of mould — the mycelium of which grows rapidly, penetrating the leaves, stem, and tubers, and causing quick decay. Dry-rot in timber is occasioned by the penetrating mycelium of fungi. The yeast and vinegar plants are submerged mycelia. The mildews, rusts, and smuts of grain — those scourges of the farmer — are all fungi. Their minute mycelium pene- trates and destroys the tissues of plants, and, bursting through the cuticle, covers them with myriads of their orange, brown, and black spore«. All those black, pustular growths seen on dead wood, bark, twigs, and leaves, and the whole tribe of moulds that cover every substance exposed to dampness, are fungi. Not only do these fungi ravage the living and the dead, but they fill the air with the cotmtless myriads of their spores. These subtile particles, " invisible to the naked eye, and light almost as vapor, are continually floating in the air we breathe, or swimming in the water we drink, or lying amid the imj^alpable dust and sand of the soil, waiting the presence of warmth TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 135 and moisture to burst into independent life. Myriads of the minute germs of moulds fasten upon various domestic articles, or dance about in the air-currents of our apartments, moving rapidly up and down and in every direction. The raicroscopist and the chemist have de- monstrated the existence of these germs in greater or less quantity in the air of both country and town, out-of-doors as well as in-doors ; and Prof. Tyndall by calling in the aid of optical analysis has, on this point, made assurance doubly sure. If we venture for a moment to imagine the overwhelming number of seeds which the different species of fungi must disseminate in the course of a single year — if we consider that each individual of the common puff-ball contains up- ward of ten million seeds, and these so small as to form a mere cloud when puffed into the air; and that a single filament of the mould which infests our bread and preserves will produce as many germs as an oak will acorns, so that a piece of decaying matter, not two inches square, will scatter upon the air, at the slightest breath of the summer breeze or the gentlest touch of an insect's wing, as many seeds, quick with life, as all the oaks of the country will produce acorns in a twelve- month— if we take these things into consideration, it is not too much to suppose that the seeds of fungi must be ubiquitous, and from their excessively miiuite size penetrate into every place, even into the stomachs and other parts of animals. Indeed, the difiiculty seems to be to imagine a spot without them." But, in looking up the relatives of the mushroom, we have been led too far away from the study of its structure. Recurring to the species with which we began our study, and a cluster of which, at different stages of growth, is represented in Fig. 3, let us inspect it once more, and make sure that we have a clear notion of all its parts. Observe the mycelium at the base, the stem, the unbroken volva in the young ones, the beginning of its rupture in a more advanced stage, and, finally, at the end of growth, the fully-developed cap, with its gills, and the ring left by the volva upon the stem. After this ac- count of its structure, its specific description should be quite intelli- gible to anybody, and ought to suffice for the ready recognition of the living plant. It is as follows : Cai^ fleshy, either smooth or scaly ; its color is white, or tawny, or smoke-colored, or brown ; gills free, when first formed pale, then changing to flesh-color, then to pink, next to purjjle, and, at length, tawny-black ; stem white, full, firm, varying in shape, with a white persistent ring. Spores brown-black ; volva quickly disappearing. In his recent work an " Fungi and their Uses," C-'ooke says of this plant that the color of the spores and gills, and the presence of the ring, are characters that never vary, but tlie color and scaliness of the cap, and other minor features, are variable ; and, furthermore, he enjoins that it must not be sought in the woods. Its proper season is September and October. 136 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. There is another common, though much coarser species of edible mushroom, often mistaken for this one, and sold as such by dealers. Although it resembles the cultivated species, it may be easily distin- guished by its big, ragged ring (Fig. 7), its pithy stem, tending to hollow, and its gills of a dirty-brownish white. It is also much larger, Fig. 7.— Agakicus Arvensis. being sometimes more than a foot across, while the common mush- room rarely exceeds three or lour inches ; in good specimens its top is smooth and snowy white, and it turns of a brownish yellow as soon as broken. It is known as the snowball, or horse-mushroom {A. arvensis). On the subject of distinguishing poisonous species, Mr, Cooke says that there is no golden rule which will enable us to tell at a glance the good species from the bad. The only safe guide lies in mastering, one by one, the specific distinctions, and increasing the knowledge through experience, as a child learns to distinguish a filbert from an acorn, or a leaf of sorrel from one of white-clover. The characters of half a dozen good, esculent species, he says, may be learned as easily as the ploughboy learns to discriminate as many species of birds. He tells us, moreover, that it is not enough to avoid poisonous species, but that discretion should be used in preparing and eating good ones. They change so rapidly, that even the cultivated mushroom, if long kept, is unfit for use. Nor is it enough that they be of good species and fresh ; but plenty of salt must be used in their preparation, to neutralize any deleterious property, and pepper and vinegar are also recommended as advantageous. Encouraged by these statements, from so distinguished and re- liable an authority, we venture to present the pictures and descrip- tions of three more of the most highly esteemed of the edible fungi, which are common in the United States. TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. ^17 The Parasol Agaric. — Of this esteemed mushroom, Cooke re- marks that it is in high request in Italy and France, and is also eaten in Austria, Germany, Spain, and England. It is easily identified. It has a fleshy cap, ovate when young, then bell-shaped, and afterward expanded and blunt-pointed. The extreme forms are shown in Fig. 8. The cuticle is more or less brown, and torn into patches or scales, ex- cept over the apex, these scales separating toward the margin. Flesh, white. Gills unconnected with the stem, and fixed to a collar on the cap around its toj). Ring, persistent, loose on the stem. Stem six or eight inches high, tapering upward from a pear-like bulb at the base, hollow, with a loose pith, whitish brown, but more or less variegated with small and close-pressed scales. Fig. 8.— The Parasol Agaric (Agoi'icus procerus). Whenever a mushroom on a long stalk, enlarged at the base, pre- sents a dry cuticle, more or less scaly, is darker colored over the blunt apex, has a movable ring and white gills, it must be the parasol agaric, and may be eaten without fear. — Robinson. Chantarelle [Cantharellus ciharrius). Of this species Cooke says : " It has a most charming and enticing appearance and odor. It is almost universally eaten in all countries where it is found, England excepted." Trattinnich says of it, " Not only this same fungus never did any one harm, but might even restore the dead." When young, its stem is white and solid, but becomes hollow and yellow. It is tapering, and passes into the substance of the cap, which is of the same color. The cap is lobed and irregular in shape (Fig. 9) ; its margin, at first curling inward, becomes expanded and wavy. The gills, or veins, as they are called, in this species, are thick, crooked, not compact, running some way down the stalk. Flesh white, fibrous, dense, with a fruity odor. Color, yellow, like yelk of eggs; 138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. deeper on the under surface. Wlien raw, it has the pungent taste of pepper. Spores, of a pallid, ochre-color. It may be found from June to October. Fairy-ring Champignon {3Iarasmhis oreades). This delicious fun- gus (Fig, 10) grows in pastures in rings, or })arts of rings, and may be known by the following characters : Cap smooth, fleshy, convex, rather blunt at apex, more or less compressed, tough, leathery, elastic, wrin- kled ; when water-soaked, brown ; when dry, bulf, or cream-color, the apex often remaining red-brown, as if scorched ; gills free from the stem, distant, swelling out in the middle, the same color as the cap, but paler; stem equal, solid, twisted, very tough and fibrous, of a pale, silky-Avhite color. This genus is much addicted, to dead leaves. — Cooke. Fig. 9. — Coantarelle {C'antharellus cibarnus). Another very acrid species [A. urens) has a similar appearance, but the gills are narrow and much crowded. While all fungi are cellular in structui'e, they yet present a great vai'iety of consistence. Some assume a corky or leathery firmness, while the substance of others is a mere watery pulp or gelatinous scum. Some are interlacing fibres, spread like a veil over decay- ing matters, while others are hard and tough like wood. They vary equally in taste and form. The cultivation of fungi for esculent pur- poses is confined to a single species, A. campestris, although, accord- ing to Cooke, there is no reason why others, for instance, Marasmius oreades, and the morel {see plate), should not succeed equally well. An unaccountable circumstance in this culture is the impossibility of growing mushrooms from spores. It is the mycelium or spawn which is always planted by gardeners, from which the production of mush- rooms is simple enough, but how to obtain mycelium from spores is still a mystery. Other species present a similar difticulty, as the fol- lowing statement from "Fungi and their Uses" will illustrate : "A friend of ours, some years since, was fortunate enough to have one or two specimens of the large puff-ball {Lycoperdon giganteum) growing in his TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 139 garden. Knowing its value, and being particularly fond of it when fried for breakfast, he was anxious to secure its permanence. Tbe spot on which the specimens appeared was marked off and guarded, so that it was never desecrated by the spade, and the soil remained consequently undisturbed. So long as he resided on the premises, he counted upon and gathered several specimens of the puff-ball, the mycelium continuing to produce them year after year. Burying a ripe specimen in similar soil, and watering the ground with an infusion of fresh specimens, has been tried without success." Fig. 10.— Faiey-kixg Champignon {Marasmius oreades). Mushroom-growing, as carried on in some parts of France, is so extraordinary as to deserve mention. In the vicinity of Paris there are extensive caves formed by stone-quarries long since abandoned. In these caves, sixty or seventy feet underground, and extending great distances, the temperature is equal and the air moist, and here mushroom-beds are made, and immense quantities of the plant are grown for home and foreign markets. An idea of the magnitude of tiie business may be formed when it is known that one proprietor has twenty-one miles of beds, another sixteen, another seven, and so on through a long list. In the ramifications of the cave of Montrouge (Fig. 11), just outside the fortifications of Paris, there are six or seven miles' run of mushroom-beds. It is entered through a circular open- ing, like the mouth of a well, and tlie only mode of descent is down a shaky pole, furnished with cross-bars, the base of which rests iu darkness sixty feet below. A gentleman who visited this cave remarks : " I had an idea that one might enter sideways in a more agreeable manner, but it was not so. Down the shaky pole my guide creeps, I follow, and soon reach the bottom, from which little passages radiate. A few little lamps, fixed on pointed sticks, are placed below, and, arming ourselves with one each, we slowly commence exploring dark, still, tortuous passages. ... On each hand are little narrow beds of lialf-decomposed stable-manure running along the wall, that have not yet been spawned. . . . "Wherever the rocky subway became as large as a small bedroom, two or three little beds were placed parallel to each other. They are about twenty inches high, and were dotted all over with mush- 140 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. rooms no bigger than peas. , . . Every thing looks quite neat, not a particle of litter being met with." Of the way rauslirooms are usually cultivated, and the various modes of cooking them, it is not our purpose to speak. Whoever < a < N Z w' o p o H o < o < Eh a 3 CO a H H < 15 w &( H o o K a CO D sw^ill^^^ wishes to study these subjects will find them fully treated in Robin- son's "Mushroom Culture." To give an idea of the rich stores of TOADSTOOLS AND THEIR KINDRED. 141 mushrooms in this country, we quote from a communication of the late Dr. Curtis, of South Carolina, in reply to inquiries of Rev. C. Berkeley : " My experience with eatable mushrooms runs back only ten or twelve years. As I had grown up with the common prejudices against them, and had no lack of wholesome food, I had passed middle life before having once tasted a mush- room." Under the guidance of Mr. Berkeley he became interested in them, and overcame his timidity, and, at the time of writing, he adds: "I can safely say that I have eaten a greater variety of mushrooms than any one on the American Continent." After describing his mode of experimenting, and the various spe- cies he had proved, he continues : " I have collected and eaten forty species found within two miles of my house. There are some others within this limit which I have not yet eaten. In the catalogue of the plants of North Carolina you will notice that I have indicated 111 species of edible fungi known to inhabit this State. I have no doubt there are forty or fifty more, as the Alpine portion of the State, which is very extensive and varied, has been very little explored in search of fungi. " In 1866, while on the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee, a plateau less than 1,000 feet above the valleys below, although having very little leisure for examination during the two days spent there, I counted eighteen edible fungi. Of the four or five species which I collected there for the table, all who partook of them, none of whom had before eaten mushrooms, most emphatically declared them delicious. On my return homeward, while stopping for a few hours at a station in Yirginia, I gathered eight good species within a few hundred yards of the depot. And so it seems to be throughout the country. Hill and plain, mountain and valley, woods, fields, and pastures, swarm with a profusion of good, nutritious fungi, which are allowed to decay where they spring up, be- cause people do not know how, or are afraid, to use them. . " I have known no instance of mushroom-poisoning in this country, except where the victims rashly ventured upon the experiment without knowing one species from another. There are families in America who have brought with them from Europe the habit of eating mushrooms, but I have not met with any whose knowledge of them extended beyond the common species, called pink- gills, in this country. Several such families live near me, but not one of them was aware, until I informed them, that there are other edible kinds. "When I first sent my son with a fine basket of imperials to an intelligent physician, who was extravagantly fond of the common mushroom, the lad was greeted with the in- dignant exclamation: 'Boy, I wouldn't eat one of those things to save your father's head!" When told that they were eaten at my table, he accepted them, ate them, and has eaten many a one since with all safety, and Avith no little rehsh." Among our best and standard mushrooms, Dr. Curtis mentions the meadow, the horse, and umbrella mushrooms, but adds: " Tastes differ on these things as on fruits and vegetables ; some putting one, some another, at the head of the list, though fond of all, and ever ready to use any of them, as one who prefers a peach may yet relish an apple. There are some among us who regard the umbrella-mushroom as fully equal to the meadow- mushroom, and I am of the same opinion. When boiled or fried, it truly makes a luscious morsel, I mention, in this connection, that this species here bears the name of nut-mushroom, fi-om a quality that I do not find mentioned in the books 142 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. which describe it. The stem, when fresh and young, has a sweet, nutty flavor, very similar to tliat of the hazel-nut. Its flavor is so agreeable, that I am fond of chewing the fresh stems. From this peculiarity, in connection with its mova- ble ring, its form and colors, I deem it a perfectly safe species to recommend for collecting." Dr. Curtis says, however, that the same species varies very much in flavor in different regions, owing probably to differences of soil, expos- ure, shade, moisture, or temperature. He has found perfectly sound pink-gills witli unpleasant odor and taste, and horse-mushrooms that were " perfectly detestable." But, wliether such exceptional specimens are poisonous or not, he thinks of no consequence, because no human being could be induced to swallow them. AEE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? Br "W. D. WHITNEY, PEOFESSOK IN TALE COLLEGE. WHILE the present century has witnessed a truly wonderful advance in the study of languages, it has not yet yielded equal results for the science of language. Comparative philology has thus far borne off the palm over linguistics. The classifications of human speech, the historical development and divarication of lan- guages, the processes of phonetic change, are understood to a degi'ee of v.'hich our fathers had no conception ; but the coordination and explanation of all these facts, the recognition of the forces whose workings underlie and produce them, and of the ways in which those forces act — on such subjects there is far from being that gecei'al agreement of opinion wiiich ought to mark a matured branch of stud}^ To quote a few instances: while the Boppian view of the making of grammatical forms by collocation, combination, and integration of originally independent elements, may be regarded as the leading and orthodox one in the modern school of philology, there yet are scholars of rank who deny it, and assert, instead, that endings were created in their separate entity and oftice along Avith the bases to which they are attached, or sprouted out from the latter by the Avorking of some mysterious internal force. Most linguistic scholars hold that the de- velopment of a grammatical system has been a work of ages, always going on and never finished ; but at least one celebrated and admired authority declares the whole essential structure of a language to be produced " at a single stroke." It is the prevailing belief that the world is filled everywhere with families of related dialects, and that a family of languages, as of individuals or of races, arises by the dis- ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 143 persion and differentiation of a unitary stock. One or two teachers of the highest popular repute ask us to believe, instead, that language had its besriniunof in a condition of indefinite dialectic division, and has been always tending toward unity — that there are, as an excep- tion, two or three real families, and no more, these being the result of peculiar and unexplained processes of arbitrary concentration in the remote past ; and another bold doubter makes a great stir by denying the ordinary family-tree theory of linguistic kinship, and putting in its place a theory of wave-motion, propagated from a centre. Some hold (more or less consistently) that language is a natural organism, growing by its own forces and its own laws, with which men cannot interfei-e: others declare it an instrumentality, produced in every item by the men themselves who use it. Some write of it as a human faculty or capacity, like sight or hearing, as a gift, as identical with thought or reason, as the one distinguishing quality of man. Others regard it as one of the outcomes of a variety of faculties and impulses, by all of which man is far removed from the lower animals; as one which, under normal conditions, is sure to show itself, but which may, by the mere force of external and accidental circumstances, be thwarted, without impeachment of man's nature, but only of his edu- cation. Some maintain that the child learns his own language ; others strenuously deny that there is any teaching or learning about it. Some, once more, declare the study in which they are engaged a physi- cal science, while to others it seems as truly an historical or moral science as any other branch of the history of man and his works. Now, with regard to all these matters of discordant opinion, only one side can possibly be in the right. We may be able to excuse those who take the wrong side, seeing where they are misled by look- ing at the facts from a false point of view, by misconceiving the mean- ing of a term or forgetting its double application, by omitting to take into account some decisive consideration, by overlooking important items of evidence, and so on ; but wrong they are, nevertheless. And it is truly unfortunate that, just upon points of the most funda- mental importance, the linguists should be so at variance with one another. Surely the study of language, so extolled on all sides for the strictness of its methods and the solidity of its results, might have gone so far by this time that its votaries should be able to give a nearly unanimous opinion, for example, as to what a word is in rela- tion to a conception, and to follow that opinion logically and con- sistently out to its consequences. One grand reason for the discord- ance has been, to be sure, that linguists were so busy with the infinite and urgent details of their Avork : details which they have not yet begun to exhaust — hardly, even for the majority of human languages, to look over and get well in hand. Germany is the home of philological and linguistic study; but the Germans are rather exceptionally careless of what we may call the 144 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. questions of linguistic pliilosophy, or are loose and inconsistent in their views of such questions ; liardly seeming, in many cases, to be aware that there are antagonistic doctrines before them, one of which ouglit to be, and must finally be adopted, to the exclusion of the other. There needs to be, perhaps, a radical stirring-up of the sub- ject, a ventilation of a somewhat breezy, even gusty, order, which shall make words fly high, and dash noisily against one another, before agreement shall be reached. If so, the sooner it is brought on, in whatever way, the better ; and they are no true promoters of the progress of the science Avho strive to smooth things over on the sur- face, and act as if all were serene and accordant below. Amid manifold minor diversities, and half-views and compromises innumerable, opinions respecting language seem to be divisible into two principal opposing classes, which may be termed (rudely, and without intended oiFense to the sensibilities of the adherents of either) the positive and the sentimental, or the common-sense and the meta- physical. The latter class tends toward an admiring contemplation of language, in its comprehensive relation to the human mind and human progress, and toward its study in and through the processes of mental action tliat underlie its production and use. The other class plants itself upon the consideration, first of details, and then of their combined result ; it begins with the a;idible sign — the word — and works from this toward the intellectual process which it repre- sents. The one strives after profundity, brings in its illustrations from remote periods and languages, and forms grand and striking views ; the other aims at simplicity, at general intelligibility, at mod- eration, and rejoices in the overthrow of exaggerated and illusory opinions. It is by no means easy to characterize the two opposing tendencies fairly in a sentence or two ; and I would not at all claim that the description here given is not tinged with the prejudices of the describer. One may acknowledge the influence of such prejudices in drawing up a general account of the questions at issue, while yet he may believe himself capable of examining and discussing, with en- tire fairness, any detailed views, any distinct statements or arguments, brought forward by the opposing party. As to which of these two general tendencies is at present the pre- vailing one among the professional students of language, there can be no reasonable doubt : it is the one here called the sentimental or meta- physical. How long this is going to be the case is another and a more difficult question. In the prevailing confusion of discordant opinions, and carelessness about the discordance, described above, comparatively few have declared themselves; and there is probably light enough abroad to bring out men's decisions prevailingly on the right side when once they can be led tQ reason themselves into clear- ness and consistency of opinions. Meanwhile, the unlearned popular view of speech, that of the general body of cultivated people, that ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 145 which has most votaries among the students of physical science, and those wlio approach the subject from the side of general anthropology, is i*ather of the opposite type. That the division bears tliis aspect ought, it should seem, to tell against the latter doctrine; but there is no good ground for regarding tlie fact as decisive, for, until the lin- guists are agreed among themselves as to fundamental points, they have no common vote to throw. For myself, I hold the more popular doctrine to be also the truer, and, in the proper sense, more philosophical ; and the other to be founded on the insecure basis of combined misapprehension and exag- geration. And I propose to give here, in as brief a form as it is pos- sible, my reasons for thus holding. Every thing in the study of language, as in most other studies, depends upon the way in which one approaches the fundamental questions. In my opinion there is no other way here so secure and so fruitful as that of inquiring what our own speech is to us, and why ; how we came by it, and by what tenure we hold it. The general lin- guistic philosophy we profess must, first and above all things, be con- sistent with the most accessible facts of present living language ; we may not be able to explain these from themselves alone, but our doc- trines must at any rate not go counter to them. If physical science has been worth any thing for its influence upon other sciences, it has been by inculcating its method of investigation, to make the utmost of what is immediately under our eyes, and reason cautiously back from the present into the past. Nor, in getting at language from this side, must we undertake to deal with it as a body or total, lest we lose ourselves in glittering and indefinite generalities. We must take up only so much as we can hold in the hand, as it were, and deal with competently. Let us try the single word book. It is to us the sign of a very complex con- ception, but one which needs no defining. How came we by it ? Every other linguistic community in the world that has the thing has also a name for it, but the names are all diflerent — livre, lihro, huch, hihlion, Jcniga, hitdh, pustaka, and so on — let us say a round hundred of them. Why do we use for our conception this one of the hundred ? There is but one answer to this, a common-sense answer, which no philosophy can possibly reason away. We learned the word, hearing it used during the period when we were engaged in learning things and their names, used over and over again, and in such connections as showed us what it meant ; we learned to reproduce the series of sounds, and to associate it with the conception, just as we could have learned to reproduce and associate any otlier of the hundred, or any one of a thousand other signs — as a motion of the hand, or a square mark. There is absolutely no tie of union to us between the sign and tlie thing signified save this mental association, artificially formed — ■ that is to say, brought about under the guidance of others, after their VOL. VII. — 10 1^6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. example, not by any inward impulse. Some of us, indeed, know that the word has a curious history — that it is akin to heech, and for the reason that beechen staves or tablets were the first material used by our rude ancestors for cutting runes upon. But this is merely a mat- ter of learned curiosity ; our knowledge or want of knowledge, our belief or disbelief in the explanation when given us, has nothing to do with our use of the term hook ; we use it because others — tliose with whom it is our lot to have to do in life — also use it, because we can communicate with them by means of it. If we, though of English blood, had happened to be born at Paris, at Rome, at Cairo, at Pe- king, we should either have learned to use a different word from this, or another besides it, in the same sense and for the same reason — even as in English-speaking communities, especially in America, descend- ants of half the races under heaven use book as their " native " sign, knowing absolutely nothing of any other. But what is thus true of hook is true also of every other sign of which our language is composed, unless we may have committed in a few instances that rare act, the coining of a word. And this is already of itself enough to show that in a perfectly proper — indeed, in the only genuine — sense, our words are arbitrary and conventional signs : arbi- trary, not because no reason can be given for the assignment of each word to its use, but because the reason is only an historical, not a ne- cessary one, and because any other of the hundred current, or of the ten thousand possible, signs might have been made by us to answer precisely the same purpose ; conventional, not because it was voted in a convention (what that we call "conventional" ever was so?), nor because men came to an explicit understanding about it in any other way, but because its adoption by us had its ground in the consenting usage of our community. There is no way of denying these two epi- thets to language, except by misunderstanding their meaning. Moreover, it is not the case that the learner gives birth first to an independent and adequate conception of a book, and then merely ac- cepts from others the name by which he shall call it. For the '• inner form," not less than for the outer sign, he is dependent on his teach- ers. He would not, indeed, even begin to use the word if he had not formed some sort of an idea of a thing which it stood for ; but he knows next to nothing about the thing j it is to him a mystery of which he only later obtains the key, and which he does not fully un- derstand till after he has studied the history of civilization, a whole chapter of which is, in a manner, ejiitomized in the single term. And all this is given him in measure, as he is prepared to receive it, by the teaching of others. A further example or two will show this depend- ence still more clearly. The idea of planet came down to us as de- fined and named by our instructors, the Greeks, and named from the most superficially obvious property of the objects designated, that of " wandering," or moving amid the other stars. No uninstructed ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? H7 person Avould single out a class of heavenly bodies to call by such a name ; many races have never formed the conception. To those who gained learning enough, the meaning was further enriched by connec- tion with the Ptolemaic system of cycles and epicycles. Then, as by a touch, Copernicus altered the whole aspect of the word, and changed the classification which it represented, ejecting the sun and moon, and taking in the earth. And all this is now used to help give shape to the at first dim and formless idea, which the language-learner is made to entertain along with the sign which is taught him. Once more, the child is made to count, and in the process his conceptions of number are cast into a decimal shape, one in which each higher factor is made up of ten of the next lower, till he comes to feel that such tenfoldness is a natural characteristic of enumeration. Yet, if we inquire Avhence comes this particular shape, we find it growing out of the simple fact that we have two hands, with five fingers on each ! So utterly ex- traneous and accidental a cause as this, as turned to account by the simple races who laid the deep foundations of our mathematics, de- termines the " inner form " assumed by the mathematical concep- tions of each new member of our race ; of course, quite without his knowledge. So it is all the way through language. Along with and by means of words, the young learner is made to take in the ideas which the knowledge and experience of older men have shaped ; he accepts the current classifications and abstractions of his community, at first only imjierfectly, then with fuller and more independent action of his own, till finally he grows up to the stature of his language, and has, at least in some departments, nothing more to learn of those about him. At the beginning, and in less degree later, he was so hurried on by the superiority of his instructors in knowledge and mental development, that he had neither leisure nor inclination to be original ; now he be- comes in his turn a teacher, and also a shaper. By his action and that of his fellows, the common instrument of expression undergoes a con- stant slow change. Their new knowledge has somehow to be worked in. It is done partly, as in the case of planet^ by reshaping the con- ceptions contained in old words, and shifting the boundaries of old classifications ; partly by the cognition of new particulars which are brought under old names, expanding so far their contents — as when Uranus and Neptune are brought into the class of planets, and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn make a class for the formerly unique appellation moon y and partly by providing new names for objects, products, qualities, relations, before unperceived, or so dimly appre- hended as not to seem to call for expression. And the provision is made in part by deliberately going to other tongues and borrowing material from them (so Uranus, Neptune), or else by forming new compounds of native material (so steamboat, railroad), or, very fre- quently, by mere transfer of old words to new uses, substituted or ad- 148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ditional. By these and other similar means, language is continually adapted by its speakers to express the modified content of their minds. At the same time, it sufiers change of a yet more intimate and uncon- scious kind as an instrument ; its phonetic shape being rendered more manageable, and its grammatical shape as well ; new words of relation are made, by the attenuation of more material elements, and now and then, in a kindred way, a new form. So far as a language is handed down from generation to genera- tion by the process of teaching and leai-ning, it is stable, and by this means it does remain nearly the same ; so far as it is altered by the consenting action of its users, it is unstable, and it does in fact change. Examine any language, and you will find it different from its prede- cessor; difierent in a variety of items of the kinds instanced above, each of them being obviously the work of the speakers, and showing no signs of the presence of any other force. In the present stage of what we call the growth of language, nothing takes place which is not the effect of human agency ; the only obscurity about it grows out of the fact that there is involved the consenting action of a community, since language is a social institution, and exists primarily and con- sciously for the purpose of communication. But if this is so nowa- days, then it was so in the period next preceding, and in the one be- fore that ; and so on, until the very beginning is reached. For we have no right to assume unnecessarily that the processes of growth have essentially changed ; that is to say, if the methods of word- making and form-making as exhibited in the historical period are sufficient to account for the whole existing material of speech, we are not authorized to postulate others. And such is the case. Forms have been made, through all the his- torical periods, by the combination of independent elements, and the reduction of one of them to a formal value by means of changes of form and changes of meaning, such as are exhibited in every part of language ; and this action, varying in kind and degree under the changing circumstances of developing speech, can never, so far as at present appears, be proved insufficient to explain the structure of lan- guage. If there are problems of structure as yet unsolved, they may be expected to yield to more skilled investigation ; or, if they do not, it will be presumably because of the loss of needed evidence. The name-making process implies only the christening of a formed idea, the provision of a sign which shall henceforth be associated with a pai-ticular conception, and used to represent it in social intercourse and in the operations of thought. And the sign is obtained just where it can be most conveniently found, according to the circumstances and habits of each particular community. There is nothing approaching to necessity in an etymology. It is only a tie of convenience that connects the new name with its source : in the case of hook, the tie of historical development out of an accidental selection of material ; in ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 149 jylanet^ that of intended, but palpably insufficient description ; in Uranus and Neptune^ of learned and reflective selection, under gov- ernment of the same regard for analogy which controls also the most unconscious and popular choice of appellations ; and in decimal^ no one has yet been skillful enough to find out what. But, known or un- known, sufficient or insufficient, learned or popular, it is all one, so far as regards the practical uses of speech ; when once established in use, the name, from whencesoever derived, is good enough for its office. It were vain indeed to be particular about the source, when the use is going to depend, with each new learner, on an artificially-formed as- sociation alone. Now, how should it enter into the mind of any one to regard words thus won, thus kept in life, thus liable to alterations of every kind in the mouths of their speakers, as any thing more than the instruments, the outward equipment, of thought ? Thought is the action of the mind, in apprehending, compai'ing, inferring ; every word is an act of the body, and of the body only ; performed, indeed, as all the volun- tary acts of the body are, under the direction of the mind, but no more the work of the mind than are crooks of a finger, or brandish- ings of an arm, or kicks with a foot. Thex'e is no more immediate connection of the apparatus of thought with the muscles of utterance than with those of facial expression or of gesture. Talking is just as much thought as dancing is ; not one whit more. All the argu- ments used to show the impossibility of mind-work without speech are, so far as I can see, such as would also prove the impossibility of manual work without tools and machines, of mathematical work with- out written signs. If it be asked how the mind comes to equip itself with this instru- mentality, the answer is ready and easy : it does so under the impulse to communication. That language should owe its origin and mainte- nance to a cause so extraneous to the soul, and so superficial, is repug- nant to the prejudices of many ; yet I do not see how the truth of the doctrine can be successfully controverted. It is in accordance with all that we know of the history and present use of language, and, not less, with all that we know of the development of man's powers in other departments. Through all its existence, speech is primarily and above all a social possession, its unity made and preserved by mutual intelligibility, all its items and their changes requii'ing the adoption of a community before they become language at all. Those who, by isolation or physical defect, are cut oflF from communication with their fellows, do not speak, and have no inclination to speak. And, especially, communication is the only inducement to which every human being, at every grade of culture, is fully accessible. The great majority, even of speaking, civilized men, do not realize that language is any thing to them but a means of communication ; and to ascribe to the uncultivated man a power to foresee that expression will furnish 150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. his paiud an instrument to work with, and be to the race an indispen- sable help forward in the career of improvement, is to do him a great deal more than justice. This is the way in which in general the pow- ers of man have been drawn out and educated ; the art of writing came, in like manner, from attempts at another kind of communica- tion ; machines came, one item after another, in the struggle of man to supply his physical needs. We are short-sighted beings, and never able to look more than one step ahead, but we have the power of put- ting each new step beyond its predecessor, and are surprised by-and- by to see how far we have come, how much we have attained that we had neither expected nor foreseen. If these views as to language are true, then the marked analogies of languages with institutions are patent and undeniable. A language is a body of usages ; it has its main occasion and usefulness in connec- tion with the social life of a community ; it is a constituent part of the civilization of its community, worked out, like the rest, by long-con- tinued collision and friction between man and his circumstances, grad- ually accumulated by the contributions of each member of a race through successive generations, and handed down by a process of teaching and learning. Let a child of European parents be brought at birth into an Indian wigwam, and grow up among Indians only ; and his life in all its parts will be Indian — his food, his occupations, his amusements, his knowledge, and his beliefs — and, along with the rest, his language also ; while the African, for instance, born and bred in an American community, shows in all these same respects accord- ance with that particular class of Americans among whom his lot is cast. This by no means implies that there are no such things as race- diiferences of capacity and disposition, even as there are wide individ- ual differences between members of the same race : the white man makes, perhaps, a somewhat peculiar kind of Indian, the African a peculiar kind of American ; yet each acquires the civilization, lan- guage included, of the race with which he grows up, and shows his race-characteristics, as they their individual characteristics, inside of that. All names are imperfect, and have their unsuitable, as well as their suitable suggestiveness in connection with every new object to which they are applied ; but I hold, and with the utmost confidence, that there is no general name so truly descriptive of a language as institution — none which takes into account so many of its essential characteristics, or marks so distinctly its place among the possessions of its community. The word, no doubt, offends some, and seems to others derogatory to the dignity of its subject ; but I believe that the more the real nature and office of language are understood, and the more established and consistent the linguistic views of the educated become, the more its truth will be acknowledged. I have used it often, partly in a kind of defiance to those views which are decidedly ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 151 opposed to what it implies ; I shall be ready to abandon it when its impropriety is proved by fact and argument. The great obstacle, as it seems to me, to the prevalence of consist- ent and correct views concerning language, is the ambiguity of the word language itself. It means two entirely different things : a capacity, and a product of the exercise of that capacity. Language in the former sense — that is, a power to express thought by means of signs, and to develop this instrumentality into a great and intricate and wonderful institution, having the most important bearings on the progress of the individual and of the race — is a gift, a quality, a part of human nature, and all that; but this power does not give a single human being his language : it does not issue in any thing except through an historical development, by a gradual accumulation of the results of its exercise. It makes eveiy human being capable of learn- ing and using any language. It implies also that every human being is capable of producing a language — only let circumstances be suffi- ciently favorable, and give him time enough : say a few hundreds or thousands of ordinary lives. But the English language, for instance, or any other, is not such a capacity : it is the concrete accumulated product of the efforts at expression of the English-speaking or other community and its ancestors, continued through thousands of years. Each such product has its history : that is to say, it has been wrought only in time, and under the infinitely varied modifying influence of historical circumstances ; each is difterent, therefore, from all the rest : a thousand different products, of every degree of diversity, but each one answering the same general purpose, and capable of being ac- quired and wielded by every normally constituted human being, of whatever race. An additional obstacle, of another character, is the (of course, un- conscious) craving of many people after lofty and poetic general views, views of which the very conception shall seem to exalt them. The doctrines set forth above are in many respects iconoclastic, and there- fore repellent to them. They want to regard man's acquisitions as direct gifts to him from his Maker, or as spontaneous outbursts of his noble nature. M. Renan says (" Origine du Langage," chap, iii.), "Languages have come forth completely formed from the very mould of the hiiman spirit, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter." Precisely so, we might answer ; the comparison has a more complete applica- bility than even the eloquent aiithor imagined ; the one thing has the same kind of truth as the other ; each is a beautiful myth, and it is hard to see why he who seriously accepted the former should not ac- cept the latter also. For one man, we have taken all the poetry out of life when we have made him see that it is not his God, rolling on mighty chariots through the sky, and hurling thunder-bolts at the demons, but mere prosaic meteorological forces, that cause the thun- der-storm ; we have perhaps robbed another of both religion and self- 152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. respect when we sliow him the earth gradually cooling and condens- ing, clothing itself with vegetable and animal life ; and man himself creeping np through the ages from a condition of savagery, gradually finding out his powers by their exercise, laying up and shaping insti- tutions— language among the rest — for traditional transmission, the knowledge and wisdom which are one day to raise him to the head- ship of Nature. We are all loath to put a truth regarded as humble in place of a brilliant error ; and slow to realize that, when the false coloring is taken oflf, what remains is worth more to us than what we thought we had before. There is, it is believed, a wide-spread impression that views of lan- guage of the kind advocated in this paper are " superficial ; " and that only those treat the subject ijrofouudly who lift it up either into the sphere of psychology, or on to the platform of the physical sciences, making linguistic study a department of the study of mind, or else of that of human organs and their functions. But that is a matter to be settled along with the truth or error of the views in question. If they are true, then those are superficial Avho, in a mistaken endeavor after profundity, abandon the true basis and method of their science. There are infinite mysteries involved in every act of language-making and language-using, with which the linguistic scholar, as such, has to do only secondarily, or not at all. To recur to our former example : the psychological processes whereby the rude conception of a hooh is formed, partly under instruction, and gradually developed into full- ness and accuracy, are one subject of study ; the physiological pro- cesses whereby one hears the word hook^ and then is able to reproduce it, by an imitative eftbrt of his own organs, is another ; the history of the civilization which has given birth to such product, and of the arts by which it is manufactured, is yet another ; and there are more, clus- tering about the same word : with the great problems of existence and human destiny looming up in the backgi-ound, as they do behind every thing that we attempt to investigate. But no one of these is the stand- ing-point of the linguist ; to him, the central fact is that there exists one audible sign hooh^ representing in a certain community a certain conception, for all purposes of communication ; used by hosts of people who know nothing about the history of books, nor about the operations of the organs of speech, nor about the analysis of mental processes — and answering their purposes as well as if they knew it all. The sign had a certain definite time, locality, and occasion of origin ; it was applied to its purpose for reasons which lay neither in men's mental nor in their physical nature, but in their historical conditions ; it has passed through certain changes of form and office on its way to our use. Here, now, is where the linguist takes his stand ; from this point of view every thing falls into its true position of relative promi- nence. Language is a body, not of thoughts, nor of physical acts, but of physically apprehensible signs for thought ; and the student of Ian- ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 153 guage begins his work upon the signs, their office, and their history. Between liim and the students of the other branches named there is a relation of mutual helpfulness. The history of words and the history of things cast constant and valued light uj^on one another. The sounds of language illustrate the articulate capacity of the organs of utterance, and their changes require for explanation a knowledge of phonetic science, as a special department of physiology and acoustics combined. And the contributions of language to psychology greatly outweigh in value those of psychology to the science of language, since the latter is the key to the historical development of human thought ; and since words are not the immediate product of processes of cognition, or abstraction, or induction, but only the result of vol- untary attempts to communicate those products. Most students of language, probably, believe all this, and act in their studies upon the belief; only they are too uncertain of their ground not to be often driven from it by the imposing claims of outsiders. About eight years ago (in the autumn of 1867), I put forth a con- nected and carefully-reasoned exhibition of my linguistic views, in a volume entitled " Language, and the Study of Language ; " in it I dealt only sparingly in controversial discussions of others' opinions, but left my own to recommend themselves by their concinnity, their accordance with familiar facts, and their power to solve the various problems which the science presents. Of the reception accorded to that volume I have no right to complain, and certainly I never have complained. But I have, at about that time and since, repeatedly taken occasion to examine narrowly and criticise freely the opposing views of others, and the arguments by which these were supported. And I have done it especially in the case of men of eminence and celebrity, men to whom the public are accustomed to look for guid- ance on this class of subjects. This, surely, was neither unnatural nor improper. What Smith, Brown, and Robinson, may say about language before ears that heed them not, is of the smallest conse- quence; but if Schleicher and Steinthal, Renan and Miiller, are teach- ing what appears to me to be error, and sustaining it by untenable arguments, I am not only authorized, but called upon, to refute them, if I can. The last of the gentlemen just named, however, in his pa- per in the Contemporary Review for January last (p. 312, et seq.), even while very flatteringly intimating that my habit of criticising only the most worthy of notice is appreciated, and hence that those criticised feel in a certain way complimented by it, appears to think that their greatness ought to shield them from such attacks. I have very little fear that the general opinion of scholars will sustain him in this posi- tion. Each controversy is to be judged, rather, on its own intrinsic merits. If I have failed to make out a tolerable case against those whom I have criticised, then, be they great men or small, I have been guilty of presumption, and deserve reproof; if, on the contrary. 15+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. I have fairly sustained my views against theirs, I am justified; and on that basis I am perfectly willing to submit to judgment. I do not think Prof. Muller the person best qualified to judge me fairly, because, in the first j^Iace, owing to his great fertility as a writer, and his position as accepted guide and philosopher, beyond any other living man, of the English-speaking people, I have felt called upon to controvert his views oftener than those of any other authority ; and yet more, in the second place, because he does not appear to have qualified himself by carefully examining what I have written. lie confesses to never having looked at my volume on lan- guage until a few weeks ago, when stirred up to it by the fact that my opinions had been quoted with approval in so conspicuous a quar- ter as the pages of the Contemporary. And, even now, he has evi- dently given it the most cursory examination. He has not observed that it was printed and published in England, instead of "in Amer- ica." He has not discovered that it is a " systematic " discussion of its subject. He is mainly impressed, even to amusement, with its similarity to his own work : as, indeed, resemblances at first glance are always more striking than ditferences : if he will continue his study, he will certainly find the likeness less and less apparent, and extending almost only to those facts and principles which are uni- versal property among philologists, neither he nor I having a patent- right to them ; Avhile the underlying diflferences of view and plan will become more and more conspicuous to him. And, most of all, he j^icks out and sets forth certain alleged inconsistencies in a manner which only great haste can explain and excuse, since every one of them would be removed by a consideration of the place and connec- tion of each passage quoted. He is even more than once so unlucky as to select a passage as showing me to hold a certain view riglit out of an argument in favor of the contrary view. For example (p. 310), in citing my expression that the facts of language " are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull," he overlooks the preced- ing clauses of the same sentence : " So far as concerns the purposes for which he [the linguistic scholar] studies them, and the results he would derive from them." The whole being a part of a statement intended to show that " the absence of reflection and conscious intent takes away from the facts of language the subjective character that would otherwise belong to them as products of volmitary action,'''' There are several other cases quite as palpable as this : it is useless to expose them here. I ought to be more than satisfied with the insignificant array of trifling errors (or supposed errors) of detail in my volume, drawn up by Prof. Muller on page 312 ; unfortunately, I could myself, if called upon, furnish a much heavier list. I only notice one, as being an im- portant evidence of the haste and cursoriness already referred to. My critic is shocked to find " the Phoenician alphabet still spoken of as ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 155 the ultimate source of the world's alphabets." Ultimate it certainly is, in the sense of being that alphabet from which the others derive themselves, in part through many intermediaries ; the point in which they all centre : but if Mr. Miiller had looked at the twelfth lecture, in which the Phcenician mode of writing is made the subject of more than a mei'e passing remark, he would have found its own derivative character most exi^licitly asserted and supported. If Prof Miiller has not been willing to read until just now the work in which I had independently and connectedly put forth my own system of views, he has not, of course, been in a position to estimate fairly the critical articles in which I have had the avowed polemical intention of trying whether they could stand their ground and make head against the opposing views of other writers. It might naturally enough seem to him that I was too pugnacious. But I cannot help questioning whether he has ever read those articles also, or knows them in any other way than as he knows the one recently used in the pages of the Contetnporary by Mr. Darwin: namely, in fragments and by the report of others. I am confident that he would not other- wise so misconceive their spirit, imagining that I am in the habit of making general depreciatory remarks about the scholars whose works I examine, and of casting hard words at them in place of arguments. He cites a little list of such words, which have caught his eye as he turned over my pages, and which he has conceived to be aj^plied to himself. I cannot help quoting a passage in which — and, so far as I know, in which alone — two or three of them actually occur. After explaining my own views as to the origin of language at some length, I add (p. 434) : " The view of language and of its origin which has been here set forth will, as I well know, be denounced by many as a low view : but the condemnation need not give us much concern. It is desirable to aim low, if thereby one hits the mark ; better hum- ble and true than high-flown^ pretentious^ and falseP The words here underscored are those complained of by Prof. Miiller: if they are applied to him, or to any one else, it must be by himself, not by me. Those to whom my works are really known will, I am sure, defend me against Mr. Miiller's unfortunate misapprehension. I do not judge men, but views, and especially the arguments by which views are upheld. If I deem the latter insufiicient or erroneous, I confess that I am apt to^speak my mind about them too plainly. If one finds a whole argument founded on the assumption that two and two are five, it is, of course, the true way to say that " Sir Isaac Newton would not have reasoned thus ; and, on the whole, it is safer for us to agree with Sir Isaac," rather than to declare the assumption false, and every thing built upon it unsound : yet, after all, if the latter is really true, and if the occasion for bringing out the truth is a sufficient one, and if the critic shows good faith, a desire to arrive at the truth and to treat his opponent with substantial justice, the shorter and blunter way is not 156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. to be too utterly condemnecl. And, as I have said above, I am ready to be strictly judged by the truth or error of my criticisms. The plainest of plain speaking is far less really injurious than mis- representation and detraction under the mask of extreme courtesy. Surely, so much wholesale depreciation and imputation of unworthy motives can hardly be found in all my writings as Mr. Miiller raises against me in this one article. I should not venture to accuse any one of being actuated in his literary work only by personal vanity and a lust for notoriety, except after the summing up of a long array of par- ticulars and deductions — I think not, even then. If I declared any one to be noisy about a subject in inverse proportion to his examination of it, I should at least want to refer to examples that illustrated the peculiarity. Does my critic put these accusations forward as his ex- ample of how a controversy should be conducted in a gentlemanly manner ? If I stated that any one " bitterly complained " that he was not answered by those he criticised, I should feel called upon to give chapter and verse for it ; and neither Mr. Miiller, nor any one else, can point out any such complaints on my part. I regard this as one more evidence of Mr. Miiller's careless and insufficient examination of my writings. He got his wrong impression, I imagine, from an impu- tation which Steinthal brings against me. I did blame Steinthal for undertaking, in his chapter on the origin of language, to report and refute the opposing views only of the last-century theorists, as if there were no more recent opinions on the subject which had a claim to be considered; and he was pleased to interpret it as a reproach to him for not mentioning myself ! I should think far worse of him and of Mr. Miiller than I do, if I supposed them incapable, in their cooler mo- ments, of understanding that a man may, without any improperly selfish feeling, be astonished, and even indignant, to see the views, which he holds in company with a great many others, quietly ignored ; or that he may hold them so heartily that he shall feel called upon to stand forth in their defense whenever they are unjustifiably passed over, or are assailed with what seem to him unsound arguments. My article upon Steinthal was so difierent from what Mr. Muller appears to assume it to be, when speaking of that scholar as having "retaliated with the same missiles with w^hich he had been assailed," that I can only infer that it, too, is unknown to him except by false report. In a chapter of his recent work, "Abriss der Sprachwissen- schaft," Prof. Steinthal seemed to me to have piled together about as many paradoxes as could well be gotten into so small a space, push- ing the psychological method to an extreme which was almost its own refutation. To pick out a few points: for a definition of language, he gives us " it is what it is becoming " — he declares the divine origin of language inadmissible, because no science, save the philosophy of religion, has any right to take account of God ; he holds primeval man — in distinction from the philosophers of the last century, who I ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 157 wanted to degrade him — to have been a being of " creative force, from which religious and moral ideas flowed forth unsought ; " his comparisons imply that language came into fully-developed being at once; he asserts the investigation of its origin to be "nothing else than this: to acquaint ourselves with the mental culture which imme- diately precedes the production of language, to comprehend a state of consciousness and certain relations of the same, conditions under which language must break forth," etc. ; he denies that a child learns, or can be taught, to speak ; he claims speech to be a capacity and activity like seeing and hearing ; and he winds up with the conclusion that there is no such thing as an origin of language, except as it origi- nates anew in every word we utter! Such views, expressed by one who stands so high in public estimation in Germany as Steinthal does, seemed to me to demand thorough examination. In my criticism, I went through the chapter, paragraph by paragraph, quoting in the author's own words nearly half of it, as I should estimate, and discuss- ing in detail the various j^oints made by him. Perhaps I carried on the discussion more vehemently than was necessary or desirable ; I hold myself open to all due reprehension on that score ; but that there were any personalities in it I utterly deny ; it was an argument throughout, if a polemical one ; it addressed itself only to the opinions it opposed, and the considerations by which these were supported. After nursing his wrath for two years, Steinthal came out in reply last summer with a volley of Billingsgate, pure and simple (Mr. Miiller gives, p. 313, some choice examples of it) ; he enters into no argument, he makes no defense — unless it may be called a defense that he seems dimly to claim that, being only engaged in a preliminary laying out of his subject, he ought to have been indulged in putting forth any thing he pleased with- out being called to account for it — he tears his hair and splits into two persons with rage and disdain, and calls his assailant a villain and a fool. To such a tirade, there is but one answer possible ; and to that I have no disposition to resort. Any one may judge from the speci- mens of Steinthal's views given above, whether they are so obscure from profundity that a man of less than extraordinary penetration cannot hope to understand them; to me, the only incomprehensible thing is, how a man of learning and acuteness should have arrived at them, and should have so little to say for them. I am perfectly will- ing to lay the acta of the controversy before the public just as they are — Steinthal's chapter, my criticism, and his retort, without a word further added in my own defense ; and I should be confident of a gen- eral verdict in my favor. Prof. Miiller fears that I am generally becoming convinced that I am unanswerable. Perhaps every one runs that risk who, after what seems to him due examination and deliberation, has come to hold a certain set of opinions with great confidence, and who, with his best endeavors, does not find among opposing views and arguments any 158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that can overbear his own. One thing I am certain about: namely, that neither MuUer nor Steinthal has answered me. As Mr. Muller appreciates so fully the danger in which I am placed, I wonder that he is not willing to put forth a hand to save me from it. I have with these gentlemen, so far as concerns my side, only a scientific contro- versy, sustaining my view of language against their contrary (and mutually conflicting) opinions. If I have been over- warm in assault, that is my disadvantage as well as my fault, as I thereby lay myself the more open to a counter-attack, having no right to claim to be treated more gently. But I have a right to protest against the con- troversy being made a personal instead of a scientific one ; against being met with the plea that I am too disrespectful to the magnates of science for my arguments to deserve attention. Such a reply is gener- ally, and justly, regarded as equivalent to a confession of weakness. It has, perhaps, been my misfortune not to appreciate sufliciently the services rendered by Prof. Muller to the science of language; cer- tainly, while fully acknowledging what he has done toward spreading a degree of knowledge of its facts, and, by \\\^ prestige and eloquence, attracting to them the attention of many who might have been reached in no other way, I might have been able to see that he helped either to broaden its foundations or to strengthen its superstructure. In ways and for reasons which I have sufficiently detailed in other places, his views have seemed to me wanting in solidity of basis, and in con- sistency and logical coherence. The difference between us is by no means of that slight character which, in his article, he gives it the air of being — " a slight matter of terminology," and the like ; it reaches to the bottom. Holding as I do, I cannot expect that his proposed work on " Language as the True Barrier between Man and Beast," whatever its general interest and readableness, will be a contribution of serious importance to the discussion of the subject. Nor, indeed, that, by any one, more can be made of this barrier than has been made of the various others, which a profounder zoological and anthropologi- cal science has thrown down, claiming that no impassable barrier, but only an impracticable distance, separates the two — and separates them just as effectively. If my view of the nature of language is the true one, the absence of speech in the lower animals is easily seen to be correlated with many other deficiencies incident to their inferiority of endowment; they have no civilization, no "institutions" of any kind; nothing that goes down by tradition, is taught and learned. Their means of communication is almost wholly intuitive, not arbitrary and conventional, which are the most essential and highest attributes of ours. I say " almost," because I think the want not absolute ; the rudiments of speech are just as much present in animals as, for ex- ample, those of the use of instruments ; on account of which latter, Mr. Muller pronounces the " use of tools " no barrier. Human language began when sign-making by instinct became sign- ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 159 making by intention ; when, for example, an utterance of pain or pleasure, formerly forced out by immediate emotion, was repeated imi- tatively, no longer as a mere instinctive cry, but for the purpose of in- timating to another, " I am (was, or shall be) suiFering or glad;" when an angry growl, once the direct expression of passion, was reproduced to signify disapprobation or threatening, and so on ; that is to say, when expression for personal relief was turned into expression for communication. The human intellect had the power to see what was gained by this means and to try it further ; and it could follow on and on, in the same course, until a whole language of signs was the result. It cannot be successfully maintained that no animals are capable of taking even the earliest steps in this process; if a dog stands outside a door, and barks or scratches, to attract attention, and then waits for some one to come and let him in, that is, in all essential respects, an act of language-making ; and the dog, and some other animals, can do much more than that. Here is the point to which the attention of naturalists should be directed, if they wish to determine liovv far the animals advance on the road to language ; to what extent are they able to turn signs — utterance, or gesture, or posture, or grimace — to account for the purpose, and with the intention, of intimating meaning. To determine what definite natural cries they have is comparatively nothing to the purpose, since these are not the analogue of human speech ; to put the inquiry on this ground, involves the capital error of attributing to the human voice a special relation to the apparatus of mental action, as its natural means of expression, instead of regard- ing utterance as merely that fonn of bodily activity which, on the whole, is most availajjle for expression, and which, therefore, after due experience of its advantages, is most availed of by man. The real expressiveness of cries and exclamations lies, not in their articulate elements, their vowels and consonants (if they have any), but in their tones ; and we keeji these same tones as auxiliaries of the very highest value to our articulate speech, when we wish to imjitress and persuade. Quite as much, I am sure, lies within the compass of the lower animals, in the way of intentional intimation of their wishes, as in the way of tool-using ; and hence the former is no more a " barrier " than the latter. But the animals can go no further in the direction of de- veloping their rude beginnings of expression into a language, than of working up their tools into a mechanical art, with all its appliances, simply because they have not the capacity ; and in this capacity of indefinite development, by accumulating the results of the exercise of his powers out of a condition originally as low, or welliiigh as low, as that of the animals, lies the distinction of man — a distinction which ought to satisfy the most exacting lover of his species. As regards " genei'al ideas," of which Mr. Mliller arrogates to him- self and his followers the monopoly, I confess to being wholly of the opinion of Mr. Ellis : " Animals, to my mind, have concepts, with quite i6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. as much right to be termed general, as any which I possess myself, the difference being one of degree." So long as Mr. Muller puts his exclusive claim solely on the ground that animals have no language, he must not expect to gain ovei* many adherents. "Animals cannot talk, because they have no general ideas ; they evidently have no gen- eral ideas, because they do not talk" — surely, as pretty a circle as ever was drawn with compasses; a mere duplication and bending around into a curved and reentering form of the dogma that thought is impossible without words ; that the intellect cannot apprehend re- semblances and differences, cannot comj^are and infer, without the bodily organs to make signs for it. If this is an exaltation of the value of language, it is an equal degradation of the power of the mind. — Contemporary Review. -♦♦^- THE CO^^SERVATIYE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. By Peof. a . F. A. KING, M. D. IF we should say that diseases prolong life, that without them man would be more liable than he is to sudden death, the announce- ment would be received by most medical thinkers, and by all those who have never studied pathology at all, as a transcendental idea, quite insusceptible of logical proof. But it is otherwise : that certain processes of disease are really conservative, and contribute to the longevity of the individual, is an absolute fact, as we shall now en- deavor to demonstrate. Let it be noted that almost from time immemorial physicians have recognized in the body a certain power of resisting injuries, and of re- turning spontaneously to health, when disordered ; and this they have called tlie power of Nature — the vis medlcatrix naturce. The growth of this idea culminated, during the sixteenth century, in the establish- ment of the so-called " Stahlian system of medicine." And, while the doctrines of Stahl were sustained and elaborated by many of the lead- ing physicians of his day,' we now know they were erroneous, for he maintained that there resided in the or2;anism a '•'• rational souV which, he affirmed, not only formed the body, but excited and directed all of its motions ; it was alleged to perceive intelligently the tendency of all external impressions acting upon the body, and to excite such mo- tions as would favor the beneficial and obviate the injurious influence of such impressions. Hence, generally speaking, diseases were con- sidered to be salutary efforts of the "presiding soul," and were to be ' By Perrault in France, Gaubius in Holland, Porterfield and Simpson in Scotland, Juncker in Germany, and by Nichols and Mead in England. CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 161 assisted, and not interrupted, by the interference of art ; it was, how- ever, admitted that the " rational soul," owing to surprise, fear, or despair, occasioned by too sudden or vehement impressions made upon it, would sometimes excite adverse motions which it was right to moderate. Prevailing only for a season, the system of Stahl was finally aban- doned as a visionary hypothesis ; it was deprecated, as leading physi- cians to neglect the use of remedies ; for its followers, trusting chiefly to the attention and wisdom of Nature, adopted the inactive mode of curing by expectation — la medecine expectmite, as the French term it. The use of opium, cinchona, mercury, and other potent medicines, was zealously opposed by the Stahlian physicians, and they Avere extreme- ly reserved also in the use of bleeding, emetics, and other evacuant remedies.' Before we dismiss this part of the subject, it may be worth while to note, as illustrating tlie not uncommon cyclical revolution of opin- ion on scientific questions that are yet unsettled, that the medical practitioners of to-day — at least the best or most successful of them — have adopted the identical mode of practice for promoting which the doctrine of Stahl was allowed to fall into disrepute. Nowadays, like the Stalilians of old, we have laid aside bleeding and emetics, mercury and evacuants, and, content with feeding the patient and contributing to his comfort, we leave the disease to take care of itself — we tinist again to the vis mecUcatrix natiirce. The physician of to-day who should boast of curing a disease (unless, indeed, it were an ague, with quinine), would be considered, by his more highly-informed fellow- practitioners, as profoundly ignorant of the recent advances made in the science of pathology. Another erroneous hypothesis, not differing very widely fi-om the idea of Stahl, and which may be named and dismissed before we pro- ceed, is that which supposes the existence, in the nervous system, of some tangible, central point of nerve-matter, from which, as from a seat of government, mandates are issued to control the motions and changes that take place in every quarter of the organism ; and which leads us to infer that processes of disease, since, as it would seem, they are allowed to take place by this governing " central point," would be rather protective than- suicidal to the individual. This view — never very widely acknowledged — received its final death-blow by the pub- lication of Virchow's " Cellular Pathology," in which it was shown that the entire organism, in all its parts, is really composed of an in- definite number of individual centres, in fact cells, each of which has a life of its own, performs its own functions, and dies its own death : it is the invisible motions of these millions of microscopic entities^ ' Stahl's principal work, in which his system was displayed in its most matured form, was entitled " Theoria Medica vera, Physiologiam et Pathologiam sistens." Printed at Halle, in I'ZOS. TOL. VII. — 11 1 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, ■which, in the aggregate, constitute the visible changes and actions which we say characterize life. The anatomist has never discovered any " central point," nor the microscopist any " single cell," which governs the motions of the rest. Every supposed " central point " has been found, on microscopic examination, to split up into innumer- able millions of centres, or individual cells. Moreover, in plants, in which the processes of life appear to be directed quite as intelligently as they do in animals, no trace of a nervous system has yet been demon- strated. To many of my readers it would perhaps be a much more accept- able explanation of the (what seem to be) inteIlir/entli/-diYected pro- cesses going on in living bodies, than either of those already men- tioned, to say that they must be ascribed to the rational will of a Creator iirging an unconscious organism, by the laws he has ordained, to perform certain acts necessary to its preservation. But, as the absolute scientists and those who religiously believe in a Creator are just now crossing swords, I will not press this third explanation, but rather choose to sustain the position I have assumed on the broader middle ground of natural philosophy. To return, therefore, to the main proposition, namely, that organic diseases are naturally designed for, and do in fact accomplish, the prolongation of life, it will be observed that I have purposely omitted from consideration those other and more simple kinds of derangement which we call functional diseases. The conservative use of many of these latter has been universally recognized. The vomiting that oc- curs when poisons or indigestible matters have been introduced into the stomach, does good, by removing the offending substances. In like manner, the functional derangement of cough secures the expul- sion of irritating gases or powders that have been inhaled, and of the accumulations of mucus that occur in every bronchial catarrh, and which would otherwise clog the tubes and induce suffocation. The watery diarrhoeas that arise from indigestible articles having passed into the intestine, cure themselves by washing away the irritating materials, and the intelligent physician, instead of curbing the de- rangement, assists it with a laxative, and so helps Nature with the cure. When, however, we come to speak of the more permanent struct- ural changes, which neither Nature nor art can remove, and which have seemed to produce premature death, scarcely any one will ac- knowledge that the processes which develop them are at all conserva- tive. Yet they are. And the error of supposing they are not has arisen chiefly from a total misunderstanding as to the 7iature of dis- ease. A very prevalent idea, if not indeed a universal one, seems to be, that disease is a separately-existing entity — a thing independent of the body and inimical to it. We constantly hear, for example, of an individual being "attacked" with pneumonia; of an army " as- CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 163 sailed " with small-pox ; of a city " assaulted " with cholera, and of its inhabitants being decimated by the " stealthy ravages " of con- sumption. Now, so considered, there is no such thing as disease. Who has ever seen it isolated from the body ? — And when, in accord- ance with this view, we ask the question, " What is disease ?" there is but one answer, namely : Disease is the tertiary product of two fac- tors : 1. Of impressions or stimuli acting upon the body from without ; and, 2. Of the reactions performed by the organism in response to the impression of such stimuli. The tertium quid following the action without, and the reaction within, is the thing " disease." Exactly in the same manner a stone thrown against a pane of glass makes a hole in it ; yet, when we try to consider the hole as a separately-existing entity, we find it does not so exist. If it did, we might take away the pane of glass, and leave the hole by itself, but this is impossible. The aperture in the glass is a tertium quid resulting from two factors, viz., 1. The action of the stone from without ; and, 2. The reaction of the glass when struck by the projected missile. Furthermore, it is evident that the quality of the resulting tertiary product can be made to vary indefinitely, either by varying the character of the action (i, e., by modifying the shape, size, direction, velocity, etc., of the stone), or by altering the reactive properties of the glass (i. e., by modifying its thickness, elasticity, inclination, etc.). Equally so the quality of dis- ease will vary in difi*erent individuals in accordance with the varia- tion in the quality of their reactive powers, as w^ell as in conformity with the character of the actions by which the reactions are elicited. Now, since the external stimuli which act upon the body in the manner we have described only produce their efiect in living organ- isms (for in dead bodies and inorganic matter they do not elicit simi- lar reactions), it is evident that the tertiary products which we call organic disease are purely the result of vital processes, and for this reason alone must be conservative, as are all the phenomena of life. Once dispute this and we should have to adopt the other alternative, that the organism would be better oflf if the reactive powers with which we find it to be endowed were annulled ; and this conclusion would compel us to acknowledge the possibility of our thinking out an improvement upon Nature — a monstrous assumption, which no student of science will for a moment entertain. In a condition of health the various processes going on in the body, which we call vital phenomena, are nothing more than a series of inter- nal reactions provoked and maintained in obedience to the impression of surrounding conditions that act upon the organism from without. The reactive powers possessed by the healthy organism are perfectly natural to it, and, so long as the external stimuli impressing the body from without are also perfectly natural, the resulting tertium quid \i\!\\. simply consist of a naturally-constructed, a physiologically-developed organism. And if we now ask ourselves, "What is the use or design .164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of organs and structures that have thus followed a perfectly normal course?" we are soon able to discover that there exists between the developed organs and the external stimuli which provoked their development a mutual relation of such a kind that one is perfectly adapted to the other; in a perfectly natural state, physiological organ- isms are nicely adjusted to the external conditions surrounding them, in which it is natural for them to live, and which require of the organs developed just such functions as their formation and power adapt them to perform. Adaptation of the organism to its environment is, therefore, the grand purpose of the peculiarities of structure observed in diiferent animals and plants. It is almost needless to present illus- trations ; they occur without number, and are quite apparent to the most superficial observer. The digestive organs are diflerently con- structed in the herbivorous and carnivorous animals, and are thereby adapted to the different kinds of food on which the animals subsist. The gills of lish and the lungs of mammalian quadrupeds are struct- urally and functionally unlike ; the differences adapting the breath- ing-apparatus of each animal to the particular kind of resjDiratory medium in which it is to live. And so of all other organs. Now, if, instead of permitting the organism to remain living in its natural state, we change the surrounding natural conditions to others that are unnatural, the action of these latter will excite in the organ- ism corresponding unnatural reactions : at first an unnatural modifi- cation of function will ensue ; and in time, if the modified functions are in this manner continued, we observe a corresponding modification of structure to follow. But the modifications of structure, thus in- duced, are nothing else than organize diseases ; they are departures from the physiological standard of health. And if we ask, " What is the conservative use and designed jiurpose of these unnatural devia- tions?" the answer is, that the modifications of structure adapt the affected organs to modified functions that they have been called upon to perform^ and mould the organism to new conditions that have been brought to act upon it j just as variation in the physiological construc- tion of different animals adapts them to the vai-ious differences of sur- rounding media in which they are designed to live. Pathology, there- fore, is really nothing else than modified physiology. Physiological development is the evolution of organs and the growth of organisms under the impression of natural external conditions; pathological development is the evolution of organs and the growth of organisms under the impression of wnnatural external conditions. Adaptation of structure to function — of organisms to surrounding media — is the designed conservative purj)ose of both kinds of growth. Furthermore, as no two human organisms ar« ever, in any particu- lar, precisely similar, and as between organisms that have followed a strictly physiological development, and those whose development has been decidedly pathological, there are stiil others of intermediate CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 165 character, whose deviation from physiological and approach to patho- logical development have been less decided, or extremely slight, it is evident there exists between the two kinds of growths no well-defined line of demarkation ; physiology and pathology run gradually into each other. It is not possible to say where one ends and the other becrins. That this must be the true state of the case is unmistakable when we consider that the change of external conditions from natural to unnatural may be in any — the slightest or the most extreme — degree. Thus we frequently observe modifications of structure induced by exceptional conditions that have been brought to act upon the body, of so trivial a character that they can hardly be called diseases, while at the same time they are in some measure anomalous deviations from the typical standard of the species ; but in these, as in the higher grades of structural modification, it will be seen that the conservative purpose of adaptation is carried out. For example, the muscles in the right arm of the blacksmith, those of the leg-calf in the limbs of the dancer, and the crural adductors of the jockey, undergo a process of increased growth (a physiological hypertrophy) by which they become adapted to the increase of function imposed on them. So the thick- ened epidermis of a laborer's palm adapts the hand — by protecting the softer tissues underneath from being bruised — to the rough han- dling of manual instruments ; an adaptation altogether wanting in one unaccustomed to labor, as evidenced by the inflamed and blistered condition of his hands when first beginning to practise such exercises.* By the same kind of thickening and induration the finger-ends of the violinist become adapted to sustain without inconvenience prolonged pressure upon the strings of his instrument. When the main artery of a limb has been obstructed, or tied by the surgeon's ligature, we find the nutrition of the tissixes beyond is supported by the blood find- ing its way through the smaller anastomosing arteries, and in time we observe these smaller arterial branches to become considerably en- larged, thus adapting themselves to the increased amount of blood they have been called upon to transmit. In cases where obstruction to the arterial circulation is more general, so that it requires an in- creased heart-force to pump the blood through its channels, we obsei've the heart itself to become larger, and thus its increase of structure (like the blacksmith's arm) is adapted to the required increase of func- tion. The head of the thigh-bone, when irreducibly dislocated, be- comes surrounded in its new position with fibro-ligamentous and mus- cular structures, which so far resemble an articulation as to permit the patient to walk about. Similarly in ununited fractures, we find the ends of the broken bone, when the muscles attached to them cause ' If it should here be alleged that the " inflammation " is the real disease, and that it accomplishes no good, we answer : Inflammation is the process by which the mechanical injury of contusion is to be repaired. It restores the part, just as the "adhesive inflam- mation " of surgeons heals up the cut of an incised wound. i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the fragments to move one against the other, become covered with cartilage and encapsulated with fibrous and ligamentous tissues, so as to form the " false joint " of surgeons. Mucous membranes, when con- tinuously exposed to the air, adapt themselves to their new situation by becoming covered with a layer of epidermis closely resembling skin. Of this we have a good illustration in long-standing cases of procidentia uteri^ where the vaginal mucous membrane is often con- tinuously exposed. The vegetable world also furnishes numerous illustrations showing how plants adapt themselves, by modification of structure, to new conditions in which they have been placed. The geranium in our win- dow, instead of growing in its naturally vertical direction, disposes its twigs and branches obliquely on one side, thereby adapting them, their leaves, blossoms, etc., the better to receive the rays of light that come in slanting through the window. Plants kept more or less in the dark, have a deficiency of color ; they become bleached and white, but this lessened opacity of their skin, this increased transparency of tis- sue, enables them to make the most of what little sunshine is allotted them. The sprouts of an onion or potato, when kept in a dark chamber, grow to an unusual length, and, although this elongation can accom- plish no good when the bulb is packed in a barrel, or housed in a cellar, still it is evident that the plant is obeying the same laws of adaptive growth by which, when buried deeply in the earth, its sprouts increase in length until they reach the sunny surface of the soil. Now, while these instances (and many others might be added) cer- tainly furnish unequivocal evidence of a disposition on the part of organs and organisms to adapt themselves to new conditions in which they have been placed, and to altered functions they have been re- quired to execute, yet it must be admitted they exhibit little or no proof that those other organic alterations, which we regard as fatal diseases, are imbued with the same conservative design. In fact, to meet the issue at once — to strangle the serpent before we take out his fangs — it is necessary to dispose of the objection that organic diseases, structural formations resulting from pathological development, pro- duce physical pain, and lead to death ; for that they do so is the com- mon belief. To meet this objection it is simply required to follow out the anal- ogy, already alleged, between structures resulting from j^hysiological development and those produced by development that is pathological. That the causes and objects of the two kinds of growths are the same, has been previously intimated. We proceed by calling attention to (what may surprise those who have not given the subject proper con- sideration) the great fatality attending physiological evolution: Very young animals, and indeed young plants, are peculiarly liable to die before reaching maturity. This is especially the case in animals, CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 167 at least during the first few days of life, but the liability continues, though in a gradually-decreasing ratio, until physiological develop- ment is complete. Breeders of stock know very well the difficulty of rearing the young; and even in wild animals that live in a perfectly natural state, untrammeled by domestication, a good proportion of new-born individuals perish in early life. Gardeners and agricultu- rists drop more seeds in a place (of corn " in a hill," for instance) than they intend shall remain as plants, knowing that in the earlier stages of growth many of the " seedlings " will die ; and, if more shall remain than is advisable, they are afterward "thinned" by hand. Surely every mother of a family knows the difficulty of rearing children, and our "bills of mortality" sufficiently attest the immense /"aia^zYy at- tending physiological development in the hitman family . Now, while in each of the instances I have cited the causes and mode of death are similar to or at least analogous with each other, it is only in the case of our own species that, generally speaking, we say death has been caused hy disease. In the young chick, the wild ani- mal, and the seedling plant, we are content to say they die because they are young, or " tender." The truth is, that death has been due, in each case, to an arrest of, or interference with, the quite normal pro- cess of physiological developm.ent, and to put this conception to a fur- ther test we may begin still a little earlier in life by studying embry- onic development. In the case of oviparous animals, for example, we know many of the eggs never come to perfection ; the young embryos they contain die during incubation. And while the pathologist, if he were to delve with his microscope into the secret physiology and pa- thology of the growing embryo, might find difierent membranes and organs fatally afiected (congested or inflamed) according to the dififer- ent stages of development at which the mortal disturbance took place, it would seem very odd, in case it should happen to be the rudimentary lungs of the growing embryo that were found specially congested, if he should say the eg^ had been " attacked " with pneumonia (inflam- mation of the lungs) ; or, if he should find the heart or intestines con- gested, how queer it would sound to say the egg had died from an at- tack of carditis (inflammation of the heart), or enteritis (inflammation of the intestines) ! yet these so-called diseases are just as much causes of death in the egg as in the child after it is born. The relevancy of the facts mentioned to the question at issue — the bearing of the argument — is this: oi'ganisms undergoing physiological evolution, and those in which pathological evolution is going on, are alike liable to be fatally aflfected by certain disturbing causes that in- terfere with the typical progress of development in each ; hence the great mortality incident to childhood and early life is strictly analo- gous with the mortality attending organic diseases in the adult. This analogy may now be further sustained by considering what these disturbing causes really are ; and here I may premise they will i68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. be found to be the same both in physiological and pathological develop- ment. Most prominent among the conditions necessary to secure the nor- mal progress of physiological development is warmth; and nothing more decidely interferes with it, or more quickly arrests it, than ex- posure to cold. In fact, an elevated temperature is the initial power — the first mover of the developmental process in all organisms, vege- table as well as animal. It is solar heat that forces the seed to germi- nate, the plant to bud, and the flower to bloom. Without warmth the fecundated egg of the oviparous animal would ever remain an inert mass ; hence the snake deposits her germs in a dunghill of rotting vegetable matter where they may be warmed by the heat of fermen- tation. The ostrich intrusts her egg almost entirely to the sun-baked sand of the African desert ; and birds in general incubate for days or weeks to supply the necessary heat for securing the development of their eggs. Fish inhabiting waters that are deep and cold, seek shal- lower and warmer streams in which to deposit their spawn. The dif- ference between the warm and the cold seasons of the year, as regards the prevalence of reproduction, in both animals and plants, is familiar to every one. But, besides heat being the primiim mobile of normal evolution, it is equally necessary to maintain it when already begun. Exposure to cold is fatal. The shivering of young animals — their great liability to become chilled on exposure -to a dejiressed temperature — has been observed by every one ; and in the breeding of domestic animals, as in the cultivatiou of j)lants, there is probably no more potent source of mortality thaninsufiicient warmth ; and, further, this mortality is found to be more prevalent during unusually cold seasons. Now, the young of our own species form no exception to this rule ; they, too, are liable to suiFer a fatal arrest of pliysiological development on being exposed to cold. Thus, in a statistical inquiry as to the average number of deaths at different seasons, and at diffei'ent ages, from a table pre- pared by M. Quetelet, of Brussels, it appears that, during the first month of infant life, the external temperature has a very marked in- fluence ; for the average mortality during each of the three summer months being 80, that of January is nearly 140, and the average of February and March 125. This is confirmed by the result obtained by MM. Villerme and Milne-Edwards in their researches on the mortality of the children conveyed to the foundling hospitals in the different towns in France ; for they not only ascertained that the mortality is much the greatest during the first three months in the year, but also that it varies in different parts of the kingdom according to the rela- tive severity of the winter.^ Additional proof of the disastrous influence of cold in early life, and, by-the-way, an explanation of the apparent natural defect in grow- ' See Carpenter's " Human Physiology," American edition of 1856, pp. 419, 420. CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 169 ing organisms implied by the existence of a liability to be fatally in- jured by it, may be found in the fact that Nature has amply provided for maintaining all very young animals at an elevated temperature, and protecting them from external cold. Note, first, how animals usually breed during the seasons of spring and summer; and observe, further, how the bird feathers her nest for the reception of her young, and shelters them under her wings, at the same time imparting heat by the contact of her own warm body. Rabbits and other animals tear off the fur from their own skins in order to provide a warm bed for the young while the parent is away in search of food. Frequently, too, animals are born in broods, or litters, especially those that are nearly nude at birth, and incapable of generating heat by exercise, and thus warmth is generated, or at least maintained, by the crowding to- gether of a number of individuals in a small space. Whether the liability, on the part of young animals, to be inju- riously influenced by cold, is owing to their vital forces being so taken up with the process of growth as to leave a smaller surplus of vitality to resist the chemical agency of a diminished temperature, or whether it is that the lack of muscular exercise in them prevents the develop- ment of heat, we may not be able to determine ; but this question is immaterial so far as the fact itself is concerned, that cold acts injuri- ously. It seems not improbable that the liability to be unusually af- fected by cold may depend upon rapidity of organic change. Thus those organs are most readily afiected whose evolution is in most rapid progress ; hence the digestive organs of the child and its pulmonary tissues are more apt to suffer from a depressed temperature than its reproductive organs ; the former are undergoing rapid development^ the latter are in a state of almost complete quiescence. Similarly the increased rate of tissue-change incident to violent activity of function appears to increase the susceptibility to cold ; thus any one who has unusually exercised certain muscles will, after exposure, find those muscles become painful, " stiff," tender, and inflamed, Avhile the re- maining muscles of the body will have escaped any such manifesta- tions. Buds that have withstood the severest cold of winter are often killed by the late but more moderate frosts of spring, because at this latter period they are in a state of more rapid tissue-change. The ^^^^ of the fowl will bear a considerable degree of cold withoiit losing its vitality so long as its evolutionary processes are at a stand-still ; but, when the rapid changes of structure incident to embryonic develop- ment have been set up, exposure even to the ordinary atmospheric temperature of spring and summer, if at all prolonged, is suflicient to destroy its life. The greatest security against injury, therefore, from exjiosure to cold, would seem to be (comparative) structural stability — organic rest. But, in whatever manner to be explained, the fact remains that pro- cesses of physiological development may be disastrously embarrassed 170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, by the want of a continuous sufficiently elevated temperature, and fatally injured by direct exposure to cold. It now remains to show that organs undergoing pathological evo- lution (conservative structural modification) are affected exactly in the same manner by exposure to cold. Speaking, first, theoretically, we find organs thus circumstanced are the seat of an exalted rate of tissue-transformation, of a change additional to that which belongs to the ordinary process of waste and repair, and therefore we should a 2>}'iori exjDCct to find in them the same liability to inflammation, on exposure, as was observed in organs being rapidly developed jDhysio- logically. Speaking practically, we find, a fortiori^ that this is actu- ally the case. What is more common, with a patient who is the subject of some chronic organic disease, than to be suddenly cut ofl" by the occurrence of acute inflammation in the afiected organ after exposure to cold ? Every medical practitioner can answer. In remarking upon the influence of cold as a cause of mortality. Dr. Carpenter, in his " Human Physiology," * refers to the Report of the Registrar-General for March, 1855, in which it appears that the rate of mortality, not only in infants and aged persons, but also in those afiected with chronic disease, increases during the winter months, and diminishes in summer. The deaths in many instances (in old persons) were due to pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, and various chronic diseases ; so that Di\ Carpenter is led to observe that " cold brings quickly to a fatal termination many maladies which it does not directly induce." Nay, the acute inflammatory attack, imder such circumstances, is often enough tlie first intimation, to the patient, and perhaps to the physi- cian, of the existence of organic change in the afiected organ. A most common error, and, as far as I know, a universal one, is to date the real beginning of the disease from the acute inflammation, and as- cribe any recognizable lingering symptoms to the acute attack having " lapsed into the chronic form ; " when, in fact, the slow, chronic changes of structure were present only in their naturally-designed latent form,* long before, and were only made manifest to the patient by the disturbing action of cold. As we have seen that, in organisms undergoing physiological de- velopment, those organs are most liable to be attacked with inflam- mation after exposure, whose rate of growth happens to be at the time most rapid, so in after-life it is not all the organs in the body that are liable to inflame after exposure, but only those in which pathological evolution is taking place. And this explains why it is, when several persons have been equally exposed, that one suflers from acute pneu- monia, another from acute nephritis (kidney-inflammation), another from acute arthritis (joint-inflammation), while some altogether escape ' American edition of 1856, p. 864. " That processes of patliological development can be latent, like pbysiological evolu- tion, will be shown hereafter. CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF OBGANIC DISEASE. 171 any unpleasant effect : these last were organically sound before ex- posure, and the same after it. In external, visible parts, that are the seat of injury or disease, or that have been wounded by the surgeon's knife, and which are undergoing the process of tissue-repair, we see redness and congestion follow exposure to cold, and often enough hear the patient not only complain of pain, but date its commencement from known exposure, and express his belief — reached as if by instinct — that " cold had settled on the part." Again, as young animals instinctively dread cold, and as Nature provides them means for warmth, so in individuals undergoing evolu- tion of a pathological kind, we observe a like instinctive dread of ex- posure, and a liability to be easily " chilled," while means of protec- tion are also instinctively resorted to. The extra quilt at night ; the heavy wrapper during the day ; the thick woolen under-garments ; the flannel " chest-protector ; " the late fires in spring, and early ones in autumn, so necessary for the comfort of the invalid — what are they but imitations of the means supplied by Nature for tlie preser- vation of warmth in young animals undergoing physiological de- velopment ? We have further proof that organs undergoing pathological evolu- tion are liable to be disturbed by cold in the manner referred to, and also that the existence of the evolutionary process is itself one of the conditions without which (in the absence of others) inflammation, after exposure, would not take place, in the fact that attacks of inflamma- tion occur repeatedly in the same organ. Thus, to take a familiar il- lustration, it has been long ago observed that some people are liable to repeated attacks of inflammation of the lungs (pneumonia). Andral records a case of a patient who had fifteen attacks in eleven years ; Chomel has seen ten recurrences, J. P. Frank eleven, and Rust has re- corded twenty-eight attacks, in the same individuah A patient of Ziemssen's had four attacks in five years. It is also observed that, of the two lungs, the one first afiected is most liable to suffer from subse- quent attacks. In thirty-five cases of recurrence collected by Grisolle, the return of the disease was noted twenty-five times in the lung first affected. In the other ten, the disease changed sides {see Keynolds's " System of Medicine," vol. iii,, p. 613). The limits of the present paper precluding a very prolonged argu- ment, we leave this part of the subject, hoping that what has been said is sufficient to account for the mortality of pathological processes which, we have said, are designedly conservative. We may now further follow out the analogy between physiological and pathological evolution, by observing that structures undergoing pathological development {conservative organic modification), like those that are being developed physiologically, manifest an intrinsic tendency, when undisturbed in their progress, to pursue a fixed, typical course to their naturally-designed termination. When 2^€rmitted to 172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. pursue such a typical course, the observed structural changes are ex- ceedingly slow, and are attended with little or no physical sujfering. Let us speak, fii'st, of physiological evolution. And, to begin, let us ask, " How shall we know when physiological development is fol- lowing its natural course, and when it is not ? " There are two strik- ing characteristics which can always here be taken as guides, viz., slowness of organic change, and latency. The physiological growth of tissue is always gradual in its progress, both as regards change of shape, bulk, and variation in physical properties. These go on with an insidious progression that is, for the most part, quite imperceptible to ordinary methods of observation. Natura non facet saltern. Ab- rupt changes of shape, size, etc., incident to function, are, of course, quite common, but these are only temporary, and quite distinct from the more stable organic changes constituting growth. Indeed, it may be taken as an invariable rule that structural changes of any consid- erable extent, that occur abruptly and remain permanent, are always unnatural, and are to be attributed to the action, direct or indirect, of some disturbing cause. Secondly, we notice that the natural course of physiological devel- opment is characterized by painlessness — unconsciousness on the part of the individual that any tissue-changes at all are taking place. As the height of perfection in function, as in digestion, for example, con- sists in ioinorance or unconsciousness of the existence of the oro;ans performing it, so is it an invariable quality of every perfectly natural organic change tliat it should take place without the knowledge of the individual — I mean without any knowledge derived from unpleasant sensations. No argument is needed to support this statement; we will only add that, when physiological organic changes are accompanied with pain, it is always attributable to some injurious influence leaving caused the changes that are taking place to deviate from their natural and typical course. A third characteristic of undisturbed physiological evolution is this : the developed organs, when their evolution is complete, and indeed during their development, present a typical uniformity of structure ; that is to say, organisms whose development has been per- fectly natural, provided they are of the same age, sex, species, etc., are alike ; and the several organs of different individuals present a uniform standard of size, shape, and functional power, any slight exist- ing differences being so inappreciable as to evade ordinary methods of observation. This uniformity of type, however, will only be ob- served in wild animals that have led a strictly natural life, untram- meled by domestication, such as ocean and river fish that have not been removed from their natural waters, wild birds, reptiles, insects, and the untamed mammalian animals. So exactly similar in such in- stances are the nutritive changes of waste and repair, growth and de- velopment, that not only are the size and shape uniformly the same, CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 173 but even the color of the exterior presents the same unvarying uni- formity of shade. The spots on the leopard and on the hutlerfly's wing, the speckles and stripes on the reptile, the scales of the fish, the plumage of the bird, and the fur of quadrupeds, are tinted so pre- cisely alike in diflerent individuals of the same species, age, etc., that we find it difficult to detect the slightest variation. Any appreciable deviation from the standard type must always be attributed to the action of some unusual cause disturbing the normal course of evolu- tion, unnumbered instances of which appear among domesticated ani- mals, where, in fact, uniformity is the exception and variety quite common. Now, to go back to pathological evolution, we find the three quali- ties of yraduality, latency, and uniformity of type, to belong also to it, i. e,, when it has followed its undisturbed typical course. We ob- serve, however, that graduality — slowness of organic change — is com- mon only to so-called chronic pathological changes ; in acute organic diseases (those that we have seen destroy life) the change of tissue is rapid ; hence an organ undergoing pathological modification that be- comes the seat of an acute process (of an acute inflammation) can no longer be said to have followed its designed typical course, and we can no longer anticipate the same attaining of the pathological evolu- tion to its designed conservative, typical completion. The acute dis- ease is accompanied with fever, hence with rapid wasting and reduced assimilation of food; it leaves the whole organism reduced in vital power, and there remain behind inflammatory products which require to be removed ; the normal progress of the gradual pathological de- velopment has been arrested ; the vitality of the part has been weak- ened ; there is set up in it a tendency to degeneration or local death. Indeed, time would fail us to enumerate all the injurious consequences, immediate and remote, general and local, that are liable to follow even a single acute inflammatory attack. No wonder, when such attacks occur more than once, or are repeated over and over again, that the pathologically developing organ fails of reaching its designed conservative termination ; it need never surprise us, under such cir- cumstances, that the final result is degeneration and death instead of preservation and repair. In the several instances (very simjDle ones) of admitted conserva- tive modifications of structure previously mentioned, we observed that time was an important element. The enlargement of anastomosing arteries that took place after the main vessel had been tied, did so by slow degrees ; so did the hypertrophy of the heart that followed more general arterial obstruction; so did the transformation of mucous membrane into skin when exposed to air ; and so do all conservative modifications of structure when they have been allowed to pursue, undisturbed, their designed typical course. Secondly, when typical pathological evolution follows its designed 174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. course, it is devoid of symptoms, latent ; the tissue-changes going on do not make known their existence by pain or unpleasant sensations. Did sj)ace permit I might quote without limit from medical authorities to prove not only the occurrence, but the quite frequent occurrence, of orfjanic chauses of structure in their " latent form." The index of almost any text-book on " Pathology," or " Practice," will direct the reader to ample evidence on this point. I will, however, cite one or two well-known authors. Prof. George B. Wood, of Philadelphia, remarks ^ that " sometimes inflammation " (he must refer to sub-acute or chronic inflammation) "runs its accustomed course, so far as relates to its effects upon the textures in which it is seated, with scarcely any of those evidences by which its existence in the interior of the body is usually detected, such as j!?a^/^, disordered function, and constitu- tional disturbance. Under such circumstances it is said to be latent, and often escapes detection." '^ Prof. Austin Flint (" Practice of Medicine," pp. 307, 308) refers to cases of what he calls "sj^ontaneous" or "idiopathic endocarditis" (organic modification of the lining membrane of the heart) " which present the physical signs and anatomical characters of the disease icith- out the first symptom having been noticed either hy the patient or his physician,'''^ Tlie terms " latent pleurisy," " latent phthisis," " latent pneumonia," etc., are familiar to every pathologist. With regard to this latter disease I cannot refrain from inserting one other citation from the "Works of Dr. Thomas Addison" [see "New Sydenham So- ciety's Publications," article "Pneumonia," p. 11). Dr. Addison re- marks that Laennec referred to pneumonia xoithout symptoms as of rare but occasional occurrence, and adds : " I am convinced that these reputed deviations and exceptions, regarded as obscure, are of ex- tremely frequent occurrence ; and that they are met with at every period of life, and in every variety of constitution ; and that they are very far indeed from being limited to old persons, or to what have been called complicated cases. . . . Cases with symptoms are in truth themselves the exceptions in a pathological sense ; and, although most frequently met with in practice, are in fact cases of complication." This most apt statement is replete with wisdom, and true to Nature. Truly, the simplest form of the disease, that in which the tissue- changes are gradual (chronic), and without symptoms (latent), is rarely met with in practice, because the pathological evolution has followed so closely its designed course undisturbed, that the physician is never ' "Practice of Medicine," vol. i., p. 38. '^ Dr. Wood, in here using the term " inflammation," is still possessed with the old error (Jong ago set aside by the researches of Dr. Handfield Jones and others), that the growth of fibrous (connective) tissue (the supposed " effect of inflammation upon the textures in which it is seated "), is always due to inflammation. Really this abnormal growth of fibrous tissue is a " new formation," the result of an evolutionary process, and is found after death from inflammation only because it preceded the infiammatory process, and was by this latter brought to a fatal termination. CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 175 sent for and never needed any more than he would be in a case of un- disturbed physiological evolution. Both are more or less precarious conditions, liable to disturbance and complication ; but, while t^wcom- plicated and imdisturbed, they are both equally conservative, equally devoid of symj^toms, and seldom come under the surveillance of the practitioner. Thus the supposed " insidious stealth " and " fatal sub- tlety" of organic disease is, in reality, the normal latency of typical pathological evolution. It is almost unnecessary to add that latent changes are of necessity slow ; hence the two qualities of chronicity and latency go hand-in- hand, and both are wanting in supervening acute inflammatory com- plications. The third quality which we have said belongs to organs developed (or developing) jihysiologically is, conformity of structure to a fixed typical standard. It may, perhaps, be less easy to point out instances of conformity to a fixed type of sti'ucture in pathological formations, for the reason, among others, that pathological evolutionary processes are more often interrupted and made to deviate from their intended type than those which are strictly physiological. Organisms follow the course of physi- ological evolution easily and happily; jjathological evolution is some- thing superadded, and, while conservative, is still the result of unnat- ural external surroundings, and is therefore less easy and auspicious. Furthermore, we may be less familiar with the finished standard of structure which a typical pathological growth is aiming to reach, than we are with one that is physiological, because the former are more rare than the latter, and hence less frequently observed and studied; physiology occurs in every organism; pathology only in some. Physiological organisms may be observed in great numbers together; pathological ones are exceptional and isolated. The typi- cal standard of physiological develoj)ment is known, because its existence has been believed in and consequently searched for ; the standard type of pathological new formations is not so exactly known, because its existence has not been so universally acknowl- edged, and hence not so diligently sought after. Again, organisms undergoing pathological evolution frequently die from the direct efiect or remote results of acute inflammation, and here the designed type of structure is obscured by the inflammatory process, so that what it would have been in the absence of inflam- mation cannot always be made out. True, as we have before seen, organisms undergoing physiological evolution die in the same way, and therefore present the same obscurity. In the latter case, however, we observe that, while the designed type of development is obscured in the inflamed parts, the remainder of the organs have pursued their physiological development unimpaired. In pathological evolu- tion this is not the case ; that is to say, the organs remaining not in- 176 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. flamed do not present unimpaired pathological evolution, but, on the contrary, furnish still additional instances of physiological develop- ment. It is chiefly, therefore, in cases of accidental sudden death from violence that the designed type of development (both pathologi- cal and physiological) can be studied best at all. But here, again, specimens of pathological evolution would occur less often than those that are physiological : first, because the whole number of pathologi- cal cases is less than the physiological ones ; and, second, because individuals undergoing pathological development are less exposed to the liability of death by violence ; they, like young individuals under- going physiological evolution, require more rest, warmth, and frequent feeding, and are less strong and vigorous, than others whose physio- logical development has been completed, and who are, therefore, more disposed to cope with the risks and hardships of out-door life and labor, under which circumstances death from violence more frequently occurs. At any rate, it is nothing else than an axiomatic proposition that similar organisms, impressed with similar stimuli, under similar cir- cumstances, will lead to the development of similar structures. Now, it is evidently only by the rarest possibility that we could meet, in the civilized human subject, with a succession of instances in which all these conditions had prevailed. In man and domesticated animals, it is even observed that physiological growth difiers widely, but, within certain limits, in diSei'ent individuals of the same age, species, etc. : it is only in wild animals and plants that we observe uniformity of type ; much less, tlien, need we expect to find this uniformity in evolutionary processes that are pathological ; especially, too, when it is only sought for in man and domestic animals. Finally, notwithstanding the difiSculties I have mentioned, enough subservience to a fixed type on the part of pathological new forma- tions has been observed, especially in cases where the new growth and its cause have been limited and simple, to warrant the assertion that pathological evolution in this respect is analogous with physio- logical development. This analogy may be further established by considering various other disturbing conditions (in addition to cold) which act disastrous- ly alike in the two kinds of evolution ; but this may be reserved for a subsequent paper, when we may also present a neio method of study, based upon the views herein laid down, and by the pursuit of which it is possible the nature, cause, and prevention of disease, may be in- vestigated more after the manner oT the exact sciences. THE MICROSCOPE— ITS MISINTERPRETATIONS, 177 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS MISINTERPRETATIONS. By JOHN MICHELS, THE old adage that " seeing is believing " has long been exploded, and folks nowadays receive with caution the impressions con- veyed by their eyesight. There is still, however, a fixed idea with many people that, when the human sight is aided by powerful and correctly-constructed opti- cal instruments, full reliance can be placed upon such united powers, and that the investigator may record that which he believes he sees, as veritable and established facts. In contradiction of such belief, I shall place before the reader some curious results, which will show that the utmost caution is requii-ed by those using optical instruments for the elucidation of scientitic problems or ordinary researcl]. Quite an interesting paper could be written upon the optical de- lusions with which astronomers have to contend in the use of the telescope, but I propose to confine my remarks to the difficulties Fig. 1.— Drawing bt Dr. Piggott, suowing the Beaded Markings on Podura-Scale. which beset the path of the microscopist, in obtaining truthful and accurate results, while using the microscope, leading to the most con- tradictory statements from men whose powers of observation and skill in the use of the instrument are admitted. Those who make use of a microscope for the first time are usually fascinated by the wonderful and beautiful appearances presented, and, having illuminated the object under examination with a flood of light, and focused it to their satisfaction, congratulate themselves upon the ease with which they have handled the instrument, and fondly believe they have attained to a knowledge of its use. More extended study, however, and the use of high powers with the more complicated pieces of apparatus, soon convince the student that the instrument requires the most delicate manipulation, and that much practice is necessary before its true powers are developed. VOL. VII. — 12 178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Until full command over a microscope has been acquired, tlie most contradictory and perplexing results are obtained by those who use high powers in the examination of difficult objects, especially if the subject is very transparent. Things examined yesterday appear quite different to-day, both in form and color ; and, even while the eye is still fixed upon the object, a slight change in the position of the mirror will alter its appearance, or present entirely new features. Again, an object mounted in different mediums, or without any, will present the most varied appearances, and the honest investigator is thus embarrassed to decide which is tlie true form. 1 Fio. 2. — Same Scale foccsed to show Note op Exclamation Marks. These complications follow the use of the instrument through all its stages ; but, when the causes are well understood, the difficulties are reduced to a minimum, and even turned to account in the exami- nation of difficult objects. Great success in the use of the microscope can only be obtained by the skillful manipulation of the light, and he that is not acquainted with the numerous schemes, devices, and contrivances in its manage- ment, might as well be in the dark ; no directions here avail, and nothing but diligent and constant practice will render the student efficient in this respect. I once stood an hour watching a leading London optician strug- gling to show me the true markings of a diatom with a new object- glass he had recently constructed, with which he had had no previous difficulty. He at last gave up the attempt in despair. Of course, an objective that has once performed a specific test will do so again. In this case, the only thing in fault was the management of the light. This had disgraced the object-glass, and enraged its maker. In contrast with the above case, I may mention the real pleasure THE MICROSCOPE— ITS MISINTERPRETATIONS. 179 I experienced in witnessing the skill of a professional microscopist of this country. In his hands, all difficulties appeared to vanish, and he showed me one of the most difficult objects known, with marvelous promptitude. But, to return to my subject : To enable the student to familiar- ize himself with the true power of the microscope, and to train his eyes to detect errors of vision, certain well-known test-objects are in general use ; which are also convenient to test the quality and power of objectives. A favorite object of this class is the scale of the Podura, a minute insect, which dwells in remote nooks of dark and damp cel- lars, and similar localities. This scale is usually mounted dry, and, when viewed under the compound microscope with suitable objectives, presents a surface studded with marks similar to the well-known note of exclamation (') This test-object has been for years the delight of microscopists possessing high powers, and a sharp definition of its peculiar markings as above mentioned was accepted as its true appearance and form. For twenty-five years this scale was under constant examination by every grade of microscopists, from the grandees of the Royal Mi- croscopical Society to the humble tyro, without any new or special feature being noticed, when on November 10, 1869, Dr. G. W. Royston Piggott, F. R. M. S., read a paper " On High-Power Definition " before the Royal Microscopical Society, and surprised the members by stating Fig. 3.— Scale of Azure Blue, placed in Position, to show False Marking8 similar to Test Podura-Scales.— (Piggott.) that all these years they had been gazing at the podura-scale, but had never yet seen its true markings. Dr. Piggott's paper described very fully what he had discovered as the true markings, and illustrated it with drawings which represented them to be distinctly of a beaded character ; in fact, as dissimilar from the old accepted idea of their form as contrast could depict them. Every microscopist was now hunting podurae, and cellars damp and dismal were ransacked for the little scale-bearers, doubtless to the astonishment of numerous colonies of spiders, who must have been much provoked by this invasion, and thus commenced a contro- i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. versy which is not yet concluded. Men equally eminent have taken opi>osite sides and expressed the most contrary opinions ; and I now 2)ropose to give a brief rhume of what has been said and done in regard to this subject, because the matter is full of instruction to those interested in microscopical research. Not that the markings of the podura are of the slightest importance, or have any scientific signifi- cance, but the gravity of the conclusions which are sought hinges upon the fact that, if the views of Dr. Piggott are correct, our most emi- nent microscopists have been promulgating false and erroneous state- ments respecting the form of a well-known and common object ; and, in whatever light the controversy is viewed, the humiliating confession must be made that they are still unable to determine the correct focus or the proper method of illuminating it. Di-. Piggott commences by calling resolving the podura-scale " a difiicult enterprise," and then describes the beaded appearance in the following manner: "Under a low power, as 80 or 100, the podura-scale is remarkable for its wavy markings, compared to watered silk ; rais- ing the power to 200 or 250, and using a side-light, the waviness dis- appears, and in its place longitudinal ribbing appears ; with 1,200, they divide themselves into a string of longitudinal beads ; but with 2,300 they appear to lie in the same plane and terminate abruptly on the basic membrane ; in focusing for the beads attached to the lower side, the beadings appear in the intercostal spaces." U 7^ Fig. 4.— The same Poduea-Scale as viewed under Diffeeent Phases of Oblique Light. — (Westropp.) Respecting the old received views of the podura-scale, Dr. Piggott says : " With 300 to 500, the celebrated ' spines ' appear, according to the size of the scale, as very dark tapering marks (like 'notes of admi- ration' without the dots ' ' '). To see these clearly with 2,500 has been considered the ne plus ultra of microscopical triumphs, and it is consequently with no small diffidence that the writer ventures to trav- erse the belief of twenty-five years." Dr. Piggott further states that he reckons these beads to be gp^o^ *° 1 g 0*0 0 0 o^ ^^ \w^ in diameter, and that the " spines," which he 160000 calls spurious, really embrace in general three or four beads, while the intervening space abounds with beads seen through the basic mem- brane, and very difficult of observation without special management ; THE MICROSCOPE— ITS MISINTERPRETATIONS. 18 1 and concludes with the remark that he expects in a few months the podura headings, such as he described them, will be fully established. Thus was the gauntlet thrown down, and the challenge was at once accepted by various members of the Society, who, on the conclusion of the reading of the paper, at once disputed the new doctrine. Mr. J. Beck was the first to express an opinion, and rather increased the confusion of the subject by stating that both the spines and the beads were illusory, and that the true structure of the podura-scale was a series of corrugations on one side, and that the reverse side was slightly undulating or nearly smooth, and that the notes of exclamation were due to refraction of light. Mr. Hogg, the Hon. Secretary of the Society, thought Dr. Pig- gott in error; he had never seen such appearances as beads; thought probably Dr. Piggott had seen them by using too deep an eye-piece, bad illumination, and drawing out the tube of the microscope to too great an extent ; or, perhaps, to a disturbed vision caused by advanced age and presbyopia. The President, the Rev. J. B. Read, followed by stating that he agreed with the observations made by Mr. Hogg, and such was his faith in the skill of the opticians of the day, that he could not but feel that what he saw with their instruments really existed. On the same date and occasion on which Dr. Piggott expounded his views, Mr. S. J. Mclntire, a member of the same Society, read a paper " On the Scales of Certain Insects of the Order Thysanura." Now, Mr. Mclntire, although a recent member, and young in microscopical re- search, is always listened to on this subject with respect by the Society, Fig. 5. having devoted his attention specially to these insects, and shown a patient and intelligent power of observing, not only their structure but their habits ; he, in his communication, opposed Dr. Piggott's views, and calls the beads " optical illusions," and concurred with Mr. Beck's statement that the surface of the scale is corrugated, but flatly contradicts him by stating that both sides are alike. December 8, 1869. — The President, the Rev. J. B. Read, stated that he, with Dr. Miller and others, had interviewed Dr. Piggott, and was bound to say he had seen the beaded appearances, and it was clear to l82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. him, now^ that in the best object-glasses small residuary aberration existed. This slur upon the best object-glasses brought out Mr. Wenham with a paper in the Microscopical JoxLrnal of June, 1870, in which he repudiated such error, and described the beaded appearance as an illu- sion, obtained by a trick of illumination, and by examining the scale with the microscope out of focus. At the June meeting of the Royal Microscopical Society, a letter was read from Colonel Woodward, of Washington, inclosing photo- graphs of the podura-scale, showing what he considered to be the true appearance. These photographs showed the spines. Colonel Woodward, however, reserved his opinion, and asked for a specimen of the true test podura-scale. Dr. Maddox, in August, exhibited various photographs of podura- scales, which Mr. Wenham commented on in a paper to the Micro- scopical Journal of September following, which merely reiterated his views that the '■'•spines'''' were the true appearance of podura-scales. The Rev. J. B. Read, in the Popular Science Revleio of April, 1870, appears to accept Dr. Piggott's views entirely, and writes : " I can now see with my own powers what has been before invisible, viz., the beautiful beaded structure of the whole test-scale, as discovered by Dr. Piggott." It would be tedious to continue the subject and give even an out- line of the papers and discussions that have been provoked by this knotty question: I shall, therefore, conclude by stating that Colonel Woodward has since produced two photographs, showing the two as- pects of the question ; they are made from authentic scales, and are pronounced very perfect. Fig. C. In further illustration of the difficulty of obtaining a true and re- liable image of an object when viewed under the microscope with high powers, I offer drawings which have been made by Mr. Ralph H, Westropp, B. A., T. C. D., of Allyflin Park, England, and represented at Figs. 4, 5, 6. These figures all represent the same object, a scale of podura viewed under different phases of oblique light ; they are in- teresting as showing the effect produced by the play of light upon a THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. 183 refractive object. The reader will note that not only the details of the markings are greatly changed, but the very outline of the figures. The fact that the most skillful microscopists of the age all differ upon the true appearances of a common and not very minute object, and the mici'oscope itself presenting to the vision the most opposite appear- ances of one and the same object, should act as a caution to those who accept too readily theories based upon microscopical research ; and suggests that, in the cause of justice, when life is at stake, single- handed evidence relating to the microscopical examination of ap- parent blood-stains should be verified at least by a second person before being accepted. Thus we see that the so-called revelations of the microscope are but hieroglyphics, needing the interpretation of a mind of the highest culture, and that while the microscope is a good servant it is a bad master — mighty in the hands of a Huxley, but as useless to a man without the powers of discrimination as the chisel of Michael Angelo would be in the hands of a Modoc. ■♦»»■ THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. By CHAELES C. ABBOTT, M. D. AS understood by us, the migration of a bird is simply the deser- tion of a given locality by that species for a certain, and always the same, portion of each year. As an example, the common house- wren {^Troglodytes cudon) is migratory, in that it remains in New Jer- sey * only from late in April until late in September, having left its Southern home for six months. Before endeavoring to determine the causes of this movement on the part of some birds, we must first note the various features charac- terizing the movement itself; for it may safely be asserted that no two birds migrate alike, although the similarity is marked among the various species of the same family. The most marked feature in migration is the apparent uniformity in the time of its occurrence, i. e., of the dates of the arrivals in spring, and of the departures in autumn. Is this arrival in spring as regular as claimed by some, and supposed by most people ? To the casual observer, and, indeed, to many who have for years noted the first appearances of our various birds, the ai-rival seems to be quite regular ; and, curiously enough, we find many such observers insisting that, however late a bird may be any one season, he is never earlier than a given date. Thus we * The observations upon which this essay is based were made by the author during the past sixteen years, while residing at Trenton, New Jersey, and the dates of arrival and departure of the various birds that we give refer solely to them, as seen in that locality. i84 THI] POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. have been frequently told that a wren is never seen before the 1st of May, and usually upon that day they are here in full force. Now, let any one be determined to watch day and night for the first birds of the season ; let him wander all day in or about tangled tliickets, and sheltered, sunny hill-sides ; let him, with sleepless eye, scrutinize every haunt of the birds, and with vigilant ear listen to every faint cliirp and far-off twitter, and follow up every undetermined bird-note ; let him do this, year after year, from April 1st to 30th, and he will find his note-books teeming with records of " early " birds, that will come and go, all unsuspected by the mid-day observer, who often will insist ujjon the absence altogether of many a summer songster, that, skulk- ing about, withholds its joyous songs until the woods have welcomed the full company of its kind, that of old have made merry in its shady nooks. The fact is, there is more to be learned about birds, in one hour of the early morning, than in six weeks of mid-day sunshine. The amoimt of variation in the dates of arrival of all of our spring birds is really considerable, and in the whole list of migratory inland birds that annually visit New Jersey, either to remain throughout the summer, or are on their wav to more northern localities, there is not one that can be considered regular in the time of reaching here, by from twenty to thirty days. The amoiant of variation in the dates of arrival, year after year, of the same species, say of the brown thrush, cat-bird, or yellow-breasted chat, is less, however, than that of the time of arrival of allied species ; for instance, the various species of thrushes reach us very irregular- ly. The robin ( Turdus migratorius) is a resident species ; the wood- thrush appears (one or two in a neighborhood) from April 15th to May 10th; the tawny thrush {Turdus fuscescens) sometimes later by two weeks, and sometimes absent altogether ; the olive-back thrush {Turdus Swainsoni) passes by irregularly, as to both time and sea- sons, and so, too, with the hei-mit thrush {Turdus Pcdlasi), which, however, occasionally remains throughout the summer. The brown thrush, or "thrasher" {Harporhynchus rufus\ comes to us by twos and threes as early as April 20th (the first recorded by me this season, 1874, was April I'Zth), and not until May 3d to the 12th can they be con- sidered as present in full force. The mocking-bird {Mimus 2yoly glottis) is irregular, both as to years and dates, and the cat-bird ( Galeoscoptes Carolinensis), never missing a year, wants the early May foliage de- veloped, that he may skulk therein, yet often in " single blessedness," comes to his last year's haunts, and is wonderfully ingenious in his efforts to conceal himself in the leafless thickets of early April, keep- ing ever close to the ground, and never venturing uj)on the slightest attempt at a song. The many notes we have made with reference to the warblers {Sylvicolidm) also indicate a great degree of irregularity and uncer- tainty in their migratory movements. This ai^plies to these birds as THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. 185 a family not only, but to all of the A^arions species separately, of wliich a score or more pass through the State as a general thing. During certain seasons we have noticed a marked preponderance of some one or two warblers, which for seasons following were much less common than many others. Thus, in 1860, 1864, 186Y, and 1872, the common redstarts [Setophaga ruticillcC) were very abundant, not only about their natural haunts, but within the city limits, and scores of them could be seen climbing over and flitting through the branches of the shade-trees of the less-frequented streets. Since 1872 these birds have not been so numerous as usual, and far less so than many other warblers, such as the yellow-rumped {Dendroica coronata), the black-throated blue {D. ccerulescens), or even the chestnut-sided (Z>. Penns^/lvanica). Unlike the thrushes, the warblers seem to be wholly controlled by meteorological influences and sudden changes of the weatlier, which, unlike some birds, they seem unable to foretell, greatly influence their movements, and certainly delay their northward progress ; and yet, while we have frequently known them to be caught in a "north- easter," they are not otherwise affected by it, so far as we could de- termine, other than by the delay, before mentioned. Even a sudden change from warm, summer-like weather to decided cold did not de- stroy any of them, apparently, or check their lively movements among the trees. Let us glance at the well-known and noticed swallows. For five months of every year we have with us, in greater or less abundance, six species of swallows and one " swift," the common chimney-swal- low. Of these, one, the rough-winged [Stelgidopteryx serripennis) is comparatively rare, and known only to ornithologists ; the white-bel- lied {Ilirundo bicolor) are not particularly abundant, except during certain seasons ; the cliff"-swallow {Petrochelidon lunifrons) is erratic , now here, about the barns and stables of a circumscribed neighbor- hood, for several years, and then wholly failing to appear in their former haunts, when spring comes slowly up this way, to greet May's sleeping blossoms. Not so, however, with the barn-swallow [Ilirundo horreormn) ; with a variation in date of arrival of about ten days, we have come to us, in May, our full complement of these beautiful birds. They have decreased in numbers during the past thirty years, so ob- sei-vant old farmers have told us, but probably not so much as they think. It is more probably the increase in the numbers of other spe- cies that makes the numbers of the barn-swallow seem fewer. The bank-swallow {Cotyle rijmria), earliest of all, is here literally by mill- ions, and the purple martin [Progne suMs), in moderate numbers, sel- dom fails to occupy the boxes placed for its accommodation ; while, lastly, the chimney-swallow [Chcetura pelagicd)^ which really belongs to another family, nearer the humming-birds and goat-suckers, we be- lieve, has never failed to appear in about the same numbers, year after i86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, year. We have fewer instances recorded of single swallows, seen at unusually early dates, than of birds of any other family. Some, in- deed, arrive much earlier than do others, as, for instance, the bank- swallow ; but the variation in date of arrival, throughout any ten years, is certainly much less than with other birds, and with some of them it is surprisingly regular, but not absolutely so, as so often asserted. Let us now glance at the peculiarities of this family of birds, and compare them with the thrushes and warblers. One marked differ- ence at once is seen ; that is, that the swallows have a wonderful flight- power, and the thrushes and warblers are weak in their powers of flight, positively as well as comparatively : and our observations bear us out in asserting, as a law of migration, that its regularity is in pro- portion to and solely dependent on the flight-powers of the species. With the entire list of inland birds of New Jersey, we believe this to hold good. We have already expressed our belief that many birds have the ability to foretell a coming storm. As this is not directly connected with the subject of our essay, as we are now considering it, we will pass to another feature of this prophetic power, as it apparently is, in birds, and that is, their ability to judge of the general character of the coming season, by a visit of a few days' duration early in spring. We have so frequently noticed that certain birds, common to a locality dur- ing the summer, occasionally fail to visit it, except one or two individ- uals, that in April come for a few days, that it has appeared to us that these " pioneer" birds saw satisfactory reasons for believing that there would be a scarcity of food, and so return to meet their fellows, and informing them, they all depart to " fresh fields and pastures new," just as a single crow, discovering danger, will turn a whole colony from their course as they are going to their roosting-place. This, be it understood, is our supposition, and may be wholly untrue ; but how are we to interpret the meaning of any habit or particular movement of a bird, except by the human standard ? An act on the part of a bird is intelligible to us only as we would interpret a corresponding act in man; and these acts in birds and men, producing allied results, indicate that close connection between all animal life which is so read- ily compi'ehended from an evolution stand-point. Now, as an instance of this " foretelling " power in birds, we noted, during the past spring, the arrival of the first chewink {Pipilo erythrophthalmus) on April 27th. Busily among the dried leaves and tangled briers it hopped, enlivening the thicket with its constant song just as a dozen of its kind had done throughout the preceding summer. In a few days it had disappeared, and not a chewink has been seen or heard for nearly six months. Now a few are noticed on their way south from the country north of us. This locality is one where these birds usually congre- gate, and we have often found a dozen nests in the limits of the spot. But a few miles away, these birds were as abundant as usual. In THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. 187 two ways we can explain the absence of tliese bii'cls : either those that were accustomed to occupy it went to a new locality, and the sinole bird that had preceded them, finding his companions did not come, left, rather than remain alone ; or he left to announce that food would be scarce, for it must be remembered, as Darwin has remarked, "most animals and plants keej) to their proper homes, and do not needlessly wander about ; we see this, even with migi-atory birds, which almost always return to the same spot." At any rate, the summer of 18V4, in this neighborhood, was the driest in the past forty years, and it seemed as if the chewink knew what was coming. So, at least, we believe. During this season we noted the entii-e absence, during the summer, of several migratory birds, common, as a rule, and a very marked decrease in the numbers of those that did appear; but, at the same time, our note-books mention the arrival of one or more individ- uals of every one of our migratory birds. Many, like the chewink, foresaw what was coming and acted accordingly. It would be most interesting to determine if insect-life was less abundant than usual during the past summer, but concerning this we have only to note, as suggestive that it was so, a marked freedom of the fruit-trees and fruit itself from the attacks of their insect enemies. Another feature of the migration of our inland birds must here be briefly referred to; and that is, the failure of late years of certain species to come, as a rule, as far north as New Jersey ; and also the habit, now fully acquired by others, of remaining throughout the year, when, but a comparatively short time ago, these same birds were truly migratory. As an instance : the summer red-bird {Pyranga CBstiva), twenty years ago, was a regular visitor to Central New Jersey, arriving about May 1st and remaining until October. It nested on ti'ees, frequently in apple-orchards, laying pretty purple-blotched, gi'een eggs. It pre- ferred wooded hill-sides with a growth of underbrush, and having a southern exposure. In such situations they were numerous, and to one such locality, in particular, we can well remember the charm they added to the scene by the bright gleam of their plumage as they passed from tree to tree, uttering their peculiar but not melodious notes. For the past fifteen years we have seen not half a dozen indi- viduals, and recorded no nests since 1857. In far scantier numbers the scarlet tanager {Pyranga rubra) has taken their place, although this bird is not rare by any means, nor was it so when the preceding species was abundant. It is much the same with the mocking-bird (Ifimiis polyglottis). Formerly, as regular in its appearance, if not as abundant, as the cat- bird, it is now among our rarest summer visitors. An occasional pair, selecting some well-tangled thicket, will come late or early, and build their nest, and then half a dozen years may elapse before we see them again. Yet, thirty years ago these birds were common. 188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. As instances of "spring arrivals," as we will class them, that have become resident species, we will first mention the well-known blue- bird {Sialia sialis), which, whatever may be the state of the weather, is as lively and full of song from November 1st to April as from April to November ; yet it is still considered as a migratory species, and formerly, we doubt not, was so, even in New Jersey. More interest- are the two instances yet to mention, being those of the common yellow-rumped warbler (Dendroica coronata), which, in scanty num- bers, braves our winters and from the tops of the loftier pines chirps merrily while the snow-flakes fill the air, and later in the winter seeks shelter in protected nooks where the noonday sun has melted the snow and gives us a breath of spring-like air. In several such spots, since February, 1863, when we shot the first "winter" specimen, we have not failed to find several individuals of this species, during each of the winter months, and of their number that thus remain with us there seems to be a steady increase. The same remarks will apply, in part, to that beautiful but not well-known songster, Bewick's wren {Thryothonis Bewickii). They too, in scanty numbers, congregate in sheltered places having a southern outlook, and now, while we are writing (October 29th) we can hear the clear notes of this lively bird as it sits, braving a chilly westerly wind, perched on a leafless branch of a sycamore. We have noted now the more prominent features in the migratory habits of our inland birds as they come to us in May from the South, save the one fact, the bearing of which upon the subject we cannot determine, that a large proportion of the birds perform the journey by night, the others wholly by day. At least this is the common im- pression, but it is difficult to demonstrate it. How little, really, we know of the precise modus operandi of migration ! All through April and May, if astir at the earliest dawn, when the resident birds are just starting their morning songs, we will occasionally hear the wel- come notes of some summer bird for the first time. Has it been wing- ing its way northward through the thick, black hours of night, guided by some unknown sense, and no sooner above its old-time haunts than it checks its onward course, and from a familiar tree sings with grate- ful heart a loud thanksgiving glee ? If we wander about those quiet nooks and by-ways, where the first thrushes and warblers are likely to be seen these same months, we will find all the day long, and evening too, these birds " consi^icuous for their absence." Not a chirp or twitter, save of the sparrows and tits of all the year, and the lingering snow-birds that seem to regret leaving our pleasant places. Far into the night we may remain, and only the startled chirp of some disturbed or dreaming bird, or the fret and scolding of little owls, greet our ears. The silence of mid- night may pass unbroken, and then, as the first gray streaks of light in the hazy east herald the oncoming day, suddenly a cheerful warble THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. 189 from some tall cedar or tangled brier-patch breaks the dead silence, and we mark the arrival of the first spring songster of its kind. Did it reach us at sunset, and, resting a few hours, then announce its pres- ence with its cheery song ? Both by day and by night, it may be, they come, but why at all by night, if so, must ever be a great mystery in the strange habit of migration. Let us next study our birds during the autumn. A careful examination of the many notes, jotted down at irregular intervals, during the months of September, October, and November, with respect to the departure south of such of our birds as are sum- mer residents, and of some that, having passed the summer in regions far to the north, are now, likewise, seeking their accustomed winter- quarters, indicates a similar apparent regularity in the southward movements of our birds as in spring, and at the same time an actual degree of variation in the dates of departure exceeding the irregular- ity of the dates of arrival. If we consider the several circumstances that would necessarily influence their migratory movements, this actual irregularity, in autumn, is just what should be expected; but in the spring, as every bird returns to its own home and former nest, if possible, they will not linger on the way, as they know too well the length of the jour- ney, and the coming duties of incubation speed them on, and we wonder why they are not more regular in their movements. In autumn, all this is changed. Now nothing need hurry them, and, so long as they find an abundance of food, they leisurely move along, just keep- ing ahead, as it seems, of the chilling frosts of the coming winter, which they can easily endure, but which robs them of the food they must have. This is especially true of insect-eating birds. Considered in this light, we are not surprised to find, then, as a rule, that the warblers, swallows, and such other birds as depend wholly upon in- sects for their sustenance, leave more promptly and in larger numbers, at one time, than do granivorous birds, and those that can subsist on seeds, while they consume insects so long as they can find them. The weather, both during September and October, is exceedingly variable, and this fact causes the southward movements of the migi-a- tory, insect-eating birds equally so, inasmuch as these birds are not larvae-hunting species, but depend upon insects that can be caught upon the wing, or are to be found resting upon the leaves and twigs of the trees; therefore, just so long as the heavy white frosts are delayed, these insectivorous birds will linger with us. Up to a cer- tain date, about October 1st on the average, these birds largely in- crease in numbers, consequent upon the daily accession of those from the north, and after the maximum is reached (October 1st or earlier, in accordance with the weather), their number steadily decreases, un- til but a few stragglers remain. ipo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. We feel quite confident that in exceptionally mild winters many- more migratory birds winter in Southern New Jersey than ornitholo- gists suspect ; and we can see, in the lingering remnant of the great fliglit of warblers that annually pass through the State, that gradual adaptation to surrounding conditions, on the part of birds, that as centuries roll by, evolve, by that mystery of mysteries, the "survival of the fittest," new species from the old. Again, long after the true insect-eaters, such as the fly-catchers {TyrannidoR) ^ the vireos [yireonidoi)^ and the swallows {Hirtindi- 7iidce), with the chimney-swallow, humming-bird {Trochilvs colubria), whippoorwill [Antrostoinus vociferus), night-hawk {Chordeiles pope- tue), and the two cuckoos ( Coccygus America7ius and erythroj^hthal- mus), have passed southward, beyond the limits of the State, and scarcely a leaf is left upon the forest-trees, when not one straggling fly-catcher, in a day's walk, can be found hovering about the many spots so lately tenanted by myriads of their kind, we have yet the pleasure of seeing, in our rambles, many a blithe sparrow, either in the fields or about leafless hedges, or haunting the still green but nearly deserted swampy meadows, and even, late as it is, an occasion- al gi'osbeak, as it half conceals its gorgeous ruby and black plumage in some dark cedar, while it utters in broken cadences a fragment of its glorious song. Of our many sparrows, of which several are resident species, we have noted down for several years, when the severity of the winter was yet to come, even as late as December 14th, the presence of the pretty bay-winged bunting (Pooccetes gramineus), and in less scanty numbers the quiet little field-sparrow {/Sjnzella pusilla). In the wet, reedy meadows, it is not until winter has encased in ice the tangled grasses, that the swamp-sparrow quits its home. For two years past, we have noticed that in the dry upland fields, all through November's hazy Indian summer, the sprightly black-throated bunting (Phisjjiza Americana) still remains, in little companies ; and in the quiet wood- lauds, ever and anon, a retiring grosbeak [Hedymeles melanocephalus) lingers, until biting north winds drive him from his summer haunts. Last year, the indigo-bird ( Cyanospiza cyanea) until the 20th of No- vember remained with us, singing as merrily from the bare branches of the maples as when, during the summer, they cheei-ed their brood- ing mates with almost ceaseless song. The bobolink, in spite of the persecution they sufier from sportsmen, hold to their reedy haunts, in scattering pairs, often until the first fall of snow, and this same bird — " reed-bird " in autumn {Dolichonyx oryzivorus) — being seen so early in the spring, occasionally, may possibly remain, but if so, very rare- ly. A few red-winged blackbirds [Agelakis 2^hoe?iiceus), we know, withstand our winters, and seem to find food somewhere and how, even when the thermometer is at zero. This difference between the insect-eating and the granivorous THE MIGRATION OF INLAND BIRDS. 191 birds, the more prolonged autumn stay of the latter, we think, ex- plains itself. In the spring, there is an object ever in view, while on their journey north — in autumn, their sole care is to be home in time; not so much to escape the coming cold, as to avoid being pinched by hunger. * We have seen that the first frost that but little affects vegetation does materially decrease insect-life ; the swallows even anticipate this first frost, and, gathering in immense flocks, wing their way south- ward long before it comes. We can clearly see that the weather greatly influences, indeed governs, the migratory movements, in au- tumn, of the insect-eaters. It bids them dej^art, and, in general, they heed the bidding ; but long after this, while there are yet berries, seeds, and fruits, to be obtained, the migratory vegetarians linger, in varying numbers, by the way. Let us now glance at the abundant and well-known purple grakle or crow-blackbird [Quiscalus 2)urpureus). The nunibers of this (with us) partially migratory species that remain throughout the winter, as compared with those which are here during the spring and summer months, are about as three to one hundred, as near as we can judge; and, in proportion as the winter is mild, the percentage of those that re- main is increased. In Massachusetts, this bird is strictly migratory ; the great bulk of those that depart from the north, and from New Jersey, wintering in the Carolinas and Georgia. In this species, therefore, we have an example of a migratory bird that is gradually becoming more and more accustomed, not to the rigors of winter which birds are better able to Avithstand than they are supposed to be, but to the methods of our winter residents, such as woodpeckers, jays, and tit- mice, in procuring such food as can then be procured. Food, as a matter of course, and an abundance of it, must necessarily be ob- tained, and, on examination of the stomachs of grakles killed in Jan- uary, we have found them filled with a half-digested mass of what appeared to be both animal and vegetable matter. If the grakles that remain during the winter are of a hardier constitution than those that migrate, then, as they mate very early in the year, and before the great bulk of the southern sojourners reach us, their offspring will naturally inherit equally vigorous constitutions, and, like their parents, will be more disposed to remain ; at least a large proportion of them will be, and in this way, wholly through natui-al selection, a race of grakles, otherwise undistinguishable from the whole number of this species, will be evolved, that in time will wholly replace (?) the now migratory and semi-migratory individuals. If we have now cor- rectly explained a change now in progress, in the habits of this and other species, then can we not, from it, gain a clew to one, at least, of the original causes of the habit of migrating ? But this we will discuss in the concluding part of our essay. The act of migrating being the passage from one distant point to 192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. another, it is evident that the cause or causes of this movement is one or more that operates at either terminus of the journey. A warbler that winters in Florida, and breeds near the arctic circle, is operated upon by a cause that exists at each terminus, or by two diifering causes, each peculiar to its own location, and it is wholly incredible that it is the same cause that induces both the visit to northern regions and the return' to a southern clime ; therefore there must be at least two causes lor the habit — one inducing it in the spring, another compelling the migrating bii'd to return. If it be possible now to demonstrate what these causes are, and. how the same cause can influence all migratory birds, considering that their habits are otherwise so totally ditierent, it will not then necessarily follow that it was the originating cause of the habit. When, indeed, did this migration commence ? How far back into the world's geological history must we go, to trace the first bird that was forced to seek another and far-distant land, wherein to rear its young and find for its offspring and itself suflicient food ? What conditions of heat and cold, land and water, summer and winter, then obtained, that birds must need fly from coming rigors of scorch- ing sun, or ice and floods, or perish where they were? Was it from living in such a world that migration originated, and became, strangely enough, characteristic of only a fraction of the whole number ? How, too, could birds have learned the oncoming of disastrous times, and know just where to seek a safe harbor and secure rest ? Clearly it could have been only by a very gradual accumulation of experiences extending over many generations, before the few progenitors of our many birds gained the happy knowledge, that here in the North we have months of sunny summer weather and a wealth of pleasant places. We will not go back, then, of the Glacial period, but rest content with it as having been the starting-point in time of birds' migratory move- ments. The progenitor of our score of warblers, the one tyrant fly- catcher, from which all our species have sprung, the vireos, the goat- suckers, and cuckoos, then very few in species, if indeed there were more than one of each, must have been influenced by the presence of the icy barriers that shut them off for the time being from a vast por- tion of the northern world, and at the close or closing of that won- derful period it may be that migration commenced, yet why and how, we can but guess. Knowing that it commenced then or recommenced, if previously a feature of bird-life, we have now to inquire what are its apparent causes at present ; but, before inquiring into these, may we not, after all, ask if migration be not an inherited habit, the origi- nating causes of which are not now in operation? The conditions not obtaining that necessitate migration, does it not become a case of survival of habit, just as in man many customs now exist, the oi-igin and proper meaning of which are M'hoUy lost? That this is true of the migration of all birds we do not believe, but that it partially holds good with some species we are fully convinced. As an inherited THE MIGRATIOX OF IXLAN-D BIRDS. 193 habit, l)ut one now not absolutely necessary to the bird's welfare, we can see why it should be, as it frequently is, so greatly influenced by surrounding circumstances and conditions. Taking the movement from its proper starting-point, which we as- sume to be the movement from south to north, in the three sprino- months, we must now look for sufficient causes to induce the under- taking of such long journeys. These causes are suggested by the two principal objects eflected, on their arrival at their northern destination, viz., rearing of their young, and procuring suitable and sufficient food for both themselves and ofispring. If migration is for these two pur- poses only, then it should prove to be the case that food was not suffi- ciently abundant in the south for both its resident and migratory birds. This certainly could not have been the case, and we believe, thei-efore, that migratory movements, at the outset, were to a very limited extent only ; a few birds at a time seeking to avoid their enemies, and have undisturbed possession of a locality, by pushing out from their accus- tomed haunts, for, comj)aratively speaking, a few miles. The young of such pioneer birds would naturally leave the neighborhood of their nest, and return to their parents' usual haunt with them ; but, on the return of another breeding-season, they would themselves seek a rest- ing-place near where they themselves were reared, and the older birds would go to the same nest or nesting-place that a year ago they occu- pied. This is precisely what occurs now, year after year. Now, as birds increased, century after century, the limits of this northward movement would be extended, until it became in time the journey of thousands of miles that it now is. Assuming, then, that migration arose for the dual purpose of safe nidification and a certainty of sufficient food, Ave are met by the ugly question, " Why do not all the southern birds come-north ? " If, when the whole avi-fauna was concentrated at the south, there was any strug- gle whatever for favorable feeding or breeding grounds, then, naturally, the weaker would go to the wall, or, in other words, would be driven beyond the limits of their accustomed habitat. These weaker birds, taken together, having once formed the habit of visiting certain locali- ties at stated times for given purposes, or periodically were forced to do so, would vary in their methods of reaching these localities, in their choice of regions wherein to remain, and the length of their annual visit, just in proportion as their habits generally varied from those of both other species of the same family and from species of other fami- lies. For instance, to avoid a common enemy, a number of species might have gradually learned to migrate at night ; while others, al- though forced to migrate, had not this same enemy to contend with. In this way, the habit of nocturnal migration would long ago have been formed, and it would, by inheritance, be continued by their descend- ants, even after the enemy had been long extinct. Having reached the northern summer homes, and, free from molesta- TOIi. TIL— 13 194 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tion, reared their broods, clearly, if all things needed for their comfort were to be obtained, it cannot be supposed that these same birds would unnecessarily retrace their long flight to the distant South. This sug- gests that if we are correct in assuming that birds first ajjpeared in a tropical climate, and from such climate migration started, it is proba- ble that by gradually prolonging their northern visits and accustom- in 2: themselves to northern insect and veo-etable life, these reaions became populated by their resident species. It is evident that the present migratory species are simply compelled to return, and three compelling causes are demonstrable. Primarily, the sudden increase of cold at the close of the brief northern summer, which starts south- ward those farthest at the north. This accession of intense cold ne- cessarily decreases the amount of food, and the birds are now forced to find it elsewhere. Farther and farther south they come, just in ad- vance of the cold, and slower and slower they proceed, as they enter our more temperate latitude, and here, resting as it were, they linger until a keen frost kills their insect-food, and, scattering the leaves, robs them of their main shelter from their enemies, happily fewer now than formerly ; and now still southward they proceed, until they reach a home in lands blessed with perpetual summer. We have now traced these migratory species from south to north, and back to their southern habitat, and endeavored to point out the several operating causes of the movement as we did so. We have already suggested the possibility of migration being an inherited habit not now necessary. Now, be this true or not, it is evident that the habit is not so fixed a one that ordinary changes in surrounding conditions do not greatly influence it. This, we think, is shown by the irregularity of the movement that really occurs, and the tendency on the part of many species to modify the habit by occasionally halt- ing much to the south of their usual breeding-grounds, and by re- maining later and later in autumn ; and, again, by the fact that many birds are now only partially migratory, and others by occasionally migrating simply in search of food, thus exhibiting, as it were, traces of a habit they have long lost, as to its full meaning and accom- plishment. In the migration of a bird, then, we see simply a temporary sojourn in a distant locality for the purpose of rearing its oflspring in safety ; the cause being implied by the term " safety," i. e., freedom from ene- mies, and an abundance of food. SAVAGISIf AND CIVILIZATION. 195 SAYAGISM AND CIVILIZATION/ By HUBERT 11. BANCEOFT. rrillE terms savage and civilized, as applied to races of men, are -L relative and not absolute terms. At best these words mark only- broad shifting stages in human progress ; the one near the point of departure, the other farther on toward the unattainable end. This progress is one and universal, though of varying rapidity and extent ; there are degrees in savagism, and there are degi*ees in civilization; indeed, though placed in opposition, the one is but a degree of the other. The Haidah, whom we call savage, is as much superior to the Shoshone, the lowest of Americans, as the Aztec is superior to the Haidah, or the European to the Aztec. Looking back some thousands of ages, we of to-day are civilized ; looking forward through the same duration of time, we are savages. Nor is it, in the absence of fixed conditions, and amid the many shades of difference presented by the nations along our Western sea- board, an easy matter to tell where even comparative savagism ends and civilization begins. In the common acceptation of these terms, we may safely call the Central Californians savage, and the Quiches of Guatemala civilized ; but between these two extremes are hun- dreds of peoj^les, each of v*^hich presents some claim for both distinc- tions. Thus, if the domestication of ruminants, or some knowledge of arts and metals, constitutes civilization, then are the ingenious but half- torpid hyperboreans civilized, for the Esquimaux tame reindeer, and the Thlinkeets are skillful carvers and make use of copper ; if the cultiva- tion of the soil, the building of substantial houses of adobe, wood, and stone, with the manufacture of cloth and pottery, denote an exodus from savagism, then are the Pueblos of New Mexico no longer sav- ages ; yet in both these instances enough may be seen, either of stu- pidity or brutishness, to forbid our ranking them with the more ad- vanced Aztecs, Mayas, and Quiches. We know what savages are ; how, like wild animals, they depend for food and raiment upon the spontaneous products of Nature, mi- grating with the beasts and birds and fishes, burrowing beneath the ground, hiding in caves, or throwing over themselves a shelter of bark, or skins, or branches, or boards, eating or starving as food is abundant or scarce ; nevertheless, all of them have made some advancement from their original naked, helpless condition, and have acquired some aids in the procurement of their poor necessities. Primeval man, the only real point of departure, and hence the only true savage, nowhere ex- ists on the globe to-day. Be the animal man ever so low — lower in skill and wisdom than the brute, less active in obtaining food, less in- genious in building his den — the first step out of his houseless, com- ' From vol. ii. of " Xative Races of the Pacific States." 196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. fortlcss condition, the first fashioning of a tool, the first attempt ta cover nakedness and wall out the wind, if this endeavor springs from intellect and not from instinct, is the first step to civilization. Hence the modern savage is not the j^rehistoric or primitive man ; nor is it among the barbarous nations of to-day that we must look for the rudest barbarism ; if proof be wanting, there are the unground edges of the stone implements of Denmark, which denote an order of art lower than that indicated by any relic of the Stone age in America. Often is the question asked. What is civilization ? and the answer comes, The act of civilizing ; the state of being civilized. What is the act of civilizing ? To reclaim from a savage or barbarous state; to educate ; to refine. What is a savage or barbarous state? A wild, i;ncultivated state ; a state of Xature. Thus far the dictionaries. The term civilization, then, popularly implies both the transition from a natural to an artificial state, and the artificial condition attained. The derivation of the word civilization, from e/y/s, citizen, civitas, city, and originally from coetus, union, seems to indicate that culture which in feudal times distinguished the occupants of cities from the ill-man- nered boors of the country. The word savage, on the other hand, from silva, a wood, points to man primeval, silvestres homines, men of the forest, not necessarily ferocious or brutal, but children of Nature. From these simple beginnings both words have gradually acquired a broader significance, until by one is understood a state of comfort, intelligence, and refinement, and by the other humanity wild and beastly. Guizot defines civilization as " an improved condition of man re- sulting from the establishment of social order in j^lace of the individual independence and lawlessness of the savage or barbarous life ; " Buckle as " the triumph of mind over external agents ; " Virey as " the de- velopment more or less absolute of the moral and intellectual facul- ties of man united in society ; " Burke as the exponent of two princi- ples, "the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." " What- ever be the characteristics of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." " Whatever be the characteristics of what we call savage life," says John Stuart Mill, " the contrary of these, or the qualities which so- ciety puts on as it throws off these, constitute civilization;" and, re- marks Emerson, " a nation that has no clothing, no iron, no alphabet, no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call barbarous." Men talk of civilization, and call it liberty, religion, government, morality. Xow, liberty is no more a sign of civilization than tyran- ny ; for the lowest savages are the least governed of all people. Civ- ilized liberty, it is true, marks a more advanced stage than savage liberty, but between these two extremes of liberty there is a neces- sary age of tyranny, no less significant of an advance on primitive liberty than is constitutional liberty an advance on tyranny. Nor is religion civilization, except in so far as the form and machinery of SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 197 sacerdotal rites and the abandonment of fetichism for monotlieism become significant of intenser thought and expansion of intellect. No nation ever practised grosser immorality, or what we of the pres- ent day hold to be immorality, than Greece during the height of her intellectual refinement. Peace is no more civilization than war, virtue than vice, good than evil. All these are the incidents, not the essence, of civilization. That wliich we commonly call civilization is not an adjunct or an acquirement of man; it is neither a creed nor a polity, neither science, nor philosophy, nor industry ; it is rather the measure of progressional force implanted in man, the general fund of the nation's wealth, learn- ing, and refinement, the storehouse of accumulated results, the essence of all best worth preserving from the distillations of good and the dis- tillations of evil. It is a something between men, no less than a some- thin 0; within them : for neither an isolated man nor an association of brutes can by any possibility become civilized. Further than this, civilization is not only the measure of aggre- gated human experiences, but it is a living working principle. It is a social transition ; a moving forward rather than an end attained ; a developing vitality rather than a fixed entity ; it is the efl:brt or aim at refinement rather than refinement itself; it is labor with a view to improvement, and not improvement consummated, although it may be and is the metre of such improvement. And this accords Avith latter- day teachings. Although in its infancy, and, moreover, unable to ex- plain things unexplainable, the science of evolution thus far has proved that the normal condition of the human race, as well as that x)f physi- cal Nature, is progressional ; that the plant in a congenial soil is not more sure to grow than is humanity with favorable surroundings cer- tain to advance. Nay, more, we speak of the progress of civilization as of something that moves on of its own accord ; we may, if we will, recognize in this onward movement the same principle of life mani- fest in Nature and in the individual man. To things we do not understand we give names, with which, by frequent use, we become familiar, when we fancy that we know all about the things themselves. At the first glance, civilization appears to be a simple matter : to be well clad, well housed, and well fed ; to be intelligent and cultured, are better than nakedness and ignorance ; therefore it is a good thino; a thins; that men do well to strive for — and that is all. But once attempt to go below this placid surface, and investigate the nature of progressional phenomena, and we find ourselves launched upon an eternity of ocean, and in pursuit of the same occult Cause, which has been sought alike by philosophic and barbaric of every age and nation ; we find ourselves face to face with a great mystery, to which we stand in the same relation as to other great mysteries, such as the oi'igin of things, the principle of life, the •soul-nature. When such questions are answered as, What is attrac- 198 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. tion, heat, electricity ; wliat instinct, intellect, soul ? Vv'hy are plants forced to grow and molecules to conglomerate and go whirling in huge masses through space ? — then avc may know why society moves ever onward like a river in channels predetermined. At present, these phenomena we may understand in their action partially, in their es- sence not at all ; we may mark eflfects, we may recognize the same principle under widely-different conditions, though we may not be able to discover what that principle is. Science tells us that these things are so ; that certain combinations of certain elements are in- evitably followed by certain results, but Science does not attempt to explain why they are so. In every living thing there is an element of continuous growth ; in every aggregation of living things there is an element of continuous improvement. In the first instance, a vital actuality appears ; whence, no one can tell. As the organism matures, a new germ is formed, which, as the parent stock decays, takes its place, and becomes in like manner the parent of a successor. Thus, even death is but the door to new forms of life. In the second instance, a body corporate ap- pears no less a vital actuality than the first ; a social organism in which, notwithstanding ceaseless births and deaths, there is a living principle. For, while individuals are born and die, families live ; while families are born and die, species live ; while species are born and die, organic being assumes new forms and features. Herein the all-j^ervading princii^le of life, while flitting, is nevertheless perma- nent, while transient is yet eternal. But, above and independent of perpetual birth and death is this element of continuous growth, which, like a sjDirit, walks abroad and mingles in the afiairs of men. " All our progress," says Emerson, " is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct ; then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit." Under favorable conditions, and up to a certain j^oint, stocks im- prove ; by a law of natural selection the strongest and fittest survive, while the ill-favored and deformed perish ; under conditions unfavor- able to development, stocks remain stationary or deteriorate. Para- doxically, so far as we know, organs and organisms are no more per- fect now than in the beginning ; animal instincts are no keener, nor are their habitudes essentially changed. No one denies that stocks improve, for such improvement is perceptible and permanent ; many deny that organisms improve, for, if there be imjDrovement it is im- perceptible, and has thus far escaped proof. But, however this may be, it is palpable that the mind, and not the body, is the instrument and object of the progressional impulse. Man, in the duality of his nature, is brought under two distinct dominions : materially he is subject to the laws that govern matter, mentally to the laws that govern mind ; physiologically, he is per- fectly made and non-progressive ; psychologically, he is embryonic SAVAGIS3I AND CIVILIZATION. 199 and progressive. Between these internal and external forces, between moral and material activities there may be, in some instances, an ap- parent antagonism. The mind may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the body, and the body may be developed in excess and to the detriment of the mind. The animal man is a bundle of organs, with instincts implanted that set them in motion ; man, intellectually, is a bundle of sentiments, with an implanted soul that keeps them efiervescent ; mankind in the mass, society — we see the fermentations, we mark the transitions ; is there, then, a soul in aggregated humanity as there is in individual humanity ? The instincts of man's animality teach the organs to perform their functions as perfectly at the first as at the last ; the instincts of man's intellectuality urge him on in an eternal race for something better, in which perfection is never attained nor attainable ; in society, we see the constant growth, the higher and yet higher development ; now, in this ever-onward movement are there instincts which originate and govern action in the body social as in the body individual ? Is not society a bundle of organs, with an implanted soul of progress, which moves mankind along in a resistless predetermined march ? The strangest part of all is, that though wrought out by man as the instrument, and while acting in the capacity of a free agent, this spirit of progress is wholly independent of the will of man. Though in our individual actions we imagine ourselves directed only by our free-will, yet in the end it is most difficult to determine what is the re- sult of free-w^ill, and what of inexorable environment. While we think we are regulating our affairs, our afiairs are regulating us. We plan out improvements, predetermine the best course, and follow it, some- times ; yet, for all that, the principle of social progress is not the man, is not in the man, forms no constituent of his physical or psychical in- dividual being ; it is the social atmosphere into which the man is born, into which he brings nothing, and from which he takes nothing. While a member of society he adds his quota to the general fund, and there leaves it ; while acting as a free agent, he performs his part in work- ing out this problem of social development, performs it unconsciously, willing or unwilling, he performs it, his baser passions being as power- ful instruments of progress as his nobler ; for avarice drives on intel- lect as effectually as benevolence, hate as love, and selfishness does infinitely more for the progress of mankind than philanthropy. Thus is humanity played upon by this principle of progress, and the music sometimes is w^onderful : green fields, as if by magic, take the place of wild forests ; magnificent cities rise out of the ground, the forces of Nature are brought under the dominion of man's intelligence, and senseless substance is endowed with speech and action. As to the causes which originate progression al phenomena there are differences of opinion. One sees in the intellect the germ of an 200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. eternal unfolding ; another recognizes in the soul-element the vital principle of progress, and attributes to religion all the benefits of enlightenment ; one builds a theory on the groundwork of a funda- mental and innate morality ; anotlier discovers in the forces of Nature the controlling influence upon man's destiny ; while yet others, as we have seen, believe accumulative and inherent nervous force to be the media through which culture is transmitted. Some believe that moral causes create the physical ; others, that physical causes create the moral. Thus Mr. Buckle attempts to prove that man's development is wholly dependent upon his physical surroundings. Huxley points to a system of reflex actions — mind acting on matter, and matter on mind — as the possible culture-basis. Darwin advances the doctrine of an evolution from vivified matter as the principle of progressive development. In the transmutation of nerve-element from parents to children, Bagehot sees " the continuous force which binds age to age, which enables each to begin with some improvement on the last, if the last did itself improve ; which makes each civilization not a set of de- tached dots, but a line of color, surely enhancing shade by shade." Some see in human progress the ever-ruling hand of a Divine Provi- dence, others the results of man's skill ; with some it is free-will, with others necessity ; some believe that intellectual development springs from better systems of government, others that wealth lies at the foundation of all culture ; every philosopher recognizes some cause, invents some system, or brings human actions under the dominion of some species of law. As in animals of the same genus or species, inhabiting widely-dif- ferent localities, we see the results of common instincts, so in the evo- lutions of the human race, divided by time or space, we see the same general principles at work. So, too, it would seem, whether species are one or many, whether man is a perfectly created being or an evo- lution from a lower form, that all the human races of the globe are formed on one model and governed by the same laws. In the cus- toms, languages, and myths, of ages and nations far removed from each other in all social, moral, and mental characteristics, innumerable and striking analogies exist. Not only have all nations weapons, but many who are separated from each other by a hemisphere use the same weajion ; not only is belief universal, but many relate the same myth ; and to suppose the bow and arrow to have had a common origin, or that all flood-myths, and myths of a future life, are but ofl- shoots from Noachic and Biblical narratives, is scarcely reasonable. It is easier to tell what civilization is not, and what it does not spring from, than what it is and what its origin. To attribute its rise to any of the principles, ethical, political, or material, that come under the cognizance of man, is fallacy, for it is as much an entity as any other primeval principle ; nor may we, with Archbishop Whately, SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 201 entertain the doctrine tliat civilization never could have arisen had not the Creator appeared upon earth as the first instructor ; for, un- fortunately for this hypothesis, the aboriginals supposedly so taught, were scarcely civilized at all, and compare unfavorably with the other all-perfect works of creation ; so that this sort of reasoning like innu- merable other attempts of man to limit the powers of Omnipotence, and narrow them down to our weak understandings, is little else than puerility. Nor, as we have seen, is this act of civilizing the effect of volition ; nor, as will hereafter more clearly appear, does it arise from an inherent princijile of good any more than from an inherent prin- ciple of evil. The ultimate result, though difficult of proof, we take for granted to be good, but the agencies employed for its consummation number amono; them more of those we call evil than of those we call good. The isolated individual never, by any possi- bility, can become civilized like the social man ; he cannot even speak, and without a flow of words there can be no complete flow of thought. Send him forth away from his fellow-man to roam the forest with the wild beasts, and he would be almost as wild and beastlike as his companions ; it is doubtful if he would ever fashion a tool, but would not rather Avith his claws alone procure his food, and forever remain as he now is, the most impotent of animals. The intellect, by which means alone man rises above other animals, never could work, because the intellect is quickened only as it comes in contact with intellect. The germ of development therein implanted cannot imfold singly any more than the organism can bear fruit singly. It is a well-established fact that the mind without language cannot fully develop ; it is like- Avise established that language is not inherent, that it springs up between men, not in them. Language, like civilization, belongs to society, and is in no wise a part or the property of the individual. We may hold, then, a priori, that this progressional principle exists ; that it exists not more in the man than around him ; that it requires an atmosphere in which to live, as life in the body requires an atmosphere which is its vital breath, and that this atmosphere is generated only by the contact of man with man. Under analysis this social atmosphere appears to be composed of two oj^posing principles — good and evil — which, like attraction and rej^ulsion, or positive and negative electricity, imderlie all activities. One is as essential to progress as the other ; either, in excess or disproportionately admin- istered, like an excess of oxygen or of hydrogen in the air, becomes pernicious, engenders social disruptions and decay, which continue until the equilibrium is restored ; yet all the while with the pi'Ogress of humanity the good increases, while the evil diminishes. Every impulse incident to humanity is born of the union of these two oppos- ing principles. For example, as I have said, and will attempt more fully to show further on, association is the first requisite of progress. 202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. But what is to bring about association ? Kaked nomads will not voluntarily yield up their freedom, quit their wanderings, hold con- ventions and pass resolutions concerning the greatest good to the greatest number; patriotism, love, benevolence, brotherly kindness, will not bring savage men together ; extrinsic force must be employed, an iron hand must be laid upon them which will compel them to unite, else there can be no civilization ; and to accomplish this first great good to man — to compel mankind to take the initial step toward the amelioration of their condition — it is ordained that an evil, or what to us of these latter times is surely an evil, come forward — and that evil is war. Primeval man, in his social organization, is patriarchal, spreading out over vast domains in little bands or families, just large enough to be able successfully to cope with wild beasts. And in that state humanity would forever remain did not some terrible cause force these bands to confederate. War is an evil, originating in hateful passions and ending in dire misery ; yet without war, without this evil, man would forever remain primitive. But something more is necessary. War brings men together for a purpose, but it is insufii- cient to hold them together ; for, when the cause which compacted them no longer exists, they speedily scatter, each going his own way. Then comes in superstition to the aid of progress. A successful leader is first feared as a man, then reverenced as a supernatural being, and finally himself, or his descendant, in the flesh or in tradition, is worshiped as a god. Then an unearthly fear comes uj)on mankind, and the ruler, perceiving his power, begins to tyrannize over his fellows. Both superstition and tyranny are evils ; yet, without war, superstition, and tyranny, dire evils, civilization, which many deem the highest good, never by any possibility, as human nature is, could be. But more of the conditions of progress hereafter; what I wish to establish here is, that evil is no less a stimulant of development than good, and that in this princijDle of progress are manifest the same antagonism of forces apparent throughout physical Nature ; the same oppugnant energies, attractive and repulsive, positive and negative, everywhere existing. It is impossible for two or more individuals to be brought into contact with each other, whether through causes or for purposes good or evil, without ultimate improvement to both. I say whether through causes or for purposes good or evil, for, to the all-pervading principle of evil, civilization is as much indebted as to the all-pervading principle of good. Indeed, the beneficial influences of this unwelcome element have never been generally recognized. Whatever be this principle of evil, whatever man would be without it, the fact is clearly evident that to it civilization, whatever that may be, owes its existence. " The whole tendency of political economy and philosophical history," says Lecky, " which reveal the physiology of society, is to show that the happiness and welfare of mankind are SAVAGISM AI^^D CIVILIZATION. 203 evolved much more from our selfish than what are termed our vh-tuous acts." No wonder that devil-worship obtains, in certain parts, when to his demon the savage finds himself indebted for skill not only to overthrow subordinate deities, but to cure diseases, to will an enemy to death, to minister to the welfare of departed friends, as well as to add materially to his earthly store of comforts. The world, such as it is, man finds himself destined for a time to inhabit. Within him and around him the involuntary occupant perceives two agencies at work; agencies apparently oppugnant, yet both tending to one end — im- provement ; and Night or Day, Love or Crime, leads all souls to the Good, as Emerson sings. The principle of evil acts as a perpetual stimulant, the principle of good as a reward of merit. United in their operation, there is a constant tendency toward a better condition, a higher state; apart, the result would be inaction. For, civilization being a progression and not a fixed condition, without incentives, that is without something to escape from and something to escape to, there could be no transition, and hence no civilization. Had man been placed in the world perfected and sinless, obviously there would be no such thing as progress. The absence of evil im- plies perfect good, and perfect good perfect haj^piness. Were man sinless and yet capable of increasing in knowledge, the incentive would be wanting, for, if perfectly hapi^y, w*hy should he struggle to become happier? The advent of civilization is in the appearance of a want, and the first act of civilization springs from the attempt to supply the want. The man or nation that wants nothing remains inactive, and hence does not advance ; so that it is not in what we have but in what we have not that civilization consists. These wants are forced upon us, implanted within us, inseparable from our being ; they increase with an increasing supply, grow hungry from what they feed on ; in quick succession, aspirations, emulations, and ambitions, spring up and chase each other, keeping the fire of discontent ever glowing, and the whole human race efiervescent. The tendency of civilizing force, like the tendency of mechanical force, is toward an equilibrium, toward a never-attainable rest. Obvi- ously there can be no perfect equilibrium, no perfect rest, until all evil disappears, but in that event the end of progress would be attained, and humanity would be perfect and sinless. Man at the outset is not what he may be, he is capable of improve- ment, or rather, of growth ; but childlike, the savage does not care to improve, and consequently must be scourged into it. Advance- ment is the idtimate natural or normal state of man ; humanity on this earth is destined some day to be relatively, if not absolutely, good and happy. The healthy body has appetites, in the gi-atification of which lies its chiefest enjoyment; the healthy mind asserts more and more its independence. Increasing skill yields ever-increased delights, which 2C4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ■encourage and reward our labor. This, up to a certain point ; but with wealth and luxury comes relaxed energy. AVithout necessity there is no labor; without labor no advancement. Corporeal neces- sity first forces corporeal activity ; then the intellect goes to work to contrive means whereby labor may be lessened and made more pro- ductive. The discontent which arises from discomfort lies at the root of every movement ; but, then, comfort is a relative term, and complete satisfaction is never attained. Indeed, as a rule, the more squalid and miserable the race, the more are they disposed to settle down and content themselves in their state of discomfort. What is discomfort to one is luxury to another ; " the mark of rank in Nature is capacity for pain ; " in following the intellectual life, the higher the culture the greater the discontent ; the greater the acquisition, the more eagerly do men press forward toward some higher and greater imaginary good. We all know that blessings in excess become the direst curses ; but few are conscious where the benefit of a blessing terminates and the curse begins, and fewer still of those who are able thus to dis- criminate have the moral strength to act upon that knowledge. As a good in excess is an evil, so evil as it enlarges outdoes itself and tends toward self-annihilation. If we but look about us, we must see that to burn up the world in order to rid it of gross evil — a dogma held by some — is unnecessary, for accumulative evils ever tend toward reaction. Excessive evils are soonest remedied ; the equilibrium of the evil must be maintained, or the annihilation of the evil ensues. Institutions and j^rinciples essentially good at one time are essen- tially evils at another time. The very aids and agencies of civiliza- tion become afterward the greatest drags upon progress. At one time it would seem that blind faith was essential to improvement, at another time skepticism — at one time order and morality, at another time lawlessness and rapine ; for so it has ever been, and whether peace and smiling plenty, or fierce upheavals and dismemberments predominate, from every social spasm as well as fecund leisure, civil- ization shoots forward in its endless course. The very evils which are regarded as infamous by a higher culture were the necessary step- ping-stones to that higlier life. As we have seen, no nation ever did or can emerge from barbarism without first placing its neck under the yokes of despotism and superstition ; therefore, despotism and super- stition, now dire evils, were once essential benefits. No religion ever attained its full development except under persecution. Our present evils are constantly working out for humanity unforeseen good. All systems of wrongs and fanaticisms are but preparing us for and urg- ing us on to a higher state. If, then, civilization is a predestined, ineluctable, and eternal march away from things evil toward that Avhich is good, it must be that throughout the world the principle of good is ever increasing and that SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 205 of evil decreasing. And this is true. Not only does evil decrease, but the tendency is ever toward its disappearance. Gradually the confines of civilization broaden ; the central principle of liuuian prog- ress attains greater intensity, and the mind assumes more and more its lordly power over matter. The moment we attempt to search out the cause of any onward movement we at once encounter this j^rinciple of evil. The old-time aphorism that life is a perpetual struggle ; the first maxim of social ethics, "The greatest happiness to the greatest number;" indeed, every thought and action of our lives points in the same direction. From what is it mankind is so eager to escape ? With what do we wrestle ? For what do we strive ? "We fly from that which gives pain to that which gives pleasure ; we wrestle with agencies which bar our escape from a state of infelicity ; we long for happiness. There is another thought in this connection well worthy our atten- tion. In orthodox and popular parlance, labor is a curse entailed on man by vindictive justice ; yet, viewed as a civilizing agent, labor is man's greatest blessing. Througliout all Nature there is no such thing found as absolute inertness ; and, as in matter, so with regard to our faculties, no sooner do they begin to rest than they begin to rot, and even in the rotting they can obtain no rest. One of the chief objects of labor is to get gain, and Dr. Johnson holds that "men are seldom more innocently employed tlian wheu they are making money." Human experience teaches, that in the effort is greater pleasure than in the end attained; that labor is the normal condition of man; that in acquisition, that is progress, is the highest happiness ; that passive enjoyment is inferior to the exhilaration of active attempt. Now imagine the absence from the world of this spirit of evil, and what would be the result? Total inaction. But, before inac- tion can become more pleasurable than action, man's nature must be changed. Not to say that evil is a good thing, clearly there is a good- ness in things evil ; and in as far as the state of escaping from evil is more pleasurable than the state of evil escaped from, in so far is evil conducive to happiness. Another more plausible and partially correct assertion is, that by the development of the subjective part of our nature, objective hu- manity becomes degenerated. The intellectual cannot be Avrought up to the highest state of ciiltivation except at the expense of the physi- cal, nor the physical fully developed without limiting the mental. The efforts of the mind draw from the energies of the body ; the highest and healthiest vigor of the body can only be attained wlien the mind is at rest, or in a state of careless activity. In answer to wliicli I should say that, beyond a certain point, it is true ; one would hardly train successfully for a prize-fio:ht and the tripos at the same time ; but that the non-intellectual savage, as a race, is physically superior, capable of enduring greater fatigue, or more skillful in muscular exer- 2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cise, than the civilized man, is inconsistent with facts. Civilization has its vices as well as its virtues, savagism has its advantages as well as its demerits. The evils of savagism are not so great as we imagine ; its pleasures more than we are apt to think. As we become more and more re- moved from evils, their magnitude enlarges ; the fear of suffering increases as suffering is less experienced and witnessed. If savagism holds human life in light esteem, civilization makes death more hide- ous than it really is ; if savagism is more cruel, it is less sensitive. Combatants accustomed to frequent encounter think lightly of wounds, and those whose life is oftenest imperilled think least of losing it. In- difference to pain is not necessarily the result of cruelty; it may arise as well from the most exalted sentiment as from the basest. Civilization not only engenders new vices, but proves the destroyer of many virtues. Among the wealthier classes energy gives way to en- joyment, luxury saps the foundation of labor, progress becomes para- lyzed, and, with now and then a noble exception, but few earnest workers in the paths of literature, science, or any of the dej^artments which tend to the improvement of mankind, are to be found among the powerful and the affluent, while the middle classes are absorbed in money-getting, unconsciously thereby, it is true, working toward the ends of civilization. That civilization is expedient, that it is a good, that it is better than savagism, we who profess to be civilized entertain no doubt. Those who believe otherwise must be ready to deny that health is bet- ter than disease, truth than superstition, intellectual power than stupid ignorance ; but whether the miseries and vices of savagism, or those of civilization, are the greater, is another question. The tendency of civilization is, on the whole, to purify the morals, to give equal rights to man, to distribute more equally among men the benefits of this world, to meliorate wholesale misery and degradation, offer a higher aim and the means of accomplishing a nobler destiny, to increase the power of the mind and give it dominion over the forces of Nature, to place the material in subservience to the mental, to elevate the indi- vidual and regulate society. True, it may be urged that this heaping up of intellectual fruits tends toward monopoly, toward making the rich richer and the poor poorer, but I still hold that the benefits of civilization are for the most part evenly distributed ; that wealth be- yond one's necessity is generally a curse to the possessor greater than the extreme of poverty, and that the true blessings of culture and refinement, like air and sunshine, are free to all. Civilization, it is said, multiplies wants, but then they are ennobling wants, better called aspirations, and many of these civilization satisfies. If civilization breeds new vices, old ones are extinguished by it. Decency and decorum hide the hideousness of vice, drive it into dark corners, and thereby raise the tone of morals and weaken vice. Thus FORESTS AND RAINFALL. 207 civilization promotes cliastity, elevates woman, breaks down the bar- riers of hate and superstition between ancient nations and religions ; individual energy, the influence of one over the many, becomes less and less felt, and the power of the people becomes stronger. Civilization in itself cannot but be beneficial to man ; that which makes society more refined, more intellectual, less bestial, more cour- teous ; that which, cures physical and mental diseases, increases the comforts and luxury of life, purifies religions, makes juster govern- ments, must surely be beneficial ; it is the universal principle of evil which impregnates all human afiliirs, alloying even current coin, which raises the question. That there are evils attending civilization as all other benefits, none can deny, but civilization itself is no evil. -♦♦♦- T FORESTS AND EAINFALL.' HE question of the influence of forests on the hydrology of a -J- region is one that has been warmly discussed. Some men of science, Becquerel for example, hold that forests increase the amount of water received by the soil ; while others. Marshal Vaillant among them, assert that forests diminish the quantity. Some savans, such as M. Mathieu, sub-director of the Nancy School of Forestry, have en- deavored, by way experiment, to get together such facts as might, if they did not set the question at rest, at least clear up some points and supply a portion of the experimental data needed for a full explana- tion at some future time. M. Mathieu undertook to " determine the amount of rain-water received by the soils of two neighboring dis- tricts, one of them covered with timber and the other arable land ; and to find out whether, in consequence of the covering of trees which intercepts the rain-water, the soil of the woodland is as abundantly watered as that of the open." His conclusion is, that timbered soils receive as much, and more, rain-water than the open country. These expei-iments are of great importance ; the results obtained are noteworthy, and, taken in connection with Becquerel's observa- tions, seem to be decisive of the question. Still, in order to meet an objection that might be raised against this mode of experimenting, viz., the difficulty of finding two districts near to one another and fairly comparable, we have made experiments from another point of view, which confirm those made by M. Mathieu. No matter how you select two neighboring districts, it is not easy to prove that they are absolutely comparable to one another. The amount of rainfall may be seriously aflfected by the altitude, and par- ticularly the relative altitude ; by the situation of the district ; by the relief and configuration of the land in the surrounding countiy; and ' Translation of a communication to the French Academy of Sciences, hv L. Faiitiat and A. Sartiaux. 208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. l>y other unknown conditions wliicli may in a greater or less degree change the direction or the velocity of the rain-current, or the point and degree of condensation of the watery vapor contained in it. M. Dausse, in a memoir which appeared in the " Annales des Fonts ct Chaussees," uses the following argument: "Rain is formed when a warm and humid wind comes in contact with strata of cold air; and since the air of forests is colder and more humid than that of the open, rain must fall there in greater abundance." To gauge experimentally the influence of forests on the rainfall of a district, or, in other words, to ascertain the condensing power of forests, we have compared the results obtained in observations made : 1. Above the forest; and 2. At the same altitude, and at so small a distance from the forest, that any observable difference could be attrib- uted only to the influence of the latter. "We now made the following observations in the heart of the forest of Ilalatte, which embraces 5,000 hectares of land. At the height of about six metres (say 20 feet) above a group of oaks and hornbeams eight or nine metres high, we placed a pluviometer, a psychrometer, maximum and minimum thermometers, and an evaporometer, so as to ascertain at that point the amount of rainfall, the degree of saturation of the air, and the rate of temperature and of evaporation. In the open air, at the distance of only 300 metres from the forest, and at the same height above the ground as in the former case, we placed similar instruments under the same conditions. With regard to the rainfall and the degree of saturation, we give a summary of the first six months' observations, as follows : Months. February, 1874 March, " " April, " May, " June, " July, " Total Difference in favor of the forest, 15.50. Amount of Rainfall. In the Forest. In the Open. 18.75 mm. 18.00 mm. 15.00 (( 11.75 " 27.50 (i 25.75 " 39.25 (1 35.50 " 51.25 (t 48.25 " 40.75 a 37.75 " 192.50 mm. 177.00 mm. Months. Degree of Saturation of the Air, in lOOthB. March, 1874 In the Forest. In the Open. 71.1 64.3 64.1 60.9 54.6 70.0 64.2 60.4 60.1 53.8 April, " Mav, " June, " Julv, " Total Mean 315.0 63.0 808.5 61.7 Difference in favor of the forest, 1. 3. THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIVERSE. 209 If these observations, which are still made daily, continue to give the same results, it may then be affirmed that forests constitute vast condensing apparatus, and the conclusion will be inevitable that more rain falls in wooded land than on bare and cultivated soil. — Compte& Mendus. THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIYEESE. Br JAMES MACKINTOSH, M. A. THE science of meteorology is but of yesterday, and yet it has already developed results which throw light upon the genesis of the universe. It has revealed to us the true nature of atmospheric disturbances throughout time and space. The winds no longer blow where they list, and we hear the sound of them and can tell whence they come and whither they go. We know their producing causes, and can foretell, with a considerable degree of accuracy, their force, duration, and direction. Accordingly, the great majority of civilized countries, including China, the oldest of them, have already established weather bureaus, whose business it is to forewarn the mariner of com- ing tempests, and to give us all a timely notice when we shall require an umbrella or a great-coat. While these practical results are exceedingly worthy of attention, and inspire us with the hope that the time shall come when perfected instruments, improved methods, and increased knowledge, shall ena- ble the meteorologist to predict with the utmost certainty every atmospheric disturbance, they yet fall into the shade when compared with the magnificent and luminous conceptions which meteorology has added to cosmological science. It has opened to us visions of beauty and order reaching through infinity and eternity. It has given us a clearer glimpse into the workshop of the Almighty. The principal scientific result of meteorology is the theory of the cyclone. This is its central idea, the point of reference from which every thing is explained. So long as meteorologists tried to explain storms by encountering currents of wind, as did Dove and his school, 60 long did the science remain merely a laborious, interminable, and apparently useless collection of tabulated facts. It was then in its empirico-historical stage, and could, at the best, only produce such bare generalizations as isobaric and isothermal lines. Averages and darkness ruled throughout. But, when once the light-giving idea of the cyclone was fully grasped, a heavenly radiance dispelled the uncer- tain gloom, and the science was at once taken out of the range of the merely empirical, and established securely upon a deductive basis. What, then, is this light-bringing conception of the cyclone ? Briefly, as follows : A cyclone consists essentially of a rapidly-ascend- VOL. VII. — 14 2 10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. iiig curreut of air. This involves two other functions: 1. A rushing in of tlie air at the under part of the ascending current ; 2. An outrushing at the upper. Upon the former of these functions, com- bined Avith modifying circumstances, depend the peculiar character and career of the under-currents and of the clouds they bear ; upon the latter, combined with the same circumstances, the proportions and direction of motion of the upper currents and of the heavy masses of clouds they bear. There appears to be nothing in the nature of the cyclone itself which can determine the motion of either the upper or under current more toward any one point of the compass than toward the others. This direction of motion relative to the ascending column depends upon the direction and velocity of motion of the latter, and of the attnosplieric strata in which the influx and efflux take place, modified to some extent by the difiering velocities of revolution of the surface of the earth at different parallels of latitude, by the form of the earth's surface, and by the variation in the constitution of the atmosphere. If the cyclone column and the atmospheric strata which it penetrates move in the same direction, and with the same velocity, the influx and efflux will take place in nearly equal quantity, on all sides of the column. If they move with different velocities, the direc- tions of exaggeration and diminution of the influx and efflux can be calculated in the same way as the direction of a vane on a ship's mast, given the directions and velocities of the motion of the wind and of the ship. This gives the general idea of the cyclone for all space and time, but not the sources of its power. These are to be found in the less specific gravity, potential or actual, of the lower atmospheric strata as compared with that of the higher. Air, and gases generally, expand when heated, and become specifically lighter. It thus tends to rise above the superincumbent colder air. (We see this illustrated in our chimneys every day.) If the aii' over the surface of a plain becomes heated by contact with it, its specific levity is increased, and it tends to rise. But the density, and therefore weight of air, the temperature and humidity being the same, is inversely as the pressure upon it. Consequently, so long as the diminution of specific gravity caused by increased temperature is balanced in the strata above by the diminu- tion of pressure due to elevation, the heated air cannot ascend very fast. If it had a chimney to rush up, the case would be different ; but, not having one, it can only rise slowly by intermingling itself with the superincumbent air. As soon, however, as the diminution of specific gravity due to higher temperature is greater than that due to dimin- ished pressure, the lower stratum will break itself a way through the air above it, and rush up through the opening. This result may be attained, and is generally readied, by favoring circumstances, long before equilibrium is totally destroyed. When once the' heated air has thus at a particular point formed itself a channel of escape, the THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIVERSE. 211 warm stratum along the surface of the earth rushes toward the open- iiio;, and there ascends, while the colder air above descends to take its jalace. If the ascending column of heated air remained Btationarj'-, it is evident that its supply of warm air would soon be exhausted, and the process therefoi-e speedily come to an end. But this is not so. It moves forward to where there is more heated air, just as one might fancy a chimney to travel after a moving fire. The operation can thus iro on for a considerable time. The ascension of air with a higher sensible temperature would not alone suffice to supply the tremendous power of the cyclone. The diiference of temperature, even in extreme eases between lower and higher strata, is wholly insufficient to account for the enormous energy developed by our cyclones of hundreds of miles in diameter. We therefore require another source of power. Nor have we far to seek it. The sun's rays falling upon dry earth heat it, and thus raise the temperature of the air in contact with it. But if they fall upon our oceans, lakes, and rivers, or upon moist earth, there is another result, of a somewhat different though equally familiar kind. It is this, that some of the water is converted into steam or vapor. Now, every one knows that no amount of heat can raise the temperature of boiling- water if it is unconfined. Where, then, does the heat go to? Plainly it is carried off by the vapor in an insensible or latent condition. It is a demonstrated fact that it requires as much heat to convert a quan- tity of water into steam as it takes to raise the same quantity 1,000° of temperature. The same amount is required to evaporate water vvithout boiling it. Consequently, when the sun's rays evaporate water, a vast amount of heat becomes insensible to our thermometers. It is not annihilated, however, and all that is required in order to make it manifest is simply to condense the vapor into water again. When the heated air, as already described, rushes up in a column, it becomes subjected to less and less pressure, because thei'e is less and less air above it. Since air in expanding under pressure produces work, and since heat is an equivalent of work, it expends heat in so doing, and is thus lowered in temperature. Consequently, the as- cending air rapidly cools as it rises. Now, this air is carrying large quantities of vapor of water with it, which likewise is cooled by ex- pansion. But you cannot cool vapor at any tension below a certain temperature without condensing it ; and so, indeed, it happens. The steam carried up by the cyclone is condensed into rain, snow, or hail, and falls to the earth. In condensing it gives forth the enormous quantity of insensible heat which it received from the sun. This heat is imparted to the ascending current, and thus keeps it warmer and therefore specifically lighter than the strata through which it is ris- ing. The heat of the sun, which had been potential in the vapor, is converted into the energy developed by the cyclone. We thus see that the cyclone is really a kind of vast steam-engine. 2 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Oil our earth its furnace is the sun, and its boiler the moist lands, the rivers, lakes, and oceans. But it is evident that its mode of operation would not be substantially aflected if the heat were supplied not as in our case from an outside source, but from the original internal heat of the sun or planet itself. So, also, the essential nature of the cyclone would not be altered whatever be the kind of vapor condensed, whether it be of water, of iron, of copper, of gold, or of granite. The above derivation of the power of the cyclone is therefore applicable through- out time and space. For the condensation of any vapor whatever would present very much the same phenomena as those with which we are familiar. Let us suppose the earth of such a temperature as to keep iron in nearly the same condition relatively as water is now ; that is, partly vapor floating in the atmosphere, partly fluid gathered in oceans, lakes, and rivers, and partly like solid snow and ice as in the colder seasons and latitudes. Evaporation would go on at the surface of the fluid iron until the atmosphere became nearly saturated. As soon as condensa- tion began an ascending current would be formed. Toward the bot- tom of this current the winds would rush in spirals just as they do now. As the vapor of iron rose and came to the strata of less and less pressure and temperature, it would expand, cool, and condense, and descend in molten showers of liquid metal. Or, if the temperature were low enough, or the summit of the storm high enough, a shower of iron hail, or snow, would be the result. Nor need we stay our imagination here. The time was, when our globe had no solid or liquid nucleus, but was wholly gaseous. It was literally an atmosphere^ and nothing else. All the matter of the earth then floated, a vast globular ocean of vapor. The power which kept its particles apart was heat. Before these particles could come to- gether and tlie solid foundations of the world be laid, it was neces- sary that the heat should be got rid of. The means by which this pur- pose was accomplished was mainly the cyclone. Around the limits of the vaporous world radiation into empty space could go on rapidly. Not so in the interior. Conduction of heat even along a bar of iron is a very slow process. It is million-fold slower through gas. Hence, the quickest way of carrying the heat from the interior to the summit of the atmosphere, where it might escape, was, to carry up the matter itself which contained a large amount of heat, either actual or poten- tial. This work was accomplished by the cyclone. Let us endeavor to form some conception of the cyclone of primeval times. Let us fancy ourselves in the solar system ere yet it became separated into insulated worlds, and just as condensation is going on. Gases of different specific gravities tend to intermingle even though at first arranged in separate layers above one another. Many of the gases would also be of nearly the same specific gravity. Hence, al- though in general the denser gases would tend together toward the THE CYCLONE IN THE UNIVERSE. 213 centre, and tlie lighter toward tlie summit, there would necessarily be a vast amount of confused intermingling. Hence a cyclone of those times could not be attended by the fall of only one kind of rain, as of molten iron, but by that of many difierent kinds. Doubtless while some substances, such as granite, fell as snow or hail, others, such as iron, would foil as rain. Moreover, since the sti'ata would be, in the main, according to their specific gravity, and since some of the gases would evaporate and condense at different temperatures from others, showers of difier- ent kinds of metals and stones would tend to form at difierent alti- tudes. This would be counteracted, at least in part, by the tendency of the cyclone to reach clear uj) from the lowest depths to the circum- ference. That the disturbances in our own atmosphere extend to an immensely greater height than is generally supposed, and probably almost to the extreme limit of the atmosphere, is now certain. In my report on the tornado of May 22, ISVS (Chief Signal-Officer's "Annual Report, 1873 "), I showed that in all likelihood it reached, at least, to an altitude of sixteen miles. The cyclones in the sun also appear to extend almost to the summit of his atmosphere, otherwise we could not see them so clearly as we do. Judging also from the nature of the case, we should conclude that the cyclone, amid such a vast assem- blage of vapors, arranged in layers, would be likely to extend its dimensions almost from the centre to the circumference ; for a dis- turbance and precipitation in one layer would tend to produce a disturbance and precipitation in the stratum above it, as well as in that beneath it. We have thus presented to our imaginations a Vast cyclonic column thousands of millions of miles in height, up which vapors of great variety, and collected at very various altitudes, are rushing with terrific force, and condensing as they go. Those, like granite, that solidify at a high temperature, would freeze in huge blocks which, generating sufficient centrifugal force by the Avhirling motion, would fly out from the ascending current and rush down- ward. Substances congealing at diflferent temperatures would thus be likely to be thrown out at different elevations. Much the larger mass of substances, however, would probably be carried up to where the cyclone spread itself out laterally in a huge nimbus-cloud. From that cloud would rush down a fierce deluge of half the substances of the solar system in solid or liquid form. The violence and confusion of the descending hail and rain would be of surpassing grandeur — far more terrible and sublime than that scene described by Milton, where the Satanic host was hurled from the battlements of heaven " with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition." All kinds of igneous rocks, mingled with molten metal, chased each other millions of miles down through the fiery gloom. The tempera- ture increased as they descended. Each substance melted and evap- orated as it reached the proper temperature, while the substances 214 TH^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. more difficult to evaporate continued their downward course. Final- ly, all would again be reduced to a state of vapor. What, then, had been accomplished by all this turmoil and activ- ity? Merely this : a large quantity of heat had been conveyed from the interior of the system to the exterior ; for this it is which all cy- clones accomplish. This it is which lends them their power. On our earth it is the sun's heat mainly which the cyclone carries away to the limits of the atmosphere. In the sun itself it is a portion of the jirime- val stock of heat which is i*emoved. The cyclone may therefore be defined as the universal cooler of creation. There is not a sun which lights the midnight sky, or which the telescope has brought within mortal ken, which is not vastly in- debted to the cyclone. Though so simple as easily to be understood by a child, it is a powerful means by which the Almighty -works. It is a key to very many of the secrets of the universe. When we watch the snow-storm and the rain, we are really watching the method by which God has proceeded in forming his worlds since ever the cooling process began. Thus have the storms raged and the winds howled throughout the universe for countless ages ; and by that rain, and snow, and hail, has all the solid and liquid substance of the worlds been formed. Every particle of it has been rained and snowed again and again. Nor is the process yet completed. The cyclone has by no means done its work yet. Its task will be finished only when tlie last particle of gas is converted into a liquid or solid. It is going on all around us. If there appears to be a balance at present upon the earth, if the solidifying power of the cyclone appears to be at a stand- still, it is only because its efibrts are counteracted by the extraneous heat we receive from the sun. The cyclone may^ also have assisted at the birth of the planets. Those stupendous meteors of thousands of millions of miles of eleva- tion must necessarily have caused immense gaseous masses to bulge out from the general level of the surface of the incipient solar system. This might be sufficient under exceptional conditions, and when the balance between the centrifugal and the centripetal forces was nearly equal, to turn it in favor of the former, and thus generate a planet. ■»»» A CUEIOUS QUESTION OF HOESES' KIBS. Br MAX MtJLLER. SYLVIUS said that man had formerly an intermaxillary bone. If he has it no longer, he ought to have it. In this he was right. The same Sylvius, in his answer to Vesalius, said that Galen was not wrong when he described man as having seven bones in his sternum, A CURIOUS QUESTIOjSF OF HORSES' RIBS. 215 " for," said he, " in aBcient times the robust chests of heroes misrht very well liave had more bones than our degenerate day can boast." In this he was wrong. I take these statements from Mr. Lewes's " Life of Goethe " (p. 343), and I have to confess that I have not verified them. They interested me, however, as bearing on a controversy that has been carried on for some time between scholars and anatomists, viz., whether another ani- mal, the horse, instead of losing, has developed in course of time some bones which it did not originally possess. Horses have now thirty- six ribs ; sometimes, it is said, thirty-eight. But there is a passage in the " Rig- Veda," which speaks apparently of only thirty-four ribs in horses. It was M. Pietrement, who, in his work " Les Origines du Cheval domestique d'apres la Paleontologie, la Zoologie, I'Histoire et la Philologie" (Paris, 1870), first called attention to this curious state- ment, and drew from it the conclusion, supported by some very in- genious arguments, that at" the time of the Vedic poets, say about 1500 B. c, there existed a race of horses with only thirty-four ribs. Other zoologists, and more -partici^larly M. Sanson, raised some strong objections, but M. Pietrement replied to them in his "Memoire sur les Chevaux a trente-quatre c6tes des Aryas de I'Epoque Vedique " (Paris, 1871), and the question is still siibjudice. M. Pietrement's reasoning may best be given in his own words : " In the first place, I would observe that the presence of only thirty-four ribs in an equine race, whether ancient or modern, would not be by any means abnormal, or contrary to the laws of Nature ; for it is fully agreed now that the number of these bones is far from being constant in our present horses. Indeed, Cbauveau remarks as follows on the number of ribs in the horse : ' "We reckon for each lateral half of the thorax eighteen ribs. Not unfrequently Ave find nine- teen, with an equal number of dorsal vertebrae in well-formed horses ; but, then, most usually there are only five lumbar vertebrae. ' " On the other hand, we sometimes find in horses of a certain type ' only five lumbar vertebra, instead of six (which is the usual number in the species Equus calalliis), the number of the other vertebrte being the same as usual in the horse.' " When this latter fact was published in France by M. Sanson, it at first met with much opposition, but now it is fully accepted by men of science ; and it is justly considered as an indication of the ancient existence of an equine race with five lumbar vertebrfe ; and the crossing of these horses with horses having six lumbar vertebrje fully accounts for the frequent anomalies of conformation which we find in this region of the vertebral column." Having by these considerations established the possibility of an ancient race of horses with only thirty-four ribs, M. Pietrement ap- pealed for its reality to a passage in the most ancient literary docu- ment of the whole Aryan world, the " Rig-Veda." The passage in which the thirty-four ribs of the horse are men- tioned occurs in the 162d hymn of the first book of the " Rig- Veda Samhita." I translated the whole of that hymn in my " History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature" (1860, p. 553). The hymn is ascribed to 2i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Dirgliatamas, and describes the sacrifice of the horse in very full de- tail. In the eighteenth verse we read : " The axe approaches the thirty-four ribs of the qnick horse, beloved of the gods. Do you wisely keep the limbs whole, find out each joint and strike." This passage is curious in many respects. It refutes the statement of Strabo (xv., 54), that the Indians did not slaughter their victims : " They do not slay the victim, but suffocate it, to the end that it may not be offered to the god mutilated, but entire." It also seems to imply that the horses then offered at the sacrifices liad only thirty- four ribs. Tliis statement, however, startled even the orthodox com- mentators in India, and Saya/?a remarks in his commentary on this passage, that other animals, such as goats, etc., have only twenty-six ribs, as might be proved by what he considers as far more convincing than ocular evidence, viz., a passage from the "Brahmawas," in which it is said, " Its ribs are twenty-six." In another passage, in his com- mentary on the "/Satapatha brahmawa," xiii., 5, 1, 18, Sayana returns to the same subject, but unfortxmately that passage, as edited by Prof. Weber, is so corrupt that I at least cannot make sense of it, though it is clear that Sayana says there that their ribs are thirty-six. Another commentator, Mahldhara, explaining the horse-sacrifice, as prescribed in the "Ya^urveda," seems to have no anatomical misgivings, but states that the horse has thirty-four, goats and other animals twenty- six ribs. I confess that I was myself very much puzzled bj^ the passage in the " Rig- Veda." It was quite clear that tlie reading A-atustrimsat, thirty-four, cannot be called in question ; it was equally clear that that number would not have been mentioned except for some special purpose. That it was the habit of the ancient Hindoos to count the various bones of the human or animal skeleton, may be seen in the " Law-book of Ya^navalkya," iii., 85, et seq. There we read : " The neck consists of fifteen bones, a collar-bone on each side, and the chin ; two at its root, and the same on the forehead, the eyes, and the cheeks, and the nose of firm bone. The ribs with their supports and the Arbudas {Zippen- TcnorpeT) are seventy-two. Two front-bones, four skull-bones of the head, seven- teen bones of the chest, these are the bones of a man." Similar passages occur elsewhere, and establish the fact that the ancient anatomists of India made a point of knowing the exact num- ber of the bones in the different portions of the bodies both of men and animals. Not being able to find a satisfactory solution of my difficulty, I applied to Prof. Huxley, and I am glad, with his permission, to print the following letter, which offers a most ingenious, and, to my mind, satisfactory solution : " 26 Abbey Place, N. W. "My dear Sib: I have been much interested in M. Pi^trement's 'Memoire.' His work ' Les Origines des Chevaux domestiques' is well known to me, but I A CURIOUS QUESTION OF HORSES' RIBS. 217 had paid no particular attention to his incidental mention of the 34-ribbed Aryan horse. "M. Pietrement's essay raises three questions. The first, Does the passage of Dirghatamas's hymn cited necessarily imply that the horse known to him had only thirty-four ribs ? The second, Does the passage from Saya^za imply tliat he asserted of his own knowledge that the horses of his time (in 1400 a. d.) had only thirty-four ribs? The third, Are there any zoological arguments in favor of or against the existence of a breed of 34-ribbed horses ? " 1. Your Latin version of the solitary Vedic passage upon which M. Pietre- ment relies, admits the reading, ' The axe cuts through [the] thirty-four ribs of the quick horse,' etc. " I speak ignorantly, but suppose I am right in assuming that there is no more 'the' in the Sanskrit than in the Latin. Nevertheless, it is upon the presence of this definite article that the question turns. For, without it, the passage may simply mean that the axe cuts through thirty-four ribs out of the thirty-six with which the horse is provided. What makes me think that this may be the proper signification of the passage is the inquiry I put to my- self, For what purpose did the sacrificing priest want to cut through the horse's ribs ? Surely, in order to disembowel him. But, in order to do this, no one would go through the great trouble and labor of chopping through the bony parts of the ribs of a horse. Moreover, such a proceeding would be incom- patible with the objection to mangling the horse's bones, which is strongly dis- played elsew^here in the Vedic hymn. " But every bony rib ends below in a gristly substance, and it is quite easy to cut these ' costal cartilages,' and then, turning them back, along with the breastbone, the cavity of the chest is laid widely open, and tlie priest readily reaches the heart or tlie like. "But, if every rib ends in a cartilage, there must be thirty-six cartUages, and not thirty-four ? " True, but the last pair of ribs is much shorter than the others. It is not needful that all the thirty-six pairs of costal cartilages should be cut through in order to lay the chest thoroughly open ; and for sacrificial purposes it may have been inconvenient to cut through more than the thirty-four ribs which lie in front of it. " If you are laying open a man's chest for a 2^ost-7noTtem examination, you go to work exactly as I am supposing the Aryan priest to do. You cut through the rib cartilages on each side and take them away, along with the breast-bone to which they are attached. But, in doing this, you leave at least the last two ribs on each side untouched, because they are free, so that it is not needful to cut them. " If I were a poet, and made a hymn about a post-mortem examination, I might speak of the operator's scalpel 'cutting through the twenty ribs,' without meaning to imply that the man of the period is devoid of his full complement. " 2. Does Sayana say that the horses of his time had only thirty-four ribs ? The passage quoted by you does not seem to me to bear that interpretation at all. " 3. As to the zoological aspect of the question. Horses may undoubtedly vary not only in the number of their ribs, but in the number of their dorso-lum- bar vertebrfB. The latter may be twenty-four (as usual), or twenty-three, as in the cases cited by Sanson, and also by Legh in his ' Handbuch der Anatomic der Hausthiere ; ' and the former may be eighteen (as usual) or nineteen on each side. Unfortunately, I know of no case on record (and M. Pietrement seems to 2i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. have been unable to find one) in wliich either horse, ass, or other equine animal, had feicer than thirty-eight ribs. If a 34-ribbed race of horses ever existed, I think it ought to turn up as a variety now and then. But it does not ; and, what is still more to the purpose, we do not find that any of the immediate allies of the horse have fewer than thirty-six ribs ; though they may, as in the case of the ass, have only five lumbar vertebra;. " Without wishing, in the least, to dogmatize, then, I must say that the zoological probabilities appear to me to be dead against M. Pietrement's hypoth- esis; and unless you tell me that the Sanskrit text must mean that Dirghata- mas's horses had thirty-four ribs and no more, I shall take leave to doubt the existence of these 34- ribbed steeds. " I am afraid I have troubled you with a very long letter, which does not come to much in the way of certainty after all. . . . " I remain, yours very truly, T. H. Huxley." I have little doiibt that Prof. Huxley has solved the riddle. It is open to translate either the thirty-four, or thirty-four ribs ; hut, whether we adopt the one or the other rendering, it seems clear that the poet must have had some reason for mentioning that number. If thirty- four was the usual number of a horse's ribs in his time, then there seems little reason for giving the number. " Cut the ribs " would have conveyed the same meaning as " cut the thirty-four ribs." If, on the contrary, the number thirty-four was mentioned because it was exceptional, then the poet, and his commentators too, would have said more about the anomaly. Every thing becomes intelligible if we ad- mit that, in cutting open the horse, two ribs were not to be cut, so that they might remain and keep the carcass together. In that case to mention the number of ribs that were to be cut had a purpose, though it is strange that tradition, which in India possesses such ex- traordinary tenacity in unimportant matters, should not have pre- served the original purj)ort of the words of Dirghatamas. I have looked in vain for a passage where the cutting of the thirty-four ribs in the horse-sacrifice is more fully described ; but I ought to add that in the oldest descriptions of the sacrifice of other animals, preserved in the Aitareya-Brahma??a and the >S'rauta-Sutras of Alvarayana, nothing it said of leaving tAVO ribs undivided. " Twenty-six are his ribs," we read: " lefhim take them out in order; let him not spoil any limb." — Academy. GEOGRAPHICAL WOP.K OF 18Y4. AT the meeting of the American Geographical Society, lield Feb- ruary 25, 1875, the annual address was delivered by Chief-Jus- tice Daly, the President of the Society. Beginning with a brief survey of the remarkable physical phenomena of the year, including great falls of rain and snow, extreme and widely-distributed cold, earth- GEOGRAPHICAL WORK OF 1814. 219 quakes, volcanic disturbances, floods, cyclones, etc., he alluded, in passing, to the geography of the sea-bottom as made known by the recent examinations of the Challenger Expedition, and then took up the geographical work in our own country, as carried on by the United States Engineer Corps, and other explorers. The explorations of Lieutenant Wheeler show that every State and Territory west of the Plains is crowded with the products of volcanic action, ancient and modern, the connected beds of lava in Arizona and New Mexico cov- ering an area of 20,000 square miles ; and the conclusions of the geolo- gists of the expedition are, that volcanic disturbances and eru2:)tions in our Western teri'itory will be resumed, and may occur at any day. They have occurred so recently, geologically speaking, that it is extraordinary there is no human record of them. In the Depart- ment of the Platte, a new route to the Yellowstone Park has been discovered by Captain Jones's exploring party. The Black Hills country was penetrated by General Custer's military expedition, and explored by Captain Ludlow. Prof. Hayden's geographical survey has confirmed the discovery of 18Y2, that Colorado is the great centre of elevation in the United States, having fifty peaks that are about 14,000 feet high. In the Pacific Ocean, soundings have been made for ascertaining a practicable route for a telegraph cable between Japan and Puget Sound, and for one from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands. The separate researches and explorations of M. Pinvart and Mr. W. H. Dall, in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, were next reviewed. M. Pinvart is of the opinion that the Esquimaux of this region are of the same stock as those of Greenland and Bafiin's Bay, and concludes from their legends and traditions that they came originally from Asia across Behring's Straits. The probability of this conclusion is doubted by Mr, Dall ; moreover, many American ethnologists think that Green- land and vicinity were peopled from Europe. Prof J. W. Putnam, of Salem, Mass., has been engaged in re- searches respecting the ancient inhabitants of North America. He be- lieves that the southern Indians (the Mound-Builders of Ohio, Indiana, and other parts of the West) were not connected with the northern or eastern tribes, but were of the same stock as the ancient inhabitants of Mexico, though diversified by immigration and by mixing with other races. In Central and South America specialists have carried on explora- tions in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and tlie lower part of South America. A French expedition has been exploring Tierra del Fuego. The arctic event of the year has been the return of the officers and crew of the Tegethof, of the Austrian expedition, and the important discoveries made by them. This expedition, in the difficulties it en- countered, the perseverance displayed, the discipline maintained, and the success achieved, is about as heroic as anv thing that has occurred 220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. in tlie history of arctic exploration. The ship was frozen in off tlie coast of Nova Zembla from August till October, 18Y2, Avhen the ice broke up, and they found themselves fixed upon an ice-floe helplessly drifting^ but, strangely enough, to the northward. Drifting fourteen months in this way, mere passengers on an ice-floe, they were at last driven ashore and frozen in on a coast which tliey had discovered, but were unable to reach, two months before. This was in 79° 43' north latitude, and 60° 23' east longitude. It was now November, 1873, and they had passed the eightieth parallel. The long polar winter of 175 days set in, and the cold was so severe that the quicksilver remained frozen for weeks, and the darkness in midwinter was intense. The land, to which they gave the name of Franz-Joseph Land, was a most desolate region. In April, 1874, they set out in sledges and reached 81° 57' north latitude, coming upon a country which they called Crown-Pz'ince Laud, whose clifis were covered with thousands of ducks and auks ; seals lay upon the ice, and there were traces of bears, hares, and foxes. Here, over a sea comparatively free from ice, they saw land in the distance, which seemed to stretch beyond the eighty-third parallel of north latitude. Their return-journey was one of over three months' hardship, make in sledges and boats. In Europe, the long-projected measurement of an arc of the merid- ian was begun last autumn. Archseological researches have been prosecuted in Dr. Schliemann's excavations of ancient Troy ; and, while many doubt its identity, M. Emile Burnouf, Mr. Gladstone, the late premier, Prof. Keller, of Frei- berg, and other eminent scholars, are of the opinion that it is really the city of Priam that has been discovered. But whether the site be Troy, or not, in the twenty thousand objects unearthed we have records which carry us back to the childhood of the world. The ex- cavations in Pompeii show that only a small part of the city has as yet been opened. Every extension adds new objects, none of which are of more interest than its paintings ; without these we would have been unable to judge of the excellence to which the Greeks had ar- rived in the art of painting; for, while their architecture and sculpture have endured, the paintings of their great masters have perished. In Rome, the excavations have disclosed many objects connected with ancient Roman life, public and private. In the tomb of a priest, the gold threads that were woven into his robe remained when every thing else had crumbled into dust. An ancient Egyptian medical treatise has been discovered by Prof. Ebers, of Leipsic, which, by a calendar on the back of the papyrus, discloses that it was written 1,600 years before Christ. In Asia, the geographical explorations and researches have, during the year, been numerous and widely distributed. The Sea of Aral has been surveyed, and found to be 165 feet above the level of the ocean, and 250 feet above the Caspian. The river Oxus, which empties into GEOGRAPHICAL WORK OF 1874. 221 it, has also been explored, revealing the fact that the country drained by the old river, whose channel is now dry, was the scat of an exten- sive civilization, of which nothing now remains but the ruins. Ex- plorations have been made in the Himalaya Mountains, with a view to a railroad across Asia. The river Han-kiang, in China, hitherto almost unknown, has been found to be of great commercial importance. For the last four years the rich and prosperous country around Tien- Tsin, in China, has been lying'under water from inundations to a depth of nearly five feet, and the unfortunate inhabitants of this once fertile region have been driven to seek new homes in the waste country north of the Great Wall. Many unknown regions have been visited by trav- elers and exi^lorers, who found new countries, peoples, and customs. In the Kassia tribes, between Siam and Burmah, the doctrine of woman's rights is fully carried out. The women own the land, live in their own houses, do the courting, marrying, divorcing, and the lion's share of work ; the men, being the weaker half, and not responsible for the maintenance of the family, do comparatively nothing, and take life easy ! A savage tribe, the remnant of a very ancient people, has been visited on the western coast of India. They are remarkable for their unswerving truthfulness. The women wear over their usual garment an apron of green leaves, the relic of an ancient custom, siiggesting a passage in Genesis. In the central provinces the site of an ancient city has been discovered buried in dense jungles, and bearing inscrip- tions of two and a half centuries before Christ. The inscriptions are chiefly the records of donors of columns, like those seen in the gift- windows of our own churches. In Palestine, Lieutenant Conder, R. E,, has made important dis- coveries of ruins in the hill-country of Judah, which he thinks he can identify with some of the lost Biblical cities. He has found lost boun- dary-stones, w^hich may prove to be the ancient Levitical landmarks. Discoveries have also been made upon Mount Zion. At the mouth of the Persian Gulf there is a small island, of about twelve miles in circumference, called Ormus, or Hormus. Though a barren rock, it became, in the sixteenth century, from its geographical position, a place of great commercial importance and wealth, where the trade between Europe and the East was transacted. A town arose three miles in length along the coast and two miles in width. The Abbe Raynal describes it as presenting a more splendid appearance than any city in the East, and, he saj^s, unusual opulence, an exten- siv^e commerce, the politeness of the men, and the attraction of the women, made it the seat of pleasure as well as trade. Milton refers to it in "Paradise Lost," where he describes Satan in council. Last year, Lieutenant Stiflb, of the British Navy, visited Ormus, and found that even its building-materials had been carried away, and that nothing remained of the once great and opulent city but a ruined minaret 222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. about seventy feet liigh, mounds strewed with brolien pottery, and a vast number of water-cisterns now choked with earth. In Africa, Lieutenant Cameron, of the Livingstone Relief Exi)edi- tion, has made an important discovery which fixes the source of the Nile within known limits, and which, there is every reason to think, will connect the net-work of lakes and rivers of the water-system that Livingstone was investigating, with the great rivers that flow to the western coast of Africa, and probably with the Congo. Livingstone and Stanley had settled the fact of Lake Tanganyika's being con- nected with Lake Albert N'yanza on the north by a river flowing into Tanganyika. The natives informed them that a river flowed out of Tanganyika at its southern extremity, which, if true, showed that Lake Tanganyika had no connection with the Nile. This oiitlet Lieutenant Cameron has found on the western side of the lake, about a third of the way up its length. He went into the river about five miles, when Ijis boat was stopped by grass and rushes. The natives informed him that this river flowed into the Lualaba, the river that Livingstone had been following up when Stanley found him. From information got from the natives, Lieutenant Cameron believes that the Lualaba is connected with the Congo, and has started to ascertain the fact. If he should be successful, and return through the Congo to the western coast, it will be one of the most important geographical achievements ever accomplished in Africa. He ascertained the elevation of Lake Tanganyika to be 2,710 feet above the sea. Dr. Nachtigal has re- turned from an exploration of five years in Central and Eastern Sou- dan. He says the curse of the country he traversed is the internal slave-trade. It has depopulated large tracts, and the wretched fugi- tives are now driven to sell each other as a means of subsistence. He saw a caravan of 1,000 of these unhappy wretches chained, while they were driven to the distant market of Kuka on Lake Tchad, the drivers mercilessly cutting the throats of those who were, even under the lash, unable, from exhaustion, to continue their terrible march. The Libyan Desert has been explored and found to be the most sterile part of the Sahara, beiirg a dried-up l)asin of a shallow sea below the level of the Mediterranean, the present surface of which was found to be a dry chalk plateau, like the Swabian Alps. A French expedition is making preliminary investigations as to the feasibility of M. Lesseps's project for creating an inland sea south of Tunis. The project is op- posed by many familiar with this part of Africa, not only as useless, but it would have an injmious efiect on the climate of the south of Eu- rope, and also destroy the great source of wealth in this part of Africa, the cultivation of the date-tree. The existing commerce can be suffi- ciently carried on by caravans, so that the commercial results of the undertaking would never justify the enormous expenditure, which is estimated at £24,000,000. Along the western coast of Africa, explora- tions have been unusually active. Dr. Giissfeldt made a journey up GEOGRAPHICAL WORK OF 1874. 223 tlie Quilla River, and found a country reminding him of Switzerland. The west coast exj^editiou for the relief of Dr. Livingstone give an interesting account of the region traversed. They found the natives civilized but indolent, and their attention was being given to the cul- tivation of the India-rubber tree, of the value of which the natives were pi'eviously ignorant. On the east coast Mr. Stanley has organ- ized an expedition from Zanzibar at the joint expense of the New YorJc Herald and the London Telegraph, to explore the region last visited by Dr. Livingstone. The French Marine and the Geographi- cal Society will also send an expedition in the same direction. In Australasia, Prof. J. B. Steere, of the Michigan University, has, dur- ing a seven months' exploration in Formosa, gathered much valuable information respecting the island and its people. Interesting explora- tions have been made around New Guinea by H. M. S. Basilisk, and in Australia several remarkable journeys have been made across the country, through dreary regions and among natives in the lowest scale of humanity. A census of the island of Ceylon has been taken for the first time, and found to be 2,500,000; and in the course of the year the Feejee Islands, 312 in number, and covering an area of 8,034 square miles, have been annexed to the kingdom of Great Britain. The world is fully awake to the importance of geographical inquiry, and its thirty-five geographical societies watch the jDrogress of the lonely traveler and self-sacrificing missionary, estimating their labor at its value, and welcoming every addition they make to the stock of human knowledge. -♦♦♦- WOOD'S DISCOVERIES AT EPHESUS. EPHESUS, one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor, was famous in antiquity as containing one of the seven wonders of the world, the great temple of Artemis, or Diana. From very early times Ephesus was a sacred city ; the fable ascribed its foundation to the Amazons, and the Amazonian legend is connected with Artemis. The first Ionian colonists in Lydia found the worship of the goddess already established here in a primitive temple, which was soon super- seded by a magnificent structure. This Grecian temple was seven times restored, at the expense of all the Greek communities in Asia Minor. In the year 356 b. c. it was burned to the ground, but again rebuilt in a style of far greater splendor than before, the work ex- tending over 200 years. This later temjile was 425 feet long and 220 feet wide. "The foundations were sunk deep in marshy ground, as a precaution against earthquake," says Pliny. There were two rows of columns at the sides, but the front and back porticoes consisted of eight rows of columns, placed four deep. Outside, at the entrance 224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. to the teraple, stood a basin of poq^hyry, 15 feet in diameter, for the worsliipers to lave and purify themselves in. The internal decora- tion was of the most sumptuous kind. The cedar roof Avas support- ed on pillars of jasper ; the doors were of cypress. The altar was the work of Praxiteles, and it was surrounded by many statues, one J. T. WOOD, Fellow of the Royal Institute of Britigh Architects. of them of gold. The image of the goddess herself was roughly hewed out of wood, black with age, and greasy with the oil with which it was customary to anoint it. When the apostle Paul visited Ephesus in the middle of the first century, the worship of Diana still WOOD'S DISCOVERIES AT EPIIESUS. 225 flourished there, and the temple retained all its original splendor. Pilgrims to the venerated abode of the goddess used to buy little models of the temple in silver, or precious stones, as mementos of their visit, and as amulets to insure to them the protection of the Ephesian Diana. The Goths sacked the city and burned the temple, about 200 years later, and in the reign of Theodosius I., toward the end of the fourth century, the furious zeal of the Iconoclasts, or Im- age-breakers, completed the work of destruction. The ancient city almost entirely disappeared before the modern era, the very site of the temple being lost. In 1863 an Englishman, Mr. J. T. Wood, while engaged as a civil- engineer in constructing a railway from Smyrna to Aidin, discovered at Ayasalouk the ruins of the Odeum, or Lyric Theatre of Ephesus, and this circumstance led him to commence excavations in that locality in search of the temple of Diana. He began his excavations on the west side of the ancient city, at a j^oint where a long rise of ground above the level of the plain seemed to cover the portico of the temple. Here he found nothing but the remains of a Roman monument ; so he went on digging trial-holes in every direction on the west side, and explored the great Gymnasium, which proved to be a Roman build- ing, erected on the site of a former Grecian structure of similar char- acter. On the surface of the ground, in the vicinity of this Gymna- sium, were the remains of some columns of Egyptian silex. At some former time seven of these columns were carried away to Constanti- nople, and there set up in the church of Saint Sophia, now the Great Mosque. Hitherto they have been regarded as columns from the temple at Ephesus, but erroneously. The i^lain has been filled up to the average height of about 15 feet. Digging in the agora, forum, or market-place of the ancient city, Mr. Wood found what he calls a baptismal font, the diameter of which is 15 feet. Its basin is 15 inches deep, and in the centre is an elevated pedestal, on which the minister of baptism might stand dry- shod, the postulants standing in the water. Other monuments of Christian antiquity were also discovered. But there was yet no sign of the temple, and the literary remains of antiquity gave no indication as to its site. His private funds being now exhausted, the trustees of the British Museum were applied to by Mr. Wood for the means necessary to carry on the work of explor- ing the Odeum, or Lyric Theatre, in the hoj^e of finding there some bas-relief, or other monument, or at least some idle scratching of a rough artist of the time, which might give some indication of the site of the great temple. In this hope he was encouraged by what he had years befoi-e seen in Venice and other places, viz., the plans of cities cut in bas-relief upon the pinnacles of the churches. The trus- tees of the British Museum having made the required grant of funds, Mr. Wood began the exploration of the Odeum. He found his Avay VOL. TII. — 15 226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. into this theatre tlirough the central doorway, and, on clearing the pulpltum^ or stage, discovered on the pavement many small fragments of marble. These, on being put together, were discovered to contain inscriptions in Greek; they were the text of three letters of Antoni- nus Pius to the people of Epliesus, two dated a. d. 145, and one dated five years later. This theatre was 153 feet in diameter, and could seat 2,300 persons. Near it were found the remains of a tomb, which Mr. Wood takes to be that of the evangelist Luke ; it was apparently a circular building, 50 feet in diameter, standing in a quadrangle 150 feet across, surrounded by a colonnade. The exploration of the Great Theatre or amphitheatre began in February, 1866. This was one of the largest structures of its kind in Asia Minor, being 495 feet in diameter, and capable of seating 24,500 persons. Here were found many interesting Greek, and a few Latin inscriptions — chiefly decrees of the senate and people of Rome — and also some sculptures. One of these inscrij^tions, known as the Saluta- rian inscription, furnished to the persevering explorer the clew to the site of the temple. The inscription consisted of decrees relating to gold and silver images vowed to Diana by C. Vibiiis Salutarius. It is there prescribed that on certain days of assembly in the theatre these images were to be carried in procession by a priest of the temple, ac- companied by a staft-bearer; and after the assembly they were to be carried back to the temple. Here was the desired clew to the site of the temple. " There were," says Mr. Wood, " two gates to the temple, named the Magnesian and the Coressian gates. It seemed to me that if I could find these gates their direction could not fail to point to the site of the temple. I at once searched for them, and in due time they were found." In January, 1868, he put a gang of seventy men to work at the great theati-e, and at the same time began to follow up the road leading from the Magnesian gate. This consisted of three openings — two for foot-jjassengers, and one for wagons and chariots. The pavement was intact, with four distinct chariot-ruts cut into it. Having fol- lowed up this road for about VOO feet, Mr. Wood came upon the stone piers of a portico 12 feet wide. This was undoubtedly the grand portico built by Damianus, a rich Roman noble. Many tombs were found, some of which were vaulted chambers finished in stucco or cement, and painted, and these had tablets over them. In some of the tombs were found several skeletons — in one as many as fourteen — lying in various directions. Next he hit upon a corner of the Peri- bolus wall, on which were inscriptions showing that this wall was built in the time of Augustus. This v/as in May, 1869. The discovery of the Peribolus wall proved sufiicient to induce the trustees of the British Museum to make further advances of money, and accordingly work was resumed in the October following. In the area within this wall, i. c., in the WOOD'S DISCOVERIES AT EPIIESUS. 227 sacred j^recinct of the temple, Mr. "Wood sank a great number of trial- holes. Nothing of interest was discovered until the explorer had proceeded about half a mile from the angle first discovered, and then remains of Roman buildings began to be found. Soon he came to a long- line of Roman buildings which must have been the dwellings of the priests and priestesses of Diana. He continued the explorations, searching for a similar range of buildings opposite, but found only- one small building — a Roman temple. As this was not the Temple of Diana, he next began a search of the space between the buildings. This was found to be an open space, and the exj)lorer conceived tha idea that the temple must bo in the rear of it; but in the mean time he found another building, and finally in the very last day of the year 1869 he hit upon the pavement of the temple itself, more than twenty feet underground. The main difficulties of the work were over: it was now a question simply of exi")ense. The pavement was all beau- tiful marble. It was in two layers : the upper course in white mar- ble, the lower one in cement, making altogether a thickness of two feet. At this stage the village of Ayasalouk was flooded by heavy rains, and the excavations were completely filled up with sand and water. Wben the water had subsided operations were resumed, and by October, 1870, there had been unearthed half a dozen of the large columns of the temple and fragments of one of the capitals, which had fallen over. One fallen column he traced to its base, and there ascer- tained that the same base had been employed in supporting columns in the last three temples. First of all we have the stone of the temple which was commenced 500 b. c. ; this was used as the foun- dation of the column of the last two temples, one rising above the other. In January, 1871, Mr. Wood bought the land over the temple for £160, and in less than a month afterwai'd found, five feet beneath the surface, 2,600 coins of the fourteenth century, amounting in value to many times the price paid for the land. The British Government, in 1872, made a grant of £5,000 for the prosecution of the work, and another of £6,000 in the following year. The discoveries on the site of the temple in the season of 1872-'73 comprised two large fragments of the frieze with human figures, life- size, in high relief, and the figure of a stag ; the base of one of the inner columns of the peristyle; two sculptured drums of columns; some lions' heads, from the tympanum at the west end of the temple ; a large fragment of a cedar beam from the roof, and a number of frag- ments from the last three temples. Numbers of Arabs came and pitched their tents near the excavations, and all the able-bodied men were employed on the works. The explorer's wife was of great ser- vice in caring for the health of these laborers and their families ; some- times she had as many as sixty patients under her care, without any doctor nearer than Smyrna. 228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Work was suspended in May, 1873, and resumed in October^ During the season of 1873-74, Mr. Wood made discoveries -wliich en- abled him to complete his plan of the temple. More than 100 feet of of the lowest steps of the platform were found in position in diiferent parts ; also a sculptured drum, with draped figures alternately seated and erect. At the beginning of 1874, Mr. Wood, having only a small balance on hand, applied to ihe trustees of the British Museum. He was allowed only a small sum, with instructions to close the work when it was expended. He therefore began to remove the cella walls, and found distinct remains of the last three temples. Part of the pavement of the temple destroyed by Erostratus was found in position, and also the altar at the east end of the cella, or shrine, whick must have served for the three temples ; also about 200 fragments of sculpture and architectural enrichment, of which the piers had been composed. Some of the sculpture was archaic. As Mr. Wood found several lime-kilns on the site of the temple, and large heaps of marble chippings ready for burning, we know what became of the works of Praxiteles, Scopas, and others. On extending the excavation thii-ty feet beyond the lowest step of the i^latform a wide portico was found, which must have surrounded the temple on three sides, and also the remains of a Grecian Doric building, which could not be explored for w^ant of funds. We have already stated that the foundations of the temple were laid in marshy ground, and Pliny says that this ground was prepared for receiving the foundation by having laid down upon it a layer first of charcoal, and then of wool! Mr. Wood makes no mention of this absurd state- . ment of Pliny's, but says that, according to the usual account of the building of the temple, there was first laid a solid foundation of stonc^ and that upon this were laid charcoal and pieces of wood. To clear up the question, he made very careful excavations near the walls of the temple and underneath the wall, and found first of all a layer four inches thick, of a putty-like substance, very similar to glaziers' putty, both in constitution and appearance. Underneath this there was a layer of chai'coal three inches thick. Then came a layer of putty four inches thick, making in all eleven inches, and upon this the walls of the temple rest. CORRESP ONDENCE. 229 CORRESPONDENCE. CONSEKVATION OF FORCE. To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly : WILL you allow me to call the atten- tion of scientists to some facts (sug- gested by me in the Monthly for February) inconsistent with the most important recent theory in physical science — the Conserva- tion or Persistence of Force. The persistence of force is as certain as the persistence of existence. But persist- ence being, so far, an absolute property or principle, cannot be proved by physical sense, or phenomena conditioned by mass, time, and space. Only finite relations are verified by finite proofs. All things perceived through physical sense are, severally, quantitatively, and qualitatively, in unceasing change, and are, directly or indirectly, dependent on each other for their existence. Therefore, not phenomena, but only principles — things />e?' se — persist. That the force or energy which we perceive, pressure, tension, or motion, does not persist, is not only a logical de- duction from the nature of phenomena, but is a familiar iact in our experiences. Force — pressure or tension — is created and annihilated at pleasure by the use of the lever. Energy is evoked from motion, and mo- tion is only changing relations in space, and as each specific or perceived change or movement is absolutely created and an- nihilated, not the perceived energy, but only the ideal, abstract principle, persists. Again, the conservation of perceived force requires the existence of potential en- ergy, or energy of position. But this " en- ergy " is a misnomer ; for mere position, or static relation in space, is in itself impor- tant, and therefore answers our conceptions of neither energy nor potentiality. Yet, it is alleged that the energy expended in lifting and planting a mass on the top of a mountain persists in the mass, because, if it could fall ^ that same energy would reap- pear. But it cannot fall. And its gravity being less, it has within itself, as a property, less falling force than before its position was changed by the expenditure of energy. To say, " If it had power to fall, it would receive the energy expended in lifting it," is equivalent to saying, " It docs not possess that energy." If it imparted that energy to something else, from which it will be re- turned, to what did it impart it ? If the ball in a loaded cannon has potential energy by being in front of the cartridge, what be- comes of that energy when the powder is saturated with water ? Perceived force is conditioned by mass and relations in space, and, as here shown, change in these conditions changes its quan- tity. Physical science is limited to these conditions, changes, and quantities, because its verifications are limited to them. The proposition that a phenomenon persists, is a self-contradiction. Only objects of con- ception, and not of perception, persist. The conservation of force is illustrated by that of form. If a circle of plastic ma- terial be changed to a square, abstract form persists through all the innumerable changes of size and form through which it passes, but no observed size or form per- sists ; nor is any specific form, from the circle to the square, metamorphosed into its subsequent form ; each is as absolutely cre- ated and annihilated as though there were no persistence of form. And, as matter is only a concrete of properties, and as form is as persistent as other properties, it follows that all per- ceived physical changes are creations and annihilations. What is observed as gas is not the persistent thing per se, but only one evanescent state of that which persists. Hence, this perceived thing, gas, is no more metamorphosed into its subsequent water, than a circle is into a square. All that was observed — gas — was as totally annihilated, and what appeared — water — as surely cre- ated, as were the circle and square. No perceived physical property persists, for, even the alleged physical proof of the per- 230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. sistencc of matter — weight — is aniiihilatcd and created by distance and proximity to the earth. Physical science relates only to the lim- ited and conditioned, because its proofs are limited. The unlimited — persistent — is be- yond the realm of physical sense and ex- perimental proof. Hence, only abstract, ideal force persists, and is known to per- sist, not from our experiences with per- ceived forces, but only because mind, he- redity, ajid mental experiences, evolve the conception of ultimate, absolute principles, and forbid the conception of their annihi- lation. Proper discrimination, exactly expressed, between perceptions of the finite and con- ditioned, and conceptions of the persistent and absolute, rids science from the odium of materialism, and other fallacies, and makes the persistence of force not a new theory, but what it was ever conceived to be — the principle of potency — causality — an attribute of the ever-existing I Am. Alleged infallibility of spectrum analysis of suns and nebulce, billions of miles dis- tant, when, for terrestrial use, the Director of the United States Mint says, " it cannot be trusted," shows the present tendency to sacrifice logical mental conceptions to mere physical sense. Religious superstitions, in their conflict with science, will not succumb to sophis- try : but, let scientific, physical facts be fortified with careful experimental verifica- tion, and hypotheses with pure logic, and give mind, though it be " discerned in mat- ter," its fair share of the universe, and both superstitious bigotry and fallacious dogmas will surely disappear. A. Arnold. Tenaflt, N. J., February 20, 1875. EDITOR'S TABLE. DRAPER AXB HIS CRITICS. DE. DRAPER has reason for grati- tude to his friends, and doubly so to his enemies. He wrote a bold book upon a subject never before separately treated, and by a large portion of the press it lias been received with favor as a valuable and important contribution to the serious thought of the time. The interest in the subject, the reputation of its author, and the cordial commenda- tion of many critics, were certain to se- cure the work a fair measure of success ; but, on the other hand, a considerable number of writers were enraged by it, and, with the usual folly of passion, have execrated it into about thrice the cix*- culation that it would otherwise have had. It is to be hoped they will learn that things are often overruled, in this world, to ends not contemplated by their contrivers. This, however, lends no ex- cuse to bad practices, and those who have unscrupulously attacked Dr. Dra- per's work are to be held to account for it, just the same as if they had not overreached themselves in the result aimed at. The honest and intelligent criticism of his book will, no doubt, be respect- ed by its author, and objections to its reasonings and conclusions will proba- bly be taken into careful consideration ; while, if convinced of their validity, he maybe expected to indicate it in future editions of the volume. But by a very considerable portion of the religious press, and by many secular journals, the editors of which know where to flatter and where to abuse, with a view to brisk sales, the book has been vehe- mently denounced. Scribner''s Monthly, for example, published in March an ad- mirable article on the "Indecencies of Criticism," and the same number con- tained a " criticism ". of Dr. Draper's work, illustrating them so perfectly as to raise the suspicion that such was its design. The frothy invective that has been copiously poured out under the name of criticism is, of course, not worth noticing; nor shall we trouble ourselves with the various petty objec- EDITOR'S TABLE. 231 tions that have been raised, and that are 80 easy to raise, against a "work of this character. Bat one criticism, particu- larly, deserves attention, because it lies against the whole reason and purpose of the book, and has been made on all sides ; in fact, it forms the only unani- mous basis of attack on the part of Dr. Draper's assailants. It is said that his work is a fiction, and represents no reality ; that his subject is an illusion, his title a misnomer, and his book a mere figment of the imagination. He professes, it is said, to write a " History of the Conflict between Religion and Sci- ence," when there is not, and never has been, any such real conflict, and there- fore no possibility of its history. The or- gans of all the orthodox denominations are in emphatic accord upon this point, and even the outside sects — Jews, Unita- rians, and Catholics, whom the orthodox repudiate as beyond the pale of Chris- tianity, as knowing nothing of true re- ligion— take precisely the same ground in regard to Dr. Draper's work. The Jewish Times, for example, says : " Is there really a conflict between science and religion? We answer emphatical- ly, no ! There is no such conflict ! there can be no such conflict!" Dr. Thomas Hill, in the Unitarian Review, says of Draper's book, that " so far from giving us a history of the conflict between science and religion, it gives us nothing to show that such a conflict ever existed ;" and Dr. Brownson, at the Roman Catholic extreme, declares of our author's volume, " He professes to give in it the history of the conflict between religion and science, or of a conflict that has never occurred, and never can occur." There is, at all events, little conflict here, but an har- monious strain of denial of the legiti- macy of Dr. Draper's subject, aU along the line, and which reaches even to the dubious borders of that which is recog- nized as no religion at all. What, now, are we to make of this ? It can hardly be that these di- verse parties have solemnly conspired to perpetrate a huge joke; and we can only suppose that they are serious at the expense of their intelligence. Re- ligion and science have certainly co- existed in the world for a long time, and they have both figured pretty largely in human thought and human affairs. They must have had some re- lations with each other, and these rela- tions must have had a definite charac- ter. If they have not been in conflict, then they have been out of conflict, or in harmony. Those who deny the an- tagonism must affirm the opposite, or that the relations of religion and science are, and always have been, those of concord and harmony. But, if this be so, let it be understood that Dr. Dra- per's work is not the only one that is discredited. What means the multitude of books that have been written pro- fessedly to bring these subjects into harmony? There is a vast body of theological literature, going back for centuries, that is devoted to the work of reconciling religion and science. Whole hbraries of such literature have been consecrated to the harmonization of separate and special phases of that relation. Generation after generation have spent a large part of their theo- logical force in reconciling Christian doctrine which has been held as re- ligion, with astronomical, geological, biological, and ethnological science. If Dr. Draper is a romancer, then all this must also go to the account of ro- mance. If there has been no conflict, then there could be no reconciliation, for the attempt to reconcile that which is already harmonious is absurd. If it be said that our ignorant prede- cessors may have fancied a hostility which we now know to be unreal, the reply is, that the work of reconciliation was never so rife as to-day. We could run The Populae Science Monthly alone on the papers we receive from the theological side, aiming to harmo- nize present religious thought with the 232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. present condition of science, Wliy tliis vigorous and comprehensive effort to harmonize the already harmonious ? The religious periodicals abound in dis- cussions aiming to compose the alleged differences and discords of religion and science ; and there pours from the press a continuous stream of books devoted to the same end. An impending vol- ume of eight hundred pages is an- nounced by a correspondent of the Evening Post, who gives an analysis of its contents, and remarks: "The con- flict between science and religion as to man's origin on this planet has been so ardent, and the interest ■which men of culture the world over feel in the sub- ject is so deep and growing, that I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that the readers of the Evening Post will be pleased to receive a synopsis of Mr. Southairs book, the proof-sheets of which I have been kindly permitted to examine. He combats the views of Lyell, Lubbock, Evans, Lartet, De Mor- tillet, Nillson, Worsaae, Desor, and oth- ers, that man is several hundred thou- sand years old, or, as Mr. Geikie and Mr. Boyd Dawkins, in their recent books put it, preglacial," Again : " The book -will provoke a deal of criticism in scientific and religious circles. Per- sons far more competent than the pres- ent writer to pronounce judgment upon its merits, do not hesitate to say that it is the most important contribution yet made in America to the theological side of this weighty subject." Of course, " the theological side," which holds that there is no such thing as " the conflict between science and religion," "ardent" or otherwise, will at once proceed to squelch this superfluous Avriter; and when they have done so, and repudiated the folly and futility of all other books of the same class, and dried up the discussion in their periodicals, it will be time to talk to Dr. Draper about the illusiveness of the subject-matter of his history. There is something not a little ludi- crous in the attitude of those who are lustily continuing a fight that is cen- turies old, and, Avhen the history of it comes to be written, suddenly turn non- resistants, and protest that it is all a mistake, and that there has really never been any conflict at all ! Can it be that it is because thej would rather not have the history appear? But it will be said that truth can never be in conflict with itself; that religious truth and scientific truth must harmonize, and that any apparent an- tagonism is due to prejudice and im- perfect knowledge. Granted ; but this concedes the fact of a conflict, and only proposes a theory of its cause. The harmony affirmed is not a harmony realized, but rather hoped for, as a possibility of the future, to which pres- ent broad and thorough investigation is tending ; and with this we entirely agree. But the hope of a state of things yet to be reached cannot be made a ground of denial of what is, and has been. It is maintained that, at bottom, there is no real conflict between capital and labor, and many indulge the anticipation that their re- lations will be ultimately harmonized; but he who denies that there is Jiow any such conflict had better spend a few days in the mining districts of Pennsylvania, where for months this conflict has threatened the peace of society. It is also held that the true and highest interest of nations is that of concord, and many think that the world will yet grow into international amity and unity ; but shall we there- fore deny the past existence of war, and discredit as groundless all our his- tories of international hostility? The case of religion and science is exactly parallel. However they may finally be brought into accord, they certainly are not in that relation now, and no antag- onism of the past has been more deep and unrelenting, and more defiant of all efforts at adjustment, than this. The conflict between rehgion and science, EDITOR'S TABLE. 233 or between the study of Nature and the tracing out of its order, and the sys- tems of belief that claim a religious character, is as much a reality of hu- man experience as the collisions of na- tions, and just as much a proper sub- ject for the historian. Dr. Draper has been much reproached for not detining what he means by re- ligion. There is no complaint that he has not defined science, because no need of it is felt; everybody under- stands what science is. But it is not so with religion. The theological world is full of dispute and contention as to ■what religion is. It is loudly declared by the theological party that science and religion are in harmony, and then the theological groups fall straightway to battling over the initial question as to w'hat constitutes religion ! Each group assumes it to be what its mem- bers believe, and what those with dif- ferent beliefs do not possess. The rev- erend representative of the Unitarians, Dr. Hill, says of the oldest and most numerous Christian communion : " The hostility of this corrupted Church toward science was no greater than its hostility to religion; religion and sci- ence, twin forms of truth, were alike persecuted by this dragon; and it is both an injury and insult to Religion to ascribe to her the evil deeds of those who hate her, and wore her name simply as a cloak for their political ambition and their intolerant pride. For every martyr of science, history can show a thousand martyrs of religion slaiu by the ecclesiastical powers of Rome." But the representative of the "dragon," at the opposite wing, is ready with his reply to this Unitarian Gentile. Dr. Brownson says : " Christianity teaches that Gentilism is apostacy from God and from his truth, and that so far from being his worship it is the worship of devils. "We protest, therefore, against the logic that concludes that what it finds true of Gentilism is and must be true of Christianity. We protest also against concluding that, because Prot- estantism is a congeries of absurdities. Catholicity is unreasonable and talse. Gentilism and Protestantism may stand in the same category or be simply va- rieties of the same si)ecies ; but they are specifically, generically different from Christianity." And between these two extremes there is a ci-owd of sects which agree in little else than in dis- missing the Catholics and Unitarians to perdition as destitute of all religion! Dr. Draper, it is evident, would have complicated his case to little purpose had he gone into definitions, and thus virtually assumed to decide, among these conflicting claimants, which has the true religion. For historical pur- poses Dr. Draper was compelled to take broad views, and to recognize as religious all bodies of people who com- bine and organize for religious ends, profess religious faith, and make claims to religious character, giving promi- nence in his treatment of the subject to those who have been historically most prominent, and are most respon- sible for theological resistance to the reception of scientific ideas. WITH REFERENCE TO SPELLING. The severity of the spelling-school contagion is manifestly abating. This is well, for we are told that public ex- citements are dangerous to reason, in- tense and prolonged spasms, rehgious or social, generally ending in a new acces- sion of recruits for the lunatic asylum. It is an interesting question what degree of fervor, extent, and duration of spell- ing-matches would be required to re- duce the general mind to a condition of imbecility. Life is full of contradictions, and we can rarely go a mile with our logic : to misspell our language is a sin, while to reach the height of ortho- graphic virtue may involve intellectual suicide. We recollect a wave of excitement 234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, that [)asscd over \is a few years ago in relation to spelling, a feature or two of which may be worth recalling. A veteran school-teacher of New York dropped a hurried line to a newspaper, in which two or three words were wrongly spelled. It was a dull season for news and excitement, and so, in its enterprise, journalism sat on this old party, and his life was darkened. He has since gone to that undiscovered country where it is to be hoped that Webster and Worcester have never been heard of ; but he has left us strug- gling with the beggarly elements of a barbarous orthography, and no better oif for the storm of reproach to which he was a martyr. His fellow-teachers came to the rescue with indignant let- ters to the editor, and that remorseless personage published them, bad spellmg and aU, every time. "Behold," said he, "the state of American education, when its masters are unable to spell their native language! " There seemed no question that the highest achieve- ment of the human mind was to put letters together in exact accordance with some authority ; and that to di-op or transpose a letter, in the tens of thousands of their arbitrary combina- tions, that form the words of our lan- guage, was an offense that should con- sign its perpetrator to everlasting ig- nominy. The thing was all going one way until there arose a rebellious voice in the East, which said to the editor : " Let me take advantage of the present spelling excitement to fatten a grudge I bear against the literary world." The soul that had been thus stirred to ut- terance was that of Elizur Wright, and he went on, in his pungent way, to say : " A school-master who does not spell correctly by somebody's system should go abroad and stay there. But just here it is that my indignation kin- dles. Why do we have these illiterate school-masters ? I do not stop to blame weak or careless committees : the trou- ble lies higher. The great masters of English literature, the lawgivers of our language, are such bunglers or charlatans in their own profession, that they ought to be ashamed to fling a pebble at the worst of spellers, or even at the inventor of Egyptian hiero- glyphics." After venting his wrath upon the conservators of the present "imperfect, unreasonable, stupid, false plan of visualizing the vocal tongue," he thus proceeds : " The misery of the matter is, that it is difficult to get any but blockheads to teach such a blockhead system. We do uncommonly well when we get hold of pedantic dances who can teach spelling with a vengeance, and perhaps the shell of grammar. Of course, I do not deny that there are some literary saints, of unquestionable genius, who devote or doom themselves to a painful inculcation into the memories of reluctant or rebel- lious youth of all the incongruities, con- tradictions, riddles, and sphinx-puzzles of English orthography." And again : " English orthography is congenial only with stupidity ; and, after thirty or forty years of occasional observation in regard to it, I am of opinion that good and successful teachers of spelling can seldom write a page without misspelling several words." And this is the writer's significant cHmax : " Of another thing I have no doubt at all, to wit, that learning to spell is a discipline pernicious to good mental habits. The minds of un- schooled children are eager for facts and the reasons of them; and they are not satisfied with a reason till they see its force. But, after they have been schooled through the inconsequential mysteries of the spelling-book, where a reason has less chance of living than a mouse in a vacuum, they are ready to swallow any thing the book or the teacher says, with a leaden quietude. No thanks to the portico of our litera- ture, if they do not continue to take things on trust, as long as there is any thing to be so taken." LITERARY NOTICES. 235 There is a trutli in these last re- marks which deserves from educators a great deal more serious attention than it has yet received. No one will deny that our spelling is irrational ; and, if so, just to that degree the art of spelling is an irrational practice ; that is, it is a practice which, in the first place, calls for no exercise of the reasoning faculty ; and, second, it is an exercise which continually violates the dictates of rea- son. The pupil who should spell a word as reason dictates would be flogged, or in some other way disgraced before the school. On the other hand, the pupil that can bring his mind into the most perfect harmony with an ir- rational system, can go on perpetrating absurdities the longest without failing, wins prizes and applause. This certain- ly cannot conduce to good mental hab- its. The child is born into a world of real objects and relations, and the mind grows through experience in acquiring ideas of these actual things. Discrimi- nation, comparison, inference, reason- ing, judgment, are all elements of early mental activity, and, in fact, consti- tute the intellect. Mental growth con- sists essentially in strengthening and extending these operations on newly- acquired and newly-combined ideas. These rudimentary processes of the in- fantine intellect are of exactly the same nature as the perfected processes of scientific and philosophic intellects ; and it is the true office of education to lead them out, or guide their unfolding from lower to higher states. Written language must be called in at an early stage, as an indispensable help in this upward progress. Yet, such is the im- perfect character of this new instru- ment, and such the bungling of many who teach its use, that the child is quite as apt to be hindered and stopped by it, in its mental course, as helped on. Nay, when we remember that this is the most critical stage of mental un- folding— the taking of the child out of Nature, as far as that can be done, and immersing it in the school where ir- rational mental practices are arbitrarily enforced — it is no exaggeration to say that more mind is extinguished than is led out, and that the school-room is as liable to become a mental slaughter- house of the innocents as a place of healthy education. When a child en- ters school, there should be no break in its earlier mental unfolding; but this is just what generally occurs. In- stead of going on with its normal mental exercises, it is turned off into artificial mental exercises. Instead of still employing its thought mainly upon the properties and relations of things, symbols are substituted for things, and the whole action of the mind becomes a manipulation of sym- bols. The memory is not only load- ed with verbal signs, but these are arbitrary and contradictory; and an accuracy is exacted in retaining them which consumes an immense propor- tion of the time, and, after working great mental mischief, generally ends in faUure. Tolerable spelling is, of course, an important thing, but we do not believe in dwarfing or stupefying the mind to gain it. Let it be taught incidentally, and in subordination to the regular exercise of the higher facul- ties, and the end will be better served than by trying to make it the prime accomplishment of education. Per- haps, in regard to so fundamental a re- form, but little is to be expected from the present generation of teachers ; but, happily for the hopes of humanity, there is an arrangement by which the present generation of teachers is destined to be taken out of the way. LITERARY NOTICES. English Mex of Science ; their Nature and Nurture. By Francis Galton, F. K. S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. London : Macmillan & Co. The author of this book is quite widely known by his former publication, " Heredi- tary Genius," and by various statistical 236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. works. Here he lias attempted to analyze the " Natural History of the English Men ■of Science of the Present Day," and to de- termine, if possible, the effect of the circum- stances in wliich they have lived, including the consideration of their antecedents, their hereditary qualities, their education, and of the influences which have made them what they are. His definit.on of a man of science, for the purpose of his inquiry, is characteristi- cally English, although it may bo, on the whole, the best attainable one for the spe- cial questions of which he treats ; he selects, then, only members of the Eoyal Society of England, and among these he still further separates those who have received a medal for scientific work ; those who have presided over a section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science ; those who are members of a certain literary and scien- tific club of London, etc., etc. On these grounds 180 men have been selected, who are presumably representative English scien- tific men. The author estimates that at least 300 men could have been selected, and that this gives (having regard to age) about one sci- entific man to every 10,000 in England. His question then is, " What are the conditions of nature and the various circum- stances and conditions of life — which I in- clude under the general name of nurture — which have selected that one and left the remainder ? " The data available for the solution of this question are " the autobio- graphical replies to a very long series of pointed questions addressed severally to the 180 men " previously described. Of course, these replies were given in confidence, and it is not possible for the reader to connect the various replies, which are often given in detail, with any one person interrogated. The first inquiry is into the " Race and Birthplace " of the subjects of the inquiry. Out of ten scientific men, five are pure Eng- lish, one pure Scotch, etc. ; their birthplaces are usually in towns away from the sea- coast. " The branch of science pursued is often in curious disaccord with the surround- ing influence of the birthplace. Mechani- cians are usually hardy lads, born in the country ; biologists are frequently pure townsfolk." The occupation and position in life of the parents are next considered, and the chief point of interest here developed is that, out of every 100 scientific men, only three or four have had clergymen for their fathers. Al- though so many of the graduates of the Eng- lish universities take holy orders as a means of securing fellowships, yet it is noteworthy that, in a fairly-selected list of G60 separate appointments on scientific councils, only six- teen have been divines, and these have chiefly been proficients in the astronomical and mathematical sciences, and not a single biologist is to be found among them. The inquiry proceeds to physical peculiarities of parents, and the conclusion is reached that out of 165 cases examined these peculiari- ties were in harmony seventy-eight times, in contrast thirty-one times ; from examination of special conditions, such as the height, color of hair, corpulency of the parents, the genei'al result is that the parents of scien- tific men are decidedly more in harmony as to their physical characteristics than in con- trast. In some of these discussions we confess to a slight feeling of doubt as to the trust- worthiness of the conclusions. Although " figures will not lie," there may be an accidental accumulation of coincidences in a small number of cases which will quite mask the real law, and statisticians need excessive care in drawing such conclusions. In general, this caution is evident throughout the volume. We have given enough to elucidate the author's method ; and we will only note those conclusions which seem most interesting, referring the reader to the book itself for details. The average number of living children of scientific men seems to be, on the whole, decidedly smaller than that of the parents of these men ; their health relatively to their parents is not so good ; in one out of every three cases their marriages are sterile. In contrast to this, it may be said that their health, relatively to that of the average man, is better and their energy greater. Still the conclusions above noted do not promise well for the continuation of the race as pure blood. Chapter II. deals with the qualities of the men themselves, as derived from their answers to the questions proposed to them. LITERARY NOTICES. 237 Out of every ten, " seven call themselves members of the Churches of England, Scot- land, or Ireland," while the remaining three are distributed among various sects ; two out of every ten have a " decided religious bias." To the question " Has the religious creed taught you in your youth had a deterrent cfl'ect on the freedom of your researches ? " seven or eight say " Ko " to one who says " Yes." Chapter III. deals in an admirable man- ner with the " Origin of the Taste for Sci- ence," and we commend it to all who are interested in scientific education ; together with Chapter IV., which deals with the merits and demerits of the education itself. The lessons of these two chapters are condensed by the author into this general statement : Teach a few congenial and loseful things very thoroughly ; encourage curiosity concerning as wide a range of subjects as possible ; and do not over-teach. Specially he recommends (from the knowledge gained from his inquiry), for the precise subjects to be studied in order best to educate a youth for scientific pursuits : 1. Mathematics ; its processes to be utilized for interesting ends and practical application ; 2. Logic ; 3. Ob- servation ; theory in experiment in at least one branch of science ; 4. Accurate draw- ing of objects connected with this branch ; 5. Mechanical manipulation. " These five subjects should be rigorously taught." There should remain enough time for lit- erature, history, poetry, and languages : these last are to be learned solely to enable the learners to read ordinary books written in them. Most of these conclusions are quite as applicable to America as to England, and they deserve the most careful attention. Roughly speaking, the author finds that "six out of every ten men of science were gifted by nature with a strong taste for it," and " we may therefore conclude that the possession of a strong special taste is a pre- cious capital, and that it is a wicked waste of national power to thwart it ruthlessly by a false system of education." No test can be given to distinguish in the youth a spe- cial taste from a passing fancy, but hered- itary inclinations should be carefully re- garded. A curious result of the inquiry is, that the influence of the father in determin- ing the scientific taste is three times more potent than that of the mother. Probably the general impression on this point is op- posed to such a conclusion. The practical lesson for England is drawn with great force and skill by the author on page 22.2, et seq. Much of this is inapplicable to us in America, but it is in the highest de- gree valuable generalization, and it is pecul- iarly worthy the attention of educators. Science with us is sporadic, and no one is in any degree directly responsible for its fos- tering, except, perhaps, the larger universi- ties. There is no central power which can assist its prosecution, nor is there much in- telligent inclination on the part of our law- makers to help it or hurt it. As an exam- ple of the lack of intelligence in the for- warding of scientific research, we may not& the liberal appropriations ($175,000) for the observations of the transit of Venus by the last Congress but one ; and the refusal of more than $3,000, by the last Congress, for the preliminary computations incident there- to. Evidently for us at this time the les- sons of this book are not to be applied, but much more elementary ones ; yet, undoubt- edly, the true principles of " government aid to science," and cf the " endowment of research," are coi'rectly indicated. These are questions which assuredly will arise in America as they have in England, and we cannot doubt that the careful analy- sis here given will serve as a firm basis for rational action in this most important direc- tion. The Heart op Africa : Three Tears' Trav- els and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa, from 1868 to 1871. By Dr. Georg Schweinfcrth. In two volumes. Price, $8. Harper & Brothers. This is a model book of travel, fresh, entertaining, full of novelty, yet in a high degree instructive and trustworthy. Its author combines the accomplishments of the artist with the solid acquirements of the man of science and the ardent enthusiasm of the explorer, so that, though still a young man, his name is already famous both in Europe and America. The history of Dr. Schweinfurth happily illustrates the power 238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY of early impressions. At his first school one of the masters was the son of a mis- sionary in South Africa. The stories he told of the wonders of that distant country took possession of the youthful fancy of his pupil, and turned his mind toward the land where he was to achieve such signal renown. Dr. Schweinfurth devoted himself from boyhood to the science of botany. He studied at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he took his degree as doctor of philosophy. In 1860, when about twenty-four years of age, his interest in Africa was intensified by the circumstance that a collection of plants from the region of the Nile was placed in his hands to arrange and describe. While engaged in this work, a yearning came over him to behold these plants in all their bloom and beauty in their native haunts, and so added an immediate stimulus to his life-long interest in that strange country. Accord- ingly, in 1863 he left Berlin for Egypt, and, after botanizing in the Delta of the Nile, along the shores of the Ked Sea, in Abys- sinia and Khartoom, for two years and a half, he went back to Europe with an empty purse and a splendid collection of plants, though obtained at the additional cost of repeated attacks of fever. But this expedi- tion only whetted his appetite for African exploration, and he soon submitted to the Royal Academy of Science a plan for the botanical survey of the equatorial districts lying west of the Nile, portions of which were still wholly unknown. His proposals were accepted, and the expenses of the en- terprise were met by the " Humboldt Institu- tion of Natural Philosophy and Travels," in Berlin. In July, 1868, he again landed in Egypt, and in the first chapter of this work he records the incidents of his journey till his arrival at Khartoom. After a short de- lay he proceeded up the White Nile and Ga- zelle. He says : " In the early morning of the 22d of Feb- ruary w« found ourselves at the Meshera, the landing-place of all who resort to the Ga- zelle. . . . Deducting the days on which we had not proceeded, our boats had been thirty days in going from Khartoom to the Mesh- era. I had been anxious to make a good in- vestigation of the river-banks ; otherwise the voyage might easily be accomplished in twenty days." As a result of this study, several pages are devoted to explanations of this river system and the topography of the swampy region of the Meshera, where he was com- pelled to linger through February and March, botanizing in swamps, wading among papy- rus-clumps, and exposed to the dreaded malaria of this unhealthy region. His im- munity from sickness he attributes in part to the three doses of quinine, of eight or nine grains each, which he took daily. Half the travelers who have ventured into these swamps have succumbed to fever. Here Miss Tunne's expedition suffered a loss of five out of its nine European members, and among them Dr. Steudner, the botanist of the expedition. Here Heuglin lost most of his time by continual relapses of fever. And in this region Le Saint, a French geo- graphical explorer, had died a few months before. From this place he took his start for the interior. He thus describes his company : " The number of our caravan was a lit- tle under 500. Of these the armed men amounted to nearly 200, and constituted a force with which we might have crossed the largest state of Central Africa unmolested. Our course for six days would be through a notoriously hostile country, so that this pre- caution was quite necessary ; but the cara- van, extending fully half a mile, was of a magnitude to require great order and circum- spection. ... To a naturalist on his trav- els, the employment of men as a means of transport appears the perfection of conven- ience. Apart from the dispatch and order in starting, and the regular continuous progress, he enjoys the incalculable advantage of being able to reach his baggage at any moment, and to open and close again, without loss of time, any particular package. Any one who has ever experienced the particular annoyances of camel-transport will be aware of the compara- tive comfort of this mode of proceeding. A few asses accompanied the caravan, and the Governor of Ghattas's Seriba had been courte- ous enough to send me his own saddle-ass, but I preferred to trust myself to my own legs. Eiding a badly-saddled donkey is al- ways infinitely more fatiguing to me than any exertion which may be requisite to keep up with the forced marches of the light- footed Nubians ; besides, I had other objects in view than mere progress ; I wished to ob- serve and take notes of any thing that came in my way, and to collect plants and what- ever else might be of interest. Thus, en- tirely on foot, I began the wanderings which, LITERARY NOTICES. 239 for two years and tbree months, T pursued over a, distance of more than 2,000 miles. Neither camels nor asses, mules nor horses, teams of oxen nor palanquin-bearers, con- tributed tlieir aid. The only animal avail- able, by the help of whicb Central Africa could be opened to civilization, is extermi- nated by fire and sword : the elephant is de- stroyed mainly for the purpose of procuring for civilized nations an article whei'ewith to manufacture toys and ornaments, and Euro- peans still persevere in setting the savages a pernicious example in this respect." After passing through the lands of the Dinka, Dyoor, Bongo, and Mittoo, and add- ing much to our knowledge of these people while studying the topography of the coun- try and contributing important discoveries concerning its river system, besides his in- cessant botanical, entomological, and meteor- ological observations, he came upon the ter- ritory of the Niam-niam. On the 29th of January, 1870, he set out with four Nubian servants, and thirty Bongo bearers, under the protection of Mohammed Aboo Sam- mat, a magnanimous Nubian merchant, who, sword in hand, had vanquished various dis- tricts large enough to have formed small states in Europe. Of this man the author says : " Not only throughout the period of eight months did he entertain me and my party in his settlements, seconding all my wishes, but when I desired to explore outlying parts, he lent me the protection of his armed force. Solely because I was supported by him did I succeed in pushing my way to Upper Shary, more than 800 miles from Khartoom, thus openingfresh districts to geographical knowl- edge and establishing the existence of some enigmatical people. Every thing that Mo- hammed did was suggested by his own free- will. The purest benevolence pi'ompted him — ^tlie high virtue of hospitality in its noblest sense." They were soon joined by a caravan con- sisting of 500 bearers and 120 soldiers, and these with women and slaves made a proces- sion in single file of some 800 people. The incidents of their progress are of the deep- est interest, but we have no space for their enumeration. From his account of the Niam- niam people we quote the following : " The social position of the Niam-niam women differs materially from what is found among other heathen negroes in Africa. "Whenever I met any women coming along a nan'ow pathway in the woods, or on the steppes, I noticed that they always made a wide circuit to avoid me, and returned into the path farther on ; and many a time I saw them waiting at a distance with averted face, until I had passed by. This reserve may have originated from two opposite reasons : it may, on the one hand, have sprung from the more servile position of the Niam-niam women themselves ; or, on the other, it may have been necessitated by the jealous tem- perament of their husbands. It is one of the fine traits of the Niam-niam men that they display an afi'ection for their wives which is unparalleled among natives of so low a grade, and of "whom it might be ex- pected that they would have been brutalized by their hunting and warlike pursuits. A husband will spare no sacrifice to redeem an imprisoned wife, and the Nubians, being acquainted with this, turn it to profitable ac- count in the ivory-trade. They are quite aware that whoever possesses a female host- age can obtain almost any compensation from a Niam-niam." Between the parallels of 3° and 4° north latitude, and 28° and 29° east longitude from Greenwich, in the very heart of Africa, is a territory of some 4,000 square miles, inhabited by the Monbuttoo. The country of the Niam-niam constitutes its northern and northwestern boundaries : " This land," Schweinfurth says, "greets us as an Eden upon earth. Unnumbered groves of plantains bedeck the gently-heav- ing soil ; oil-palms, incomparable in beauty, and other monarchs of the stately woods, rise up and spread their glory over the favored scene ; along the streams there is a bright expanse of charming verdure, while a grateful shadow ever overhangs the domes of the idyllic huts. In the deeper valleys, trees grow to such a prodigious height, and exhibit such an enormous girth, that they could not be surpassed by any that could be found throughout the entire Nile-region of the north. Beneath the imposing shelter of these giants, other forms grow up, and, rising one above another, stand in mingled confusion." From his account of the Monbuttoo, of of whom he speaks " as exhibiting a devel- opment of indigenous culture entirely dif- ferent to what can be witnessed all around," we quote the following : " The two sexes conduct themselves 240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. toward cacli otlier with an excessive free- dom. The women, in this respect, arc very different to the modest and retiring ■women of the Niam-niam, and are, beyond measure, obtrusive and familiiir. Their in- quisitiveness was a daily nuisance : they watched me into the depth of the woods, they pestered me by flocking round my tent, and it was a difficult matter to get a bath without being stared at. Toward their husbands they exhibit the highest degree of independence. The position in the house- hold occupied by the men was illustrated by the reply which would be made, if they were solicited to sell any thing as a curiosity : ' Oh, ask my wife ; it is hers.' Their gen- eral demeanor surprised me very much when I considered the comparative advance of their race in the arts of civilization. Their immodesty far surpassed any thing that I had observed in the very lowest of the negro tribes, and contrasted most unfavorably with the sobriety of the Bongo women, who are submissive to their husbands, and yet not servile. The very scantiness of the cloth- ing of the Monbuttoo women has no excuse. Carved benches are the ordinary seats of the men, but the women generally use a one- legged stool ! While the Dinka women, leaving perfect nudity as the prerogative of their husbands, are modestly clothed with skins ; while the Mittoo and Bongo women wear their girdle of foliage, and the Kiam- niam women their apron of liides, the women of the Monbuttoo — where the men are more scrupulously and fully clothed than any of the nations I came across throughout my journeys — go almost entirely naked." ' But, as every page and paragraph of this work is of absorbing interest, we are ■weary of the mental conflict as to whieh shall have place in our limited space. We will conclude with the following : " I always made a rule of eating alone. A solitary European, as he proceeds farther and farther from home, may see his old as- sociations shrink to a minimum ; but, so much the more, with pertinacious conser- vatism, will he cling to the surviving rem- nants of his own superiority. Nothing can ever divest him of the thought as to how he may maintain the prerogative, which he takes for granted, that he is a being of some higher order. Many a misanthrope, in his disgust at the shady side of our modern culture, may imagine that, to a traveler, in his intercourse with the children of Nature, the thousand necessities of daily life must seem but trifles vain and empty, to be dis- pensed with without a sigh. Such a one may fancy that the bonds which fasten him to the world of civilization are weak, and all waiting to be rent asunder as soon as Nature is left to assert her unfettered rights ; but, from experience, I can assure him that the truth is very different. With the fear of degenerating ever before liis eyes, the wanderer from the realms of civilization will surely fix his gaze almost with devo- tion on the few objects of our Western cult- ure that remain to him, which (however trivial they are in themselves) become to him symbols little less than sacred. Tables and chairs, knives and forks, bedding, and even pocket-handkerchiefs, will assume an importance that could never have been an- ticipated, and it is hardly too much to aver that they will rise to a share in his affec- tions." FtTNGI : THEIR NATURE AND UsES. Bv M. C. Cooke and M. J. Berkeley. New York : D. Appleton & Co. " Interna- tional Scientific Series," No. XV. Pp. 800. Price, $1.50. A VERY interesting tract of the vegetable kingdom, which has hitherto received but little popular attention, is here reported upon by two of the most eminent English authorities upon the subject. In all that relates to those numerous and curious forms of vegetable growth called fungi, in their familiar forms, as seen by everybody in field and forest, and in their still more won- derful microscopic varieties. Rev. M. J. Berkeley, the venerable Rector of Sibbertoft, is perhaps the first authority in the world. Though a hard-working clergyman, he has found time to master and to extend one of the most interesting provinces of botany hitherto as obscure as it is extensive. He engaged to produce a book for the " Inter- national Series " upon this subject, but, find- ing, from the multiplicity of bis engage- ments and his uncertain health, that he could not accomplish it satisfactorily, ho as- sociated with himself the next ablest man of England in this field, Dr. M. C. Cooke, who has done the principal work, which now appears under the critical editorship of Dr. Berkeley himself. Readers who desire to become acquainted with the subject-matter of this volume, and to form some general idea of its scope and importance, are re-» ferred to the opening article of the present number of the Monthly, and, if its perusal LITERARY 2iOTICES. 24.1 interests them, they will find that the book gives the clearest and fullest account of the subject for common readers that has yet been published. The following passages are from an able review of it in the London Athenceum : " The present volume may be taken as a general introduction to the previous one, and is of much wider interest than it. Physiol- ogists and botanists have come to recognize and appreciate, much moi-e fully than here- tofore, that the solution of many vexed prob- lems in the life-history both of plants and of animals is to be sought in the investiga- tion of the mode of life of those so-called lower organisms, fungi and algse. Speaking in general terms, we may say that the phe- nomena of reproduction are at least as well, if not better, understood among these plants, once considered se.Kless, as among organ- isms of higher rank, and it seems highly probable that when observers avail them- selves of the joint use of chemistry and of the microscope that the essential phenomena of nutrition will also be made clear. Eng- lish students not familiar with the modern literature of Germany and France are at a great disadvantage in this matter. "With the exception of Mr. Berkeley — salve magne nomen! — few have devoted themselves to the study of these plants, and still fewer to the study of their physiological history. It has thus chanced that what little most Eng- lish botanists know of these matters, they have gained in a large degree from conden- sations and abstracts in scientific journals from the writings of German and French observers. Happily, there have been indi- cations of late that English students are be- ginning to devote themselves to this difficult but most promising field of inquiry. The discussions on so-called spontaneous genera- tion ; the inquiry whether or no fevers and other diseases owe their origin to the intro- duction and multiplication of germs within the body ; the disastrous consequences fol- lowing the attacks of fungi on vines and on potatoes, all excited interest in the study of these organisms, and induced observers to turn their attention to them. "From this point of view, Dr. Cooke's book is well timed. It comes at a period when the importance of the study, both from the stand-point of pure science and from that of practical utility, is becoming clearly recognized. Such an epitome of what is 4cnown as to the growth of fungi is, there- fore, peculiarly welcome, the more so as no modern work of the kind exists, Mr. Berke- VOL. VII. — 16 ley's 'Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany' having been published several years ago, while its style is obscure and its arrange- ment not suitable to the requirements of beginners. Dr. Cooke's book contains an admirable resume of what is known on the structure, growth, and reproduction of fungi, together with ample bibliographical refer- ences to original sources of information. " One of the most interesting chapters in the volume to the general reader, who does not care to follow the author in the technical, and still somewhat obscure details of tiie structure and classification of these plants, is that devoted to the influences and eft'ects of fungi. Apart from what are popularly known as poisonous fungi, it is assumed by many that certain diseases, such as cholera, various fevers, measles, diphtheria, etc., are actually caused by the introduction into the system of fungus-spores. Now, there is am- ple evidence to show that fungus-spores are introduced, and that in some diseases, e. g., diphtheria, fungus-moulds, the result of the development of such spores, have been found, but there is no certain evidence either that the spores or the developed plant has any thing to do with the disease. The opinion of those best qualified to judge is that the fungi are there in consequence of the disease, not the disease in consequence of the fungi. We are glad to see, with ref- erence to this matter, that the author sum- marizes the important conclusions of Drs. Cunningham and Lewis — the more so as those conclusions, which are based on im- portant observations, are contained in offi- cial publications not I'eadily accessible to the general public. Dr. Cunningham estab- lishes without question that the air is always charged more or less with these minute spores, but that no connection can be traced between the numbers of bacteria, spores, etc., present in the air, and the occurrence of diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, ague, or dengue, nor between the presence or abun- dance of any special form or forms of cells and the prevalence of any of these diseases. On the other hand, it is a matter of dispute at the present moment whether the minute organisms called bacteria may not be devel- oped in the body itself, and, in some cases, produce fungoid structures in the tissues, and, as a consequence, disease. Through- out the volume we find evidence of the care that has been taken to summarize the most recent information, even to the rem- edies proposed for the hollyhock-disease in the gardening journals of the present year." 242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. TuE American Garden : a Monthly Illus- trated Journal devoted to Garden Art. 24 pajres. jjiS a Year. Beach, Sou & Co., No. 7 Barclay Street, New York. Under the able editorial management of Mr. James Hogg, this journal is doing ex- cellent service in the interest of gardening and fruit culture. It contains each mouth a large amount of interesting and valuable matter, characterized, in the main, by a di- rectness of statement and common-sense that quickly win the confidence of the read- er, and assure him that he is in the hands of a safe and competent instructor. From the thirty-two titles in the last number, the following may be taken as a fair sample of the variety and practical character of the subjects treated: "Insects injurious to Room -Plants," " Fresh - Water Aquaria," "The Artistic Influence of Flowers," "Trop- ical Scenery," "About Ferns," "The Truf- fle," " Stillingia Sebifera, or Tallow-Tree," " The Carolina Poplar," " Watering Plants," and " Thinning out Fruit." Birds of the Northwest. By Elliot Coues, M. D., U. S. A. 791 pages. Washing- ton: Government Printing-OflSce, 1874. The basis of the present volume is main- ly an unpublished report prepared by the author, in 1862, upon the ornithological col- lections made in the Missouri region by the naturalists of the expedition under Captain Reynolds, and afterward extended so as to embrace the ornithological results of previ- ous explorations, in 1856-57, by Lieutenant Warren, in the region of the Upper Missouri, Yellowstone, and Platte Rivers. In 1872 Dr. Hayden, U. S. Geologist, expressed to the author his desire to publish a treatise on the ornithology of the Western Territo- ries, which he had explored. Dr. Coues undertook the task of elaborating the ma- terial collected since the writing of his original report, and the whole result is pub- lished in the book now before us, which is believed to be fairly abreast of the present state of the science. To bring the work within the compass of a single volume, and to give it a distinctive character apart from the general work on " North American Or- nithology " in preparation by Profs. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, its scope is restricted to the Missouri region. The birds of this region, like most others of North America, having been repeatedly and suflBciently de- scribed, text of this technical kind has been omitted as a rule, to make room for fresher matter of more general interest, but par- ticular plumages, not yet well known, are described. The distribution of the species, their residence or migration, and their abundance or scarcity, are worked out, not only within the region indicated, but through- out the general area they inhabit. All the species at present known to inhabit this re- gion are given, and represent a large ma- jority of the birds of North America. The author is brief in the cases of the best known Eastern birds, in order to devote more space to the history of species upon which less has already been written. Three families, Laridce, Colymbida, and Podicipi- dcc, are made the subjects of special mono- graphs. The Elements of Embryology. By Mi- chael Foster, M. D., and Francis M. Balfour, M. A. London : Macmillan, 1875. 272 pages. Price, $2.25. This is the first installment of a sys- tematic introduction to the study of embry- ology. For the sake of making the first steps in this interesting branch of science as easy as possible, the authors consider in the present volume only the embryogeny of the common fowl. The development of the chick once mastered, the study of other forms becomes an easy matter. The work consists of nine chapters, with an Appendix. In Chapter I. we have a description of the egg, and an account of the changes which take place up to the beginning of incuba- tion. Chapter II. is a summary of the his- tory of incubation. The other chapters, down to the ninth, indicate the changes which occur from the first day of incuba- tion down to the end of that process. Chap- ter IX. is on the development of the skull. In the Appendix are given practical instruc- tions for studying the development of the chick. Improvement of Health. By James Knight, M. D. 406 pages. Price, $1.50. New- York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1875. This is the second edition of this book on the improvement of health by natural means, including a history of food and a consideration of its substantial qualities. LITERARY NOTICES. 243 The work opens with a statement of the various unfavorable influences that tend to the enervation of the physical powers of parents ; and this is followed by an outline of man's organization, development, and proper sustenance, and by an elucidation of the relations which exist between the vege- table and animal kingdoms, whence his sub- sistence is obtained. The book contains few cuts, and these are poorly made. Catechism op the Locomotive. By M. N. Forney, M. E. 600 pages, 12mo. Price, $2.80. New York: The Railroad Ga- zette. 1875. The object of this book is to furnish a clear and easily-understood description of the principles, construction, and operation, of the locomotive-engine of the present day, a subject not concisely or adequately treated in any one similar book. It is intended not only as a hand-book for all classes of me- chanics and railroad-men, but as a readable book of practical information for amateur engineers, students, and general readers. The headings of a few chapters taken at random are : " The Steam-Engine ; " "Forces of Air and Steam ; " " General Description of a Locomotive-Engine ; " " Diiferent Kinds of Locomotives ; " " Accidents to Locomo- tives ; " "Responsibility and Qualification of Locomotive Runners." The subjects pre- sented are treated simply and plainly, in the form of question and answer, of which there are 563. The book is illustrated by 230 woodcuts and many plates. A New Treatise on Elements of Mechan- ics. By John W. Nystrom, C. E. 352 pages, 8vo. Price, $4.00. Philadelphia : Porter & Coates, 822 Chestnut Street. 1875. This new treatise on mechanics has for its object the establishment of strict preci- sion in the meaning of dynamical terms, and the classification of physical quantities into elements and functions. It is written for students of mechanics, by a practical engineer ; and the terms adopted in it are those used in the machine-shop, rejecting the ideal vocabulary heretofore used in text-books and colleges ; thus the author rejects such terms as " efiiciency of force," " working force," " quantity of motion," " mechanical power," " mechanical effect," " energy," etc., as having no definite mean- ing, or being redundant expressions mean- ing " force," " power," or " work." The first 56 pages treat of " Statics," and the next 221 pages are given to " Dynamics." A short chapter on the " Dynamics of Sound," a chapter on the " Mechanics of Astronomy," and an Appendix elucidating a duodenal system of arithmetic, measures, weights, and coins, complete the work, the whole of which is illustrated by 242 woodcuts. Familiar Lectures about the Teeth. By Henry S. Chase, M. D. 68 pages, cloth. St. Louis : Gray, Baker & Co. The contents of this neat little publication are designed particularly to enable mothtm to understand and take care of the growth of children's teeth. The author first gives several illustrations with descriptions, show- ing the position of the teeth in the jaws, to- gether with the usual time of appeai'ance of the milk-set and permanent set of teeth. He then treats of the structure of the teeth, the changes they undergo, and the nutrition which they demand, the same as other parts of the body. The food must furnish bone- material as well as flesh-material. Phos- phate of lime gives hardness to the teeth and bones, but it must be organized by a plant before it becomes fit food for an ani- mal : " Artificial salts will not nourish the teeth by being taken as food ; yet some persons have recommended that they be put into bread for that purpose." Other sub- jects are " Early Growth of the Teeth," " Infants' Teeth," " Dental Decay," " Chil- dren's Teeth," "The Six-Year Molars," " Plugging Teeth," " Effects of Medicine on the Teeth," " Diseases of the Teeth," " Ex- traction of Teeth," and "Artificial Teeth." The book is a good one, and will fully re- pay an attentive perusal. A New Manual of Physiology. By Prof, KtJss. Boston : James Campbell, 1875. 531 pp., 12mo. Price, $2.50. The contents of this volume are a course of lectures on physiology, delivered by Prof. Kiiss, at the Medical School of the University of Strasbourg ; edited by Mathias Duval, M. D., of the Medical Faculty of Paris ; and translated by Robert Amory, M. D., formerly Professor of Physiology at 244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the Medical School of Maine. The object of the work, as stated in the preface, is to supply the want of an English text-book in which the functions of living tissue are closely compared and combined with its texture; or, in other words, a book wherein the rela- tions of physiology to histology are care- fully presented; for, while there are many good works on physiology, to which the student can refer for a knowledge of the subject, a concise treatise, within the limits of the means of medical students, has been a want hitherto supplied only by treatises in French or German. The book is embel- lished with 150 woodcut illustrations. Report op the Commissioners op Lunacy TO THE Commonwealth op Massachi:- SETTS. Boston, January, ISYS. This pamphlet of 76 pages contains the separate Reports of the Commissioners, Nathan Allen and Wendell Phillips, to which is added, in an appendix, a letter to the Commissioners by S. E. Sewall. The Report gives the number of insane in the State as, approximately, 3,624, but the Commissioners are persuaded that, if more thorough measures were taken for ascer- taining the number, they would exceed /owr thousand. We observe with pleasure the ad- dition of four pages to the Engineerinff and Mining Journal, edited by Richard P. Rothwell, C. E., M. E., and Rossiter W. Raymond, Ph. D. Heretofore its weekly issue consisted of sixteen pages, now it is twenty. But, besides enlarging, the pub- lishers announce their intention of other- wise adding to the value of the journal. Thus they will make more liberal use of engravings to illustrate subjects of profes- sional interest, and questions of practical importance in mining, metallurgy, and gas- engineering, will receive special attention. Another new departure, something in the nature of Notes and Queries, is announced, and cannot fail to enhance the value of the paper. It is the publishers' desire to have their pages used as a " " medium for asking and giving information on subjects con- nected with mining and metallurgy, or gen- eral science." Subscription, $4.00. Pub- lication-ofifice, 21 Park Place, New York. International Scientific Series. — If the last volume of this series, on " Fungi," be thought somewhat remote from the ur- gent solicitudes of the American mind, no such objection can be urged against the contribution of Prof. Jevons to this series, now in press, entitled " Money and the Sci- ence of Exchange." Prof. Jevons is not only a logician of originality and eminence, and author of a recent profound work on the " Principles of Science," but he is a professional student of political economy, and the author of important works upon this subject also. He brings a disciplined mind and a comprehensive knowledge of the subject to the discussion of that im- portant branch of economical science which deals with currency, and may be expected to give in his new volume a clear and com- pact statement of the subject, as far as its scientific principles have been worked out. Such a volume cannot fail to be useful in this country, where the interest in money is so intense as to be surpassed only by the general ignorance of its nature, offices, and laws. " The Unseen Universe." — Under this title an anonymous work will be shortly is- sued from the press of Macmillan, treating of the religious bearings of the most advanced science, in such a way as to arouse the in- terest of both scientific and religious think- ers. Since its announcement the work has been anxiously looked for, and there is much speculation as to its authorship. PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED. The Religion of Humanity. By 0. B. Frothingham. Pp. 338. New York : Put- nam's Sons. Price, $1.50. Home Sketches in France. By Mrs. Henry M. Field. Pp. 256. New York ; Putnam's Sous. Price, $1.50. Fifth Catalogue of Seventy-one Double Stars. By S. W. Burnham, Esq. Duplicity of the Principal Star of New Scorpii (same author). Reprint from Royal Astronomical Society notices. Iron and Steel. By Adolf Schmidt," Ph. D. Pp. 12. St. Louis Times ^v'mt. History of Greece, By C. A. Fyffe (His- MISCELLANY. 245 tory Primers). Pp. 127. New York : Mac- millan. Price, 40 cents. Pneumo-thorax. By Austin Flint, Sen., M. D. (series of American Clinical Lectures). Pp. 18. New York : Putnam's Sons. Price, 40 cents. Spectroscopic Examination of Gases from Meteoric Iron. By Artliur W. Wright. Pp. 8. Tiie Past and Future of Geology. By Joseph Prestwich, M. A., F. R. S. London : Macmillau. Pp. 50. Price, two shillings. Possibility and Probability of Super- natural Revelation. By Rev. Horace Bum- stead. Pp. 13. Minneapolis : Johnson & Smith. Doubt. By J. N. Stiles. Pp. 19. Chi- cago : Beach, Barnard & Co. Philadelphia School of Anatomy. By William W. Keen, M. D. Pp. 32. Phila- delphia : Lippincott. Skew Arches. By E. W. Hyde, C. E. Pp. 104. New York : Van Nostrand. Price, 50 cents. The Iron-clad Ships of the World. By M. P. Dislere. Pp. 29. Washington : Gov- ernment Printing-Office. The Centennial of Chemistry. Pp. 208. Philadelphia : Collins, Printer. Price, $1.00. Cretaceous Lamellibranchs, collected at Pernambuco. By Richard Rathbun. Pp. 15. Journey in Honduras. By R. C. Hus- ton, C. E. Pp. 39. Cincinnati : R. Clarke & Co. Price, 50 cents. Catalogue of American Grape-vines. Bush & Son, Bushberg, Jefferson County, Mo. Transits of Venus (Proctor). New York : Worthington. Manual of Diet in Health and Disease (Chambers). Philadelphia : Henry C. Lea. Navigation, in Theory and Practice (Evers). Putnam's Sons. Theology of the Coming Man. By G. Eppley, M. D. Pp. 11. Lewisberry, York County, Pa. The Author. Vertebrata of the Eocene of New Mex- ico (Cope). Theory of Solubility (Walz). Philadel- phia : Collins, printer. Causes of Irregularity in Development of the Teeth (Kingsley). Munroe's Philosophy of Cure. MISCELLANY. Disastrous Balloon Ascent. — On the 18th of April the balloon Zenith made an as- cension from Paris, carrying three aeronauts, Messrs. Gaston Tissandier, Sivel, and Croce- Spinelli. All three were aeronauts of long experience, and qualified in every way for making accurate scientific observations on the meteorological phenomena of the upper strata of the atmosphere. They carried with them a full set of such philosophical instru- ments as would be of service in ascertaining elevations, constitution of the atmosphere, temperatures, and the like. They carried al- so a supply of pure oxygen, for use when the air should be found too rare to support res- piration. Having risen to the height of 7,000 metres (22,960 feet), Tissandier ob- served that his companions looked pale ; he himself felt weak, but refreshed himself by inhaling a little of the oxygen. Sivel soon after threw out ballast, and the balloon commenced to ascend rapidly. All at once Tissandier was so feeble that he could not even turn his head ; he tried to seize the oxygen tube, but was unable ; his mind still lucid. Looking at the barometer he saw that it indicated an elevation of 8,000 metres (26,240 feet), but he had not the strength to call the attention of the others to the fact. He soon after fell into a sort of swoon, but twenty minutes later revived for a moment, finding the balloon descend- ing rapidly. Sivel and Croce were now lying at the bottom of the car insensible. Again he sank fainting, and a few minutes later found himself shaken by the arms, and, looking up, recognized Croce, who told him to throw out ballast, for the balloon was descending at a very rapid rate. Croce now unfastened the aspirator and threw it out, as also some ballast, extra wraps, and the like. This caused the bal- loon again to ascend, and Tissandier relapsed once more into insensibility. On recover- ing consciousness, he found the car rushing 246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY downsvard with frightful velocity. He tried to arouse Sivel and Croce, but they were immovable ; Slvel's face was black, his eyes dull, mouth wide open and full of blood. Croce's eyes were closed, and his mouth blood-stained also. Having come down to the earth, Tissandier dropped the grapnel, but it failed to hold firmly, and the car was dragged across the fields by a violent wind. He succeeded, however, in grasping the cord of the valve, and the balloon was soon emptied. Croce-Spinelli and Sivel were dead. Tissandier was in a high fever, but he was kindly cared for by the inhabitants of the village of Ceron, in the vicinity of which he landed, after having been in the air over three hours. The disaster attending this memorable ascent has delayed the publication of the scientific results of the voyage. These, how- ever, are understood to be of high impor- tance, and we will present them to our read- ers at an early day. The greatest altitude observed by M. Tissandier was not very re- markable, when compared with Glaisher and Coxwell's highest in 1862. These aeronauts reached the enormous altitude of 3*7,000 feet, which is more than 10,000 feet in ex- cess of Tissandier's 8,000 metres. But, while Tissandier lay insensible, the Zenith may have attained still greater elevations ; this question will be decided by the records of the self-registering barometers, which were sent to the French Academy imder seal. Cave Explorations. — A number of caves containing the remains of animals were re- cently discovered in Worcestershire, Eng- land, on the banks of the river Wye. At a meeting of the county Scientific Society the president described a visit made by him to these caves, in company with Dr. Carpenter. Three of the caves only were visited. In one were found three human skulls, with coins and ornaments belonging to the Eo- man period. The soil in which these ob- jects were buried having been removed, the explorers found a layer of solid stone, so thick and hard that it had to be blasted with gunpowder. Under this layer were found bones belonging to a single animal — JJrsus spdceus. Another layer of stone was then Ukewise removed by blasting, and the explorers found fossil bones of sundry ex- tinct species, viz., the remains of a mam- moth, in a state of wonderful preservation ; all the bones of a rhinoceros ; the debris of cave-lions, cave-bears, and also of several hyenas. The Worcestershire Scientific So- ciety intends to acquire possession of one of the caves. Grigin and Distribution of Amnioula in the AITi — In a communication to the French Academy of Sciences, Schlijsing states as follows the results of his researches on the origin of the ammonia di Bused on the sur- face of the soil, its circulation, its varia- tions in the atmosphere, and its distribution between the sea, the continents, and the air. It is a well-known fact that, in the course of the transformations of organic matter, a certain amount of nitrogen is set free ; also that this gaseous nitrogen is not assimilable by organisms. Hence the ne- cessity of some agency which shall take this free nitrogen and cause it to reenter into combination. The author, after criticising the various opinions put forth on this sub- ject, assents to the theory of Boussingault, who holds that, under the influence of at- mospheric electricity, nitric acid is produced in the air. Further, he says that the sur- face of the continents is essentially an oxi- dizing medium ; that nitrification is there abundantly developed ; and that a portion of the nitrates thus formed enters again into the cycle of life, while the rest is carried into the sea. Experience also shows that if the decomposition of organisms produces nitre on the continents, it produces ammo- nia in a medium so little oxidized as is the sea. Hence the author recognizes on the surface of the globe a regular circulation of nitric acid and of ammonia, taking place in this way, viz., nitrous production in the air, nitrous gains from the air to the con- tinents, transfer of nitrates to the sea, for- mation of ammonia in the sahne medium ; finally, disengagement and passage of the alkali into the air, to be given back again to the continents. Mortnary Statistics of Virginian Cities. — The following mortuary statistics, taken from the official reports of three Virginian cities, would seem to show that the African race is declining in the Southern States: MISCELLANY. 247 The total white population of Richmond is given as 3.S,452, and the deaths for Jan- uary 25 males and 16 females. The col- ored population of the same city is given at 27,213, and the deaths as 40 males and 36 females. Norfolk had, for the same month, in a white population of 12,000, 3 male deaths and 5 female, while its colored popu- lation of 8,000 gave 6 male and 7 female deaths. The white population of Lynch- burg is 6,500, and the colored population the same. Among the whites there were 4 males died and 1 female, while among the colored people 8 males died and 10 females. In Richmond, the number of still-born in- fants in the white population was 5, in the colored 11 ; in Lynchburg the number was 3 and 7 respectively. In Norfolk the num- ber was even. Temporatnrc of the Body in Disease. — The normal surface temperature of the hu- man body, in temperate climates, is about 98.°5, any persistent variation from this, whether by depression or by elevation, in- dicating disease. In the tropics, the nor- mal temperature is one degree higher. Hitherto it has been supposed that, when in fevers the temperature rises over 108°, recovery is impossible, unless a reduction is effected by the cold bath. The Lancet gives an instance of recovery where the thermometer indicated a temperature of over 122° in the armpit of a patient suffer- ing from injury to the spine. The history of this extraordinary case is as follows : On September 5, 1874, a young lady met with an accident in the hunting-field, where- by two ribs were fractured ; at the same time she complained of- pain in the back. A surgeon, Mr. J. W. Teale, was soon in attendance. A few days after the accident the temperature was 101°, but, in the space of a fortnight, it became normal. The fract- ured ribs united, but pain and tenderness still existed over the sixth dorsal spine. On October 3d the temperature rose to 100°, and then to 101° ; and it still con- tinued to rise in spite of the application of ice-bags to the spine, till, on November 6th, it was 106°. After many fluctuations, the temperature, on the 13th of November, reached the astonishing height of 122°, the index of the thermometer becomins; buried in the bulb at tlie top of the instrument, which registered only up to 122°. During that day there was a fall of 8^, but, in the evening, 122° was again reached. As a general rule, an increase of 1° above the normal temperature is attended with an increase of ten beats of the pulse per minute. In the present case, the pulse appears to have been the same (120) at 122° as at 108°. The normal temperature was not reached till January 10th, and, during the space of seven weeks, it never fell below 108°. We must add here that every precaution was taken against error in the indications of the thermometer. No fewer than seven different instruments, made by Harvey & Reynolds, were used, of which four had received certificates of correctness at Kew. Further, they were inspected by two or three trustworthy wit- nesses before and after each application, and the results were always immediately recorded in writing. Sometimes, when the thermometrical readings were highest, the hands, feet, and forehead, were icy cold, and the patient felt as if " her blood was on fire." "Cotton Gunpowder." — This is the name given to a preparation of gun-cotton which, by the use of certain chemicals, is rendered perfectly safe for storage or car- riage, though possessing enormous explo- sive power. The following account of some experiments made with cotton gunpowder we take from the Journal of the Society of Arts: "Cartridges were held in the hand, lit with fuses, and burned with "a steady blaze, while, when ignited by detonators, they exploded with a loud report. Ten pounds of the substance was placed on an anvil, and an iron pile-driver weighing one- half ton was allowed to fall 15 feet upon it, without causing an explosion. Two barrels, each containing 40 pounds, were placed in a pile of fagots. Upon these being fired, the powder burned with a steady but in- tense flame, and without any tendency to explosion. A solid block of steel, about one-half ton in weight, was bored to the depth of 6 inches, and a 6-ounce cartridge was inserted in the hole. It was split into two pieces. But the greatest exhibition of force was made in two experiments with 248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY steel ingots. In the first experiment, 4 in- gots of 8 inches square and 3 feet long were used. In the centre of these four masses of steel as laid together, two pound cartridges of the powder were placed, and kept in their place with a few handfuls of clay. In the second experiment the four ingots were each 11 inches square, and the charge used 2| pounds. The 8 ingots were all broken in halves ; some of these massive pieces of steel were sent flying high in the air, fall- ing 30, 35, and, in one case, 45 yards avray. At the close of the experiment, a torpedo of 50 pounds of this powder, sunk 10 feet in the river Swale, but not resting on the bottom, was fired. An immense body of water was projected high in the air, and any vessel which might at the time have been passing over it would have suffered severely." A Thorongh State Suryey.— Prof. N. S. Shaler publishes in the Atlantic Monthly an article on a survey of Massachusetts, advo- cating a more minute reconnoissance of the topography, geology, zoology, botany, agri- cultural resources, climate, etc., of that Commonwealth, than has hitherto been at- tempted with respect to any portion of the territory of the United States. In this great enterprise, the first thing to be done is, to secure the best map. Massachusetts has the good fortune to have her shore-belt map completely made by the Coast Survey. Cape Ann and Cape Cod, and the bordering islands, constituting about a tenth of the total area of the State, have all been done on a scale of xuuTjtT) or about six inches to the mile of distance. The entire State, on the same scale, would be represented in a record-map about 90 by 54 feet. " On this plan," says Prof. Shaler, "the surveying and improvement of private grounds could always be accomplished, tax-levies made, and, in short, our civilization could be or- ganized upon it." In this way the topo- graphical portion of the survey would prob- ably cost not over $750,000, a sum which Massachusetts could easily afford. In the geological survey, every strati- graphical question, every question in chem- ical geology, should be followed to its ut- most point. Some of the problems which would arise are economical, have money in them ; the others are economical too, in that higher sense which finds all truth prof- itable. The problems Of direct economical interest are : distribution of water, its stor- age and quahty; building-stones; deposits of coal ; distribution of metals ; reclama- tion of marshes ; retimbering of the exposed parts of the coast, etc. As for purely sci- entific problems, probably no other known fossils have so much value for the science of to-day as those wonderful footprints of the Connecticut Valley. A large part of the necessary work for the complete description of Massachusetts animals and plants is already done, and only needs to be brought together and classified. The State already has nearly $1,000,000 invested in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and, in the work of cataloguing the animals, this noble institution can make a substantial return through the students it has trained and the collections it has made. With good maps and good catalogues of the natural productions of a country, the teach- ing of natural science becomes possible to a degree that cannot be hoped for under other circumstances. The Microscope as a DetectlTC. — The mi- croscope, as an agent in the detection of crime, has been alternately commended and condemned. It was recently employed in a Connecticut court of justice to discover, in the clothing of a man charged with murder, minute filaments from the shawl of his al- leged victim. Dr. J. G. Kichardson lately read before the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences a paper on the " Value of High Powers in the Diagnosis of Blood- Stains," in which he shows that the red blood- globules of various domestic animals, as the ox, cat, pig, horse, sheep, goat, are all so much smaller than the human red disk, that we can positively distinguish stains produced by human blood from those caused by the blood of any of these animals. To furnish positive demonstration of the facts of the case, Dr. Richardson obtained six specimens of blood-clot, from the veins of a man, an ox, and a sheep, selected without his knowl- edge, and so marked as to furnish no clew as to which animal they were derived from. By the microscopical characters alone he was able to determine with perfect correct- MISCELLANY. 2 19 iiess the origin of every one of the samples. The corpuscles of the human blood aver- aged a^jTT inch diameter, those of the ox- blood 4 8^4, and the sheep's blood z'^St- The Cineinuati Zoological Garden. — We are indebted to Mr. G. H. Knight, of Cincin- nati, for an account of the Zoological and Botanical Garden about to be established in the northern suburbs of that city. The projected garden is to be, as far as possi- ble, a complete representation of the fauna and flora of this continent. Efforts will be made to render the ground a complete ar- boretum, in which each tree and shrub will be plainly labeled according to the scientific classification, with the common name ap- pended. Fresh and salt-water aquariums, on a large scale, will add to the popular at- tractions as well as to the scientific value of the establishment. Nor will the collec- tion be restricted to a representation of the animal and vegetable worlds ; there is also to be a novel geological feature added, viz., an artificial section of the earth's crust, made up of the actual component rocks in their natural positions, accompanied, possi- bly, by some of their paleontological char- acteristics ; that is to say, their extinct fauna and flora restored. The tract of land secured for this garden is, for the most part, an elevated plateau of about sixty-seven acres, very central and accessible in loca- tion. The Cincinnati Zoological Society, to whom all the credit of this great enterprise is due, have already in hand over $100,000 for the beautification of the grounds and the construction of the necessary buildings, laying out of paths, etc. A naturalist, who brings a large practical experience in the care of wild animals, and a landscape-gar- dener, who has been engaged in similar works elsewhere, have been engaged, and are already busily at work examining the ground and making necessary preparations. The Dietetic Value of Gelatine.— The theory that gelatine passes through the system undigested, and thus contributes nothing toward the nourishment of its tis- sues, has recently been subjected to a re- examination by Etzinger, with results that appear to contradict the current view. By submitting fine gelatine, and also the vari- ous gelatine-yielding tissues, such as bones, cartilages, tendons, connective tissue, etc., to the action of artificial gastric juice, he shows, in accordance with Boerhaave and others, that gelatine is digestible, breaking up and becoming dissolved more or less rapidly, according to the form in which it is pre- sented to the solvent. Being satisfied on this point, the next question was, " Is the gela- tine, after solution or digestion, of any ser- vice in nutrition?" To determine this, a careful dieting of animals was instituted, with coincident analysis of their urine and faeces. The results showed that, in the cases of bone, cartilage, and tendons alike, these substances not only undergo digestion, but are absorbed into the blood, and play an important part in nutrition. Instead, there- fore, of being entirely cast aside as useless articles, they may be consumed in moderate quantities with decided advantage. The Origin and Strnetare of Folgn- rltes. — Mr. Frank Buckland publishes, in Land and Water, an account written by his father, the late Prof. Buckland, of certain vitreous tubes discovered in sand-hills, near Drigg, in Cumberland. Three of these tubes were found on a single hillock about thirty feet above the level of the sea, the di- ameter of each being about an inch and a half. An excavation having been made about one of them, it was found to descend per- pendicularly through the sand about thirty feet. At about twenty-nine feet, the sand was succeeded by a bed of pebbles. Here the tube came in contact with a piece of hornstone porphyry, from which it glanced off at an angle and then resumed its verti- cal position. Below this point the tube, be- coming extremely delicate, was frequently broken, and at the distance of a foot the sand fell in, preventing further investiga- tion. The tube appears to have tapered in its descent, its diameter at the bottom of the excavation being only half an inch. Small lateral branches proceeded from diflferent parts of the stem, not over two or three inches in length, nor one-quarter inch in di- ameter at the points of insertion. They were conical, the point* being turned down- ward. The outside of the tube is coated with an agglutinated sand, which, viewed with a lens, is seen to consist of black and opaque 250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. white grains mixed together and rounded as if by instant fusion. The wall of the tube is about one-twentieth of an inch thick, and very solid and rigid. In the opinion of Prof. Buckland, lightning is the only agent that could at once supply the heat and force necessary to make these tubes. A similar tube, coming from North Car- olina, has been described by Prof. Leeds, of the Stevens Institute. In this case the lightning had penetrated a bed of pure white sand, melting the silex, and forming a hollow shaft two or three inches in diame- ter and four feet long, filled within and sur- rounded without by the pure white sand of the locality. The shaft, however, was discol- ored by finely-divided metallic iron (which does not exist in Nature at the earth's sur- face), and the explanation seems to be that at the immensely high temperature at which silica melts, iron dissociates from oxygen, and that here, dissociation having occurred, the metallic iron, transported by the electric flux from some subterranean depth, became incased in molten sand, and was preserved unoxidized in the vitreous tube. The Weakness of a Great Man.— The vanity of the great botanist Linnajus was extraordinary, as witness the following doc- ument written by his own hand, and enti- tled "The Good Fortune, Services, and Fame of Linnaeus : " " God gave him to wife the woman he most loved, and who cared for the household while he studied. God granted him the largest herbarium in the world, and this is his delight. God honored him with a title (chief physician), orders (knighthood), coat-of-arms (nobility), and a name among the learned. God saved him from a conflagration. No man before him ever pursued his special study with greater zeal, or had more listeners. No man before him was ever more famous thi'oughout the whole world." The same trait of character is seen in "Flora's Body Guard," as Lin- naeus, curiously enough, called the most em- inent botanists of his day : " General, Karl von Linnaeus ; major-general, Bernard Jus- sieu; colonels, Albrecht von Hall and J. F. Gronovius ; lieutenant-colonels, Bur- m.inn, Gleditsch, Ludwig, etc. ; major, J. G. Gmelin;" and so on. A lady having once visited Linnaeus's cabinet, the great man made a profound impression on her by giv- ing her some interesting information about each specimen. At last she exclaimed, " I can now understand why Linna;us is so fa- mous in the whole province of Upsala," But Linnaeus, who had expected to hear "all over the world," instead of "in the provhice of Upsala," was hurt by the mea- greness of the lady's adulation, and dis- missed her curtly enough. In order to sound the depths of the great botanist's vanity, an acquaintance once saluted him as the Sun of Botanists, the Jupiter of Scholars, Nature's Secretary, an Ocean of Knowledge, a Traveling Mountain of Eru- dition, and the like. Far from being dis- pleased at such fulsome flattery, Linnaeus in- terrupted the panegyrist at the close of each phrase, embraced him, and again and again called him his best and dearest friend. Perception of Color by Bees. — To test the faculty possessed by bees of distinguishing between colors, Sir John Lubbock brought a bee to some honey, which he placed on blue paper, and about three feet ofl" he placed a similar quantity of honey on orange paper. After the bee had returned twice he transposed the papers, but the bee re- turned to the honey on the blue paper. After she had made three more visits, al- ways to the blue paper, he transposed them again, and she again followed the color, though the honey was left in the same place. The papers having been again trans- posed, the bee returned to the former site of the blue ; but, when just about to alight, she noticed the change of color, and with- out a moment's hesitation dashed off to the blue. No one, says he, who saw her at that moment, could have entertained the slight- est doubt of her perceiving the difierehee between the two colors. Poisoning with Extract of Hemlocli. — The following is a condensed history of the remarkable case of Frederick W. Walker, who died in Brooklyn, on the 8d of April, from an overdose of extract of hemlock, taken with the hope of controlling the symptoms of an annoying and obstinate complaint. The rare force of will and cool- headedness displayed by the patient in no- ting and detailing the effects of the drug up MISCELLANY. 251 to almost the last moment of his life, recall the celebrated case of Amedee BerthoUet, who, while dying of suffocation by charcoal- gas, kept a record of his sensations as long as he was able to hold the pen. Some time before his death, Mr. Walker had been struck in the temple by a truck- pole, the result of which injury was blepha- • ro-t'acial paralysis, or spasms of the facial muscles and the eyelids. These symptoms were extremely troublesome in themselves, the spasms often continuing for hours at a time ; but scarcely less annoying was the fact that the contortions came on without premonition, and thus the patient often had the misfortune to excite the derision of others by the hideous grimaces which he could not control. The best medical ad- vice had been resorted to without avail. Brown - Sequard performed many severe operations on the patient, such as actual cautery and severing of the facial nerves ; the surgeon even cut out considerable por- tions of nerve-fibre in the attempt to con- trol the spasms. Brown-Sequard having returned to Europe, Mr. Walker came to Prof. C. R. Agnew for treatment. Dr. Ag- new tried to relieve the spasm of the right , eyelid by dividing the muscle which sur- rounds the corner of the eye ; but the op- eration failed. On Saturday, April 3d, Mr. Walker visited, by appointment. Dr. Ag- new's office, for the purpose of being treated with the extract of Conium macu- latum, or hemlock. The drug was admin- istered by Dr. Webster, Prof. Agiiew's as- sociate ; the first dose, forty drops, being taken at 10.23 a. m. At 10.50 the dose was repeated, as also at 11.15, and half an hour later sixty drops more were given. No effect was observable. The patient was then di- rected to obtain from Dr. Squibb, of Brook- lyn, an ounce of his fluid- extract of conium, and to follow minutely that physician's di- rections as to its administration. Both by Dr. Webster and by Dr. Squibb Mr. Walker was again and again charged to stop taking the conium the moment he " felt any effect of the drug, such as muscular relaxation, or vertiffo." The dose recommended by Dr. Squibb was fifty drops, to be repeated in half an hour, in case the symptoms did not present themselves. From the record taken down from the patient's own lips, it is clear that the admonitions of the doctors were disregarded. We give the record, to show the stoical calmness of the man, while the shadow of death was gathering upon him : "4.10 p.m., took fifty minims Squibb's fluid - extract of conium (hemlock) ; 4.40 p. M., effect very decided in dizziness, re- laxation of muscles and limbs ; fifty min- ims more then taken ; difficulty of walking immediately and want of power to control movements ; forced to lie down, but no mitigation of spasms, limbs and legs weak, unable to hold up head, speech thickening some, pain and heaviness in top and back part of head ; pulse fifty-six. " 5.15 p. M., took fifty drops; some nau- sea, some tremor at base of clavicle and in muscles across the chest, just above the sternum ; no diminution of spasms about eyes nor of photophobia. "5.25 P.M., drowsiness; inclined to sleep. " 5.40 P. M., eyes difficult to open, speech difficult, fullness in throat, prostration near- ly complete, diplopia (double sight) vastly increased. " 6.10 P. M., nausea, twitchings on right side, unable to articulate, eyes closed, full- ness almost to suffocation in throat, pulse about sixty. At eight in part — " He never spoke again. A New Respirator. — A respirator, in- tended for the use of miners, firemen, and others, whose duties so often expose them to danger by the inhalation of deleterious gases, was recently tested at the Barclay & Perkins Brewery, London. The apparatus is the invention of a Frenchman, Denay- rouze. It consists of a tube about an inch in diameter internally, made of flexible spi- ral wire and India-rubber, and so strong and well protected as to bear the weight of a heavy man without collapsing. The tube is attached to a belt which is firmly buckled to the waist of the operator. The mouth- piece is very ingeniously contrived for hold- ing in the mouth with extreme tenacity and the minimum of inconvenience. There is a glazed eye-protector, which also closes the nostrils. Inspirations are taken through the tube, and the respired air is discharged through a valve half-way between the belt and the mouth-piece. By drawing a long 252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY breath tlirough the tube and removing the mouth-piece a simple sentence can be loudly spoken, care being taken not to inhale with- out first restoring the mouth-piece. The tube is of sufficient length to communicate by one end with the outer air. A newly- emptied vat, of 1,000 barrels capacity, was selected for the scene of the experiment. Lighted candles, dipped one-eighth of an inch into the vat, were instantly extin- guished without a flicker, thus showing that the air within was utterly irrespirable. The London agent of the patent, Mr. Apple- garth, having put on the belt, and adjusted the mouth-piece and the eye-preservers, descended into the vat by a ladder, and, having reached the bottom, carried on a conversation with those outside, the tube serving as a speaking-trumpet. Robert Hardwicko. — We have to record the death of Mr. Robert Hardwicke, the respected publisher, of London, which oc- curred on the 8th of March last, resulting from a stroke of paralysis with which he was seized a few weeks previously. Mr. Hardwicke was well known by the number of useful hand-books on general science and natural history published by him at his house in Piccadilly ; most of these works were beautifully illustrated, and sold at very moderate prices. But Mr. Hardwicke will be best remembered by his desire to popularize science. In this field he was an earnest and indefatigable worker, not from a wish to raise an army of pseudo- philosophers, but with the truest intention of elevating the standard of mental culture among all classes, and preparing the masses to follow and appreciate the work of those great minds who devote their lives to sci- ence. In 1862 he started the Popular Science Review, a quarterly journal, and in 1865 issued Science Gossip, a charming little monthly, well illustrated, and sold for so small a sum as 4d. In 1869, under the heading of the Monthly ilicroscopical Jour- nal, he undertook to publish the " Trans- actions of the Royal Microscopical Society," in conjunction with matter bearing on the same subject. These ventures were highly creditable to the spirit and enterprise of Mr. Hard- wicke, but were not so profitable as they deserved to be ; they were, however, a suc- cess, and were continued up to the time of his death. What Charles Knight was to general literature, Robert Hardwicke was to sci- ence. It was the aim of both to circulate in the homes of the people pure and reada- ble matter, light and interesting, but worthy the perusal of reasoning beings. With Hard- wicke, his work was a labor of love, for he thought that " the high prerogative of every advocate of scientific truth was not to plume himself upon his own successes, but to era- ploy them for the good of others." Carnivorons Plants. — The list of known carnivorous plants has been very consid- erably enlarged during the past year or two, many interesting additions having been made by sundry observers. To Mrs. Mary Treat is due the credit of having materially increased the fund of scientific knowledge with regard to this description of plants. We have already mentioned her observations on sundew, and now we have to recount her very full researches on the bladder -wort {UiricvJaria clandestina), a plant common in shallow ponds and swamps. This plant owes its vulgar name to the fact that its stem has attached to it numerous little bladders, the use of which has been supposed to be to float the plant. But they serve a diff'erent purpose. In December, 1874 the author placed some of these blad- ders under the microscope, and noticed a number of animalcules within. This dis- covery led to further researches during the following October. It was then found that the bladder consists of irregular cells, with clusters of star-like points (the office of which is still unknown), arranged very regularly over the inner surface. The ani- mal most commonly seen entrapped in the bladder was a snake-like larva ; but for a while the author was baSled in her effijrts at finding out how the prey is taken. Soon, however, this difficulty was overcome, and the patience of the author was amply re- warded by a view of sundry animals enter- ing into the maw of the utricularia. One end of each bladder resembles a tunnel -net, open at the larger end and closed at the smaller. The animalcules MISCELLANY. 253 would sometimes dally about the entrance for a while, but eventually would venture in and push open the closed end of the net ; this then closed, and the animalcule was a prisoner. In this way various minute ani- mals— water-bear, daphnia, cyclops, cypris — were seen to enter the chamber of death. No sooner was the victim within, than it manifested alarm, drew in its feet and an- tennae, and closed its shell. After death the shell unclosed again, displaying the feet and antennae. Not one was ever seen to escape. But, now, how was the observer to know that these animals became the food of the plant ? This question occupied the author for several days. If it could be proved that the contents of the bladders were carried directly into the circulation of the plant, the problem was solved. The cells were, in many instances, of a red color, and in all such cases it was observed that the stem at the point where the bladder grew was of the same color. It thus looks " as if a red fluid was carried from the blad- ders into the main stem, which is not spe- cifically the fact, so far as the observations yet made determine, though the main point, that the contents of the bladders are car- ried into the circulation, does not seem open to question." Darwinism by Destent. — Mr. Darwin, many people know, has an hereditary claim to the apostolate of the doctrine of evolu- tion ; but Dr. Erasmus Darwin's poems have long ceased to be read by the multi- tude, and it is not so well known how close- ly his philosophical creed tallies with that of his accompUshed grandson. As an ex- ample, however, we take the following pas- sage from " The Economy of Vegetation : " " Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nursed in Ocean's pearly caves. First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud or pierce the watery mass ; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume, Whence countless groups of vegetation spring. And breathing realms of fln, and feet, and wing." In a note combating the " prejudices " against the doctrine of spontaneous vital production. Dr. Darwin holds that " there is more dignity in our idea of the Supreme Author of all things, when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, than the cause simply of the events which we see ; " and further on intimates the unlikelihood of the larger and more complicated animals being thus produced, as they " have acquired their present perfection by successive gen- erations during an uncounted series of ages." — Iron. Antiseptics and Infasorial Life. — M. Parmille points out that, according to the investigations of Calvert and others, char- coal, lime, and permanganate of potash, contrary to the received opinion, facilitate rather than hinder putrefactive changes, and actually favor the formation of animal- cules. Charcoal, when employed for the purification of water, undoubtedly absorbs offensive gases, and removes dissolved fla- voring and coloring matters. But upon living animalcules and their germs it has no destructive effect — if any thing, rather pro- moting their development. Water contain- ing a known amount of " albuminoid am- monia," when experimentally filtered over animal charcoal, has been found, on analy- sis, worse than before. M. Danaim found that treatment with charcoal increased the poisonous qualities of putrid blood ; the explanation offered being that absorption of the gases dissolved in the liquid removed an obstacle to the development of the in- fusoria. Permanganate of potash is like- wise without effect on living organisms, although it rapidly destroys the dead or- ganic matter. The author considers car- bolic, or, better still, cresylic acid, as the only agent which extirpates these animal- cules. Tenacity of Life in the Wlieel Aninial- enle. — It has been asserted that the wheel animalcule {Rotifer vulgaris) may be re- stored to life by the application of moist- ture, after having been dried up, and to all appearance dead. This subject has been in- vestigated by Prof. Leidy, and his results show that there is a very definite limit to the tenacity of life in these minute animals. Two glass slides, containing, beneath cov- er-glasses, some dirt, exhibited each about twelve living rotifers. After exposure to the sun's rays, the temperature being 80°, for half an hour, the moisture on the slide was dried up. The next morning water was ap- 254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY plied, and soon the microscope showed some of the rotifers to have revived, while others remained motionless. The same slides were again submitted to drying, the cover- glass of one having been removed. Several hours after moistening them, the next day, only two rotifers were seen to be alive on each slide. Again some twenty active roti- fers were exposed to the hot sun during the afternoon. These could not be revived the following morning. From all this it would appear that rotifers become inactive in comparatively dry positions, and may be revived by supplying moisture ; but, when their own substance is actually dried up, it is impossible to revive them, Inflnenee of Ammonia on the Color of Flowers. — Exposure to the smoke of a ci- gar changes violet-colored flowers to green. This change is due to the ammonia present in tobacco-smoke. The general question of the influence of ammonia on the colors of flowers has been lately investigated by Gabba, an ItaUan, his method being to put a little ammoniacal solution in a basin, and place a receiver over it containing the flower. In this way blue, violet, and purple flowers were changed to green, carmine-red flowers to black, white to yellow, etc. The most singular changes were presented by flowers in which several tints are combined ; the red lines changed to green, the white to yel- low, and so on. After the flowers have un- dergone these changes, if they are placed in pure water, they retain their new colora- tion several hours, and then gradually re- sume their original hues. Gabba has fur- ther observed that the flowers of aster, which are naturally inodorous, acquire an agreeable aromatic odor under the influence of ammonia. When moistened with dilute nitric acid they change from violet to red. If inclosed in a wooden case, and exposed to hydrochloric-acid vapor, they in six hours assume a beautiful carmine red. Metal Roofs as Lightning-Condnctors, — In a communication to the French Acad- emy of Sciences, E. Nouel gives the results of his observations, made at Vendome dur- ing a very violent storm. The lightning on that occasion struck some telegraph-posts and three houses. In the case of the houses, Nouel found that the lightning followed the sheet-zinc roofing (without damage) to the spouts, and thence to the earth. The author remarks that static electricity flows always to the surface of bodies, so that a gutter and its pipe, notwithstanding the thinness of the metal, constitute an excellent electric conductor, having less resistance than the best lightning-rods ; that the thunder-bolt, as a rule, falls only during heavy showers, by taking advantage of the semi-communi- cation with the earth offered by the verti- cal series of rain-drops. The summary of his conclusions is as follows: 1. It is pos- sible, almost without expense, to protect ordinary houses from lightning casualties by establishing good metallic communica- tion between the chimney-flues and roof, through the gutters, and by trusting to the rain to complete the communication to the ground. 2. That, even for complete light- ning-conductors, we should utilize as a con- ductor the gutters and their pipings. 3. That there is need in every case to wholly replace the conductors of lightning-rods with hollow pipes of the same mass and of greater diameter. He decidedly rejects me- tallic cords, because electricit)', always fol- lowing the conductor's surface, only selects or uses from this cord a small number of its wires, which may be easily fused. A Botanic Garden for Chicago.— The Commissioners of the South Park, Chicago, have in contemplation the establishment of a Botanic Garden on the following liberal plan : First, there will be a botanic garden proper, in which all indigenous plants of the United States, and hardy species from other countries, will be arranged, as far as possible, according to their natural aflini- ties, while hot-houses and green-houses will be provided for the reception and display of tropical plants. There will also be an arboretum, or collection of hardy trees, from all parts of the world, planted in such order as to serve the purposes of science and or- nament ; a garden devoted to floriculture ; a botanical museum, for the exhibition of vegetable economic products ; an herbari- um, or collection of specimens of dried plants, scientifically arranged ; finally, a library of botanical works. The South Park com- prises about 1,200 acres, and the commis- NOTES. ••^3 sioners will reserve for the Botanic Gar- den all the space which may be required for present and prospective use. Prof. H. H. Babcock has been chosen as Botanical Di- rector. NOTES. A. McDouGALL recently exhibited to the Manchester Philosophical Society a speci- men of carbon which had formed upon the roof of a gas-retort, by the decomposition of the hydrocarbon gas by heat. This car- bon resembles graphite, and its mode of formation might possibly explain that of graphite. The latter mineral always occurs iu association with rocks which have been subjected to igneous action, and may have been formed by hydrocarbon gases travers- ing fissures, the sides of which were in a highly-heated state. The adulteration of tobacco is exten- sively practised in England. A cigar-maker was recently found guilty of manufacturing cigars which contained 74 per cent, of lime- leaves, 1 per cent, of colored paper, and only 19 per cent, of tobacco. Some one in Texas is examining the an- nual rings on trees with reference to the effect of very dry seasons upon tree-growth. He has a theory that a series of such seasons may return in regular periodicity, the dis- covery of which would be of great value to the farmer, since it would enable him to anticipate short crops, and, by previous sur- plus ones, prepare for them. He has se- lected for his purpose the burr-oak, on some of which he finds a record of the growth of three hundred years. So far as he has traced back human records, he finds each very di-y season marked by rings of ex- traordinary thinness. He is still tracing back the records of man and Nature in the hope of discovering the law above referred to. — Department of Agriculture. Antimony, equal to the best English, is produced in San Francisco from native ore, and might be sold there at a far lower price than the imported article. In practice, how- ever, the California metal has to be shipped to New York, and then returned to San Francisco as imported antimony, consumers persisting in the belief that, unless it comes from England, it is of little value ! A Western farmer communicates to the American Chemist a method of preserving wooden posts, so that they will last longer than iron in the ground, while the cost does not exceed two cents per post. This is the recipe : Take boiled linseed-oil and stir into it pulverized charcoal to the consistency of paint, and put a coat of this over the timber. The case of the ecstatica, Louise Lateau, who says that for years she has partaken of no food, has been considered in the Brus- sels Academy of Medicine. The opinion of the Academy is : " That Louise works and requires food. When she breathes, she ex- hales water-vapor and carbonic acid ; her weight has not decreased since she has been observed ; she therefore consumes carbon which is not furnished by her system. Who- ever alleges that Louise Lateau is not sub- ject to physiological laws, must prove it; until this is done physiology will pronounce the miracle a deception." A NEW mammalian genus, Mixocehxts, is described by Peters in the Monatsherichte of the Berlin Academy of Science. It is most nearly allied to Lepidolemur, and is covered with a brown fur, except the head and neck, which are of lighter color. The tail is longer than the body. The feet are, in shape, not unlike human hands, and the thumbs of all four feet are opposable. Hab- itat, Madagascar, Sir Chasles Lyell bequeathed to the British Geological Society £2,000 as a fund for the promotion of geological research. The award is to be accompanied by a " Lyell Medal," and to be open to geologists with- out distinction of nationality or of sex. An International Congress of "Ameri- canists" is to assemble at Nancy, France, on the 22d of July. The object is to bring together those who are interested in the history of America prior to its discovery by Columbus, and in the interpretation of the monuments and the ethnology of the aboriginal races. At the Philadelphia Academy of Sci- ences, Mr. Willard gave two instances of the brittleness of iron under the low tem- perature of the past winter. In breaking up an old locomotive, the cutting off of the rivet-heads, which usually requires heavy sledging, was effected by a single blow. Again, in the forging of a long steamboat shaft of the best hammered iron, which hung balanced in a crane, the hammering of the heated end caused vibration in the other end, which caused the beam to break sharp near the point of support. There are now manufactured in England candles containing in their substance some of those gum-resins and balsams, especially benzoin and storax, which have been found useful in chronic pulmonary and allied maladies. These " pulmonic candles" yield, on combustion, a pleasing fragrance, and at the same time give a good light. All the steamers afloat on the Caspian Sea use petroleum exclusively for fuel, burn- ing it with the aid of a blast of steam. 256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Canada rice-grass is said to afford an excellent material for the manufacture of paper. It is comparatively free from sili- cates, and the paper is quite as strong and flexible as that made from rags. It is easily bleached, pure in color, and presents a surface of perfect evenness. It also takes a very clear impression from the printer's types. The plant grows wild, and in great abundance, in the United States and Canada, Experiments made by Dr. Chassaignol, of Brest, show that the flesh of drunkards is not more inflammable after death than the flesh of those who have been abstemi- ous ; even when soaked for several days in alcohol, it burns with difliculty. To determine the true nature of the acid principle of gastric juice, the French physi- ologist Rabuteau took juice from the stom- ach of a dog which had been allowed to fast for twenty-four hours, and then fed on bits of tendon. To the filtered liquid he added as much quinia as it would dissolve. Then it was dried in vacuo, and the residue treated first with amylic alcohol, then with chloro- form or benzine. On evaporation, a pure hydrochlorate of quinia was obtained. No trace of lactic acid was found. Died, March 2d, Robert Willis, F. R. S., Professor of Natural and Experimental Phi- losophy in the University of Cambridge, England, for nearly forty years. Deceased had been President of the British Associa- tion, and at the time of his death was one of the Visitors of the Greenwich Observatory. A PLEASING illustration of the deep pop- ular interest now almost universally taken in scientific research comes to us from Swe- den. Dr. Berggren, a Swedish botanist, who had explored Spitzbergen in 1868, and Greenland in IS'ZO, found himself last year in New Zealand without the means neces- sary for pursuing his investigations into the flora of that country. The situation was made public by a Swedish newspaper, and immediately the proprietors of another Swedish newspaper, Gotehorg^s Post, for- warded a large sum toward the prosecution of the work, and private contributions came in so rapidly that Dr. Berggren is now in pos- session of all the pecuniary aid he needs. During the extreme cold of the past winter, the Messrs. Becquerel made obser- vations on the effect of the presence or ab- sence of turf on the temperature of the soil beneath the surface. Both of the soils un- der observation were covered with snow. It was found that, the temperature of the air being from 0° to 12° Cent., that of the turf-covered soil, at the depth of twenty inches, was never so low as zero, whereas in the case of denuded soil the temperature was nearly 5° below zero (Cent.). DoRiNG, a German physician, asserts that an average dose of four grammes of chloral hydrate suffices not only to procure rest and sleep in case of sea-.-ickness, but even to entirely cure the disorder. Dr. J. D. Hooker, President of the Brit- ish Royal Society, questions the expediency of recognizing scientific services and dis- coveries by such trivial rewards as medals. He favors some other form of award which might convey to the public a more promi- nent and a more permanent record of the services done by the recipients. Prop, de Bart, of Strasburg, is inclined to believe that the Peronospora infestans, or parasitic fungus of the potato, passes a por- tion of its life upon some other plant. Prob- ably both clover and straw are capable of entertaining the Peronospora. If this is the case, it gives confirmation to the prevailing opinion that barn-yard manure promotes potato-disease, especially when applied in spring. The theory can be easily tested. A LETTER to the Department of Agricult- ure from San Joaquin County, California, states that hundreds of tons of the finest grapes were left on the vines in that county at the close of the past season, there being no demand for them. Wine-makers were paying only $1 5 per ton, and very few were buying even at that price. It has been asserted that oxides of ni- trogen may be produced by oxidation of at- mospheric nitrogen through -the agency of ozone, but, from experiments made by Prof. Carius, it appears that free nitrogen remains unacted on in the presence of this active oxygen. He believes that the most impor- tant reaction in Nature by which nitrates and nitrites are generated is the oxidation of ammonia by means of ozone. During the visit of Prof. W. D. Whitney to England, this spring, the British Philo- logical Society will hold a special meeting for the purpose of hearing a paper from him. Prof. Whitney has just finished a vol- ume for the " International Scientific Se- ries" on the "Life and Growth of Lan- guage." An English sanitarian, Dr. Yeld, of Sun- derland, contends for the superiority of sea- water over fresh water in street sprinkling, and alleges that when treated by the former the streets remain much longer moist even during very hot weather, and that by its means the cohesive power of the materials of a road is increased. Dynamite is employed in France for the purpose of breaking up old caunon. The proportion of dynamite required for this purpose is only about one-thousandth part of the weight of the iron. WILLIAM ROBERT GROVE. THE POPULAR SOIEXCE MONTHLY. JULY, 1875. ANENT ANTS. By E. E. LELAND. SINCE the earliest recorded observations of insect-life, tlie ant has been a subject of especial comment and wonderment. Found throughout the range of both temperate and the torrid zones, it is in the tropics that the most interesting species abound, and where their vast numbers and their industry and fearless pertinacity make tliem a veritable scourge. Many confused, not to say fabulous, statements regarding them have been published in books of travels, and copied in natural history works ; but enough has been recorded concerning them, which has the warrant of recent and high authority, to justify the views popu- larly Ijeld as to their intelligence and sagacity. Mr. Bates, in " The Naturalist on the Amazon," devotes consider- able space to them, and, in the descriptions following, very free use is made of his delightful book, and most of the illustrations are borrowed from that source. One of the chief peculiarities of the ants is their social relations. Assembling in countless multitudes, they are divided into different classes, each with a special order of duties to fulfill, but all working harmoniously for a definite end — the perpetuation of the species. Their communities consist of males, females, and neuters ; with gen- erally two and sometimes three distinct orders or castes of the latter. Upon them devolves all the labor, the divisions being known as the worker-minors and tbe worker-majors, the brunt of the work falling upon the first, while the function of the worker-major, though not definitely understood, seems to be that of a superintendent or a soldier, or perhaps a combination of the two. One of the most interesting of the American species is the satiba, or leaf-cutting ant [CEcodoma cephalotes). The workers of this spe- cies are of three orders, and vary in size from two to seven lines. Some idea of them maybe obtained from the accompanying woodcut. TOL. VII. — 17 258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The true working-class of a colony is formed by the small-sized order of workers (1, Fig. 1). The two other kinds have enormously- swollen heads ; in one of these the head is highly polished (2) ; in the other (3) it is opaque and hairy. The worker-minors vary greatly in size, some being double the bulk of others. The entire body is of solid consistence, and of a pale, reddish-brown color. The thorax, or middle segment, is armed with three pairs of sharp spines ; the head also has a pair of similar spines proceeding from the cheeks behind. 'T^'^''^ '^^^ ^^z^'^r. '**X.-^^^w»». - I^^S^e^-.;^ - ' Fig. 1.— SAtjBA, OR Leap-cuttikq Ant.— 1, Worker-minor; 2, Worker-major ; 3, Subterranean Worker. Their domes or outworks are very extensive, some of them being forty yards in circumference, but not more than two feet high. The entrances are small and numerous ; in the large hillocks a great amount of excavation is required to get at the main galleries ; the minor entrances converge at arfew feet below the ground to one broad, elaborately-worked gallery or mine four or five inches in diameter. These underground abodes are very extensive. The Rev. Hamlet Clark relates that the satiba of Rio de Janeiro has excavated a tunnel imder the bed of the river Parahyba, at a place where it is as broad as the Thames at London Bridge. At the Magoary Rice-Mills, near Para, these ants once pierced the embankment of a large reservoir ; the great body of water which it contained escaping before the dam- age could be repaired. One other fact is told of these ants, which shows the herculean nature of their labors. Their lives are dependent upon access to water, and they always choose places where it is to be obtained by digging wells. One case is related where a well was dug for domestic purposes, and water found at a depth of thirty feet ; to do this, an ant-well was followed Avhich was twelve inches in di- ameter. The habit in this ant of clipping and carrying away immense quan- tities of leaves has long been recorded. When employed in this work, their processions look like a multitude of animated leaves on the march. They mount the trees in swarms. Each one places itself on the sur- face of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp, scissor-like jaws a nearly semi- ANENT ANTS. 259 circular incision on the upper side ; it then takes the edge between its jaws, and, by a sharp jerk, detaches the piece which is about the size of a dime. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a little heap accumulates, until carried off by another relay of workers ; but generally each marches off with the piece it has operated upon, and, as all take the same road to their colony, the path they follow soon becomes smooth and bare, looking like the impression of a cart- wheel through the herbage. The heavily-laden workers troop up and cast their burdens on the hillock ; another relay of laborers place the leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy granules, which are brought up one by one from the soil beneath. It has not been shown satisfactorily to what use the leaves are put. It was for- merly supposed that they were consumed as food. Mi". Bates's inves- tigations convinced him that the leaves were used to thatch the domes which cover the entrances to the subterranean dwellings, thereby pro- tecting from the deluging rains the young broods in the nests beneath. Mr. Belt, however, who observed the leaf-cutting ants in Central America, and gives a full and interesting account of them in his " Nat- uralist in Nicaragua," arrives at the conclusion that the leaves which they gather in such enormous quantities are used to form beds for the growth of a minute fungus, on which they and their young live. Fritz Miiller, writing from Brazil {Nature^ vol. x., p. 102), says that he has always held this view, and that an examination of their stomachs un- der the microscope confirms it. This ant is so abundant in some districts that agriculture is almost impossible, and wherever it exists it is a terrible pest. It is also troublesome to the inhabitants fi'om its habit of plundering the stores of provisions in houses at night, for it is even more active by night than in the daytime. The principal part of the visible work is done by the small-heads (1, Fig. 1), while those which have massive heads, the worker-majors (2), are generally observed to be simply walking about. They are not, in this species, soldiers, for they never fight. The function of superintendence would seem superfluous in a community where all work with precision. They cannot, however, be entirely useless to the community, for the sustenance of an idle class of such bulky indi- viduals would be too heavy a charge for the species to sustain. Prof. Sennichrast, who studied some of the species of CEcodoma in Mexico, is of the opinion that their special role, if they have one, is borne in the excavation of the nest, and in tunneling the galleries, labors which require superior strength and better implements. The third order of workers is the most curious. If the main shaft of a mine be probed, a small number of colossal fellows (3, Fig. 1) will slowly begin to make their way up the smooth sides of the mine. In the middle of the forehead is a trim ocellus, or simple eye, of quite different structure from the ordinary compound eye on the sides of the 26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. head. This frontal eye is totally wanting in the otlier workers, and is not known in any other kind of ant. Their special functions are unknown. None of this sj^ecies are pugnacious. The work of reproduction begins with the rainy season. The union probably takes place in the night, for in the morning the neighborhood of the nest will be strewed with the females, and the dead bodies of the males, the former already fertile, from whom the workers make it their duty to tear away the wings. The true females are incapable of at- tending to the wants of their offspring ; and it is on the poor, sterile workers, who are denied all the other pleasures of maternity, that the care devolves. The successful d^hut of the winged males and females depends likewise on the workers. Great activity reigns in an ants'-nest on the exodus of the winged individuals. The workers clear the roads of exit, and show the most lively interest in their departure, althougli it is highly improbable that any of them will return to the same colony. They are of large size, the female measuring two and a quarter inches in expanse of wing ; the male is not much more tlian half the size. They swarm in vast numbers, but are so eagerly preyed upon by insectivorous animals that but few of the impregnated females escape the slaughter to found new colonies. An immense amount of labor would be saved to the ants, if, instead of raising annually myr- iads of winged males and females to perish, they raised only a few wingless males and females, which, free from dangei*, might remain in their native nests ; and, as Fritz Muller says, he who does not admit the paramount importance of intercrossing must of course wonder why the latter manner of reproduction has not long since taken the place, through natural selection, of the production of winged males and females. But the wingless individuals would of course have to pair always with their near relatives, while by swarming a chance is given for the intercrossing of individuals not nearly related. Fig. 2.— Sauba Ant, Female. Resembling the saliba, in being vegetable-feeders, are the harvest- ing-ants {Atla stnictor, A. barhara, Pheidole vnegacephala^ etc.). It has been a fashion among naturalists to set down as pure invention the accounts by classical writers of the accumulation of cereals by ants for winter consumption, and to assume that the Biblical injunction to ANENT ANTS. 261 study the ways of her " who, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, pro- videth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the har- vests," was a figure drawn from careless observation ; that ants, being carnivorous insects, would not eat dry, hard grains of wheat or bar- ley, the idea that they would do so having arisen from mistaking the whitish cocoons which inclose the pupae for grains of wheat, to which tliey bear a resemblance. But Mr. Traherne Moggridge has recently, by careful observation in the south of Europe, confirmed in many of their minutest details tlie accounts given by ancient writers, and shown that, in ti'eating these accounts with contempt, it is the modern au- thors who have been guilty of forming hasty conclusions from insufla- cient data. The ants were described as ascending the stalks of cereals and gnawing ofi" the grains, while others below detached the seed from the chaff and carried it h(?me ; as gnawing ofi" the radicle to pre- vent germination, and spreading their stores in the sun to dry after wet weather. These statements Mr. Moggridge has verified, supple- menting them by discovering the granaries in which they are stored, sometimes excavated in solid rock. He has seen them in the act of collecting seeds, and has traced seeds to the granaries ; he has seen them bring out the grains to dry after a rain, and nibble ofi" the radi- cle from those which were germinating ; lastly, he has seen them feed, on the seeds so collected. A curious point is, that the collections of seeds, although stored in damp situations, very rarely germinate ; yet nothing has been done to deprive them of vitality, for, on being sown, they grow vigorously. Their depredations are of such extent as must cause serious loss to cultivators. Texas and Northern Mexico furnish a remarkable species in the honey-making ants {^Myrmecocystxis Mexicanus). The workers of their communities are divided into three classes : 1. Yellow workers, nurses and feeders ; 2. Yellow workers, honey-makers ; 3. Black work- ers, guards and purveyors. The site chosen for their nest is usually some sandy soil in the neighborhood of shrubs and flowers, the space occupied being four or five feet square. The black workers surround the nests as guards, and are always in a state of great activity. They form two lines of de- fense, moving dififerent ways, their march always being along three sides of a square ; one column moving from the southeast to the south- west corners of the fortification, while the other proceeds in the oppo- site direction. Most of the nests lie open to the south ; the east, west, and northern sides, being surrounded by the soldiers. In case of an enemy approaching, a number of guards sally forth to meet the in- truder. Spiders, wasps, beetles, and other insects are, if they come too near the hive, savagely attacked, and the dead bodies speedily removed from the neighborhood, the soldiers at once resuming their places in the line. 262 THE POPULxlR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Their object in destroying other insects is protection of the encamp- ment, and not the obtaining of food. While one section of the black workers is thus engaged, a more numerous division will be found em- ployed in entering the quadrangle by a diagonal line, bearing noi-th- east, and carrying flowers and fragments of aromatic leaves, which they deposit in the centre of the square. !J. C s V ^o \ e a . \Ol A Fig. 3. — Encampment of the Honet-making Ant {Myrmecoq/stus Mexicanus). The line a of the sketch shows the path of this latter section, the mound of flowers and leaves being at c. This line leads to the shrubs, upon which another division of the black workers is settled, engaged in cutting off" the leaves and petals to be conveyed to the nest. On the west side of the encampment is a hole marked d, leading to the interior of the nest. It is probably intended for the introduction of air, as, in case of any individuals carrying their loads into it, they im- mediately emerge and carry them to the common heap, as if conscious of having made a mistake. A smaller hole, near the southeast corner of the square, is the only other means by which the interior can be reached ; and down this aj^erture, h, the flowers gathered by the black workers are carried along the line e from the heap in the centre of the square, by a number of the small yellow workers, who seem adapted for the gentler ofiice of nurses for the colony within. No black ant is I ANENT ANTS. 263 ever seen on the line e, and no yellow one ever approaclies the line a. each keeping his own station, and following his given line of duty with a steadfastness which is remarkable. When the course of the galleries is traced from the entrances, a small excavation is reached, across which is stretched, in the form of a spider's web, a net-work of squares about one-quarter inch across, the ends of the web being fastened firmly to the earth of the sides of the cell. In each one of the squares, supported by the web, sits one of the honey-making workers — prisoners, for locomotion is impossible, the distended abdomen which constitutes the honey-bag being at least twenty times as large as the rest of the body. The workers provide them a constant supply of flowers and pollen, which, by a process analogous to that of the bee, they convert into honey. Whether the honey-makers are themselves used as food, or excrete their saccharine fluid, and then proceed to distill more, is not known. Indeed, that the remainder of the inhabitants feed on the supply thus obtained in any mannei", although surmised, has not been established, very little being known of the economy of these creatures. The honey is much sought after by the Mexicans, who not only use it as a delicate article of food, but ascribe to it great healing propei'ties. The worst insect pest of tropical America is the terrible tire-ant {Myrmica scevissima), whose sting is likened to the puncture of a red- hot needle. It is found only on sandy soils in open places, and seems to thrive most near houses and in weedy villages. Towns are some- times deserted on account of this little tormentor. It is a small spe- cies, of a shining red color, not greatly differing from the common red stinging-ant of our own country, except that the pain and irritation caused by its sting are much greater. Where it abounds, the whole soil is undermined by it ; the ground is perforated with the entrances to their subterranean galleries, and a little sandy dome occurs here and there where the insects bring their young to receive warmth near the surface. Homes are overrun with them ; they dispute every frag- ment of food with the inhabitants, and destroy clothing for the sake of the starch. All eatables have to be suspended in baskets from the rafters, and the cords well soaked with copaiba-balsam, which is the only means known to prevent them from climbing. They seem to attack persons out of sheer malice. The legs of tables, chairs, and stools, and the cords of hammocks, have to be smeared in the same way. Belonging to a totally different group are the. Ecitons^ or foraging- ants ; they are carnivorous, and hunt in vast armies, exciting terror wherever they go, resembling in their habits the . often-described drivers of tropical Africa, though belonging to quite another sub- group of the ant tribe. They are composed, besides males and fe- males, of two classes of workers — a large-headed and a small-headed 264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. class ; the large-heads have, in some species, greatly-lengthened jaws ; the small-heads have jaws always of the ordinary shape, but the two classes are not sharply defined in structure and function, except in two species. In these the jaws of the worker-majors are so monstrous- ly lengthened that they are incapacitated for taking part in the labors of tlie Avorker-minors, and act as soldiers. The peculiar feature in the habits of the genus Eciton is their hunting for prey in regular bodies or armies. It is this which chiefly distinguishes them from the genus Myrmica^ the common red stinging-ant of the temperate zone, whose habit is to search for food in the usual irregular manner. All the Ecltons hunt in large organized bodies ; but almost every species has its own special manner of hunting, Eciton Legionis. — In this species there is no division in classes among its workers, although the difference in size is very great. It lives in open places, and its movements are easy to be observed ; its sting and bite are not very formidable. The armies consist of thousands of individuals, and move in rather broad columns. They are quick to break line on being disturbed, and attack hurriedly and furiously any intruding object. Their activity seems to be chiefly directed to plundering the nests of a large defenseless ant of another genus [Formica). EciTON" Drepanophara. — This, one of the commonest species of foraging-ants, confines its ravages to the thickest part of the forest. When a pedestrian falls in with one of their trains, the first signal given him is a twittering and restless movement of small flocks of plain-colored birds (ant-thrushes) in the jungle. If this be disre- garded, and he advances a few steps farther, he is sure to fall into trouble, and find himself suddenly attacked by numbers of the fero- cious little creatures. They swarm up his legs with incredible rapidity, each one driving his pincer-like jaws into his skin, and, with the pur- chase thus obtained, doubling its tail and stinging with all its might. There is no course left but to run for it. The tenacious insects then have to be plucked off, one by one, a task which is generally not ac- complished without pulling them in twain, and leaving heads and jaws sticking in the wounds. The errand of the vast ant-armies is plunder. Wherever they move, the whole animal world is set in commotion, and every creat- ure tries to get out of their way. It is especially wingless insects that have cause to fear, such as heavy-bodied spiders, maggots, cater- pillars, larvse of cockroaches, etc., all of which live under fallen leaves, or in decaying wood. The main column, from four to six deep, moves forward in a given direction, clearing the ground of all animal matter, dead or alive, and throwing out here and there a thinner column to forage for a short time on the flanks of the main army. If some rich place be encountered, for example, a mass of rotten wood abounding in insect-larvae, a delay takes place, and a very strong force is concen- ANENT ANTS. 265 trated upon it. The excited creatui-es searcli every cranny, and tear in pieces all the grubs they bring to light. They attack wasps'-nests, when built on low shrubs, gnawing away the paper covering to get at the larvas, pupre, and newly-hatched wasps, and cut every thing to tat- ters, regardless of the infuriated owners which are flying about them. Fig. 4.— Fokaging-Ants (Edton drepanophara). The life of the Ecitons is not all work, however; they seem fre- quently to be employed in a way that looks like recreation. This always takes place in a sunny nook. The main column of the army and the branch columns are in their ordinary relative positions ; but, instead of pressing forward eagerly and plundering right and left, they seem to be smitten with a sudden fit of laziness. Some walk slowly about ; others brush their antennse with their fore-feet ; but the drollest sight is their cleaning one another. Here and there an ant may be seen, stretching forth first one leg and then another, to be brushed and washed by one or more of its comrades, who perform the task by passing the limb between the jaws and the tongue, finishing by giving the antennoe a friendly wipe. It is a curious spectacle, and well calculated to increase one's amazement at the similarity be- tAveen the actions of ants and the acts of rational beings — a similarity which must have been brought about by difierent processes of devel- opment of the primary qualities of mind. The action of these ants looks like simple indulgence in idle amusement. Have these little creatures, then, an excess of energy, and do they expend it in mere sportiveness, like young kittens, or in idle whims, like rational beings? EciTOX Pejedatoe. — This species differs from other Ecitons^ chiefly from its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes con- sisting of myriads of individuals. A j^halanx, when passing over smooth ground, occupies a space from four to six yards square. Noth- ing in insect-movements is more striking than this rapid march of these large compact bodies. Bund Ecitons. — None of the foregoing kinds have eyes of the 266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. faceted or compound structure, such as are usual in insects, and which ordinary ants [Formica) are furnislied with ; but all are pro- vided with organs of vision, composed each of a single lens. Con- necting them with the utterly blind species of the genus, is a very stout-limbed Eciton, the FJ. crassicornis, whose eyes are sunk in deep sockets. This ant goes on foraging expeditions like the rest of its tribe, but it avoids the light, always moving in concealment under leaves and fallen branches. When its columns have to cross a cleared space, the ants construct a temporary covered way with granules of earth, arched over, and holding together mechanically ; under this the procession passes in secret, the indefatigable creatures repairing their arcade as fast as breaches are made in' it. Next in order comes the JS. vastator, which has no eyes, though the collapsed sockets are plainly visible ; and, lastly, the M erratica^ in which both sockets and eyes have disappeared, leaving only a faint ring to mark the place. The armies of JE. vastator and E. erratica move wholly itnder covered roads, constructing them rapidly as they advance. The column of foragers pushes forward, step by step, under the protection of these covered ways, and, on reaching a rotten log, or other promising hunting-ground, pour into the crevices in search of booty. The grains of earth for their arcades are taken from the soil over which the column is passing, and are fitted together without cement. MmUh\ Fig. 5.— Foraging- Ants {Eciton erratica), constructing a Covered Eoad— Soldiers Ballyiug out oil being disturbed. Working in numbers, they build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive in a surprising manner to approxi- mate them and fit in the key-stone without letting the loose, unce- mented structure fall to pieces. There is a very clear division of labor between the two classes of neuters in these blind species. When a breach is made in one of their covered ways, all the ants underneath are set in commotion, but the worker-minors remain behind to repair the damage, while the large-heads issue forth in a most menacing manner, rearing their heads, and snapping their jaws with an expres- ANENT ANTS. 267 sion of fiercest rage and defiance. Pitched battles sometimes occur between different pugnacious species, and classical writers have deemed them woi-thy to be recorded. Kirby and Spence relate that " ^neas Sylvius, after giving a circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a large and a small species, adds that ' this action was fought in the Pontificate of Eugenius IV.' " Thoreau gives a graphic description — in his whimsical style of exalting small tnings and emphasizing the trifling difference that there is between big and little actors and events in Nature — of a similar engagement that took place near his hut " in the presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive Slave Bill" ("Walden," p. 346). Whether such an enactment obtains in any of the ant nations is unknown, but that certain of them possess the extraordinary instinct of capturing the pupoe of other species and bringing them up as slaves, is a well-authenticated fact. They are made captive while still in the cocoon, and on emerging become the auxiliary workers and friends of their captors, as though such was their natural destiny. But no fanciful exaggeration is needed to impress us with the degree of forethought, methodical industry, and dauntless courage, the engineering and mechanical skill, the reasoning and perceptive powers and general sagacity which the ant displays. If space permitted, numerous illustrative citations could be given. A member of the Natural History Society describes a tubular bridge, half an inch in diameter, and spanning a chasm twelve inches across. A correspondent of Mr. Darwin's, Mr. Joseph D. Hague, a geologist of California, submits what seems to be satisfactory evidence that they realize danger from seeing the corpses of their fellows, an inference drawn by no other invertebrate, if indeed it be by the higher animals. They keep domestic animals. The aphides, or plant-lice, excrete a peculiar sweet fluid which the ant obtains by caressing the abdomen of the aphis with its antennae. Ordinarily they seek the aphides upon plants, but that they also keep them in their nests much as man keeps cows, is an opinion which receives the sanction of eminent naturalists, among them Sir John Lubbock, who further says : " Ants also keep a variety of beetles and other insects in their nests. That they have some reason for this seems clear, because they readily attack any un- welcome intruder ; but what that reason is we do not yet know. If these insects are domesticated by the ants, then we must admit that the ants possess more domestic animals than we do." Indeed, their whole social economy is of a complex order. No- where is the division of labor — which in mankind always marks a high state of civilization — so rigid, being carried to the extreme of a phys- ical modification of great numbers of the community for the better fulfillment of their duties. Their undeveloped sterile females may serve to warn — or to encourage — those members of the Anthroindce 268 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. who are so anxious to subordinate, if not wholly lay down, the gentle functions of maternity in order that they may engage in the sterner work of the world ! When, marking their size, we consider the mighty character of the works which they complete ; when we reflect upon the infinitesimal ganglion which is the seat of the intelligence they display, we may well be filled with surprise, and almost wonder if man, or any other order of the vertebrata, is destined to remain forever the higher animal ! THE FIEST AND THE LAST CATASTKOPHE. By W. KINGDON CLIFFOED, pkofessoe in the itniveesity of londox, I PROPOSE in this lecture to consider speculations of quite recent days about the beginning and the end of the world. The world is a very interesting thing, and I suppose that from the earliest times that men began to form any coherent idea of it at all, they began to guess in some way or other how it was that it all- began, and how it was all going to end. But there is one peculiarity about these spec- ulations which I wish now to consider, that makes them quite differ- ent from the early guesses of which we read in many ancient books. These modern speculations are attempts to find out how things began, and how they are to end, by consideration of the way in which they are going on now. And it is just that character of these speculations that gives them their interest for you and for me ; for we have only to consider these questions from the scientific point of view. By the scientific point of view, I mean one which attempts to apply past experience to new circumstances according to an observed order of Nature. So that we shall only ponsider the way in which things began, and the way in which they are to end, in so far as we seem able to draw inferences about those questions from facts which we know about the way in which things are going on now. And, in fact, the great interest of the subject to me lies in the amount of illustration which it offers of the degree of knowledge which we have now attained of the way in which the universe is going on. The first of these speculations is one set forth by Prof. Clerk Max- well, in a lecture on " Molecules," delivered before the British Asso- ciation at Bradford. By a coincidence, which to me is a happy one, at this moment Prof. Maxwell is lecturing to the Chemical Society of London upon the evidences of the molecular constitution of matter. Now, this argument of his, which he put before the British Associa- tion at Bradford, depends entirely upon the modern theory of the molecular constitution of matter. I think this the more important, THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 269 because a great number of people appear to have been led to the con- clusion that this theory is very similar to the guesses which we find in ancient writers — Democritus and Lucretius. It so happens that these ancient writers did hold a view of the constitution of thinirs which in many striking respects agrees with the view which we hold in modern times. This parallelism has been brought recently before the public by Prof. Tyndall in his excellent address at Belfast. And it is perhaps on account of the parallelism, which he pointed out at that place, between the theories held among the ancients and the theory now held among the moderns, that many people who are acquainted with classic literature have thought that a knowledge of the views of Democritus and Lucx'ctius would enable them to under- stand and criticise the modern theory of matter. Tliat, "however, is a mistake. The difference between the two is mainly this : the atomic theory of Democritus was a guess, and no more than a guess. Every body around him was guessing about the origin of things, and they guessed in a great number of ways; but he happened to make a guess which was more near the right thing than any of the others. This view was right in its main hyj^othesis, that all things are made up of elementary parts, and that the different properties of different things depend rather upon difference of arrangement than upon ulti- mate difference in the substance of which they are composed. Al- though this was contained in the atomic theory of Democritus, as expounded by Lucretius, yet it will be found by any one who exam- ines further the consequences which are drawn from it, that it very soon diverges from the truth of things, as we might naturally expect it would. On the contrary, the view of the constitution of matter which is held by scientific men in the present day is not a guess at all. In the first place, I will endeavor to explain what are the main points in this theory. First of all we must take the simplest form of matter, which turns out to be a gas — such, for example, as the air in this room. The belief of scientific men in the present day is that this air is not a continuous thing, that it does not fill the w^hole of the space in the room, but is made up of an enormous number of exceed- ingly small pax'ticles. There are two sorts of particles : one sort of particle is oxygen, and another sort of particle nitrogen. All the particles of oxygen are as near as possible alike in these two respects : first in weight, and secondly in certain peculiarities of mechanical structure. These small molecules are not at rest in the room, but are flying about in all directions with a mean velocity of seventeen miles a minute. Tliey do not fly far in one direction ; but any particular molecule, after going over an incredibly short distance — the measure of which has been made — meets another, not exactly j^bimp, but a little on one side, so that they behave to one another somewhat in the same way as two people do who are dancing Sir Roger de Cover- ley; they join hands, swing round, and then fly away in different 270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. directions. All these molecules are constantly changing the direc- tion of each other's motion ; they are flying about with very different velocities, although, as I have said, their mean velocity is about sev- enteen miles a minute. If the velocities were all marked off on a scale, they would be found distributed about the mean velocity just as shots are distributed about a mark. If a great many shots are fired at a target, the hits will be found thickest at the bull's-eye, and they will gradually diminish as we go away from that, according to a certain law, which is called the law of error. It was first stated clearly by Laplace ; and it is one of the most remarkable consequeiices of this theory that the molecules of a gas have their velocities dis- tributed among them precisely according to this law of error. In the case of a liquid, it is believed that the state of things is quite different. We said that in the gas these molecules are moved in straight lines, and that it is only during a small portion of their motion that they are deflected by other molecules ; but in a liquid we may say that the molecules go about as if they were dancing the grand chain in the Lancers. Every molecule after parting company with one finds another, and so is constantly going about in a curved path, and never gets quite clear away from the sphere of action of the surrounding molecules. But, notwithstanding that, all molecules in a liquid are constantly changing their places, and it is for that reason that diffusion takes place in the liquid. Take a large tank of water and drop a little iodine into it, and you will find after a certain time all the water turned slightly blue. That is because all the iodine- molecules have changed like the others and spread themselves over the whole of the tank. Because, however, you cannot see that, except where you use different colors, you must not suppose that it does not take place where the colors are the same. In every liquid all the molecules are running about and continually changing and mixing themselves up in fresh forms. In the case of a solid quite a different thing takes place. In a solid every molecule has a place which it keeps ; that is to say, it is not at rest any more than a molecule of a liquid or a gas, but it has a certain mean position which it is always vibrating about and keeping fairly near to, and it is kept from losing that position by the action of the surrounding molecules. These are the main points of the theory of the constitution of matter as at pres- ent believed. It differs from the theory of Democritus in this way. There is no doubt that in the first origin of it, when it was suggested as a whole, it was a guess of his. In order to make out that your supposition is true, it is necessary to show, not merely that that particular supposition will explain the facts, but also that no other one will. Now, by the efforts of Clarges and Prof. Clerk Maxwell, the molecular theory of matter has been put in that other position, namely, instead now of saying, "Let us suppose that such and such tilings are true," and then deducing THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 271 from that supposition what these consequences ought to be, and showing that these consequences arc just the facts which we observe — instead of doing that, I say, we make certain experiments, we show that certain facts are undoubtedly true, and from these facts we go back by a direct chain of logical reasoning, which there is no way of getting out of, to the statement that all matter is made up of separate pieces or molecules, and that in matter of a given kind, in oxygen, or in hydrogen, or in nitrogen, these molecules are of very nearly the same weight, and have certain mechanical properties which are common to all of them. In order to show you something of the kind of evidence for that statement, I must mention another theory which, as it seems to me, is in the same position, that is the doctrine of the luminiferous ether, or that wonderful substance which is dis- tributed all over space, and which carries light and radiant heat. By means of certain experiments upon interference, we can show, not by any hypothesis, not by any guess at all, but by a pure interpretation of the experiment — we can show that in every ray of light there is some change or other, whatever it is, which is periodic in time and in place. By saying it is periodic in time, I mean that at a given point of the ray of light this change increases up to a certain point, then decreases, then increases in the other direction, and then decreases again. That is shown by experiments of interference ; it is not a theory which will explain the facts, but it is a fact which is got out of observation. By saying that this phenomenon is periodic in space, I mean that, if at any given instant you could examine the ray of light, you would find that some change or disturbance, whatever it is, has taken place all along it in diflerent degrees. It vanishes at certain points, and between these it increases gradually to a maximum on one side and the other alternately. That is to say, in traveling along a ray of light there is a certain change (which can be observed by experiments, by operating upon a ray of light with other rays of light), which goes through a periodic variation in amount. The height of the sea, as you know if you travel along it, goes through certain periodic changes ; it increases and decreases, and increases and decreases again at definite intervals. And if you take the case of waves traveling over the sea, and place yourself at a given point, say you put a cork upon the surface, you will find that the cork will rise up and down, that is to say, there will be a change or displace- ment of the cork's position, which is periodic in time, which increases and decreases, then increases in the opposite direction, and decreases again. Now, this fact, which is established by experiment, and which is not a guess at all, tlie fact that liffht is a phenomenon, pei'iodic in time and space, is what we call the wave-theory of light. The word theory here does not mean a guess ; it means an organized account of the facts, such that from it you may deduce results, which may be applicable to future experiments, the like of which have not yet been 272 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. made. But we can see more than this. So far we say that light con- sists of waves, merely in the sense that it consists of some phenomenon or other which is periodic in time and in place ; but we know that a ray of light is capable of doing work. Radiant heat, for example, striking on a body, will warm it and enable it to do work by expan- sion ; therefore this periodic phenomenon which takes place in the ray of light is something or other which possesses mechanical energy, which is capable of doing work. We may make it, if you like, a mere matter of definition, and say, "Any change which possesses energy is a motion of matter;" and this is perhaps the most intelligible defini- tion of matter that we can frame. In that sense, and in that sense only, it is a matter of demonstration, and not a matter of guess, that light consists of the periodic motion of matter which is between the luminous object and our eyes. But that something is not matter in the ordinary sense of the term, it is not made up of such molecules as gases and liquids and solids are made up of. This last statement, again, is no guess, but a proved fact. There are people who ask, "Why is it necessary to suppose a lumi- niferous ether to be any thing else except molecules of matter in space, in order to carry light about ? " The answer is a very simple one. In order that separate molecules may carry about a disturbance, it is necessary that they should travel at least as fast as the disturbance travels. Now we know, by means that I shall afterward come to, that the molecules of gas travel at a very ordinary rate, about twenty times as fast as a good train. But, on the contrary, we know by the most certain of all evidence, by five or six different means, that the velocity of light is 200,000 miles a second. Bj'- that very simple means we are able to tell that it is quite impossible for light to be carried by the molecules of ordinary matter, and that it wants some- thing else that lies between those molecules to carry the light. Now, remembering the evidence which we have for the existence of this ether, let us consider another piece of evidence, let us now consider what evidence we have that the molecules of a gas are separate from one another and have something between them. We find out by ex- periment, again, that the different colors of light depend upon the various rapidity of these waves, depend upon the size and upon the length of the waves that travel through the ether, and that when we send light through glass or any transparent medium except a vacuum, the waves of difierent lengths travel with difierent velocities. That is the case with the sea ; we find that long waves travel faster than small ones. In much the same way, when light comes out of a vacu- um and impinges upon any transparent medium, say upon glass, we find that the rate of transmission of all the light is diminished, that it goes slower when it gets inside of a material body; and that this change is greater in the case of large waves than of small ones. The small waves correspond to blue light and the large waves correspond THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 273 to red light. The waves of red light are not made to travel so slowly as the waves of blue light, but, as in the case of waves travelino- over the sea, when light moves in the interior of a transparent body the large waves travel quickest. Well, then, by using such a body as will separate out the different colors — a prism — we are able to affirm what are the constituents of the light which strikes upon it. The light that comes from the sun is made up of waves of various lengths • but making it pass through a prism we can separate it out into a spectrum, and in that way we find a band of light instead of a spot coming from the sun, and to every band in the spectrum corresponds a wave of a certain definite length and definite time in vibration. Now we come to a very singular phenomenon. If you take a gas such as chlorine and interpose it in the wave of that light, you w^ill find that certain particular rays of the spectrum are absorbed, while others are not. Now, how is it that certain particular rates of vibra- tion can be absorbed by this chlorine gas while others are not ? That happens in this way, that the chlorine gas consists of a great number of very small structures, each of which is capable of vibrating inter- nally. Each of these structures is complicated, and is capable of a change of relative position among its parts of a vibratory character. We know that molecules are capable of such vibrations, such internal vibrations, for this reason, that if we heat any solid body sufficiently it will in time give out light; that is to say, the molecules are got into such a state of vibration that they start the ether vibrating, and they start the ether vibrating at the same rate at which they vibrate themselves. So that what we learn from the absorption of certain particular rays of light by chlorine gas, is that the molecules of that gas are structnres which have certain natural rates of vibration, pre- cisely those rates of vibration which belong to the molecules natu- rally. If you sing a certain note to a string of a piano, that string if in tune will vibrate. If, therefore, a screen of such strings were put across a room, and you sang a note on one side, a person on the other side would hear the note very weakly or not at all, because it would be absorbed by the strings ; but if you sang another note, not one to which the strings naturally vibrated, then it would pass through, and would not be eaten up by setting the strings vibrating. Now this question arises. Let us put the molecules aside for a moment. Sup- pose we do not know of their existence, and say, " Is this rate of vi- bration, which naturally belongs to the gas, a thing which belongs to it as a whole, or does it belong to separate parts of it ? " You might suppose that it belongs to the gas as a whole. A jar of water, if you shake it, has a perfectly definite time in which it oscillates, and that is very easily measured. That time of oscillation belongs to the jar of water as a whole. It depends upon the weight of the water, and the shape of the jar. But now, by a very certain method, we know that the time of vibration which corresponds to a certain definite gas VOL. vn. — 18 274 ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. does not belong to it as a whole, but belongs to the separate parts of it, for this reason : that if you squeeze the gas you do not alter the time of vibration. Let us suppose that we have a great number of fiddles in a room which are all in contact, and have strings accurately tuned to vibrate to certain notes. If you sang one of those notes all the fiddles would answer ; but if you compress them you clearly put them all out of tune. They are all in contact, and they will not answer to the tune with the same pi*ecision as before. But if you have a room which is full of fiddles placed at a certain distance from one another, then if you bring them within shorter distances of one another, so that they still don't touch, they will not be put out of tune, they will answer exactly to the same note as before. We see, therefore, that since compression of a gas within certain limits does not alter the rate of vibration which belongs to it, that rate of vibra- tion cannot belong to the body of gas as a whole, but it must belong to the individual parts of it. Now by such reasoning as this it seems to me that the modern theory of the constitution of matter is put upon a basis which is absolutely independent of hypothesis. The theory is simply an organized statement of the facts, a statement, that is, which is rather different from the experiments, being made out from them in just such a way as to be most convenient for finding out from them what will be the results of other experiments. That is all we mean at present by scientific theory. Upon this theory Prof. Clerk Maxwell founded a certain argu- ment in his lecture before the British Association at Bradford. It is a consequence of the molecular theory, as I said before, that all the molecules of a certain given substance, say oxygen, are as near as possible alike in two respects — first in weight, and secondly in their times of vibration. Now Prof. Clerk Maxwell's argument was this : He first of all said that the theory required us to believe not that these molecules were as near as may be alike, but that they were exactly alike in these two respects — at least the argument appeared to me to require that. Then he said all the oxygen we know of, whatever processes it has gone through — whether it is got out of the atmosphere, or out of some oxide of iron or cai'bon, or whether it be- longs to the sun, or the fixed stars, or the planets, or the nebulse — all this oxygen is alike. And all these molecules of oxygen we find upon the earth must have existed unaltered, or unappreciably unaltered, during the whole of the time the earth has been evolved. Whatever vicissitudes they have gone through, how many times they have en- tered into combination with iron or silver and been melted down beneath the crust of the earth, or deoxidized and sent iTp again through the atmosphere, they have remained steadfast to their origi- nal form unaltered, the monuments of what thpy were when the world began. Now, Prof. Clerk Maxwell argues that things which are unal- terable, and are exactly alike, cannot have been formed by any natural THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 275 process. Moreover, being exactly alike, they cannot have existed for- ever, and thei-efore they must have been made. As Sir John Herschel said, " they bear the stamp of the manufactured article." Now, into these further deductions I do not propose to enter at all. I confine myself strictly to the first of the deductions which Prof Clerk Maxwell made upon this theory. He said that because these molecules are exactly alike, and because they have not been in the least altered since the beginning of time, therefore they cannot have been produced by any process of evolution. It is just that question which I want to discuss. I want to consider whether the evidence that we have to prove that these molecules are exactly alike is sufii- cient to make it impossible that they can have been produced by any process of evolution. The position, that this evidence is not sufiicient, is evidently by far the easier to defend, because the negative is pro- verbially hard to prove ; and, if any one should prove that a process of evolution was impossible, it would be an entirely unique thing in science and philosophy. In fact, we may see from this example pre- cisely how great is the influence of authority in matters of science. If there is any name among contemporary natural philosophers to whom is due the reverence of all true students of science, it is that of Prof Clerk Maxwell. But if any one, not possessing his great authority, had put forward an argument founded apparently upon a scientific basis, in which there occurred assumptions about what things can and what things cannot have existed from eternity, and about the exact similarity of few or more things established by experiment, we should say, " Past eternity ; absolute exactness ; " and we should pass on to another book. The experience of all scientific culture, for all ages during which it has been a light to men, has shown us that we never do get at any conclusions of that sort. We do not get at con- clusions about infinite time or infinite exactness. We get at conclu- sions which are as nearly true as experiment can show, and some- times which are a great deal more correct than direct experiment can be, so that we are able actually to correct one experiment by deduc- tions from another ; but we never get at conclusions wliich we have a right to say are absolutely exact; so that, even if we find a man of the highest powers saying that he had reason to believe a certain state- ment to be exactly true, or that he believed a certain thing to have existed from the beginning exactly as it is now, we must say, "It is quite possible that a man of so great eminence may have found out something which is entirely difierent from the whole of our previous knowledge, and the thing must be inquired into. But, notwithstand- ing that, it remains a fact that this piece of knowledge will be abso- lutely of a difierent kind from any thing that we knew before." Now. let us examine the evidence by which we know that the molecules of the same gas are as near as may be alike -in weight and in rates of vibration. There Avere experiments made by Dr. Graham, 276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. late Master of the Mint, upon the rate at which different gases were mixed together. He found that if he divided a vessel by a thin parti- tion made of black-lead or graphite, and put different gases on the two opposite sides, they would mix together nearly as fast as though there was nothing between them. The difference was, that the plate of graphite made it more easy to measure the rate of mixture ; and Dr. Graham made measurements and came to conclusions which are exactly such as are required by the molecular tlieory. It is found by a process of mathematical calculation that the rate of diffusion of different gases depends upon the weight of the molecules. Now^, a molecule of oxygen is sixteen times as heavy as a molecule of hydro- gen, and it is found upon experiment that hydrogen goes through a septum or wall of graphite four times as fast as oxygen does. Four times four are sixteen. We express that rule in mathematics by say- ing that the rate of diffusion of gas is inversely as the square root of the mass of its molecules. If one molecule is thirty-six times as heavy as another — the molecule of chlorine is nearly that multiple of hydro- gen— it will diffuse itself at one-sixth of the rate. This rule is a deduction from the molecular theory, and it is found, like innumerable other such deductions, to come right in practice. But now observe what is the consequence of this. Suppose that, in- stead of taking one gas and making it diffuse itself through a wall, w^e take a mixture of two gases. Suppose we put oxygen and hydro- gen into a vessel which has one side of it made of graphite, and we exhaust the air from the other side, then the hydrogen will go through this wall four times as fast as the oxygen will. Consequently, as soon as one side is full there will be a great deal more hydrogen in it than oxygen — that is to say, that wg shall have sifted the oxygen from the hydrogen, not completely, but in a great measure, precisely as by means of a screen we can sift large coals from small ones. Now, suppose, when we have oxygen gas unmixed with any othei*, the mole- cules are of two sorts and of two different weights. Then you see that if we make that gas pass through a porous wall, the lighter parti- cles would pass through first, and we should get two different speci- mens of oxygen gas, in one of which the molecules would be lighter than in the other. The properties of one of these specimens of oxy- gen gas would necessarily be different from those of the other, and that difference might be found by very easy processes. If there were any perceptible difference between the average weight of the mole- cules on the two sides of the septum, there would be no difficulty in finding that out. No such difference has ever been observed. If w^e put any single gas into a vessel, and we filter it through a septum of black-lead into another vessel, we find no difference between the gae on one side of the wall and the gas on the other side. That is to say, if there is any difference it is too small to be perceived by our present means of observation. It is upon that sort of evidence that the state- THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 277 ment rests that the molecules of a given gas are all very nearly of the same weight. Why do I say very nearly? Because evidence of that sort can never prove that they are exactly of the same weight. Tlie means of measurement we have got may be exceedingly correct, but a certain limit must always be allowed for deviation ; yet if the deviation of molecules of oxygen from a certain standard of weight were very small, and restricted witliin small limits, it would be quite possible for our experiments to give us the results which they do now. Sup- pose, for example, the variation in the size of the oxygen-atoms was as great as that in the weight of different men, then it would be very difficult indeed to tell by such a process of sifting what that differ- ence was, or in fact to establish that it existed at all. But, on the other hand, if we suppose the forces which originally caused all those molecules to be so nearly alike as they are, to be constantly acting and setting the thing right as soon as by any sort of experiment we set it wrong, then the small oxygen-atoms on one side would be made up to their right size, and it would be impossible to test the difference by any experiment which was not quicker than the processes by which they were made right again. There is another reason why we are obliged to regard that experi- ment as only aj)proximate, and as not giving us any exact results. There is very strong evidence, although it is not conclusive, that in a given gas — say in a vessel full of carbonic acid — the molecules are not all of the same weight. If we compress the gas, we find that when in the state of a perfect gas, or nearly so, the pressure increases just in the ratio that the volume diminishes. That law is entirely explained by means of the molecular theory. It is what ought to exist if the molecular theory is true. If we compress the gas further, we find that the pressure is smaller than it ought to be. This can be ex- plained in two ways : First of all we may suppose that the molecules are so crowded that the time during wliich they are sufiiciently near to attract each otlier sensibly becomes too large a ))roportion of the whole time to be neglected ; and this will account for the change in the law. There is, however, another explanation. We may suppose, for illustration, that two molecules approach one another, and that the speed at which one is going relatively to the other is very small, and then that they so direct one another that they get caught together, and go on circling, making only one molecule. This, on scientific principles, will account for our fact, that the pressure in a gas which is near a liquid state is too small ; that instead of the molecules going about singly, some are hung together in couples and some in larger numbers, and making still larger molecules. This supposition is con- firmed very strikingly by the spectroscope. If we take the case of chlorine gas, we find that it changes color — that it gets darker as it approaches the liquid condition. This change of color means that there is a change in the rate of vibration which belongs to its compo- 278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. uent parts ; and it is a very simple mechanical deduction that the larger molecules will, as a rule, have a slower rate of vibration than the smaller ones — very much in the same way as a short string gives a higher note than a long one. The color of chlorine changes just in the way we should expect if the molecules, instead of going about separately, were hanging together in couj^les ; and tlie same thing is true of a great number of the metals. Mr. Lockyer, in his admirable researches, has shown that several of the metals and metalloids have various spectra, according to the temperature and the pressure to which they ai-e exposed ; and he has made it exceedingly probable that these various spectra, that is, the rates of vibration of the mole- cules, depend upon the molecules being actually of diiferent sizes. Dr. Roscoe has, a few months ago, shown an entirely new spectrum of the metal sodium, whereby it appears that tliis metal exists in a gaseous state in four different degrees of aggregation, as a simple molecule, and as three or four or eight molecules together. Every increase in the complication of the molecules — every extra molecule you hang on to the aggregate that goes about together — will make a difference in the rate of the vibration of that system, and so will make a difference in the color of the substance. So, then, we have an evidence, you see, of an entirely extraneous character, that in a given gas the actual molecules that exist are not all of the same weight. Any experiment which failed to detect this would fail to detect any smaller difference. And here also we can see a reason why, although a difference in the size of the molecules does exist, yet we do not lind that out by sifting. Suppose you take oxygen gas consisting of single molecules and double molecules, and you sift it through a plate ; the single molecules get through first, but, when they get through, some of them join themselves together as double molecules ; and, although more double molecules are left on the other side, yet some of them separate up and make single molecules ; so the process of sifting, which ought to give you single molecules on the one side and double on the other, merely gives you a mixture of single and double on both sides ; because the reasons which originally decided that thei'e should be just those two forms are always at work, and continually setting things right. Now let us take the other point in which molecules are very nearly alike; viz., that they have very nearly the same rate of vibration. The metal sodium in the common salt uj)on the earth has two rates of vibration ; it sounds two notes, as it were, which are very near to each other. They form the well-known double line. The two bright yellow lines are very easy to observe. They occur in the spectra of a great number of stars. They occur in the solar spectrum as dark lines, showing that there is sodium in the outer rim of the sun, which is stopping and shutting off the light of the bright parts behind, and all these lines of sodium are just in the same position in the spectrum, THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 279 showing that the i-ates of vibration of all these molecules of sodium all over the universe, so far as we know, are as near as possible alike. That implies a similarity of molecular structure, which is a great deal more delicate than mere test of weight. You may weigh two fiddles until you are tired, and you will never find out whether they are in tune ; tlie one test is a great deal more delicate than the other. Let us see how delicate this test is. Lord Rayleigh has remarked that there is a natural limit for the precise position of a given line in the spectrum, and for this i-eason. If a body which is emitting a sound comes toward you, you will find that the pitch of the sound is altered. Suppose that omnibuses run every ten minutes in the streets, and you walk in a direction opposite to that in which they are coming, you will obviously pass more omnibuses in an hour than if you walked in an opposite direction. If a body emitting light is coming toward you, you will find more waves in a certain direction than if it was going from you ; consequently, if you are approaching a body emit- ting light, the light will come quicker, the vibration will be of shorter duration, and the light will be higher up in the spectrum — it will be more blue. If you are going away from the body, then the rate is slower, the light is lower down on the spectrum. By means of varia- tions in the positions of certain known lines of that character, the actual rate of approach of certain fixed stars to the earth has been measured, and the rate of going away of certain other fixed stars has also been measured. Suppose we have a gas which is glowing in a state of incandescence, all the molecules are giving out light at a cer- tain specified rate of vibration ; but some of these are coming toward us at a rate much greater than seventeen miles a minute, because the temperature is higher when the gas is glowing, and others are also going away at a much higher rate than that. The consequence is, that instead of having one sharply-defined line on the spectrum, in- stead of having light of exactly one bright color, we have light which varies between certain limits. If the actual rate of the vibration of the molecules of the gas were marked down upon the spectrum, we should not get that single bright line there, but we should get a bright band overlapping it on every side. Lord Rayleigh calculated that, in the most favorable circum- stances, the breadth of this band would not be less than one-hundredth of the distance between the sodium-lines. It is precisely upon that experiment that the ev'idence of the exact similarity of molecules rests. We see, therefore, from the nature of the experiment, that we should get exactly the same results if the rate of vibration of all the molecules was not exactly equal, but varied within certain very small limits. If, for example, the rates of vibration varied in the same way as the heads of different men, then we should get very much what we get now from the experiment. From these two sources of evidence, then, the evidence of their being of the same weight and degree of 2 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. vibration, all tliat we can conclude is, that whatever differences there are in their weights, and whatever differences there are in their de- grees of vibration, these differences are too small to be found out by our present modes of measurement, and that is precisely all that we can conclude in every similar question of science. Now, how does this apply to the question whether it is possible for molecules to have been evolved by natural processes? I do not understand, myself, how, even supposing that we knew that they were exactly alike, we could know from that, for certain, that they had not been evolved, because there is only one case of evolution that we know any thing at all about, and that we know very little about yet — that is the evolution of organized beings. The processes by which that evo- lution takes place are long, cumbrous, and wasteful processes of natu- ral selection and hereditary descent. They are processes which act slowly, which take a great laj^se of ages to produce their natural effects. But it seems to me quite possible to conceive, in our entire ignorance of the subject, that there may be other processes of evolu- tion which result in a definite number of forms — those of the chemical elements — just as these processes of the evolution of organized beings have resulted in a greater number of forms. All that we know of the ether shows that its actions are of a rapidity very much exceeding any thing we know of the motions of visible matter. It is a possible thing, for example, that mechanical conditions should exist, according to which all bodies must be made of regular solids, that molecules should all have flat sides, and that these sides should all be of the same shape. I suppose it is just conceivable that it might be impossible for a mole- cule to exist with two of its faces different. In that case we know there would be just five shapes for a molecule to exist in, and these would be produced by process of evolution. Now, the forms of various matter that we know, and that chemists call elements, seem to be related one to another very mucli in that sort of way : that is, as if they rose out of mechanical conditions which only rendered it possible for a certain definite number of forms to exist, and which, whenever any molecule deviates slightly from one of these forms, would immediately operate to set it right again. I do not know at all — we have nothing definite to go upon — what the shape of a mole- cule is, or what is the nature of the vibration it undergoes, or what its condition is compared with the ether ; and in our absolute ignorance it would be impossible to make any conception of the mode in which it grew up. When we know as much about the shape of a molecule a,s we do about the solar system, for example, we may be sure of its mode of evolution as we are of the way in which the solar system came about ; but, in our present ignorance, all we have to do is to show that such experiments as we can make do not give us evidence that it is absolutely impossible for molecules of matter to have been evolved out of ether by natural processes. THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 281 The evidence which tells us that the molecules of a given sub- stance are alike, is only approximate. The theory leaves room for certain small deviations, and consequently if there are any conditions at work in the nature of the ether, which render it impossible for other forms of matter than those we know of to exist, the great probability is, that when by any process we contrive to sift molecules of one kind from molecules of another, these very conditions at once bring them back and restore to us a mass of gas consisting of molecules, whose average type is a normal one. Now, I want to consider a speculation of an entirely different char- acter. A remark was made about thirty years ago, by Sir William Thompson, upon the nature of certain problems in the deduction of heat. These problems had been solved by Fourier, many years be- fore, in a beautiful treatise. The theory was, that if you knew the degree of warmth of a body, then you could find what would happen to it afterward, you would find how the body would gradually cool. Suppose you put the end of a poker in the fire and make it red hot, that end is very much hotter than the other end, and if you take it out and let it cool, you will find that heat is traveling from the hot end to the cool end, and the amount of this traveling and the tem- perature at either end of the poker can be calculated with great ac- curacy. That comes out of Fourier's theory. Now, sujipose you try to go backward, in time, and take the poker at any instant when it is about half cool, and say, "This equation — does it give me the means of finding out what was happening to it before this time, in so far as that state of things has been produced by cooling?" You will find the equation will give you an account of the state of the poker before the time when it came into your hands, with great accuracy up to a cer- tain point, but beyond that point it refuses to give you any more in- formation, and it begins to talk nonsense. It is in the nature of a problem of the conduction of heat, that it allows you to trace the for- ward history of it to any extent you like ; but it will not allow you to trace the history of it backward, beyond a certain point. There is another case in which a similar thing happens. There is an experi- ment in the excellent manual, " The Boy's Own Book," which tells you that if you put some beer into a glass half full, and put some paper on it, and then pour in water carefully, and draw the paper out without disturbing the two liquids, the water will rest on the beer. The problem, then, is to drink the beer without drinking the water, and it is accomplished by means of a straw. Let us suppose these two resting on each other, we 'shall find that they begin to mix, and it is possible to write down the equation, which is exactly of the same form as the equation for the conduction of heat, and it would tell you how much water should have gone at any given time after the mixture began. So that, given the water and the beer half mixed, you could trace forward, the process of mixing, and measure it with accuracy, 282 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and give a perfect account of it ; but if you attempt to trace tliat back you will have a point where the equation will stop, and will be- gin to talk nonsense. That is the point where you took away the paper, and allowed the mixing to begin. If we apply that same con- sideration to the case of the poker, and try to trace back its history, you will find that the point where the equation begins to talk non- sense is the pohit where you took it out of the fire. The mathemati- cal theory sujjjjoses that the process of conduction of lieat has gone on in a quiet manner, according to certain defined laws, and that if at any time there was a catastrophe, one not included in the laws of the conduction of heat, then the equation could give you no account of it. There is another thing which is of the same kind. That is the transmission of fluid friction. If you take your tea in your cup, and stir it round with a spoon, it won't go on circulating round forever, but comes to a stop ; and the reason is, that there is a certain friction of the liquid against the sides of the cup; and of the different parts of the liquid with one another. Now, the friction of the different parts of a liquid or a gas is precisely a matter of mixing. The particles which are going fast, and are in the middle, not having been stopped by the side, get mixed, and the particles at the side going slow, get mixed with the jjarticles in the middle. This process of mixing can be calculated, and it leads to an equation of exactly the same sort as that which applies to the conduction of heat. We have, therefore, in these problems, a natural process which consists in mixing things together, and this always has the property that you can go on mixing them forever, without coming to any thing impossible ; but if you at- tempt to trace the history of the thing backward, you must always come to a state which could not have been produced by mixing, namely, a state of complete separation. Now, upon this remark of Sir W. Thompson's, which you will find further expi-essed in Mr. Balfour Stewart's book on the " Conservation of Energy," a most singular doctrine has been founded. These writers have been speaking of a particular problem, on which they were employed at the moment. Sir W. Thompson was sj^eaking of the deduction of heat, and he said this heat-problem leads you back to a state which could not have been pi-oduced by the conduction of heat. And so Prof. Clerk Maxwell, speaking of the same problem, and also of the diff'usion of gases, said there was evidence of a limit in past time to the existing order of things, when something else than mixing took place. But a most eminent man, who has done a great deal of service to mankind, Prof Stanley Jevons, in his very admirable book, "The Principles of Science," which is simply marvellous for the num- ber of examples illustrating logical principles which he has drawn from all kinds of regions of science, and for the small number of mistakes that occur in it, takes this remark of Sir W. Thompson's, and takes out two very important words, and puts in two other very TEE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 283 important words. He says, "We have here evidence of a limit of a state of things which could not have been produced by the previous state of things according to the known laws of Nature." It is not according to the known laws of Nature, it is according to the known laws of conduction of heat, that Sir William Thompson is speaking ; and that mistake illustrates the fallacy of concluding that, if we con- sider the case of the whole universe, we should be able, suppose we had paper and ink enough, to write down an equation which would enable us to make out the history of the world forward, as far forward as we liked to go, but if we attempted to calculate the history of the world backward, we should come to a point where the equation would begin to talk nonsense, we should come to a state of things which could not have been produced from any previous state of things, by any known natural laws. You will see at once that that is an entirely different statement. The same doctrine has been used by Mr, Murphy, in a very able book, " The Scientific Bases of Faith," to build upon it an enormous superstructure. I think the restoration of the Irish Church was one of the results of it, but this doctrine is founded, as I think, upon a pure misconception. It is founded entirely upon for- getfulness of the condition under which the remark was originally made. All these physical writers, knowing what they were writing about, simjDly drew such conclusions from the facts which were before them as could be reasonably drawn. They say, "Here is a state of things which could not have been produced by the circumstances we are at present investigating." Then your speculator comes, he reads a sentence and says, " Here is an opportunity for me to have my fling." And he has his fling and makes a purely baseless theory about the necessaiy origin of the present order of Nature at some definite point of time which might be calculated. But, if we consider the matter, we shall see that this is not in any way a consequence of the theory of the deduction of heat. If we apply that to the case of the earth, we find that at present there is a certain distribution of temperature in the interior of it, there is a law according to which the temperature increases as we go down, and no doubt if we made further investiga- tions, we should find that if we went deeper an accurate law would be found, according to which the temperature increases as we go downward. Now, assuming this to be so, taking this as the basis of our prob- lem, we might endeavor to find out what was the history of the earth in past times, and when it began cooling down. That is exactly what Sir William Thompson has done. When we attempt it, we find that theiie is a definite point to which we can go, and at which our equa- tion talks nonsense. But we do not conclude that at that point the laws of Nature began to be what they are; that is the point where the earth began to solidify ; that is a process which is not a process of the deduction of heat, and so the thing cannot be given by the 284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. equation. Now, that point is given definitely as a point of time, not with great accuracy, but still as near as we can expect to get it, with such means of measuring as we have, and Sir William Thompson has calculated that the earth must have solidified at some time a hundred millions or two hundred millions of years ago ; and there w^e arrive by a present state of things at the beginning of the process of cool- ing the earth which is going on now. Before that it was cooling as a liquid, and in passing from the liquid to the solid state there was a catastrophe which introduced a new rate of cooling, so that by means of that law we do come to a time when the earth began to assume the present state of things — not that of the existence of the universe at all; we do not give the time of the commencement of the universe, but simply the structure of the earth. If we went farther back, we niio;ht make a further calculation and find how Ions the earth had been in a liquid state. We should come to another catastrophe, and say at that time, not that the universe began to exist, but that the present earth passed from the gaseous to the liquid state. And if we went farther back still we should probably find the earth falling together out of a great ring of matter surrounding the sun, and dis- tributed over its orbit. The same thing is true of every body of matter: if we trace its history back, we come to a certain time at which the catastrophe took place, and if we were to trace back the history of all the bodies of the universe in that way we should con- tinually see them separating up, and falling together, as they have done. What they have actually done is to fall together and get solid. If we should reverse the process we should see them separating and getting cool, and, as a limit to that, we should find that all these bodies would be resolved into molecules, and all these would be flying away from each other. There would be no limit to that process, and we could trace it as far back as ever we liked to trace it. So that on the assumption, a very large assumption, that the present constitution of the laws of geometry and mechanics has held good during the whole of past times, we should be led to the conclusion that at an inconceiv- ably long time ago the universe did consist of ultimate molecules, all separate from one another, and approaching one another, because we have to revei'se our former process. Instead of their being at a great distance from one another, and all traveling toward some place where they would meet, the reverse would be the case. Then you would have the process of chlorine going on in these bodies, exactly as we find it going on now, but you will observe that we do not come to such a catastrophe as implies that we have to stop these laws of Na- ture, We come to something of which we cannot make any further calculation ; we find that, however far we like to go back, we approx- imate to that actual state of things, but never actually get to it. Here we have a doctrine about the beginning of things. First, we have a probability, aboirt as correct as science can make it, of the THE FIRST AND THE LAST CATASTROPHE. 285 beginning of the present state of things on the earth, of the fitness of the earth for habitation ; and then we have a probability which is an exceedingly small one, which is certainly put in this form, that we do not know any thing at all about the beginning of the universe as a whole. The reason why I say that we do not know any thing at all of the beginning of the universe is, that we have no reason whatever for believing that what we at present know of the laws of geometry are exactly and absolutely true at present, or that they have been even approximately ti-ue for any period of time, further than we have direct evidence of. The evidence we have of them is founded on experience, and we should have exactly the same experience of them now, if those laws were not exactly and absolutely true, but were only so nearly true that we could not observe the difference, so that in making that assumption, that we may argue upon the absolute uniformity of Nature, and supposing them to have remained exactly as they are, we are assuming something we know nothing about. My conclusion then, is, that we do know, with great probability, of the beginning of the habitability of the earth about one hundred or two hundred millions of years back, but that of the beginning of the universe we know nothing at all. Now, let us consider what we can find out about the end of things. The life which exists upon the earth is made by the sun's action, and it depends upon the sun for its continuance. We know that the sun is wearing out, that it is cooling, and although this heat which it loses day by day is made up in some measure, perhaps completely, at present, by the contraction of its mass, yet that process cannot go on forever. There is only a certain amount of energy in the present constitution of the sun, and, when that has been used up, the sun can- not go on giving out any more heat. Supposing, therefore, the earth remains in her present orbit about the sun, seeing that the sun must be cooled down at some time, we shall all be frozen out. On the other hand, we have no reason to believe that the orbit of the earth about the sun is an absolutely stable thing. It has been maintained for a long time that there is a certain resisting medium which the planets have to move through, and it may be argued from that, that in time all the planets must be gradually made to move slower in their orbits, and so to fall in toward the sun. But, on the other hand, the evi- dences upon which this assertion was based, the movement of Encke's comet and others, has been quite recently entirely overturned by Prof. Tait. He supposes that these comets consist of bodies of meteors. Now, it was proved, a long time ago, that a mass of small bodies trav- eling together in an orbit about a central body will always tend to fall in toward it, and that is the case with the rings of Saturn. So that, in fact, the movement of Encke's comet is entirely accounted for on the supposition that it is a swarm of meteors, without regarding 286 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the assumption of a resisting medium. On tlie other hand, it seems exceedingly natural to suppose that some matter in a very thin state is diffused about the planetary spaces. Then we have another consid- eration : just as the sun and moon make tides x;pou the sea, so the planets make tides upon the sun. If we consider the tide which the earth makes upon the sun, instead of being a great wave lifting the mass of the sun up directly under the earth, it lags behind, the result is that the earth, instead of being attracted to the sun's centre, is at- tracted to a point behind the centre. That retards the earth's motion, and the effect of this upon the planet is to make its orbit larger. That planet disturbing all the other planets, the consequence is, that we have the earth gradually going away from the sun, instead of falling into it. In any case, all we know is that the sun is going out. If we fall into the sun then we shall be fried ; if we go away from the sun, or the sun goes out, then we shall be frozen. So that, so far as the earth is concerned, we have no means of determining what will be the character of the end, but we know that one of these two things must take place in time. But in regard to the whole universe, if we were to travel forward as we have traveled backward in time, consider things as falling together, we should come finally to a great central mass, all in one piece, which would send out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether, and gradually cool itself down. As this mass got cool it would be deprived of all life or motion ; it would be just a mere enormous frozen block in the middle of the ether. But that con- clusion, which is like the one that we discussed about the beginning of the world, is one which we have no right whatever to rest upon. It depends upon the same assumption that the laws of geometry and mechanics are exactly and absolutely true, and that they have con- tinued exactly and absolutely true for ever and ever. Such an assump- tion we have no right whatever to make. We may therefore, I think, conclude about the end of things that, so far as the earth is concerned, an end of life upon it is as probable as science can make any thing, but that in regard to the universe we have no right to draw any con- clusion at all. So far we have considered simply the material exist- ence of the earth ; but of course our greatest interest lies not so much with the material things upon it, its organized things, as with another fact which goes along with that, and which is an entirely different one — the fact of the consciousness that exists upon the earth. We find very good reason indeed to believe that this consciousness in the case of any organism is itself a very complex thing, and that it cor- responds part for part to the action of the nervous system, and more particularly of the brain of that organized thing. There are some whom such evidence has led to the conclusion that the desti'uction which we have seen reason to think probable of all organized beings upon the earth will lead also to the final destruction of the conscious- SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 287 ness that goes with them. Upon this point I know there is great dif- ference of opinion among those who have a right to speak. But, to those who do see the cogency of the evidences of modern physiology and modern psychology in this direction, it is a very serious thing to consider that not only the earth itself and all that beautiful face of Nature we see, but also the living things upon it, and all the conscious- ness of men, and the ideas of society, which have grown up upon the surface, must come to an end. We who hold that belief must just face the fact and make the best of it ; and I think we are helped in this by the words of that Jew philosopher who was himself a worthy crown to the splendid achievements of his race in the cause of prog- ress during the middle ages, Benedict Spinoza. He said, " The free- man thinks of nothing so little as of death, and his contemplation is not of death but of life." Our interest, it seems to me, lies with so much of the past as may serve to guide our actions in the present, and to intensify our pious allegiance to the fathers who have gone before us, and the brethren who are with us ; and our interest lies with so much of the future as we may hope will be a2Dpreciably affected by our good actions now. Beyond that, as it seems to me, we do not know, and we ought not to cai-e. Do I seem to say, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ? " Far from it ; on the contrary, I say, " Let us take hands and help, for this day we are alive together." — Fortnightly Review. -♦-»♦- SEXUAL CEKEBRATION. By ELY VAN DE WARKER, M. D. BY sexual cerebration is meant the existence of sex in the emo- tional and ideo-motor psychical nature of women and men, from which originate jijcr se emotions and states of consciousness which dis- tinguish and give character to the intellection of the sexes. It is sex in mental, as distinguished from sex in physical development. It is to mental operations what the prism is to light — a medium of refrac- tion ; a bending, as it were, of the axis of thought. Having postulated that certain differences exist mentally between the sexes, is it possible to determine the extent and nature of the dif- ference ? Is it also possible to trace this difference to a sexual factor ? It is evident that, if we can reach the truth, approximately, in the first question, the establishment of the second is easy. There appears to me but one way of studying this question. The old speculative method of investigating metaphysical questions must be abandoned. We must grapple with this psychological problem from a few fixed points ; like points of triangulation, to measure dis- tances which otherwise may remain unknown. We must reason from 288 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the known to the unknown. These fixed points are to be found in anatomy and physiology. We may also study certain voluntary acts of the sexes in the aggregate, and estimate the difference in the result. The relations between the sexes will also furnish facts from which mental differences may be estimated. Accepting Dr. Carpenter as the exponent of thought upon the physiology «f mental action, we shall give his estimate of the cere- brum, or "brain," as "ministering, so far as any material instrument may do, to the exercise of these psychical powers which, in man, ex- hibit so remarkable a predominance over the mere animal instincts." The brain, anatomically, may be classed, among the ganglia, having its function more clearly defined than is usual with great nerve-cen tres. It is not an assumption, then, which will provoke dissent among modern physiologists, to assume the brain as the " organ of thought ; " not in the sense that it secretes thought, but that it presides in its own way over its special function, that of intellection. It is the operation of the brain in its functional capacity which gives to each individual his mental peculiarities. These differences in mental action which define the individual must represent differences in functional activity. Taking this view of the physiology of thought, it is just to say that this exhibit of mental differences is the measure of functional, if not of structural, peculiarities, in the great brain-ganglion. If this is true of several individuals, it must also be true of the sexes. The mental traits, which define the sexes intellectually, afford a measure of either functional or structural differences in the cerebral ganglion. It is very possible that, histologically, any structural differences which may exist in the ganglia of either individuals or the sexes may never be determined. But the drift of modern thought and research tends to show that such differences do exist, and it is as true approximately as the undulatorj' theory of light. Many of the functional attributes of sex are presided over by ganglia having special reference to these functions, and these groups of nerve-centres in the sexes, one being the analogue of tlie other anatomically, must differ widely in function, notwithstanding their similarity of location and structure. When we take into consideration that the forces of oi-ganic and functional life represent simply the sum of ganglionic activity, a just idea may be formed of the extent to which this activity must be differentiated in the sexes. It is simply necessary to extend the field of ganglionic action to the brain, the supreme ganglion of all, in order to realize the fact that here also functional differences must exist. That the brain possesses functions in common to the sexes in no wise renders it im- possible to perform its part as an organ embraced in the sexual cycle. The relations existing between the sexes are mutually voluntary, and involve more or less of mental action. As these relations represent the opposite poles of structural and functional life, this mutuality must also represent phases of mental action which exist as sexual traits. SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 289 Concerning many of these relations we know that men and women do not think alike, and that these differences are radical ones, and have existed many years, and yet contimie to exist. Take the labor and the ballot questions as the most widely known of the points of disa- greement, which seem to have their origin in sexual mental attributes. But, even upon these questions, we find many men and women think- ing and acting alike. Yet these are the exception, and not the rule ; which confirms my idea of the difference in the results reached by the mental processes of the sexes : for surely the want of agreement must be a radical one in which it is a rare exception for the two types of mind to approach each other upon matters other than the organic emotions. Keeping in view the accepted fact that the brain, as an organ, or nerve-centre, is the seat of mental action, with which its structure, either in its histological elements or its relative proportion of parts, is more or less intimately connected, it seems reasonable to refer these differences in the results of sexual mental processes to structural rather than to any ephemeral cause. If we estimate the sexual factor in brain-develoj^ment by the aggregate of results at- tained by the sexes, the way is clearer. The known average excess in weight in the male brain is the most probable coefficient of this excess in results. The face of Nature has fairly been changed by man's labor. The vast systems of railroads, of canals, of mountains pierced by tunnels, of lines of telegraph and cables, the steamships, the vast engines of war, the great emporiums of commerce, the re- sults reached by masterly labors in science which underlie all these grand results, and in which women have been the accessories rather than the collaborators, prove that some factor, other than superior strength of bone and muscle, has led to this vast excess in results reached by man. These results represent brain-labor ; and to what cause can we assign it, if not to this great development of the brain of man over that of woman ? In the organic emotions, and in the play of those finer feelings which form distinguishing mental traits of the sexes, we have the same reason to seek for a physical basis. As these mental traits are analyzed in the course of the paper, it will become more evident that the brain in the sexes is an organ embraced structurally in the sexual cycle. With this sexual factor existing in brain-structure, can woman ever hoj^e, in entering the field of man's labor, to do his work in man's way ? Will she write sermons, draw up a brief, or treat disease with the same facts before her, in the way of man ? I do not believe I show disrespect to the sex when I answer, No. Women in literature have occupied a distinctive place. A book or an article in which the sex of the writer cannot be detected, no matter how studiously con- cealed, forms an event in literature. When woman labors either with her hands or head, notwithstanding she reaches the same result as man, she labors in her own way. All this, I believe, points not so TOL. Til. — 19 290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. much to a womanly habit, as to a womanly brain as well as body. Sex is a law to body as well as brain. Sex pervades all Nature, not for the sake of the individual, but for that of the species. In the insect-world, some bright little creature lives but a few hours, deposits its egg and dies. The sum of its life is sex. Not less do I believe does man, notwithstanding the grandeur of his intellect, conform to the same inexorable law. Before we enter upon the more difficult part of our subject, there are certain conceded mental attributes peculiar to the sexes which are legitimate subjects of investigation. I say there are mental differences conceded ; because, without thought, we include them in our ideal of women, or of men. In the same manner, we need not recall to our minds, or to the minds of others, that women are characterized nearly the world over by peculiarities of dress which distinguish them as a sex. It is part of our ideal of women, because they have ever been associated with such peculiarities. In literature and art, woman has maintained her lofty place, separated more widely from man by her mental trait than by her differences in form. It has ever been a theme more of mind than of matter which has inspired the poet to entwine women in his graceful verse. Her truth, her gentleness, her constancy, these are immortal themes ; these are the chords of her nature which have found responsive vibrations in the hearts of poets, and made the monuments of their genius eternal. When the poet and the artist see more in the enticements of woman's form than in her mind, the best of men shrink from the picture. Is it not because our ideal woman in art is associated more with sexual graces of mind than of body ? When that strange poet, Algernon Swinburne, clothed in his matchless English the gospel of the flesh, the world of literature recoiled. This union of the gentle nature of woman as a theme with the beautiful in literature, dates back to the cradle of art. Now, what are these conceded mental differences between the sexes. — " Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood ! which supersedes all acqui- sitions, all accomplishments," says George Eliot, in " Scenes of Cleri- cal Life." We may assume gentleness of mind as a sexual mental trait. It does not spring from any process of conscious I'easoning. It has no main-spring in a sense of expediency. Unconsciousness and spon- taneity are the conditions of its existence. The practical bearing of this paper is to estimate the value of these mental traits as affecting the affairs of daily life. Necessarily, therefore, we must have an ap- proximate standard of measurement. I seek this standard in that class which usually deals with the active affairs of life — the masculine type of mind. Not only for this reason do I select this criterion ; but, also, this is the type women are endeavoring to reach in essaying a career in the professions. The two types of mind, masculine and feminine, by mutual contrast afford the surest indication of sexual SEXUAL cerebration: 291 differences in intellection. This gentleness of woman has found its way into the argument as something definite, as a descriptive trait of character, yet by itself is nameless. Relating to woman as it chiefly does, it seems to consist of a mobility and pliability of character, an unconscious avoidance of harshness and fixity of thought. Not a want of fixity as indicating fickleness of character, but implying con- cessions to the wishes of others. This gentleness of mental habitude in women, which so clearly isolates the psychical condition of the sexes, finds its factor in sexual differences. Unavoidably, this takes approximate force. Reasoning cannot make it clearer that this type of woman is an expression of sex in mind. We see this feminine type of mind associated with certain bodily configurations which are equally expressive of sex. We also find exceptions to this form of sexual cere- bration. There are women who approach more or less nearly in posi- tiveness and habitual harshness to the masculine type. With this there is almost invariably associated masculine development of form. Masculine brawn, bone and muscle, shaded and toned down by the irrepressible presence of sex, define this phase of the feminine mind. The voice approaches a manly compass, the down upon the upper lip becomes short, delicate hairs ; the stature exceeds the average of woman's ; the limbs are muscular and strong. With these bodily powers of aggression there is a natural outgrowth of mental belliger- ence. This is a law of Nature. The man who shrinks from a physi- cal contest with his fellows is one of conscious bodily weakness. His body measures, therefore, the extent of mental aggressiveness. Not necessarily do these women possess the male intellect ; they simply approach the male type in this single aspect of their characters, other and equally feminine attributes of mind existing in full force. But, as demonstrating a sexual origin for this traditional and actual gentle- ness of the female mind, the fact that certain departures fi-om the typi- cal feminine form are associated with equally positive analogies to the typical masculine mind, seems to me to be conclusive. These two conditions of mind existing in full force tend to place the sexes at the opposite poles of human actions, that of demanding and yielding, that of giving and receiving. George Eliot is right in saying that this feature of mental character supersedes all acquisi- tions, all artificial acquirements. Education and refinement may lend it additional attractiveness, but it is a primordial sexual trait of mind — the brightest gem in woman's chaplet of mental charms, around which may cluster other and equally attractive traits without impair- ing its lustre. I believe it to be evident that the opposite psychical conditions of the sexes under consideration determine for men and women their careers in society — to one the strife and struggle with the world, to the other the gentle occupations of the home. From the male sex we may obtain a forcible example of how potent is the sexual factor in 292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. shaping the mental character of the sexes. Men reduced to a con- dition of eunuchism afford a wonderful contrast to men in the normal condition. It is upon the cerebrum and on its function of cerebration that some of its most marked effects are to be observed. He ceases to be fit for war, and is of service only in the pursuits of peace. He is no longer capable of daring to assert his rights, and, of all beings, is a fit subject for a slave. Not only is he made a coward, but the moral senses are weakened, and he maybe safely delegated to execute the cruelty of others. It does not seem, then, to be any thing but a legitimate deduction that this radical difference, intellectually, be- tween the normal man and eunuchism is the participation of the brain in the generic cycle, and one phase of sexual cerebration. Through all the females of the mammalia, there exists a feeling toward their young called the maternal mstinct. There is no neces- sity here of going into the question of instinct among animals, as to whether it partakes of the nature of an intellectual process. What- ever be its nature, it is evidently a part of generation, and as such is eminently sexual in its origin. In dealing with this feeling in the human female, although it may have a rudimentary intellectual source, yet it is lifted above the level of instinctive feeling, and becomes a part of her emotional nature. " The intimate and essential relation of emo- tions to the ideas, which they equal in number and variety, is suffi- cient to prove that the law of progress from the general and simple to the special and complex prevails in their development " (Mauds- ley). Thus it is that an instinctive feeling in lower animals, without which the reproductive faculty would be totally defeated, becomes the maternal emotion in its simplest form in the human being ; and, by carrying on this evolution from the simple to the complex, pro- duces a complete modification of the psychical tone. Here, also, we may gain a clearer insight into the nature of the maternal feeling by contrasting it with the paternal feeling.* This emotion is a state of the mind which obtains the conditions of its existence from the same physical faculty — that of reproduction ; and although it is closely re- lated to the expression of the maternal feeling in the more developed state of the emotion, yet, in its fundamental form, it differs widely. Thus, among the male of the mammalia in which it is not entirely absent, it mostly assumes the form of abstaining from injury, while in the female of the same species it exists as a protecting and maintain- ing instinct. In the human race, the same emotion receives a shadow cast from its primal origin in animals. In the human female, in the child-bear- ing period, it exists as a love, active or passive, for all children ; while in men, dui'ing the more active period of manhood, it exists as a gentle tolerance of children, until called out in its active form by his own ^ The word " feeling " is here used, not in its idiomatic sense, but as a state of con- sciousness. SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 293 paternity. Notice from this that even the lofty elevation of intel- lectual man, and exalted yet higher by the force of education, has not been sufficient to change beyond recognition this emotion in its rela- tive condition and quality as it exists among animals. We cannot separate the mental from the bodily life. When we scan the deeper relation of things in their genesis, there are displayed in closest connection continuity of parts and functions (Maudsley). The maternal emotion exists potentially in the intellection of the healthy adult woman as a natural outcome of the existence of organs and functions which render possible the occasion of its activity. As the time approaches for its full development, any observing physician can jDerceive the latent emotion assuming shape and direction to a definite end. Numberless cares and solicitudes, colored by the ten- dei-est of anticipations, become dominant in her volition. Not once, but innumerably, has a star over Bethlehem shed its lucid light in the hearts of watchers, and roused from the depths of latent emotions, half stifled with agony, the infinite possibilities of a mother's love. De Quincey, who intellectually stood so near the verge of the impossible in thought, and measured the heights and fathomed the depths of hearts, looked upon this kindling of the maternal emotion, at the su- premest moment of a woman's life, with the eyes of a seer. Until I read this,* there always seemed an incongruity in the piercing grief of a mother over the death of her new-born. One with whom there was associated not a single earthly emotion, save that of maternity, but who was freshly linked with a hundred pangs, received upon its little, scarcely human face, the most keenly-felt of maternal tears. The reason is plain. The emotion of maternity exceeds reason, tran- scends imagination, and is brought forth from the depths of organic life as part of the mystery of reproduction. As from the state of eunuchism we gained a knowledge of the sexual origin of certain at- tributes which distinguish man intellectually, so, from the condition resulting after the operation of spaying in animals, we may obtain additional evidence of the origin of the maternal feeling. Animals so treated have a great aversion for the young of their own species ; that which was the maternal instinct in the normal animal becomes an instinctive hatred in the unsexed one. Here it is evident that the presence of organs whose existence is necessary to the completion of function is a prime factor in the creation of an overruling instinct. I have already drawn attention to the great resemblance between the maternal emotion in human beings and the maternal instinct in ani- mals, and it does not seem to be unreasonable to trace both emo- tion and instinct to a common and physical cause. It is not in the power of a woman, normal psychically and physically, to repress her maternal emotion in the presence of her new-born, and in this respect she is allied to her sister animals. But the analogy here ceases. The * " Suspiria de Profundis." 294 ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. woman is gifted with intellect, tlie animal is not ; the woman has memory, the animal has none ; and thus it is that the maternal instinct ceases with the necessity of providing food for the young ; the mater- nal emotion in the human mother ends ©nly with her life. But yet again, how tender is the mother with her new-born babe, compared to the exhibition of the same emotion towai'd her half-grown child ! The diifereutia that exist between the maternal and paternal emo- tions are such as characterize other expressions of sexual cerebration. I have already called attention to some of them. Among men, as the mind assumes its higher moral and intellectual development, these emotions are more nearly alike in the sexes, so far as constancy and care are concerned. If we take into consideration the frequency of the charge against men of desertion of family and children, and the extreme rarity of this charge against woman, we perceive that the paternal emotion must be accompanied by a certain degree of moral sense in order to equal the maternal emotion, which alone, and unaided by any mental accessory, is, as a rule, capable of the most heroic sac- rifice. I think I may end our study of the maternal emotion here, with no doubt in my mind, and with but little chance of valid objec- tions on the part of others, that it is purely the result of sexual organ- ization; that not indirectly, but directly, it is the psychical compo- nent of the reproductive faculty, and as such is notably an example of sexual cerebration. Love is the attraction between the sexes. The word is wrongly used to express a great variety of relations and emotions. Spinoza says that, " between appetite and desire there is no difference, except so far as the latter implies consciousness ; desire is self-conscious ap- petite." It is important that the presence of consciousness be not allowed to obscure the fundamental condition of things in the brain. Because of the affinity between vital structure and instinct or impulse, the organic reaction becomes evident as a condition of consciousness, overlooking the primary cause. " The striving after a pleasing im- pression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a physical consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its relation to a certain stimulus ; and the reaction or desire becomes the motive of a general action on the part of the individual, for the purpose of satis- fying a want or of shunning an ill " (Maudsley). Any of these self- conscious appetites may become the main-spring of a voluntary action. A desire which so results is gradually evolved out of an unconscious organic appetite into an emotion, or a series of intelligently-connected efforts. The physiological relation existing between the sexes is a part of the organic law of reproduction. The action of this law finds its expression through the brain, instinctively or emotionally in desire. This participation of the brain in the reproductive stimulus is an ab- solute necessity in order to place the sexes in a relation favorable to an observance of one of the laws of their existence. With the gradual SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 295 evolution of sex physically there is a corresponding evolution psychi- cally. The one is necessary to the organic part, the other is neces- sary to the mental part, of i-eproduction. This development of the possibility of love with structural completion is one of the most strik- ing examples of the evolution of organic life into consciousness. The mental awakening is gradual. Vague and undefined desires exist long before they have taken definite shape in the consciousness ; there is a satisfaction, too obscure and gradually evolved to startle the subject into consciousness, in the society of the other sex. These undefined desires become a part of a self-conscious act when one object is selected from the many and is associated with the most sacred emotion — love. In order to prove that this emotion can exist independent of conscious- ness, and antedate it as it were, it is only necessary to allude to the fact that, in human beings, the instinct attains a knowledge of its aim, and even a sort of satisfaction, in dreams, before it does so in real life. Upon this Dr. Maudsley remarks as follows : " This fact might of itself suffice to teach psychologists how far more fundamental than any conscious mental state is the unconscious mental or cerebral life." Physiologically, this is the origin of the beautiful emotion called love. In a healthy brain and body, one in which all organic impulses find a reaction in normal consciousness, the emotion of love is allied with all that is pui-e and noble in the character of the individual. Men find in it an incentive to exertion, and a spur to their ambitions, while women without thought array themselves in all the graces of dress and manner to attract the beloved one. But we can say of love, what Bacon says of it, that " the mind in its own nature would be temperate and staid, if the affections, as winds, did not put it in tu- mult and perturbation." This may be the effect of love even in its healthy manifestations. In those cases — and they are not rare — in which the organic appetites affect unduly and too persistently the con- sciousness, it becomes the source of great unhappiness or of bad health. It would be indeed hard to recognize as love the exhibition of this emotion in the depraved. Among this class it is exhibited as love brutalized. Revolting as it is in this form to all that is elevated in our mental character, I yet believe it to be love in its rudimentary form. It is love stripped of its refinements, of its singleness of object, of its purity. It is often said that man is but little lower than the angels ; if there is any thing which tends to this imaginary elevation it is this faculty of identifying another with all earthly hopes, of making the happiness and well-being of a fellow-creature the aim and motive of a lifetime. But this same emotion, when it finds expression in these abnormal states of consciousness, allies man to the brute, and tends to show from what depths the present moral and intellectual nature of man was elevated by the slow progress of evolution. As I have already tried to show that mentally men and women define two opposite types of mind, we shall find strong confirmation 296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of this by contrasting love as presented in the sexes. As there is no process of vivisection or array of physical facts which will prove this, we must study this emotion as we know it to exist in the mass of men and women, and which has been verified by common experience. But, in the first place, we must bear in mind the widely-diverging paths in life followed by men and women. Men enter the world and labor bodily or mentally, and thus expend all surplus energy. This energy is used at the direct expense of the emotional life. Women, as a rule, do not have this vicarious outlet for the emotions. Love with women exists as an entity, with men as an abstraction. A study of tables of suicidal deaths in both sexes gives us some startling evidence of the difference in both the intensity and effect of this emotion in men and women. The decade between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age affords the largest number of voluntary deaths for women. It is dur- ing this period of woman's life that the demand for love is greatest. The functional life is exerting its most potent sway over mind and body. Thus it is that to love and to be loved is a physiological demand during this period, and it becomes evident that this excess of suicides is the outcome partly of a defeated sexual life. The figures for men present a remarkable contrast. The same period in the life of men is also the period of greatest sexual activity. But, whatever vicissitudes the emotion of love among men may be subjected to, it does not find expression in self-destruction. On the contrary, the period of greatest liability to suicides is postponed to the period when the sexual ener- gies have expended their youthful ardor, so that the decade between thirty-five and forty-five years of age gives the greatest number of suicidal deaths, and during which interval it is that the business or worldly interest of men attains success, or ends in failure. Another fact derived from the same source throws light on this in- teresting subject. The condition of concubinage almost trebles the number of voluntary deaths for women. It seems reasonable, from what we know of human beings, to assert that it is not the continu- ance, but the breaking up of these relations — which, in a monogamous state of society, must invariably occur — that leads to this result. We have here almost positive proof that this tendency to self-destruction in the relation of women to the other sex finds its factor in a defeated sexual feeling or love. It is generally understood that the mental and bodily structure and function of women develop at an earlier age than in the other sex. Now, there are twice as many suicides among girls as among boys under the fifteenth year. A leading character of the earlier development of women over the other sex is a sexual one — a capacity to love and to be loved. It is a very significant fact in com- paring the degree and quality of love as we find it existing in men and women, that the two periods in woman's life in which suicidal deaths exceed those in the male are at the time of structural completion and greatest functional activity. This demonstrates the predominance of SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 297 a capacity to love in woman's psychical nature, and its greater power to impress itself profoundly upon the deliberate acts of her life over that of man. Madame de Stael truly said that "love is the history of woman's life ; it is an episode in man's." Love defeated in the attainment of its object becomes in man an incident to be forgotten, or to be remembered with impatience. A defeated love with woman is too often a defeat of her intellectual life. An emotion, the misdirection or disappointment of which is capable of inducing a large per centum of insane in one sex over the other, must surely differ in degree and kind. Certainly we must credit this excess on the part of women with an important physical factor, aside from that of sex proper — being of a less hardy development than man — but these physical peculiarities permit sex to assert its most potent psychical effect to the degree of shaping the actions or destiny of woman. It will suffice, to illustrate the fact referred to, to take the figures from the report of two asylums for the insane — the Pennsyl- vania Hospital for the Insane, and the Michigan Asylum. Of 141 in- sane men and women received into these institutions, whose supposed cause of insanity could be traced to disappointed affections, 84 were women, and 57 were men. These figures are taken from an excess of 454 male over female inmates. Now, the figures, as we gather them from asylum reports, show that women are no more prone to insanity than men. It is natural to conclude that a specific cause leading to this excess of insanity in one sex over the other exists with greater force in one than the other, and not that one sex is less able to bear the operation of the specific cause. There are many well-known facts in physiology, some of them brought out with remarkable force during the employment of anses- thetics, other facts obtained from a state of organic disease, and others from functional derangements, which tend to prove the sexual origin of love, but which would be out of place in a paper of this character. But there is really no doubt expressed by modern writers on jDhysiolo- gy or psychology that this emotion is due to a sexual origin. Proof, such as I have advanced, becomes necessary from the popular scope of this paper, and that I have grouped a series of mental acts, and ap- plied to them the name of sexual cerebration. I offer, in conclusion, some general facts tending to define a funda- mental difference in the mental operations of men and women. M. Quetelet has shown that the propensity to crime existing in a mass of people bears a mathematical ratio, both as to its degree and the sex of the pei'petrators, to the total of population year by year. The cer- tainty of this ratio is the result of law, which has its origin in the forces which cement together a mass of men under the name of society. Now, the fixed ratio existing between men and women of the same community, as to the nature and extent of the commission of crime, must be the product of the mental and physical peculiarities of sex. 298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Thus, the author shows that the propensity to crime in men is about four times as great as in women, in France. Now, while this holds true as to crime in general, it does not as to crime in particular. In poisoning, the proportion is 91 women to 100 men, while in murder by other means the difference falls to 4 in 100. If we define the pro- pensity to crime by the enormity of the offense, we find the ratio of M. Quetfilet reduced just one-half, as the crime of parricide gives the ratio of 50 to 100. Contrasting with this last offense the wounding of parents, the ratio falls to 22. As the fact of a wound involves the necessity of a personal encounter, we perceive that women instinctive- ly— if I may use the word — shrink from this ; therefore, in estimating the means by which the j^arricides. so greatly exceeding the ratio of other murders, were accomplished, it is evident that some method peculiar to women entered largely into the crime. Next, taking into consideration two crimes, which may, inferentially, be attributed largely to the motive of revenge in both sexes, we find for that of in- cendiarism a ratio of 34, and for that of assassination a ratio of but 12 in 100. From this it is evident that the propensity to crime and the degree to which women recoil from publicity in its execution are widely different matters, and are traits which distinguish women from men in the perpetration of crime. So marked is this trait that the author, in analyzing crime in general with reference to sex, says that "their numbers diminish in proportion according to the necessity of the greater publicity before the crime can be perpetrated." There are other facts to be reached in this direction showing the extent to which women's criminal acts are affected by sexual peculiarities. In the two great divisions of crime, that against persons and that against property, we find that the sexes are engaged in almost a constant ra- tio. This is fixed for a series of years for the first class of crimes as 0.16, and for the second at 0.26. In connection with this is a fact, which reiterates itself with the force of a law. It is found that the proportions of the sexes engaged in the crimes against persons and property represent very nearly the same ratio as that of the strength of the two sexes, 16 to 26. The law which controls the commission of crime by the sexes evidently cannot be reduced to the formula of a difference in the projjensity to crime dependent upon the relative morality of men and women, but is governed by mental and physical sexual peculiarities. All these figures relate to four years previous to 1830.' The application of this to the matter under investigation is evi- dent. These various actions, involving more or less of thought and resolve, exhibit a radical difference, both in degree and quality, which umst have their factors in mental peculiarities. It cannot be objected that there is simply a fundamental physical basis for this difference, since the mental differences of sex must have their origin in the physi- ' " A Treatise on Man," pp. 90-92, SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 299 cal differences which constitute sex. The fact that the ratio of the extent to which women perpetrate crimes against property is to crimes against persons the same as the ratio of strength between men and women, j^roves that her less degree of physical power, whicli is a sexual property, so affects mental action that her deliberate acts are capable of tabulation, and, contrasted with those of men, show a con- stant series of differences year by year. Were it otherwise, we would expect that these uniform ratios, which point so unerringly to the workings of a law, would disappear, and in their place we should have tabulated confusion. "We obtained an idea of love differentially as it exists in the sexes by observing the degree to which it affects men and women as a prob- able cause of insanity. In the same manner I think we can gain a knowledge of the comparative intensity with which emotions and states of consciousness, common to both sexes, exist in intellection, by observing the extent to which they react as a probable cause of mental alienation. For my purpose I shall use Dr. Kirkbride's report for the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. The analysis is based upon the supposed causes of insanity in 6,899 cases. Domestic diffi- culties are the probable causes of mental disease in 47 men and 86 women. Nearly two to one expresses the difference in intensity in the action of this cause. Fright resulted in insanity in 16 men and 36 women. Grief affected "77 men and 256 women, a difference of more than three to one. Religious excitement acts as the cause in 79 men and 127 women, a difference of sixty-two per cent. Nostalgia, 7 women, and no men. From mental anxiety there are 164 men and 261 women insane. These causes, which present such dissimilarity, have one bond of union ; they affect the emotional part of the psychical nature. From this I would not conclude that women are less able to bear the operation of these exciting causes than men; but, that the emotional nature of woman is more largely developed, and thus more exposed to the action of such causes as directly affect it. If I am right in this, we would expect to see in women the emotional forms of insanity developed in excess of the same in men ; and this is just what we find. Continuing to analyze the tables of Dr. Kirkbride re- lating to the same cases as above, we find the number of women to be 3,220, the number of men exceeding them by 459 ; and yet, there are 1,032 cases of melancholia among the women to 832 in men. Prof. Maudsley defines this form of insanity as " great oppression of the self-feeling, with corresponding gloomy morbid idea." * The emotions, it is evident, are both the main recipients of the cause and the field of its morbid expression. Now, from what we know of the mental and physical constitution of woman, we should expect to find this form of insanity developed in excess of all others at the period of greatest sexual activity, and consequently of greatest 1 " The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," p. 320. 300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, emotional sensibility. And here, again, our anticipations are realized by the figures. The interval between twenty and forty years consti- tutes this period in women. For these ages inclusive we have 1,923 cases of insanity against 1,297 cases for all other ages. It therefore follows that more than one-half the cases of insanity for this period were of melancholia. We can gain a clearer idea of the intensity of emotional activity in women by extending further the same line of comparison in regard to men. For the ages between twenty and forty inclusive we have 2,172 cases of insanity, and but 832 cases of melan- cholia for all ages. This shows a marked contrast in the liability of the sexes to this form of mental disease ; for, at this period, the num- ber of male cases exceeding the female by 200, yet the percentage of melancholia is thirty-three against fifty-three per cent, for women. I do not believe that I err when I say that this excess in the emo- tional nature of woman over that of man is the outcome of physical and functional sexual traits, and is, consequently, anotlier phase of sexual cerebration. The above throws considerable light upon that peculiarity in woman's character so gracefully alluded to by George Eliot, and which I had so much difficulty in defining in the opening part of this article. This gentleness springs from woman's exquisite emotional susceptibility, as it is from the play of the emotions that this character becomes manifest. Having in view its origin in the emotions, and reaching its greatest development at the period of completion in woman's sexual genesis, the evidence of its existence as a form of sexual cerebration becomes complete. Were it otherwise, we would expect to see it obeying laws other than those of sexual development, and not existing in equal intensity during childhood, developed in ex- cess of the male at womanhood, to disappear in the placidity of old age. I have been using these statistics of insanity for the purpose of showing the extent of normal diflTerences in the mental constitution of the sexes, and consequently of normal sexual cerebration. If we were to consider this in its abnormal phases, we would have opened before us another great field of investigation, the study of which would throw much light upon many problems of sex. Puerperal and gesta- tional mania, the singular perversion of the maternal emotion attend- ing lactation, are of special importance with reference to abnormal sexual cerebration. Hysteria, peculiarly a feminine disease, undoubt- edly has its origin in sexual functional derangement, and is a striking example of the extent to which the emotional nature may be perverted by the abnormal actions of certain organs. Those cases of the social evil which break out from the purest domestic surroundings, and which defy all attempts at reform, are evidently due to the perver- sion of a healthful psychical state. The services of a skilled physician are needed to reform this class, and not the sentimental aid of reform societies, or the visits of the colporteur. HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 301 But here we are dealing with the healthy evidence of sex in mind. I have referred to but few of the many recognized intellectual states or processes, and yet they are sufficient to define differentially the average mental conditions of the sexes. With these as a basis of dif- ference, the acuteness of intuitions, the vividness of imagination, and the want of intellectual belligerence, so often spoken of as traits of the feminine mind, and the existence of a modified or opposite form of these in the mental type of the other sex, can, with equal justice, be traced to sexual differences. Sex does not exist simply as a physi- cal state ; but we find it pervading organic life, and asserting itself potentially in every mental process. I believe the relation of the sexes in society bears to sexual cerebration the relation of cause and effect. Since the beginning of the historic age, under every variety of mental and physical conditions, the sexes have preserved their moral relations to each other almost unchanged. In what way can this be explained, except as the working of a natural law ? There appears to me to be no law so adequate to explain this as that of sexual cerebration. Several of the reviewers of a former paper seem to have regarded me as the avowed enemy of woman's social and moral advancement. I have entered upon the study of the relations of the sexes to the matters of daily life, with the single purpose of arriving at truth by the use of scientific methods. I believe the field gone over in this and former papers to belong properly to the student of Nature, and not to the so-called social reformer. I cannot bring myself to use the term " woman's sphere ; " women have no sphere, except as it is de- fined by usefulness. I concede to woman the right to essay her for- tune in any profession : I simply claim the right to courteously study her in her new relations. The ethnologist cannot be called the enemy of mankind, because he studies the diffei-ent natural races of men ; the botanist cannot be called the enemy of the rose, because he has ana- lyzed its parts, and assigned it its place as a thing of beauty in the scheme of Nature. -♦♦♦- THE DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. ' n. THAVE suggested the thought of a God revealed in Nature, not by any means because such a view of God seems to me satisfactory, or worthy to replace the Christian view, or even as a commencement from which we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view. I have suggested it because this is the God whom the present age actually does, and in spite of all opposition, certainly will worship, also because ^ From a series of papers, in Maonillan's Magazine, on "Natural Religion." 302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. this aspect of God is common to all theologies, however much in some it may be slighted or depreciated ; and, lastly, because I do not believe that any theology can be real or satisfying that does not make it promi- nent as well as admit it. I can conceive no religion as satisfactory that falls short of Christianity ; but, on the other hand, I cannot be- lieve any religion to be healthy that does not start from Nature-wor- ship. It is in the free and instinctive admiration of human beings for the glory of heaven, earth and sea, that religion begins, and I cannot imagine but as morbid a religion which has ceased to admire them. But many readers will probably think that not much is to be hoped for from dwelling on this subject. " We know very well that the uni- verse is glorious, but, when you have said that, there is an end of the matter. "We want to make atheists believe in God, and you do it not by changing their minds, but by changing the meaning of the word God. It is not a verbal controversy that rages between atheists and Christians, but a controversy that concerns the most serious realities. When people display such rancor against religion as was shown by the Paris Commune, you may be sure there is some essential matter in dispute, and that nothing is more vain than to attempt to reconcile them by refining upon words. According to the definition you have given of theism, no rational being could ever be an atheist." I will endeavor to answer this supposed objection at length, and the part of it which sounds the most formidable will give me the least trouble. That people do not shoot and stab each other for a word is not always true. In fact, when the word is theological that is just what people do. It has often been remarked of theological controver- sies, that they are never conducted more bitterly than when the dif- ference between the rival doctrines is very small. This is nearly cor- rect, but not quite. If you want to see the true white heat of contro- versial passion, if you want to see men fling away the very thought of reconciliation, and close in internecine conflict, you should look at controversialists who do not differ at all^ but who have adopted dif- fei'ent words to express the same opinion. But the other question raised in the objection, the question whether there can be such a thing as atheism, will furnish me with a convenient point from which I may start for a fuller explanation of what I mean by the worship of God in Nature. As I have represented modern science as a form of theism, and as there is no rational man who does not believe — at least, in a general way — in science, it follows of course tbat no sensible man in these times can be speculatively an atheist. And I believe no one can, however many great philosophers may have congratulated themselves upon accomplishing that feat. If, then, no man could be an atheist practically without being one speculatively also, it would be true that men are entirely mistaken in the importance they attach to the distinction between theist and so-called atheist. It would then appear to be a misdescribed distinction, and to be in reality HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 303 only a distinction between two kinds of theists. This is what in com- mon controversy it actually is. One might suppose beforehand that the theist and atheist must necessarily have the whole diameter be- tween them, that their thoughts upon all subjects must be affected by this fundamental difference. It is not so in fact ; the theist and the so-called atheist often indeed differ very widely, but sometimes also they think very much alike. This is, in reality, because one or other has been misnamed, for, between a real and thoroughly convinced theist and an atheist really deserving that name, there is almost as much difference as we could expect ; only the latter character is not very easy to meet with. An atheist in the proper sense of the word is not a man who dis- believes in the goodness of God, or in his distinctness from Nature, or in his personality. These disbeliefs may be as serious in their way as atheism, but they are different. Atheism is a disbelief in the existence of God — that is, a disbelief in any regularity in the universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties. Such a disbelief, as I have said, is speculatively monstrous, but it may exist practically, and where it does is an evil as fatal to character and virtue as the most timid religionist supposes. We may consider here, briefly, some of the forms which atheism assumes. The purest form of atheism might be called by the general name of xoillf Illness. All human activity is a transaction with Nature. It is the arrangement of a compromise between what we want on the one hand and what Nature has decreed on the other. Something of our own wishes we have almost always to give up ; but by carefully con- sidering the power outside ourselves, the necessity that conditions all our actions, we may make better terms than we could otherwise, and reduce to a minimum what we are obliged to renounce. Now we may either underrate or overrate the force of our own wills. The first is the extravagance of theism; it is that fatalism which steals so natu- rally upon those who have dwelt much upon the thought of God, which is said to paralyze, for example, the whole soul of the Mussulman. But the opposite mistake is a deficiency of theism ; a touch of it often marks the hero, but the fullness of it is that kind of blind infatuation which poets have represented under the image of the giants that tried to storm heaven. Not to recognize any thing but your own will, to fancy every thing within your reach if you only will strongly enough, to acknowledge no superior power outside yourself which must be considered and in some way propitiated if you would succeed in any undertaking — this is complete willfulness, or, in other words, pure atheism. It may also be called childishness, for the child naturally discovers the force within it sooner than the resisting necessity outside. Not without a few falls in the wrestle with Nature do we learn the limits of our own power and the pitiless immensity of the power that is not ours. But there are many who cannot learn this lesson even 304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. from experience, who forget every defeat they suffer, and always refuse to see any power in the universe but their own wills. Sometimes, indeed, they discover their mistake too late. Many barbarous races are in this condition. In their childishness they have engaged them- selves in a direct conflict with Natiire. Instead of negotiating with her, they have declared a blind war. They have adopted habits which they gradually discover to be leading them to destruction ; but they discover it too late and when they are too deeply compromised. Then we see the despair of the atheistic nation, and its wild struggles as it feels itself caught in the whirlpool ; then, a little later, we find that no such nation exists, and on the map its seat begins to be covered with names belonging to another language. Less extreme and unre- deemed, the same Titanism may sometimes be remarked in races called civilized. Races might be named that are undergoing punishments little less severe for this insensate atheism. " Sedet seternumque sedebit," that unhappy Poland, not indeed extinguished but partitioned, and every thirty years decimated anew. She expiates the crime of atheistic willfulness, the fatal pleasure of unbounded individual liberty, which rose up against the very nature of things. And other nations we know that expect all successes from the mere blind fury of willing, that declare the word impossible unknown to their language. They color their infatuation sometimes with the name of self-sacrifice, and fancy they can change the Divine laws by offering up themselves as victims to their own vanity; they "fling themselves against the bars of fate;" they die in theatrical attitudes, and little know how "the abyss is wreatlied in scorn" of such cheap martyrdom. A wrong belief about God, however fatal it may be, is not atheism. Ml*. Buckle tried to show that the Spanish empire fell through a false conception of the order of the universe; and it seems clear that the rigid Catholic Adew of the world is dangerous in this age to every nation that adopts it. These are the effects of false theology. But there is a state of mind which, though very far removed from the will- fulness I have been describing, and often accompanied with a strong and anxious religiousness, may nevertheless be practically regarded as a form of atheism. It is the state of those minds which, fully be- lieving in an order of the universe, yet have such a poor and paltry conception of it that they might almost as well have none at all. People are sometimes led to this by a very reasonable and excus- able process of thought. Naturally modest and distrustful of their own powers, they despair of understanding the order of the universe ; they think it almost presumptuous to attempt to understand it. Wisely distrustful of any knowledge that is not precise, they avert their eyes instinctively fi'om every thing which cannot be made the subject of such knowledge. In all their transactions with Nature, to use my former phrase, they make it a rule to be unambitious. They aim at objects very definite and very near. Whatever they g^in they HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 305 make it a rule not to expose to any further risk. They avoid, as it were, meeting the universe in front, and endeavor to overcome it in detail. For its immediate purpose this plan is the best that can be pursued. If in all our actions we allowed ourselves to remember the greatness of the power with which we have to do, we should accomplish noth- ing ; if, because Nature's laws are large and comjirehensive, we never acted except on the largest principles, we should either fall a prey to unsound generalizations, the more ruinous because of their grandeur, or we should become paralyzed with a Turkish fatalism. Far better, no doubt, it is to make the utmost use of what precise knowledge we have, however little may be the amount of it, and, not to suffer our minds to be bewildered by coping too freely with an adversary whose play is beyond us. It is these humble, cautiously inductive people that prosper most in the world up to a certain point. To them belong the large populations, the thriving communities, the stable politics. They never dream of defying Nature ; they win an endless series of small victories over her. There is no reason why this cautiousness should necessarily degen- erate into little-mindedness. It does not take its beginning in any deficiency in the feeling for what is great. On the contrary, it is the direct result of an overwhelming sense of the greatness and, so to speak, the dangerousness of Nature. Those who proceed thus warily, probing Nature as they go, may with most reason expect to penetrate far and to elevate their minds gradually until they can venture to cope with the grandeur of the world and become familiar with great ideas. And when this is done they will have escaped the danger of atheism. Their minds will become the mirror of an Infinite Being, and their whole natures will be conformed to his. But in the earlier stages of such a process the temptation to a kind of atheism is strong. From the habit of leaving out of account all larger considerations in every problem, on the ground that they are vague and not precisely calculable, they are led easily to forget the very existence of such con- siderations. In some cases this habit even leads to great practical miscalculations. It is evidently a mistake in algebra to assume that all unknown quantities = 0 ; yet this mistake is constantly made by the practical men I am describing. When vague considerations are suggested to them, instead of assigning them an approximate value, which, since they cannot get the true value, is evidently what they ought to do, they leave them out of account altogether, though an in- determinate value may just as easily be large as small. But it is not with these practical mistakes that I am now concerned ; practically these men are more often right than wrong, though in the exceptional cases, when every thing turns on a great principle, they fail deplorably. But the habit of never suffering the mind to dwell on any thing great produces often an atheism of the most pitiable and helpless kind. The soul of man lives upon the contemplation of laws or principles ; VOL, VII.— 20 3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. it is made to be constantly assimilating such sustenance from the uni- verse; this is its food: not by bread only, hut by every word that pro- ceedeth out of the mouth of God, doth man live. What, then, must be the moral starvation of the man who, from an excess of caution, turns away from every thing of the kind, until from want of habit he can no longer see such tilings, and forgets their very existence ; so that for him there is no longer any glory in the universe ! For all beauty or glory is but the presence of law ; and the universe to him has ceased to be a scene of law, and has become an infinite litter of detail, a rub- bish-lieap of confused particulars, a mere worry and weariness to the imagination. I have been describing the Philistine, the miserable slave of details, who worships a humiliated, dissected and abject deity, a mere Dagon, "fallen flat upon the grundsel-edge, and shaming his worshipers." There is a particular form of conventionalism which all men who see it instinctively call by the name of atheism. By conventionalism generally, I understand the mistaking of institutions, usages, forms of society, which essentially are temporary and transitory, for normal and permanent forms. It is conventionalism, for example, when he- reditary royalty or aristocracy are supposed to be not merely good institutions in particular cases but necessary in all countries and times. There is nothing at all atheistic in such a mistake ; it is rather a super- stition— that is, it is a false belief, but still a belief. The temporary arrangements are honestly confused with eternal laws, the feelings and views which in course of time have grown up around them are hon- estly mistaken for essential morality. The devoted adherents of the exiled Stuarts and Bourbons, the early Jesuits and the other champi- ons of the counter-reformation, seem to me to have been such conven- tionalists. I think they confounded a transitory state of things with the sacred and eternal laws of human society. But for a long time their faith was genuine though mistaken. They had a God, and there- fore they had vigor, and occasionally victory. But at the same time their belief was an ebbing tide. The movement of the age was, on the whole, against it ; their successes always bore the marks of being accidental, and were followed in no long time by more than equiva- lent reverses. They could never give a character of reality to what they created; they could seldom feel quite easy and happy in their party strife. Their eloquence was copious and sonorous, but not often quite natural, and seldom convincing or overwhelming. And with such conventionalists, when the age puts them on their defense, these misgivings, this uneasiness, this constraint and depression go on in- creasing. Doubt penetrates them in spite of all their resistance, in spite of all the chivalrous devotion to their cause upon which they pride themselves. In the ardor of conflict they have pushed into the foreground all the weakest parts of their creed, and have got into the habit of asserting most vehemently just what they doubt most, be- HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 307 cause it is what is most denied. As their own belief ebbs away from them, they are precluded from learning a new one, because they are too deeply pledged, have promised too much, asseverated too much, and involved too many others with themselves. Thus their language becomes more and more vehement and hollow, more and more despair- ing under the mask of triumphant confidence. It may happen that the cause they defend is not merely unsound, but terribly bad, that what they have taken for sacred institutions are in reality monstrous abuses. Then, as they become reluctantly enlightened, as their advo- cacy grows first a little forced, then by degrees consciously hypocriti- cal, until in the end their eyes are fully opened not only to the fact that their cause is bad, but, to all the enormous badness of it, there follows a complete moral dissolution of the whole man. Unable to abandon a position he is bound to, forced to act belief and enthusiasm when under the mask there is the very opposite of both — settled dis- belief and utter disapproval — the man sees now in the universe noth- ing but a chaos. At the beginning he had a God ; his actions were regulated by a law which he recognized in the universe; but now he recognizes this law no more, and yet is forbidden by his situation from recognizing any other. The link that bound him to the universe is snapped; the motive that inspired his actions is gone, and his actions have become meaningless, mechanical, galvanic. He is an atheist, a man without a God because without a law. Such men may generally be noted among the most intelligent adherents of expiring causes, demoralized soldiers, powerless for good and capable of any mischief. These are specimens of what seems to me to be properly called athe- ism. The common characteristic of all these states of mind is feeble- ness. In the first example you have violent feebleness, impotence ; in the second, cautious feebleness ; in the thii-d, cynical feebleness; but in all cases feebleness springing from a conscious want of any clew to the order of the universe. The specimens I have selected are all such as may be furnished by men of great natural vigor. The cynical atheist has often an extreme subtilty of intellect, the Philistine commonly be- gins with a great grasp of reality, a great superiority to illusions ; the willful atheist.has often much imagination and energy. Where a char- acter wanting in energy is infected by atheism, you have those anevrjva Kciprjva of which the world is at all times full. By the side of the profound cynic you have the mere lounger, who can take an interest in nothing, all whose thoughts are hearsays, never verified, never real- ized, not believed, not worthy of the name of prejudices — echoes of prejudices, imitations of hypocrisy. He moves about embarrassed and paralyzed by the hollowness of all he knows ; conscious that nothing that he has in his mind would bear the smallest criticism or probation, knowing no way to any thing better, and meanwhile ingenuously con- fessing his own inanity. By the side of the over-judicious Philistine, who has fallen into feebleness through an excessive dread of general- 3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. izing hastily, there may be seen the born Philistine, who does not know, and has never heard, what generalizing is, who becomes uncom- fortable when he hears a principle enunciated, as if he had been ad- dressed by a foreigner in some language unknown to him, and whose homely talk never willingly travels beyond what time the train starts, and whether it happened on Monday or on Tuesday. Lastly, by the side of the brilliant Utopian, who overlooks the greatness of the ne- cessity with which he has to contend, there is the Utopian without brilliancy, the enrage^ the mere restless disturber. As atheism is but another name for feebleness, so the universal characteristic of theology — if we put aside for the present the rare belief in an utterly hostile or thwarting Deity — is energy. He who has a faith, we know well, is twice himself. The world, the conven- tional or temporary order of things, goes down before the weapons of faith, before the energy of those who have a glimpse, or only tliink they have a glimpse, of the eternal or normal order of things. And this vigor of theism does not much depend on the nature of the God in whom the theist believes. Just as atheism does not consist in a bad theory of the universe, but in the want of any theory, so theism consists not in possessing a meritorious or true or consoling theoi-y, but simply in possessing a theory of the universe. He who has such a theory acts with confidence and decision, he who has no such the- ory is paralyzed. One of the rudest of all theories of the universe is that propounded by Mohammed, yet it raised ujd a feeble and dis- persed nation to vigor, union, and empire. Calvinism presents as- suredly a view of the universe which is not in any way consoling, yet this creed too gave vigor and heroism. The creed of the earliest Romans rested upon no basis which could for a moment pass for philo- sophical, yet while it was believed it gave order to the state, sanction to morality, victory to the armies. Whatever kind of theology be in question, so long as it is truly believed, the only danger is of its in- spiring too much energy — of its absorbing its votaries too much, and driving them into extreme courses. And so if the Nature recognized by Science be not benevolent, and have provided no future life for men, it does not follow that her vota- ries are not theologians, and it is quite clear that their theology gives them energy. Many theologies have had no future life ; indeed, it is well known that our own, in its earlier Judaic form, laid no stress upon any future life. And it is not the benevolence of his Deity which gives so much energy and confidence to the convinced theist ; it is rather the assurance that he has the secret of propitiating his Deity. It was not because Jupiter and Mars were benevolent beings that the Roman went out to battle confiding in their protection. It was because all sacrifices had been performed which the pontifis or the Sibylline books prescribed. Just of the same kind is the theistic vigor which we see in modern science. Science also has its jjrocuratio HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 309 prodigioritm. It does not believe that Nature is benevolent, and yet it has all the confidence of Mohammedans or Crusaders. This is be- cause it believes it understands the laws of Nature, and knows how to deal so that Nature shall favor its operations. Not by the Sibyl- line books, but by experiment ; not by suj^plications, but by scientific precautions and operations, it discovers and pi'opitiates the mind of its Deity. But by the side of this scientific theology decrying theology there is also a popular outcry against theology. The Revolution in Europe delights in declaring itself atheistic. The meaning of this in the main is, that it wishes to express in the tersest possible way its hatred of the reigning theology. But with this feeling there is no doubt a mixt- ure of that real atheism I have described above under the name of willfulness. These revolutionists have so little conception of the great- ness of the powers which determine the order of things, that they im- agine they have only to make up their minds and to exjjress their reso- lution with suflicient vehemence and to fling away their lives with suffi- cient recklessness, and human society will in a short time assume just the shape they wish. They think, in short, that they themselves are very great, and that Nature is very little. Still, it is evident enough that their hatred against the reigning theology is not a merely capri- cious feeling. It is no wild, egotistic grudge against whatever is pow- erful, however this feeling may occasionally blend with it. It is a serious, persistent, deep-rooted aversion. But it by no means follows that the reigniug system excites their hatred purely as a theology, even though they themselves believe so. In their furious invectives against God, nothing is moi-e evident than that they are thinking of a special conception of God, and, though they themselves do not profess to substitute any other conception, it is very possible they are uncon- sciously doing so. At any rate, the mere fact that these men are nominally atheists proves no more than is proved by the same name having been commonly bestowed upon the first Christians. What, then, are the grounds of the irreconcilable repugnance of the Revolution for theology ? Nothing is more easy than to distinguish and enumerate the principal ones. First may be ranked the political ground, that is, the intimate connection in which they find theology standing to the political system they are laboring to overthrow. Twice in modern Europe it has been possible to discern the inter- dependence of the reigning political with the reigning theological system. Modern history is filled with two great movements, the Reformation and the Revolution. The first was an attempt to purify religion, the second an attempt to reform government and society. In both cases the principal obstacle to the movement was found in the coalition of the Church and Government. The decided reaction against the Reformation which marks the second half of the sixteenth century, and which ended in restoring the mediaeval form of Chris- 310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, tianity in so many countries of Europe, seems to have been principally caused by the feeling of some courts, particularly the imperial court, that they could not afford to forfeit the support of the great Catholic organization, and by the corresponding disposition in Catholicism to ally itself with governments. The principle of saving the Church by the help of governments was avowed — Ranke tells us — by Pope Pius IV., and it was by this means that Catholicism was restored upon a new and strengthened foundation at the Council of Trent. What the Church owed to the state for protection against the Reformation it repaid two centuries later in assistance against the Revolution. A time had come round when the state was threatened as the Church had been, and now kings became faithful churchmen as the church- men of Pius IV.'s school had before become faithful royalists. For half a century kings had coquetted with free-thought, and free-thought had flattered kings. But when the crisis came, and royalty was in danger, it hurried back to find shelter in the Church. Napoleon, Charles X., and the Emperor Francis, formed the new alliance by which theology was called in to drive out revolution in the state, just as Pius IV. formed the older alliance with royalty against Reforma- tion in the Church. The natural effect of this coalition is to incline the Revolution to attack the Church at the same time that it assails Government. Atheism has become the creed of revolution because theology has been the traditional creed of monarchy and of privilege. But is it true that theology is necessarily conservative or mo- narchical, because it happens to be true of the Christian Church, or the most prominent part of it, at this particular time ? At particular times and places theology has been revolutionary. The earliest Christians must have seemed the most revolutionary party of the Greek and Roman world. Mohammedanism was so violently revolu- tionary that it completely transformed the Eastern world, and has caused almost the whole East to look back upon the ages preceding it as iipon " times of ignorance." The same may be said of Buddhism in Asia. And certainly one form at least of Protestantism — I mean Puritanism — was revolutionary in spirit, and led either to an abridg- ment of royal power or to positive republicanism. Hereditary royalty and aristocratic privilege were the institutions which, in the last century, the Revolution attacked. It was histori- cally in the names of skepticism, and sometimes of atheism, that the attack was conducted. But there was no reason at all in the nature of things why the same attack should not have been made in the name of theology. In France, theology has been on the side of privilege, and equality has been associated with opposition to theology. But, in Turkey the opposite has happened ; the equality of mankind has been preached, and successfully, in the name of theology. If a Chris- tian preacher had been inspired to do so, he might with perfect war- rant from his religion have proclaimed equality in France. Indeed, HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 311 this was to some extent what actually happened. Rousseau spoke partly in the name of theology, and even of Christian theology ; and it was not until the skeptical foundation had been in a manner aban- doned, and an appeal made to religion, that the spirit of political change awoke. Indeed, to say that the Revolution has charged upon theology itself what is merely the defect of a particular theology, is a state- ment much short of the truth. The conservatism of the Church in the last ages is not principally due to the natural tendencies of the Christian religion. It is not so much Christianity as the Church that has been conservative. Church and government have been drawn together not so much from any natural sympathy — witness their per- petual conflicts in the middle ages — as by a common danger. All that can be said is, that in the hour of difficulty, when it was their obvious interest to combine, they have not found themselves so anti- pathetic that they could not do so. In neither of the two great crises was the help rendered by the one to the other disinterested. In the sixteenth century it was the Church that was threatened most ; but governments were also uneasy, and took as well as gave in the arrange- ment they made with the Church. In the Revolution the state strug- gled for life, but the distress of the Church was almost as great. In these circumstances they would be driven into alliance even in the absence of any natural affinity, and being once in alliance would ex- cite the indiscriminate aversion of the Revolution as if they had been natural allies. In one instance at least this has been strikingly real- ized. When the Revolution attacked monarchy and privilege, it was not very surprising that they should attack Christianity at the same time. Christianity is entirely silent on the question of liberty, and lends no support to those who contend against despotism. It has been used to defend despotism, and not without plausibility. It is not quite the same with privilege. Christianity is clearly favorable on the whole to equality, and yet even here its declaration is not very distinct. But in due time the Revolution, having conquered these enemies, went on to attack new ones. Leaving behind its mediaeval monarchy and aristocracy, it proclaimed war against plutocracy. It proclaimed the principle of fraternity, fraternity between individuals as opposed to reckless competition in industry, fraternity between nations as opposed to war. Now, this new principle is not merely consistent with Christianity ; to say this would be almost as absui'd as to call it inconsistent with Christianity. It is neither more nor less than Christianity itself, Christianity is certainly not a socialistic system, because it is not, in that sense of the word, a system at all, but most assuredly Christianity furnished the ideas which the differ- ent socialistic systems are blundering attempts to realize, Not only so, but I believe that Christianity as a morality actually did nothing else, and that the modern word fraternity coincides exactly with the 312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, moral side of Christianity. And when fraternity was first put upon the order of the day in 1848, this fact was to some extent recognized. Christianity actually played a certain part in that Revolution. But then followed a restoration of the old alliance between the Church and Government. For twenty years they continued accomplices in reaction. The consequence has been that when Revolution once more raises its head, it is no longer able to see the identity of fraternity and Christianity, nay, absolutely identifies Christianity with the negation of fi'aternity. How far it is possible to falsify an institution was never known to mankind until, in 1871, the Paris workmen assailed with irreconcilable fury the Church of Christ in the name of human brother- hood. Thus the political repugnance of the Revolution to theology is in part merely a repugnance to an institution which has falsified the theology of which it is the depositary, and in any case is a repug- nance not to theology as such, but merely to a particular theology. But the Revolution has also, no doubt, a quarrel with theology as a doctrine. " Theology," it says, " even if not exactly opposed to social improvement, is a superstition, and as such allied to ignorance and conservatism. Granting that its precepts are good, it enforces them by legends and fictitious stories which can only influence the unedu- cated ; and, therefore, in order to preserve its influence, it must needs oppose education. Nor are these stories a mere excrescence of the- ology, but theology itself. For theology is neither more nor less than a doctrine of the supernatural. It proclaims a power behind Nature which occasionally interferes with natural laws. It proclaims another world quite different from this in which we live, a world into which what is called the soul is believed to pass at death. It believes, in short, in a number of things which students of Nature know nothing about, and which science puts aside either with respect or with con- tempt." Now, these supernatural doctrines are not merely a part of theology, still less separable from theology, but theology consists ex- clusively of them. Take away the supernatural person, miracles, and tlie spiritual world, you take away theology at the same time, and nothing is left but simple Nature and simple science. Thus theology comes to be used in the sense of supernaturalism, and in this view also excites the hostility of the age. Not merely scientific men themselves, for of these I am not now speaking, but liberals in general, all those who have any tinctui-e of science, all whose minds have in any degree taken the scientific stamp, a vast number already, and, as education spreads, likely to become coextensive with civilized mankind, form a habit of thought with which they are led to consider theology irreconcilable. It is a singular coincidence which has combined in apparent op- position to theology the two mightiest forces of the present age. Truly it is not against flesh and blood that Religion has to contend, HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 313 but against principalities and powers, that is, against the Revolution and against Science. Hasty minds, poetic imaginations, ready theo- rists, will never be content to see a mere coincideujce in this. They will not admit that theology has been undeservedly charged with all the sins of that ancient corporation called the Christian Church, with which sins in reality it had nothing whatever to do. It is much more convenient to imagine the Church as the body of which theology is the soul, and to trace all the body's actions to the natural disposition of the informing soul. By this easy process we arrive at the conclu- sion that theology is an essentially conservative and stagnant principle, with the strongest natural affinity for despotism, privilege, respecta- bility, and every kind of antiquated pretension ; that, in short, it is a way of viewing the universe which inevitably leads to all the vices peculiar to old endowed corporations. And that an institution which is opposed to the Revolution should be at the same time at war with Science will never be thought a mere coincidence. Party spirit will be adroit enousrh to make it out that Science and Revolution are as soul and body on the one side, as theology and conservatism are on the other; that people who believe in miracles must necessarily side with capital against labor, and that large standing armies follow logi- cally from a belief in benevolent design. As to the mistake which lies in confounding theology with super- naturalism it is not necessary here to do more than repeat shortly what was said in the first chapter. First, then, there is no necessary connection between theology and supernaturalism. It is quite pos- sible to believe in a God, and even a personal God, of whom Nature is the complete and only manifestation. Supernaturalism is part of the reigning theology, but it is not any necessary part of theology, as such. Secondly, when it is said that supernaturalism is identical with theology, this is not true at all, even of the reigning theology, i, e., of modern Christianity. Such a notion has sprung from a confusion of ideas. In the controversy between Christianity and Science it has be- come usual for shortness to give the name of theology (meaning Chris- tianity) to that part of theology which science controverts. This is a very usual and, if rightly understood, a very harmless controversial practice. The agreements between theology and Science may very properly be overlooked by controversy which is only concerned with their differences. But it is the mistake constantly made by contro- versialists to adopt this abridged notation, as I might call it, outside the domain of controversy. For example, Catholicism means two quite different things according as the word is used in controversy or not. In controversy with Protestantism, Catholicism means worship of the Virgin and the saints, transubstantiation, purgatory. But no mistake could be more monstrous than to suppose that if all these doctrines were removed Catholicism would disappear. On the con- trary, by far the larger half would remain — worship of God, worship 314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of Christ, heaven and hell, forgiveness of sins, the law of love. In the same way, in controversy with Science, Christianity (not theology) and supernaturalism are convertible terms. That is to say, if super- naturalism is refuted. Science wins and Christianity loses in the par- ticular controversy in which they are engaged. In the conti'oversial sense this is the destruction of Christianity, but only in the controver- sial sense. For when the worship of God outside Nature is taken away, the worship of God in Nature remains. Whether this residue is impoi'tant or unimportant will be considered later ; at any rate, it is there ; and we may say at once that it would not be surprising if it should turn out more considerable than controversialists believe, when we remember how habitual it is for controversialists to exaggerate their diflerences, and generally how prodigiously exaggerated is the common estimate of the province of debate and dispute in human affairs. At any rate, it is evident that the theology of the book of Job, of many of the Psalms, e. g.,the 104th, of many passages in the Prophets, of many discourses of Christ, of many passages in the Epistles, would remain unaffected if supernaturalism were entirely abandoned. I will say no more at this stage. On the whole, then, when we look at the great controversy of the age, what do we see ? It is said that a furious attack upon theology is being made by the two distinct though allied hosts of Science and Revolution. But we see something essentially different. We see that what is called Science is indeed a most formidable power, against whomsoever she may declare war, but that her enemy is not theology, but supernaturalism, and that Science herself has all the character of a theology, not comforting or elevating like that she opposes, but not less capable of inspiring zeal and subduing the mind with conviction, and bearing in her hand a budget of practical reforms ; and, moreover, that the Deity of her devotion is not different, but only a too much disregarded aspect of the Deity of Christians. The host of Revolution which we see approaching from another side is far less formidable. It is infuriated, but neither knows what it would overthrow nor what it would build. But we can see that its enemy is not theology at all, nor even supernaturalism, except in a secondary degree. It is en- raged against an ancient corporation, which, having something medi- aeval in its constitution, like so many other corporations, has been led in tlie latest centuries to make common cause with other mediaeval institutions which were endangered by the modern spirit. This cor- poration happens to be the depositary of a theology partly super- naturalistic, but we can see plainly that had it been the depositary of modern science itself it would have excited just the same animosity, nay, probably very much more, for in fact its creed in some aspects is in most remarkable agreement with tlie revolutionary creed itself. The result, then, is this — of atheism, that demoralizing palsy of THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BIRD. 315 human nature, which consists in the inability to discern in the uni- verse any law by which human life may be guided, there is in the present age less danger than ever, and it is daily made more and more impossible by science itself: of revolt against the Christian law of fra- ternity, there is also less than ever in this age, and that redemption of the poor and that pacification of nations which Christianity first suggested are more prominent than ever among the aspirations of mankind. On the other hand, the organization of the Church seems ill-adapted to the age, and seems to expose it to the greatest danger ; and, what is far more serious, the old elevating communion with God, which Christianity introduced, appears to be threatened by the new scientific theology, which, while presenting to us deeper views than ever of his infinite and awful greatness, and more fascinating views than ever of his eternal beauty and glory, denies for the present to him that human tenderness, justice, and benevolence, which Christ taught us to see in him. — Macmilla^i's Magazine. •*•*■ THE BIOGKAPHT OF A BIED. By ERNEST INGEESOLL. THE bird which is the subject of this sketch is familiar to all who walk in green pastures and beside still waters ; for in such haunts do the J3ank-Swallows congregate in merry companies, making up for their want of companionship with man, which is so character- istic of the other hirundines, by a large sociability among themselves. Conservator of ancient ways, it is almost the only swallow which has not attached itself to humanity as soon as it had opportunity, and changed from a savage to a civilized bird. Perhaps it, too, has tried it, long ago, and voluntarily returned to the fields ; for our bank-swal- low is a cosmopolite, and has watched the rise and fall of all the dynas- ties and nationalities that have grouped the centuries into eras, from Nineveh to San Francisco. It is at present an inhabitant of all Europe and eastward to China; of a large part of Africa, especially in win- ter ; and throughout North America, the West Indies, Central Amer- ica, and the northern Andean countries. On both continents its wan- derings extend to the extreme north, where, in Alaska, it is one of the commonest summer visitors. So this modest little bird, smallest of his kind, is entitled to our respect as a traveler at least ; and, to compare the habits and appearance of the representatives in different portions of the globe of so widely distributed a species, becomes a most inter- esting study. Gotyle riparia, the bank-swallow, sand-martin, sand-swallow, river- swallow, VhirondeUe de rivage, or back-svala, is generally diff'used over 3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the Northern Hemisphere though very unequally, avoiding those spots unfavorable to them. In this distribution they seem to have been somewhat influenced by man, though owing him no other favors than the incidental help of railroad-cuttings and sand-pits which have in- creased the sites suitable for their nests and enabled them to spread inland. It is one of the earliest birds to arrive in the spring, appearing in Old England during the last week in March, and in New England early in May, many passing on to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where Richardson, at the mouth of the Mackenzie, and Dall, on the Yukon, found them breeding in immense numbers. In these high lati- tudes its summer is necessarily a brief one, and September finds them back again picking up their congeners for company on the southward journey. Where these and other swallows spend the winter was a hotly- debated question among ornithologists at the beginning of the pres- ent century ; some afiirming that they migrated with the sun, while others, believing it impossible that such small and delicate birds could endure the great fatigue and temperatures incident to such a migra- THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BIRD. 317 tion, held that they regularly hibernated, during the cold weather, sinking into the mud at the bottom of ponds, like frogs, or curling up in deep, warm crannies, like bats, and remaining torpid until revived by tlie warmth of spring. Of this latter opinion was White, of Sel- borue, who alludes to it again and again, and Sir Thomas Forster wrote a " Monograph of British Swallows," apparently with no other object tlian to present the arguments for and against the theory of their annual submersion and torj^idity. One of the difficulties which the suhmersionists put in the way of the migrationists was the fre- quent accidental and isolated appearance of the swallow before its usual time — a fact which has occasioned a proverb in almost every lan- guage. The French have, " Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printetrips ;''"' the Germans, '"'' Eine Schwalbe macht Tceinen Fruhling j'''' the Dutch, " Een zwaluw niaak geen zomer ; " the Italians, " Una rodhie non fa primavera j'''' the Swedes, ^^ En svala gov ingen sommar ;''"' which all mean. One sicallow doth not make a summer. The story is well known of a thin brass plate having been fixed on a swallow with this inscrip- tion : " Pi-ithee, swallow, whither goest thou in winter?" The bird returned next spring with the answer subjoined : " To Anthony, of Athens. Why dost thou inquire ? " Out of this controversy, evidence of their sudden autumnal ad- journment to Africa accumulated in England. Wilson, in this coun- try, showed that their advance could be traced in the spring from New Orleans to Lake Superior and back again, and their regular mi- gration soon came to be acknowledged. Then attention was turned to the season, manner and limits of their migrations, and it was found that, taking advantage of favorable winds, immense flocks of swal- lows— and many other birds of passage as well — flying very high, passed each fall from the coast of England to the coast of Africa, and from Continental Europe across the Mediterranean direct, whence they spread southward almost to the Cape of Good Hope. No sooner had the spring fairly opened than they were suddenly back again, very much exhausted at first with their long-sustained eflbrt, but speedily recuperated and " diligent in business." Our own migrants, as I have mentioned, winter in Central America and the West Indies, or still farther south. Their flight is rapid, but unsteady, " with odd jerks and vacilla- tions not unlike the motions of a butterfly," as White describes it ; and continues : " Doubtless the flight of all hirundines is influenced by and adapted to the peculiar sort of insects which furnish their food. Hence it would be worth inquiry to examine what particular genus of insects aflbrds the principal food of each respective species of swal- low." They are constantly on the wing, skimming low over land and loch, pausing not even to drink or bathe, but simply dropping into some limpid lake as they sweep by to sip a taste of water, or cleanse their dirty coats. It seems strange, then, that birds who sustain the 3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. unremitting exertion of a flight scarcely less than 100 miles an hour in speed, during the whole of a long summei-'s day, should not be thought capable of the transition from England to Africa. However, at that time it was not well understood what long-continued flight small birds actually do make, as, for instance, from our coast to the Bahamas, or even across to Ireland, or from Egypt to Heligoland, 1,200 miles, which is passed over at a single flight by a certain tiny warbler, in every migration. The bank-swallow is not a musical bird — a faint, squeaking chirrup being all its voice can accomplish. Nor is it a handsome bird, simply sooty-brown above, white beneath, with a brown breast. To its grace of motion, and charming home-life, we attribute that in it which at- tracts us so much. Although probably the least numerous of all the swallows, they do not seem so, because of the great companies which are to be seen together wherever they are to be found at all ; and because, leading a more sequestered life, they are not usually brought into direct com- parison with house-martins and chimney-swifts. Eminently social in their habits, they congregate not only at the time of migration (then, indeed, least of all), and in the construction of their homes, but some- times alight in great flocks on the reeds by the river-side and on the beach, where Sir William Jardine saw them "partly resting and wash- ing, and partly feeding on a small fly, which was very abundant." Yet you will occasionally notice stray individuals associating with other swallows. The secret of the local distribution of the bank-swallows lies in the presence or absence of vertical exposures of soil suitable for them to penetrate for the burrows, at the inner end of which the nest is placed. Firm sand, with no admixture of pebbles, is preferred, and in such an exposure, be it sea-shore, river-bank, sand-pit, or railway-cutting, the face will be fairly honey-combed with burrows, so that we can readily believe that Mr. Dall counted over VOO holes in one blufi" in Alaska. These are usually very close together, and the wonder is how the birds can distinguish their own doors. If mistakes do occur, I imagine they are very polite about it, for I know of no more peaceable bird than they. The mode in which this perforation, requiring an amount of labor rare among birds, is performed, is well described by Mr. Rennie, in his " Architecture of Birds : " " The beak is hard and sharp, and admirably adapted for digging; it is small, we admit, but its shortness adds to its strength, and the bird works .... with its bill shut. This fact our readers may verify by observing their operations early in the morning through an opera-glass, when they begin in the spring to form their excavations. In this way we have seen one of these birds cling with its sharp claws to the face of a sand-bank, and peg in its bill as a miner would his pickaxe, till it had loosened a considerable portion of the hard sand, and tumbled it down among the rubbish below. In these preliminary operations it never makes use of its claws for digging ; indeed, it is impossible that it could, for THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BIRD. 319 they are indispensable in maintaining its position, at least when it is beginning its hole. We have further remarked that some of these martins' holes are nearly as circular as if they had been planned out with a pair of compasses, while others are more irregular in form ; but this seems to depend more on the sand crum- bling away than upon any deficiency in its original workmanship. The bird, in fact, always uses its own body to determine the proportions of the gallery — the part from the thigh to the head forming the radius of the circle. It does not trace this out as we should do, by fixing a point for the centre around which to draw the circumference : on the contrary, it perches on the circumference with its claws, and works with its bill from the centre outward; . . . the bird con- sequently assumes all positions wliile at work in the interior, hanging from the roof of the gallery with its back downward, as often as standing on the floor. We have more than once, indeed, seen a bank martin wheeling slowly round in this manner on the face of a sand-bank when it was just breaking ground to begia its gallery. " This manner of working, however, from the circumference to the centre unavoidably leads to irregularities in the direction. . . . Accordingly, all the galleries are found to be more or less tortuous to their termination, which is at the depth of from two to three feet, where a bed of loose hay and a few of the smaller breast-feathers of geese, ducks, or fowls, is spread with little art for the reception of the four to six white eggs. It may not be unimportant to remark, also, that it always scrapes out with its feet the sand detached by the bill; but so carefully is this performed that it never scratches up the unmined sand, or dis- turbs the plane of the floor, which rather slopes upward, and of course the lodg- ment of rain is thereby prevented." Sometimes the nest is carried to a far greater depth than two or three feet, as in a case observed by Mr. Fowler, in Beverly, Massacliu- setts, where, in order to get free of a stony soil where pebbles might be dislodged and crush the eggs, the tunnel was carried in nine feet, while neighboring birds in better soil only went a third as far. In one place the burrows will be close to the top of tl)e bluff, in another near the bottom, according as fancy dictates, or the birds have reason to fear this or that enemy. English writers agree that occasionally their bank- swallows do not dig holes, but lay in the crannies of old walls, and in hollows of trees. This is never done, that I am aware of, in the United States; but in California a closely allied species, the rough-winged swallow, " sometimes resorts to natural clefts in the banks or adobe buildings, and occasionally to knot-holes." On the great Plains, how- ever, our Gotyle burrows in the slight embankments thrown up for a railway-bed, in lieu of a better place, " How long does it take the bird to dig his cavei'n under ordinary circumstances ? " is a question which it would seem hard to answer, con- sidering the cryptic character of his work. Mr. W. H. Dall says four days suffice to excavate the nest. Mr. Morris, a close observer of British birds, says, per contra^ that a fortnight is required, and that the bird removes twenty ounces of sand a day. Male and female alternate in the labor of discojinff, and in the duties of incubation. When the female is sitting, you may thrust your arm in and grasp 320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. her, and, notwithstanding the noise and violence attending the enlarge- ment of the aperture of her nest-hole, she will sit resolutely on, and allow herself to be taken in the hand with scarcely a struggle or sign of resistance — even of life, sometimes. The young are fed with the large insects which the parents catch, particularly those sub-aquatic . sorts which hover near the surface of still water ; and White mentions instances where young swallows were fed with dragon-flies nearly as long as themselves. The young do not leave the nest until they are about ready to take full care of themselves. Finally, they are pushed ofl" by the parents to make way for the second brood, and, inexperienced in the use of their wings, many fall a prey to crows and small hawks that lie in wait ready to pounce upon the first poor little fellow that launches upon the untried air. Those that manage to run the gant- let of the hawks, collect in small companies by themselves and have a good time liunting by day, and roosting at night among the river-reeds, until the autumn migi-ation. "At this time Salerne observes," says Latham, " that the young are very fat, and in flavor scarcely inferior to the ortolan.'''* Sometimes the pai*ents forsake their progeny in the nest, and seem generally to cai'e less for them than is usual among swallows. But not the young alone are exjDOsed to enemies. It would seem as though the situation of the nest precluded invasion, yet if they are near the haunts of the house-sparrow they are sure to be dispossessed of their homes by that buccaneer. Snakes, too, can sometimes reach their holes ; weasels, like that one Mr. Hewitson tells us of, are often sharp enough to make their entree from above : school-boys regard the pink-white eggs a fine prize; and, last and worst of all, the bank-swal- lows are many times utterly worried out of their galleries by fleas and young horse-flies, which swarm and increase in their nests until the bird finds endurance no longer a virtue, and digs a new latehra -♦*♦- EECENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. TRANSLATED FEOM THE FEENCfl, BY EMMA M. CONVEKSE. THE regions called circumpolar, during the last six or seven years, have been the theatre of numerous explorations that have enriched our geographical maps with many new outlines. Doubtless, the recent discoveries have not succeeded in penetrating the mystery that envelops the arctic world, but, by strength of will, and thanks also to the con- nivance of chance — sometimes propitious to navigators — important points of departure have been obtained from extreme latitudes. It is well known that there are four distinct routes for approaching the basin of the Arctic Ocean : One, by Behring Strait, is formed by the REGENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS, 321 rent found between the northeastern point of extreme Asia and the very jagged promontories of the northwestern coast of North America. This was the route chosen by the Frenchman Gustave Lambert for that gigantic expedition, the preparations for which were followed with great interest by the learned world ; but his unexpected death caused the abandonraent of the enterprise. A second route, by Baffin's Bay, opens between the western shores of Greenland and the vast archipelago that commences at Hudson's Bay. This double entrance to the arctic seas has been for a long time the favorite course for English and American sailors. Europe, at the present time, seems to prefer two routes nearer its own territory, passing, the one, along the eastern coast of Greenland, the other between Sj)itzbergen and Nova Zembla. These last-mentioned routes were formerly much frequented by the Dutch navigators like Barentz, but they have since been aban- doned. Dr. Petermann, the director of the Geographische Mitthei- lungen, has succeeded in bi'inging once more into popular favor these desirable paths to the Polar Sea. Extensive and long-continued study gave to this geographer the conviction that the great warm current that issues from the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and the island of Cuba, and takes a northern course, passing along the coast of Eu- rope, must have a northern extension more considerable than had been heretofore supposed. In the month of July, 1865, Dr. Petermann for the first time developed this theory before the German Geograph- ical Society in session at Hamburg. Supporting his argument by numberless experiments in soundings and measurements of tempera- ture, he demonstrated the probable presence of the Gulf Stream in very high latitudes, and concluded that, after leaving Spitzbergen, the barrier of ice once overcome, a navigable ocean woiild be found. The routes that we have described would then be openings conducting to a kind of arctic Mediterranean, to which navigators could sail in a direct course, instead of wasting their lives in perilous and useless searches in the windings of the great circumpolar labyrinth. These bold deductions did not fail to meet with energetic opposition, espe- cially in America and England; but five years latei", in 1870, Dr. Petermann, returning to the charge with the data gained from a still more complete research, surmounted all controversy. He established the fact that the warm current advances as far as Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, beyond the eightieth degree of latitude, and that, aside from some lateral branches, it sends its principal mass toward the northeast. At this latitude the temperature of the current de- scends to three degrees below zero. Centigrade. Experiments made by Dr. Bessels, of Heidelberg, in the course of one of the latest ex- plorations, prove that the influence of the warm current is still per- ceptible beyond Bear Island. The real extent of the Gulf Stream is, however, a problem that has never been satisfactorily solved. VOL. VII. — 21 322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The scientific agitation fomented in Germany by the speeches and writings of Dr. Petermann did not delay to bear fruit, although the theory of the eminent geographer has not received the sanction of direct proof, which it still awaits. In 1868 a first expedition, under the command of Captain Koldewey, a sailor, educated at the scliool for pilots in Bremen, set sail from the port of Bergen. Although im- perfectly fitted out, it had for a special mission to take the bearings of the northern prolongation of the east coast of Greenland. In case the explorer could not attain this coast, he must endeavor to refind on the east of Spitzbergen the famous land of Gillis, discovered in 1707 by the Norwegian Gilles, and since then forgotten and lost. The Gerraania (such was the name of the ship chartered for this purpose) dii'ected her course toward the eastern coast of Greenland ; but the agglomeration of ice preventing her approach, she turned toward the west coast of Spitzbergen, and then reascended toward the north a little beyond the eighty-first degree. Although the expedition was obliged to deviate from the path marked out, it was not without inter- est for the progress of hydrography and physical geography. It dis- covered that King William's Island, situated in the strait of Henlopen, was really an island, as Scoresby had indicated in 1822 ; and it cor- rected the boundary of Northeast Land, one of the largest islands of Spitzbergen. Besides, the year 1868 did not appear to be favorable for an attempt at landing on the east coast of Greenland, for the Swedish steamer Sophia, which made the same attemj^t under the command of Captain Baron de Otter, could not pass the icebergs, and was obliged to return in October, a month after the Germania. The impulse once given was not allowed to diminish its force. Thanks to the zeal of Dr. Petermann, seconded by an indefatigable ship-owner of Bremerhaven, Mr. Rosenthal, the next year, 1869, num- bered a dozen expeditions, almost all sent forth by the routes recently reopened. In February, the screw-steamer Bienenkorb left the Weser for the purpose of attempting a landing on the east coast of Greenland. The ice once more prevented the success of the enterprise. In May, another steamer, the Albert, commanded by Captain Haasgen and Dr. Bessels, set out to make the tour of Spitzbergen, to explore the sea between this land and Nova Zembla, and to discover, if possible, the land of Gillis. None of these three objects Avere accomplished, but the expedition determined more exactly the situation of the islands southeast of Spitzbergen, and confirmed the assertions of Dr. Petermann upon the distant extension of the Gulf Stream. The same year the English Captain Palliser, having for an object to sail around the shores of Nova Zembla, penetrated into the Sea of Kara, situated between that island and the Samoiede peninsula, and sailed along the Siberian coast, within a few leagues of White Island, without being at all im- peded by the ice. Beliind him, the Norwegian Johannesen traversed the same route twice without encountering any difiiculty. By this RECENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. 323 means the commonly-received belief was corrected, wliicli represented as narrow and of little dej)th this basin, into whicli, by two neighbor- ing estuaries, are poured the congealed masses of the Obi and Yenisei, as if it were the great ice-house of the north-pole. The most important event of the year 1869, in the order of facts, was the second German expedition, which departed in June from Bremerhaven. This expedition, fitted out at great expense through the zeal of numerous committees, was composed of two ships, the screw-steamer Germania, seasoned already by a preceding exploration, and the sailing escort Hansa. Captain Koldewey, tlie commander- in-chief, was assisted by the Austrian Lieutenant Julius Payer, and several scientists. The instruction given to the voyagers, by the Cen- tral Committee of Bremen, marked out for them the eastern coast of Greenland as the principal base of operations, and the object to be accomplished was to study it scientifically, and to examine it in all its details. These labors completed, Mr. Koldewey and his companions would, if circumstances were favorable, direct their course as far as possible toward the pole ; but, in any event, the extreme date of re- turn was fixed upon the first of November of the following year. The two sliips kept company, through good and evil fortune, as far as the seventy-fourth degree of latitude ; there, a fatal error, a signal of the Germania incorrectly interpreted on board the sailing-vessel, sepa- rated the two ships forever. The Hansa, not having at command the resources of steam, was soon invested by the ice, about forty miles from the coast, and, after having, in this j)Osition, drifted considerably to the south, broke to pieces under the pressure of the ice-blocks that surrounded her. The crew sought safety upon an immense piece of floating ice, where they built of coal a Avinter hut that was destroyed in its turn. This new species of raft, which was at first seven miles in circumference, broke up or gradually melted during a perilous and capricious drift of six months, a part of the time in the darkness of a polar night, until at last the hour came when the unfortunate sailors measured only with anxiety the surface of their fragile domain. Hap- pily, the current had carried them insensibly to more hospitable lati- tudes, and, as they had saved their boats, they seized the first occasion to Set them afloat. Finally, by force of sail, towing, and transship- ment, they reached Friedrichsthal, a missionary station situated at the southern point of Greenland, then Lichtenau, and Julianshaab, where they found a steamer that landed them at Copenhagen on the first of September. The Germania, more favored, had meantime the glory of accom- plishing to the letter the very precise instructions of the committee of Bremen. The history of the voyage, filling four large volumes, de- serves the closest attention, and will remain, until new discoveries are made, the indispensable manual of the navigator in the eastern part of Greenland. The difficulty of gaining access to these coasts, situ- 324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ated beyoiul the influence of llic Gulf Stream, proceeds from the enor- mous quantity of ice carried by the polar current in this direction. Tlie i)rincipal chance of success depends upon the direction of the prevailing winds. East and southeast winds render the icebergs more resistant and more compact ; west and northwest winds, on the con- trary, by driving back the blocks of ice in an opposite direction, cause a division and a crumbling that disentangle the labyrinths near tlie shore, and o\)Q\\ numerous jjasscs. The Germania had this ex))erience. During the month of July she struggled in vain against insuperable agglomerations of icebergs and ice-fields welded to each other. It was not till the commencement of Auf»'ust, when the predominance of breezes from the Atlantic had pro- duced a loosening of the ice driven back between Iceland and Spitz- bergen, that the ship opened a j^assage, and effected a landing in a small bay of Sabine Island, in the Pendulum Archipelago, below that part of the country called King William's Land. It is well known that Greenland, visited several times from the tenth to the fifteenth century, then completely abandoned and lost, was rediscovered at the end of the sixteenth centuiy by some Scandi- navian sailors. The eastern shore, particularly, is only known since the voyages accomplished from 1822 to 1831, by Scoresby, Clavering, Sabine, and Graah ; we do not speak of the unfortunate attempt made at the same epoch by the Frenchman, Jules de Blossville, who disap- peared with his ship, and was never heard of afterward. This eastern coast, relatively level from Cape Farewell, the ex- treme southern point, as far as Scoresby's Sound, suddenly changes its character as soon as the seventieth degree is passed. It offers at this latitude an infinity of bold promontories, deep and sinuous fiords, fan- tastically collected, with backgrounds bristling with gigantic glaciers, in comparison with which the most famous ones of Switzerland sin- gularly lose their majesty. All this jagged, solid mass, has for an ad- vance-guard a projection of islands generally very mountainous ; the whole figure recalls a little the aspect of the coasts of ancient Asia Minor. The Germania penetrated, into the centre of this labyrinth. As soon as she was anchored in her harbor, it was evident that she must remain a prisoner. The masses of iceberg, though temporarily affected by tlie summer heat, manifested no symptom of breaking up, and the channels, opened between the islands and the continent, began to close during the middle of August. According to the account of explorers, the formation of ice takes j^lace in this manner. Small, iso- lated denticulations are accidentally formed near each other, without presenting at first any appearance of cohesion. Afterward, a thick paste is produced, which is finally amalgamated into a crust, and this • crust is so flexible that it reproduces without breaking the swelling of the surge. By the middle of September this ice could sustain the weight of the sleds. Mr. Koldewey and his companions improved the RECENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. 325 opportunity, by the assistance of these vehicles, to visit several points of their archipelago ; unfortunately, the autumn excursions in these lands continue only about five or six weeks. In the first clays of No- vember, the crew of tl)e Germania saw the sun disappear for three loner months beneath the horizon. Then commenced that terrible captivity in the midst of the polar night, and among frightful storms of snow. The winter of 1869-"70 was made remarkable by a series of tem- pests from the north, one of which continued for more than a hundred consecutive hours with a velocity of about sixty miles an hour. The thermometer at the same time did not fall beyond 32° (Centigrade) below zero. Besides, even in the most severe temperature, if the chinks in the cabins are carefully stopped up, if the access to the ship is well defended by artificial casings of ice and snow, there will be little suffering from cold. The physical and moral discomfort arises principally from the impossibility, during more than ninety days, of observing the surrounding jjhenomena, and from the long-continued immobility in the midst of sinister darkness, illuminated alone by those strange celestial fairy scenes called aurora borealis. Outside, the congealed masses of every age and production, being pushed against each other with inimitable noises and grindings that sailors call " the voices of the ice," are welded in huge rafts, or form pyram- idical entablatures sculptured with gigantic stalactites, Tlie shij:), however, well sheltered in a harbor open on the southern side, and protected on the north by a high rampart of mountains, can brave this frightful shock of the elements ; but every thing depends, in case of emergency, on the fortunate choice of a station. The essential point is that the blockade, that assures the safety of navigators, should remain unbroken, and that no ricochet movement should reach the ship ; the least rupture of the plain of surrounding ice, the least bar would be fatal ; the most fearful peril is the neighborhood of running water. The polar night, in the latitude where the Germania wintered, ended at the commencement of February ; a month after, the sun re- mained long enough above the horizon to allow great sledge excur- sions. Then the truly scientific labor of the explorers commenced. This task represents a series of Herculean labors that baffles the imagi- nation. The country not offering the least resource, the travelers were obliged to carry every thing with them ; the heavy vehicle also played the role of that " ship of the desert," whose loss involves that of the whole caravan. Clothed with heavy furs, the face entirely masked, the tourists harnessed themselves to the sled ; supported in some fashion in their hard effort in towage, they struggled against the cutting north wind. The eye, beset by the monotonous reflection of the white immensity, knew neither where to rest nor how to judge of distances ; it was every moment the sport of mirages that vanished 326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. to spring uj) again in another part of the horizon with the most decep- tive effects of refraction. The activity and wakefulness of the nights increased the suffering of these inarches where a geographical enigma was mingled, as it were, with every step, and Avhere it was often the work of a whole day to accomplish a simple advance of a quarter of a league ; but of what is not the constancy of man capable when science is the object of pursuit ! The pioneers of the Germania advanced thus beyond the seventy-seventh degree of latitude by 18° 50' west longi- tude from Greenwich. This year, at least, there was no trace of an open sea toward the pole, on the Greenland coast. Everywhere, on the north and east, the sea ajDpeared to be solidly bridged by the ice. If provisions had not failed, the traveling colony would have been able to push on the sled indefinitely over these boundless plains. The iceberg, properly so called, w^ithout remarkable protuberances, ex- tended for about two leagues from the shore, which, starting from this extreme point, seemed to take a northwest direction, where the perspective was obstructed by high mountains crowned with glaciers. During the two following months, the voyagers explored, either in sleds or boats, the deep bays and fiords of the estuaries west and south of the Pendulum Islands. In the month of Mav, even in this hieh lati- tude, signs precursory of the fine season were manifest, and the first fruits of the meagre Greenland vegetation were seen in all directions. Under the bridges of snow and the coverings of the glaciers, the mur- mur of running water was heard ; long flights of eider-ducks arrived from the south ; the polar ortolan warbled its sweet note ; the lan- jninffs, a kind of northern rabbit, were seen among the fragments of the rocks ; the white hares enjoyed the young sprouts of moss and saxifrage; while the reindeer, with its slender body, enlivened the depths of the torrents, and, at a distance, the curious head of the seal emerged through the sheets of ice, brightened and mellowed by the sun. At last, on the 22d of July, 1870, the Germania floated once more in the open sea, and, after having remained 300 days in wdnter quar- ters, quitted the little harbor that had hospitably received her, in order to attempt, by the aid of steam, further progress toward the north; but, in latitude 75° 26', a little less than the height she had attained the preceding summer, the channel suddenly failed. The summer influences had not disintegrated the enormous masses bound to the iceberg, and apparently this soldering would yield only to the autumnal tempests. But, these tempests coming at the end of August, the Germania, which, according to the instructions of the committee of Bremen, could make but one winter in these regions, resolved to return to Europe, and she was alongside the wharf in the Weser on the 11th of September. The scientific results of the exploration were, on the whole, con- siderable. If the principal problem of polar navigation had not been solved, much more precise and extended notions concerning the i^hysi- RECENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. 327 cal and hydrographic nature of the most important northern country were attained. Mr. Koldewey, when he asserts that no continuous channel exists on the east of Greenland, draws perhaps too rigorous a conclusion from a simple experience of two years. But it appears doubtful whether, under any conditions, this coast can oifer a favor- able base for reaching the central basin of the north-pole, foi-, on one hand, the state of the channel near the shore is subordinated to all kinds of topical conditions difficult to foresee, and, on the other, the cold current, even at the season of the greatest loosening of the ice, causes immense quantities of huge blocks to drift in that direction. The country itself presents also to the scientist and geographer a very curious field for observation. The officers of the Germania found, from investigations skillfully conducted, that this part of Greenland is actu- ally inhabited, and that it seems also habitable. They discovered the perfectly preserved remains of Esquimai^x huts, veritable houses that the history describes very minutely, containing diiferent instruments and utensils, whose primitive fashion recalls the work of the Stone age ; but, for some reason, the polar man seems to have deserted, witliout a desire to return, these quarters, where the conditions of life, during the progress of ages, have been sensibly modified, TJie polar bear, improperly called the white bear, reigns as master among the glaciers of the coast, as the walrus, no less dreaded, reigns on the ice- bergs of the sea. The most intelligent and the most active member of the important mission whose fortune we have followed, was undoubtedly Lieutenant Julius Payer. This officer, devoted heart and soul to the theories of Dr. Petermann, set out the next year (1871) with his countryman. Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, to search for the land of Gillis. The two explorers did not succeed in finding it; but they penetrated 150 miles farther north than their predecessors had done in this region. Beyond the seventy-eighth degree, between 42° and 60° west longitude, there was still an open sea, and the temperature of the surface of the sea varied between three and four degrees (Centigrade) above zero. The want of provisions obliged the crew to turn back, and this was a great misfortune, for the year seemed exceptionably favorable. The Nor- wegian captain. Mack, who traversed at this time the eastern part of the same ocean, in search of the place M'here Barentz had wintered in 1579, met everywhere, at a distance that no one had before attained, navigable water with a strong current. The station of Barentz was, however, found a short time after on the northeast point of Xova Zembla by another Norwegian, Carlsen ; it still preserved visible tokens of the abode of the Dutch navigator. Another expedition, resembling the abortive voyage of the Hansa, in its dramatic catastrophe, if not in its results, was undertaken in this same year (1871) by the American captain. Hall, who adopted the route by Baffin's Bay, instead of the European entrance to the 328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Arctic Ocean, Captain Hall, in company with Dr. Bessels, starting from Newfoundland on the 29th of June, on the ship Polaris, shaped his course toward Smith's Strait, discovered by Kane seventeen years before, and at the end of August landed on Grinnell Land, in 80° north latitude. lie ascended afterward to Kennedy's Channel, and penetrated into a narrow sound for about 100 leagues, where no mariner had ever ventured before. This passage was called Robe- son, in honor of the Secretary of the Navy of the United States. Captain Hall advanced by this new route, that probably ended in the famous central arctic basin, as far as latitude 82° 16', touching the ex- treme point on the 3d of September. There he perceived on the north a vast extent of open water that he called Lincoln Sea, and farther on another ocean, or a bay, on the west of which the outlines of a coast were delineated ; this country was named Grant Laud. Every- where a fauna appeared similar to that of Greenland ; herds of musk- oxen, white hares, and other polar animals, were seen, and they even thought that traces of human beings were perceptible. The crew was eager to make an opening through the iceberg ; but the sailing- master of the exjjedition. Captain Buddington, would not permit the attempt, and the Polaris returned to winter in Robeson's Channel, in latitude a little above 81°. The death of Captain Hall, occurring in the month of November, put an end to every new endeavor to make any further advance on the northern coast ; the winter was passed in inaction, and when the warm breath of the following summer had put the waters in motion, and delivei*ed the Polaris from the fetters that bound her, the travelers hastened to descend to the south. The return was not entirely unimpeded. The ship underwent a terrible pressure ; a part of the men, separated by chance from their companions, took refuge on an ice-floe, where they remained miserably stranded for 240 days. This ice-field, like the one that bore the waifs of the Hansa, was constantly drifting toward the south, and visibly shrinking, until, on the 30th of April, the shipwrecked sailors were seen by a passing steamer. As to the rest of the crew of the Polaris, obliged to aban- don the leaky ship, they wintered on Littleton Island, whence they set out once more, on the following summer, in two boats procured from a Scotch whaler. All these eventful voyages, so curious and exciting, are surpassed by the recent exploit of the steamer Tegethoff, whose almost fabulous ex- perience was only knoAvn in Europe during the month of last September. Lieutenants Payer and Weyprecht, immediately after their return from the expedition of 1871, were detailed to prepare a new one. Nothing was neglected to give a character of unusual grandeur to this exclu- sively Austro-Hungarian enterprise. Two eminent friends of science, the Counts Wilczek and Zichy, lent to it their material and moral aid; the Royal Geographical Society, in February, 1872, advised the forma- tion of a special committee, including among its members the most RECENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. 329 illustrious names of the Austrian aristocracy, and a considerable sum of money was soon collected. The equipment of the mariners was the object of careful solicitude ; they were so provided for that, with- out dreading cold and snow, they might go away hundreds of miles from the ship and be absent for months. The principal aim of the expedition was to study the unknown regions of the Polar Sea north of Siberia, and to see if it were possible to reach Behring Strait by this route ; it was only as a secondary object, a kind of last resort, that the expedition could direct its course toward extreme latitudes; it was only permitted to venture in the direction of the pole if, in the course of two winters and three summers, it did not succeed in doubling the extreme promontory of Asia. The point of official de- parture of the scientific excursion was the northern coast of Nova Zembla. The TegethoiF, having on board twenty-four persons, set sail from Tromsoe, Norway, on the 14th of July. Some days after a yacht sailed from the same port with Count Wilczek on board, whose pur- pose was to establish on an eastern point of the Arctic Ocean a depot of coal and provisions for the TegethoiF. On the 21st of August, off Cape Napan, between Nova Zembla and the mouth of the Petchora, the yacht lost sight of the steamer. More than two years passed before any news was received of the missing ship. Great was the anxiety in Austria and in the whole civilized world ; heaven and earth were moved to aid the navigators who had so strangely disappeared. Count Wilczek had a quantity of small India-rubber balloons made, which, supplied with dispatches, were distributed to the whalers sail- ing for the northern seas, with directions to let them loose in the differ- ent stations of these territories. The Geographical Society of London gave an express mission to a ship bound for Spitzbergen, to inquire everywhere for the Tegethoff. The Russian Minister of the Navy, Mr. Siderof, instigated a public reunion for the purpose of sending a salvage expedition upon the traces of the unfortunate steamer. Suddenly, on the 3d of last September, just at the epoch predicted by Dr. Petermann, who had constantly maintained that news of the explorers must not be expected before the autumn of 1874, a report was spread abroad from Vienna that the lost sailors had just landed in Europe. Some days after they made their entrance into the Aus- trian capital, welcomed by enthusiastic cheers whose echoes are still heard. The expedition, as often happens in these unconquerable polar seas, was not able to follow the terms of the official instructions. The Tegethoff, from the 21st of August, 1872, the same day when Count Wilczek saw her for the last time, found herself irretrievably invested by ice. In endeavoring to get free from this fatal imprisonment, the crew and the ship remained the passive sport of chance; on the 13th of October, the vessel received a thrust that lifted it up, and inflicted upon it heavy bruises. Let any one judge how agitated and terrible 330 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. this winter harbor was, at the mercy of the elements ! The ice was in constant movement until the spring of the following year. At the end of March, 1878, the pressure came to an end, but the Tegethoff was incrusted in the midst of a plain of ice several leagues in circuit. For five months, from April to September, the crew worked in vain to restore the ship to its normal condition ; the ice-plain in which it was incorporated was pushed by the winds in every direction, and at last ascended to 79° 54' north latitude. The role of science then unexpect- edly commenced; a consoling light for the mind and will of the ex- plorers burst forth even from the bosom of blind fatality. On the 31st of August, 1873, after more than a year of terror and endurance, the ice-bound captives saw a mass of elevated coast, sparkling with glaciers, emerging from the fog, at a distance of about fourteen miles. They immediately gave to this apparition the name of Emperor Fran- cis Joseph's Land. But it was not till the end of October that they were able to land on shores so miraculously discovered ; even then, on account of the advanced season, they found it impossible to take pos- session; for they were soon to enter for the second time into the sin- ister polar night that continues three and four months. They took advantage of the last days that were illuminated with an expiring twilight to make little preliminary excursions some leagues from the ship, and this was all they could accomplish. They were then obliged to wait patiently for the next dawn of day, that is, until the spring of 1874. This winter was more tempestuous than the preceding, and the per- sistent north winds brought interminable snow-storms ; the thermom- eter fell to 48° (Centigrade) below zero. At last, on the 24tb of Febru- ary, the sun having reappeared above the horizon, they hastened to improve tlie spring weather. Lieutenant Payer prepared three expe- ditions with sledges drawn by dogs to reconnoitre the nature and con- figuration of the ueigbboring land. In the first excursion, from the 10th to the 16th of IMarch, he visited the nearest island, where he found a most picturesque fiord with an enormous glacier in the background ; there were summits 2,500 feet high. The second journey was much more important; discoveries succeeded each other as if by enchant- ment. Mr. Payer penetrated into a sound or strait — Austria Sound — extending from south to north, and completely covered with small islands. This strait was prolonged as far as the latitude of 82° be- tween two continuous masses of land. The eastern side was called Wilczek Land, the other Zichy Land. In going out of this pass, the explorer encountered a vast basin, from which emerged another land, named Prince Rudolph's Land. The extreme point attained by Payer and his companions was called Cape Fligely ; it is situated nearly at the same distance from the pole as that reached by another route, in 1871, by the captain of the Polaris. There it was necessary to stop, on accoimt of the crevasses and ruptures produced at this season in the REGENT POLAR EXPLORATIONS. 331 ice of the fiords. A strait, terminated by another land, laj' open be- fore the eyes of the travelers, whose prolongation, inflected to the east, could be followed even beyond the latitude of 83°. They named it Petermann's Land. What is, then, this new world that remains pro- visionally the ultima Thule of navigators ? It is not, certainly, accord- ing to the report of Mr. Payer, a mass of insignificant islands; it is an entire regional system with a development comparable to the archi- l^elago of Spitzbergen. Could it be the Land of Gillis, so much sought for in these later times ? The explorers, on returning from this long excursion, having had the good fortune to find their ship immovable in the same place, set out very soon for a third tour in a western direction. When fourteen miles fi'om the Tegethofi*, they made the ascent of a high mountain, from tlie top of which they could trace the general configuration of the country ; the most elevated summit was 5,000 feet high. Finally, the moment came for thinking of a return home. On the 20th of May, 1874, they put themselves en route^ but they were obliged to abandon the ship. All the members of the expedition were safe and sound, the mechanician alone having died. During ninety days, by the aid of sledges and boats, sometimes on the ice, sometimes on the open sea, the glorious Austrian pioneers wandered in these unknown regions, following always the direction of the compass to the south. In the beginning, the winds thwarted their progress to such a degree that after two whole months they were only eight marine miles distant from the ship. Their provisions also were nearly exhausted, when, on the 18th of August, they reached Nova Zembla. Six days after they embarked on the Russian steamer Nicholas, which carried them to Warsoe. If the vicissitudes endured by this memorable expedition, the of- ficial report of which has not yet reached us, give the measure of the difiiculties experienced in following in these regions a jDreconcerted plan, they show also that with coolness and constancy the resistance of polar chaos may be overcome. A day will come, doubtless, when the conditions of arctic life will be in some measure familiar to us, and the navigator will face less timidly its sombre horrors. Already he has succeeded in discovering his way through good and bad fortune into the variable windings of the great labyrinth ; he has sounded the depths, studied the currents and counter-currents ; he knows at what season such a channel is obstructed or free, and what routes the ice- fields driven to the south follow in their regular migrations. The principal features of this exceptional geography are, then, partially established ; the essential point is, that the succession of polar voyages shall be no more interrupted. Too long have arctic explorations been made in a desultory and capricious fashion ; audacity and courage have been lavishly used, but consecutive acti'on has been wanting. Experiments, in order to acquire their full scientific value, must be 332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. continuous, and it is therefore necessary that all nations should in turn relieve each other, according to their resources, in this attentive sen- tinelship of the outposts of the arctic world. -♦♦♦- SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION.^ By HUBERT H. B NCEOFT, rr^HE obvious necessity of association as a primary condition of de- -JL velopraent leaves little to be said on tliat subject. To the mani- festation of this soul of progress a body social is requisite, as, without an individual body, there can be no manifestation of an individual soul. This body social, like the body individual, is composed of numberless organs, each having its special functions to j^erform, each acting on the others, and all under the general government of the progressional idea. Civilization is not an individual attribute, and, though the atom, man, may be charged with stored energy, yet progress consti- tutes no part of individual nature; it is something that lies between men and not within them ; it belongs to society and not to the indi- vidual; man, the molecule of society, isolate, is inert and forceless. The isolated man, as I have said, never can become cultivated, never can form a language, does not possess in its fullness the faculty of abstraction, nor can his mind enter the realm of higher thought. All those characteristics which distinguish mankind from animal-kind become almost inoperative. Without association, there is no speech, for speech is but the conductor of thought between two or more indi- viduals ; without words abstract thought cannot flow, for words, or some other form of expression, are the channels of thought, and with the absence of words the fountain of thought is, in a measure, sealed. At the very threshold of progress social crystallization sets in ; something there is in every man that draws him to other men. In the relationship of the sexes, this principle of human attraction reaches its height, where the husband and wife, as it were, coalesce, like the union of one drop of water with another, forming one globule. As uncon- sciously and as positively are men constrained to band together into societies as are particles forced to unite and form crystals. And herein is a law as palpable and as fixed as any law in Nature ; a law which, if unfulfilled, would result in the extermination of the race. But the law of human attraction is not perfect, does not fulfill its purpose apart from the law of human repulsion, for, as we have seen, until war, and despotism, and superstition, and other dire evils come, there is no progress. Solitude is insupportable — even beasts will not live alone ; and men are more dependent on each other than beasts. Solitude > From vol. ii., "Native Races of the Pacific States. SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 333 carries with it a sense of inferiority and insufficiency ; the faculties are stinted, lacking completeness, whereas volume is added to every individual faculty by union. But association, simply, is not enough ; nothing materially great can be accomplished without union and cooperation. It is only when aggregations of families intermingle with other aggregations, each contributing its quota of original knowledge to the other; when the individual gives up some portion of his individual will and property for the better jjrotection of other rights and property ; when he in- trusts society with the vindication of his rights ; when he depends upon the banded arm of the nation, and not alone upon his own arm for redress of grievances, that progress is truly made. And with union and cooperation comes the division of labor by which means each, in some special department, is enabled to excel. By fixing the mind wholly upon one thing, by constant repetition and practice, the father hands down his art to the son, who likewise improves it for his descendants. It is only by doing a new thing, or by doing an old thing better than it has ever been done before, that progress is made. Under the regime of universal mediocrity the nation does not advance; it is to the great men, great in things great or small, that progress is due ; it is to the few who think, to the few who dare to face the infi- nite universe of things, and step, if need be, outside an old-time boun- dary, that the world owes most. Originally implanted is the germ of intelligence, at the first biit little more than brute instinct. This germ in unfolding undergoes a double process : it throws off its own intuitions, and receives in return those of another. By an interchange of ideas, the experiences of one are made known for the benefit of another, the inventions of one are added to the inventions of another ; without intercommunication of ideas the intellect must lie dormant. Thus it is with individuals, and with societies it is the same. Acquisitions are eminently reciprocal. In society, wealth, art, literature, polity, and religion, act and react on each other; in science, a fusion of antagonistic hypotheses is sure to result in important developments. Before much progress can be made, there must be established a commerce between nations for the interchange of aggregated human experiences, so that the arts and industries acquired by each may become the property of all the rest, and thus knowledge become scattered by exchange, in place of each having to work out every problem for himself. Thus viewed, civiliza- tion is a partnership entered into for mutual improvement ; a joint- stock operation, in which the product of every brain contributes to a general fund for the benefit of all. No one can add to his own store of knowledge without adding to the general store; every invention and discovery, however insignificant, is a contribution to civilization. In savagism, union and cooperation are imperfectly displayed. The warrioi's of one tribe unite against the warriors of another; a 334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. band will coo2:)erate in pursuing a herd of buffalo ; even one nation will sometimes unite with anotlicr nation against a third, but such combinations are temporary, and no sooner is the particular object accomplislied than the confederation disbands, and every man is again his own master. The moment two or more persons unite for the ac- complishment of some purpose which shall tend permanently to meli- orate the condition of themselves and others, that moment progress begins. The wild beasts of the forest, acting in unison, were physi- cally able to rise up and extirpate primitive man ; but, could beasts in reality confederate and do this, such confederation of wild beasts could become civilized. But why does primitive man desire to abandon his original state and set out upon an arduous, never-ending journey ? Why does he wish to change his mild, paternal government, to relinquish his title to lands as broad as his arm can defend, with all therein contained, the common property of his people ? Why does he wish to give up his wild freedom, his native independence, and place upon his limbs the fetters of a social and political despotism? He does not, Tlie savage hates civilization as he hates his deadliest foe; its clioicest benefits he hates more tiian the direst ills of his own u'lfettered life. He is driven to it — driven to it by extraneous influences, without his knowledge and against his will ; he is driven to it by this Soul of Progress. It is here that this progressional phenomenon again ap- pears outside of man and in direct opposition to the will of man ; it is here that the principle of evil again comes in and stirs men up to the accomplishment of a higher destiny. By it Adam, the first of re- corded savages, was driven from Eden, where otherwise he would have remained forever, and remained uncivilized. By it our ances- tors were impelled to abandon their simple state, and organize more heterogeneous complex forms of social life. And it is a problem, for each nation to work out for itself. Millions of money are vainly spent by benevolent people for proselyting purposes, when, if the first prin- ciples of civilization were understood, a far diflerent course would be pursued. Every civilization has its peculiarities, its idiosyncrasies. Two individuals attempting the same thing differ in the performance ; so civilization evolving under incidental and extraneous causes takes an individuality in every instance. This is why civilizations will not coalesce; this is why the Spaniards could make the Aztecs accept their civilization only at the point of the sword. Development en- gendered by one set of phenomena will not suit the developments of other circumstances. The government, religion, and customs of one people will not fit another people any more than the coat of one person will suit the form of another. Thought runs in difiTerent channels ; the happiness of one is not the happiness of another; development springs from inherent necessity, and one species cannot be engrafted on another. SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 335 Let us now examine the phenomena of government and religion in their application to the evolution of societies, and we shall better un- derstand how the wheels of progress are first set in motion — and by- religion I do not mean creed or credulity, but that natural cultiis in- herent in humanity, which is a very different thing. Government is early felt to be a need of society ; the enforcement of laws which shall bring order out of social chaos ; laws which shall restrain tlie vicious, protect the innocent, and punish the guilty; which shall act as a shield to inherent budding morality. But, before government, there must arise some influence which will band men together. An early evil to which civilization is indebted is war ; the propensity of man — unhappily not yet entirely overcome — for killing his fellow-man. The human race has not yet attained that state of homogeneous felicity which we sometimes imagine ; upon the surface, we yet bear many of the relics of barbarism ; under cover of manners, we hide still more. War is a barbarism which civilization only intensifies, as indeed civilization intensifies every barbarism which it does not eradicate or cover up. The right of every individual to act as his own avenger; trial by combat ; justice dependent upon the passion or caprice of the judge or ruler, and not upon fixed law; hereditary feuds and migra- tory skirmishes ; these and the like are that which moved our savage ancestors to like conduct, falls to, and, after a respectable civilized butchery of fifty or a hundred thousand men, ceases fighting, and returns, perhaps, to right and reason as a basis for the settlement of the difiiculty. War, like other evils which have proved instrunents of good, should by this time have had its day, should have served its purpose. Standing armies, whose formation was one of the first and most important steps in association and partition of labor, are but the manifestation of a lingering necessity for the use of brute force in place of moral force in the settlement of national disputes. Surely, rational beings who retain the most irrational practices concerning the sim- plest pi-inciples of social life cannot boast of a very high order of what we are pleased to call civilization. Morality, commerce, literature, and industry, all that tends toward elevation of intellect, is directly opposed to the warlike spirit. As intellectual activity increases, the taste for war decreases, for an appeal to war in the settlement of difii- culties is an appeal from the intellectual to the physical, from reason to brute force. Despotism is an evil, but despotism is as essential to progress as any good. In some form despotism is an insei^arable adjunct of war. An individual or an idea may be the despot ; but, without cohesion, without a strong central power, real or imaginary, there can be no unity, and without unity no protracted warfare. In the first stages of government, despotism is as essential as in the last it is noxious. It holds society together when nothing else' would hold it, and at a time when its very existence depends upon its being so held. And 336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. not until a moral inherent strength arises sujQficient to burst the fetters of despotism, is a people lit for a better or milder form of government ; for not until this inherent power is manifest is there sufficient cohesive force in society to hold it together without being hooped by some such band as despotism. Besides thus cementing society, w^ar generates many virtues, such as courage, discipline, obedience, chivalrous bearing, noble thought ; and the virtues of war, as well as its vices, help to mould national character. Slavery to the present day has its defenders, and from the first it has been a preventive of a worse evil — slaughter. Savages make slaves of their prisoners of war, and if they do not preserve them for slaves they kill them. The origin of the word, servus^ from servare, to preserve, denotes humane thought rather than cruelty. Discipline is always necessary to development, and slavery is another form of savage discipline. Then, by systems of slavery, great works were accomplished, which, in the absence of arts and inventions, would not have been possible without slavery. And again, in early societies where leisure is so necessary to mental cultivation and so difficult to obtain, slavery, by promoting leisure, aids elevation and refinement. Slaves constitute a distinct class, devoted wholly to labor, thereby enabling another class to live without labor, or to labor with the intellect rather than with the hands. Primordially, society was an aggregation of nomadic families, every head of a family having equal rights, and every individual such power and influence as he could acquire and maintain. In all the ordinary avocations of savage life this was sufficient; there was room for all, and the widest liberty was possessed by each. And in this happy state does mankind ever remain until forced out of it. In unity and cooperation alone can great things be accomplished ; but men will not unite until forced to it. Now, in times of war — and with savages war is the rule and not the exception — some closer union is necessary to avoid extinction; for, other things being equal, the people who are most firmly united and most strongly ruled are sure to pre- vail in war. The idea of unity in order to be effectual must be em- bodied in a unit ; some one must be made chief, and the others must obey, as in a band of wild beasts that follow the one most conspicuous for its prowess and cunning. But the military principle alone would never lay the foundation of a strong government, for with every cessa- tion from hostilities there would be a corresponding relaxation of gov- ernment. Another necessity for government here arises, but which likewise is not the cause of government, for government springs from force and not from utility. These men do not want government, they do not want culture ; how, then, is an arm to be found sufficiently strong to bridle their wild passions ? In reason they are children, in passion, men ; to restrain the strong passions of strong, non-reasoning men SAFAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 337 requires a power ; whence is this power to come ? It is in the earlier stage of government that despotism assumes its most intense forms. The more passionate, and laAvless, and cruel the people, the moi'e com- pletely do they submit to a passionate, lawlchs, and cruel prince ; the more ungovernable their nature, tlie more slavish are they in their submission to government ; the stronger the element to be governed, the stronger must be the government. The primitive man, whoever or whatcA'er that maybe, lives in har- mony with Kature ; that is, he lives as other animals live, drawing his supplies immediately from the general storehouse of Nature. His food he plucks from a sheltering tree, or draws from a sparkling stream, or captures from a prolific forest. The remnants of his captui-e, unfit for food, supply his other wants ; with the skin he clothes himself, and with the bones makes implements and points his weapons. In this there are no antagonisms, no opposing principles of good and evil ; animals are killed not with a view of extermination, but through necessity, as animals kill animals in order to supply actual wants. But no sooner does the leaven of progress begin to work than war is declared between man and Nature. To make room for denser popula- tions and increasing comforts, forests must be hewn down, their pri- meval inhabitants extirpated or domesticated, and the soil laid under more direct contribution. Union and cooperation spring up for pur- poses of protection and aggression, for the accomplishment of purposes beyond the capacity of the individual. Gradually mamifactures and commerce increase ; the products of one body of laborers are ex- changed for the products of another, and thus the aggregate comforts produced are doubled to each. Absolute power is taken from the hands of the many and placed in the hands of one, who becomes the representative power of all. Men are no longer dependent upon the chase for a daily supply of food ; even agriculture no longer is a ne- cessity which each must follow for himself, for the intellectual prod- ucts of one person or people may be exchanged for the agricultural products of another. With these changes of occupation new institu- tions spring up, new ideas originate, and new habits are formed. Hu- man life ceases to be a purely material existence; another element iinds exercise, the other part of man is permitted to grow. The ener- gies of society now assume a different shape ; hitherto the daily strug- gle was for daily necessities, now the accumulation of wealth consti- tutes the chief incentive to labor. Wealth becomes a power and absorbs all other powers. The possessor of unlimited wealth com- mands the products of every other man's labor. But, in time, and to a certain extent, a class arises already pos- sessed of wealth sufficient to satisfy even the demands of avarice, and something still bettor, some greater good is yet sought for. Money- getting gives way before intellectual cravings. The self-denials and labor necessary to the acquisition of wealth are abandoned for the en- VOL. vii. — 22 338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. joyment of wealth already acquired and the acquisition of a yet higher good. Sensual pleasure yields, in a measure, to intellectual pleasure, the acquisition of money to the acquisition of learning. Where brute intelligence is the order of the day, man requires no more governing than brutes, but when lands are divided, and the soil cultivated, when wealth begins to accumulate and commerce and in- dustry to flourish, then protection and lawful punishment become necessary. Like the wild-horse, leave him free, and he will take care of himself; but catch him and curb him, and the wilder and stronger he is the stronger must be the curb until he is subdued and trained, and then he is guided by a light rein. The kind of government makes little difference, so that it be strong enough. Granted that it is absolutely essential to the first step toward cult- ure that society should be strongly governed, how is the first govern- ment to be accomplished ; how is one member of a passionate, un- bridled heterogeneous community to obtain dominion absolute over all the others ? Here comes in another evil to the assistance of the former evils, all for future good — superstition. Never could physical force alone compress and hold the necessary power with which to burst the shell of savagism. The government is but a reflex of the governed. Xot until one man is physically or intellectually stronger than ten thousand, will an independent people submit to a tyrannical govern- ment, or a humane people submit to a cruel government, or a people accustomed to free discussion to an intolerant priesthood. At the outset, if man is to be governed at all, there must be no division of governmental force. The cause for fear arising from both the physical and the supernatural must be united in one individual. In the absence of the moral sentiment, the fear of legal and that of spiritual punishments are identical, for the spiritual is feared only as it works temporal or corporal evil. Freedom of thought at this stage is incompatible with progress, for thought without experience is dan- gerous, tending toward anarchy. Before men can govern themselves they must be subjected to the sternest discipline of government ; and whether this government be just, or humane, or pleasant, is of small consequence, so that it be only strong enough. As with polity, so with morality and religion : conjointly with despotism there must be an arbitrary central church government, or moral anarchy is the in- evitable consequence. At the outset it is not for man to rule, but to obey ; it is not for savages, who are children in intellect, to think and reason, but to believe. And thus we see how wonderfully man is provided with the essen- tials of growth. This tender germ of progress is preserved in hard shells and prickly coverings, which, when they have served their purpose, are thrown aside, as not only useless but detrimental to further development. We know not what will come hereafter, but up SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 339 to the present time a state of bondage appears to be the normal state of humanity— bondage, at first severe and irrational, then ever loosen- ing, and expanding into a broader freedom. As mankind progresses, moral anarchy no more follows freedom of thought than does political anarchy follow freedom of action. In Germany, in England, and in America, wherever secular power has in any measure cut loose from ecclesiastical power and tlirown religion back upon public sentiment for support, a moral as well as an intellectual advance has always followed. What the mild and persuasive teachings and lax discipline of the present epoch would have been to the Christians of the four- teenth century, the free and lax government of republican America would have been to republican Rome. Therefore, let us learn to look charitably upon the past, and not forget how much we owe to evils which w^e now so justly hate ; while we rejoice at our release from the bigotry and fanaticism of mediaeval times, let us not forget the debt which civilization owes to the tyrannies of Church and state. Christianity, by its exalted unutilitarian morality and philan- thropy, has greatly aided civilization. Indeed, so marked has been the elFeet in Europe, so great the contrast between Christianity and Islamisra and the polytheistic creeds in general, that Chui'chmen claim civilization as the oflspring of their religion. But religion and morality must not be confounded with civilization. All these and many other activities act and react on each other as proximate prin- ciples in the social organism, but they do not, any or all of them, con- stitute the life of the organism. Long before morality is religion, and long after morality, religion sends the pious debauchee to his knees. Religious culture is a gi*eat assistant to moral culture, as intellectual training promotes the industrial arts, but morality is no more religion than is industry intellect. When Christianity, as in Spain during the fourteenth century, joins itself to blind bigotry and stands up in deadly antagonism to liberty, then Christianity is a drag upon civili- zation : and therefore we may conclude that in so far as Christianity grafts on its code of pure morality the principle of intellectual free- dom, in so far is civilization promoted by Christianity ; but, when Ciiristianity engenders superstition and persecution, civilization is retarded thereby. Then Protestantism sets up a claim to the authoi'ship of civilization, points to Spain and then to England, compares Italy and Switzerland, Catholic America and Puritan America, declares that the intellect can never attain superiority while under the dominion of the Church of Rome ; in other words, that civilization is Protestantism. It is true that protestation against irrational dogmas, or any other action that tends toward the emancipation of the intellect, is a great step in advance ; but religious belief has nothing whatever to do with intel- lectual culture. Religion, from its very nature, is beyond the limits of reason ; it is emotional rather than intellectual, an instinct and not 340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. an acquisition. Between reason and religion lies a domain of com- mon ground upon which both may meet and join hands, but beyond the boundaries of which neither may pass. The moment the intellect attempts to penetrate the domain of the supernatural, all intellectu- ality vanishes, and emotion and imagination till its place. There can be no real conflict between the two, for neither, by any possibility, can pass this neutral ground. Before the mind can receive Christian- ity, Mohammedanism, or any other creed, it must be ready to accept dogmas in the analysis of which human reason is powerless. Among tlie most brilliant intellects are found Protestants, Romanists, Unita- rians, deists, and atheists; judging from the experiences of mankind in ages past, creeds and formulas, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, have no inherent power to advance or retard the intellect. Some claim, indeed, that strong doctrinal bias stifles thought, fosters superstition, and fetters the intellect ; still, religious thought, in some form, is inseparable from the human mind, and it would be very ditiicult to prove that belief is more debasing than non-belief. THUNDER-SIIOWEES. Br J. W. PHELPS. THE thunder-shower of Southeastern Vermont generally comes from the soiithwest. To understand why it should take this course instead of any other, we must examine the topographical char- acter of the country. The chain of Green Mountains extends thronghoi;t the State from south to north, inclining some degrees to the east of north. It pre- sents a barrier to the prevailing general current of southwest wind, and in summer condenses the vapor which that wind bears, thus form- ing piles of cumulus cloud over the higher summits, or most wooded districts. The deeper ravines, or river-beds, on the eastern slopes of the mountains, run to the southeast, and open out on the wider valley of the Connecticut River. In order to convey a more definite idea of ovir theory, we will choose a certain locality which may serve the j^urpose of a diagram to our demonstration ; and this locality shall be the region of West River, This river takes its rise among the forests near the summit of the Green Mountains, at a height of some 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and, flowing southeasterly forty or fifty miles, empties into the Connecticut River about ten miles from the southern boundary of the State. During a hot summer day the sides of the deep valley of this river reek with intense heat, and cause a flow of moist air upward toward THUNDER-SHOWERS. 341 the summits of the mountain-ridge, from the valley of the Connecticut, and also from the sea. This moist air, meeting with the general cur- rent from the southwest, piles up an immense mass of cumulus cloud, of many square miles in extent. So long as the intense heat prevails, this cloud increases in size ; grows black and blacker with its dense vapor, and casts a gloomy, lurid glare over the face of Nature, darker than that of any eclipse. The vapor, pushed up by the ascending currents of heated air, attains to a great height above the sea, where the temperature is very low. But finally, at that hour of the after- noon when the heat begins to decline, the accumulated vapors, no longer augmented or sustained by heated air from the valleys below, fall in rain. The eftect of large cold drops of water, or perhaps of ice, making altogether millions of tons in weight, falling from a great height into a deep, narrow valley, is, not only to beat down the air into that valley, but to chill the air there ; and the cold air, seeking the lowest level, tends to rush down the valley, at first near the sui'face of the earth, but growing deeper and deeper, until the cloud itself is borne away on the swift-rushing air-freshet of its owai making. The land beginning to cool with the declining sun and the cooling rain, causes the southerly breeze to slacken and die away, and the stoi'm-cloud rushes on unobstructedly down the West River and the Connecticut, deluging and fertilizing the fields along its course, while its quick lightning and oft-repeated claps of thunder flash and resound among the reverberating hills. The cloud passes on, and often the sinking sun comes out from be- hind it ; the late hushed and frightened birds gush forth with new song ; myriad drops hang glittering on the spray ; the green is flushed with a brighter, fresher hue, and the glowing rainbow smiles serenely from the dark, retiring, and still grumbling storm. This storm is followed the next day by delightfully clear weather, with a cool, exhilarating breeze from the northwest ; though this is not always the case, the cloud sometimes overspreading the sky, losing its motion, and leaving the air damp and murky. The thunder-shower, as w^e have thus described it, though limited to a small disti'ict of country, may be regarded as the type of all similar showers that occur in mountainous regions everywhere. Numerous modifications, however, of local origin will occur, due to various causes ; and it would be a highly-interesting and valuable study to as- certain these causes for every particular case. Yet as to whether the moving force of the thunder-gust is limited wholly to the causes here given, may well admit of a question. It is not improbable that a cloud, from its great height, may penetrate a high upper current from the northwest, and that both this upper and the lower current may contribute to its rapid motion of translation. It is well that these thunder-showers are movable, instead of being 342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. stationary, as they often are at sea, for otherwise summer rains 'vrould not be evenly distributed over the face of the country ; and the hind in some places would be subject to exceeding moisture, while in other places it would suffer from the drought. A few days after the above was written, a violent thunder-gust closed a warm afternoon. It was on the 1st of August, 1873. The day had been hot and peculiarly oppressive, as is usually the case be- fore a violent storm. Between four and six o'clock p. m., a thunder- shower came down the valley of West River, and corresponded in its general features with the desci-iption given above ; but it exhibited in addition other features which were entirely peculiar. The lightning struck in five notably different jjlaces in the village of Brattleboro, which partly borders the valley of West River near where it disem- bogues into the Connecticut River, and these places, instead of being elevated points, were, in all cases except one, among some of the lower ones. And they were nearly all in the same straight line, about a half or three-fourths of a mile in length, and at a short distance from the Connecticut. The strokes that fell upon these points followed each other in pretty rapid succession, and were accompanied by thunder that had a sound as if partly suppressed. It was neither loud nor jarring, as thunder sometimes is. The rain fell in floods, and was very copious. Its abundance, rendering the air seemingly nearly half water, doubt- less occasioned the subdued sound of the thunder, and perhaps greatly reduced the force of the shocks ; for in no case was any considerable damage done. An upper corner of a two-story house was shattered, two other buildings were slightly injured, and several trees were marked by narrow channels down their trunks or branches. Together with the first house struck, one of two fir-trees standing near was grooved at the same time, and some of the splinters were found in the chamber nearest the shattered corner, although the window-blinds were closed and fastened. These splinters must have been driven up between the slats of the blinds, which would seem to show that the stroke was upward instead of downward. A window-curtain near the corner was torn to shreds. In the lower room nearest the corner there were no effects of the shock observed except upon a gilt cornice which was marked at intervals by black perpendicular bars, the gild- ing there having been burned or melted. The intervals between these bars were in some cases very narrow, and at others very wide. Two persons sitting in this room perceived no effect from the shock. At one moment during the storm the wind came from the north or northeast. This wind was probably highly charged with electricity, which, being added to the electricity of the northwest current, pro- duced such an excess of the fluid as to result in the rapid and numer- ous discharges which took place. The most of these discharges appar- ently occurred along the line where the two currents of air met. The THUNDER-SHO WERS. 343 more easterly current of air may have come over the shoulder of the mountain on the opposite bank of the Connecticut River, or it may have come down the valley of that river, and met the current coming down tlie West River in the village of Brattleboro. With respect to the direction in Avhich the lightning struck whether up or down, it is not improbable that in every stroke of elec- tricity there are two opposing currents, one up and the other down. Tlie splinters which adhere to the first tree struck show this, some re- maining attached by the upper end, and others by the lower. Beginning in the north, the first in order of the objects struck were a house and a tapering fir-tree near by, within about ten or fif- teen feet, and towering considerably above the house. The house had no conductor. A hundred paces from there, in a southeasterly direc- tion, a locust-tree was struck. It stood in a grove of locust, maple, poplar, butternut, fir, and. other trees, within about thirty paces from a conductor upon a neighboring house, and not far from a tall Lom- bardy poplar. A hundred paces farther on, and at a lower level, one of the higher branches of a lofty elm was struck. At the distance of another hundred yards, in the same general direction, stands the Con- gregational church, and near it the Baptist church, both about 130 feet in height, and with conductors apparently in good condition. These churches were unharmed. About 400 paces from there, and at a still lower level, stands the fourth point struck, which is a three- story grist-mill; and, finally, some 300 yards or more farther on, and more to the westward, on a comparatively high point of land stands the dwelling-house, the fifth and last point known to have been struck — the last, we mean, in following the direction, and not in the order of time. The effect of the strokes at the two extreme jjoints w^as severer than any of the others. Reports from other quarters of the country show^that the electrical condition of the atmosphere of New England on the 1st of August was considerably disturbed, thunder-showers occurring at many different places. When this is the case, it is reasonable to suppose that two showers, following down two neighboring valleys, may come together, and thus double the amount of electricity that might be possessed by one alone. The question here occurs, " Is there any common origin between these thunder- showers and the northern lights ?" Are they not each but a different means of restoring a disturbed electrical equilibrium ? If this is the case, we might infer that, when thunder-showers are mimerous and violent, the displays of the northern lights will be less frequent and less active, and vice versa ; though there may be cases in wliieh both become more than ordinarily active. One of the discharges of electricity which we happened to observe during the shower was perhaps that one which fell upon the grist-mill. Amid the floods of descending rain, it looked like falling sparks of 344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. lire. It was about GOO or 700 yards from where we sat, and the sound of the thunder was more like that of tlie rocket than tliat Avhich usually accompanies electrical discharges. In fact, the cloud probably passed through the village rather than over it ; and the discharges were ne- cessarily short, close, and without prolonged reverberations, such as may occur when the stroke is high, partly in dry air, and several miles in lencjth, the sound from which must reach the ear at ditierent intervals of time, thus producing a continuous rolling noise. We are here reminded of another thunder-shower, of peculiar feat- ures, which occurred in Brattleboro in November, 1860. It was on the day of the first election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency. A pine- tree was rent into fragments by it, and a passer-by, a voter, on see- ing the extraordinary havoc that had been made, the white, shining splinters lying scattered over the ground, in all sizes, from the small- est sliver up to strips long enough for rails, exclaimed in great excite- ment: "The thing is all up now; for the old 'Rail-Splitter' is around at his work ! " Even thunder-showers are wrested by some men into a political significance ! The circumstances of the case, how^ever, would appear to have been these : A dense cloud, borne upon a low southwest surface-cur- rent of wind, was passing across the deep valley of the West River, half a mile or so from its mouth, when it was probably struck by a cool, dry mountain-breeze flowing down the valley. This breeze im- parted new electricity to the cloud, Avhich, being thus overcharged, gave out its surplus in a sudden shock, which took efiect upon, a group of pines. Every drop of water of which the cloud was com- posed we may regard as a small Leyden jar, as it were, the united force of which proved sufficient to rend in pieces one of the pines in an instant of time. The tree was some seventy feet in height, two feet in diameter, and stood, not on the heights immediately under the cloud, but low down, within a few paces of the river. It was broken square ofl" twenty or thirty feet from the top ; and this top fell straight down and stood leaning against the shattered stump, showing that the trunk had been rent asunder so suddenly as to occasion no obstruction to its fall ! There were but two discharges of electricity from this cloud ; and soon afterward the weather cleared up from the north- west. -♦*>- THE AUSTRALIAN FEYER-TREE.' DURING the present century, a great number of exotic plants and trees have been brought to Europe, or transplanted from their original habitat to other climes. In view of its usefulness, perhaps the blue-gum tree of Australia and Tasmania, belonging to the genus ' Translated from Das Ausland. THE AUSTRALIAN FEVER-TREE. 34.5 Eucalyptus, which includes upward of 150 species, holds the first place among these exotic plants. The Eucalypti belong to the natural order Myrtace 13'° 48» ; 89° 6' ; + 3^09; — 4".02. The first entry relates to No. 2052 of the catalogued nebuhe, and we learn from it (taking the numbers in their order from left to right) that this nebula is No. 688 of Sir John Herschel's previous catalogue ; is No. 168 of Sir William Herschel's Class I. ; that no other persons have published any obser- vations of this up to 1863 ; that its Right Ascension for 1860.0 is 10'>9°»49^9; that the annual precession in Right Ascension for 1880 is + 3^623; that the number of observations upon which tliis place depends is 1 ; that its North Polar Distance for 1860.0 is 47° 53' 1".9 ; that the precession in North Polar Distance for 1880 is+17".83; that 1 observation was used to determine its position in North Polar Distance ; and that this Nebula is "/jretty i?right ; yery iarge; ivound ; a'ery ^/radually 6righter in the 1/iddle; and finally, that it has been LITERARY NOTICES. 375 observed 4 times by the Herschels." In .short, we know something about this Nebula. Interpreting the entry from the "Double Star Catalogue," we lind about No. 2052 that it is No. 698 of Sir John's previously published list ; that it has been observed by no one else ; that its Right Ascension for 1830 is 5^ 13'°48»; its North Polar Distance is for the same epoch 89° 6'; and that the precessions in Right Ascension and North Polar Distance are for the same epoch + 3'.09 and — 4''.02 respectively. There is not a word about the relative magnitudes of the component stars of the double star referred to, not a word to show whether it is double, triple, quadruple, or multiple, not a word about the position, angle, and distance of the component stars of the double (if it is a double), and finally, not a word about the colors of the compo- nents. In short, we know next to noth- ing about this star. The little we do know is this : 1. Its position in 1830, and we have the means of determining the position with tolerable accuracy at present ; and, 2. We know where to look in Sir John's partial " Catalogues," which are scattered through many volumes of the Royal Astronomical Society's "Memoirs," the observations at the Cape of Good Hope, etc., for the infor- mation regarding position, distance, color, and magnitude, which is precisely what we require, and which is precisely what is omit- ted from this new "Catalogue." Thus we may estimate its value to be that of an ex- tended index to various double-star obser- vations, with the approximate positions of these stars. After what we have said, it is unnecessary to go further. Any one can see that to the astronomer this " Catalogue" is of but slight value, while to the average double-star observer (who often has not the means of determining accurately star-posi- tions) it is tantalizing and almost useless. When he finds a double star, how is he to know whether it is new or not, except by going over much of the same work that has been done once by the computer of this " Catalogue ? " In fine, this book can only be considered to be truly useful when it is accompanied by the " Memoirs " from which the materials were originally drawn. The publication is not creditable to the Royal Astronomical Society, to the memory of its distinguished projector, nor to its able ed- itors. These gentlemen might well have consulted the work of Dr. Anwers on a simi- lar subject, ^'■William JlcrscheVs Verzeichnis- sen von Nebelflecken und Sternhanfen, bear- btitetvon Arthur Anwevs, 1862," (or a model as to the way in which the memory of a great astronomer should be honored, and as to the manner in which alone it is worth . while to do astronomical work. Seventh Annual Report on the Noxious, Beneficial, and other Insects of Mis- souri. By C. V. Riley, State Entomol- ogist. In this volume (published April 1st) Prof. Riley specially considers six insect-pests, viz., the Colorado potato-beetle, chinch- bug, apple-tree borer, canker-worm. Phyl- loxera, and the Rocky Mountain locust, improperly called grasshopper. Mr. Riley gives the results of his observations and inquiries during the past year on each of these different insects, and, as in all his previous reports, keeps steadily in view the great practical object of his research, namely, the discovery of the best and most effectual means of annihilating these ene- mies of agriculture. In Missouri the farm- ers now accept the presence of the Colorado beetle as the necessary concomitant of the culture of the potato ; but they do not fear it as once they did, being provided with the means of keeping the pest in check. Prof. Riley has, for years, recommended the use of Paris green in the war of extermination against this beetle, and the farmers of Mis- souri now very generally employ this sub- stance, and with the best results : in short, it is by far the cheapest and most eti'ectual means of destroying the beetle. "But, then, Paris green is a deadly poison, and therefore its use causes more mischief by far than could ever be done by the Colorado potato-bug." Prof. Riley, how- ever, speaks from experience, and he as- serts that there is no danger to be appre- hended from the use of Paris green, " ex- cept through carelessness and exposure to its direct influence." Millions of bushels of potatoes were last year grown in Missouri, and great quantities of Paris green used in sprinkling the leaves of the growing plants, and yet the author has not heard of a single case of poisoning, save where people had 37^ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. been careless. After discussing tlie subject very fully, the author concludes with these words : " I would say to those agriculturists of the East who are in any way alarmed by what hus been written on this subject, and who hesitate to use the Paris-green mixture — profit by the experience of your more Western brethren, and do not allow the vo- racious Dorypliora to destroy your potatoes, when so simple and cheap a remedy is at hand." The aggregate loss to Missouri farmers, in 1S74, Irom the chinch-bug, is estimated at $19,000,000. The only measure at pres- ent known to be effectual against this pest, when it has spread, is irrigation. On the subject of the grape Fhylloxera, Prof. Riley is an authority both at home and in Eu- rope. A few facts, of interest to entomolo- gists, in the life-history of this insect, are noted in the present volume. Mr. Riley gives a brief narrative of the researches made in France during the year, with a view to discovering a means of destroying this pest. Dumas's method is as follows : A hole is bored with an auger in the earth, near the foot of the vine, and in it are placed about four ounces of alkaline sulpho- carbonate. By decomposition the sulphuret of carbon is formed, which kills the Phyl- loxera, without injuring the vine. We see, from the report of a recent meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, that this meth- od " has been tried with great success in several of the more important vine-growing districts." The territory in Missouri ravaged by the Rocky Mountain locust in 1866, and again in 1874, is represented in a map, in which is also indicated the direction in which the insects came during the latter year. Last May the Governor of Missouri proclaimed a day of fasting and humiliation as a stratagem in the anti-locust war. Prof. Riley, last year, " prophesied " that the lo- custs of 1874 would come too late to do much damage. He then asserted, and now as- serts, that beyond the extreme western tier of counties Missouri need not dread these in- vaders. The event has confirmed the ac- curacy of Prof Riley's conclusions. The Governor would have done well had he given ear to this truthful prophet, before he uttered his cry of distress. Determination anh Classification of Min- KRALS. By Jamks C. Fove, a. M., Pro- fessor of Chemistry and Physics, Law- rence University, Wisconsin. Pp. 38. Price 75 cents. Chicago : Jansen, Mc- Clurg k Co., 1875. The object of this little work, as the author says, is to furnish tables by which the student may, with as few easy tests as possible, determine with precision, and clas- sify, minerals found in the United States, and become familiar with their principal characteristics. Annual Report of the Board of School Commissioners of the City of Mil- waukee, for the Year ending August 31, 1874. Nothing neater, as respects typography and book-making, can be found in any edu- cational document East. The table of ex- aminations of teachers shows, in the large number of rejections, that honest work is attempted. Superintendent McAllister's scheme for uniform examination of the schools seems to us philosophical. Systematic Catalogue of Yertebrata of THE Eocene of New Mexico ; collected in 1874. E. D. Cope, A. M. This is a morccau of Lieutenant Wheel- er's Reports. Of this essay the writer says it completes the determination of the fossil vertebrate species obtained in the Eocene of New Mexico during the field-work of 1874. The total species of mammalia is forty-seven, of which this essay "introduces twenty-four for the first time," besides some i-eptilia and fishes. PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED. The Keys of the Creeds. Pp. 200. New York: Putnams. Price, $1.25. The Miracle of To-Day. By Charles B. Warring. Pp. 292. New York : Scheimer- horn & Co. Price, $2.00. Heat, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism. By Charles Skelton, M. D. Pp. 75. Tren- ton, N. J. : Naar, Day & Naar. Curious Anomaly in the History of Larvae of Acronycta Oblinita. By Thomas G. Gen- try. Pp. 30. Mysteries of Hierarchy. Pp. 14. MISCELLANY. Z77 Climatology of Florida. By A. S. Bald- win, M. D. Pp. 39. Charleston, S. C. : Walker, P^vans & Cogswell. Secular Sermons, No. 1. By John Mcin- tosh. Pp. 20. Rochester : C. H. Stump. Language, its Nature and Functions. By Rev. J. H. Pettingell, M. A. Pp. 26. Washington : Gibson Bros. Report of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, for the Year 1874. Albany : Weed, Parsons & Co. Management of the Insane. By Henry Howard, M. D. Pp. 14. St. Johns, N. B. : News Print. A Protest against the High-Pressure System of Education. Same Author. Pp. 24. Philosophy of Dairy Manufactures. By F. X. Willard, M. A., of Herkimer Co., N. Y. Pp. 29. The Aerial World (Hartwig). Appletons. Problems of Life and Mind (Lewes). Os- good. What Young People should know (Wilder). Estes & Lauriat. Storms : their Nature, Classification, and Laws (Blasius). Philadelplfia : Porter & Coates. Certain Harmonies of the Solar System (Alexandei). Lists of Elevations (Gannett). Fishes of the East Coast of North Amer- ica (Gill). Eighth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum. Meteorological Observations (Chitten- den). MISCELLANY. Notices of Recent Earthqaakes. — The American Journal of Scieiice for May gives a summary of earthquakes for the year 1874, prepared by Prof. C. G. Rockwood, Jr., of Rutgers College, New Jersey. They are reported from nearly all quarters of the globe, forty-three in number. Two of these were disastrous, but in most cases the shocks appear to have been light. Fourteen shocks are reported as having occurred in the United States. The most important of these took place in North Carolina, in Bald and Stone Mountains. The shocks continued at intervals from February lOlh to April 17th, with explosive and rumbling noises. The most seveie shock was I'elt February 22d. On one oc- casion the sound of the shock resembled that made by blasting in a deep quarry, first explosive, then reverberating. The shock which occurred in the vicinity of New York City, December 10, 1874, is noticed. It extended as far as Peekskill on the north, and Norwalk, Connecticut, on the east. The shock was most severe in the neighborhood of Tarrytown and Nyack, but did no damage anywhere. The most disastrous earthquakes oc- curred at and near Harpoot Mission, East- ern Turkey, destroying the houses of Haloosi, a considerable town near that place, and at Volcan del Fuego in Guatemala. This earthquake destroyed the town of Duenos. From a small mountain near the base of the Volcan del Fuego there issued an eruption of cold compact mud. Testing Iron and Stec!.— We have re- ceived the programme of organization of a Board appointed by the President, in accord- ance with the provisions of an act of Con- gress, making " appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1876, and for other purposes." The instructions of the Board are, to de- termine by actual tests the strength and value of all kinds of iron, steel, and other metals, which may be submitted to it, or by it procured, and to prepare tables which will exhibit the strength and value of said ma- terials for constructive purposes. The mem- bers of this Board are Lieutenant-Colonel T. T. S. Laidley, U. S. A., President, Com- mander L. A. Beardslee, U. S. N., Lieuten- ant-Colonel Q. A. Gillmore, U. S. A., Chief- Engineer David Smith, U. S. N., W. Sooy Smith, C. E.. A. L. Holley, C. E., and R. H. Thurston, C. E., Secretary. The Board has organized into standing committees to conduct special experiments and investigations, during the delay in pre- paring the testing machinery for the regular work of the Board, and afterward, as leisure 378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. will peiiiiit. These investigations are expect- ed to be made with critical and scientific ac- curacy, and will consist in the mintite analy- sis of a somewhat limited number of speci- mens, ami the precise determination of me- chanical and physical properties, with a view to the detection and enunciation of the laws connecting them with the phenomena of resistance to flexure, distortion, and rup- ture. The Board will be prepared to enter upon a more general investigation, testing such specimens as may be forwarded to the President of the Board, or such as it may be determined to purchase in open market, immediately upon the completion of the apparatus ordered, at which time circulars will be published giving detailed instructions relative to the preparation of specimens for test, and stating minutely the information which will be demanded previous to their acceptance. The following is a list of the subjects to be investigated by the standing committees, as given in the circular issued by the Board : Abrasion and Wear ; Armor-Plates ; Chem- ical Research ; Chains and Wire Ropes ; Corrosion of Metals ; Effects of Temper- ature ; Girders and Columns ; Iron, Mal- leable ; Iron, Cast ; Metallic Alloys ; Ortho- gonal Simultaneous Strains ; Physical Phe- nomena ; Reheating and Rerolling; Steels produced by Modern Processes ; Steel for Tools." Insulation of Lig]itnin»-Rods. — We take from the Journal of the 'Jilt graph a few valuable observations on the subject of lightning-rods. The insulation of lightning- rods, says the Journal, is a grave error, be- cause the insulators to some extent arrest the flow of currents of rarefied electricity, which it is the true function of the light- ning-rod to facilitate. On the other hand, the insulator amounts to nothing as a bar- rier against a discharge of lightning, which can either pass through it or leap the short distance between the rod and the building. The prejudice in favor of insulators arises from a misapprehension. Strictly speaking, there are no non-conductors ; but that term is applied to substances which conduct very imperfectly and are subjected to violent disruptive effects when a shock of electricity passes through them. To prevent a dis- charge from leaving the rod and passing through the building, something more must be done than to attempt to keep it out by erecting such flimsy and insignificant bar riers as insulators. The rod must be ar ranged so as to present points for the re- ception and discharge of electricity at the extremities of the building, both above and below, and the different terminations in the ground must be connected by rods lying across the roof, so that lightning can be provided with a path in an horizontal direc- tion, which, being continuous, will be pre- ferred to any series of detached masses of conducting matter contained within the building. Action of Absinthe and Alcohol. — In an essay which received a prize from the French Academy of Sciences last December, Dr. Magnan states as follows the comparative action of absinthe and of alcohol: Whether injected into the stomach, pulmonary pas- sages, cellular tissue, or vascular system, these two agents produce different effects. Essence of absinthe, in weak doses, causes vertigo and sudden contractions in the mus- cles of the anterior portion of the body ; in strong doses, epileptic attacks and mental disorder. The well-known effects of alcohol are muscular debility, staggering, relaxation of the limbs, and finally comatose sleep, without any epileptic symptoms. Injected simultaneously, alcohol and absinthe, instead of neutralizing, intensify one another, and the absinthine phenomena are in part masked under the alcoholic. The substances used in the manufacture of the liqueur absinthe^ viz., the essences of anise-seed, angelica, sweet-flag, marjoram, fennel, mint, possess no toxic action. Hence all the injurious effects of the liqueur are due purely to the wormwood. Epileptiform symptoms never follow from the use of alcohol, and they are characteristic of absinthe. Fish-Life and the Pollution of Rivers. — The injurious effects on fish of the pollution of rivers with the refuse of gas-works have been very thoroughly investigated by Prof. A. Wagner, of Munich, and from his report on the subject we take the following account of some of his experiments. His method MISCELLANY. 379 was to put small fishes into vessels contain- ing well-water, different amounts of gas- water being added. In water to which one per cent, of gas-water was added, the fish became at once very restless, tried to jump out, turned or. their backs after they had been in the polluted water one minute, and were dead after the lapse of six minutes. With one-half per cent, gas-refuse, the fish became at once restless, floated on their backs after five minutes, and died after thirty minutes. With one-quarter per cent, gas-refuse they became restless after some time, floated on their backs in one hour, and were dead after ninety minutes. With one- tenth per cent, refuse, they at first remained quiet ; one of them showed no change after three hours and a half, but died after the lapse of six hours ; no change was observed in another, a small pike, after seven hours, but it was dead the next morning. Lightning in an Electric Ciocli. — A writer in Poc/yendorff^ s Annaloi describes some cu- rious effects of lightning on the wires of an electric clock on a steeple in Basle. The wire, which was sheathed in gutta-percha and cotton, was torn away and lay about iti pieces from four to forty inches in length. These pieces at first sight presented nothing worthy of note, but they were found to have quite lost their stiffness, and further exami- nation showed that they consisted only of the sheath ; the copper was entirely gone. The interior of the sheath was smooth, and the sheath itself was whole except in a few places at variable intervals, where there were minute ruptures. These were evidently the holes at which the copper had escaped — as some remains of the metal sticking in them showed. These remains distinctly proved, too, that the copper had been driven out, for the most part, in a molten state. This melting of the wire must have been instan- taneous, for the molten copper was expelled before its heat could act upon the sheath. Another striking fact is that, in a portion of the wire which was inclosed for protection in a lead pipe, the copper was quite un- changed, while the gutta-percha had been fused in several places. Here the lead acted by retarding the electric current, and thus the wire had time to give up its heat to the sheath. Influence of Camplior on Plant-Growtli. — Vogel, of Munich, who has studied very closely the action of camphor on plants, says that it acts like a kind of stimulant on vegetative processes, which it accelerates and intensifies. In one of his experiments he placed a branch of flowering syringa in ordinary water, and another branch in camphor-water; in twelve hours the one drooped, while the other stood upright and even developed some of its buds. This br.anch did not begin to wither till after the third day. Another experiment con- sisted in placing in camphor-water a flower- ing branch of syringa which was nearly dead. In this instance the plant revived, living for some time. Similar results were obtained from experiments with seeds. Oil of turpentine was found to act like cam- phor. It accelerated the germinative pro- cess in seeds, but it exerted an injurious action on the after - development of the plants. Vogel remarks, in conclusion, that the process of germinating, receiving of oxy- gen, and giving out of carbonic acid, is iden- tical with animal respiration. From the agreement of the vegetable processes in the early period of germination with the animal processes, it would seem to follow that stimulants would have similar effects in the two cases. A New Deep-Sea Tliernionieter. — Dr. Neumayer recently exhibited to the Berlin Geographical Society a new apparatus for the determination of the temperature and of the currents at great depths in the ocean. The apparatus consists of an hermetically- sealed copper box, with an external append- age resembling a rudder. In the interior are a mercury thermometer and a compass, each inclosed in a glass receptacle, in which are admitted traces of nitrogen gas. A small electric battery completes the apparatus. When it is allowed to descend attached to a sounding-line, the action of the current on the rudder causes the apparatus to take an horizontal direction, thus indicating the set of the flow by the relative positions of com- pass-needle and rudder, while the ther- mometer indicates the temperature. To fix tliese indications, a piece of photographic paper is suitably disposed near the glass cases containing the instruments. Then at 38o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the proper time a current of electricity is establi>ho(l tlirougli the gas in the recepta- cles, cau.sing an intense violet light, capable of acting clieniically on the paper for a suffi- cient length of time to photograph the t^had- ows of the cotnpass-needle and the mercury column. Witliin three miimtes the opera- tion is complete, and then the apparatus is hoisted and the paper removed. Absorption of Water by Growing Grain. — M. Marie-Davy has been making some exact measurements of the quantity of water con- sumed by grain during its growth. He found that corn in pots, filled with earth and watered daily, consunjed 1,796 grammes of water daily to produce one gramme of grain. According to this, a yield of thirty hectolitres (eighty bushels) of corn per hec- tare (two-fifths of an acre) would take up a quantity of water which, along with the water evaporated, forms a greater total than the amount of the average rainfall of Paris. Thus the yield of the land is limited by the amount of water supplied to the fields. M. Marie-Davy, however, points out that the quantity of water necessary to produce a given harvest is by no means absolute, but depends on the amount of useful mineral matters with which the water can be charged. To a certain extent water supplements ma- nure, and vice versa. Some manures may effect a very considerable economy in the mass of water consumed. Vegetation as a Disinfeitant. — In a paper advocating the utilization of sewage for ag- ricultural purposes, Dr. Alfred Carpenter says that, if a certain weight of rye-grass seed be sown in wet sand, without allowing the contact of any water which contains nitrogenous matter, the plants will grow to a certain size, that is, until they have used up all the matter contained in the seed, and then growth is, to a great extent, arrested. This has been shown experimentally by growing rye-grass under glass. All growth has been arrested for want of nourishment. On adding to the water solutions of fresh organic matter (meat-juice), the plant has at once begun to grow, and in a few days has doubled its size, while a test set of plants to which such organic matter has not been added has remained stationary. Another basia and glass cover with sand not containing ryegrass, but to which or- ganic matter had been added, became putrid in a few days, but no such putridity ap- peared when the rye-grass was growing. A fourth case had put into it an amount of nitrate of ammonia corresponding to the amount estimated to be contained in the meat-juices which were used in the first case ; but here the growth of the plant was by no means so luxuriant as when the living nitrogenous matter was added : although a fresh start was made, the plant soon dwin- dled away and died. Thus it appears that living vegetation acts as a powerful disin- fectant, assimilating directly the nitrogen- ous principles of organic substances. Nutritive Valae of Cocca. — The nutri- tive constituents of cocoa correspond very closely with those of beef, and largely ex- ceed those of milk and wheaten flour : hence the importance of this substance as an article of food. In this respect it differs widely from tea and coffee, which are, per- haps, rather condiments and stimulants than foods, or flesh-formers. The following table, drawn up by Mr. John Holm, of the Edinburgh Chemical Society, shows the po- sition of cocoa as compared with three other well-known articles of food : ARTICLES. Cocoa. Milk. Meat (Beef). Wheaten Flour. Fat 50.0 20.0 7.0 6.0 ' 5.6 4.0 4.0 '2.6 3.5 4.0 ■4.3 87.5 0.7 2.87 20.75 67.80 5.60 ' i!e6 1.38 1.2 Azotized fubstances. Starch 14.6 59.7 Gum Sugar Water '7.2 13.2 Salts Woody fibre 1.6 Cellulose Coloring-matter Ash 1.7 0 8 Extractive matters.. TLeobrounne ' '2.6 Parts 100.0 100.0 100.00 100 0 " Thus," observes Mr. Holm, " although one-half of the weight of cocoa consists of cocoa-butter, Lt still presents 20 per cent, of albuminoid material, as against 4 per cent, in milk, 20.75 in beef, and 14.6 in wheat. In addition, it contains starch, which is present neither in milk nor beef, but in smaller proportion thsn in wheat." The value of cocoa as a food is thus ap- parent, and fully justifies the high eulo- giums which have been passed upon it. MISCELLANY 381 Statistics of Suicide ia Prussia.— The number of suicides occurring in the king- do:ii of Prussia during the four years pre- ceding 1873 is given as follows in the offi- cial journal of the Statistical Bureau : SUICIDES. 1869. 18T0. 1871. 1878. Males 2,570 616 3,186 2,334 629 2.183 540 2,303 587 Females Total 2,963 2,723 2,950 From this it would appear that either the female se.x is less exposed to the temp- tation of suicide, or resists that temptation better than the male. The table shows that the frequency of suicide increases with age. This is true with regard to the whole num- ber of suicides, not with regard to those of each sex taken separately. Thus suicide is most frequent among males between the ages of ten and fifteen, and again between fifty and sixty, while among females it is most frequent between fifteen and twenty, and again after seventy. Of suicides, mar- ried persons constitute 452 per 1,000, un- married, 339 per 1,000, and the remainder is made up of widows, widowers, divorced persons, etc. Mental disease is by far the most frequent occasion of suicide. Reli- gious belief does not appear to have any marked influence. On the other hand, the influence of various avocations is very evi- dent. The favorite modes of suicide are, in both sexes, hanging and drowning — the latter more frequent in the case of females ; then by fire-arms on the part of the males, by poison on the part of the females. Defects of the Human Eye.— The human eye, because it is practically achromatic, has been supposed to be absohitely so. But it is not difficult to show that the organ is not faultless in this respect. The sub- ject was recently discussed in a lecture by Prof. H. McLeod, at the London Physical Society, and the lecturer cited many facts to show that the eye is not achromatic. Thus to short-sighted persons the moon ap- pears to have a blue fringe. In using the spectroscope, the red and blue ends of the spectrum cannot be seen with equal dis- tinctness without adjusting the focussing glass. A black patch of paper on a blue ground appears to have a fringed edge if viewed from even a short distance ; while a black patch on a red ground, when observed under similar conditions, has a perfectly distinct margin. It is interesting to note that Wollaston considered that the colored bands of the spectrum were really divided by the black (Fraunhofer) lines, and his statement, that the red end of the spectrum does not appear to have a boundary-line " because the eye is not competent to con- verge the red rays properly," shows that he had very nearly, if not quite, discovered the achromatic defects of the eye. An experi- ment was exhibited by Prof. McLeod to show the relative distinctness of a dark line on grounds of various colors. A wire was so arranged that its shadow traversed the entire length of the spectrum, which was thrown on a screen by an electric lamp. Viewed from a short distance, the edges of the shadow appeared to be sharp at the red end, but gradually became less distinct, un- til at the blue end nothing but a blurred line remained. Infrequency of Pulse. — A case of extra- ordinary infrcquency of pulse was recently mentioned by Mr. Pugin Thornton, at a meet- ing of the Clinical Society of London. The subject was a woman, twenty-nine years of age, thin and anasmic, and suffering from severe inflammation of the larynx, for which the operation of tracheotomy was performed. Just before the operation her pulse was 40, and after it she had an epileptiform attack. She was discharged from the hospital much improved, but was readmitted soon after- ward. Her pulse was then found to be beating only at the rate of 16 per minute, the pulsations being strong. The frequency increased slowly for a month, when it was 20, and soon afterward it was again 40. This was some two years ago. Her pulse is now 48, and the patient has grown stout. Normally, the number of pulsations per minute differs at different periods of life : at birth, it is about 135 ; at the age of seven, from 80 to 85 ; in adults, 70 to 75 ; in old age, from 50 to 65. In females, the pulse is quicker than in males. Ornamentation of Copper and Bronze. — A new mode of ornamenting bronze or cop- per work is described as follows : After the object has received the desired form, the 382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY drawings arc made with water-colors, the body of which is wiiite-lead. Those por- tions of the surface which are not painted are covered with varnish. The article is then placed in dilute nitric acid, whereby the paint is dissolved, and the surface of the metal is etched to a certain depth. The article is then washed with water, and im- mediately placed in a silver or gold bath, and a layer of the precious metal deposited by electricity on the exposed portions. When the latter operation is finished, the varnish is removed, and the whole surface ground or polished, so that the ornamented portion is just even with the rest of the sur- face. A specially fine effect is obtained by producing a black bronze of sulphuret of copper on portions of the surface between the silver ornaments. A copper vase then has three colors, black and white drawings on a red-brown ground of suboxide of cop- per. Ancestors of the Esqaimanx. — Charles E. DeRance, in one of his papers on " Arctic Geology," points out some of the many striking resemblances between the modern Esquimaux and the paleolithic man of Southern France. These two peoples, sepa- rated so widely in time and space, were alike in their artistic feelings and methods of in- cising, on tusks, antlers, and bones, repre- sentations of familiar objects ; alike also in their habit of splitting bones for marrow, and accumulating them around their dwell- ings ; in their disregard for the sepulchre of their dead ; in their preparation of skins for clothing, and in the pattern of the needles used in sewing them together; alike also in their feeding on the musk-sheep and the reindeer, and in countless other character- istics. It is wellnigh impossible to resist Prof. Dawkins's conclusion that the Es- quimaux is the descendant of paleolithic man, who retreated northward with the arc- tic fauna with which he lived in Europe. Antidote to Atropia. — Dr. G. Riickert has made the interesting discovery that the poisonous alkaloid muscarin (extracted by alcohol from the mushroom Amanila mits- caria) is a perfect antidote to atropia, and vice versa. The pupil of the eye, enlarixed by atropia, is contracted by muscaiin. So, too, the depression of temperature induced by subcutaneous injection of muscarin is counteracted by the other alkaloid similar- ly injected. The heart of a frog, whose action had ceased from thirty to sixty min- utes under the influence of muscarin, had its activity restored by the exhibition of atropia. The relation of quinine to the spe- cific poison of intermittent fevers is prob- ably analogous to that between these two alkaloids. NOTES. Correction. — Prof. Henry Wurtz cor- rects an error in the theory of A. McDougall, of the Manchester Literary and Philosoph- ical Society, on the possible mode of form- ation of graphite, as given in our Notes for last month. As he points out, the carbon which collects in gas-retorts does not give the reactions of graphite with a mixture of chlorate of potassium and nitric acid ; it is not converted into graphitic acid ; therefore it is not graphite at all, and of course its formation cannot explain the formation of that mineral. It has even been shown by Berthelot that gas-retort carbon contains hydrogen, being in fact a highly-condensed hydro-carbon, or mixture of hydro-carbons. The Aniline Manufacturing Company, of Berlin, are now producing aniline colors by Coupler's process, in which no arsenic acid is employed. Being free from arsenic, these dyes are not only fitted for coloring sweet- meats, liqueurs, syrups, and pharmaceutical preparations, but may be used in many other industrial purposes where poisonous colors would be more or less dangerous, as in the staining of paper, paper-hangings, toys, etc. A. FLAME burning in condensed air grad- ually increases in brilliancy with the com- pression, till at last it becomes as brilliant as the flame of phosphorus in oxygen. But, if the pressure be still further increased, the process of combustion is retarded, and the flame becomes smoky. From this it would appear that the temperature of com- bustion increases with the pressure up to the point of dissociation of the hydro-car- bon gases of the candle. Hence the con- clusion that it is an error to estimate the temperature of the sun at several millions of degrees. Sainte-Claire Deville holds that 2,000° C. is the highest possible tempera- ture. ScHWEiNFURTH, the distinguished Afri- can traveler, has been appointed by the Kliedive Director-General of all the large collections, museums, and other scientific institutions, of Cairo. NOTES. Z^ The length of time needed for reaction in sensation has been made a subject of in- vestigation by two German physiologists, Vintsohgau and Hongschmied, with the fol- lowing results : In the case of a person whose sense of taste was highly developed, the reaction-time was, for common salt, 0.169 second; for sugar, 0.1639 second ; for acid, 0.1676 second ; and for quinine, 0.2351 second. With a person whose taste was less acute the reactiDn-times were 0.595 sec- ond for salt, 0.752 second for sugar, and 0.993 second for quinine. It will be seen that in both instances for the bitter taste of quinine the reaction-time was consider- ably longer than for the others. The most noteworthy circumstance con- nected with Captain Boyton's feat of cross- ing the English Channel is, not so much his having been kept afloat for so many hours, but that his body temperature was not low- ered appreciably. His water-proof dress prevents the loss of animal heat, and hence, after being in the water for fifteen hours. Captain Boyton was almost as fresh and vigorous on reaching Boulogne as when he started from Dover. An apothecary and self-styled surgeon in Liverpool, named Heap, was recently hanged for the crime of attempting to pro- cure abortion on a young woman, and so causing her death. The jury recommended the culprit to mercy, but the authorities very commendably refused to interfere with the process of the law. Jn view of the prohibitory duties im- posed by the United States upon imported agricultural machinery, the British Associa- tion of Agricultural Engineers recommends manufacturers to hold aloof from the Phil- adelphia Exhibition. The imposition of prohibitory duties is declared to be out of harmony with the objects of international exhibitions. This advice will be adopted almost unanimously in England. A Scientific Association has been or- ganized in Peoria, 111., with Dr. W. H. Chap- man as president. Arrangements have been completed by the Association for a " Sum- mer School" for the study of botany and zoology, the term to extend over four weeks, commencing on July 5th. The ins^tructors will be Profs. Burt G. Wilder and J. H. Comstock, of Cornell University, and Prof. Alphonso Wood. The tuition for the term will be fifteen dollars. The meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science takes place this year at Bristol, commencing Wednes- day, August 2ath. The President of the Association for the present year is Sir John Hawkshaw, C. E., Fellow of the Royal So- ciety. A DONATION of $25,000 for library pur- poses has been made to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. The library of the Academy already contains 20,0()0 scientific works, but is in many respects incomplete. It is believed that with the means now at the disposal of the Academy the library can be made equal to any scien- tific library in the world. Died, March 20th, Daniel Hanburt, F. R. S., F. L. S., member of the British Pharmaceutical Society. Deceased had at- tained distinction by his original investiga- tions into the nature and history of drugs, and of the plants from which they are ob- tained. Just before his death appeared " Pharmacographia : a History of the Prin- cipal Drugs of Vegetable Origin met with in Great Britain and British India." Of this work Hanbury was joint author with Prof. Fluckiger, of Strasburg. The committee of the Bremen Polar Expedition propose that their vessels shall coast along the eastern shore of Greenland, while the English expedition proceeds up Smith's Sound. If this arrangement is car- ried out, possibly these two expeditions may meet at the pole, or at all events at the northernmost portion of Greenland. The Anderson School of Natural His- tory, at Penikese Island, will not be opened this summer. A card from Prof. A. Agas- siz states that " the applications for this summer's session have been so much re- duced by the attempt to make the school partially self-supporting, that the trustees are forced, in order to save the institution from debt, to close it for the coming season. Since no assistance is to be expected from State Boards of Education, it becomes evi- dent that the school must be carried on either by the help of the teachers for whose advantage it is intended, or by endowment. This interruption, which it is hoped may be only temporary, arises neither from lack of enthusiasm in the pupils of Penikese, nor from any want of generous interest in the naturalists who have thus far given their services to aid the enterprise." The French Geographical Society has awarded a gold medal to the family of the late Captain Hall, in recognition of the dis- tinguished services rendered to geographi cal science by that intrepid explorer. The Garden€r''s Chronicle states, on the authority of the market-gardeners around London, that the spring just passed was the most backward known in that locality for many years. Dr. J. Bell Pettigrew has been awarded the Goddard prize of the French Academy of Sciences for his original anatomical and physiological memoirs. 384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The Savifarian publishes a table show- in<^ the death-rate ol' various cities in the United States lor tiie nioiitli of Mareli, from which it appears that the highest deatli-ralc (Nashville) was ;i7.69 per thousand per annum, and the lowest (St. Louis) 13.37. Other cities showed the following death- rates: New York, 30.'25 ; Philadelphia, 2(3.30; Brooklyn, 23.54; Chicago, 15.73; Boston, 22.67 ; New Orleans, 26.72 ; Wash- ington, 33.36; Richmond, 26.40; Charles- ton, 34.50; New Haven, 19.80. A PARTY of Englishmen, Drs. Freeland and NichoUs, Captain Gardner, and Mr. Watt, while exploring the steep and forest- covered mountain behind the town of Ros- seau, in the republic of Dominica, came upon a boiling lake about 2,500 feet above the sea-level, and two miles in circumfer- ence. When the wind cleared away for a moment tlie clouds of sulphurous steam with which the lake was covered, a mound of water was seen ten feet higher than the general level, and caused by ebullition. The margin of the lake consists of beds of sul- phur ; at the outlet is a waterfall of great height. The twenty-fourth meeting of the Amer- iean Association for the Advancement of Science will be held at Detroit, Mich., com- mencing on Wednesday, August 11th. The Permanent Secretary calls special attention to the meeting of the Entomological Club. It is proposed to form a subsection of An- thropology at the coming meeting of the Association. Officers of this year's meet- ing : President, Prof J. E. Hilgard ; Vice- President, Section A, Prof H. A. Newton ; Section B, Prof. J. W. Dawson ; chairman, Chemical Subsection, Prof S. W. Johnson. M. Le Verrier, Director of the Paris Observatory, transmits twice daily to the principal ports of France forecasts of the probable weather for the ensuing twelve hours. The present system does not include signals to give warning of storms. The tele- grams are posted up in some public place. It is suggested to form an artificial isth- mus between France and England, leaving a narrow space in the centre for the pas- sage of ships. The expense would not be much greater than in boring a tunnel, and the advantages in some respects greater. A NEWSPAPER paragraph gives this in- stance of community of disease in man and animals. A large Newfoundland dog, be- longing to a Mr. Wallace, of Upton, Mass., contracted measles from the children of a Mr. Walker, and died of the disease. The dog exhibited all the symptoms of measles as seen in human beings, and under medical treatment was convalescing, when he ran out in the snow, was chilled, and died. A CLUB has lately been formed in this country for the circulation among its mem- bers, by way of the United States mails, of microscopic objects. Applications for mem- bership should be made to the secretary of the club. Rev. A. B. Hervey, 10 North Sec- ond Street, Troy, N. Y. Those only are eligible as members who are accustomed to work with the microscope, and who can contribute to the usefulness of the club by sending good objects for examination. At the Louisville meeting of the Ameri- can Medical Association, S. D. Gross, M. D., of Philadelphia, avowed himself an advocate of bloodletting lor many diseases, especial- ly those of an inflammatory character. He predicted that phlebotomy would again come to be recognized as a therai-eutic agent, but that it would not be practised indiscriminately. Pettenkofer has shown that a cubic foot of soil contains oiie4hird of a cubic foot of air. Now, according to Boussingault, the amount of carbonic acid in this air is much more than that in the atmosphere. He found that in a field recently manured it amounted to 221 parts in 10.000 of air; in a vineyard, 96 ; forest-land, 86 ; loamy subsoil, 82 ; sandy subsoil, 24 ; garden-soil, 36. The title of the society known as the New York Lyceum of Natural History has been changed. It will henceforward be known as the New York Academy of Sci- ences. A CORRESPONDENT of the Department of Agriculture writes that a decoction of tansy- is always effectual in killing bots. He gives the tansy in the morning to a horse infested with bots, and in the evening a dose of salts ; the bots die, and pass out with the excretions. Black silks are very commonly " weight- ed " with foreign substances to the amount of 100, 200, and 300 per cent. This increase in weight is caused by treatment with salts of iron and astringents, salts of tin and cyanides. In fact, what is sold as silk is a mere agglomeration of heterogeneous mat- ters, held temporarily together by a small portion of silk. It is stated by Paul Perny, formerly a pro-vicar apostolic in China, that the Em- peror Kien-Lung, who lived upward of a century ago, drew up the plan of a general encyclopaedia of human knowledge, the pub- lication of which still goes on. Nearly 100,000 volumes of this work have ap- peared, and there remain 60,000 volumes to be published ! M. Perny further states that the Chinese have encyclopaedias of more than 300 volumes on agriculture, hor- ticulture, pisciculture, etc. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. AUGUST, 1875. PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE COLOEADO YALLEY.' Br Major J. W. POWELL. I. Mountains and Valleys. THE topographical features of the valley of the Colorado, or the area drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries, are, in many respects, unique, as some of these features, perhaps, are not re- produced, except to a very limited extent, on any other portion of the surface of the globe. Mountains, hills, plateaus, plains, and valleys, are here found, as elsewhere throughout the earth ; but, in addition to these topographic elements in the scenic features of the region, we tind buttes, outlying masses of stratified rocks, often of great altitude, not as dome-shaped or conical mounds, but usually having angular outlines ; their sides are vertical walls, terraced or buttressed, and broken by deep, reentering angles, and often naked of soil and vege- tation. Then we find lines of clifis, abrupt escarpments of rock, of great length and great height, revealing the cut edges of strata swept away from the lower side. Thirdly, we find caiions, narrow gorges, scores or hundreds of miles in length, and hundreds or thousands of feet in depth, with walls of precipitous rocks. In the arid region of the Western portion of the United States, there are certain tracts of country which have received the name of 3fauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands. These are dreary wastes — naked hills, with rounded or conical forms, composed of sand, sandy clays, or fine fragments of shaly rocks, with steep slopes, and, yielding to the pressure of the foot, they are climbed only by the greatest toil, and it is a labor of no inconsiderable magnitude to penetrate or cross such a district of country. The steep hills are crowded together, and the water-ways separating them are deep array as. Where the niud- * From " Report on United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Terri- tories. Second Division." Major J. W. Powell in charge. VOL. VII. — 25 386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY rocks, or sandy clays and shales, of which the hills are composed, are interstratified with occasional harder beds, the slopes are terraced ; and when these thinly-bedded, though harder, rocks prevail, the ont- n o xn o EH n H K O o O < 5 to a hi H O o M a O u W CO n » tx oo <4 u lines of the topography are changed, and present angular surfaces, and give rise to another type of topographic features, which I have de nominated Alcove Lands, PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 387 The agencies and conditions undei- which all of these features have been formed deserve mention, and in this and following chapters I shall briefly discuss this subject, in a manner as free from technical terms as will be consistent with accurate description. The discussion will by no means be exhaustive, and I hope here- after to treat this subject in a more thorough manner. In view of these facts, I shall not attempt any logical classification of the ele- ments of the topography, nor of the agencies and conditions under which they were produced ; but, commencing at the north, at the ini- tial point of the exploration, I shall take them up in geographic order, as we proceed down the river. Bad Lands and Alcove Lands north of the Uinta Moun- tains.— The area north of the Uinta Mountains embraced in the sur- vey is but small Through the middle of it runs Green River, in a deep, narrow valley, the sides or walls of which sometimes approach so near to each other, and are so precipitous, as to form a canon. The general surface of the country, on the north of this district, is about 1,000 feet above the river, with peaks, here and there, rising a few hundred feet higher ; but soutli, toward the Uinta Mountains, this general surface, within a few miles of the river, gradually descends, and at the foot of the mountains we find a valley on either side, with a direction transverse to that of the course of Green River, and par- allel to the mountain-range. To the north, the water-ways are all deeply eroded ; the perma- nent streams have flood-plains of greater or lesser extent, but the channels of the wet-weather streams, i. e., those which are dry during the greater part of the year, are narrow, and much broken by abrupt falls. The rocks arc the sediments of a dead lake, and are quite variable in lithologic characteristics. We find thinly-laminated shales, hard limestones, breaking with an angular fracture, crumbling Bad-Land rocks, and homogeneous, heavily-bedded sandstones. The scenic features of the country are alike variable. On the clifts about Green River City, towers and buttes are seen as you look from below, always regarded by the passing traveler as strange freaks of Nature. The limestones, interstratified with shales, give terraced and buttressed characteristics to the escarpments of the canons and narrow valleys. Immediately south of Bitter Creek, on the east side of Green River, there is a small district of country which we have called the Alcove Land. On the east it is drained by Little Bitter Creek, a dry gulch much of the year. This runs north into Bitter Creek, a permanent stream, which empties into the Green. The crest of this water-shed is an irregular line, only two to four miles back from the river, but usually more than 1,000 feet above it, so that the waters have a rapid descent, and every shower-born rill has excavated a deep, narrow 388 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. channel, and these narrow canons are so close to each other as to be separated by walls of rock so steep, in most places, that they cannot be scaled, and many of these little caiioos are so broken by falls as to be impassable in either direction. The whole country is cut, in this way, into irregular, angular blocks, standing as buttresses, benches, and towers, about deep water- ways and gloomy alcoves. The conditions under which the caiions have been carved will be more elaborately discussed hereafter. To the west of Green River, and back some miles, between Black's Fork and Henry's Fork, we have a region of buff, chocolate, and lead- colored Bad Lands. This Bad-Land country differs from the Alcove Land, above mentioned, in that its outlines are everywhere beautifully rounded, as the rocks of which it is composed crumble quickly under atmospheric agencies, so that an exposure of solid rock is rarely seen ; but we have the same abrupt descent of the streams, and the same elaborate system of water-channels. Here we have loose, incoherent sandstones, shales, and clays, carved, by a net-work of running waters, into domes and cones, with flowing outlines. But still there is no vegetation, and the loose earth is naked. Occasionally, a thin stratum of harder rock will be found. Such strata will here and there form shelves or steps upon the sides of the mountains. Traces of iron, and rarer minerals, are found in these beds, and, on exposure to the air, the chemical agencies give a greater variety of colors, so that the mountains and cones, and the strange forms of the Bad Lands, are elaborately and beautifully painted ; not with the delicate tints of verdure, but with brilliant colors, that, are gorgeous when first seen, but which soon pall on the senses. The Uinta Mountains. — To the west of Green River stand the "Wasatch Mountains, a system of peaks, tables, and elevated valleys, having a northerly and southerly direction, nearly parallel to the river. The range known as the Uinta Mountains stands at right angles to the Wasatch, extending toward the east, and no definite line of division can be noticed. The Wasatch is a great trunk, with a branch called the Uinta. Near the junction, the two ranges have about the same altitude, and the gulches of their summits are filled with perpetual snow; but, toward the east, the Uinta peaks are lower, gradually diminishing in altitude, until they are lost in low ridges and hills. Through this range Green River runs, and a series of caiions forms its channel. To a person studying the physical geography of this country, without a knowledge of its geology, it would seem very strange that the river should cut through the mountains, when apparently it might have passed around them to the east, through valleys, for there are such along the north side of the Uintas, extending to the east, where the mountains are degraded to hills ; and, passing around these, there PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 389 are other valleys, extending to the Green, on the south side of the range. Then, why did the river run through the mountains ? The first explanation suggested is, that it followed a previously- formed fissure through the i-ange ; but very little examination will h Hi S > K z; n n o o a © O A O $; M o H H P O -I H n t< o o a; « a a t< 3 show that this explanation is unsatisfactory. The proof is abundant that the river cut its own channel ; that the cailons are gorges of cor- rasion. Again, the question returns to us, Why did not the stream 390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. turn around this great obstruction, rather than pass through it ? The answer is, that the river had the right of way ; in other words, it was running ore the mountains were formed : not before the rocks, of which the mountains are composed, were deposited, but before the formations were folded, so as to make a mountain-range. The contractine: or sliriveling of the earth causes the rocks near the surface to wrinkle or fold, and such a fold was started athwart the course of the river. Had it been suddenly formed, it would have been an obstruction sufficient to turn the water in a new course to the east, beyond the extension of the wrinkle ; but the emergence of the fold above the general surface of the country was little or no faster than the progress of the corrasion of the channeh We may say, then, tliat the river did not cut its way down through the mountains, from a height of many thousand feet above its present site ; but, having an elevation differing but little, perhaps, from what it now has, as the fold was lifted, it cleared away the obstruction by cutting a canon and the walls were thus elevated on either side. The river j^reserved its level, but mountains were lifted up ; as the saw revolves on a tixed pivot, while the log through which it cuts is moved along. The river was the saw which cut the mountains in two. Recurring to the time before this wrinkle was formed, there "were beds of sandstone, shale, and limestone, more than 24,000 feet in thick- ness, spread horizontally over a broad stretch of this country. Then the summit of the fold slowly emerged, until the lower beds of sand- stone were lifted to the altitude at first occupied by the upper beds, and if these upper beds had not been carried away, they would now be found more than 24,000 feet above the river, and we should have a billow of sandstone, with its axis lying in an easterly and westerly direction, more than 100 miles in length, 50 miles in breadth, and over 24,000 feet higher than the present altitude of the river, gently rounded from its central line above to the foot of the slope on either side. But as the rocks were lifted, rains fell upon them and gathered into streams, and the wash of the rains and the corrasion of the rivers cut the billow down almost as fast as it rose, so that the present alti- tude of these mountains marks only the difference between the ele- vation and the denudation. It has been said that the elevation of the wrinkle was 24,000 feet, but it is probable that this is not the entire amount, for the present altitude of the river, above the sea, is nearly 6,000 feet, and when this folding began we have reason to believe that the general surface of this country was but slightly above that general standard of com- parison. Then there were down-turned as Avell as up-turned wrinkles, or, as the geologist would say, there were synclinal as well as anticlinal folds. Had there been no degradation of the fold, there would have been a bed of i*ock turned over its summit 24,000 feet above the pres- PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 391 ent level of the river. Now that bed is gone from the mountains, yet it can be seen turned up on edge against the flanks of the mountains, dipping under the beds of rocks found still farther out from the range. Follow it down, and doubtless we could trace it to a depth much below the level of the sea. While the folds were forming, the up- turned flexures were cut down, and the troughs in the down-tnrned flexures were filled up, and we have more than 8,000 feet of these later sediments to the north of the Uinta Mountains. ^<%i !g^\T^^T\-^ g-jBT^-V^ Fig. 3.— Diaclinal Valley. It will thus be seen that the upheaval was not marked by a great convulsion, for the lifting of the rocks was so slow that the rains removed the sandstones almost as fast as they came up. The moun- tains were not thrust up as peaks, but a great block was slowly lifted, and from this the mountains were carved by the clouds — patient artists, who take what time may be necessary for their work. We speak of mountains forming clouds about their tops : the clouds have formed the mountains. Lilt a district of granite, or marble, into their region, and they gather about it, and hurl their storms against it, beating the rocks into sands, and then they carry them out into the sea, carving out caiions, gulches, and valleys, and leaving plateaus and mountains embossed on the surface. Instead of having a rounded billow, we have an irregular table, with beds dipping to the north, on the north side of the axis, and to the south, on the south side, and in passing over the truncated fold we pass over their upturned edges. 392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Go out on the flank of the fold, and find the bed of rock which woukl form the summit of the great wrinkle, had there been no erosion, and there sink a shaft 24,000 feet, and you will be able to study a certain succession of beds of sandstones, shales, and lime- stones. Go two or three miles farther from the mountains, and sink a shaft; the first 8,000 feet or more will be through sandstones and shales, unlike those seen in the first section ; then you will strike the summit of the first section. Continuing down for 24,000 feet, the first will be reproduced, stratum for stratum. Now start on either side of the fold, and cross to its centre ; and you will pass over the same series of strata in the same order as you would in descending the first- mentioned shaft, and in the second also, b'elow the upper 8,000 feet. Now pass again from the centre to the flank of the fold, in either direction, and you can study the same rocks in the same order as you would in ascending these shafts. It will thus be seen that in these truncated wrinkles we are enabled to study geological formations without descending into the depths of the earth. Fig. 1 has been constructed for the purpose of graphically ex- pressing some of the important facts observed in the great Uinta Fold. In this, the beds are seen to turn up in a great flexure, and to be cut away above, the higher beds more than the lower; thus 4, 4-4, 4, has been cut away much more than 5, 5-5, 5; and 10, 10-10, 10 has suffered much less erosion than the beds above it. The only place where the water has carried it away is at Y, the bottom of the caiion. In this diagram, the line A-B represents the lowest line of ob- servation, as exhibited in the bed of the river. All below this line is theoretical. The line C-D represents the level of the sea. The stratum ^, JE-E, E was the last deposited antecedent to the com- mencement of the emergence of the summit of the fold. Had there been no erosion of the fold, the beds intervening between the broken line I, I, I (which is a continuation of the lines E, E-E, E), and the irregular line which represents the surface of the country, cutting the edges of the eroded beds, and passing through the lowest. No. 10, at Y, would still be found, but they have been carried away. The diagram does not properly represent the entire amount of erosion, from the fact that the vertical scale is exaggerated, and the beds have been extended beyond their proper limits, for the jDurpose of representing more clearly other facts of interest. It will be seen that in passing along the line A-B (the bottom of the river-channel), from the shaft -^to the bottom of the canon Y^ we are able to observe the beds 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, in the same order that we would in descending the shaft F. The beds 1-1, 2-2 have been deposited since the emergence of the summit of the fold, and hence never extended quite across it ; yet the lower members of these beds, doubtless, at one time extended much farther up on the flanks of the fold. They have been cut away, however, as represented in the dia- PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 393 gram. Let the lines II, H-H, 77", represent the limit of the contin- uation of these beds. In the shaft 6^ these beds also are exposed above those seen in shaft F. The altitude of the rocks above the line of observation (vl, B) is exaggerated about five times. If they were reduced to one-fifth, the proportion between the rocks seen in the various escarpments of these mountains, and those carried away below the broken lines, would be projjerly represented. Fig. 4.— a Cataclinal Vallet By sinking a shaft, only a little surface along the edge of the strata could be seen ; but on the sides of the fold they are exposed for many miles, and often the top or bottom is cleared off for a great space, revealing even the ripple-marks of the ancient sea, or rounded impres- sions of rain-drops which fell in that elder time ; or the sands have buried shells and bones of ancient animals, and they are still encased in the rock ; and even impressions of leaves that were buried in the mud can yet be seen in such a fine state of preservation that you can trace their delicate veins. In speaking of the great upheaval of rocks from which the Uinta ^Mountains are carved, I have spoken of wrinkling and folding, as if the rocks sstqyq always flexed ; but these displacements are sometimes attended with fractures, on one side of which the rocks are upheaved, or thrown down on the other. Such displacements are called faults. Faults like these are seen in many places in the Uinta Mountains ; one great one, on the north side, the throw of which is nearly 20,000 feet, and many others are found of lesser magnitude. In speaking of elevation and depression by faulting or folding, it must be understood that reference is made to a change of altitude in 394 THE POPULAR SCIE^^CE MONTHLY. relation to the surface of t])e sea, so that upheaval or throw is only relative to this general standard of comparison. But during the geo- logical ages represented in the folding and carving of the Uinta Moun- tains, it is possible the level of the sea itself has been changed by the shrinking of the earth, and a part, at least, of the apparent upheaval above mentioned may be accounted for by a depression of the forma- tions in synclhial folds, and the letting down of broad areas of the earth's surface by lateral contraction exhibited, in corrugation. Fig. 5.— An Anticlinal Valley, with Section. It has already been said that the cutting off of the fold has left the upturned edges of the formations exposed to view. Some of these beds are quite hard, others are composed of very soft material; so that there are alternating beds of harder and softer rocks running in an easterly and westerly direction, both on the north and south side of the range. The soft rocks, yielding much more readily to atmos- pheric degradation, have been washed out in irregular valleys, be- tween intervening ridges of harder rock, so tliat we have a series of nearly parallel valleys, and also a series of intervening parallel ridges, and both valleys and ridges are approximately parallel to the range. But, as the great fold of the Uinta Mountains is greatly com])licated PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY 39S by minor obliqixe and transverse flexures, while the general direction of these ridges is as described, they are turned back and forth from these lines in gentle or abrupt curves. These ridges are sometimes low mountain-ranges. So, if we approach these mountains from either direction, north or south, we first meet with ridges, or, as they are usually called in the Westei-n country, hog-backs. In many places these are so steep as to form a complete barrier to. progress. Usually the slope away from the side of the mountain corresponds above with the dip of the rock, and is gentle or steep, as the dip is lesser or greater. The side of the hog-back, next to the mountain, is composed of the cut edges of the strata, and varies greatly with the texture of the rocks; but usually it is steep or broken, sometimes but tressed, sometimes terraced, sometimes columned and fluted. Fig. 6.— a Stnclinal Vallet. On the south side of the Yarapa Plateau, near the head of Cliff"- Creek Valley, there is an abrupt, oblique flexure, on the side of the great fold, by which the rocks are turned up, so as to stand vertically. In the rocks at this place there are two very hard conglomerates; the intervening strata are soft sandstones and marls, and have been car- ried away, aiul the conglomerates stand as vertical walls, 30 or 40 feet in thickness, 50 to 300 feet in height, and several miles in length, and between these is a broad avenue, or narrow vallev, beset with rao-o-ed bowlders of conglomerate. The drainage of these narrow valleys between the hog-backs is not always along their lengths, but the water is sometimes carried by channels crossinof them and cuttings throuo;h intervenino; ridcres; hence 396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. there are numbers of transverse streams and wet-weather channels running across valleys and through ridges. Now, if the great axis of the Uinta Fold was everywhere the sum- mit of a water-shed, we should find the streams heading along that irregular line running ofi' to the flank of the fold on either side ; hut, as the fold is bisected by Green River, some of the minor water- courses, especially those near the river, and those near the centre of the fold, follow the strike of the rocks dircictly into that stream. On the north side, some head back near the summit of the fold, and run to the north, crossing the hog-backs in a direction with the dip, and then turn, at the foot of the mountains, and run into the Green, where the waters take a general southerly direction. Others, again, head back on the hog-backs, or even beyond them, on the plains and the Bad Lands to the north, and cut quite through the hog-backs and mountains in a direction against the dip of the rocks, and emj^ty into the Green. This is especially true where the river has its easterly and westerly direction through Brown's Park. On the other side of the range, streams head high up in the mountains, and cut directly or obliquely against the upturned edges of the strata, and run in a gen- eral direction with the dip of the strata until they reach the long val- leys between hog-backs; then down these valleys they turn, some- times cutting through intervening ridges, until they find their way into the Green, where they are turned to the south, away from the mountain. FiQ. 7.— An Anaclinai Vallet. Tt will thus be seen that the relation of the direction of the streams to the dip of the rocks is very complex, and, for convenience of de- scription, I have elsewhere classified these valleys, on the basis of these relations, in the following order : Order 1. — Transverse valleys, having a direction at right angles to the strike. PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 397 Order 2. — Longitudinal valleys, having a direction the same as the strike. Of the first order, three varieties are noticed : a, dlacUnal, those which pass through a fold. (Fig. 3.) b, catacUnal^ valleys tliat run in the direction of the dip. (Fio-. 4.) c, anaclinal^ valleys that run against the dip of the beds. (Fig. 7.) Of the second order, we have, also, three varieties : A^ anticlinal valleys, which follow anticlinal axes. (Fig. 5.) B, synclinal valleys, which follow synclinal axes. (Fig. 6.) C, nionoclinal valleys, which run in the direction of the strike be- tween the axes of the fold — one side of the valley formed of the sum- mits of the beds, the other composed of the cut edges of the formation. (Fig. 8.) Many of the valleys are thus simple in their relations to the folds ; but, as we may have two systems of displacements, a valley may be- long to one class, in relation to one fold, and to another in its relation to a second. Such we designate as complex valleys. Again, a valley may belong to one class in one part of its course and to another elsewhere in its course. Such we designate as com- pound valleys. It will be further noticed that valleys may have many branches, but, in relegating a valley to its class, we consider only the stem of the valley proper, and not its branches. A great diversity in the features of all these valleys is observed. Most of these modifications are due to three principal causes : First, a greater or lesser inclination of the rocks. Second, the texture of the beds — that is, their greater or lesser degree of heterogeneity. The third class of modifying influences is found in the eruptive beds. The last-mentioned agencies are not found in the region underinmo- diate discussion. The explanation of the caiions of Green River will assist us in un- derstanding the origin of the lateral valleys and canons. The streams were there before the mountains were made ; that is, the streams carved out the valleys, and left the mountains. The direction of the streams is indubitable evidence that the elevation of the fold was so slow as not to divert the streams, although the total amount of eleva- tion was many thousands of feet. Had the fold been lifted more rapidly than the principal streams could have cut their channels, Green River would have been turned about it, and all the smaller streams and water-ways would have been cataclinal. Thus it is that the study of the structural characteristics of the valleys and canons teaches us, in no obscure way, the relation between the progress of upheaval and that of erosion and corrasion, showing that these latter were^^aW passu with the former, and that the agen- cies of Nature produce great results — results no less than the carving of a mountain-range out of a much larger block lifted from beneath 398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the sea ; not by an extravagant and violent use of power, but by tlie slow agencies which may be observed generally throughout the world, still acting in the same slow, patient manner. There are yet some interesting facts to be observed concerning these inter-hog-back valleys. Their floors are usually lower than the general surface farther away from the mountains. There seem to be two causes for this : The great fold having been lifted and truncated prior to the exj^osure of the rocks farther away from the mountains, its strata present their edges, instead of their upper surfaces, to the down-falling rain, and the softer beds are not so well shielded by the harder. Erosion hence progresses more rapidly than where the beds are approximately horizontal. Again, the mountains, with peaks among the clouds, condense their moisture, and a greater quantity of rain falls on them, or in their vicinity. The region of country adjacent to the mountains re- FiG. 8.— MoNOCLixAL Vallet. ceives a portion of this extra rainfall, so that this dynamic agency in- creases from the plains to the summits of the mountains, probably in some direct ratio. This increase of the eroding agency, and the greater exposure of the soft beds, probably account for the fact that the low- est country is at the foot of the mountains. There is a limit to the effect of these conditions, for it should be observed that no valley can be eroded below the level of the jirincipal stream, which carries away the products of its surface degradation ; and where the floor of such a valley has been cut dowm nearly to the level of such a stream, it receives the debris of the adjacent cliffs and mountains, and in this way the rocks composing the floor are usually masked, to a greater or lesser extent. The same tojjographic facts under like conditions, are found on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado Territory, and tlie valleys which run into the South Platte from the south, between the hog-backs, are lower than THE FORM OF LIGHTXIA^G-RODS. 399 the mesas and plateaus farther away trom tlie mountains, but not lower than the flood-plain of the river. I have endeavored above to explain the relation of the valleys of tlie Uinta Mountains to the stratigraphy, or structural geology, of the region, and, further, to state the conclusion reached, that the drainage was established antecedent to the corrugation or displacement of the beds by faulting and folding. I propose to call such valleys, including the orders and varieties before mentioned, antecedent valleys. In other parts of the mountain-region of the West, valleys are found having directions dependent on corrugation. I proj^ose to call these consequent valleys. Such valleys have been observed only in limited areas, and have not been thoroughly studied, and I omit further dis- cussion of them. In many cases, there can be no doubt that the present courses of the streams were determined by conditions not found in the rocks through which the channels are now carved, but that the beds in which the streams had their origin, when the district last appeared above the level of the sea, have been swept away. I propose to call such superimposed valleys. Thus the valleys under consideration, if classified on the basis of their relation to the rocks in which they originated, would be called consequent valleys ; but, if classified on the basis of their relation to the rocks in which they are now found, would be called supei'imptosed valleys. -♦•♦- THE FOEM OF LIGHTNIXG-KODS. By Peof. JOHN PHIN. THE season when the attention of the public will be directed to protection from lightning is now approaching, and it is of the utmost importance that correct views in regard to the construction and erection of lightning-rods should prevail. We have in this coun- try a class of men who have devoted themselves to the business of making money out of the fears which thunder and lightning inspire, and it unfortunately happens that the majority of these men care more for the money which they obtain than for the actual protection which they afford to their customers. To them, complicated arrangements, that can be defended with any show of reason, are a most important matter, for, on the ground of greater cost and efficiency, a more lib- eral harvest is obtained. In this connection there has been no more fertile source of imposition than the fallacy that lightning travels only on the surface of metallic conductors, for it has led to the construction of lightning-rods of which the cross-sections are stars, tubes, and all sorts of complicated devices. A recent note in The Populae Sci- 400 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ENCE Monthly, translated from the Comptes Hefidus, indorses this view, and, as no editorial protest has been added, it may have a ten- dency to mislead many. Let us, therefore, consider the facts in the case. In looking up the history of this subject, the first mistake that we meet is the confounding of static with dynamic * electricity, or rather an utter ignorance of what static electricity is. The author of the note to which we have referred evidently supi:>oses that all electricity produced by the ordinary frictional machine is static — which most as- suredly is not the case. In making this mistake, however, he is not by any means alone. Dozens of writers have committed the same error, and it is not long since a medical man wrote a book on the cura- tive powers of static, as distinguished from dynamic, electricity, while any physicist would have told him that in the entire volume there was not a single case described in which static electricity was used ! Whenever electricity is in motion, that is to say, when it is flowing along a conductor, it is dynamic, no matter from what source it may be obtained. When at rest — that is, when it is in equilibrium — it is static. Dynamic electricity may be produced by the ordinary plate or cylinder machine ; static electricity may have its origin in a vol- taic battery. Knowing that electricity at rest always tends to difiiise itself on the surface, in fact, that it always confines itself to the surface, it be- came, at an early period, a question whether electricity in motion did not follow the same law. Pouillet determined the question in a very ingenious manner. He took a cylindrical wire of a certain size and measured the resistance which it ofi"ered to a current of electricity. He then rolled the wire out flat and measured the resistance again ; it was found to be the same, although it is evident that the extent of the surface of the conductor was by this means greatly increased. Other experimenters have determined the question by difierent methods, but always with the same result. The committee of the French Academy, which included Becquerel, De la Rive, Pouillet, and others, adopted a solid square bar as the best form for lightning-rods ; and Sir William Snow Harris, though often quoted as favoring rods which present a large surface, says : " Provided the quantity of metal be present, the form under which we place it is evidently of no consequence to its conducting powers, since it would be absurd to suppose that a mass of metal, under any form, did not conduct electricity in all its parti- cles ; indeed, we know that it does so." In attempting to determine this question, Pouillet and others seem always to have used electricity prodixced by a voltaic battery; and * We give to the terms static and dynamic the old meanings, as evidently does the writer under review. According to the new definitions suggested and advocated by Profs. Tliomson and Tait, dynamics includes statics. The point is one which does nol affect the main question, however. TEE FORM OF LIGHTNING-BODS. 4.0 ) although, to the mind of every scientific physicist, such experiments are conclusive, the objection has been raised that they do not fairly determine the case for electricity of such high tension as lightning. To meet such objections, the writer of this article, many years ago, instituted the following experiments: Take a strip of gold-leaf half an inch wide, and two or three inches long ; pass through it a moderate charge from a six-jar electrical bat- tery, and it will be entirely burned up. The circumference of the gold in this case is one inch, and this, of course, is the measure of the sur- face. Now, take a gold wire one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, and pass through it the most powerful charge that can be obtained from the same battery ; the wire will remain unaffected, although it pre- sents but one-fifth the surface. The difierence between the action of static electricity and electri- city in motion is very well shown by the following simple experiment : Take a large Leyden jar, one of say two gallons measurement, having the usual knob and other arrangements, as shown in the figure. In the wooden cover insert a glass tube, carrying at its upper extremity ^j^.-J^ Illustration of the Effects of Static and Dynamic Electricity. a wire lying horizontally across it, this wire having a good-sized ball at each end, so that the discharge may take the form of a spark or an explosion, and not pass off silently. Between the horizontal wire and the knob of the jar stretch a strip of gold-leaf {JS), and charge the jar in the usual manner. So long as the electricity does not flow through the gold-leaf, the latter will remain uninjured, although it is evidently charged as intensely as the machine can charge it. But, if we dis- charge the jar by laying one ball of the discharger on the outer coat- TOL. TII. — 26 402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ing of the jar, and the other on the knob (yl), the gold-leal" will be de- stroyed. If, for the strip of gold-leaf, a wire the one-thirtieth of an inch in diameter be substituted, the charge will be carried off without its doing any damage. Here we see that, while the electricity was at rest (static), the gold-leaf was quite, capable of receiving as heavy a charge as the most powerful machine could impart ; but, the moment the electricity began to flow (became dynamic), the gold-leaf was de- stroyed, notwithstanding its great surface, while a wire of far less surface afforded a perfect way for the charge to pass off. Experiments in this direction might be multiplied ad infinitum, and, when properly conducted, they all lead to the same conclusion, which is, that, when made of the same metal, the efficiency of any rod is in direct proportion to its weight per foot. It may be round, square, tubular, ribbon-like, or in the form of a rope consisting of several strands ; it makes no difference. For ourselves, we give the prefer- ence to a simple flat ribbon as being most easily applied and less obtrusive, but wires and wire ropes are very convenient, more easily procured, and quite as good. That M. Nouel has neither experimented upon the subject nor given deep thought to it, is evident from the fact that he advises us to siibstitute hollow pipes for the present solid rods. As the interior surface of a pipe is incapable of receiving a charge of static electricity, it is evident that, if this law applies to lightning-conductors, the ca- pacity of a pipe or tube would be just doubled by slitting it and spreading it out flat. ♦«» THE HIGHER EDUCATIOK By F. W. CLARKE, PBOPESSOR OP CHEMI8TET AKD PHYSIOS, UNIVERSITY OP CINCINNATI. EDUCATORS, to-day, are divided into two schools, especially with regard to colleges and universities. The older of these schools insists very vigorously upon the importance of thorough instruction in the so-called "dead languages," and makes all else subordinate to them. The new school, on the other hand, the school which seems to be steadily gaining ground, upholds the claims of the sciences, and gives to them the places of honor in every general course of study. The controversy between these schools is well worn, but has not yet become threadbare. The questions at issue cannot grow stale and hackneyed until after they have been finally settled. In discussing all such questions many commonplaces must be uttered. Indeed, much confusion has arisen J^mong educational writers because they have too timidly feared to seem commonplace. These commonplaces are the necessary, rough foundations upon which THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 403 we must build ; if we ignore or lose sight of them, our structure will be unsound. Simple facts must be stated in a simple way. The first thing to be determined is, the true object of the higher education. Is it, as some would seem to suppose, purely ornamental, a thing valuable only as far as it gives a man extra polish and elegance of mind, a mere luxury, with no practical bearings upon the every-day duties of common, busy life ? Such an idea is preposterous. Of course, ornamental culture is something to be desii-ed ; its acquirement confers honor upon the acquirer ; facilities should be furnished for its attain- ment. But true education, including all this, goes far deeper. Its purpose is to develop the mind ; to strengthen the thinking faculties in every possible direction ; to render the acquisition of new knowledge easier and surer ; to increase the student's resources ; and to render him better fitted for dealing with the useful affairs of the world. Such an education is never completed ; it grows throughout a lifetime ; it is self-propagating ; its most valuable features are acquired outside of schools and colleges. All that a college can do is to help lay its foundations, by training the mental power for subsequent use. Which course of studies best carries out this purpose ? The argument has been summed up by certain advocates of the new school in the following very condensed way: "Science deals with things, language with words. Words merely represent things. Surely the knowledge of the thing itself is worth more than the knowledge of its symbol." But this reasoning, however sound it may be at the core, is rather too curt and dogmatic to carry conviction. No reason- able being can deny the great value of a study of language. Different races of men must exchange their ideas. A man cannot be called liberally educated who has no knowledge of any tongue other than his own. But shall linguistic studies be allowed to occupy the first rank in our college courses ? Are they to almost monopolize the attention of the student, or shall they be made subordinate to other things? Ought they to be taught independently for themselves alone, or should they be brought to bear upon other studies, so that all branches of learning may be made to fortify one another? The latter view, at least as far as our colleges are concerned, is unquestionably the correct one. The study of philology, or of language by itself, is undoubted- ly of great value ; but it is rather a study for the specialist than for the average student. It is, certainly, a true science ; only, lacking precision in its methods, and being deficient in practical applicability to the general affairs of life, it must be left out of account for the pres- ent. In a general course of study a language should be taught because of its value in opening up other departments of knowledge. It should reveal to us the thoughts of other peoples, and enable us to avail our- selves of their experience. For most men these purposes are best ful- filled by a study of the modern tongues. Latin and Greek are valu- able, no doobt, only they are less indispensable than French and Ger- 404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. man. These newer languages are not only of practical value, being spoken and written by millions of our fellow-beings to-day, but they have also many direct beax-ings upon all modern life. The sciences cannot be well studied without them ; they open up the widest fields of recent tliought ; they bring us into closer harmony with the spirit of our own times. We can get along better without a knowledge of antiquity than without a knowledge of the days in which we live. The history of the siege of Troy has less interest for us than the history of the great social and economic problems which are being worked out in such deadly earnest in our own country and in Europe to-day. The ancient languages have their uses, unquestionably ; so also have the Russian and the Chinese ; but are those uses of sufficient importance to warrant universal study? Remembering the aims of education, we must also remember that every student has but a limited number of years to spend at college. In those few years he must acquire that learning which will best fit him to go forth and grapple with active duties. If he has both the taste and the leisure, then he can learn the dead languages after graduation. It is nothing to urge that Latin and Greek facilitate the acquisition of French and German, since the latter can be studied directly as well as the former. Few people can afford the time to study four languages in order to use but two. If we consider the languages in their bearings upon other studies, French and German again take the lead. For advanced study in philosophy or in science these tongues are absolutely necessary, while the dead languages are not. True, many scientific terms are derived from the Latin or the Greek; but the derivation is commonly lost in new technical meanings. Moreover, the derivation, if desired, can readily be learned and sufficiently understood without much knowl- edge of Latin grammar or much familiarity with Greek verbs. The philological facts may be valuable, but they are no more so than a host of other facts which must, for want of time, be omitted from every general course of study. As far as concerns the Latin, needed for the comprehension of nomenclature in the natural sciences, it is safe to say that any intelligent student can learn enough of the language in three months, if, indeed, he cares to study it regularly at all. In the direction of literary pursuits, the modern languages, again, have the advantage. Undoubtedly', the literatures of the past are rich in grand poetry, in great thoughts, and in the history of noble deeds. But poetry as grand, thoughts as great, the history of deeds as noble, can be found in the literatures of to-day. Every thing of permanent value which the old contained has been translated into the new. Plato and Virgil may be read in English, French, or German ; but Goethe, Racine, and Shakespeare, are not to be found in Greek. These modern literatures are certainly of as great value in any system of real culture as those of older times. No student can master all literatures, and therefore much must be rejected. First, a scholar should study THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 405 the classics of his own language, next in order taking others of his own time. When he knows something of his fellow-beings as he will meet them in the present, then he may learn with profit about the people of two thousand years ago. We profess to admire the culture of the Greeks. This culture came, not from the study of some language dead to them, but from direct intercourse with Nature and mankind. Cannot we draw new culture from the same sources ? As far, then, as concerns direct bearing upon practical life, the modern languages must take precedence of the ancient. And, if we look at education from a utilitarian stand-point, we cannot doubt that a knowledge of those sciences which are involved in the arts, whose principles are applied in the steam-engine and in the telegraph, is of more value to the average mind than an acquaintance with the hui- guages of antiquity. Ornament is worth having, but for most people usefulness must rank first. But another question here comes up. It is plain that a modern education best fits a man to perform the exter- nal duties of life. But which education best develops the mind? Here we come in sight of the stronghold of the classicist. He claims for his system that it afibrds the best mental training. Is this true ? Let us see what has to be done. Looking at education solely as a means of intellectual development, we must inquire what faculties of the mind need to be cultivated. Three may be suggested at once : the reason, the memory, and the powers of observation. The aesthetic tastes should also be brought into play, and given good material for wholesome growth. In the treatment of each faculty, education, as its name indicates, should be a drawing out rather than a cramming in. It should give the student not only material, but power ; not only train him to express his thoughts, but also furnish him with thouglits to express. Beginning with the memory by itself, it is hard to see how either system of education can outrank the other. In the old school the memory is trained upon words and grammatical rules ; in the new upon facts of observation and the laws deduced from them. But, if we consider the memory in connection with the other powers of the mind, we must give the modern educatiou the highest place. Memory and the perceptive faculty are here cultivated side by side, as they cannot be in the mere study of language. Language does nothing for the observing powers. In science, on the other hand, the eye, the ear, and all the instruments of the senses, are trained to observe facts accurately, these facts are stored up in the memory, and the memory then renders it possible to exercise the reason upon them, generalize from them, and compare them with other facts gathered from other observers. In the cultivation of the pure reason science again takes the lead. The element of judgment, which is exercised in the work of translat- " ing, is brought into play as much among modern languages as among 4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the ancient. It also finds its place in the classification of observed facts. Further than this, language offers the dry, arbitrary rules of grammar as food for the intellect, while science gives grand laws and generalizations already deduced or in process of deduction. The dis- covery of these natural laws may be counted among the greatest achievements of the human mind. To follow out the processes by which they were discovered, gives the mind its most rigid training, and elevates the tone of thought in many other respects. The intel- lect becomes self-reliant and yet conscious of its own weak points. On the other hand, grammatical reasoning binds one down to past authorities, and leaves no room for original thinking. It is purely conventional, nothing more. Originality, either of thought or of inves- tigation, is discouraged by it. The mind may be filled, but not ex- panded. But surely the intellect ought to be trained to think forward as well as backward, in new regions as well as in the old, beaten paths. To the scientific student the universe ajjpears full of great unsolved problems, whose solution is the noblest exercise for the human mind and a benefit to the race. To thoughts like these the mind of the mere grammarian is closed. He sees nothing but routine, and dreads all innova.tion. He fetters the intellect rather than loosens it. It may be said, however, that the old education did not depend altogether upon the languages for intellectual training ; that the math- ematics were included, with a variety of philosophical and historical studies. True, but the new education also includes these branches, only in a better way. Their connection with modern times is much more intimate than their connection with antiquity. Modern lan- guages aid in their cultivation to the highest degree. In philosophy, the modern has assimilated every thing of value from the ancient ; and history, in the scientific sense, is just beginning to be written. As for mathematics, the old education made it a system of mental gymnastics ; the new transforms it into a useful tool which the student must apply to the solution of many physical problems. Both the intellectual value and the utility of such studies have been vastly increased. Turning toward aesthetic studies, we find the new education again foremost. Quite obviously, the sesthetic sense must be mainly culti- vated through music, works of art and literature. The world's great- est music is all modern. So also are most of the famous works of art. The painter lives entirely among the achievements of recent or com- paratively recent times. As for sculpture, one needs no Latin nor Greek in order to appreciate the Laocoon. Beauty is better under- stood by direct contact with beauty, than by reading about it in an- cient books. And in literary studies the languages of to-day are more than on a par with those of the past. This part of the argument has already been mentioned. In scientific pursuits, also, the aesthetic tastes find such nourish- THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 407 ment as they can get nowhere else. In a truly scientific education the art of drawing is an important element, and in the study of acoustics the musician wins great advantage. But we may look in other direc- tions than these. No one can long handle a microscope without hav- ing his sense of the beautiful enlarged ; nor can any one study modern astronomy without gaining the loftiest conceptions of the sublime. The true student of Nature and her phenomena ever sees order and symmetry coming out of chaos, and finds the rarest beauty hidden where to the unaided eye naught but ugliness exists. Must it not bring the highest satisfaction to the lover of beauty thus to find its traces every- where ? Can any student, who looks upon the universe with vision thxis unobscured, fail to find in his studies the truest aesthetic culture ? Theoretically, then, we may conclude that the study of science, with modern languages, literatures, and philosophies as aids, does all for the mind that the old classical education ever did, and more. A higher discipline, a higher utility, and a higher culture, are its natural results. It trains memory, intellect, the perceptive faculties, and the sense of the beautiful simultaneously, insuring a symmetrical devel- opment. It brings men into closer relations with the spirit of modern civilization, bears directly upon all modern work, aids in practical after- life as no other education can, and helps the student to grow in all directions. This education not only fills the mind, but at the same time deepens and broadens it. In every definable respect it is supe- rior to the old system. The latter was good enough in its day, but the new surpasses it in ours. Yet it may be urged that all this is theory, and not borne out by facts. It is easy to point out college after college in this country in which, apparently, the classical and scientific courses have been tried side by side, to the evident disadvantage of the latter. Can this be explained ? Three things must here be taken into consideration : namely, the character of most American colleges, the character of many professed teachers, and the methods of study. Beginning with the colleges and universities, it is noteworthy that there are to-day in our country about three hundred institutions bear- ing those names. Of these, Ohio has twenty-eight, while Pennsylva- nia, Illinois, and New York, have each twenty or over. For this de- plorable scattering of educational forces, denominational rivalry is chiefly to blame. Where, by judicious management, one really effi- cient institution might be established, half a dozen sects, jealous of each other, build up as many insignificant weaklings. Each college acts as a drag on all the others. Libraries, cabinets, and faculties are uselessly duplicated. Naturally, one result of this state of affairs is a lowering of educational standards. It would be well for education if the several States would compel each so-called " university " to act up to its pretensions, become what it claims to be, or else forfeit its char- <^o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ter. The educational frauds which many of these institutions perpe- trate should no longer be tolerated. No new college ought to be chartered unless it has a proper endowment at the start. And, in a majority of our States, no new college should be chartered at all. Forces should be concentrated upon institutions already in existence. But what has all this to do with the relative merits of the classics and science ? Quite obviously, much. Since, on account of this fool- ish division of forces, most of these colleges are inadeqately endowed, they are compelled to work short-handed. One professor has fre- quently several branches to teach. Not long ago, in one of our West- ern colleges, a man was elected " professor of natural philosophy, as- tronomy, and the theory and practice of preaching ! " In the major- ity of cases there is a chair of Latin, a chair of Greek, and then — a chair of " natural science ! " Each linguistic professor is to some de- gree a specialist ; while the one who teaches science is perforce com- pelled to be a smatterer. He is expected to teach half a dozen dis- similar branches, each one being a life-work by itself. He is to be omniscient on about $1,000 a year. Of course, in such a condition of things, the new education must suffer. No man living is able to teach properly more than one science. Indeed, some sciences, as, for ex- ample, chemistry, need to be subdivided into several different special- ties, under several distinct teachers. Except by specialists, no truly scientific education can be given ; since each instructor has to deal with a constantly-growing branch, and not with a fixed, completed study. The teacher must keep up with the growth of his particular science, or else drop into downright incompetency. He who is over- worked by teaching several subjects cannot properly keep up with any one. It is plain, then, that this scattering of educational forces is lower- ing to the character of the teacher, and that this effect is more evident and more mischievous in the wide realm of Science than in the com- paratively narrow kingdom of the ancient languages. In still another way is the character of each college reflected in that of its professors. A Catholic institution will employ only Catholic instructors ; a Method- ist or Episcopalian university will seek out Methodists or Episcopa- lians ; and so on. Instead of selecting teachers on the basis of capaci- ty, the basis of belief is commonly chosen. The exceptions to this rule are rare, and are to be looked for chiefly in some of the oldei- Eastern establishments, such as Yale, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Union, and Columbia. This principle cannot fail to work mischief. A pro- fessor, and especially a professor of any science, should be elected be- cause of his ability as a teacher, his knowledge, and his moral worth ; not for his opinions upon some abstract theological dogma. A man may believe in sprinkling, and yet be competent to teach the chemis- try of water even in a Baptist university. One other consideration bearing upon the character of the teacher THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 409 remains to be noticed, and this will bring us naturally to the question of method. A large majority of our American college professors are graduates under the old r'egime. Having been trained in the old edu- cation, by the old methods, they are, consequently, unable to adapt themselves perfectly to the new. In the modern system, modern methods must be used. The old bottles will not hold the new wine. Formerly, instruction was given by lectures and text-book recitations; the student received, but gave nothing ; he was placed upon a sort of Procrustean bedstead, and shaped according to a common pattern. The classics and mathematics were established things ; the learner must take them as he found them ; he was neither permitted to add nor to modify. Routine governed every thing. DiiFerences of capacity, of tastes, and of needs, among a class of students went for nothing ; there was so much raw material for the teacher to work up, and he must do it by the clumsiest rule and measure. The new education is very different. Here we have a variety of subjects to be studied, each one best suited to a particular class of minds. The scholar who proves to be dull in one branch may be brilliant in another. Evei-y branch is continually undergoing the changes attendant upon progress and growth. In each science new questions are continually arising ; the higher we go up the mountain the wider our horizon will be. Through these changes the minds of both student and teacher are kept in constant activity ; a condition requiring very different treatment from that given in the colleges of thirty years ago. But the greatest changes in the educational method must be looked for in another direction. No longer are text-books and lectures ade- quate means of instruction ; a new element must be brought in. This is the element of laboratory instruction. The student must not only hear about scientific truths, he must be able to demonstrate them in person. There are tools to be handled as well as books. Tf botany is to be studied, it must be partly in the field and partly with the microscope ; if zoology, then the scalpel must be used ; if chemistry or physics, the student must learn to perform his own experiments. Without practice of this sort the instruction will be largely thrown away. It is to science what the exercise of translation is to the study of language, or what the solution of problems is to mathematics. The student must be trained to observe for himself ; then to generalize upon his observations. In no other manner can the natural and physi- cal sciences be taught. All other teaching in them is a mere pretense. How many American colleges can boast a " scientific course " in which this method is really employed ? But this necessity again brings a disadvantage to science in very many institutions. A poorly-endowed college cannot afford suitable laboratories and apparatus, any more than it can afford to employ the specialists who are alone competent to manage them. Accordingly, 410 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. iu four cases out of five, if not in a larger proportion, the sciences are impropei'ly taught, by inferior or incompetent men, and therefore, as means of education, fall into disrejjute. The classics have less rigor- ous needs, the proper teachers are more easily obtained, and thus they carry off a glory which is not rightfully theirs. It is safe to say, in conclusion, that the new education will contrast unfavorably with the old only when it is imparted by incorrect meth- ods or by improperly-trained teachers. The two systems, being so diiferent, can hardly be compared upon the same ground. Let each do its own work, in its own way, with truly equal advantages, and, beyond a reasonable doubt, the new education will show the more vigor. Its greater utility, its wider range of discipline, and its more varied adaptability to dissimilar minds, unite to give it wonderful advantages. ■♦»»• ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. Br JOHN TYNDALL, F. E. S. ■"> I. — ACOUSTIC REVERSIBILITY. ON the 21st and 22d of June, 1822, a commission appointed by the Bureau of Longitudes of France executed a celebrated series of experiments on the velocity of sound. Two stations had been chosen, the one at Villejuif, the other at Montlhery, both lying south of Paris, and 11.6 miles distant from each other. Prouy, Mathieu, and Arago, were the observers at Villejuif, while Humboldt, Bouvard, and Gay-Lussac, were at Montlhery. Guns, charged sometimes with three pounds of powder, were fired at both stations, and the velocity was deduced from the interval between the appearance of the flash and the arrival of the sound. On this memorable occasion an observation was made which, as far as I know, has remained a scientific enigma to the present hour. It was noticed that while every report of the cannon fired at Mont- lhery was heard with the greatest distinctness at Villejuif, by far the greater number of the reports from Villejuif failed to reach Montlhery. Had wind existed, and had it blown from Montlhery to Villejuif, it would have been recognized as the cause of the observed difference ; but the air at the time was calm, the slight motion of translation actually existing being from Villejuif toward Montlhery, or against the direction in which the sound was best heard. So marked was the difference in transmissive power between the two directions that on the 22d of June while every shot fired at Mont- lhery was heard d merveille [with wonderful distinctness] at Villejuif, but one shot out of twelve fired at Villejuif was heard, and that fee- bly, at the other station. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 411 W^ith the caution which characterized him on other occasions, and which has been referred to admiringly by Faraday,' Arago made no attempt to explain this anomaly. His words are: "As for the very notable differences of intensity constantly observed in the sound of the cannon accordingly as it was propagated from north to south be- tween Villejuif and Montlhery, or from south to north between the latter station and the former, we will not at present try to explain it, as we could present to the reader only conjectures unsupported by evidence." ^ I have tried, after much perplexity of thought, to bring this sub- ject within the range of exjDeriment, and have now to submit to the Royal Society a possible solution of this enigma. The first step was to ascertain whether the sensitive flame referred to in my recent paper in the " Philosophical Transactions " could be safely employed in experiments on the mutual reversibility of a source of sound and an object on which the sound impinges. Now, the sensitive flame usually employed by me measures from eighteen to twenty-four inches in height, while the reed employed as a source of sound is less than a square quarter of an inch in area. If, therefore, the whole flame or the pipe which fed it were sensitive to sonorous vibrations, strict ex- periments on reversibility with the reed and flame might be difficult, if not impossible. Hence my desire to learn whether the seat of sensi- tiveness was so localized in the flame as to render the contemplated interchange of flame and reed permissible. The flame being placed behind a cardboard screen, the shank of a funnel, passed through a hole in the cardboard, was directed upon the middle of the flame. The sound-waves issuing from the vibrating reed placed within the funnel produced no sensible effect upon the flame. Shifting the funnel so as to direct its shank upon the root of the flame, the action was violent. To augment the precision of the experiment, the funnel was con- nected with a glass tube three feet long and half an inch in diameter, the object being to weaken by distance the effect of the waves dif- fracted round the edge of the funnel, and to permit those only which passed through the glass tube to act upon the flame. Presenting the end of the tube to the orifice of the burner [b, Fig. 1), or the orifice to the end of the tube, the flame was violently agi- tated by the sounding-reed, i?. On shifting the tube, or the burner, so as to concentrate the sound on a portion of the flame about half an inch above the orifice, the action was nil. Concentrating the sound upon the burner itself about half an inch below its orifice, there was no action. These experiments demonstrate the localization of " the seat of ' " Researches in Chemistry and Physics," p. 484. ^ Tyndall gives the passage in French, as found in the " Connaissance des Temps," 1825, p. 370.— Ed, 412 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY sensitiveness," and they prove the flame to be an appropriate instru- ment for the contemplated experiments on reversibility. The experiments proceeded tlius : The sensitive flame being jjlaced close behind a screen of cardboard eighteen inches high by twelve inches wide, a vibrating reed, standing at the same height as the root of the flame, was placed at a distance of six feet on the other side of the screen. The sound of the reed, in this position, produced a strong agitation of the flame. Fig. 1. The whole upper half of the flame was here visible from the reed ; hence the necessity of the foregoing experiments to prove the action of the sound on the upper portion of the flame to be nil, and that the waves had really to bend round the edge of the screen so as to reach the seat of sensitiveness in the neighborhood of the burner. The positions of the flame and reed were reversed, the latter being now close behind the screen, and the former at a distance of six feet from it. The sonorous vibrations were without sensible action upon the flame. The experiment was repeated and varied in many ways. Screens of various sizes were employed, and, instead of reversing the positions of the flame and reed, the screen was moved so as to bring, in some experiments the flame, and in other experiments the reed, close behind it. Care was also taken that no reflected sound from the walls or ceiling of the laboratory, or from the body of the experimenter, should have any thing to do with the effect. In all cases it was shown that the sound was effective when the reed was at a distance from the screen, and the flame close behind it ; while the action was insensible when the positions were reversed. Thus let s e. Fig. 2, be a vertical section of the screen. "When the reed was at A, and the flame at B, there was no action ; when the reed was at B, and the flame at A, the action was decided. It may be added that the vibrations communicated to the screen itself, and from it to the air beyond it, were without effect ; for when the reed, which at B is effectual, was shifted to <7, where its action on the screen was greatly augmented, it ceased to have any action on the flame at A. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND, 413 • We are now, I think, prepared to consider the failure of reversi- bility in the larger experiments of 1822. Happily an incidental ob- servation of great significance comes here to our aitl. It was observed and recorded at the time that while the reports of the guns at Ville- juif were without echoes, a roll of echoes, lasting from twenty to twenty-five seconds, accompanied every shot at Montlhery, beino- heard by the observers there. Arago, the writer of the report, referred these echoes to reflection from the clouds, an explanation whicli I think we are entitled to regard as problematical. The report says that " all the shots fired at Montlheiy were there accompanied Fig. 2. by a rolling sound like that of thunder." ' I have italicized a very significant word — a word which fairly applies to our exijeriments on gun-sounds at the South Foreland, where there was no sensible solu- tion of continuity between explosion and echo, but which could hardly apply to echoes coming from the clouds. For, supposing the clouds to be only a mile distant, the sound and its echo would have been separated by an interval of nearly ten seconds. But there is no men- tion of any interval; and, had such existed, surely the word "fol- lowed," instead of" accompanied," would have been the one employed. The echoes, moreover, appear to have been continuous, while the clouds observed seem to have been separate. " These phenomena," says Arago, "never took jjlace except at the moment when some clouds appeared." ^ But from separate clouds a continuous roll of echoes could hardly come. "When to this is added the experimental fact that clouds far denser than any ever formed in the atmosj^here are demonstrably incapable of sensibly reflecting sound, while cloud- less ail', which Arago pronounced echoless, has been proved capable of powerfully reflecting it, I think we have strong reason to question the hypothesis of the illustrious French philosopher. And considering the hundreds of shots fired at the South Fore- land, with the attention specially directed to the aerial echoes, when no single case occurred in which echoes of measurable duration did not accompany the report of the gun, I think Arago's statement, that at Villejuif no echoes were heard when the sky was clear, must simply mean that they vanished with great rapidity. Unless the attention ' Tyndall quotes the French. — Ed. ^ The French quoted by Tyndall. — Ed. .J 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. • were specially directed to the point, a slight prolongation of the can- non-sound might well escajje observation; and it would be all the more likely to do so if the eclioes were so loud and prompt as to form aj^parently part and parcel of the direct sound. I should be very loath to transgress here the limits of fair criticism, or to throw doubt, without good reason, on the recorded observations of an eminent man ; still, taking into account what has just been stated, and remembering that the minds of Arago and his colleagues were occupied by a totally diflferent problem (that the echoes were an inci- dent rather tlian an object of observation), I think we may justly con- sider the sound which he called "instantaneous" as one whose aerial echoes did not difterentiate themselves from the direct sound by any noticeable fall of intensity, and which rapidly died into silence. Turning now to the observations at Montlhery, we are struck by the extraordinary duration of the echoes heard at that station. At the Soiith Foreland the charge habitually fired was equal to the largest of those employed by the French philosophers ; but on no occasion did the gun-sounds produce echoes approaching to twenty or twenty-five seconds duration. It rarely reached half this amount. Even the siren-echoes, which were far more remarkable, more long-continued than those of the guns, never reached the duration of the Montlhery echoes. The nearest approach to it was on the 17th of October, 1873, when the siren-echoes I'equired fifteen seconds to subside into silence. On this same day, moreover (and this is a point of marked sig- nificance), the transmitted sound reached its maximum range, the gun- sounds being heard at the Quenocs buoy, which is 16^ nautical miles from the South Foreland. I have already stated that the duration of the air-echoes indicates " the atmospheric depths " from which they come.' An optical analogy may help us here. Let light -fall upon chalk, the light is wholly scattered by the superficial particles ; let the chalk be powdered and mixed with water, light reaches the observer from a far greater depth of the turbid liquid. The chalk typifies the action of exceedingly dense acoustic clouds ; the chalk and water that of clouds of moderate density. In the one case we have echoes of short, in the other, echoes of long duration. These considerations pre- pare us for the inference that Montlhery, on the occasion referred to, must. have been surrounded by a highly-diacoustic atmosphere; while the shortness of the echoes at Villejuif shows the atmosphere sur- rounding that station to have been acoustically opaque. Have we any clew to the cause of the opacity ? I think we have. Villejuif is close to Paris, and over it, with the observed light wind, was slowly wafted the air from the city. Thousands of chimneys to windward of Villejuif were discharging their heated currents, so that an atmosphere non-homogeneous in a high degi'ee must have sur- rounded that station. At no great height in the atmosphere the equi- » "Philosophical Transactions," 1874, Part I., p. 202. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 415 librium of temperature would be established. The non-homogeneous air surrounding Villejuif is experimentally typified by our screen with the source of sound close behind it, the upper edge of the screen repre- senting the place where equilibrium of temperature was established in the atmosphere above the station. In virtue of its proximity to the screen, the echoes from our sounding-reed would, in the case here sup- posed, so blend with the direct sound as to be practically indistinguish- able from it, as the echoes at Villejuif followed the direct sound so hotly, and vanished so rapidly, that they escaped observation. And as our sensitive flame, at a distance, failed to be aiFected by the sound- ing body placed close behind the cardboard screen, so, I take it, did the observer at Montlh6ry fail to hear the sounds of the Villejuif gun. Something further may be done toward the experimental elucida- tion of this subject. The facility with which sounds pass through textile fabrics has been already illustrated,' a layer of cambric or cal- ico, or even of thick flannel or baize being found competent to inter- cept but a fraction of the sound from a vibrating reed. Such a layer of calico may be taken to represent a layer of air diflerentiated from its neighbors by temperature or moisture ; while a succession of such sheets of calico may be taken to represent successive layers of non- homogeneous air. Fig. 3. Two tin tubes (J/ iVand 0 P, Fig. 3) with open ends are placed so as to form an acute angle with each other. At the end of one is the vibrating reed r, opposite the end of the other and in the prolongation of P 0 is the sensitive flame /, a second sensitive flame (/') being placed in the continuation of the axis oi M N. On sounding the reed, the direct sound through iJfiV agitates the flame/'. Introducing the square of calico ab a.t the proper angle, a slight decrease of the action on /' is noticed, and the feeble echo from a b produces a barely per- ceptible agitation of the flame/. Adding another square, c d, the sound transmitted by a b impinges on c ^y it is partially echoed, re- turns through a b, passes along F 0, and still further agitates the flame /. Adding a third square, ef, the reflected sound is still further aug- mented, every accession to the echo being accompanied by a corre- 1 "Philosophical Transactions," 18Y4, Pait I., p. 208. 4i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. sponding withdrawal of the vibrations from/', and a consequent still- ing of tluit flame. With thinner calico or cambric it would require a greater number of layers to intercept the entire sound ; hence, with such cambric we should have echoes returned from a greater distance, and therefore of greater duration. Eight layers of the calico employed in these experi- ments, stretched on a wire frame, and placed close together as a kind of pad, may be taken to rejiresent a very dense acoustic cloud. Such a pad, placed at the proper angle beyond it, cuts off the sound which in its absence reaches/', almost as effectually as an impervious solid plate; the flame/' is thereby stilled, while / is far more powerfully agitated than by the reflection from a single layer. With the source of sound close at hand, the eclioes from such a pad would be of insen- sible duration. Thus close at hand do I suppose the acoustic clouds surrounding Villejuif to have been, a similar shortness of echo being the consequence. A further step is here taken in the illustration of the analogy be- tween light and sound. Our pad acts chiefly by internal reflection. The sound from the reed is a composite one, made up of partial sounds, differing in pitch. If these sounds be ejected from the pad in their pristine proportions, the pad is acoustically lohite ; if they return with their proportions altered, the pad is acoustically colored. In these experiments my assistant, Mr. Cottrell, has rendered me material assistance. n.— STATE OF THE RESEAECH.> In preparing this new edition of " Sound," I have carefully gone over the last one, amended, as far as possible, its defects of style and matter, and paid at the same time respectful attention to the criti- cisms and suggestions which the former editions called forth. The cases are few in which I have been content to reproduce what I have read of the works of acousticians. I have sought to make my- self experimentally familiar with the ground occupied ; trying, in all cases, to present the illustrations in the form and connection most suitable for educational purposes. Though bearing, it may be, an undue share of the imperfection which cleaves to all human effort, the work has already found its way into the literature of various nations of diverse intellectual standinj?. Last year, for example, a new German edition was published " under the special supervision" of Helmholtz and Wiedemann. That men so eminent, and so overladen with ofiicial duties, should add to these the labor of examining and correcting every proof-sheet of a work like this, shows that they consider it to be what it was meant to be — a serious attempt to improve the public knowledge of science. It is especially gratifying to me to be thus assured that not in England > Preface to forthcoming third edition of " Sound." By John Tyndall, F. R. S. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 417 alone has the book met a i)ublic want, but also in tl)at learned land to which I owe my scientific education. Before me, on the other hand, lie two volumes, of foolscaji size, curiously stitched, and printed in characters the meanino- of which I am incompetent to penetrate. Here and there, however, I notice the familiar figures of the former editions of " Sound." For these vol- umes I am indebted to Mr. John Fryer, of Shanghai, who, along with them, favored me, a few weeks ago, with a letter, from which the fol- lowing is an extract : " One day," writes Mr. Fryer, " soon after the first copy of your work on ' Sound' reached Shanghai, I was readino- it in my study, Avhen an intelligent official, named Hsii-chung-hu, no- ticed some of the engravings, and asked me to explain them to him. He became so deeply interested in the subject of Acoustics, that nothing would satisfy him but to make a translation. Since, how- ever, engineering and other works were then considered to be of more practical importance by the higher authorities, we agreed to translate your work during our leisure time every evening, and pub- lish it separately ourselves. Our translation, however, when com- pleted, and shown to the higher officials, so much interested them and pleased them, that they at once ordered it to be published at the expense of the Government, and sold at cost price. The price is four hundred and eighty copper cash per copy, or about one shilling and eightpence. This will give you an idea of the cheapness of native printing." Mr. Fryer adds that his Chinese friend had no difficulty in grasping every idea in the book. The new matter of greatest importance which has been introduced into this edition is an account of an iuvestis^ation which, during the two past years, I have had the honor of conducting in connection w^ith the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House. Under the title " Re- searches on the Acoustic Transparency of the Atmosphere, in relation to the Question of Fog-signaling," the subject is treated in Chapter VH. of this volume. It was only by governmental appliances that such an investigation could have been made ; and it gives me pleasure to believe that not only have the practical objects of the inquiry been secured, but that a crowd of scientific errors, which for more than a century and a half have surrounded this subject, have been removed, their place being now taken by the sure and certain truth of Nature. In drawing up the account of this laborious inquiry, I aimed at linking the observations so together, that they alone should offer a substantial demonstration of the principles involved. Further labors enabled me to bring the whole inquiry within the firm grasp of experiment., and thus to give it a certainty which, without this final guarantee, it could scarcely have enjoyed. Immediately after the publication of the first brief abstract of the investigation, it was subjected to criticism. To this I did not deem TOL. TII. — 27 41 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. it necessary to reply, believing that the grounds of it would disappear in presence of the full account. The only opinion to which I thought it right to defer was to some extent a private one, communicated to me by Prof. Stokes. He considered that I had, in some cases, ascribed too exclusive an influence to the mixed currents of aqueous vapor and air, to the neglect of differences of temperature. That difierences of temperature, when they come into play, are an efficient cause of acous- tic opacity, I never doubted. In fact, aerial reflection arising from this cause is, in the present inquiry, for the first time made the subject of experimental demonstration. What the relative potency of differ- ences of temperature and differences due to aqueous vapor, in the cases under consideration, may be, I do not venture to state ; but, as both are active, I have, in Chapter VII., referred to them jointly as concerned in the production of those " acoustic clouds " to which the stoppage of sound in the atmosphere is for the most part due. Subsequently, however, to the publication of the full investigation, another criticism appeared, to which, in consideration of its source, I would willingly pay all respect and attention. In this criticism, which reached me first through the columns of an American newspaper, dif- ferences in the amounts of aqueous vapor, and differences of tempera- ture, are alike denied efficiency as causes of acoustic opacity. At a meeting of the Philosophical Society of Washington, the emphatic opin- ion had, it was stated, been expressed that I was wrong in ascribing the opacity of the atmosphere to its flocculence, the really efficient cause being refraction. This view appeared to me so obviously mistaken that I assumed, for a time, the incori-ectness of the newspaper account. Recently, however, I have been favored with the " Report of the United States Lighthouse Board for 1874," in which the account just referred to is corroborated. A brief reference to this report will here suffice. Major Elliott, the accomplished officer and gentleman referred to at page 261, had published a record of his visit of inspection to this country, in which he spoke, with a pei'fectly enlightened appreciation of the facts, of the differences between our system of lighthouse illumi- nation and that of the United States. He also embodied in his report some account of the investigation on fog-signals, the initiation of which he had M'itnessed, and indeed aided, at the South Foreland. On this able report of their own officer the Lighthouse Board at Wasliington make the following remark : " Although this account is interesting in itself and to the public generally, yet, being addi'essed to the Lighthouse Board of the United States, it would tend to convey the idea that the facts which it states were new to the Board, and that the latter had obtained no results of a similar kind ; while a reference to the Appendix to this Report * will show that the researches of our ' It will be borne iu mind that the Washington Appendix waa published nearly a year aftfir mj Eeport to the Trinity House. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 419 Lighthouse Board Iiave been much more extensive on this suhjoct than those of the Trinity House, and that the latter has established no facts of practical importance wliich liad not been previously observed and used by the former." The " Appendix " here referred to is from the pen of the venerable Prof. Joseph Henry, chairman of the Lighthouse Board at Washing- ton. To his credit be it recorded that, at a very early period in the history of fog-signaling, Prof. Henry reported iu favor of Daboll's trumpet, though he was opposed by one of his colleagues on the ground that " fog-signals were of little importance, since the mariner should know his place by the character of his soundings." In the Appendix, he records the various eftbrts made in the United States with a view to the establishment of fog-signals. He describes experi- ments on bells, and on the employment of reflectors to reenforce their sound. These, though effectual close at hand, were found to be of no use at a distance. He corrects current errors regarding steam-whis- tles, which by some inventors were thought to act like ringing bells. He cites the opinion of the Rev. Peter Ferguson, that sound is better heard in fog than in clear aii*. This opinion is founded on observa- tions of the noise of locomotives ; in reference to which it may be said that others have drawn from similar experiments diametrically oppo- site conclusions. On the authority of Cajjtain Keeney he cites an oc- currence, " in the first part of which the captain was led to suppose that fog had a marked influence in deadening sound, though in a sub- sequent part he came to an opposite conclusion." Prof. Henry also describes an experiment made during a fog at Washington, in which he employed " a small bell rung by clock-work, the apparatus being the part of a moderator lamp intended to give warning to the keepers when the supply of oil ceased. The result of the experiment was, he affirms, contrary to the supposition of absorption of the sound by the fog." This conclusion is not founded on comparative experiments, but on observations made in the fog alone ; " for," adds Prof. Henry, " the change in the condition of the atmosphere, as to temperature and the motion of the air, before the experiment could be repeated in clear weather, rendered the residt not entirely satisfactory." This, I may say, is the only experiment on fog which I have found recorded in the Appendix. In 1867 the steam-siren was mounted at Sandy Hook, and exam- ined by Prof. Henry. He compared its action with that of a Daboll trumpet, employing for this purpose a stretched membrane covered with sand, and placed at the small end of a tapering tube which con- centrated the sonorous motion upon the membrane. The siren proved most powerful. " At a distance of 50, the trumpet produced a decided motion of the sand, while the siren gave a similar result at a distance of 58." Prof. Henry also varied the pitch of the siren, and found that, in association with its trumpet, 400 impulses per second yielded the 420 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. maximum sound; while the best result with the unaided siren was obtained when tlie impulses were 360 a second. Experiments were also made on the influence of pressure ; from which it appeared that, when the pressure varied from 100 lbs. to 20 lbs., the distance reached by the sound (as determined by the vibrating membrane) varied only in the ratio of 61 to 51. Prof. Henry also showed the sound of the fog-trumpet to be independent of the material employed in its con- struction ; and he furthermore observed the decay of the sound when the anffular distance from the axis of the instrument was increased. Further observations were made by Prof. Henry and his colleagues in August, 1873, and in August and September, 1874. In the brief but interesting account of these experiments an hypothetical element ap- pears, which is absent from the record of the earlier observations. It is quite evident from the foregoing that, in regard to the ques- tion of fofy-sienalins:, the Lighthouse Board of Washington have not been idle. Add to this the fact that their eminent chairman gives his services gratuitously, conducting without fee or reward experiments and observations of the character here revealed, and I think it will be conceded that he not only deserves well of his own country, but also sets his younger scientific contemporaries, both in his country and ours, an example of high-minded devotion. I was quite aware, in a general way, that labors like those now for the first time made public bad been conducted in the United States, and this knowledge was not without influence upon my conduct. The first instruments mounted at the South Foreland were of English manu- facture; and I, on various accounts, entertained a strong sympathy for their able constructor, Mr. Holmes. From the outset, however, I resolved to suppress such feelings, as well as all other extraneous con- siderations, individual or national, and to aim at obtaining the best instruments, irrespective of the country which produced them. In reporting, accordingly, on the observations of May 19 and 20, 1873 (our first two days at the South Foreland), these were my words to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House : "In view of tlie reported performance of horus and whistles in other places, the question arises whether those mounted at the South Foreland, and to wbicli the foregoing remarks refer, are of the best possible description. ... I think our first duty is to make ourselves acquainted with the best instruments hitherto made, no matter where made; and then, if home genius can transcend them, to give it all encouragement. Great and unnecessary expense may be incurred, through our not availing ourselves of the results of existing experience. "I have always sympathized, and I shall always sympathize, with the desire of the Elder Brethren to encourage the inventor who first made the magneto- electric light available for lighthouse purposes. I regard his aid and counsel as, in many respects, invaluable to the corporation. But however original he may be, our duty is to demand that his genius shall be expended in making advances on that which has been already achieved elsewhere. If the whistles and horns that we heard on the 19th and 20th be the very best hitherto constructed, my ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 421 views have been already complied with ; but if they be not — and I am strongly inclined to think that they are not — tlien I would submit that it behooves us to have the best, and to aim at making the South Foreland, both as regards light and sound, a station not excelled by any other in the world." On this score it gives me pleasure to say that I never had a diflS- culty with the Elder Brethren. They agreed with me ; and two power- ful steam-whistles, the one from Canada, the other fi-om the United States, together with the steam-siren — also an American instrument — were in due time m.ounted at the South Foreland. It will be seen, in Chapter VIL, that my strongest recommendation applies to an instru- ment for which we are indebted to the United States. In presence of these facts, it will hai'dly be assumed that I wish to withhold from the Lighthouse Board of Washington any credit that they may fairly claim. My desire is to be strictly just ; and this de- sire compels me to express the opinion that their report fails to es- tablish the inordinate claim made in its first paragraph. It contains observations, but contradictory observations; while, as regards the establishment of any principle which should reconcile the conflicting results, it leaves our condition unimproved. But I willingly turn aside from the discussion of " claims " to the discussion of science. Inserted, as a kind of intrusive element, into the Keport of Prof. Henry, is a second Report by General Duane, founded on an extensive series of observations made by him in 1870 and 1871. After stating with distinctness the points requiring deci- sion, the general makes the following remarks : " Before giving the results of these experiments, some facts will be stated which will explain the difficulties of determining the power of a fog-signal. " There are six steam fog-whistles on the coast of if aine : these have been fre- quently heard at a distance of twenty miles, and as frequently cannot be heard at the distance of two miles, and this with no perceptible difference in the state of the atmosphere, " The signal is often heard at a great distance in one direction, while in an- other it will be scarcely audible at the distance of a mile. This is not the effect of wind, as the signal is frequently heard much farther against the wind than with it.' for example, the whistle on Cape Elizabeth can always be distinctly heard in Portland, a distance of nine miles, during a heavy northeast snow- storm, the wind blowing a gale directly from Portland toward the whistle.^ " The most perplexing difficulties, however, arise from the fact that the sig- nal often appears to be surrounded by a belt, varying in radius from one to one and a half mile, from which the sound appears to be entirely absent. Thus, in moving directly from a station the sound is audible for the distance of a mile, is then lost for about the same distance, after which it is again distinctly heard for ' That is to say, homogeneous air with an opposing wind is frequently more favorable to sound than non-homogeneous air with a faToring wind. We made the same experience at the South Foreland.— J. T. * Had this observation been published, it could only have given me pleasure to refer to it iu my recent writings. It is a stril^ing confirmation of my observations on the Mer de Glace in 1859. 422 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. a long time. This action is common to all ear-signals, and has been at times ob- served at all the stations, at one of which the signal is situated on a bare rock twenty miles from the main-land, with no surrounding objects to affect the sound." It is not necessary to assume here the existence of a " belt," at some distance from the station. The passage of an acoustic cloud over the station itself would produce the observed phenomenon. Passing over the record of many other valuable observations, in the Report of General Duane, I come to a few very important remarks which have a direct bearing upon the present question : "From an attentive observation," writes the general, "during three years, of the fog-signals on this coast, and from the reports received from the captains and pilots of coasting- vessels, I am convinced that, in some conditions of the at- mosi>here, the most powerful signals will be at times unreliable.' " Now it frequently occurs that a signal, which under ordinary circumstances would be audible at a distance of fifteen miles, cannot be heard from a vessel at the distance of a single mile. This is probably due to the reflexion mentioned by Humboldt. "The temperature of the air over the land where the fog-signal is located being very different from that over the sea, the sound, in passing from the former to the latter, undergoes reflexion at tlieir surface of contact. The cor- rectness of this view is rendered more probable by the fact that, when the sound is thus impeded in the direction of the sea, it has been observed to be much stronger inland. "Experiments and observation lead to the conclusion that these anomalies in the penetration and direction of sound from fog-signals are to be attributed mainly to the want of uniformity in the surrounding atmosphere, and that snow, rain, and fog, and the direction of the wind, have much less influence than has been generally supposed." The lieport of General Duane is marked throughout by fidelity to facts, rare sagacitj^, and soberness of speculation. The last three of the paragraphs just quoted exhibit, in my opinion, the only approach to a true explanation of the phenomena which the "Wasliington Re- port reveals. At this point, however, the eminent chairman of the Lio-hthouse Board strikes in with the following criticism : " In the foregoing I differ entirely in opinion fi'om General Duane, as to the cause of extinction of powerful sounds being due to the unequal density of the atmosphere. The velocity of sound is not at all affected by barometric pressure ; but if the difference in pressure is caused by a difference in heat, or by the ex- pansive power of vapor mingled with the air, a slight degree of obstruction of sound may be observed. But this effect we think i-s entirely too minute to pro- duce the results noted by General Duane and Dr. Tyndall, while we shall find in the action of currents above and below a true and etflcient cause." I have already cited the remarkable observation of General Duane, that, with a snow-storm from the northeast blowing against the sound, ' Had I been aware of its existence I might have used the language of General Duane to express my views on the point here adverted to. {See chapter vii., pp. 319, 320.) ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 423 the signal at Port Elizabeth is always heard at Portland, a distance of nine miles. The observations at the South Foreland, where the sound has been proved to reach a distance of more than twelve miles against the wind, backed by decisive experiments, reduce to certainty the surmises of General Duane. It has, for example, been proved that a couple of gas-flames placed in a chamber can, in a minute or two, render its air so non-homogeneous as to cut a sound practically off; while the same sound passes without sensible impediment through showers 'of paper-scraps, seeds, bran, rain-drops, and through fumes and fogs of the densest description. The sound also passes through thick layers of calico, silk, serge, flannel, baize, close felt, and through pads of cotton-net impervious to the strongest light. As long indeed as the air on which snow, hail, rain, or fog, is suspended is homogeneous, so long will sound pass through the air, sensibly heedless of the suspended matter.* This point is illustrated upon a large scale by my own observations on the Mer de Glace, and by those of General Duane, at Portland, which prove the snow-laden air from the northeast to be a highly homogeneous medium. Prof. Henry thus accounts for the fact that the northeast snow-wind renders tlie sound of Cape Elizabeth audible at Portland : In the higher regions of the atmosjDhere he places an ideal wind, blowing in a direction opposed to the real one, which always accompanies the latter, and which more than neutralizes its action. In speculating thus he bases himself on the reasoning of Prof. Stokes, according to which a sound-wave moving against the wind is tilted upward. The upper and opposing wind is invented for the purpose of tilting again the already lifted sound-wave downward. Prof. Henry does not ex- plain how the sound-wave recrosses the hostile lower current, nor does he give any definite notion of the conditions under which it can be shown that it will reach the observer. This, so far as I know, is the only theoretic gleam cast by the Washington Report on the conflicting results w^hich have hitherto rendered experiments on fog-signals so bewildering. I fear it is an ignis fatuus, instead of a safe guiding light. Prof. Henry, however, boldly applies the hypothesis in a variety of instances. But he dwells with particular emphasis upon a case of non-reciprocity -which he con- siders absolutely fatal to my views regarding the flocculence of the atmosphere. The observation was made on board the steamer City of Richmond, during a thick fog in a night of 1872. " The vessel was approaching Whitehead from the southwestward, when, at a distance of about six miles from the station, the fog-signal, which is a ten-inch steam-whistle, was distinctly perceived, and continued to be heard with increasing intensity of sound until within about three miles, when the sound suddenly ceased to be heard, and was not perceived again until the vessel, approached within a quarter of a mile of the sta- ' This is not more surprising than the passage of radiant heat through rock-salt. 424 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tion, altlioiigli from conclusive evidence, furnished by the keeper, it was shown that the signal had been sounding during the whole time." But, while the ten-inch shore-signal thus failed to make itself heard at sea, a six-inch whistle, on board the steamer, made itself lieard on shore. Prof. Henry thus turns this fact against me : " It is evident," he writes, " that this result could not be due to any mottled condition or want of acoustic transparency in the atmosphere, since this would absorb the sound equally in both directions." Had the observation been made in a still atmosphere, this argument would, at one time, have had great force. But the atmosphere was not still, and a suf- ■ ticient reason for the observed non-reciprocity is to be found in the recorded fact that the wind was blowing against the shore-signal, and in favor of the ship-signal. But the argument of Prof. Henry, on which he places his main re- liance, would be untenable, even had the air been still. By the very aerial reflexion which he practically ignores, reciprocity may be de- stroyed in a calm atmosphere. In proof of this assertion I would refer him to a short paper on " Acoustic Reversibility," printed ai the end of this volume.* The most I'emarkable case of non-reciprocity on record, and which, prior to the demonstration of the existence and power of acoustic clouds, remained an insoluble enigma, is there shown to be capable of satisfactory solution. These clouds explain perfectly the "abnormal phenomena" of Prof. Henry. Aware of their existence, the falling off and subsequent recovery of a signal- sound, as noticed by him and General Duane, is no more a mystery than the interception of the solar light by a common cloud, and its restoration after the cloud has moved or melted away. The clew to all the difficulties and anomalies of this question is to be found in the aerial echoes, the significance of which has been over- looked by General Duane, and misinterpreted by Prof. Henry. And here a word might be said with regard to the injurious influence still exercised by authority in science. The afiirmations of the highest authorities, that from clear air no sensible echo ever comes, were so distinct, that my mind for a time refused to entertain the idea. Au- thority caused me for weeks to depart from the truth, and to seek counsel among delusions. On the day our observations at the South Foreland began, I heard the echoes. They perplexed me. I heard them again and again, and listened to the explanations oifered by some ingenious persons at the Foreland. They were an " ocean- echo : " this is the very phraseology now used by Prof. Henry. They were echoes " from the crests and slopes of the waves : " these are the words of the hypothesis which he now espouses. Through a portion of the month of May, through the whole of June, and through nearly the whole of July, 1873, I was occupied with these echoes; one of ' Also " Proceedings of Royal Society," vol. xxiii., p. 159, and " Proceedings of Royal Institute," vol. vii., p. 344. ON THE MOTIONS OF SOUND. 425 the phases of thought then passed through, one of the solutions then weighed in the balance and found wanting, being identical with that which Prof. Henry now offers for acceptation. But though it thus deflected me from the proper track, shall I say- that authority in science is injurious ? Not without some qualifica- tion. It is not only injurious, but deadly, when it cows the intellect into fear of questioning it. But the authority which so merits our respect as to compel us to test and overthrow all its supports, before accepting a conclusion opposed to it, is not wholly noxious. On the contrary, the disciplines it imj^oses may be in the highest dco-vee salu- tary, though they may end, as in the present case, in the ruin of au- thority. The truth thus established is rendered firmer by our strug- gles to reach it. I groped day after day, carrying this problem of aerial echoes in my mind ; to the weariness, I fear, of some of my col- leagues who did not know my object. The ships and boats afloat, the " slopes and crests of the waves," the visible clouds, the clifis, the ad- jacent lighthouses, the objects landward, were all in turn taken into account, and all in turn rejected. With regard to the particular notion which now finds favor with Prof. Henry, it suggests the thought that his observations, notwith- standing their apparent variety and extent, were really limited as re- gards the weather. For did they, like ours, embrace weather of all kinds, it is not likely that he would have ascribed to the sea-waves an action which often reaches its maximum intensity when waves are en- tirely absent. I will not multipl}"- instances, but confine myself to the definite statement, that the echoes have often manifested an astonishing strength, when the sea was of glassy smoothness. On days when the echoes were powerful, I have seen the southern cumuli mirrored in the waveless ocean, in forms almost as definite as the clouds themselves. By no possible application of the law of incidence and reflexion could the echoes from such a sea retiirn to the shore ; and, if we accept, for a moment, a statement which Prof. Henry seems to indorse, that sound-waves of great intensity, when they impinge upon a solid or liquid surface, do not obey the law of incidence and reflexion, but " roll along the surface like a cloud of smoke," it only increases the difficulty. Such a " cloud," instead of returning to the coast of Eng- land, would, in our case, have rolled toward the coast of France. Nothing that I could say in addition could strengthen the case here presented. I will only add one further remark. When the sun shines uniformly, on a smooth sea, thus producing a practically uniform dis- tribution of the aerial currents to which the echoes are due, the direc- tion in which the trumi^et-echoes reach the shore is always that in which the axis of the instrument is pointed. At Duugeness this was proved to be the case throughout an arc of 210° — an impossible re- sult, if the direction of reflexion were determined by that of the ocean- waves. 426 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Riglitly interpreted and followed out, these aerial echoes lead to a solution wliich penetrates and reconciles tlie phenomena from begin- ning to end. On this point I would stake the issue of tlie whole in- quiry, and to this point I would, with special earnestness, direct the attention of the Lighthouse Board of Washington. Let them prolong their observations into calm weather : if their atmosphere resemble ours — which I cannot doubt — then I affirm that they will infallibly find the echoes strong on days wlien all thought of reflexion " from the crests and slopes of tlie waves " must be discarded. The echoes afibrd the easiest access to the core of this question, and it is for this reason that I dwell upon them thus emphatically. It requires no re- fined skill or profound knowledge to master the conditions of their production ; and, these once mastered, the Liglithouse Board of Wash- ington will find themselves in the real current of the phenomena, out- side of which — I say it with respect — they are now vainly speculating. The acoustic deportment of the atmosphere in haze, fog, sleet, snow, rain, and hail, will be no longer a mystery : even those " abnormal phenomena" w^hich are now referred to an imaginary cause, or re- served for future investigation, Avill be found to fall naturally into place, as illustrations of a principle as simple as it is universal. While this Preface was passing through the press, the intelligence of the loss of the Schiller thrilled through the land. 1 look forward to a time when such a calamity upon our coast will be a simple im- possibility. It is in our power to make it so ; and that power will, I doubt not, be promptly and wisely employed. Royal Insiitutiox, May, 1875. TELEGRAPHIC DETERMI]S"ATIOX OF LOXGITUDE. By F. M. GKEEN, iieutenant-commandee united states navy. IN^ the construction of new charts for the use of navigators, as well as in the correction of old ones, the assignment of difierent lati- tudes and longitudes to the same point, by various authorities, has always been a source of difficulty and embarrassment. The exact position of all prominent points on the coasts of the United States, as well as those of England, France, and other European nations, has been determined with great accuracy; but a large portion of the earth's surface is still very imperfectly and inaccurately laid down on marine charts. The latitude of any point being determined directly by observa- tion, and independently of the latitude of any other place, is less likely to be in error than the longitude, which can only be ascertained with TELEGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE. 427 reference to the meridian of some other place; being measured by- time, is determined by the comparison of the local time with the time at some other place, the longitude of which is known. Discrepancies in the results of observations for the determination of longitudes seem unavoidable with most of the metliods usually em- ployed, such as transportation of chronometers from place to place, observations of the relative positions of the moon and stars, and ob- servations of occultations and eclipses. Until the completion of telegraphic connection between this coun- try and England, the exact longitude of the Washington Observatory W'ls quite uncertain. A great many transfers of chronometers across the Atlantic had been eftected by the Coast Survey at a great expen- diture of labor and money. Yet the result of the latest expeditions diftered from that deduced by Prof. Newcomb from moon-culminations by more than three and a half seconds of time, equal to nearly a mile, the final telegraphic determination lying between the two results. In other parts of the world, however, the discrepancies are much greater. On the southern shore of the Caribbean Sea, an uncertainty of five or six miles exists with regard to many positions, and some of the islands in the Pacific Ocean have had longitudes assigned them by different surveyors within the last fifty years differing by as much as twenty-seven miles. Where, however, chronometers have to be carried only a short distance from an established meridian, the results are much more ac- curate. In 1852, the longitude of Key West was measured by Coast- Survey ofiicers from Savannah (previously established by telegraph from Washington), and was found to be 81° 48' 30."7. In 18V3, by telegraph, Washington to Key West 81° 48' 27."2. It will be seen that tlie difference between these results is only 3. "5, equal to about 100 yards, and that the statement lately published in Appletons' JouEXAL, that the recent telegraphic determination showed the for- mer position to be several miles in error, is incorrect. Of late years the establishment of telegraphic connection between so many points of the earth's surface, both by submarine cable and by overland lines, has added to the modes of determining longitudes anotlier, by far the most simple, elegant, and accurate. This method can, however, only be used between places having telegraphic communication with each other ; bvit the exact determina- tion of these meridians renders easy the correction of errors in the longitude of neighboring places. The establishment of differences of geographical longitude by the electric telegraph and of geographical latitudes by the zenith tele- scope constitute tw^o of the most important improvements in practi- cal astronomy of modern times, and both have had their origin in the United States. To the skillful and indefatigable astronomers of the Coast Survey and those of the corps of United States Engineers are 428 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. due the introduction and perfection of the instruments and methods now employed, which make the results so accurate and the work so simple. " Among the very earliest of the astronomers to introduce tliis raetliod of measurement was the lamented Captain J. M, Gilliss, U. S. N., who determined in this way the difierence of longitude be- tween Santiago and Valparaiso, Chili." As soon as the Atlantic cahle was laid, in 1866, the Superintendent of the Coast Survey took advantage of the opportunity to establish, by way of Newfoundland and Ireland, the difierence between the me- ridians of the British Islands and those of the United States. In 18G9-'70, a similar determination was made by different observ- ers through the French cable from Duxbury, Massachusetts, to Brest. Again, in 1872, the measurement was made through the same cable, using the island of St. Pierre, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as an inter- mediate station. The exquisite accuracy of the results of these measurements is demonstrated by their accordance. Referring them to the station of the New York City Hall, the resulting longitudes are as follows : 1866— west of Greenwich i"" 56" 1'.71 equal to 74° 0' 25".65 1870— " " 4" 56™ 1'.70 " 74° 0' 25".50 1872— " " 4" 56™ P.67 " 74° 0' 25".05 The instruments in common use for making observations to ascer- tain the difference of longitude between two stations are, at each of the stations, a transit instrument, a break-circuit sidereal chronometer, and an electric chronograph ; with the usual telegraphic sending and receiving instruments. The transit instrument is a telescope, capable of being mounted accurately and firmly in an exact north-and-south line, so that the precise local time may be determined by the passage of well-known stars across the meridian. The chronometer is adjusted to keep sidereal time and is furnished with an attachment by which the mechanism breaks an electric cir- cuit every second. Chronographs for the automatic registering of the exact time of any occurrence are constructed in various forms. Those generally used by astronomers in this country consist of a train of wheel-work driven by a weight, and causing a cylinder covered with a sheet of paper to make exactly one revolution in a minute. A little carriage, to which a pen of peculiar construction is attached, moves upon wheels along the cylinder in the direction of its length, about one-tenth of an inch for each revolution of the cylinder, so that the pen records a perpetual spiral. The pen is so mounted as to have a slight lateral movement, and is so attached to an electro-magnet that, when the electric circuit in which it is placed is broken every second by the clironometer, which, with a small battery, is included in TELEGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE. 429 the same circuit, the mark made on the chronograph-pai^er, instead of being a straight line, will be broken at regular intervals as shown at a. 0. a a aha aha a By means of a little instrument called, a break-circuit key, in the liands of the observer, and included in the same circuit, tlie electric current may be interrupted, causing the pen to make a similar mark as shown at h, on the occurrence of any event, such as the passage of a star across the wires of the telescope. With a finely-divided scale the position of this arbitrary mark, with reference to the nearest second mark, may be accurately established, and the exact time accurately ascertained to within -gL of a second. By means of these instruments, the error of the chronometer is found at each station with great accurac}', and, the times shown by the faces of the chronometers being compared by telegraph, the difference of time and corresponding difference of longitude are readily deduced. The time occujsied by an electric impulse to traverse the wire from one station to another, and act upon the telegraph-instruments, though generally very small, is too great to be neglected, but is easily ascer- tained and allowed for. Suppose a to be a station, one degree of longitude east of another station &, and that at each station there is a clock exactly regulated to the time of its own place, in which case the clock at a will be, of course, four minutes faster than the clock at b. Let us also suppose that a signal takes a quarter of a second to pass over the telegraph- wire connecting the two stations. Then if the observer at a sends a signal at exactly noon, by his clock,to6 12" O- 0' It wiU be received at 6 at IPSO™ 0'.25 Showing apparently a difference of time of. 3™ SQ'.'ZS Then if the observer at 6 sends a signal at noon by his clock.. 12* 0"" 0' It will be received at « at 12" 4" 0'.25 Showing an apparent difference of time of 4"" 0'.25 One-half the sum of these differences is 4 , which is exactly the difference of time and of longitude ; and one-half of their difference is 0'.25, which is exactly the time taken by the electric impulse to trav- erse the wire and telegraph instruments. This is technically called the " wave and armature time." The error of each chronometer being ascertained by observations of stars at each station, and the difference of the chronometers being in this way shown by the exchange of signals, the difference of the local times, which is the difference of longitude of the two stations, is easily deduced. Some English astronomers have objected that, where the line is, as 43 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. is usual in long land-linos, divided into lengtlis connected by tele- graphic repeaters, the time of transmission will not be the same in both directions, and that the same effect would be produced in a sub- marine cable having an imperfection or leak nearer one end than the other. Experiments, however, by the Coast Survey on the long line from Washington to San Francisco indicate that this objection, thougli theoretically true, is of no practical importance. Upon land-lines the time-signals sent can be recorded directly on the chronograph by putting it in the telegraphic circuit ; but, with submarine cables, the electric impulse transmitted is not strong enough to act upon the electro-magnets of the chronograph-pen. For telegraphing with weak impulses over submarine lines a very beautiful device was invented by Sir William Thomson, and is now in general use. To a delicately suspended magnet, surrrounded by a coil of fine covered wire, a small mirror is attached. From this mirror a beam of light from a lamp is reflected on a scale in a dark room. When no currents are being sent over the line, this beam remains at rest; but, when, at the sending station, either of two keys is pressed, a positive or negative current, as the case may be, is sent through the cable, and through the coil surrounding the magnet, causing the magnet with its mirror to turn and to deflect the ray of light to the right or left. When the signal arrives and is perceived, the observer touches his chronograph-key, thus recording the time of its arrival. The completion of the West India and Panama Telegraph Com- pany's cable in 1873, and the certainty that serious errors existed in the geographical positions of many places in the West Indies and South America, caused Commodore H. H. Wyman, U. S. IST., Hydrog- rapher to the Navy Department, to turn his attention to the outfit of an expedition which should seek to determine with all possible accu- racy the latitudes and longitudes of points connected by telegraph in that part of the world. The authority of tlie Navy Department was readily obtained, aiul the necessary preparations were commenced in the spring of 1873. In order that the work might be accomplished with economy, as small a vessel as possible was desirable, the Fortune, a strong iron tug- boat of 300 tons, being selected and prepared. Although this little vessel carried the officers and men of the expedition safely, she was found to be too small to encounter heavy weather at sea with any degree of comfort. Tlie astronomical outfit was superintended by Mr. J. A. Rogers, of the Hydrographic Office, and was in all respects satisfactory. The telescopes used were constructed at the repair-shop of the Hydrographic Office for the purpose, and were a combination of the transit instrument Avith the zenith telescope, a modification working admirably in practice, and first suggested by Prof. C. S. Lyman, of TELEGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE. 431 Yale College. These instruments were so constructed that the eye- piece was at one end of the horizontal axis, a prism at the junction of the axis and telescope-tube reflecting at a right angle the rays from the object-glass, thereby enabling the observer to direct the instrument upon stars of any elevation above the horizon without change of position. The command of the expedition was given to Lieutenant-Command- er F. M. Green, U. S. N., and it was intended that the work should be commenced in the winter of 1873-'74 ; but the non-completion of the instruments and the probability of trouble resulting from the Cuban outrages interfered with this plan, and the Fortune was tem- porarily employed as a tender to the squadron at Key West. Upon the dispersion of the assembled squadron in Ajjril, 1874, Lieutenant-Commander Green was directed to complete a survey of the Mexican Gulf coast, commenced by the United States steamship Wyoming. This work employed the time till the following August, when the Fortune returned to Washington, and was at once refitted for the prosecution of the original design. Fortunately for the success of the work, the services of Mr. Miles Rock, formerly of the observatory at Cordova, were secured as prin- cipal astronomical assistant; and the Fortune sailed on the 24tli of November, 1874, from Hampton Roads for Jamaica. Upon arrival at Kingston, definite arrangements were made witli the manager of the telegraph cables, the gratuitous use of which had been ofliered very promptly and courteously by the London board of directors. As it had been decided to commence the work by measuring be- tween Panama and Aspinvvall, the Fortune sailed for the latter i)lace on the 9th of December, arriving on the 12th. Portable observatories had been constructed, to shelter the instru- ments and observers, and were immediately set up at Panama and Aspinwall upon obtaining permission from the local authorities. Throughout the work the same general system was pursued, and was briefly as follows: As soon as practicable after the establishment of a party at each station, the work was commenced by observing stars on five clear nio-hts, from 8 to 10 p. M., and from 11 p. m. to 1 a. m. for determining the errors of the chronometers, and during the hour from 10 till 11 p.m. exchanging time-signals between the two stations. This was effected as follows : Telegraphic communication being established betw^een the obser- vatories, the senior observer sent a preparatory signal at ten seconds before the completion of a minute by tapping his key several times in quick succession ; then exactly at the even minute, pressing his key again for about a quarter of a second, and repeating this signal at intervals of five seconds till the completion of the next even minute. The hour and minute when the first signal was sent were then tele- 432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MO NT JILT. grai)licd to the receiving station and repeated to insure correctness. The time of arrival of these signals was recorded by the chronograph at the receiving stations, and five similar sets were exchanged in each direction, making sixty-five comparisons each way. After five nights of this work, zenith telescope observations of pairs of stars were made on four nights for latitude. In this way, during the wintei-, the stations of Panama, Aspinwall, Kingston, Santiago de Cuba, and Havana, were occupied, the exact difference of time between each station and the next and the latitude of each being ascertained. It was intended to continue the work to Key West, thus connecting with a Coast Survey station, but the occur- rence of yellow fever among the crew of the Fortune, and the break- ing out of that disease at Key West, caused the postponement of this measurement till the next season. By combining these ascertained differences of time, and applying the result to a determined position, the longitude of each place will be decided with a very small limit of error. In addition to the above observations, the exact habitual error of observing, or relative personal equation of the two observers, must be ascertained and applied to the result.^ The method of star-signals, or the comparison of the times at whicli the same star passes over the meridians of two stations, is seldom used now, and therefore is not described in detail. The authorities of each country visited extended the most grati- fying courtesy and assistance to the officers of the expedition. Es- pecially was this the case in the island of Cuba, where a Spanish naval officer was detailed to assist in the work. On the 5th of April last, all work practicable during this season being finished, the Fortune left Havana, completing her cruise by ar- riving at the Washington Navy- Yard on the 12th of the same month. The computation of the numerous observations made during the past winter is now being prepared, and, as soon as completed, the re- sults will be published. Some imjjrovements and modifications, wljich the experience of the past year has suggested, will be made in the instruments and outfit, and the same officers in a larger and more commodious vessel will leave the United States during the coming autumn, to continue the measurements through the Virgin and Windward Islands to the coast of South America. j Although the naval surveyors of nearly all maritime nations (par- ticularly the English) are constantly at work perfecting the knowl- edge of the earth's surface, it is believed that this is the first systematic naval expedition for establishing by this method secondary meridians to which other positions may be referred. In connection with their preparations for observing the recent ^ See Popular Science Monthly, vol. vi., p. 385. THE AMERICAN CHIPMUNK. 433 transit of Venus, German astronomers have made some telegraphic measurements of differences of time in the East Indies ; but the vast and constantly increasing net-work of cables nearly surrounding the earth will afford work for years to come, and will, in a way hardly contemplated by the projectors, add in a very great degree to accu- rate geographical knowledge. • ■♦»♦■ THE AMERICAN CHIPMUNK. By CHAKLES C. ABBOTT, M. D. WITH the first sweet blossoms of the Epigsea, and long before the foremost warbler greets his old-time home with gleesome songs, our little chipmunk has roused himself from his long winter's nap, and, sniffing the south wind, as it whirls the dead leaves about, scampers to and fro while the sun shines, and dives into his winter- quarters, it may be for a whole week, if the north wind whispers to the tall beech-trees. But the blustering days of March give way in due time to showery April, and then, with more courage, " chip " faces the music of the winds, blow they from whatever quarter, and darting along the top rail of our zigzag fences, chatters, scolds, and calls at and to his equally noisy companions. They know full well that they have the summer before them, and, while determined to enjoy it, begin early and in good earnest to make arrangements for its com- ing duties. We watched several pairs of them from March to No- vember, during the last year (1874), and our sketch is based on nu- merous notes made at different times. Until the weather became fairly settled, and really spring-like in temperature, these little chipmunks did not frequently show them- selves, and then only in the middle of the day. The occurrence of a cold storm they appeared to foretell by twenty-four hours, and re- sumed their hibernating sleep, becoming lethargic, and very difficult to restore to consciousness. A pair that we dug out in March, having two days before reentered their winter-quarters and become again torpid, w^ere apparently lifeless when first taken up in the hands, and not until after several hours' warming did they become lively and altogether themselves again. This seemed to us the more curious, in that they can respond to a favorable change in the weather in a short time, even when the thermometric change is really but a few degrees. On the 3d of May a pair made their ap])earance in the yard of our residence, and took up their abode in a stone-wall having a southern outlook, and on the edge of a steep descent of seventy feet ; which hill-side is thickly wooded, and harbors scores of these little chip- VOL. VII. — 28 4.H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY munks, or " ground-squirrels," as they are more commonly called. From the fact of these little animals living wholly underground, and it being stated that their underground homes were quite elaborate in structure, we determined to wait until the pair in our yard had com- pleted their excavations in and under the stone-wall, and arranged Fig. 1. -American "Chipmunk" (Tamias Lysteri), baj^ Natural Si'.e. their nest, which time we judged by their actions, and then seeking out the home of another couple, which was readily accessible, we un- dertook to expose the nest and its approaches. This we did on May 29th. The general character of the nest and its approaches are seen in the sketch. The nest contained five young, not more than forty- eight hours old. The two entrances were at the foot of a large beech- tree standing about six feet from the brow of the hill. The grass alone grew about the tree, and the holes on the surface of the ground were very conspicuous. No attempt at concealment had been made ; but this was evidently because there is here almost a total absence of their particular enemies. Animals soon learn this fact, and their homes and habits vary with the knowledge. From the right-hand entrance to the nest was an intervening space of nine feet traversed by a cylindrical passage somewhat serpentine in its course, which made the distance really about twelve feet. The nest itself was oval, about twenty inches in length (the cut makes it appear too large), and ten inches in height. It was lined with very fine grass. We THE AMERICAN CHIPMUNK. 435 had hoped to find several passages leading from the nest, and two or more " extra " nests, or magazines for storing away food, but no trace of them was to be found. On the 23d of June, six young chipmunks made their appearance about the stone-wall in the yard, and to these, wntli their j^arents, we w'ill now confine our attention. It puzzles us now when w'e think of it, to imagine w^hen this company of eight chipmunks took any rest. Very frequently during the summer we were astir at sunrise, but the chipmunks were already on the go, and throughout July they ap- peared to do little but play ; which sporting, by-the-way, is very ani- mated. They seem to be playing at what children know as " tag," i. e., they chase each other to and fro, and try not simply to touch, we should judge, but to bite each other's tail. The way in which they scamper along the tapering points of a paling fence is simply astonishing ; but however mad may be their galloping, let a hawk come near, and in a moment every one is motionless. If on a fence, they simply squat wherever they may be at the time, and trust to re- maining unnoticed. If on the ground, and not too far from their bur- rows, which is not often the case, they will dart to their nests with an incredible celerity, going, we believe, the w^hole length of their pas- sage-way to the nest, turning about, and retracing their stejis to the entrance, from which they will peer out, and, when the danger is These little animals over, reappear and recommence their sports play merely for play's sake, and have no more important object in view than amusement. Indeed, so far as we have studied animal life, this indulgence in play, just as children play, and for the same reasons, is common to all animals. We have often seen most animated move- ments on the part of fishes that could be referred only to play. That some work was accomj^lished during July by our eight chip- 436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. munks, we have no doubt, as early in August we dug out a nest be- neath an oak, on the hill side, and we found, besides the nest proper, two nest-like cavities, and in one of which — that most distant from the nest — was about a quart of yellow corn (maize). We judge, there- fore, that these "magazines" were dug out by the chipmunks late in the summer, and similar ones, no doubt, were excavated by the chip- munks in the stone-wall. What they did with the dirt we cannot guess. Certainly not a particle of it could be found about their nests' entrances. About August 15th they commenced to work in real earnest. In- stead of playful, careless creatures, that lived from hand to mouth, they became very sober and busy indeed. Instead of keeping com- paratively near home, they wandered to quite a distance, for them, and, filling both cheek-pouches full of corn, chincapins (dwarf chestnuts), and small acorns, home they would hurry, looking, in the face, like children with the mumps. This storing away of food was continued until the first heavy white frosts, when the chipmunks, as a member of Congress once said, went " into a state of retiracy." The food gathered, we believe, is consumed in part, on their going into winter-quarters, they spending some time in their retreats before commencing their hibernating sleep. This belief, on our part, is based on the result of digging out a third nest on the 3d of Novem- ber. The last time we noted down seeing a chipmunk belonging to a certain nest was October 22d. Twelve days after we very carefully closed the three passages that led to the nest, and dug down. We found four chipmunks very cozily fixed for winter, in a roomy nest, and all of them thoroughly wide awake. Their store of provisions was wholly chestnuts and acorns, and the shells of these nuts were all pushed into one of the passages, so that there should be no litter mingled with the soft hay that lined the nest. How long this under- ground life lasts, before hibernation really commences, it is difficult to determine ; but as this torpid state does not continue until their food-supply is again obtainable out-of-doors, the chipmunks, no doubt, store away sufficient for their needs throughout the early spring, and perhajjs until berries are ripe. So much for the present year, now nearly passed away ; but we are not done with the chipmunks yet, and next year, if all goes well, we purpose to follow the wanderings of the young brood of the past sum- mer, for, we suppose, the old couple will not want them after spring once fairly comes again this way. — Science-; Gossip. THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 437 THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC KESEAECH. Bt kichard a, peoctoe. II. THE public endowment of science presents itself as a desirable sup- plement to the various means of maintenance considered in the previous part of this article. Those departments of science, in par- ticular, which require costly instruments, which can only be pursued with the aid of trained assistants, or which, in other ways, involve greater expense than a man of ordinary means can afford, seem to require and deserve assistance from the national purse. On abstract jDrinciples, this use of the nation's wealth is strongly to be recom- mended. The subject is altogether worthy ; the expenses would not be great, compared with others which are readily borne for purposes far less worthy; and this manner of supporting science commends itself to the respectful consideration of a nation accustomed, in spite of repeated disappointments, to regard state control as a surer resource than private efforts. I think every zealous student of science, to whom the subject might be submitted, would be apt, at a first view, to decide unhesitatingly that the endowment of science could not but be fruitful in good results. So soon, however, as details are considered, and especially wdien candidates for the nation's money come forward and tell us precisely what they want, the matter assumes a different aspect. So far as the source whence money could be provided for the endow- ment of science is concerned, there is little difficulty. The additional taxation required to meet all probable expenses would be so light as scarcely to be appreciable. But in truth a fund already exists out of which the cost of the endowment of science might be defrayed either wholly or in great part — the sums bequeathed in old times to the uni- versities. Nor would this application of university property involve a departure from the purpose for which those sums were originally bequeathed. On the contrary, we have evidence to show that the universities were originally founded, not for educational purposes solely or chiefly, but for the advancement and preservation of knowledge. In the third report of the Commissioners for the Advancement of Science, we find that the witnesses examined were " on no point more united than in the expression of the feeling that it is a primary duty of the universities to assist in the advancement of learning and science, and not to be content with the position of merely educational bodies ;" and the evidence quoted shows that this opinion was based on the fact that such was the original purpose of the universities — that, in fact, "the coUegLate foundations of the universities were originally and fimdamentally, although not absolutely and entirely, destined for" 438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that object. " This object " proceeds the report, " is certainly not less important in modern than [it was] in ancient society. In the middle ages, knowledge would altogether have perished if it had not been for such foundations, and it appears that now, from other causes, the pur- suit of knowledge and of general scientific investigation is subject to very real dangers, though of another kind than those which then pre- vailed, and which make it very desirable to preserve any institution through whicli scientific discovery and the investigation of truth may be promoted." Granting, however, first the desirability of endowment for science on abstract principles, and secondly that the necessary funds either already exist, or can be easily raised, we find ourselves in presence of the practical difticulties involved in the distribution of such funds. Decision must be made : first, as to the scientific subjects which shall be selected for endowment ; secondly, as to the persons under whose supervision the funds for this purpose should be distributed; and thirdly, as to the persons to whom these funds should be dispensed. On the first poict, it is to be noticed that, since, for a long time, the administration of endowment would chiefly rest with non-scientific persons, the question of the practical value of difierent scientific sub- jects would at first be of primary importance. It is not to be exj^ected that the value which scientific researches possess, apart from all ma- terial benefits they may bring with them, should be genei-ally recog- nized. A principle of selection would have to be adopted at first which men of science would regard as essentially unsound. Nevertheless, little direct mischief would follow from this circumstance, though many advantages would for a time be lost. The limitation would ex- clude subjects worthy of the highest consideration : but these are already excluded; and many subjects now receiving no public support would be admitted. I apprehend that the most unfortunate result of this state of things would flow from the fact that persons desirous of securing money grants for a scientific subject of the non-productive sort might be tempted, rather than allow the nation to neglect it, to imagine material advantages from its cultivation. I am not aware that many instances exist whereby to illustrate this point, or indeed that as yet any appeal has been made for special endowment save in a single instance. But this instance chances to illustrate my meaning exceedingly well. It will probably be admitted that the practically useful applica- tions of astronomy are at least as well provided for by the nation as those of any other branch of science, not excluding chemistry or j^ure physics. Occasionally, also, government has provided, not without generosity, for astronomical researches little likely to lead to results of practical utility. Recent eclipse expeditions, and still more the ex- peditions for observing the late transit, are instances in point, seeing that it is almost impossible to conceive that mankind can derive any THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 439 direct benefits from a knowledge of the sun's surroundings, or of the distance, size, and mass of that himinary. But the nation makes no direct in-ovision for researches into the physical condition and nature of the sun, the planets, stars, star-cloudlets, comets, the moon, and so on. Nor, probably, would an appeal for new observatories to meet this want receive general or efiectual support at present. But, about three years ago, it was thought advisable, by two or three persons, to bring a scheme of this nature before the Astronomical Society, so as to secure the suppoi-t of that body in submitting the matter to tliose in charge of the national purse. Of the fate of this scheme with the Astronomical Society I need say nothing, save that the Council were practically unanimous in rejecting it — only four A'oting in its favor. But I would direct particular attention to the nature of the argument used to obtain support for this scheme : " Permanent national provi- sion," said its advocate, "is urgently needed for the cultivation of the physics of astronomy. If the study of the sun alone were in question, that alone would justify such a measure ; for there can hardly be a doubt that almost every natural phenomenon connected with climate can be distinctly traced to the sun as the great dominating force, and the inference is unavoidable that the changes, and what we now call the uncertainties of climate, are connected with the constant fluc- tuations which we know to be perpetually occurring in the sun itself. The bearing of climatic changes on a vast array of problems connected with navigation, agriculture, and health, need but to be mentioned to show the importance of seeking, in the sun, where they doubtless reside, for the causes which govern these changes. It is, indeed, my conviction, that of all the fields now open for scientific cultivation, there is not one which, quite apart from its transcendent philosophical interest, promises results of such high utilitarian value as the exhaus- tive systematic study of the sun." ' ' I quote from a paper by Lieutenant-Colonel Strange, a Fellow of the Astronomical Society. Of course this would not be the place to discuss his remaiks. It need hardly be said that no astronomer has ever sanctioned such views, though many astronomers be- lieve that an association exists between terrestrial relations and the phenomena of solar disturbance. It may suffice to remark here that the influence of changes in the sun's con- dition, as manifested by sun-spots and other solar peculiarities, must be infinitely less than the influence of those changes of aspect which produce the seasons ; and yet our acquaint- ance with these changes leaves the " uncertainties of climate " still unexplained. How much less must be the significance of the cycles of changes in the solar spots ! The chief of these, again, are already known, yet we are as far as ever from being able to predict the weather. Even the theories which have been advanced as to the connection between rainfall, prevalent winds, etc., and the spot-cycle, compel their advocates to assume con- trary influences for different regions separated by nodal lines of no influence, which lines must also be assumed to shift their position from year to year — theoretical devices ad- mitting of being most conveniently adapted to circumstances which would be fatal to any definite theory. Sir J. Herschel well remarks of such ideas that though " some rude approach to the perception of a cycle of the seasons may possibly be attainable, no per- son in his senses would alter his plans of conduct for six months in advance in the most 440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. It would be fatal to scientific interests if such a mistake as this were often repeated. Yet we can have no assurance that the Government would not again and again be invited to support science on the strength of unfounded promises, if any wide scheme of endowment were adopted whose administration should be intrusted to non-scientific persons. If the administration of the funds for scientific endowment were from the beginning intrusted to leading men of science, it is probable that correct scientific principles would be adopted for their guidance. But then a difficulty would arise which might prove even more serious than the mistakes of the unscientific. No one acquainted with the history or present condition of science, and with the relations which have existed and continue to exist among science-workers, can doubt that scientific managers of endowment funds would be repeatedly called upon to decide on the claims of methods or subjects to which they had conceived objections, and to vote respecting the candidature of scientific men against whom they entertained feelings of personal hostility. The first case can be illustrated by example, the other not so conveniently. Suppose Leverrier had been called upon to deter- mine whether any sum from an endowment fund should be given pros- pectively for researches into the subject of transits of Venus, we may be sure (his actual course in the matter leaves no room for doubt) that his prepossession in favor of that method of measuring the solar system which is based upon the planetary perturbations would have led him to decide against any such grant. Many cases akin to this will occur to those familiar with recent controversies in various branches of sci- entific research. As to personal animosities, we may follow the con- venient example of those writers who trace the faults of persons in high places down to a certain date, and leave the present time to the criti- cisms of future historians. It will be admitted that both Halley and Flamsteed were faithful servants of science; yet if either had had to decide on any question of awarding to the other some post of influence or emolument, it is to be feared, from what we know of their actual conduct toward each other, that the result would not have depended solely on scientific considerations. It may be hoped that there has been a change for the better since then, and that matters will improve still more hereafter. The advocates of rival theories, the leading teachers of different schools of thought, will one day, perhaps, be con- stantly on good terms with each other. Dissensions will be unknown in our scientific societies. The older men of science will be well pleased to see younger workers gradually modifying theories which had formerly seemed established forever, and the younger workers will never give unpleasant expression to the feeling that "authority" is not an absolutely certain guide in science. Jealousies and rivalries among those working in the same departments will gradually become trifling particular on the faith of any special prediction of a warm or a cold, a wei or a iry, a calm or a stormy summer or winter." THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 441 things of the past. At present, all we can say is, that matters are improving at such a rate that . . . that they may be allowed, without disadvantage, to improve a little longer. If men of science were sud- denly called upon to administer any extensive scheme of public en- dowment for science, this improvement might be checked, which would be unfortunate. As regards the class of men who would come forward if science were endowed, much would doubtless depend on the position offered to the candidates for office, and on the qualifications demanded. In tliese days of competitive examinations, it seems probable that care- ful preliminary inquiry would be made into the proficiency of the candidates, at least in departments of learning associated with their special science. Again, it may be presumed that every office under the new system would have definite duties attached to it, even though matters were so arranged that ample time would be left for original research. It ought certainly to be arranged, moreover, that from time to time every holder of a salaried office should be called upon to give satisfactory proof that he was not wasting his own time and the na- tion's money. It would be unpleasant if a large salary were assigned for life to a zealous student of science, and then, by some accident, his zeal diminished. The mere loss of so much money annually would be of little importance to the nation ; but the discredit to science would be a very serious matter. Unfortunately, those who ought to know assert that among the persons who seem most earnest in the cause of science, and who not only seem, but are exceedingly earnest in advo- cating the endowment of science, there are not wanting men who may be characterized as " scientific Micawbers, waiting for something to turn up." They may be recognized by men of discernment, because of their tendency to dilate upon their own work, to take credit for the work or methods of others, and to urge (anticipating, perhaps, the endowment of science) that large salaries should be given for the dis- charge of exceedingly indefinite duties. In any wide scheme for the endowment of research these persons would have to be carefully watched. The money wasted on them would be a matter of very lit- tle moment; but science would be degraded in the eyes of the world, and mischief, not easily reparable, would be wrought, if such men as these worked their way into the best-paid offices. It may, perhaps, be urged that a system of payment by results might be established. Mr. Mattieu Williams, the ingenious author of "The Fuel of the Sun," in a letter commenting upon a leading article (mine, as it chanced) in the Chemical News for September 5, 1873, advances this as the only sound and natural principle of public en- dowment for science. The case seems very simple as he presents it : " If a fund for the payment of scientific research existed," he says, " the genuine worker might send in his bill with the paper communi- cating the results of his researches, and such a bill, after being fairly 442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. taxed, should be paid like any other honest account, in a simple and business-like manner. The toiler in the workshop of science who re- veals a new truth is a benefactor to the whole of mankind, has a fair and honest claim against the whole human race, and is entitled to draw a bill accordingly, which should be accepted and honored by his own country at least. Decent gratitude and common honesty demand so much from the nation. It should be done, and may be done, with- out opening a door to jobbery or any multiplication of corrupt and idle pensioners." I fear that though this might, perhaps, be managed in Utopia or the New Atlantis, it could scarcely be effected in Eng- land or any otlier country at present existing. The accounts that would be handed in to the minister of science under any such system would present a strange medley of real and false discoveries. His time would be chiefly occupied in objecting to undue estimates of re- sults, and in endeavoring (hopelessly) to settle rival claims of con- tending discoverers. Besides, it is absolutely impossible to devise any scale of valuation for scientific discoveries. Conceive the state of mind of the minister of science, who, after disposing of claims for the quadrature of the circle, the discovery of perpetual motion, new cos- mogonies, schemes of weather prediction, and the like, should suddenly find liimself called upon to decide the money value of some great achievement in science, such as Newton's discovery of universal gravi- tation, or Kirchhoff's interpretation of the solar spectrum. Whether tlie intrinsic value of any result, or the time and labor it had cost, were considered, the difiiculty of determining how much should be paid for it would be alike insuperable. If the former were the test, who should determine the intrinsic value ? The discoverer might perhaps overrate it, or, if he were really an earnest student of science, he would either underrate it, or be unwilling to make any claim at all. Others would, for the most part, be unable to estimate the result at its true worth, if it were really a discover}^ of importance. For the discoverer must commonly be in advance of his fellow-workers in the department of research to which his discovery belongs. He alone knows the relation of his discovery to work already accom- plished in the same direction. Let any specialist, who has just ob- tained some notable result, be asked to name half a dozen experts in his own subject to whose opinion he would be willing to submit his discovery, and it will be found that he will with difficulty name half as many, and those not specially eminent in that subject. As" to the amount of time and labor devoted to any subject of sci- entific researcli, it is tolerably certain that the nation would object to any system of retrospective endowment based on that criterion. The ardent student of science gives many more hours of his time to his favorite subject of research than any government would be willing to pay for, at the present day, or for many years to come. Past experience, not in scientific matters alone or chiefly, but gen- THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 443 erally wherever state maiutenance has been provided for work which before had been carried on independently of tlie government, suggests that tlie wisest course would be to proceed tentatively. It is almost certain that any general scheme formed at the present time would hereafter have to be greatly modified, if not altogether abandoned. The time, indeed, has not yet arrived when the nation would look with satisfaction on any wide scheme of scientific endowment even if Parliament could be persuaded to make adequate grants for such a scheme, or to authorize the employment for that purpose of funds available at the two universities. As to the action of our legislators, it may be remarked that possibly a favorable vote might be secured, if the more earnest supporters of endowment (who have shown con- siderable strategic skill in pushing their schemes) should choose a convenient season and convenient hours for bringing the matter be- fore Parliament. But it is to be hoped that science will not be de- graded by a line of action implying that the endowment of science requires to be urged as cautiously in Parliament as an act relating to contagious diseases. The most liberal grant would be dearly pur- chased by the disgrace which such a proceeding would bring upon science. The nation is probably willing to see experiments made on the effect of endowment for special scientific purposes. If such experi- ments were made, we should gradually perceive whether wider schemes were likely to be advantageous to science, or whether dangers may not lurk in all such schemes. It might be found that endowment would tend greatly to increase the number of those entering on scientific pursuits, while widening also the range of scientific culture. It might be found, as some assert, that endowment would give the younger men a better chance of making good progress than they at present possess. Or, on the other hand, it might be found that the national endowment of science would tend only to advance scientific Micawber- ism, and that the real workers in science would be discouraged by seeing all the best rewards given for pretentious novelties, clever adaptations perhaps of their own discoveries. That, too, which Her- bert Spencer has described as " the rule of all services, civil, military, naval, or other," might be found to operate with the scientific service also — the rule, namely, of " putting young ofticials under old," with its necessary " effect of placing the advanced ideas and wider knowl- edge of a new generation under control of 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 organizations are far less liable; since, in the life-and- death struggle of competition, merit, even if young, takes the place of demerit, even if old." It appears to me that those who really desire the advancement of science cannot too carefully or cautiously weigh the schemes now rife 444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. for tbe endowment of physical research. Unquestionably, the abstract proposition that science is worthy of national support must be ad- mitted as just. We may agree with Sir John Herschel in feeling "prepared to advocate or defend" (on abstract princijiles) " a very large and liberal devotion indeed of the public means to setting on foot undertakings and maintaining establishments in which the in- vestigation of physical laws and data should be the avowed and pii- mary object, and practical application the secondary, incidental, and collateral one." It is hardly necessary for me to say that I recognize the full weight of those considerations which have been urged in favor of wide schemes of endowment. Such schemes have, indeed, had few warmer advocates than myself, nor has any one been more outspoken in their support. But jjractical experience has taught me, I must con- fess, that dangers — and serious ones — surround them. Even while as yet they were in their infancy, mischievous tendencies began to show themselves which had certainly not been anticipated by those earnest students of science who first supported the general principle that science deserves the recognition of the state. Greedy hands were stretched out for the promised prizes. Jobbery began its accustomed work ; and those who sought to check its progress were abused and vilified. If this happened when schemes for endowment were but mentioned, what evil consequences might not be looked for if those schemes succeeded ? Deterred by the consequences of the first few steps they had taken in the direction of endowment, many of the most zealous workers in science now stand aloof. Before long, however, the real position of affairs will be known. If the present desire for the endowment of research is prompted by genuine zeal for science, we shall find that the wartnest advocates of the scheme are not those who would themselves profit by it. But if, on the other hand, it should appear that the persons who now speak most earnestly about the en- dowment of science are in reality eager chiefly for their own prefer- ment, or desire to secure posts of emolument for personal friends and adherents, then every real lover of science must desire the failure of such schemes, seeing that the cause of science could not fail to suffer, nor Science herself to be degraded, should they prove successful. — Conteinporary Meview. THE PYEOPHONE By M. DUNANT. SOUND is in general, according to natural philosophers, a sensa- tion excited in the organ of hearing by the vibratory movement of ponderable matter, while this movement can be transmitted to the ear by means of an intermediate agent. Sound, properly called musi- THE PYROPHONE. 445 cal sound or tone, is that which produces a continuous senfcation, and of which one can appreciate the musical value. Noise is a sound of too short a dui-ation to be appreciated well, as the noise of a cannon, or else it is a mixture of confused and discordant sounds like the roll- ing of thunder. For a single sound to become a musical sound, that is to say, a tone corresponding to one of the intonations of the musical scale, it is necessary that the impulse and, consequently, the undula- tions of the air should be exactly similar in duration and intensity, and that they should return after equal intervals of time. In its change to the musical state, however dull and confused the noise may be, it becomes clear and brilliant. Like the diamond, after having been polished and cut according to the rules of art, it has the brill- iancy for the ear which the former has for the eye. This is what takes place in singing -flames. Very imperfect in its beginning, hoarse, roaring, or detonating, it does not come nearer the musical sound, properly so called in the chemical harmonica, as it is termed, still, by means of reiterated trials, the sound of the single flame in the tube, the lumen philosophicum, as it is elsewhere called, can it be musically produced in every case. It has long been known that a flame traversing a glass tube under a certain pressure produces a musical sound. The eminent savayit, Prof. Tyndall, to whom the greater part of the deep questions in physics are no mysteries, has studied singing-flames, but it must be admitted that singing-flames have only penetrated into the dominion of art in consequence of the discovery made by M. Frederick Kastner of the principle which allows of their being tuned and made to pro- duce at will all the notes of the musical scale, to stop the sound instan- taneously and mechanically; as in keyed instruments, the sound is regu- lated and subdued as desired. It is thus that the modest harmonica chlmique, lumen philosophicutn of natural philosophers has, in the pyrophone, attained to the character of a real musical instrument ; tliis happy result supports the remark that the observation in Nature of the phenomenon of sound may conduct man, if not exactly to the invention of music, at least to endow the art with resources which in- crease its power. The sound of the pyrophone may truly be said to resemble the sound of a human voice, and the sound of the ^olian harp ; at the same time sweet, powerful, full of taste, and brilliant ; with much roundness, accuracy, and fullness ; like a human and im- passioned whisper, as an echo of the inward vibrations of the soul, something mysterious and indefinable ; besides, in general, possessing a character of melancholy, which seems characteristic of all natural harmonies. The father of this young philosopher, a member of LTn- stitut de France, and a learned author, who died in 1867, treating on cosmic harmonies, insists on this peculiarity : " The harmonies of Nature," said he, " which, in their terrible grandeur as well as in their ineffable sadness, have ever charmed the philosopher, poet, and 446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. artist, are most often stamped witli a character of vague melancholy, from the influence of which the mind cannot escape. It is especially when the noise of the world is hushed that these powerful harmonies produce the most overpower- ing and poetical effects." It characterizes, for example, the sound of the echo, the sound called harmonics, and many others which are included in the range of musical tones, defined further on under the name of chemical and sympathetic music. We have the most remarkable examples of these in the sound of the ^olian harp. Science, as well as philosojjhy, poetry, and musical art, is interested in the further study of these sounds. In Germany, Goethe and Novalis, in France, Jean Paul, and many others, have eagerly appreciated the bond which unites natural harmonies to the most elevated instincts, and to the most ideal aspirations of the human soul. Prof. Tyndall has recognized the fact that, in order to render a flame musical, it is necessary that its volume be such that it should explode in unison with the undulations of the fundamental note of the tube, or of one of its harmonics. He also asserts that, when the vol- ume of the flame is too great, no sound is produced; he demonstrates it, by increasing the flow of gas. Prof. Tyndall has also called atten- tion to this fact, that, in order that a flame may sing with its maximum of intensity, it is necessary that it should occupy a certain position in the tube. He shows this by varying the length of the tube over the flame, but he does not specify the proportions which must exist be- tween the flame and the tube for obtaining this maximum intensity of sound. M. Kastnei''s merit is in having shown that, when two or several flames are introduced in a tube, they vibrate in unison, and produce the musical maximum of sound wlien they are placed one- third the length of the tube, and, if these two flames are brought in contact, all sound ceases directly, a phenomenon M. Kastner demon- strates to be caused by the interference of sounding flames. Here is a question, lately scarcely thought of, of which M. Frederick Kastner has determined the laws, at the same time making a most remarkable application of them in creating an instrument which reminds one of, and may be mistaken for, the sound of the human voice. A very simple mechanism causes each key to communicate with the supply-pipes of the flames in the glass tubes. On pressing the keys the flames separate, and the sound is produced (Fig. 1). As soon as the fingers are removed from the keys the flames join, and the sound ceases immediately (Fig. 2). These new experiments made by M. Kastner upon singing-flames should cause all makers of musical instruments to turn their attention to inventions connected with sound. If two flames of suitable size be introduced into a glass tube, and if they be so dis- posed that they reach one-third of the tube's height, measured from the base, the flames will vibrate in unison. This phenomenon con- tinues as long as the flames remain apart, but the sound ceases as THE PYROPHONE. 447 (9 1 la N I R. Fig. 1— Tube witu bi.sGiNG-FLAMES, show- ing Mechanism bt which thk Gas-Jets are made to diverge, and thus give RISE TO TEE SotTND. Pig. 2.— Same, with Flames vnited, when NO Sound is produced. 448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. soon as the two flames are united. If the position of the flames in the tube is varied, still keeping them apart, it is found that the sound diminishes while the flames are raised above the one-third until they reach the middle point, where the sound ceases. Below this point the sound increases down to one-fourth of the tube's length. If at this latter point the flames are brought together, the sound will not cease immediately, but the flames will continue to vibrate as a single flame would. M. Kastner, for his first experiments, used tAvo flames derived from the combustion of hydrogen gas in suitably constructed burners. The interference of the singing-flames is only produced under special conditions. It is certain that the length and the size of the tubes depend upon the number of flames. The burners must be of a particular shape ; the height of the flames does not exercise much effect upon the phenomenon. From a practical point of view, the numerous experiments effected by M. Kastner during several years have resulted in the construction of a musical apparatus of an entirely new principle, to which he has given the name of Pyrophone (Fig. 3)/ it may be called a new organ, working by singing-flames, or rather by vibrations caused by means of the combustion of these flames. This instrument may be constructed from one octave to a most extended compass. The British Meview humorously remarks that the pyrophone will naturally be valuable in winter, and that in America it has already been recommended to families as a means of warming small apart- ments, and perhaps an economical stove may be added to it for the culinary exigencies of straitened households. The pyrophone will have in the future a poetical mission to fill in the music of concerts. A great number of composers and musicians have already admired this new organ performing by the singing of flames, or rather by vibrations determined by mtans of the combus- tion of these flames. They think it will be of great advantage in cathedrals and churches, as the most extended compass can be given to the instrument. JO Ann'ee Scientijique, by M, Figuier, declares that the pyrop])one is assuredly one of the most original instruments that science has given to instrumental music. In the large pyrophone which M. Kast- ner has constructed, and which they have not yet been able to bring to London, an artist can produce sounds unknown till the present time, imitating the human voice, but with strange and beautiful tones, capable of producing in religious music the most wonderful effects. So says Le Journal Officiel de V Exposition de Vienne. Journals and reviews abroad have unanimously mentioned with praise this new instrument, both from a musical as well as from a scientific point of view. M. Henri de Parville, in Les Gauseries Scientifiques, gives a large space to the consideration of " Singing-Flames," and states that "gas THE PYROPHONE. 449 music" made its debut at the Vienna Exhibition of J 873. La Nature and La Revue des Sciences, edited by M. Tissandier, believe that this new instrument is destined to produce the most remarkable and unex- pected effects in the orchestras of lyric theatres and in large concert?. Fig. 3 —The Ptkophone, ok Gas-Okgan. The chandeliers of the theatre, besides serving to light it, may be con- verted into an immense musical instrument : " "When the pyrophone is played by a skillful hand, a sweet and truly de- licious music is beard; the sounds obtained are of an extraordinary purity and delicacy, recalling the human voice." voT,. VII. — 29 450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The inventor has prej^ared a large and beautiful singing lustre, with a dozen or fifteen jets, which can be placed in the richest or most comfortable drawing-room. This lustre may be used at concerts or balls, for it can play all the airs in dance-music. It will be worked by electricity, so that the performer who plays may be seated in a neighboring room. The effect will be perfectly magical. The future has other surprises for us for our houses. The most unexpected ap- plications of scientific principles are daily the result of the skillful efforts of learned men. Without reckoning Prof. Tyndall, who is so well known and es- teemed on the Continent, many other learned men, English, German, Austrian (like Shaffgotsche), and* Frenchmen, have already studied singing-flames, but no one had previously thought of studying the effects produced by two or several flames brought together, till M. Kastner, who, by means of delicate combinations and ingenious mech- anism, has produced the pyrophone. Frederick Kastner, the inventor of the pyrophone, showed from his earliest age a very decided taste for scientific pursuits. His parents, whose fine fortune permitted them to satisfy the taste of their son for study, gave him facilities often denied to genius. They frequently traveled : the first thing which arrested his attention was a railway ; this pleased him much ; he had a passion for locomotives, just as some children have for horses. He was only three years old when he ex- amined the smallest details with a lively feeling of curiosity. Later on, when he tried to reason and explain his impressions, he over- whelmed with questions those who surrounded him, wishing to learn the mechanism of these great machines, and the mysterious force which sets them to work. But, what more especially charmed him was, when the train stopped at the station, the fiery aspect of the jets of gas emerging suddenly from the darkness. At this sight he shouted with delight ; such was his enthusiasm, that he seemed as if he would jump out of the arms of those who held him, in order to rush toward the jets of flames, which exercised upon him a sort of fascination. Steam and gas, in their modern application to locomotion and lightning, were the first scientific marvels which struck the mind and the sense of the child. He studied music under the skillful direction of his father. From the age of fifteen years, in studying gas particu- larly, his attention was directed to singing-flames. The mysteries of electricity were also at this time the object of his stixdy. The re- searches to which he gave himself up carried him on to invent a novel application of electricity as a motive force. He patented this inven- tion. On the 17th of March, 1873, the Baron Larrey, member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, presented to the Institut de France young Kastner's first memoir on singing-flames, which laid down the following new principle : THE PYROPHONE. 45] (1 " If two flames of a certain size be introduced into a tube made of glass, and if they be so disposed that tJiey reach tlie tliird part of the tube's height (meas- ured from the base), the flames will vibrate in unison. This phenomenon con- tinues as long as the flames remain apart ; but as soon as they are united the sound ceases." Passing on to his exi^eriments, M. Kastner thus gives his account : " I took a glass tube, the thickness of which was 2^ millimetres ; this tube was 55 centimetres long, and its exterior diameter measured 41 millimetres. Two separate flames of hydrogen gas were placed at a distance of 183 millimetres from the base of the tube. These flames, while separated, gave F natural. "As soon as the flames are brought together, which is done by means of a very siuiple mechanism, the sound stops altogether. If, letting the flames re- main apart, their position is altered until they reach one-third of the total length of the tube, the sound will diminish gradually ; and it wih cease completely if the flames go beyond one-half the length of the tube ; under this (one-half the length of the tube) the sound will increase until the flames are brought to one- fourth of the tube's total length. This latter point being reached, the sound will not cease immediately, even if the two flames are placed in contact one with the other; but the two flames, thus united, continue vibrating in the same manner as a single flame would. " The interference of the singing-flames can only be obtained under certain conditions. It is important that the length of the tubes should be varied accord- ing to the number of the flames, the height of which has only a limited action or influence over the phenomenon ; but the special shape of the burners is a matter of considerable importance. " These experiments, which I undertook two years ago, induced me to con- struct a musical instrument, possessing quite a novel sound, which resembles the sound of the human voice. This instrument, M'hich I term the Pyrophone, is formed by three sets of keys {claviers) disposed in a similar manner to that em- ployed for the conjunction of the organ-key tables; a very simple mechanism causes every key of the diflferent sets to communicate with the supply-pipes in the glass tubes. As soon as a key is pressed upon, the flames, by separating, create a sound ; but when the keys are left untouched, the flames are brought together and the sound stops." In consequence of this communication a commission from the Aca- demic des Sciences de Paris was selected for the examination of this curious invention, consisting of Messrs. Jamin,Regnault, and Bertrand, three distinguished members of that Academy, who sliowed a lively- interest from a scientific point of view in M. Kastner's discovery. After fresh experiments, M. Kastner has succeeded in substituting the ordinary illuminating gas for hydrogen. gas in working this pyrophone, and his friend the Baron Larrey was again the interpreter to 1' Acade- mic des Sciences of this new discovery, which much facilitates the em- ployment of the luminous musical instrument. M. Kastner thus ex- presses himself in his new report presented to the Institut de France, December 7, 1874 : " The principal objection which has been made to the working of the pyro- phone is the employment of hydrogen gas. From a practical point of view, this 452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gas presents several inconveniences. It is difficult to prepare ; it necessitates the use of gas-holders, whose size may he considerable. Besides, there is some danger in its use. I have therefore given uj) using hydrogen gas, and for a year I have experimented on the means of applying common illuminating gas to the pyrophone, which it is always easy to procure. In tlie first experiments which I attempted with two flames, witli illuminating gas, in a glass tube, I was unable to obtain any sound, which proved unmistakably the presence of carbon in the flames. "While the sound was produced in a very clear manner with the pure hydrogen gas, that is to say, without there being any solid foreign matter in the flames, it was impossible to make the tube with illuminating gas vibrate, when placing the flames in an identical condition. It was necessary, then, by some means or other to eliminate the carbon, a result at which I arrived by dint of the following method : " When the flame of ordinary gas is examined, and this is introduced into a tube made of glass, or of any other material (metal, oil-cloth, card-board, etc.), this flame is either illuminating or sounding. "When this flame is only illuminating, that is to say, when the air contained in the tube does not vibrate, it presents a lengthened form, and is pointed at the top. Besides, it swells toward the middle, and flickers on the least current of air. On the contrary, when the flame is sounding, that is to say, when the necessary vibrations for the production of sound are produced in the tube, its form is narrow, and large at the top. While the air of the tube vibrates, the flame is very steady. The carbon in a great measure is eliminated as if by some mechanical process. " Sounding-flames proceeding from lighting gas are in eflfect enveloped in a photosphere which does not exist when the flame is merely luminous. In the latter case the carbon is burnt within the flame, and contributes in a great degree to its illuminating power. "But, when the flames are sounding, the photosphere which surrounds each of them contains an exploding mixture of hydrogen and oxygen which determines the vibrations in the air of the tube. "To produce the sound in all its intensity, it is necessary and sutiicient that the whole of the explosion produced by the particles of oxygen and hydrogen in a given time should be in agreement with the number of vibrations which cor- respond to the sound produced by the tube. "To put these two quantities in harmony, I have thought of increasing the number of flames so as to increase also the number of the explosions from the mixture of oxygen and hydrogen in the photospheres, and thus determine the vibration of the air of the tube. Instead of two flames of pure hydrogen, I put four, five, six, etc., jets of lighting gas in the same tube. " I have besides observed that the higher a flame is, the more carbon it con- tains. " I have then immediately been obliged to diminish the height of the flames, and consequently to increase the number so that the united surface of all the photospheres may sufiice to produce the vibration of the air in the tube. "The amount of carbon contained in the whole of the small flames will al- ways be much less than the quantity of carbon corresponding to the two large flames necessary to produce the same sound. In this manner I have been able with separated flames to obtain sounds whose tones are as clear as those pro- duced by hydrogen gas. \\'hen these, flames, or rather when the photospheres which correspond to these flames, are put in contact, the sound instantly ceases. ANIMAL PHOSPHORESCENCE. 453 The carbon of lighting gas, when the flames are sounding, is certainly almost en- tirely eliminated — in fact, it forms upon the interior surface of the sounding-tube at and below the height of the flames a very visible deposit of carbon, which increases while the air of the tube vibrates. I can now afiirm that the pyro- phone is in a condition to act as well with the illuminating gas as with pure hydrogen. The phenomenon of interference is produced exactly in the same condition with the two gases, the same flames occupy the same position in the tube, that is, the third part of the tube's length measured from the base. In addi- tion to the phenomenon of interference, I believe I shall be able to describe a novel process by aid of which the sound produced by burning flames in a tube can be made to cease. "Supposing that one or several flames, placed in a tube a third of its height (measured from its base), determine the vibration of the air contained in this tube ; if a hole is pierced at the one-third of the tube, counted from the upper end, the sound ceases. This observation might be applied to the construction of a musical instrument, which wOl be a species of flute, working by singing-flames. Such an instrument, from a musical point of view, will be very imperfect, because the sound will not be so promptly or sharply stopped as when the phenomenon of interference is employed. If, instead of making the hole at the third, it is made at a sixth, the sound will not cease, but it will produce the sharp of the same note. In all these experiments I have clearly detected the formation of ozone while flames cause the air in the tube to vibrate. The presence of this body can, moreover, be ascertained by chemical reagents scientifically known." — Given before the Academic des Sciences, December 7, 1874. Prof. Tyndall, at a lecture on January 13tl], at the Royal Institu- tion, showed experiments, according to the new principle, with an apparatus of nine flames, which worked during the evening in tubes of different sizes. — Journal of the Society of Arts. ■♦»» ANIMAL PHOSPHOEESCENCE. AMONG the marvels which excite the admiration of the student of Nature, not the least strange is the group of phenomena known under the name of Animal Phosphorescence. We are so accustomed to associate light with heat, and to consider that fire of some kind is necessary to its production, that the imagination is appealed to with unusual force, when we find light proceeding from the body of a living animal Yet, it is well known that the emission of light is not an un- common characteristic among the members of the invertebrate divisions of the animal kingdom. Travelers have often expatiated on the beauty of the scenes which they have witnessed in the tropics, when the seas or forests have seemed to be illimiinated by innumerable sparks of fire; and recent discoveries have shown that the luminous quality- is even more common than was previously supposed. During the dredging expeditions of H. M. S. Porcupine in the years 1869 and 454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 1870, so many of the deep-sea animals were found to be phospliorescent, that Prof. Thomson has suggested that tlie light necessary to the development of the eyesight which some of the specimens possessed may have had its origin in that source. In animal phosphorescence, as in all her works, Nature exhibits an immense variety in the forms in which she displays her power; in one case, the luminosity will be visible in a fluid secretion ; in another, it will manifest itself through the action of a minute and complicated organ ; one species of animal will shine with a yellow light ; a second, with brilliant green ; a third, with pale lilac ; and we are acquainted with one instance in which the light changes successively to the chief colors of the solar spectrum. The causes which produce these phenomena are still very obscure. Although many forms of life are known in which the luminous quality is present, scientific men are not yet agreed on what the quality depends ; and the purposes which the light serves in the animal economy are also little understood. But the phenomena themselves are often very remarkable. Some strange theories were advanced to account for the j^hospho- rescence of the sea, before the real cause was discovered. In 1686, an ecclesiastic, named Tachard, suggested that the ocean absorbed the sun's light by day, and emitted it again at night. About the same time, a better-known philosopher, Robert Boyle, endeavored to account for the same phenomenon by the friction which, he supposed, the rotation of the earth upon its axis caused between the water and the atmosphere. The problem was finally solved in 1V49, by the discovery of luminous animalcules in the water of the Adriatic Sea; and a large proportion of the lower classes of marine animals are now known to be phosphorescent to a greater or less degree. Let us take the invertebrate divisions of the animal kingdom in their regular order, and briefly glance at one or two examples in each. Beginning with the simplest forms of life, the Protozoa, we find, in addition to certain Infusoria, the little jelly-like organism to which naturalists have given the name of Noctiluca, the phosphorescence of which is largely demon- strated around our coasts. The radiated class of sea-animals possess high phosphorescent qualities. Star-fish, sea-pens, jelly-fish, sea-fans, sea-rushes, may be mentioned as cases in which the luminous quality is present among the radiata. We will take our examples from among the specimens captured during the expeditions of the Porcupine. Op some occasions when the dredge was hauled up late in the evening, the hempen tangles which were attached to it came up sprinkled over with stars of the most brilliant uranium green ; little stars, for the phosphorescent light was much more vivid in the younger and smaller specimens. The light was not constant, nor continuous all over the star, but sometimes it struck out a line of fire all round the disk, flashing, or one might rather say glowing, up to the centre ; then that would fade, and a defined ANIMAL PHOSPHORESCENCE. 455 patch, a centimetre or so long, break out in the middle of an arm, and travel slowly out to the jtoint, or the whole five rays would light up at the ends and spread the fire inward. Doubtless, in a sea swarming with active and predaceous crustaceans, with great bright eyes, phos- phorescence must be a very fatal gift. On one occasion the dredge came up tangled with the long pink stems of a kind of sea-pen, which were resplendent with a pale lilac phosphorescence like the flame of cyanogen gas ; not scintillating like the green light of the star-fish, but almost constant, sometimes flashing out at one point more brightly, and then dying into comparative dimness, but always sufliciently bright to make every portion of a stem caught in the tangles or stick- ing to the ropes distinctly visible. In some places, nearly everything brought up seemed to emit light, and the mud itself was perfectly full of luminous sparks. The sea-rushes, the sea-fans, and usually the sea- pens, shone with a lambent, white light, so bright that it showed dis- tinctly the hour on a watch. In the neighborhood of the Madeiras, jelly-fish have been taken which emitted light in flashes, and the same phenomenon has been noticed in other parts, both in respect to jelly-fish, and, as we shall see, in respect to other animals. Some of the most beautiful, luminous phenomena of the ocean are caused by animals belonging to the molluscous sub-kingdom, which is nearly as prolific in light-giving species as the Radiata. There is a shell-less mollusk which inhabits the Atlantic, in the neighborhood of the equator, and resembles a tiny cylinder of incandescent matter. It is microscopic in size, but prodigious numbers adhere together, until a tube from five or six to fourteen inches in length is formed, and the sea sometimes presents the appearance of a sheet of molten lava, from the number of these tubes which are floating in it. Moreover, a sin- gular phenomenon is connected with this form of phosphorescence : the color of the light is constantly varying, passing instantaneously from red to brilliant crimson, to orange, to greenish, to blue, and finally to opaline yellow. Another highly phosphorescent species of Mollusca belongs to the family of the Salpidm^ which abounds in the Mediterranean and the warmer parts of the ocean. These individuals also swim adhex'ing together in vast numbers, and produce the efiect of long ribbons of fire, sometimes drawn straight in the direction of the currents, sometimes twisted and almost doubled by the action of the waves. In the Mediterranean their phosphorescence often resem- bles the light of the moon, giving rise to what the French term une mer de lait. Luminosity is not so frequent a characteristic of the marine Articu- lata ; nevertheless, it is exhibited by certain worm-like animals be- longing to the class Annelida, and by a large number of the smaller Crustacea. In many instances the light takes the form of vivid scin- tillations similar to those emitted by the Medusae, or jelly-fish, already mentioned. The appearance is sometimes very brilliant, when great 4 56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. numbers of these organisms are present in the sea, the water, especial- ly where it is agitated, being illuminated by sparks of light, varying in size from that of a pin's-head to that of a pea, and vanishing and reappearing in countless myriads. The late Prof. E. Forbes recorded instances in which he found individuals of a species of mollusk, whose visceral cavities had been deprived of their natural contents, to con- tain multitudes of minute crustaceans which emitted bright and rapid flashes. If we now leave the marine world, and pursue our investigations among the inhabitants of dry land, we shall find the examples of phos- phorescence much reduced in number. With few exceptions, the Articulata alone among land-animals possess this characteristic, and the class Insects furnishes us with by far the largest number of light- giving species. Thus, naturalists enumerate between two and three hundred kinds of luminous beetles, which are nearly restricted to two families, the Lampyridoe and the Elaterklce. We may take the com- mon English glow-worm as a type of the former, and the famous fire- flies, said to serve the West Indian belles instead of jewels, as a type of the latter. In both, the organs which emit the light are very simi- lar. Dissecting the abdomen of the glow-worm, two minute sacs of cellular tissue are seen, lying along the sides just under the skin. The cells are filled with a substance which, under the microscope, looks like soft, yellow grease. When the season for giving light is past, this yellow matter is absorbed, and replaced by the ordinary sub- stance of the insect. A multitude of minute air-tubes surround and ramify through the sacs, terminating in a larger tube and a spiracu- lum, or air-opening in the skin. Free communication with the outer air is essential to the emission of the light of these two sacs, and we are thus able to account for the frequent disappearance of the glow- worm's lamp by the power which insects enjoy of closing their spira- cula at will. But the Lampyris can in reality only partially extin- guish its light ; beneath the last segmentary ring of the abdomen a second pair of still more minute sacs are placed, likewise filled with yellow, greasy matter, and the light of these is not entirely under the insect's control. It may always be seen if the glow-worm be closely examined. The most curious feature connected with the organ has still to be mentioned ; each of the points at w^hich the light is visible is covered by a transparent, horny cap, divided into little hexagonal facets, and exactly similar in principle to an apparatus invented by man for increasing the diftusion of light. The best known species of fire-fly, the cocuja of Spanish America and the West Indies, is an insect which resembles the common Eng- lish black beetle in size, but it is dark-brown in color, and the divis- ions of its body are less deeply marked. The light is sufiiciently strong to be of use to the inhabitants of the countries in which it is found. By inclosing three or four of the beetles in a glass bottle, a ANIMAL PHOSPHORESCENCE. 457 lamp is obtained sufficient for ordinary household purposes, and trav- elers are said to fasten the insects to the toes of their boots, in order to illuQiinate the pathways at night. The light proceeds from four yellow spots upon the thorax, two of which are hidden by the wing- covers, unless the insect be in flight, when the brightness of the light is also increased by the quicker respiration caused by the motion. The luminous matter is more largely distributed than in the glow- worm, and, if the segmentary rings of the abdomen be gently pulled asunder, the light may be seen shining through the semi-transparent skin of the interstices. Two East-Indian species of luminous beetles are especially worthy of mention. In the island of Singapore, a Lamp't/ris is found whicli shines with an intermittent light. The insects cluster among the foliage of trees where the ground is damp and swampy, and, in ac- cordance with some strange instinct, flash out their lanterns simulta- neously. At one moment the tree will be dotted with bright sparks, which a moment later will have disappeared, excepting two or three. The intervals of darkness are about a second in duration. At these times the insects appear to be settled upon the leaves, and, if they are disturbed, they dart out at random, flashing their lights irregularly, and at shorter intervals. Borneo produces a species of glow-worm which shines with a triple row of lamps. It has been found crawling among dead-wood and leaves, the first row of lights being placed along the back, and the second and third rows along the sides. Turning to another class among the land Articulata, we may briefly mention the phosphorescence of the centipede and tliat of the earthworm. Both phenomena may be seen in England, but are more common on the Continent. The centipede, which is tawny brown in color, and scarcely exceeds the tenth of an inch in diameter, is about an inch and a half in length. It frequents out-houses and arbors, where it may sometimes be found crawling along the ground, and searching for the insects on which it feeds. The phosphorescent prop- erty resides in a fluid which it secretes, and with which it can moisten the whole of its body. The light becomes more brilliant when the ani- mal is irritated, and, if the fluid be received upon the hand, it will con- tinue luminous for some seconds. M. Audouin, a French naturalist, residing near Paris, was witness of a remarkable appearance which was caused by luminous centipedes. He was informed that there were " earthworms " in a field near his house, glowing like red-hot coals. On going to the place to sec, he found merely a few luminous streaks here and there upon the ground; but, when a spade was brought, and some of the earth thrown up, a beautiful spectacle pre- sented itself. Great numbers of centipedes, which had collected together for some purpose, were unearthed, and the soil shone with the light which they emitted, the streaks remaining visible for many- seconds, if the clods were crushed beneath the foot. Similarly, Prof. 458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Moquin-Taudon has recorded a case of the phosjjhorescence of earth- worms, which lie noticed on a gavden-walk at Toulouse. The worms were about an inch and a half in length, and looked like little rods of white-hot iron. It would be out of place in the pages of this journal to discuss the merits of theories which have been advanced to account for animal phosphorescence. As we have already said, Science has not pro- nounced any final decision on the matter. Some philosophers look upon the light as the result of the slow combustion of some combina- tion of phosphorus contained in the animal secretions ; others believe it to be a direct manifestation of vital force, acting through special organs, much in the way that electricity is produced in the torpedo or gymnotus. No doubt the problem will ultimately be solved as we advance in the study of comparative anatomy, and, in the mean time, many experiments have been made, in the hope of assisting the solu- tion. It has been found that the luminous matter will communicate its peculiar property to liquids or solids with which it may come in contact. The light is extinguished by a cold or boiling temperature, or by strong stimulants ; it also disappears in vacuo^ but becomes visi- ble again on the admission of the air ; and it is increased by moderate heat, and by gentle stimulants. In respect to the glow-worm, the two smaller sacs of yellow matter which we described possess the curious property of shining uninterruptedly for several hours, after they have been removed from the living body, the light from other parts being extinguished immediately under similar circumstances. A simple galvanic current passed through water containing NoctiluccB pro- duced no effect ; but an electro-magoetic current, on the other hand, caused, after a short interval, a continuous and steady glow to issue from the water. The light disappeared at the end of a quarter of an hour, and could not be reproduced, the animalcules being evidently dead. — Chambers's Journal. THE GLACIERS OF NORWAY. By Peof. HENKY M. BAIED. A VISIT to Switzerland has of late become so easy and frequent an undertaking, that the glaciers around Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau have lost much of their romance and all their novelty. Every tourist climbs the Montanvert to enjoy the sensation of walk- ing over the Mer-de-glace in midsummer, and creeps under the Rasen- laui to admire the deep-blue color of its icy vault. There is, how- ever, another country which, in the number and beauty of its glaciers, is a formidable rival of Switzerland ; but, lying as it does, out of the THE GLACIERS OF NORWAY. 459 ordinary track of pleasure-travel, is far less known or appreciated. Norway may, in fact, be styled with good reason the country of the glacier. True, the height of its mountains does not approximate to that of the Alps. Only one or two summits exceed 8,000 feet in alti- tude, and this elevation is not much more than half that of Mont Blanc. But almost the entire country stands high above the level of the ocean, while its situation so far toward the north enables the snow- fields, which are the feeders of the glaciers, to retain their vast accu- mulations with little loss thi'ough rain or thaw. If the reader will glance at a map of Norway, he will see that tliere are two well-defined divisions : the southern, a region not desti- tute of flourishing cities and towns ; and the northern, a narrow strip consisting of little more than a succession of headlands and islands, stretching far within the Arctic Circle. Both divisions have their characteristic, that the mountain-ranges rise in the form of wide table- lands, extending for long distances in so nearly a perfect level " that, did roads exist, a coach-and-four might be driven along or across them for many miles." The very valleys that break up their continuity are unperceived by the eye, being overlooked on account of their narrow- ness ; and the view is interrupted, only by slight undulations, or by occasional mountains of no great size. Here it is that, summer and winter, the moisture which elsewhere descends in the form of rain, spreads the successive layers of the great Sneefon.. Prof. Forbes, in the map accompanying his interesting work on " The Glaciers of Nor- way," indicates not less than eighteen of these " chief permanent snow- fields " to the south of Trondhjem, and nineteen in the narrow strip north of that city. It must not, however, be concluded too hastily that the climate of Norway is cold and inhospitable ; for no greater contrast can be found between countries lying in the same latitude, than between Norway and Greenland. The influence of the Gulf Stream is nowhere more strikingly traced ; for, if the summers in Christiania are comparatively cool, the winters are as warm as in many places far to the south of it. Indeed, it is the remarkably equable temperature of Norway which, while it prevents the harbors from being closed by drifting ice, like those of the opposite shores of Greenland, yet, allows the line of perpetual snow to come down as low as 4,000 or 5,000 feet above the sea-level. For it has been conclusive- ly proved that it is not so much the intensity of the winter's cold, as the amount of the summer's heat, that fixes the point where frost reigns supreme throughout the year. So it happens that, while the haven of Bergen, in latitude 60°, is frozen over only twice or three times in a hundred years, or about as often as the same fate befalls the Seine at Paris, the eternal snows cover the mountain-sides in the neighbor- hood of Bergen at heights at which the peasant on the Jura or the Alps pastures his flocks through the long summer months. Of late, the savants of Norway have been giving to the world the 460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. results of observations upon the glaciers which they enjoy such re- markable facilities for examiiiinor. About 175 miles in a direct line to the northwest of Christiania (which is not only the capital of Norway, but the seat of one of the best universities of Europe) is a spur of the principal range included between the two inlets of Sogne and Nord — fiords. Upon its top is the largest snow-field of Norway, which bears the name of Justedal (Jostedalsbraeen). Its superior magnitude and its comparative nearness to Christiania have led to its selection by two of the most eminent geologists of the country as a subject of spe- cial study. In 1869 Prof. Sexe published, as the "Programme" of the university for the first semester of the preceding year, a paper on the great glacier of Boium ; and, in 1870, M. C. de Seue, of the Meteoro- logical Institute, gave to the world, as the " Programme " for the second semester of that year, a more extended account of his obser- vations under the title of " Le Neve de Justedal et ses Glaciers." Some of the results of the researches of these gentlemen may be of interest even to those who would soon grow weary of purely scientific details. This immense field of snow and ice measures over forty miles in length from northeast to southwest, and from four to seven miles or more in breadth, covering, with its dependencies, according to M. de Seue's calculations, not less than some 550 square miles. The weue, or snow-field proper, is by no means a dead level, but the inequalities of the rocky crags are, for the most part, concealed by the thick de- posit of snow, which is supposed to be at least 150 feet deep on the average, while in places it certainly fills up depressions of twice that depth. Here the snow is granular, lying in distinct layers, the prod- uct of the storms of successive seasons, and rent with frequent fis- sures. The glaciers spring from the edge. Wherever the jagged clifts with which that edge bristles fall away and leave ravines, there the snow-field seeks an outlet. The glaciers are, as it were, the rills by which the great perennial reservoir discharges into the valleys below. So numerous are they, that their exact number has never been ascertained. Of glaciers of the first class, or those which pour their icy streams quite down into the valley, there are twenty-four ; but, if we also include in the enumeration the glaciers of the second class, or those which remain suspended on the mountain-sides, the number is counted by hundreds. Some of the second class, it may be noticed, seem almost entitled, by reason of their breadth and depth, to be included in the higher class. Each glacier presents many of the same phenomena as all the rest. From the moment it leaves the parent nme,^ or snow-field, the consti- tution of the mass is difierent from that of recently-fallen snow. Com- pressed by the immense weight of tlie superior strata, that lower por- tion of the 7iev'e which feeds the glacier is, at the very start, trans- formed into a solid ice, whose particles are cemented by the alternate THE GLACIERS OF NORWAY. 461 melting and freezing which go on through all but the coldest weather of the year. Whether it is the pressure of the n'ev'e, or the irresistible expansion caused by the action of cold upon the water pervadino- its great mass, that drives off" the glacier, is a question respecting which the most intelligent observers are by no means unanimous. Against the theory of weight as the motive power is urged the fact that occa- sionally the glaciers are not strictly adjacent to the superior snow- field, but separated from it by an intervening space of bare rock. When once it has emerged from the 7ieve, the glacier becomes a stream of ice chiefly distinguished from a fluid river by the greater sluo-o-ish- ness of its current. How, it may be asked, can a mass of solid ice move in a fixed channel ? The question was long unanswered. In- deed, it was only slowly that the truth forced itself upon the scientific world that it does actually move at all. And, the fact being conceded, the explanation is still not altogether easy. Prof. Sexe imagines that the plastic character of the glacier, as he has observed it in the neigh- borhood of Justedal, resides in the ease with which the ice fractures and the equal facility witli which it reunites when fragments are brought together. Thus it is that, under the immense weight of the glacier, the glassy material of which it is composed is rent when brought into contact with some solid rock standing in its bed, and that the parted streams become one again as soon as the obstacle in their way is passed. So also it is that longitudinal fissures regularly form in the lower part of the glacier of Boium, when tlie glacier reaches a point where it can expand in the less contracted valley, while transverse fissures open in the glacier of Suphelle at a place where the inclination suddenly becomes more considerable than it was at first, and close up as soon as the slope is again a gentle one. M. de Seue, on the other hand", emphasizes the peculiar constitution of the ice of glaciers, that is, the ice which is formed by the compres- sion and metamorphosis of snow " The ice of the glacier," he says, " is, as already remarked, composed of distinct particles. From a piece of this ice you can, as a general thing, easily remove the parti- cles, one after the other, without injuring the surrounding ones ; and, if you should find a particle which cannot be taken out without afflict- ing the rest, you will still notice that you can move it a little rela- tively to the others without harming them. Take a piece of the ice of the glaciers of a convenient size, and, in trying (so gently that it does not break) to twist or bend it, you will notice at once that there is a little changeableness in the minute portions of which it is com- posed." Both M. de Seue and Prof. Sexe reject tlie theory of expansion as failing to account for the phenomenon of the glacier's progression, and both virtually agree in ascribing that progression to the combined influence of the enormous pressure exerted by the glacier's Aveight and the melting produced by the air. Unfortunately for tlie former 462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. theory — of expansion — it is difficult to see how it will explain the greater motion of the glacier in precisely that part of the year and of the day when the heat is the greatest, and the influence of expan- sion by freezing must necessarily be least operative. The rapidity of the glacier's motion is much greater than we would naturally expect. By a course of very careful observations and meas- urements, Prof, Sexe found that, in the middle of July, 1868, the ice on the surface of the glacier of Boium, near the centre of the glacier and some distance from the lower end, moved 204|^ inches (Norwegian) in 211 hours. This was about y^g- of an inch per hour, and, if kept up during the entii'e year, would have given a total motion of about 707 feet. Here the motion was considerably greater by day than by night ; in the former, exceeding 1^ inch per hour, and, in the latter, being about |^ only. M. de Seue, however, coming later in the same month, when the weather was less uniformly pleasant, found the aver- age rate of progression of the same point very much diminished, viz., to less than | of an inch per hour ; and there is every reason to be- lieve that, had these gentlemen been able to resume their observa- tions in winter, they would have found that the motion during the cold weather is almost inappreciable. It is unnecessary to say that the difficulty of taking observations during half the year, on account of the temperature, and the glacier being covered over with deep snow, can scarcely be exaggerated. It is not every part of the glacier which moves with even the rapidity mentioned. Toward the sides (and undoubtedly we should also find it so at the bottom, if we could get at it), the influence of friction can be detected retarding the motion. Near the lower end, also, the ice appeared to advance not more than one-third as fast as further up. Of the numerous glaciers which M. de Seue describes as descending from the snow-field of Justedal, a number seem to be objects of great beauty. The photographic views which accompany his paper unfor- tunately fail to convey a very satisfactory idea of their appearance. The most considerable is the glacier of Trensbergdal, some nine miles long, and from two-thirds of a mile to nearly a mile in width. In several cases two or more glaciers meet, and, joining their contents, merge so thoroughly that they can be distinguished only by the moraines — lines of detached blocks of stone, torn from the rocks above in the downward course of the icy current, and which mark their edges even after their junction. Several are instances of what the French savants have called glaciers remanies, the internal struct- ure being altogetlier changed in consequence of their having been pre- cipitated over ledges of rocks of considerable height. One of the smallest of the number is the glacier of Lunde, which is less than a mile in length, and only 100 feet in breadth. The interest attaching to it, however, lies in the suddenness with which it makes its spring INFIRMITIES OF SPEECH. 463 down from the snow-field. -From the opposite side of the valley it appears like a cascade suddenly congealed in its fall ; and the wonder of the spectator is excited by the apparent impossibility that such a mass of ice should thus remain suspended in mid-air. A nearer ap- proach dispels the illusion, but scarcely the amazement of the be- holder ; for, after all, tlie inclination of the glacier is at least 45° with the horizon, nor could it maintain itself in this position but for the steep banks that inclose it, and the large mass of ice at its base which props it up. All the glaciers of the first class are remarkable for the circum- stance that their lower extremities are so little raised above the level of the ocean. While the glacier of lokuls-fiord, in Northern Norway, is the only one in Europe, we believe, which actually comes down to the water's edge, there are several around Justedal that reach to within a few hundred feet of the sea's level, and one, that of Suphelle, to within 140 feet of it. Of many other points developed in the valuable papers of Prof. Sexe and M. de Seue, which are of more interest to the student of physical geography and geology than to the general reader, we can enter into no discussion liere. INFIKMITIES OF SPEECH. WHAT is necessary in order to our communicating ideas by speech? It is necessary, first of all, that ideas call np their approj^riate symbols ; secondly, that we remember how to say words ; and, thirdly, that our organ of speech be entire — by which is meant, the whole of the muscular apparatus which is brought into action when one articulates. Now, each of these three capabilities is liable to injury from dis- ease. When the first is affected, the patient forgets words, or uses wrong words, in which a connection with the right ones may be more or less traceable. In the second case, an individual may have lost speech entirely, or he may retain a few words. It is no use helping him out : having forgotten how to use words, he cannot repeat them when they are used in his hearing. In the third case, there is paraly- sis, it may be, of muscles of the mouth, of the tongue, the larynx, etc. This last form we will exclude from consideration here. The two former constitute the disease called a])hasia (as at least understood by some writers), and the study ol" it makes us acquainted with some curious facts connected with the working of that wonderful organism with which we have been endowed. There are well-authenticated instances of persons who suddenly 464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. found that they could not remember tlieif own names. An embassa- dor at St. Petersburg was once in this case, when calling at a house where he was not known by the servants, and he had to apply to his companion for the necessary information. The names of common things are sometimes strangely forgotten. The wife of an eminent jurist who consulted Dr. Trousseau, of Paris, told him that her hus- band would say to her, " Give me my — my — dear me ! my — you know," and he would point to his head. ''Your hat?" "Yes, my hat." Sometimes, again, he would ring the bell before going out, and say to the servant, " Give me my um — umbrel — umbrel, oh dear ! " " Your umbrella ? " " Oh, yes ! my umbrella." And yet at that very time his conversation was as sensible as ever. He wrote or read of, or dis- cussed, most difficult points of law. A patient will often use a form of circumlocution to express his meaning; thus one man who could not remember scissors would say, " It is what we cut with." It may be, however, that not only are the right words forgotten, but wronsc ones are substituted. The mother-in-law of a medical man (we are told by Dr. Trousseau) labored u.nder a very singular intel- lectual disorder. Whenever a visitor entered her apartment, she rose with an amiable look, and, pointing to a chair, exclaimed, "Pig, brute, stupid fool ! " " Mrs. B asks you to take a chair," her son-in-law would then put in, giving this interpretation to her strange expres- sions. In other respects, Mrs. B -'s acts were rational, and her case differed from oi'dinary aphasia in that she did not seem to grow im- patient at what she said, or to understand the meaning of the insult- ing expressions of which she made use. Crichton mentions the case of an attorney who, when he asked for any thing, constantlj' used some inappropriate term ; instead of asking for a piece of bread, he asked for his boots, and, if these were brought, he knew they did not correspond to the idea of the thing he wanted ; therefore, he became angry, yet he would still demand some of his boots or shoes, meaning bread. One gentleman (a patient of Sir Thomas Watson) would say " pamphlet " for " camphor." Another would say " poker " when he meant the " fire;" Dr. Moore, of Dublin, has recorded the case of a gentleman who completely lost the connection between ideas and words. On one occasion the doctor was much puzzled by his patient saying to him, " Clean my boots ! " Finding tliat he was not under- stood, he became much excited, and cried out vehemently, " Clean my boots by walking on them." At length it was ascertained that the cause of disquietude was the shining of the candle in his face ; and that the object of his unintelligible sentences was to have the curtain drawn. When this was done, he appeared gratified. In this case, it will be noticed, the patient formecV complete sentences, the power of coordination and articulation was perfect, and the intelligence was apparently unimpaired. But sometimes, where articulation may be retained, what is uttered is perfect jargon. A gentleman in Dublin, INFIRMITIES OF SPEECH. 465 after an attack of apoplexy, was thus affected, and in tl)e hotel where he staid he was mistaken for a foreigner. Dr. Osborn, with a view to ascertain the nature of his imperfection of language, asked him to read aloud the following sentence from the by-laws of the CoUeo'e of Physicians: "It shall be in the power of the college to examine or not to examine any licentiate previous to his admission to a fellowship, as they shall think fit." lie read as follows : " An-the be what in the temother of the ti'Othotodoo to majorum or that emidrate ein einkrastroi mestraits to ketra totombreida to ra from treido as that kekritest." Several of these syllables are difficult and unusual. As indicated above, it is necessary to distinguish between the memory of xoords and the memory of how to say words. Where the latter memory is lost, the disorder is sometimes called atactic aphasia. The patient may retain a few words, and use only these. There was at the Bicetre Asylum for many years a man who invariably used the monosyllable " Tan " when any question was put to him. (He went by the name of "Tan.") This, with the exception of an oath (S — N — d — D — !), composed his whole vocabulary. His history, long un- der observation, furnished some useful data with regard to the physio- logical relations of aphasia ; but we cannot here dwell on this. An- other instance, mentioned by M. Broca, was that of a man who had only four words besides his name (which he pronounced " Lelo " for " Lelong") ; they were, yes, no, three, and ahcays. He used yes and no at proper times, but he made use of the word three in order to express any number, although he knew well that the word did not always con- vey his meaning ; and corrected the mistake which he made in speak- ing by holding up the proper number of fingers. Whenever yes, no, and three, were not applicable, he used the word always {tovjovrs). M. Broca infers from this man's case — 1. That he understood all that was said to him ; 2. That he used with judgment the four words of his vocabulary ; 3. That he was of sane mind ; 4. That he understood written numeration, and at least the values of the first two orders of units ; 5. That he had lost the faculty of articulate language alone. It is to this atactic aphasia alone that M. Broca limits the term aphasia. Another example of it may here be given from Dr. Trousseau. A lady came to consult him with her son, aged twenty-five. This young man could articulate two words only, no and mamma. " What is your name ? " " Mamma." " What is your age ? " " Mamma, no." He yet knew that he did not answer as he ought. He had taught himself to write with his left hand, the right being paralyzed, but had not got beyond signing his own name, " Henri Guenier." " Since you write your name," Dr. Trousseau told him, " say Guenier." He made an efibrt, and said, "Mamma." " Say Henri.'''' He replied, "Ko mamma." " Well, write mamma.''"' He wrote Guenier. " Write wo." He wrote Guenier. However much he was pressed, nothing more could be got from him. VOL. VII. — 30 466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. There are various remarkable phases of this inability to arlieulate. One man in the Paris asylum would say '■'■ Consisi ;'''' and it might be expected that lie could easily say ^'•con-con'''' or '■'■ sisi,^'' but it was only after several days' trying that Dr. Trousseau got him to say the former, and he never could say "s^5^" alone. Another aphasic patient, a woman, could say very well, ^^ Bonjour, monsieur ;'''' but could never be got to say " Bonbon.'''' Aphasic patients are, as a rule, beneath the average of other men, as regards intelligence, and considerably beneath their former selves, when the comparison can bo instituted. There is, however, a very rare form of aphasia in which the intellect is unaltered, memory is good, the patient writes easily, and expresses his thoughts correctly in writing as educated deaf-mutes do. The recovery of the art of writing (where it is recovered) is gradual. The physiology of aphasia is a subject that has been a good deal controverted, but it now appears possible to explain most of the phe- nomena by the nature of lesions, and by the very constitution of the nervous system. The following representation of the facts (which we take, in the main, from an eminent French observer, M. Chai'les Richet) will convey some idea of what medical men hold on this subject . The nervous system (let it first be understood) is formed of a cen- tral part, the brain and spinal cord, and of a peripheric part, the nerves. The nerves are simple conductors, while tlie central part per- ceives sensations and determines movement. Now, in this central part, the cerebro-spinal, inclosed by the cranium and vertebral col- umn, as in a case, there are two distinct elements ; an active element, and a conducting element. The white substance is the conducting: element ; the gray substance the active. The gray substance forms a thin column, which is the central j^art of the spinal cord, and is con- tinued into the brain Avhere it enlarges. The whole of this column is surrounded by white substance ; and in the higher types of vertebrates we find added the so-called " cerebral convolutions." Here the white substance of the brain is folded in various directions, and its entire surface is covered with a thin layer of gray substance. To this ele- mentaiy exposition it need only be added that the gray substance in brain or cord seems to be formed, not by a single cord, but by a series of nuclei, or centres, placed end to end and connected together. These are sometimes called ganglions. It is in the outer gray substance that will, intelligence, instinct, seem to reside. If the upper part of the cerebral hemispheres be cut in a pigeon, the bird loses all activity : it is incapable of moving voluntarily. It is an automaton which flies when thrown into the air, which swallows when a grain is placed in its throat ; but which is without consciousness. Its existence is purely vegetative. If, instead of the superficial part of the brain, it be the gray axis. INFIRMITIES OF SPEECH. 467 the spinal cord, that is injiu-ed, all the nerves coming out from it are paralyzed ; and, so long as the ganglion from which the respiratory nerves come is not aftected, life is possible, however numerous the paralyses. Now, it appears that, for each of our functions, respira- tion, movements of the heart or of the eye, deglutition, etc., there is a special ganglion of the gray substance forming part of the central column, and. charged with the regular coordination of the movements necessary to the accomplishment of this function. Thus, e. g., in order to voluntary swallowing, it is first necessary that the will determine movements of deglutition, then that this order be transmitted to the nervous centre of deglutition, i. e., a small body of gray substance Avhich anatomists have called the olivary body (on account of its form), and which presides over this function. Between these two centres, however, of which one is producer and the other coordinator, there is a third, the centre of impulsion. The central gray substance, expanding in the brain, forms two large gan- glions surrounded entirely by white substance, except at their base, Avhich is connected with the central axis. These two large cerebral ganglions are called respectively the optic layers and the corpora striata. It is they that determine the motor impulsion, that transmit to such and such a ganglionic nerve-centre the order to put itself in motion. Thus the nervous influx arising from will proceeds from the superficial nerve-cells to the ganglionic centres of the brain, then to the ganglionic centres of the sjjinal cord, issuing in regular movement. It is something like the case of an electric telegraph, with stations and intermediate relays. Now, coming to aphasia, it seems to have been well established (from post-mortem examination) that there is a limited region of the superficial portion of the brain, on which the faculty of articulate lan- guage is dependent, and impairment of which gives rise to aphasia as understood by M. Broca. First of all, it is in the left hemisphere (a curious thing in an organ so symmetrical as the brain). Next, it is in the anterior part of this hemisphere ; and, lastly, to be more precise, it is the third cerebral convolution. Agreeably with this, it is found that a great number of aphasic patients are paralyzed in the right side of the body. It must be understood that the nerve-fibres cross over from the left hemisphere. We may regard the anterior convolutions of the left hemisjihere as a sort of logopoietic, or word-forming apparatus, where the previously vague idea becomes precise and distinct, taking a word-form and be- coming representative. Lordat distinguishes these two forms of in- telligence as the interior logos and the exterior logos. It should be remembered that this conception is a pure hypothesis ; but it is in accordance with the facts. But, for a phrase thought by us to come to the ear of another, a second series of apparatus is required. This is the continuous chain 468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. going from the periphery of the convolutions to the central gray col- umn. The nervous influx first goes into those two large ganglions of gray substance, the corpora striata and the o^ytic layers. Probably these organs transform the phrase thought into voluntary movement. From the corpora striata the vibration is transmitted along the cen- tral axis to the olivary bodies, which are the coordinating aj)paratus, and which regulate and direct the movement. From the olivary bodies proceed nerves to the lips, the larynx, the tongue, the pharynx, the palate — all the vocal organs concerned in production of language. Pathological facts teach us that these difiereut a2)paratuses may be destroyed separately, and there is then involved the absolute loss of such and such a function. Thus in a case recorded by Dr. Winslow, the man had retained the faculty of language; he could write the* words and phrases which he thought of ; but, when he tried to speak, he only uttered confused sounds. In this instance the olivary bodies were alone afiected. The faculty of language remained intact; the vocal apparatus was not injured ; but the apparatus of transmission was profoundly altered. In other cases, again, it is the organ of thought itself that is dis- eased. There is an afl"ection well known to physicians who study the insane, and which is called general paralysis. This disease begins in the periphery of the convolutions, which are devoured (so to speak) by a slow inflammation characterized by intermittent extensions. One may take account of the disorders it causes by the state of intelligence of the patients. At first the inflammation produces an intellectual ex- citation, which expresses itself in mad acts. Each time a fresh access of madness is observed, one may pretty surely infer a new extension of the disease. But at length, when the whole outer surface of the hemispheres is destroyed, there is no longer either thought, or will, or instinct ; the unhappy subjects are plunged in a state of somno- lence and stupor, from which nothing can rouse them. They do not speak, because the organ of thought no longer exists. It is pi'obable, then, that between the organ of thought and tlie vocal oro-an there is a third orocan — the or^an of words, and it is a lesion of this which properly constitutes aphasia. — English Mechanic. -♦»♦- ARCTIC ICE-TRAYELS. By CLEMENTS E. MAEKHAM, Y. E. S. FORMERLY exploration in the arctic regions was entirely per formed by ships. On one or two occasions only were sledge-par ties dispatched for the purpose of discovery, and then on a very reduced scale. During the search expeditions, however, after Sir John Franklin and his gallant companions, the system of sledge-trav- ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 469 eling was matured, and has now, owing to the genius of McClintock, Mecham, Hamilton, Osborn, and Richards, reached a high state of perfection. In fact, in these days the sledge must be regarded as the principal means of arctic exploration, and the ship only as the aux- iliary. It is to Sir Edward Parry that the introduction of sledge-trav- (4ing is due, but the very primitive and cumbrous machines used by him, during his many successful voyages to the arctic regions, are no more to be compared with the light and useful sledges which are being constructed from the designs of Sir L. McClintock for the expedition of 1875 than is a brewer's dray to a light gig. We propose to insti- tute a comparison between the modes of traveling past and present, and to describe the work that will fall to the lot of an exploring expe- dition during the space of twelve months. The best route for polar exploration is the one that has been so unanimously advocated by all arctic authorities both of our own and other countries, and the one that is to be adopted by the expedition about to leave our shores. There are many reasons why the roiite via Smith Sound is superior to and more advantageous for polar exploration than any other. We know that the United States exploring-ship Polaris succeeded by this route in reaching a very high northern latitude — in fact, the highest latitude that a ship has ever attained, and that in a remarkably short space of time and with perfect ease. The shores of this narrow sound are teeming with animal life. In Dr. Hayes's ex- pedition upward of 200 reindeer were shot during the winter, walrus and seals were abundant, and there were quantities of ducks and little auks in the summer. Where the Polaris wintered herds of musk- oxen found pasture, rabbits abounded, and large flocks of birds came northward in the summer months. This in itself is of the lUmost im- portance, as with well-organized hunting-parties, such as will be formed on board our exploring-ships, the crews will be supplied with fresh meat. The Smith Sound route is the best adapted for exploration by sledges, and in case of mishap or any unforeseen accident befalling the ships, it would simply be a matter of time for the ship's companies to travel south and reach the Danish settlements, or one of the Scotch whalers that annually frequent Baffin's Bay. The importance of reach- ing in the ships a high latitude lies in the consideration that every ten miles made good in the ship toward the north is two days' sledge- traveling saved. The ships ought to leave England in the month of May or June. In a fortnight Cape Farewell, the south extreme of Greenland, would be reached, oif which the first ice is invariably met. This in a great measure consists of small, detached fragments, probably broken off the land-ice, with which Greenland at the early part of the year is surrounded, by the motion of the waves. Icebergs are also fallen in with in this locality. The scene on a fine clear day in Davis's Straits, to one visiting these regions for the first time, is indeed very grand. Huge icebergs sailing majestically along, in every conceivable 470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. shape and form, at times making the navigation so intrica'te as to call forth the utmost vigilance and watchfulness from those on board, their edges adorned with pendent fringes of icicles, while the bright blue and green tints reflected from these huge mountains of ice tend to render it a scene such as is hardly to be realized by those who have never witnessed it. The Danish settlement of Lievely, or Godhavn, at the southwest extreme of the island of Disco, and Upernavik, the most northern settlement, are reached, dogs are purchased and taken on board, Esquimaux dog-drivers engaged, and the necessary skins and dog-food procured. Now commences the first really serious work of the exploring ships. One day's run from Upernavik and Cape Shackleton is reached, from which is sighted the dreaded floe-ice of Melville Bay, a spot which, until the introduction of steam, has proved fatal to many a gallant bark. To an inexperienced eye this ice seems of an impassable and impenetrable nature, but to those acquainted with ice-navigation a lead may appear through which the ship is steered. Much depends on the wind in making a passage through Melville Bay. If it is calm, or if the wind is from the north, the ice loosens, and ships must then make the best of their time and push on speedily ; but if the wind is from the south it causes the loose ice-floes of Baffin's Bay to pack against the land or fixed ice, and woe betide the unfortunate vessel that should be nipped between the two I The only means of escaping destruction is by cutting a dock in the land-ice and warpmg the ship into it. Steam, however, has of late years produced such a revolution in ice- navigation, that the animated scene of 200 or 300 seamen landed on the floe, busily employed in the operation of cutting docks, is now sel- dom or never witnessed. The last English Government Expedition, that of Sir Edward Belcher, took no less than five weeks going through Melville Bay, although the expedition was accompanied by a couple of steam-tenders, commanded by experienced and energetic officers. When Commander Markham went through Melville Bay in 1873, in the steam-whaler Arctic, the time occupied was only sixty hours, and last year the whole of the whaling-fleet succeeded in making the passage in three days ! Such is the advantage we have gained by the aid of steam. Detention in Melville Bay is, even with a steamer, probable, but seldom for a long duration. When such is the case, ice- anchors are got out, and the ship is moored to the floe, waiting an opportunity for the ice to ease offi Perhaps it is only a neck of ice that pi'events the ship from proceeding; in which case, with a full head of steam, the objectionable barrier is rammed, and the ship is forced through, emerging into the open water beyond. Even during these detentions the time may be beguiled in shooting looms and rotges, which are capital eating, harpooning narwhals and stalking seals, or in the more exciting sport of bear-hunting. Sport, together with the strange and novel scenery, and the beauties of the midnight sun, ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 471 makes life, even in Melville Bay, charming and enjoyable. In former days the monotony of the detention in this bay was indeed wearisome, and the laborious work of tracking the clumsy, unwieldy ship, or cut- ting docks in the floe, was fatiguing and irksome in the extreme. In the latitude of Cape York the " North Water " is generally reached, and this, so far as we know, has always been navigable to the entrance of Smith's Sound, and to a much higher latitude. We will now assume that the month of September has arrived, and that the expedition has succeeded in reaching, we will say by way of illustration, the latitude of 84°. We are, of course, anticipating an open season, and a most favorable and prosperous run. Bay or pan- cake ice, which is newly-formed ice, is now forming, and it is absolutely necessary to seek winter quarters. A snug harbor is, if possible, found, protected as much as possible from the prevailing northeasterly winds, and arrangements are at once commenced for securing and housing- in the ship. One part of the ship's company is told oft' for this latter duty, which consists in unbending the sails, unreeving running rigging, sending down upper spars, and housing the ship in with a covering made of tilt-cloth. This is spread on spars that are secured fore and aft between the masts about fifteen feet above the deck, sloping down to the bows and the stern, and ridge-ropes set up to the rigging, about seven feet above the bulwarks. One entry only is made as a gangway, on what would be the lee-side of the prevailing wind. An observatory is built, and an ice-wall made to inclose the ship, the space inside the wall being kept free and clear, to be used for exercise, and as a prom- enade during the winter months. In the mean time, the other part of the ship's company will be preparing the sledges, and making the necessary preparations for the autumn sledge-traveling, all of which will have been carefully organized beforehand. We now come to the most important feature of arctic work, name- ly, the sledge-traveling, which was first introduced by the late Admi- ral Sir Edward Parry, but which is most indissolubly associated with the name of McClintock, whose perseverance and energy have brought this system of traveling to such a state of perfection that we rely chiefly on its aid to procure for the forthcoining expedition that suc- cess which all England heartily and eagerly desires, and hopefully anticipates. Before describing the arrangements for the autumn trav- eling, let us take a brief retrospect of the sledging undertaken by Parry fifty-five years ago. Parrv at Melville Island, in 1820, did not commence traveling operations until June. He used a cart, in all probability formed of the field-piece carriage and limber supplied to the ship. He was away only fourteen days, having traversed a distance of about 180 mile?, averaging 12' per diem. His party consisted of twelve, including him- self, out of which five were ofiicers. On account of the excessive glare caused by the sun on the snow and ice, the party traveled during the 472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. night, wlien the sun was low. By this arrangement they had the ad- vantage also of sleei^ing during the comparative warmth of the day. The daily allowance of jDrovisions per man was 1 lb. of biscuit, |- lb. of preserved meat, 1 oz. of sugar, and 1 pint of spirits. The total weight carried on the cart was 800 lbs., consisting of two blanket-tents, wood lor fuel, three weeks' provisions, cooking-apparatus, three guns, and ammunition. In addition to this, each man had to carry a blanket- bag, a haversack with one pair of shoes, one pair of stockings, and a flannel shirt, weighing from 18 to 24 lbs. Their tents were made of blankets, with two boarding-pikes fixed across at each end, and a ridge-rope along the top, the lower parts of the blankets being kept down by placing stones on them. In his attempt to reach the pole, in 1827, Parry started in the same month of June, with four officers and twenty-four men, with seventy- one days' provisions, in two flat-bottomed boats named the Enter- prise and Endeavor, so constructed that they could be used as sledges, and drawn on the ice. They were 20 feet long, and 7 feet broad, with a bamboo mast 19 feet long, a tanned duck-sail, steer- oar, fourteen paddles, a sprit and boat-hook. Each boat, with stores, etc., complete, weighed 3,753 lbs., making the weight for each man to drag 268 lbs. ! in addition to four liglit sledges, weighing 26 lbs. each. The boats were squarely built, without regard to shape or symmetry, their beam carried well forward and aft. In order to secui-e elasticity during the roiigh handling which they must needs encounter from frequent concussions with the ice, their frame was first covered with a water-proof coating, consisting of tarred canvas, then a thin fir plank- ing, which latter was covered with felt, and outside a thin oak plank- ing, the whole secured to the timbers of the boat by iron screws. On either side of the keel was a stout wooden runner, shod with metal, similar to that of a sledge, on which the boat Avould travel when being dragged over the ice. A spar, made of hide, was secured across the fore-end of the runners, to which the drag-ropes were attached. The daily allowance of provisions for each man was 10 ozs. of biscuit, 9 ozs. of pemmican, 1 oz. of cocoa-powder, and 1 gill of rum, besides 3 ozs. of tobacco i^er man per week. The fuel used was spirits of wine, of which 2 pints were used daily. This was one of the most laborious and heart-breaking journeys that can be conceived, as, owing to the lateness of the season, the trav- eling was chiefly over loose pack, which on account of unusual heavy rain was bi'oken and rotten ; added to this, the hummocky nature of the firmer ice necessitated a constant packing and unpacking of their sledges, the same ground having to be traversed as many as three and sometimes four times. Parry nobly persevered, fighting against obstacles that would have daunted and appalled many a brave man, xmtil it was known that the drift of the ice on which they were trav- eling was faster to the southward than the progress they were mak- ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 473 ing to the north ward, and they were in consequence reluctantly com- pelled to abandon their project and return to their ship, which they succeeded in reaching after an absence of sixty-one days. Althougli before turning back the party liad traveled over 202 miles of gi'ound, their greatest distance from the ship was only 172 miles, so much had the set drifted them to the southward. Notwithstanding these ob- stacles, and the enormous weight which each man had to drag, the latitude attained by Parry on this occasion has never been reached' by known man. The experience gained during this enterprise has shoAvn us a great deal. It proved that the allowance of provisions for the amount of work required, and for the hardships endured, was insuf- ficient; that the sledges were too cumbrous and heavy, and the weight that each man was required to drag was far in excess of his capabilities, and that the season was so far advanced as to cause not only the ice to be broken up, and thereby aiFected by the current, but the mild temperature had so rotted and thawed the surface of the floes on which they traveled, that the greater part of their journey was performed walking through sludge and water. As during his former sledge-journey in 1820, Parry preferred traveling by night, and resting during the glare and warmth of the mid-day sun. The next authentic accounts of sledge-traveling we hear of are those parties organized by Sir James Ross in 1849 for the relief of Sii John Franklin, in which Sir Leopold McClintock, then a lieutenant.^ received his first initiation in that important branch of arctic work, which through his means has reached such an admirable state of per- fection. But to what consequences did these pioneer expeditions lead ? Experience had to be gained, and the privations and sufferings en- dured by those engaged in these early expeditions are now compen- sated by the lessons they have taught us. They started with two sledges, each drawn by six men, carrying with them their tent and thirty days' provisions. Other parties with more provisions followed on their route. They were away forty days, having accomplished a search over 500 miles of unknown country, but we are told that out of the twelve men that started, seven only returned in comparative health, the remaining five having quite broken down under fatigue. The party suffered severely from hunger, frost-bites, blistered feet, and rheumatic pains, caused by their continually walking through water on the ice and deep soft snow. Two of them, being unable to walk, were brought back on the sledges. Sir Leopold himself ac- knowledges that, after his return to the ship, he did not lose the sen- sation of constant hunger for a fortnight. During the next expedition, tliat of Cajitain Austin, in 1851, from the experience which he had already gained in sledge-traveling. Sir Leopold McClintock, by adopting a system of fatigue-parties, was enabled to prolong his absence from the ship to eighty days, and to extend his journey to a distance of 900 miles. During this journey, 474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. partly traveling over the same ground as Sir Edward Parry, he dis- covered the encampment of his predecessor, and found the remains of his broken cart, and the records left by him thirty years before. Even the remains of Parry's last feast, "a sumptuous meal of ptar- migan," lay strewed about in the shape of bones, by no means de- cayed, but merely bleached from exposure. McClintock and his gal- lant party returned to their sliip after this long absence, reduced a little in flesh, but not in health or spirits. They had already bene- fited from tlie experience of former expeditions. During the expedition of 1852, the last dispatched by Government in search of our missing countrymen, we find Sir Leopold McClintock in command of the steam-tender Intrepid, acting under the orders of Captain Ivellett. On this occasion. Sir Leopold had, through the assiduous and constant exercise of his inventive talent, so improved on his former knowledge of sledge-traveling, that he was enabled to remain away from his ship for a period of 105 days, during which time he traveled over no less than 1,400 statute miles, and this, too, under no very favorable circumstances, as the ice over which he had to journey was old and unusually rugged, snow lay very deep, and Melville Island had to be crossed and recrossed, in addition to which, owing to the few men from whom he had to select his party, he was obliged to portion out to each man a much heavier load than had ever been attempted before. They were most fortunate in obtaining plenty of game. Musk-oxen, deer, and ptarmigan, were seen in abun- dance, and many shot, the fresh meat from which materially assisted in the preservation of the health of the party. The words of Sir Lcojiold McClintock are very true, and very sig- nificant, in epitomizing the results of arctic ice-travel. He says : "Truly may we arctic explorers exclaim, 'Knowledge is power!' It is now a comparatively easy matter to start with six or eight men, and a sledge laden with six or seven weeks' provisions, and to travel some 600 miles across desert wastes and frozen seas, from which no sustenance can be obtained. There is 7ioto no known position, how- ever remote, that a well-equipped crew could not efiect their escape from by their own unaided efibrts. We felt this, and by our ex- perience, gained in a cause more glorious than ever man embarked in, have secured to all future arctic explorers a plan by which they 'may rejoin their fellow-men." Before detailing the operations connected with the autumn sledge- traveling, it will be necessary to explain the construction of the sledge, and the amount of provisions and stores that will be required for an extended journey. We projsose, therefore, to give an account of an eight-man sledge, provisioned and stored for a period of eight weeks, copied from Sir Leopold McClintock's notes. The following particulars describe, with considerable exactness, the equipment which is now being prepared in Portsmouth Dock-yard for use in the forth- coming Arctic Expedition : ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 475 The sledges are made of American elm, and the runners are shod with steel. The cross-bars are lashed to the bearers with strips of hide, which are well soaked in hot water and put on while warm and wet, so that when cold they will shrink tightly into their places. The drag-ropes should be of two-inch whale-line, or better still of hemp or manila rope, which is lighter, six fathoms in length, and these could also be used for tent-ropes. They should be middled and the bight toggled to the span on the fore-end of the sledge. The span should be of the same size and description of rope, fitted to go with an eye over the end of the horn at the after-end of the sledge, rove through one or more grummets on the cross-bars, through a hide-strop round the runner, and taken well down below the foremost horns, so as to keep it as near as possible to the best angle of traction, namely, 15°. The bight of the span should be about three feet in front of the sledge, having a toggle and eye in the middle for the purpose of con- necting the drag-ropes. To keep the contents from falling down be- tween the cross-bars, two fore-and-aft lines are clove-hitched round each and stretched taut along — over these is laced a width of stout canvas, on which rests the sledge trough or load, and is called the sledge-bottom. The sledge-trough, although not absolutely necessary, is extremely useful, as it enables the sledge to be loaded more speedi- ly, and prevents small packages from tumbling out ; it is also most useful in the event of much wet. It is simply a canVas body in which the stores are packed, and weighs, without being oiled, eight pounds. The drag-belts are made of light loose girth, three inches wide, long enough to go over a man's shoulder, having a strong eyelet-hole worked in each end, into which is spliced a piece of one-inch rope, having a thimble on it. Round this thimble is spliced a small piece of rope, having at its other end a bung toggle, usually a circular piece of copper. This is attached to the drag-rope after the manner of a Blackwall hitch, the advantao-e being that the man can detach him- self at any instant. Turk's-heads worked on the drag-ropes point out where the men are to attach themselves. The sledge-lashings consist of about twenty fathoms of one and one-quarter inch untarred rope, and are used for lashing the lading on the sledge. Too much care cannot be taken in the stowage and lashing of the sledge. The greatest weight should be over the centre cross-bar, di- minishing toward the end, so that the sledge will rise easily and grad- ually, and descend in the same manner, when traveling over rough or hummocky ice. A well-packed, that is, a well-trimmed, sledge is dragged with less exertion, and less jerking to the men's shoulders, when going over rough ice, than one that has been carelessly packed. The lashings should be passed so tight that, should the sledge be up- set and roll over, its contents would remain intact. It will be found convenient to fit a light cross-bar across each end of the sledge, for the purpose of spreading a light netting, on which to stand the cook- 476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, ing-utensils, as they are usually the last things to go on the sledge and the first things to come off it. Dog-sledges are of a smaller size, and the diffei-ent fittings and gear are therefore proportionately small. The driver in a packed sledge usually walks behind, holding on to the back of the sledge with one hand while with the other he uses the whip, which latter has to be kept in constant use. A most important auxiliary in sledge-traveling, and one which must not be omitted, is the sledge-sail; by its aid, with a fair wind, the men are greatly relieved in their laborious work of dragging. The mast is extemporized out of two tent-poles — which should, if possible, be of bamboo — used as sheers, the heads being connected by an iron band, on which is stropped the block through which the halyards are rove ; the heels of the sheers are stepj^ed into a thimble on each side of the sailing-thwart, Avhich is placed across the sledge on top of every thing, immediately over the midship-upright, and is lashed down to the bearers. The object of having it so high is that a loftier sail may be spread. The tent-ropes are used as guys, and a hand lead-line as halyards. Each sledge should have what is called a " store-bag," made of light duck, and containing sail and sewing-needles, a palm, twine, thread, a ball of spun-yarn, two yards of green or blue crape, awls, waxed ends, lucifer matches, record-cases, tent-brush, clothes- brush, and spare wicks for cooking-lamps. With an eight-man sledge detached for an extended journey of seven weeks the total weight of the laden sledg;e would be 1,646 pounds, being 235 pounds for each of the seven men to drag. \i all the circumstances are favorable. Sir Leopold McCIintock is of opinion that this is not too much ; of course the men must be picked and well trained to sledge-work before setting out. Under no circumstances should this weight be exceeded, or even maintained for more than a very few days. When sledges are traveling in company, one gun each and much less ammunition will suffice. The sledges being pre- pared and every thing in readiness for a start, tlie men are assembled dressed in the following manner: 1 Flannel or wove woolen frock. spaee. 1 Thick Guernsey frock. 1 Loose serge or cloth frock 1 1 Pair of good duffle (or box cloth lined with flannel) trousers. 1 Light close duck jumper and trousers as " overalls." 1 Pair of worsted stockings 1 1 Pair of wove woolen drawers , 1 1 Pair of blanket feet-wrappers 2 1 Pair of wadmill boot-hose 1 1 Pair of moccasins 3 1 Pair of mitts 2 1 Welsh wig ] 1 Cap, veil, and face-cover. 1 Comforter. 1 Pair of colored spectacles. 1 Pair of canvas boots 2 ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS 477 Towel and soap, also a water-bottle and gutta-percha drinking-eup. Spare clothing in knapsack, altogether weighing twelve pounds. The clothing supi^lied by Government to the various search ex- peditions was made of the most superior material, and was found ex- cellent. It is hardly necessary to describe the different articles. Par- ticular care should be exercised in the selection of under-clothino-. which should be of the best and warmest substance. Outside cloth- ing should fit loosely. In place of the overall jumper and trousers, which are used merely as " snow-repellers " to keep out the light snow-drift, a suit made from the skin of the moose-deer wed smoked Avould be found advantageous ; the jumper should have a hood to pull up over one's cap in bad weather, and should have a large pocket in front to put one's mitts in when not in use. The moccasins should be made large, so as on no account to cramp the foot. They are only intended to be worn during extreme cold. The daily allowance of provisions for those engaged in sledge-trav- eling is as follows : For each man, 1 lb. pemmican,^ lb. boiled pork, 14 ozs. biscuit, 2 ozs. preserved potatoes, 1^ oz. prepared chocolate, \ oz. tea and sugar, 1 oz. concentrated rum ; 4 ozs. fuel being used daily for each individual ; also a weekly allowance per man of If oz. salt, \ oz. pepper, 1 oz. curry or onion powder, and 3 ozs. tobacco, making a weekly allowance per man of 19 lbs. 3 ozs., Avhich is a very liberal one, and well adapted to long journeys in the most severe weather. In fact, at first starting, the men are not able to consume the full amount allowed of pemmican, but after a few days' hard work and exjDosure this little difiiculty is soon overcome. Fuel may consist of diiferent mate- rials. There is the camphorated spirits of wine, whose great charm consists in its being camphorated, and therefore cannot well be tam- pered with by the men. Methyllated spirits of wine has also been much used, and is cheaper than pure alcohol. Sir Leopold McClin- tock, in the Fox, used crude cocoa-nut oil, which he found very use- ful and very cheap. Its advantages over tallow are: 1. That it cooks much more rapidly ; 2. It makes very little smoke (an important item) ; and, 3. There is nothing disagreeable in smell or taste about it. Great care must be taken in the stowage of provisions, and, in fact, in all that relates to the equipment of a sledge, as it is most im- portant that the greatest economy in the matter of weights should be arrived at. The ofiicer conducting the sledge-party is, of course, re- sponsible that the necessary instruments are taken that will be re- quired for fixing astronomically different positions, and for delineating the coast-line. Every thing being in readiness for a start, the sledges, which we Avill say are six in number, with their distinguishing flags (to each of which there is usually a history attached) fluttering brave- ly in the breeze, are drawn up outside the ship, the men, cheerful and joyous, with their drag-ropes in hand, the ofiicers with their rifles slung across their shoulders, receiving their parting instructions, all 478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. hopefully confident of success, and all eager to accomplish all that man can do. It is an animated scene, all are merry and glad, with the exception, perhaps, of those few that must of necessity remain be- hind, to look after the ship. The crews of each sledge consist of an officer and seven men, and by a system which has already been adopt- ed with great success on previous occasions, one sledge could be ad- vanced to at least fifty days' journey from the ship, or more correctly twenty-five days out, and depots placed for the return-journey. This is effected in the following manner : After traveling in company for a week, No. 6 sledge will complete the remainder to their full amount of fifty days' provisions and return, the remaining five proceeding on their way. When six more days have elapsed, No. 5 sledge will re- turn to the ship, having filled up the remaining four to what they originally started with, and so on until No. 1 sledge is left to proceed by itself. In the mean time the sledges that have returned will imme- diately repx'ovision, and will lay out depots for the use of, and meet the returning sledges, ready to render any assistance they may re- quire. As an outline of the daily routine obseiwed by sledge-parties dur- ing their arduous employment may be of interest, we will briefly re- fier to it. As it may be advisable some time to travel during the night, for the same reason that Parry did, we will not name any hour, but merely the time of rising and going to bed. We will begin witli the commencement of the day's work. The first thing to be done is to awaken the cook of the day, who at once sets to work to prepai-e breakfast. The time occupied in preparing this meal is usually about an hour from the time he is called. When nearly ready, he brushes off the condensation that has taken place during the night, from off the coverlet, and from the inside of the tent, and then arouses the whole party. If the weather is very severe they sit up for breakfast in their bags, but if not, they roll them up, as also the tent-robes, put on their moccasins, etc., ready for the march, and then, sitting on their bags and knapsacks, discuss their morning meah The sleeping- bag is, as its name designates, a large bag made of the Hudson's Bay three-point blanket or of duffle. It is about seven feet long, and is best fitted with the opening in the side instead of at the top, as in this way it is more convenient to get into and out of, and the more readily enables a man to sit up and keep it over his head while eating his meals or while writing. When breakfast is finished, the biscuit and pork to be used for lunch should be measured out, and placed in the luncheon haversack; dilute the day's allowance of rum, and any water that may be remain- ing put into the men's water-bottles. Issue to the cook the day's allowance of stearine, and put the requisite amount of spirits of wine into the lamp. The cook trims both lamps, and is then relieved by the cook whose turn it is for the next twenty-four hours. In large parties ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 479 it would be as well to have a cook's mate in addition, who would suc- ceed the cook when his term of office had expired, a fresh hand beinc; installed in the capacity of cook's mate. The whole of the tent-fur- niture must be well brushed, so as to get rid of any snow-drift, or condensation, and the tent itself should be well shaken before being stowed on the sledge, which is then packed, and the march begun. The officer takes his observations for time or variation, also the bear- ings of land, tempei-ature, etc., at a regular time before starting. After marching for about six hours, halt for twenty minutes for lunch. The spirit-lamp is used to dissolve snow, and the grog, pork, and biscuit, are issued. If the wind is fresh, turn the sledge at rio-ht angles to it, and with sledge-sail to form a lee, sit-down. If very se- vere weather, pitch the tent, and sit inside without any tent-gear, or stop only five minutes for grog and biscuit. When halted for the night, and the tent is pitched, one man, after brushing himself well, goes inside, and receives and places all the gear, robes, knapsacks, sleeping-bags, etc. The cook prepares supper without delay. When all the work is completed the men take off and hang up their mocca- sins or boots and blanket-wrappers, either upon the tent-ropes outside, or on the tent-line inside, according to the weather, brush themselves well, divest themselves of tlieir overalls, and take up their respective places in the tent, the officer always at the head of the tent, the cook and cook's mate nearest the entrance, so that their rising does not dis- turb the rest. Supper consists of warm pemmican, the quantity in each pannikin always being carefully equalized before being served out, then a drink of tea or water, when pipes are lighted and the par- ty compose themselves for their night's rest ; songs and yarns, if not too cold and exhausted, bringing the day's proceedings to a close. Tlie officer, as a rule, takes his observations while supper is being prepared, and before lying down winds up his chronometer and writes his journal. A very good rule is to give directions, for precaution's sake, that the tent-robe is never to be spread until the question has been asked, " Has the chronometer been wound up ? " Before retir- ing, the cook sees every thing in readiness for the morrow's break- fast ; the captain of the sledge serves out the breakfast allowance to him, and sees every thing connected with the sledge secure and safe. The tent is made of light, close, unbleached duck, twelve square feet weighing a pound, lined with brown holland across the head, or end opposite the door, up to a height of three feet, and along the sides to a height of two feet. It is spread by means of teut-poles, two (crossed) at each end, and set up with tent-ropes or guys. A window, six inches square, is fitted at the upper end with a flap to trice up or haul down. There should also be a pocket at this end for the use of the officer, in which instruments, etc., might be placed. A cook's pocket at the opposite or door end of the tent is also conven- ient. In very severe weather the cooking has sometimes to be per- 48o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. formed inside the doorway ; it is, however, very objectionable, and should not be practised more than is absohitely necessary, as the steam condensing covers every thing near it with fine particles of frozen vapor, and the soot from the stearine-lamp blackens ever}' thing. The furniture for a tent consists first of a water-proof floor- cloth, made of a light description of mackintosh ; this should be used with care, and only over snow. The coverlet should be made of the Hudson's Bay three-point blanket or thick dufiie, its upper side cov- ered with glazed brown holland. Three stops should be sewn on one end of this coverlet, for tying it when rolled i;p, and when in use for tying it to the lower robe at the upper end or head of the tent. The knapsack forms the pillow. The canvas floor-cloth, though not absolutely indispensable, is, however, very useful. It is made of very light unbleached duck, and is also used as the sledge-sail, which is only set when the wind is abaft the beam. It should be laid down over the water-proof floor- cloth, when the men are taking ofi" their boots and taking their sup- l^ers. In severe weather, when the breath condenses in the tent and falls in minute frozen particles, the canvas floor-cloth is useful to spread " over all " after the men have laid down, as it catches all this fine snow, which would otherwise penetrate into the coverlet, where it would thaw by the heat from the men's bodies, and be frozen into them again when exposed to the air. " So rapidly," says Sir Leopold McClintock, " does frost accumulate, that in eighteen days of traveling during the month of October I have known the coverlet and the low- er robe to become more than double their original weisfht." The lower robe or blanket should be of the same material as the coverlet, namely, three-point Hudson's Bay blanket or thick dufiie. It should have a covering of brown holland on its underneath side, hav- ing stops on its upper side to tie to similar stops on the coverlet when spread for the night : probable weight of the lower robe about seven- teen pounds. This robe has sometimes been of fur, but it has its dis- advantages, as in the first place it is more absorbent ; a skin will when wet emit a disagreeable smell ; the hairs come out, and they shrink very much ; they are also more stifi" and unmanageable when frozen. The above-mentioned woolen materials are on the whole pref- erable, as they are quite as warm as fur, when covered with the brown holland, in addition to which evapoi*ation from the body will generally make its way through woolens, and escape into the air, but in the fur robe is arrested and condenses in it. The coverlet, lower robe, and sleeping-bag, answer well when the temperature is no lower than — 30°, but should it fall lower, an additional coverlet should be sup- plied, as well as a small blanket bag to put into the sleeping-bag to keep the feet warm. Should the temperature continue to fall, snow huts should be used, they being very much better and warmer than tents. A party of four men can, after a little practice, hut themselves ARCTIC ICE-TRAVELS. 481 in about half an hour ; one man cuts the blocks, another builds, and the other two carry the blocks and fill up chinks, etc. Building a hut with a large party, however, is a different matter, the difficulty in constructing the dome greatly increasing as its diam- eter is enlarged. It then becomes a question whether it would not be more advisable to build two huts, and to divide the tent-robes etc. between them, or to build four walls inclosing a space of about six and a half feet wide, and long enough to accommodate the whole party (fourteen inches being the allotted space of each man). The tent is then used as a roof, by being laid over the walls, and snow thrown on it to prevent the wind blowing it off. The walls should incline in- ward slightly, and be about five feet high, and the floor excavated to a foot or so to give additional height inside. The advantages a snow hut has over a tent-roofed house is, that should the temperature be- come high, the moisture overhead runs down the walls in the former, whereas in the latter it dri{)S, and makes the tent so wet that when it freezes again it is almost impossible to spread it. The snow hut which Englishmen should construct (that is, without the aid of the Esquimaux) is made of slabs of caked snow about two feet long, one wide, and six inches thick. The site (a circle) is first marked out on the ?now, and beginning with a very narrow slab, inclining slightly inward, the building is commenced and continued spirally, until at a height of about five feet, when a single rounded slab is cut, closing up the centre of the dome. The entrance is as low as possible, and is cut the last thing by the man inside. When the temperature is low it will be found preferable to encamp on snow rather than on land, and still warmer ujaon ice when there is water underneath, which will materially add to the warmth and comfort of the encampment. While dragging the sledges it is very necessary to keep continu- ally changing the leading men on the drag-ropes, as on them rests the severe task of exerting their eyes in order to pick their road, and they are therefore more subject to snow-blindness than the others. The officer, when not engaged in dragging the sledge, should be very particular in selecting a good and easy line of country ; this is of the utmost importance. We will now suppose that the season for sledge-traveling has passed, the sun no longer sinks below the horizon, the object for which the sledge-parties have been striving has been gained, and they have all returned to their ship, which they left three months before frozen up in the solitude of their winter quarters. Some, which have re- turned early, after taking out depots for the extended parties, have since been actively engaged on regularly-organized shooting-excur- sions. But all are back by July. They return to a busy scene. Ac- tive preparations are being made to get the ship ready for sea. The housing is taken down and stowed away below, and it is to be hoped will not again be seen, as rumor whispers they are homeward bound ; TOL. Til. — 31 482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. spars are swayed up and sails bent, and the ship is again " all a taunto," and all are anxious once more to feel the long roll of the ocean. The open water is seen to the southward from the crow's-nest, but it is some distance off, and the ship is held fast in the wintry grasp of the ice. The month of June has come and gone, July is nearly at an end ; if they are not shortly released, they will perhaps be doomed to spend another winter in that inhospitable and inclement region. During the preceding months those on board have not been idle, as a long line of ashes, sand, and rubbish of all descriptions, thinly sprinkled from the ship's bows in a long straight line to the southward, will testify. This has been done with the object of penetrating and rotting the ice, the dark color attracting the heat of the sun, so as to make a passage for the ship to pass through. This dcA'ice has failed, and others must be resorted to to effect their liberation. Blasting has been determined upon. Chai*ges of three pounds, five pounds, and ten pounds of ordinary gunpowder will be prepared for use, in tin canistei'S, with Bickford's fuse. If, howevei-, the new ex- plosive " cotton gunpowder" should be the substance selected to carry oiit this object, a small charge of about two pounds is prepared, primed with its detonator, to which is attached a short length of Bickford's fuse. Operations are commenced from the open water and carried on toward the ship. A hole is made in the ice by means of a drill some distance from its edge, and the charge is lowered down through this until it reaches the water and is placed immediately under the ice. The fuse is ignited, a sharp explosion takes place, and the ice is shat- tered and rent in all directions. Men in boats, and others armed with boat-hooks and long poles, at once assail the fragments, removing them from the channel into the open water. These operations are repeated until a clear channel has been made, through which the ship is able to steam and thus effect her escape. The advantages which the " cotton gunpowder " has over ordinary black gunpowder are numerous. It is a much more powerful explosive, its proportionate strength to common powder being as eight to one, but its great merit is said to consist in its perfect safety. If put into the fi.re it will burn quietly, without any explosion, nor will it explode on concussion. The practice of ice-blasting is not a new invention, and had been much resorted to by the various search expeditions. Their plan was simply to lower a glass bottle, or preserved meat tin, containing from two to four pounds of ordinary gunpowder below the ice, and explode it. The results were most satisfactory. Lieutenant Mecham tells us that during Captain Austin's expedition, in 1851, a blasting-party was employed for twelve days in detaching a floe from the eastern shore of Griffith Island. With 216 pounds of powder they cleared away a space 20,000 yards in length, and averaging 400 yards in breadth ; this ice varied from three to five feet in thickness. The estimated weight of the ice removed was about 216,168 tons. The heaviest DISTRIBUTION OF ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE. 483 charge used on this occasion was sixteen pounds, lowered ten feet be- low iive-feet ice ; its effect was the breaking up of a space of 400 yards squai-e, besides splitting the ice in several directions. The last charge would be equivalent to two pounds of " cotton gunpowder," but the results with the latter explosive would, in all probability, be far more effective. The work of an exploring expedition in the arctic regions for the period of twelve months has now been detailed. No unforeseen acci- dent, no detention in the ice, in fact no casualty of any description has been taken into consideration, but every thing has progressed under the most exceptionally favorable circumstances. That the same will be the case with the Arctic Expedition of 1875 is too much to expect, but that it will be successful in exploring a large area of unknown land may be confidently hoped and anticipated. — Geographical Magazine. -♦♦♦- DISTKIBUTION OF ATMOSPHEEIC MOISTUEE. ALL over the earth, the more largely where its beams reach the surface with the least diminution of heat, the sun is continually engaged in evaporating moisture from all exposed surfaces of water ; this remains suspended in the atmosphere, and is carried about by the winds in the form of impalpable vapor or of clouds, till the point of saturation is reached, and the moisture falls again to the earth's sur- face in the form of rain, or snow, or hail. Air becomes lighter, and consequently expands and ascends, when it grows hotter, and becomes heavier and falls with cold. The hotter it is the more moisture it is able to hold in solution. Between the equator and the poles there is a difference of 80° of average annual temperature. Li the torrid zone the light, warm, vapor-laden air is ascending continually to the upper regions of the atmosphere, and there flowing outward north and south toward the poles, and the cold, heavy air from the polar regions comes rushing along the surface to fill its place. As the seasons change, the line of the greatest heat in the world gradually moves its position. At the equinoxes of spring and autumn it runs along the actual equator, or near it. In winter it lies south of the earth's equator, about mid- way between the equator and tropic of Capricorn. Not more than half as much of the tropic of Capricorn as of the tropic of Cancer runs over land, and this makes a material difference, because the more sea the more the intense heat is deadened and absorbed. In summer the great continental area traversed by the tropic of Cancer, a long line of which is removed from the ameliorating influence of the sea, be- comes excessively heated, and from the great African Sahara, through Nubia and Arabia to the north of India, runs a tract of intense heat, in which the July average in the shade rises to 90°. 4-84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Zone of Periodic Winds and Rains. — It is to this chantifinoc line of the greatest heat that the main currents of wind are directed. Within a zone extending for about 30° on each side of the equator the winds blow with great regularity. When they leave the polar regions the tendency of the surface-currents is due north and south, but in their course they become deflected longitudinally in con- sequence of the earth's motion, and reach the line of greatest heat as northeast and southeast currents. The tropic of Capricorn has its air rarefied by heat in our winter, and this produces within the torrid zone what is called the northeast trade-wind or monsoon. The tropic of Cancer has its air still more rarefied by heat in our sum- mer, and this produces the south monsoon. Through these causes this central belt of the world has its winds and rains perfectly steady and regular, and wdthin it there falls the greatest quantity of rain which there is in any part of the world. The rainy season begins some time before the sun reaches the zenith of a place, and continues for some time afterward. In a belt near the equator there are two rainy seasons, the main one, which lasts three or four months, begin- ning when the sun, in its progress to a vertical position, has crossed the equator, and a shorter one, which lasts four or six weeks, when the sun is coming again from the tropic to the equator. Nearer the two tropics the countries have only one rainy season, which begins when the sun approaches the tropic, and one dry season, the year being divided between the two. The rain pours down in torrents in a way of which we can form no notion from our experience in temperate countries. Our London rainfall is 2 inches a month, but in the tropics an inch a day is not an uncommon average for the whole rainy season. On the banks of the Rio Negro Humboldt collected as an ordinary rain If inch in five hours. In Cayenne Admiral Roussin collected, between the 1st and 24th of February, 12^ feet, and in one night, be- tween 8 p. M. and 9 a. m., measured \^\ inches. In the Himalayas of Khasia as much as 600 inches are said to fall in a single year. The rain, however, does not commonly pour down without intermission night and day, and day after day, as is sometimes the case in the Eng- lish lake country. The ordinary succession of atmospheric phenomena is as follows: The sun rises in a cloudless sky. Toward noon some faint clouds appear on the horizon, which increase rapidly in density and extent, and are soon followed by thunder and violent gusts of wind, accompanied by heavy rains. Toward evening the rain abates, the clouds disappear, the sun sets in a serene sky, and during the iiight no rain falls. The annual quantity of rain which falls upon any particular place depends greatly upon local circumstances, just as it does in the temperate zones, and is gi'eatest where hill-ridges are placed so as to catch the clouds, and smallest in tracts that lie to landward of such ridges. To take our illustrations from India, where the south monsoon blows laden with the copious vapors raised by the equatorial DISTRIBUTION OF ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE. 485 sun from the broad expanse of the Indian Ocean, we find that in the eastern Himalayas the rainfall varies from 200 to 600 inches a year, and that at Mahabaleshwar, where the clouds drift against tlie high ridge that lines the west side of the peninsula, it is 248 inches, but that at Courtallum it is only 40 inches, at Bangalore 35 inches, at Cape Comorin 30 inches, and at Bellary in Mysore 22 inches, which is as low as in any part of England, Zone of Periodic Winds without Rain.— Outside the zone of periodic winds and rains comes a double belt, one girdling the world in the northern, and the other in the southern hemisphere, the breadth and area of which are greatly modified by local circumstances, within which no rain ever falls. These belts are estimated to include alto- gether an area of 5,000,000 square miles, but it is impossible to make any calculation that is at all precise, because round the tracts that are entirely rainless are regions in which rain falls but rarely, which again pass gradually into the two rainy zones, through countries like South- ern Palestine and the Gangetic plain, which, though usually rainy, are liable at intervals to years of drought. These belts of rainless land near the tropics contain some of the most hopelessly dreary country which the world can show. Beginning with the west of the old con- tinent, we have along the tropic of Cancer in Africa the Sahara or great desert, on the southern border of which the rains cease at 16° north latitude, and begin again on the north at 28°. Passing farther east, the southern rains cease in the countries on the banks of the Nile between 18° and 19°, and the northern begin between 27° and 28°. Passing into Asia, there is a great rainless tract in Arabia of which we do not know the exact bounds, and it reaches through Beloochistan over into the delta of the Indus, where it does not cover more than 4° of latitude. From this point the rainless zone turns to the northeast and extends to 30° north latitude. Crossing the great Himalayan chain it includes the high table-land of Thibet, but does not appear to reach into the Chinese Empire. In South Africa there is a sandy, des- ert, rainless tract on the north of the Orange River, between 24° and 28° south latitude, and a great part of the interior of Australia seems to be nearly or quite rainless. In North America the rainless belt includes the Californian peninsula, and extends round the northern end of the Sierra Madre chain past Chihuahua and Monterey to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico between latitudes 24° and 26°. In South America it includes between latitudes 23° and 27° the northern prov- ince of Chili, and, through an extensive low tract in the interior of the continent belonging to the territory of the Argentine Confedera- tion, rain is very unfrequent and small in quantity. Zone of Variable Winds and Rains. — From about latitude 80° on each side of the equator to the poles extends a region of ever- changing and variable winds, and of rain that is irregularly distrib- uted throughout the whole year. Sometimes in these middle lati- 486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tudes, in Britain, for instance, we fall within the sway of the south- rushing polar current deflected to the east by the earth's rotation, and sometimes within that of the north-rushing current from the equator, deflected to the west by the rotation which it shared with the earth at the zone from which it started. In Britain this southwest wind comes to us laden with vapor from the great mass of the Atlantic, and makes Ireland and our western shores unusually damp and rainy. The relative temperatures of sea and land in the temperate zones are con- tinually changing with the seasons. In summer and autumn the At- lantic is colder than the European Continent, and this has a tendency to produce a west current at the surface. In winter and spring the Atlantic is warmer than the continent, and this has a tendency to produce an east wind. Sometimes one of these varying tendencies gains the predominance and sometimes another, and the result is con- stant and often rapid change and variety. The heat and moisture which the wind brings with it depend entirely upon where it comes from, and what it has passed in its way. A west wind blows to us from the Atlantic, and usually brings rain ; an east wind brings up the fog of the German Ocean ; and in winter and spring the prevalent northeaster brings the cold and often the snow of Russia and Nor- way. At the sea-side, unless it be overpowered by a general current, there is a breeze from ofi" the sea during the day, and a breeze from off the land during the night. The quantity of rain that falls in this zone at different points is extremely variable, and depends upon the position of a place with regard to mountain-masses and the seas from which the vapors come. In England the rainfall is greatest on the west side of the island, and smallest on the east. The difference with- in a short distance is sometimes very striking. There are 140 inches a year at Borrowdale, in the lake district, and not more than 20 inches at Shields and Sunderland, which are directly opposite on the east coast. But the habitual humidity of the atmosphere often varies but little between places the rainfall of which is very different. The number of days upon which more or less rain falls, varies in England from 100 to 300, but in the Mediterranean region the number of days is fewer, the quantity is smaller, and there is an almost regular period of entirely dry weather in summer. Taking the north temperate zone as a whole, there is, as a rule, least rain in places away from hills in the interior of continents, and most in insular and mountainous situa- tions.— Gardenefs Chronicle. I CORRESP OXDEXCE. -187 CORRESPONDENCE. SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS. To th^ Editor of the Popular Science Monthly : I HAVE been an attentive reader of The Popular Science Monthly for over two years, and in that time not one article, editorial, or note of correspondence, has escaped my notice. Also, I have been deeply interested from the first in all the advanced positions of the Monthly, and have noted its strictures on the narrow in- tolerance and ignorance of the clergy, and the many hints that they should enlarge the field of their observation and knowl- edge ; and I am convinced that many of these hints are well-timed. But, then, ought not men of science also to be more liberal and better acquauited with biblical knowledge ? The theologian observes in the writings of men of science the same narrowness and ignorance of the Bible that the scientist sees in the writings of theolo- gians concerning his particular line of study and investigation. In No. XXXVII. of The Popular Sci- ence Monthly, the editor says, in his no- tice of Dean Stanley's sermon on the death of Sir Charles Lyell : " Dean Stanley is far from being alone in his views ; they are shared by many other eminent clergymen who recognize that the Mosaic account of creation is without authority." But, does Dean Stanley indeed " recognize that the Mosaic account of creation is without au- thority ? " Be that as it may, ought not any man to lose the respect of his fellow- meu who will consent to remain a clergy- man, and yet reject the authority of the Bible ? Certainly no particular account of crea- tion was intended by the author of the Book of Genesis — nothing more than a brief out- line, and he gives no intimation as to the time when this world began to be. Nor is there any reason why the six days of crea- tion should not be regarded as so many general periods, without any limitation as to duration. But, if you will carefully no- tice the statements of Moses, ycu will find some things hard for the scientist to dis- pose of, if the account of creation is with- out authority. Moses says : " In the be- ginning the earth was without form and void." Does not the scientist say substan- tially the same thing? Then take the diflferent stages in the progress of the world, as stated by Moses, and especially as to the appearance of life ; do they not agree perfectly with the reve- lations of science ? Moses says the first life was vegetable — grass, herb, tree. Next came a low form of aquatic animal life — " the moving creature that hath life " — de- veloping into fishes and fowls of the air. Then land-animals, and, lastly, man ap- peared on the earth. Now, what says mod- ern science of this arrangement ? Does it not fully sustain this Mosaic account of creation ? Even the modern doctrine of evolution — Darwinism, if you please — is as nearly taught in the first chapter of Gene- sis as in the revelations of modern science ; and spontaneous generation seems to ap- pear on the very face of the statements of Moses as therein recorded. Read verses 20 and 24 : " And God said. Let the waters bring forth abundantly,''^ etc., " And God said. Let the earth bring forth,''^ etc. And as for man, if God saw fit to straighten up a monkey and endow him with human reason, whether that took the Almighty one hour or a thousand years, who need object ? It is certain that it can be proved neither by the Bible nor modern science, either that God did or did not make man in that way. But here comes the question as to the authority of the Mosaic account of crea- tion : How was the author of that account able to state in so brief a space the main points in the earth's development, just as they are now known by the revelations of science, when he wrote at least three thou- sand years before the sciences which have now brought these things to light were born ? Was Moses a profound scientist ? 488 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. or did he write under the influence of divine inspiration ? Rev. J. C, Mahin. Peru, Indiana, June 21, 1875. THE MECHANICAL POWEK OF LIGHTNING. To the Editor of Hie Popular Science Monthly : In the afternoon of June 26, IS'/i, a thunder-storm passed over the town of Cummington, Hampshire County, Massa- chusetts, duruig which an exhibition of the mechanical power of lightning was dis- played, which I believe is extremely rare, at least in this latitude. A sugar-maple tree {Acer saccharinum), thirteen feet in circumference four feet from the ground, was struck, and split in several places, apparently throughout its diameter, from the ground to a height varying from twelve to twenty feet. On reaching the .earth, the main portion of the shaft passed to a piece of wet ground several rods distant, in its way ploughing a fur- row from one to over three feet in depth, tearing seven trees, the largest six inches in diameter, from the ground, and throwing them several feet from their former places, A rock containing thirty-six cubic feet was torn from its bed, and rests on the sur- face, three feet from its original position. In its course it passed under another maple, two feet in diameter. The tree was not thrown down, but the earth was thrown up from beneath its roots, in places, to tlie depth of three feet. This tree stood about sixty feet from the one struck. It then passed thirty or forty feet farther, through earth so wet in some places that the trench made by it filled with water. After making I a cut eiglit feet wide at the surface, and ' three feet deep through a knoll, it divided, and, alter passing a short distance farther, struck at three points a half-inch lead water-pipe, running at right angles with its centre, filled with water at the time, and covered with about two feet of wet earth, which was thrown out, and the pipe destroyed for a distance of 200 feet. No trace of the pipe could be found in many places, excepting scattered gray oxide of lead. In its way from the tree to the pipe, large masses of mica-slate rock were shat- tered, and one observer saw large stones which were thrown above the top cf the surrounding trees. Nearly the whole distance traversed by the lightning was woodland, and the soil was firmly bound together by interlacing roots ; many of these, large enough to resist the power of the strongest yoke of oxen, were snapped like pipe-stems, the fracture being almost as smooth as if cut with a saw. Lighter portions of the electricity radiated in various directions from the tree, turning up the earth like a plough, for a distance of from 40 to 100 feet. The tree was struck while the rain-cloud was at least two or three miles distant. Many people were out, making preparation for the coming shower at the time, and the bolt was seen by several persons as it darted from the coming cloud. I visited the place nearly a year after the event, but all that I have described is yet visible. I can only account for this tremendous force by supposing that the water in the soil, con- verted instantly to steam, produced these results. Dewey A. Cobb. Pkovidbnce, R. I., Juiw, 18T5. EDITOR'S TABLE. RELATIVITY OF TRUTH. AMOXG the higher influences of science to be realized in tlie fu- ture, will be its inculcation of more cor- rect views concerning the relation of the human mind to truth. The etfect of partisanship in politics and theology — the two great schools in which people are chiefly educ/ Clifls on the Leit, PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 537 seen in the Brown Cliffs and the upper portion of the Book Cliffs. In the last-mentioned escarpment the harder beds are underlaid hy soft, bluish shales, which appear below in the beautifully-carved but- tresses. In the Orange Cliffs there are a thousand feet of homogeneous light-red sandstone, and this is undei-laid by beds of darker red, choco- late, and lilac-colored rocks, very distinctly stratified. The dark-red rocks are very hard, the chocolate and lilac are very soft, so below we have terraced and buttressed walls and huge blocks scattered about, which have fallen from the upper part of the escarpment. The homo- geneous sandstone above is slowly undermined — so slowly that, as the unsupported rocks yield to the force of gravity, fissures are formed parallel to the face of the cliff. Transverse vertical fissures are also formed, and thus the wall has a columnar appearance, like an escarp- ment of basalt, but on a giant scale ; and it is these columns that tumble over at last, and break athwart into the huge blocks which are strewed over the lower terraces. The drainage of an inclined terrace is usually from the brink of the cliff toward the foot of the terrace above, i. e., in the direction of the dip of the strata. As the channels of these intermittent streams ap- proach the upper escarpment, they turn and run along its foot until they meet with larger and more permanent streams, which run against the dip of the rock in a direction opposite the course of tlie smaller chai> nels, and these latter usually cut either quite through the folds, or at least through the harder series of rocks which form the cliffs. In some places the waters run down the face of the escarpment, and cut nai*row canons, or gorges, back for a greater or less distance into the cliffs, until what would, otherwise, be nearly a straight wall, is cut into a very irregular line, with salients and deep reentering angles. These canons which cut into the walls also have their lateral canons and gorges, and sometimes it occurs that a lateral canon from each of two adjacent main canons will coalesce at their heads, and gradually cut oft* the salient cliff from the ever-retreating line. In this way buttes are formed. The sides of these buttresses have the same structural characteristics as the cliffs from which they have been cut. So the buttes on the plains below the Orange Cliffs are terraced and buttressed below, and fluted and columned above. Often the upper parts of these buttes are but groups of giant columns. The three lines of cliffs, which I have thus described, have been traced to the east but a few miles back from the river. The way in which they terminate is not known ; but, fi'om a general knowledge obtained from a hasty trip made through that country, it is believed tlvat they are cut off by a system of monoclinal folds. To the west they are knowni to gradually run out in plateaus and mountains, which have another orographic origin. 538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Climb tlie cliff at the end of Labymith Canon, and look over the plain below, and you see vast numbers of biittes scattered about over scores of miles, and every butte so regular and beautiful that you can hardly cast aside the belief that they are works of Titanic art. It seems as if a thousand battles had been fought on the plains below, and on every field the giant heroes had built a monument, compared with which the pillar on Bunker Hill is but a mile-stone. But no human hand has placed a block in all those wonderful structures. The rain-drops of unreckoued ages have cut them all from the solid rock. Between the foot of Gray Canon and the head of Labyrinth Canon we descend through many hundred feet of soft shales, sandstones, marls, and gypsiferous rocks of a texture so friable that no caiion ap- pears along the course of the Green, but, along the southern border of the terrace above the Orange Cliffs, buttes of gypsum are seen. Some- times the faces of these buttes are as white as tlie heart of the alabas- ter from which they are carved, while in other places they are stained and mottled red and brown. As we come near to the Book Cliffs the buttes are seen to be com- posed of the same beds as those seen in the escarpment, and we see the same light-blue buttresses and terraced summits. On the terrace above the Book Cliffs, the buttes are less numerous, but the few seen have the angular, irregular appearance of the Brown Cliffs. The summit of the high plateau through which the Caiaon of Deso- lation is cut, is fretted into pine-clad hills, with nestling valleys and meadow-bordered lakes, for now we are in that upper region where the clouds yield their moisture to the soil. In these meadows herds of deer carry aloft with pride their branching antlers, and sweep the country with their sharp outlook, or test the air with their delicate nostrils for the faintest evidence of an approaching Indian hunter. Huge elk, with heads bowed by the weight of ragged horns, feed among the pines, or trot with headlong speed through the under- growth, frightened at the report of the red-man's rifle. Eagles sail down from distant mountains, and make their homes upon the trees ; grouse feed on the pine-nuts, and birds and beasts have a home from which they rarely wander to the desert lands below. Among the buttes on the lower terraces rattlesnakes crawl, lizards glide over the rocks, tarantulas stagger about, and red ants build their play-house mountains. Sometimes rabbits are seen, and wolves prowl in their quest ; but the desert has no bird of sweet song, and no beast of noble mien. The Toom'-pik "Wu-near' Tu-weap'. — "We now proceed to the dis- cussion of Stillwater Caiion, Cataract Canon, and Narrow Caijon, and the region of country adjacent thereto. At the head of Stillwater Caiion the river turns to a more easterly PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 539 course, and runs into a fold, which has a northeast and southAvest axis, but its central line is never reached. Before coming to it tlie river turns again to the west, and runs entirely out of the fold, at the nioutli of the Dirty Devil River. It will thus be seen that the dip of tlie formations under discussion is to the northwest. Going down to the middle of Cataract Canon, we constantly see rocks of lower geological position appearing at the water's edge; and, still continuing from that point to the foot of Narrow CaSon, the same beds are observed in reverse order; that is, we see at the water's edge rocks of later geological age. Where the upturned axis of this fold is situated is not known ; but, looking away to the southeast, mountains are seen — the Sierra La Sal and Sierra Abajo. Looking over the general surface of the country, it appears that the course of the river is from lower into hioher lands and then back again. Observing the present topographic features of the country, it seems strange that it did not find its way directly across from the foot of Labyrinth to the foot of Narrow Caiion, following the low lands. Why should it leave this low region, and run away out into the slope of a system of mountains, and then return? We must remember that the river is older than the mountains and the cliffs. We must not think of a great district of country, over which moun- tains were piled, or built, or heaved up, and that when rain fell it gathered into streams along the natural depressions of such a country and thus attempt to account for the course of the river ; but we must understand that the river cut its way through a region that was slow- ly rising above the level of the sea, and the rain w^ashed out the val- leys, and left rocks and cliffs standing, and the river never turned aside from its original course to seek an easier way, for the progress of up- lifting was not greater than that of corrasion. Again we see how slowly the dry land has emerged from the sea ; no great convulsion of Nature, but steady progi'ess. The Orange, Cliffs, which terminate Labyrinth Canon, extend to the west a few miles, and then change their course to the southwest, run. ning parallel with the axis of the fold we are now discussing, and they cross the Dirty Devil a few miles above its mouth. Thus they are seen, like the other lines of cliffs, to face the axis of a fold. Fig. 2 is a bird's-eye view of this country, showing the course of the river through Stillwater, Cataract, and Narrow Canons. It represents the cutting of the stream into the slope of a mountain-range, and out of it again, without crossing the range. On the left it shows two lines of cliffs. Here we have a district inclosed within Titanic walls. On the southeast are great mountains, and from the foot of their slope, on the north side, near Grand River, we find a line of cliffs crossing this stream, and extending to the Green, in a westerly direction ; then to the southwest, to the Dirty Devil River, and then broken and confused by buttes and caiion-walls, which extend toward the east, until it 540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. strikes the soiitlierii foot of the mountains. Within this walled area a profound gorge —Cataract Caiion — is seen, with Stillwater Caiion above, and Narrow Caiion below. The lower caiion of the Grand is also seen, and a number of lateral canons. Along the general slo2:)e of the district between the caiions are vast numbers of buttes. Their origin is the same as that of the buttes pre- viously described. Often they are but monuments, or standing col- umns of rocks. From tliem is derived the Indian name Toom'-pin Wu-near' Tu-weap' — " the Land of Standing Rocks." Adjacent to the larger caiions, especially near the junction of the Grand and Green, walled coves are found. Each main gulch branches into a number of smaller gulches above, and each of these smaller gulches heads in an amphitheatre. The escarpments of these amphi- theatres are broken and terraced, and in many places two such amphi- theatres are so close together that they are separated only by a narrow gorge of vertical homogeneous sandstone. This latter, though homogeneous in general structure, is banded with red and gray, so that the walls of the amphitheatres seem painted. In many places these walls are broken, and the coves are separated by lines of monuments. Where these coves or amphitheatres are farther apart, the spaces above are naked, presenting a smooth but billowy pavement of sandstone, in the depressions of which are many water-pockets, some of them deep, preserving a perennial supply ; but the greater number so shallow that the water is evaporated within a few days after the infrequent showers. In many places, especially in the sharp angles between gulches, the rocks are often fissured, and huge chasms obstruct the course of the adventurous climber. These caiions, and coves, and standing rocks, and buttes, and cliffs, and distant mountains, present an ensemble of strange, grand features. Weird and wonderful is the Too'm!-pin Wii-near' Tu-weap'. Marble Canojt. — The escarpment, which we call the " Vermilion Cliffs,?' at the foot of Glen Caiion, exposes the same beds as are seen in the face of the Orange Cliffs, at the foot of Labyrinth Caiion. It will be remembered that the beds exposed in the Terrace Caiions dip to the north. Between the Orange Cliffs and the Vermilion Cliffs, the strata are variously dipped by raonoclinal folds, having their axes in a northerly and southerly direction, and the red beds are at about the same altitude above the sea at the two points. The Vermilion Cliffs which face the south form a deep, reentering angle at the mouth of the Paria. On the east side of the Colorado, the line stretches to the southeast for many miles ; on the west side, it extends, in a south- westerly direction, about fifteen miles, then turns west, and, at last, to the northwest. The general northerly dip is again observed from the mouth of the Paria to the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito. The genei'al surface of the country between the two points is the PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLEY. 541 Fio. 3.— Bird's-ete View op JIaesle CaS^on from the Vermilion Cliffs, near the Mouth OF THE Paria. Ill the distance the Colorado River is seen to turn to th<' west, where its gor-je divides the Twin Pl.'iteaus. On ibe right arc seen t!ie Eastern Karbab Displacemente appearini: as fi-lds. and farther iu the distance as faults. 5f2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. summit of the Carboniferous formation. At the mouth of the Paria tliis is at the water's edge ; at the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito it is 3,800 feet above the river. The fall of the river, in the same dis- tance, is about 000 feet, so that the whole dip of the rock between the two points is about 3,200 feet. The distance, by river, is sixty- five miles ; in a direct line, twenty miles less. So we have a dip of the formation of 3,200 feet in forty-five miles, or about seventy feet to a mile. The slope of the country to the north is the same as the dip of the beds, for the country rises to the south as the beds rise to the south. Stand on the Vermilion Clifts, at the head of Marble Canon, and look off down the river over a stretch of country that steadily rises in the distance until it reaches an altitude far above even the elevated point of observation, and then see meandering through it to the south the gorge in which the river runs, everywhere breaking down with a sharp brink, and in the perspective the summits of the walls appearing to approach until they are merged in a black line, and you can hardly resist the thought that the river burrows into, and is lost under, the great inclined plateau. A POPULAR YERDICT. THE life of Kobert Knox, the celebrated Edinburgh anatomist, written by his friend and pupil Dr. Lansdale, is a work of much interest on account of the contributions to science made by that remarkable man ; but there were some tragic features in his career which, taken in connection with the stupid and brutal "public opin- ion " of which he was made the victim, have an instructiveness of a quite different kind, yet of such importance that it is desirable they should not be forgotten. We can give here but a very imperfect sketch of the case, and would refer curious readers to Dr, Lansdale's book, from which \A^e condense the following statement, making free use of the language of the author. Robert Knox, who is numbered among tlie descendants of the sturdy Scotch reformer, was born in 1T91. He was educated at the High-School of Edinburgh, which boasted of many great names, such as Brougham, Horner, and Cockburn, in the long roll of its illustrious alumni. But few of its students showed more brilliant parts than young Knox, who rose, apjDarently without effort, to the head of every class, and came out gold-medalist in 1810. He joined the medical classes of Edinburgh the same year, but pursiied a broad course of literary, historical, and scientific studies, together with those bearing more immediately upon the medical profession. He early took a prom- A POPULAR VERDICT. 543 inent, place as a student of large acquirements, and twice occupied the presidential chair of the Royal Physical Society before his graduation. On his first examination for the M. D., Knox was " plucked" in anat- omy. Thrown upon his metal by this untoward circumstance, he took hold of the subject so thoroughly that he became profoundly interested, was captivated by it, and chose it as the work of his life. He became an able physician and surgeon, and was sent to Brussels by the gov- ernment, to render aid to the wounded of Waterloo. He joined the army in 1817, and spent three years in Africa engaged in hospital- jjractice. But, with a capacity for wide observation, he occupied him- self with physical geography and meteorology, and more especially with natural history and ethnology. He collected and dissected speci- mens from every division of the animal kingdom ; but man being his chief study, he took every opportunity of dissecting the natives whose bodies fell in his way through the contingencies of war ; and thus added much to what was known of their peculiar anatomical charac- ters and physiological traits. He was a skillful horseman, an intrepid hunter, and an excellent shot. Long after his sojourn among the colonists of the Cape of Good Hope, he was remembered with admira- tion, and spoken of as a man of transcendent abilities and accomplish- ments. He returned to England in 1820, and, after receiving the thanks of the army medical department for his " industry, zeal, and talents," he got leave of absence for a year, to study in the medical schools of the Continent. In Paris he made the acquaintance of Cuvier, De Blainville, Larrey, and St.-Hilaire ; and to the views of the latter on the higher anatomy he became a convert. A man of great industry and originality, he produced memoirs on a wide range of subjects, which were published in the Transactions of various societies. In 1824, Dr. Knox submitted to the Edinburgh College of Sur- geons a plan for the formation of a museum of comparative anatomy, which was accepted ; the scientific arrangement and active manage- ment of the establishment devolving upon the proposer. He pur- chased Sir Charles Bell's collection for £3,000, and brought it from London to Edinbur<2:h. He was conservator of the. museum thus formed, and classified, catalogued, and extended the collection, so as to make it most valuable for anatomical, surgical, and pathological students. After seven years' work, he left it one of the most extensive and valuable collections in Europe. Edinburgh was at that time a prominent centre of medical study. The fame of its professors drew crowds of students to the university. But the teaching of anatomy was mainly an outside affair ; that is, it was conducted in private institutions, independent of the university. Several eminent anatomists had lectured to preparatory classes in these schools, and in 1825 the leading man in this field was Dr. John Barclay, a thorough anatomist and accomplished lecturer, who had a laro-e class of students. Dr. Barclay was the author of many valu- 544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. able anatomical works ; and in illustration of Lis character it may be mentioned that one day Henry Brougham, afterward Lord Bi'ougham, then on the staff of the Edinburgh Iteview, asked the doctor to give him half an hour's talk on anatomy, to enable him to write a critique on one of his (Barclay's) books. This is a fair sample of the capital on which the noble quack earned his scientific reputation. The anato- mist refused the request and resented the impertinence. Dr. Barclay was, however, getting old, and he formed a partnership with Knox in the management of the school. He soon after died, and Dr. Knox became master of the establishment. He at once rose to unexampled popularity. In the first place, he was a man of profound, comprehen- sive, and thorough erudition. Anatomy was not with him a mere ordi- nary occupation, but an object of high philosophical research, and pursued with enthusiasm. He was early to recognize the two divi- sions— anatomical science and anatomical art — the former embracins: the elucidation of the nature or structure and organization of animal bodies; the latter comprehending all tliose means and contrivances by which organisms can be dissected and demonstrated. He was one of the first of philosophic biologists. When he began to teach, human anatomy was treated very much as a superficial and technical pursuit, to be dispatched in a thx'ee months' course of dissections, by the mnjority of medical students. To some lecturers, a bone was a structure with certain jihysical features, and nothing more. Knox made it assume an historical position in the scale of organization ; its size and form were obvious enough, but he sought in the osteogenesis, type, and homologues, to fix its place in the general superstructure of the animal series. In short, he gave not the mere description but the philosophy of the osseous form. "There was no circumlocution in his teachings ; he aimed at a clear delineation of the w^ork before him. He was more jjractical than minute, more suggestive than ana- lytic in his systematic course ; rather than linger on points of detail, he indicated the path to be pursued by the student. His mode of teaching was not suited to the 'grinding' or 'cramming' system; hence those who sought anatomy for examining boards went elsewiiere. His prelections were well adapted to stimulate thought, as he meant them to do. Being a surgeon and pathologist, Knox could signifi- cantly apply anatomy to a practical calling; and as a physiologist of high aim, he looked to zoology as a sine qua non to the study of the higher philosophy of man himself." Dr. Knox was an orator of the first class, a tight-made man, above the middle stature, of the nervo-sanguineous temperament, broad- chested, with an upright carriage, a firm and soldierly walk, and a free and lithesome action. He had a strikingly fine head, but a plain visage, an agreeably-toned voice, and a persuasive tongue that made captive every listener who could appreciate colloquial excellence. He had a weakness for elegance of dress, and attended carefully to all A POPULAR VERDICT. 545 the arts by which an audience can be fascinated ; but lie never lost his suave demeanor and high respect for his class as a body of gentle- men. His movements were graceful, and his gestures, now slow and now rapid, had a rare felicity and pertinence to the matter in hand. His style, his illustrations, and insinuating speech, lent a marvelous fascination to his subject, and he stood before his class the imperso- nation of lofty intellect and perfect self-possession. He was an ideal lecturer. The area of his class-room was to Knox a charmed circle. There he exercised a weird influence that traversed from side to side the thronged benches and subtly pervaded the mind of every member of his audience. As a consequence of these traits, of the solidity and breadth of his knowledge, and of the consummate art of his delivery. Dr. Knox was to an extraordinary degree popular with his classes. At all times ac- cessible and ready to ofier kindly and encouraging counsel, he became the "guide, philosopher, and friend," of every worthy student. His pupils loved him and lauded him to the skies, and his anatomical classes were larger than any other ever assembled in Britain. Coun- try physicians rode twenty miles to attend his introductory lect- ures. " The benches of Knox's class-room were occui)ied by a schol- arly, earnest, and appreciative class ; the majority were strictly medi- cal students, but mingling with these were English barristers, Cam- bridge scholars and mathematicians, Scottish advocates and divines, scions of the nobility, artists, and men of letters. The zoologists and naturalists flocked to Knox for their comparative anatomy. Genera! students looked upon him as the great master of his art, and fully in- dorsed the encomiums bestowed upon him by Audubon and others of still greater eminence, both Continental and Transatlantic. Military and naval surgeons, in active service or on half-pay, often mingled with the crowd. Cultivated men of all kinds were attracted by his fame, and looked upon his instructions as the greatest intellectual treat af- forded them in the modern Athens ; while among his students it was remarked that the higher their intellectual grade, the more profound was their admiration of his genius and their personal attachment to him." As an indication of how Dr. Knox was regarded by bis class, his biographer states : " There was a struggle to obtain good places in Knox's lecture-room each day at eleven o'clock. The first year's students attending chemistry, and the second year's men attending surgery, between the hours of ten and eleven, were tlie chief claim- ants for Knox's front seats. The university, from whose class-rooms the majority of Knox's men came to hear his morning lecture, was about three minutes' walk from Old Surgeons' Hall — Knox's place. The competitors in their flight down two staircases, from Hope's Chemistry Rooms, their racing across the quadrangle of the univer- sity, their sweeping rush over every obstacle to gain Infirmary Street,. VOL. VII. — 35 546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. offered an exciting spectacle. The race was neck and neck, and woe betide whoever fell in the way! Old and young passers-by were thrown down in the mtlee caused by scores of agile-limbed fellows contending for the Knox goal. The rare and intense enthusiasm that Knox created in his class belongs to the j^ast ; no such high fervor is manifested by the student of these latter days. The reason is ob- vious : he who called it forth is gone, and his counterpart is nowhere to be found ; indeed, it is more than doubtful if another Knox will ever appear before a British audience. Old pupils of Knox, both j3ri- vately and publicly, still sj)eak with sparkling eyes of the grand excitement and rush for favored seats in his lecture-room." Robert Knox was, moreover, a hater of all humbug, and an unspar- ing critic of shams of every sort. He ridiculed the superficial method of teaching anatomy practised by rival lecturers, and in his sudden bursts of oratory, his sharp, pithy sentences, which came like sparks from a furnace, often created havoc among doubtful medical reputa- tions, and his telling sarcasms would often circulate through Scotland. It was therefore impossible that he should not make many enemies. His very eminence and popularity also could not fail to be a source of hostility on the j^art of the envious and jealous. Often his class seemed spellbound under the influence of a speech ; and as he wound up his lecture with increasing emphasis, and a sweeping torrent of rhetoric, and bowed his exit, the crowded audience would often rise en masse, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and cry : " Bravo ! bravo ! Knox forever, and one cheer more ! " All this was delightful ; but, as this world is constituted, men often have to pay dearly for such things ; and so did Dr. Knox. Anatomy is the foundation of surgery, and the basis of all rational medical science. To know the structure of the human orsranization is indispensable both to the progress and the intelligent j)ractice of the healing art. A knowledge of anatomy is therefore the first condition of the most important and beneficent of all occupations — that of alle- viating human suffering and saving human life. But the knowledge of the human body that is necessary to remedy its diseases cannot be obtained except by studying it through and through ; and this can only be done when the corporeal fabric becomes useless for other pur- poses. Dead bodies, worthless for any thing else, are invaluable for dissection, and if dissected they must of course be obtained for the purpose. Yet, with an absurd inconsistency, goA^ernments, while exacting of medical students a knowledge that can only be procured by the dissection of corpses, have at the same time outlawed the pro- curement of subjects. Such has been the policy of states for centu- ries, and in pursuing it the civil power has but given expression to one of the profoundest prejudices and most wide-spread superstitions of human nature. Antipathy to dissection after death is a deeply-rooted A POPULAR VERDICT. <;47 feeliug that lias been manifested by all nations, creeds, and peoples — Egyptian, Greek, Koman, Mohammedan, Christian, and. Jew. The primitive Christians, as evinced by their epitaphs, cursed the disturbers of their remains in the Roman Catacombs. When science was regarded as little else than magic, and diseases were ascribed to the influence of the devil, physicians were looked upon as sorcerers, and it was but natural that those who considered that their bodies were destined to resurrection should entertain a hatred and horror of those wlio would cut it up in the dissecting-room for base purposes of utility. And when governments in modern times began to concede a restricted privi- lege of dissection, the mode of doing it only served to heighten the horror with which the operation was popularly regarded. For three centuries the law increased the infamous reputation of dissection bv making it follow the work of the gallows. These feelings were pecu- liarly intense in theological Scotland, so that the modern medical schools had the greatest difliculty in getting even a few subjects for anatomical study. The necessity of having them, however, created a special "craft of body-snatchers and robbers of graveyards. Nothing was more cal- culated to infuriate the pojuilace than to discover that a grave had been violated. The church-yard was a sacred precinct, " God's acre," and the removal of a body from it was treated as an impious interference with the plans of Providence respecting the great resurrection — the body-stealers being accordingly named " resurrectionists." The men who took to this vocation were of the lowest and most brutal sort. None but base and desperate rascals, indifl^erent to public detestation, Avould pursue a business so reprobated by all classes, and so the very quality of the men added repulsiveness to the occupation. Yet physi- cians were constantly compelled to cooperate with these wretches ; that is, to buy their plunder and keep their secrets, as the very first condition of sound medical education. But government, with its legal enactments, joined the superstitious masses in arresting the work of anatomy and making it unlawful and impracticable. The physi- cians petitioned the authorities for relief, and were answered with more stringent enactments, prosecutions, and spies and detectives watching: the doors of medical schools. These schools in Edinburgh were sacked by mobs or starved into suspension by the impossibility of obtaining subjects. "The law virtually proclaimed that the sur- geon should possess aptitude and skill as well as a formal license to practise ; nay, it went further, and subjected him who failed to dis- play proper skill to pecuniary forfeiture in the civil courts at the instigation of any dissatisfied patient ; yet the only mode of acquir- ing that skill — namely, from dissections of the dead clandestinely obtained — was in the criminal court held to be a misdemeanor, punish- able by fine and imprisonment." Such was the state of things in Edinburgh when Dr. Knox en- tered upon the public teaching of anatomy. With the unprecedent- 548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ed enlargcmeut of his classes, which sometimes rose to more than five huudred students ; and with his thorough-going views of the importance of actual dissection to the well-prepared physician,- the demands of his establishment for subjects were necessarily large. These he had, of course, to meet in various ways. The home supply of bodies being insufficient, he made arrangements with distant places in England and Ireland to have subjects sent to Edinburgh. He was often compelled to pay so high for cadavers that it consumed the prof- its of his teaching, and in one session he lost nearly $4,000 from this cause alone. An enthvisiast himself, and with an enthusiastic class, he could not endure to see the bare dissecting-tables, or to hear the im- portunate solicitations of his students seeking for professional oppor- tunities that were denied them away from a medical school. Not infrequently the professors of medical colleges have joined the resur- rectionists in their midnight adventures, or have pursued them alone j and many thrilling stories are recorded of their nocturnal exploits in getting possession of subjects which ofiered special interest to the anatomists. But Dr. Knox never indulged in these practices. He despised the resurrectionists whom he was compelled to use, and did his best to get a change of legislation by which anatomy might be prosecuted in a legal and legitimate way. Failing to s'ecure this, he had to resort to the usual expedients for facilitating anatomical study — expedients as old as medical science. On the 29th of November, 1827, an old man by the name of Donald died in West Port, one of the purlieus of Edinburgh. He lodged with an Irishman named William Hare, and died owing him four pounds. His creditor saw but one way of reimbursing him- self, and that was by disposing of the old man's body to the doc- tors. Hare found a ready accomplice in William Burke, another Irish- man, and also one of his lodgers. The body was removed from the coffin, and a bag of tanner's bark substituted for it. The lid was screwed down and the little funeral went off as usual. The same evening. Hare and Burke stealthily rejiaired to the university, and, meeting a student in the yard, asked for the rooms of Dr. Monroe, the Professor of Anatomy. The student happened to be a j^upil of Knox's, and, upon discovering their errand, he advised them to try Knox's place in Surgeons' Square. There they sold the body for £7 10s., a large sum for them, and very easily obtained. They had not courage . to go into the regular business of body-stealing ; and so Hare, the vilest of the two, suggested a fresh stroke of business, which was to inveigle the old and infirm into his quarters and " do for them." Hare started in search of a victim ; and, prowling through the slums, met an old woman half drunk, and asked her to his house. He gave her whiskey until she became comatose, and then with Burke's assist- ance strangled her. The body brought £10. A POPULAR VERDICT. 549 The api^etite of the vampires was now sharply whetted, aiul tliey entered systematically upon the work of murder. Vagrants, street- walkers, and imbeciles, were allured on various pretexts to the house of Hare, made dead drunk, and suffocated. Emboldened by tlieir suc- cesses, they began to pursue their thuggish practices even in daylight. A woman named Docherty was stifled, and her body left half-exposed under some straw was seen by two lodgers, who notified the police. Thirteen victims had been secured in eleven months, and all taken to the same place and sold. The prisoners were tried December 24, 1828, when Hare, the blackest of the villains, was let off by turning " state's evidence," and Burke was convicted, hanged, and dissected. Tlie effect produced upon the public by this horrible disclosure is indescribable. A new and unheard-of crime, that of "Burkino-." was added to the list of atrocities of which human fiends are capable. As- tonishment and terror spread through the community. Households gathered their members within-doors before dusk; workmen walked home from their night's toil in groups, as if in fear of being waylaid. The facts were appalling enough ; but a thousand exaggerations and inventions filled the air, and intensified the universal excitement. It could hardly be expected that public feeling, under such circum- stances, would be restrained within the bounds of reason, but it went to the most outrageous excesses. Those who were loudest in their execrations of Hare and Burke, were themselves guilty of conduct almost as atrocious, which was nothing less than the endeavor to fasten the turpitude of these crimes upon the parties at the Medical School who received the bodies. They were accused of being in col- lusion with Hare and Burke, of conniving at their villainy, and paying them the wages of murder. Dr. Knox, who was at the head of the establishment, was held responsible, and accused of being the prime mover of the dark transactions. Yet Dr. Knox never saw Burke and Hare but twice during the whole time that they were bringing subjects to the institution, and never had any thing whatever to do with them. The subjects were received in the usual way by persons in charge of the dissecting-room, and they constituted less than one-sixth of the regular supply of the establish- ment. Moreover, the practice of obtaining subjects in the way they were alleged to come had been long pursued. Tramps, vagabonds, beggars, and worthless, homeless creatures of all sorts were dying in the hovels, dens, cellars, and gutters, with nobody to claim them, and even their relatives, if they had any, would often sell their bodies for a few bottles of whiskey. It was frequently necessary in crowded lodg- ings to have bodies promptly removed, and there was a regular busi- ness done with the medical colleges in smuggling this class of subjects into their rooms. Hare and Burke were therefore doing nothing ap- parently unusual or that in itself excited suspicion. The porter of the establishment received the bodies, deposited them in the mor- 550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tuary, and then reported to the assistants, who were young medical students, without long experience. It was alleged that the bodies were brought fresh and warm, which was proof enough of the way they had been obtained. But this was by no means a necessary con- clusion. Some of Burke's contributions were fresh, Avhich created sur- prise; but he made no secret tliat he was in league with the relatives of the deceased or the owners of lodging-houses, for the prompt pos- session of bodies as soon as life was extinct. " When his attention was drawn to two apparently newly dead, his glib tongue and plausible statement served his purpose so well as to lull all doubts. One of these bodies was warm, on touching which the assistant expressed himself much horrified. Burke, being challenged in the strongest terms, ad- mitted the warmth, for the person died only a few hours previously, and for secrecy the body had been in close contact with the fireplace. His open manner and ready excuse, when so boldly taken to task, told strongly in favor of the accuracy of his statement." To illustrate the facility with which irregular practices might be carried on without public interference. Dr. Knox's biographer re- marks : " There are no coroners' inquests in Scotland. Sudden death of either stranger or citizen does not concern the public authorities, unless suspicion is entertained and evidence can be ofiered to warrant the attention of the procurator-fiscal, who then makes a most thorough investigation in private, untrammeled by stupid juries and the com- ments of the press." He adds : " With the exception of Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, there is no burial service, either at the church or at the grave-side, in Scotland. In lieu of this, a minister attends the funeral, who ofiers a prayer or makes an address by the side of the bier at the house of the deceased." This gave rise to mock or sham minis- ters. HyjDOcritical wretches palmed ofl" their services in many cases among the poor and ignorant to conduct funerals, and managed them so as to play into the hands of the body-snatchers. The history is a peculiar one, and would require a volume to trace its complications. But the main fact about it is, that the doctors stood in peculiar relations, which exposed them to public animosity, and put them to every disadvantage, when the most extravagant and futile charges were made against them. A revolting and inhuman crime had certainly been committed, and the Medical School had the benefit of it. The conclusion that the head of the school had instigated it was easy to draw, especially if there was the slightest inclination of unfavor- able feeling toward him. Dr. Knox had therefore now to pay the penalty of his popularity. There was a vast mass of indignant and exasperated feeling in the university ready enough to be hos'tile, and easily turned in the direc- tion of accusation and reprobation. The enemies of Dr. Knox, those who had been irritated by his comments, and those who were jealous of his influence, seized the opportunity to pay him off. It mattered A POPULAR VERDICT. 551 little that there was neither evidence nor shadow of evidence of the charge : it was only necessary to link Dr. Knox's name with the atro- cities, and reasons enough would be found for the belief that he was the cause of them. If it appeared incredible, the reply was, that the vil- lainies had actually been perpetrated by somebody, then why not in- stigated by him who had the greatest interest in the result ? Besides, he was none too good for it, as judged out of his own mouth. Had he not rej)lied to a medical student, when asked how he came to have so many Kaffre skulls in his museum : "Why, sir, there was no diflBculty in Kaflraria ; I had but to walk out of my tent and shoot as many Kaffres as I wanted for scientific and ethnological purposes." A pass- ing joke was thus tortured into proof of a murderous disposition, and had its numerous believers. Again, Dr. Knox had said that " he could always command subjects." To which it was rejoined, " We now know what he meant — the West Port villains were in his pay." Thus by in- sinuation, perversion, and hinted suspicion, on the part of those who ought to have known better, and by a gaping credulity on the part of the mass of the people, the charges against Dr. Knox came to be be- lieved by bare force of reiteration and association of ideas. The fol- lowing specimen of the literature of the time embodies the whole logic of the case : " Down the Close, and up the Stair, But and Ben wi' Burke and Hare. Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the man that buys the beef." On no better grounds than this Dr. Knox was condemned by the press, slandered by his medical brethren, denounced by "the clergy, and his life was sought by the mob. Relying upon his entire inno- cence, abhorring the crime that had been done as much as anybody, and deeply indignant at the charges that were brought against him, Dr. Knox preserved silence. We can now appreciate the dignity and self-respect which impelled him to this, but he calculated wrongly for himself. Silence cannot be comprehended by a stupid public or a clamorous mob. The people were infuriated that he had not been in- dicted along with the West Port murderers, and Knox had to bear the whole weight of the city's wrath, which was increased by covert enemies in every quarter, and still further heightened by the escape of Hare. " Two months after Burke's condemnation, and his confes- sion exonerating Knox from all blame whatsoever had been given to t\iewov\di, BlackicoocVs Magazine, m its 'Noctes Ambrosianre' (March, 1829), written by John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, alias Christopher North, made every effort to blast the character of the anatomist. Literary ruffianism is too mild a term to apply to the foul words used by Wilson, who, not content with holding up Knox to public execration, rushed with the savagery of the war-whoop and tomahawk upon an unoffending 552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. anatomical class, for showing an affectionate regard for their great teacher." Dr. Knox could have brought his enemies to strict account, and obtained heavy damages for their foul libels, but he preferred the policy of forbearance, as he had that of silence, and to leave the mat- ter to be determined when the excitement should cease. So he kept on steadily with his work. One night, when a large class had assem- bled to hear him, the proceedings were interrupted by the yells and threats of an outside crowd, so that the students became alarmed. Knox, perceiving the growing restlessness of the audience, paused, and remai-ked : " Gentlemen, you are disquieted by these noises, to which no doubt you attach a proper meaning. Do not be alarmed; it is my life, not yours, they seek. How little I regard these ruffians you may w^ell judge, for, in spite of daily warnings, and the destruc- tion of my property, I have met you at every hour of lecture during the session ; and I am not aware that my efforts to convey instruction have been less clear or less acceptable to you." This statement was received with such cheers as never before rang through a class-room in Edinburgh ; and, amid all his troubles and trials, he found his only solace in the approval and affection of his students. Dr. Knox at length broke his long silence by a letter to the Cale- donian Mercury^ of which the following is a part : " SiK : I regret troubling either you or the public with any thing personal, but I cannot be insensible of the feelings of my friends, or the character of the professioa to which I have the honor of belonging. Had I alone been con- cerned, I should never have thought of obtruding on the public by this com- munication. " I have a class of above 400 pupils. No person can be at the head of such an establishment, without necessarily running the risk of being imposed upon by those who furnish the material of their science to anatomical teachers ; and, ac- cordingly, there is hardly any such person who has not occasionally incurred odium or suspicion from his supposed accession to those violations of the law, without which anatomy can scarcely now be practised. That I should have be- come an object of popular prejudice, therefore, since mine happened to be the establishment with which Burke and Hare chiefly dealt, was nothing more than what I had to expect. But, if means had not been purposely taken, and most keenly persevered in, to misrepresent facts and to influence the public mind, that prejudice would at least have stood on right ground, and would ultimately have passed away, by its being seen that I had been exposed to a mere misfor- tune, which would almost certainly have occurred to anybody else who had been in my situation. " But every effort has been employed to convert my misfortune into positive and intended personal guilt of the most dreadful character. Scarcely any indi- vidual has ever been the object of more systematic or atrocious attacks than I have been. Nobody acquainted with this place requires to be told from what quarter these have proceeded. "I allowed them to go on for months without taking the slightest notice of them ; and I was inclined to adhere to this system, especially as the public A POPULAR VERDICT. 553 authorities, by never charging mo with any offense, gave the only attestation they could that they had nothing to charge me with. But my friends interfered for me. Without consulting me, they directed an agent to institute the most rigid and unsparing examination into the facts. I was totally unacquainted with this gentleman ; but I understood that, in naming Mr. Ellis, they named a person whose character is a sufficient pledge for the propriety of his pro- ceedings. " The result of his inquiries was laid before the Dean of Faculty and another counsel, who were asked what ought to be done. These gentlemen gave it as their opinion that the evidence was completely satisfactory, and that there was no want of actionable matter, but that there was one ground on which it was my duty to resist the temptation of going into a court of law. This was, that the disclosures of the most innocent proceedings even of the best-conducted dis- secting-room must always shock the public, and be hurtful to science. But they recommended that a few persons of undoubted weight and character should be asked to investigate the matter, in order that, if I deserved it, an at- testation might be given to me, which would be more satisfactory to my friends than any mere statements of mine could be expected to be. " After a severe and laborious investigation of about six weeks, the result is contained in the following report, which was put into my hands last night. . . . " Candid men will judge of me according to the situation in which I was placed at the time, and not according to the wisdom which has unexpectedly been acquired since. This is the very first time that I have ever made any statement to the public in my own vindication, and it shall be the last. It would be unjust to the authors of the former calumnies to suppose that they would not renew them now. I can only assure them that, in so far as I am concerned, they will renew them in vain." The report here referred to bore the names of Sir John Robinson, chairman ; Mr. M. P. Brown, advocate ; Prof. James Russell, Dr. Ali- son, Sir George Ballingall, Sir George Sinclair, Sir William Hamil- ton, and Mr. Thomas Allen, banker ; and completely and absolutely exonerated Dr. Knox from the charges that had been made against him. The public advocate went to the bottom of the case, and de- clared t])at there was no ground of suspicion ; and one of the ablest representatives of the British bar. Lord Cockburn, who had a personal knowledge of all the facts, wrote in the " Memorials of his Time " as follows : " All our anatomists incurred a most unjust and very alarm- ing though not unnatural odium ; Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the condemnation of the more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But, tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the profes- sion, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most cor- rect of them all." Dr. Knox was a man of pluck, and he went along about his busi- ness, paying little attention to the storm of abuse and vituperation that rained upon him. But the savage injustice of Avhich he was a victim was, nevertheless, not without its effect. It clouded his pros- perity, darkened his life, and gave a cynical turn to his disposition. 554 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. His biographer remarks : " Only once, as far as I can learn, did Knox exhibit any emotion on account of the connection of his name with the Burke and Hare atrocities, and his freely-alleged complicity in the transaction. Walking in the meadows at Edinburgh with his old friend Dr. Adams, their conversation turned upon ' outward form and its relation to inward qualities.' Knox had a keen appreciation of the beautiful in form ; and it chanced at the moment that a pretty little girl, about six years of age, caught his notice while at play. She afforded a text for Knox's comment on physical beauty, combined with unusual intelligence, in so young a child, for by this time he had drawn her into a playful conversation. At length he gave her a penny, and said: ' Now, my dear, you and I will be friends. Would you come and live with me if you got a whole penny every day?' ' No,' said the child ; ' you would, maybe, sell me to Dr. Knox.' The anatomist started back with a painfully stunned expression ; his feat- ures began to twitch convulsively, and tears appeared in his eyes. He walked hastily on, and did not exchange words with Dr. Adams for some minutes ; at length came a forced laugh, with a questionable emphasis on the words ' vox populi,^ which led to a new tojjic of discourse." Dr. Knox gave up his lectures in Edinburgh in 1839, and aftei'- ward went to London, where he died, December 20, 1862. ■♦«» TEMPEEED GLASS. By PEREY F. NUESEY, C. E. A CONSIDERABLE degree of well-merited attention has of late been directed toward an invention which may be justly termed remarkable, even in these days of startling discoveries, inasmuch as it is one which promises to effect a complete change in the physical charac- ter of glass. This invention is the toughening process of M. Fran9ois Royer de la Bastie, by which the natural brittleness of ordinary glass is exchanged for a condition of extreme toughness and durability. And this invention is perhaps the more remarkable in that it does not emanate from one engaged in, or practically conversant with, the manu- facture of glass ; nor is the discovery due to one of the great lights of science of our day; neither was it the result of a happy momentary inspiration. On the contrary, M. de la Bastie is a French private gen- tleman of fortune, residing in his native country — who, however, is given to the study of scientific matters. He was educated as an engi- neer, but his position and means rendered it unnecessary for him to follow the profession into which he had been initiated. He, however, is fond of experimenting in matters relating to engineering, and among TEMPERED GLASS. 555 other things he, some years since, conceived tlie idea of rendering glass less susceptible to fracture, either from blows or from rapid al- ternations of heat and cold. The early training of his mind naturally led him to look to mechanical means for the accomplishment of this end; and he, in the first place, set himself a purely mechanical prob- lem to solve. He thought — as did Sir Joseph Whitworth with re- gard to steel — that by submitting glass when in a soft or fluid condi- tion to great compressive power, he should force its molecules closer togethei', and, by thus rendei-ing the mass more compact, the strength and solidity of the material would be greatly increased. This was not an unreasonable line of argument, inasmuch as the fragility of glass results from the weakness of the cohesion of its molecules. Suc- cess, however, did not follow experiment, and the mechanical problem was laid aside unsolved. M. de la Bastie, however, continued to regard the question from an engineering point of view, and turned his attention to another method of treatment. Aware that the tenacity of steel was increased and that a considerable degree of toughness was imparted to it by dipping it, while hot, into heated oil, he experimented with glass in a similar manner. The results were sufficiently successful to encourage him to persevere in this direction, and, by degrees, to add other fatty constituents to the oil-bath. Improved results were the consequence; and they continued to improve until at length, after several years of patient research and experiment, De la Bastie succeeded — with a bath consisting of a mixture of oils, wax, tallow, resin, and other similar ingredients — in producing a number of samples of glass which were practically unbreakable. As may be supposed, there were other con- ditions ujDon which success depended besides the character and pro- portions of the ingredients constituting the bath. M. de la Bastie, not being a glass-manufacturer, purchased sheets of glass, as well as glass articles, which he heated in a furnace or oven, to a certain tem- perature, and transferred to the oleaginous bath, which was also heat- ed to a given temperature. These questions of relative temperature, therefore, had to be worked out ; and De la Bastie had further to de- termine, very precisely, the condition of the glass most favorable for the proper action of the bath upon it. This he found to be that point at which softness or malleability commences, the molecules being then capable of closing suddenly together, thus condensing the material when plunged into a liquid at a somewhat lower temperature than itself, and inclosing some portion of the constituents of the bath in its opened and susceptible pores. Having determined all these condi- tions, and constructed apparatus, M. de la Bastie was enabled to take ordinary glass articles, and pieces of sheet-glass, and to toughen them so that they bore an incredible amount of throwing about and ham- mering without breaking. Just, however, as De la Bastie had per- fected his invention, he lost the clew to success, and for two years he 556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Tvas foiled in every attempt to regain it. There was the hard fact staring him in the face, that he had succeeded in depriving glass of its brittleness, as shown by specimens around him ; but there was the harder fact before him, that he had lost the key of his success. Never- theless he labored on, and at the end of the period above mentioned he had the satisfaction of finding all his anxieties at an end ; his toils were requited by the rediscovery of his secret. He has since worked at it most assiduoiisly, and has now brought it into jDractical working order, rendering the process as certain of success as any in use in the arts and manufactures in the present day. As already observed, M. de la Bastie is not a glass-manufacturer ; he therefore had to reheat glass articles when toughening them. It, however, by no means follows that the toughening process cannot be applied in the course of manufacture, thus avoiding reheating. On the contrary, it not only can be, but has been, applied at glass-works to glass just made, and so saves the costly and time-absorbing process of annealing. But, for reasons stated, M. de la Bastie had to apply the process to the manufactured article; and the method adopted, and the apparatus used in its application, next merit attention. In the first place, the glass to be toughened had to be raised to a very high Fig. 1. temperature — the higher the temperature the better — the risk of break- ing the glass being thereby reduced, and the shrinkage or condensa- tion being increased. It was therefore advantageous, and often neces- sary, to heat the glass to the point of softening; but in that condition glass articles readily lost their shape, and had to be plunged into the TEMPERED GLASS. 557 bath almost without being touchetl. Then came another difficulty — that of preventing an already highly-heated combustible liquid taking fire upon the entrance of the still more highly-heated glass. The lat- ter difficulty was met by placing the tempering bath in direct com- munication with the heating oven, and inclosing it so as to prevent access of air ; and the former by allowing the heated glass articles to descend quickly by gravitation, from the oven to the bath. The apparatus used by M. de la Bastie is shown in the accom- panying illustrations, in which Fig. 1 is a front vieAv, and Fig. 2 a ver- tical section, of furnace for annealing glass objects; Fig. 3 a sectional plan of the oven for annealing flat plates. The working oven, a, is heated by a furnace, h. The bottom of the oven, c, and the slope to the bath, are made in one piece of refractory material, and are very smooth on the surface. At the side of the oven is a j^reparatory oven, communicating by a passage in the sepai'ating wall. In this oven the glass is partially heated before being placed in the main oven, a. The products of combustion are carried away in the direction of the arrows through the chimney. When the oven, a, is sufficiently heated, the ash-pit and fire-doors are closed, and rendered air-tight by luting, Fig. 2. and the fire is maintained by small pieces of fuel introduced by a hole in the fire-door. The draught is then stopped by lowering the chim- ney-cap, or closing the damper. The vertical damper, /, is then raised, so that the flame passes by the flue, g, to a second chimney, passing thus along the slope and heating it, and also opening communication from the oven, a, to the bath, A, which is filled with the oleaginous compound. It is covered from the external air by a lid, and within it is a basket of fine wire gauze, A-, hung from brackets. A tube, I, con- tains a thermometer, w,to indicate the temperature; and by this tube the contents of the bath may be added to, or any excess may overflow by the discharge-pipe, n. A plug, o, on the cover may be removed to 558 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. observe the interior, without entirely uncovering the bath. A fire- truck, 2^1 chai'ged with live fuel, heats the bath to the desired tempera- ture. The glass is introduced into the preparatory oven by an open- ing in the outer wall, and thence it is moved through a second open- in «• on to the floor of the oven, a. The workman who watches the glass through a spy-hole, when he finds it at the proper heat, pushes it by an iron rod to the slope, c7, Avhence it slides into the bath and is re- ceived on the basket, k. When the glass has cooled to the tempera- ture of the bath, the lid is removed, and the basket, A", is raised out of the bath with the tempered glass. In tempering sheet-glass the arrangements of both oven and bath are slightly modified, as shown in Fig. 3. In place of the sloping exit Fig. 3. for articles from the oven to the bath, M. de la Bastie has a rocking table, E, which is hinged underneath to the mouth of the oven, and which also forms the floor of the oven. "When the glass has been suf- ficiently heated, the workman, by means of a lever, tilts the table, and the glass slides gently down an easy incline on to a table set at a corre- sponding incline in the bath. If it is not of importance that the trans- parency of the glass should be preserved, no special precautions are taken to prevent the dust from the furnace settling on its face. Where, however, clearness is required, the glass is heated in a mufile, perfect transparency being obtained. The process of tempering or tougliening, exclusive of the time required for heating the glass, occu- pies but a minute or so, the glass being immersed in the bath and at once withdrawn and set aside to cool. The cost per article, as may be supposed, is merely nominal. Glass which has been treated in this manner undergoes a physical transformation as complete as it is remarkable. Its appeal anee is in no way altered, either as regards transparency or color — if colored glass be so treated — and its ring or sound is not in any way aft'ected. TEMPERED GLASS. 559 It has, hovv^ever, exchanged its distinguishing characteristic of extreme brittleness for a degree of toughness and elasticity Avhich enables it to bear the impact of heavy falling weights and smart blows without the least injury. A great number of experiments have been made, the re- suits of which fully corroborate this fact. From these it will suffice to select a few by way of illustration. "Watch-glasses, which per- fectly retain their transparency, have resisted every attempt to break them by crushing between the fingers, or by throwing them about indiscriminately on the bare floor. Glass plates, dishes, colored lan- tern-glasses, and the like, have been similarly thrown about by the handful, stood upon, and otherwise maltreated, but without the slio-ht- est injury accruing to them, except, perhaps, when a solitary specimen which had been imperfectly tempered got in with the rest. Experi- ments have also been carried out to ascertain the comparative strength of toughened and untoughened glass when submitted to bending stress. Here a number of pieces of glass, each measuring six inches in length, by five inches in breadth, and having a thickness of about one-fourth of an inch, were tried. Each sample in its turn was supported at the ends, and a stirrup-piece was hung upon the centre of the glass, a Aveight-rod hanging vertically from the under-side of the stirrup. With this arrangement applied to a piece of ordinary glass, the weight- rod was gradually loaded until a weight of 279 pounds was reached, when the glass broke. A piece of toughened glass of similar dimen- sions, similai'ly treated, did not give way until a strain of 1,348 pounds had been reached, and before it yielded a considerable deflection was produced in it, showing its elasticity. Had its strength been due to rigidity or inflexibility alone, it would not have assumed a curve be- fore yielding to the pressure brought upon it. Satisfactory as the above results may appear at the first glance, they will be seen upon reflection most inadequately to represent the relative strength of toughened and untoughened glass. It will be ob- served that the test applied was that of long-sustained and gradually- increasing pressure, which could rarely occur to glass articles in every- day use. Glass is subject to sudden, sharp blows, either from articles falling down on other substances or from extraneous bodies falling upon or being brought in contact with them. Hence it is clear that to obtain a true estimate of the new process, glass must be subjected to tests which fairly represent the conditions of the accidents to which it is ordinarily exposed. This estimate has been arrived at repeatedly by placing pieces of plate-glass in a frame and allowing weights to fall on them from given heights. One experiment from a number — and which was made publicly — will illustrate this test : A piece of ordi- nary glass, six inches long by five inches wide, and one-fourth of an inch thick, was placed in a small frame which supported the glass around its edges, and kept its under-side about half an inch from the floor. A four-ounce weight Avas dropped on it from a height of one 56o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. foot, and the glass was broken. A piece of toughened glass of corre- sponding dimensions was then placed in the frame and the same weight dropped upon it several times from a height of ten feet, but without fracturing the glass. An eight-ounce weight was then substituted, and repeatedly dropped upon the glass from the same height as before, and with the same result, no impression wliatever being made upon it. The eight-ounce weight was then thrown violently upon it several times, but without damaging it. Its destruction, however, was finally accomplished by means of a hammer. Perhaps the most crucial test to which toughened glass could be put would be to let it fall on iron. This has been done, and in public too. A thin glass plate was dropped from a height of four feet on to an iron grating, from which it rebounded about one foot, sustaining no injury whatever. As singular as any other feature presented by toughened glass are the results of its destruction. Ordinary glass, upon bemg fractured, gives long, needle-shaped, and angular fragments. Not so toughened glass, which is instantaneously resolved into mere atoms. The whole mass is at once disintegrated into innumerable pieces, ranging in size from a pin's-poiut to an eighth of an inch in diameter. It sometimes occurs that pieces measuring half an inch or an inch across may remain whole, but these pieces are traversed in all directions by a net-work of fine lines of fracture, and with the fingers are easily reduced to frag- ments. Microscopical examination shows the fragments of toughened glass— large and small— to follow the same law as regards the form and character of the crystals, and on some of the larger crystals being broken up they have been found to separate into smaller ones of the same character. The edges of these fragments, too, are more or less smooth instead of being jagged and serrated as are those of fragments of ordinary glass. Hence a diminished tendency in the former to cause incised flesh-wounds when handled. When glass has been imperfectly treated, as has sometimes hap- pened in M. de la Bastie's experiments, it will not stand the same amount of rough usage as will perfectly-toughened specimens. The fact of the toughening process having been incomplete is made manifest upon the destruction of a sample in three difierent ways chiefly. In- dependently of its yielding at an early stage either to blows or press- ure, it wilfshow upon destruction either needle-fractures approaching in appearance those of ordinary glass, or pieces varying from the size of a sixpence to that of a half-crown will remain unbroken and untrav- ersed by lines of fracture. Again, the mass may be wholly fractured, but on looking at the fragments edgewise a narrow, milky streak will be apparent midway between the upper and under sides of the glass, indicating that the influence of the bath has not extended through the glass. Where the process has been perfectly applied, no such phe- nomena are exhibited, the crystals being of uniform transparency throughout the whole mass. TEMPERED GLASS. 561 Such, then, is De la Bastie's toughened glass, which possesses enormous cohesive power, and offers great resistance to the force of impact. There is, however, one peculiarity which, for the present, tells against it in a slight degree — it cannot be cut through with a diamond. Scratched its surface can be, but there the action of the diamond ceases. This drawback only applies in the case of window- glass in odd-sized frames ; for the practice of the present day, with builders, is to make window-sashes of certain fixed dimensions, and glass-manufacturers work to these dimensions. It is not at all improb- able, however, that ere long a means will be divised for cutting tough- ened glass to any size or shape ; experiments are, in fact, now being conducted with this view, and so far as they have gone they give promise of success. But if toughened glass cannot be cut by the diamond, it can be readily cut and polished by the wheel, as for lustres and the like, so that wine-glasses and articles of cut glass-ware can be toughened directly they are made, and cut and polished subse- quently. Superficial observers have afiected to detect in the toughening process a similar condition of matter to that which obtains in Prince Rupert's drops. The error of such a conclusion, however, becomes evident upon a little consideration. Prince Rupert's drops are made by allowing melted glass to fall into cold water ; the result of which is a small peai--shaped drop, which will stand smart blows upon the thick end without injury; but the moment the thin end, or tail, is broken, the drop flies into fragments. Now, glass and water, and — a's far as present knowledge goes — no other substances besides, expand while passing from the fluid into the solid condition. The theory of the Rupert drops is, that the glass being cooled suddenly, by being dropped into cold water, expansion is checked by reason of a hard skin being formed on the outer surface. This exterior coating pre- vents the interior atoms from expanding and arranging themselves in such a way as to give the glass a fibrous nature, as they would if the glass was allowed to cool very gradually. An examination of the Rupert's drop shows the inner substance to be fissured and divided into a number of small particles. They exist, in fact, in a state of compression, with but little mutual cohesion, and are only held to- gether by the external skin. So long as the skin remains intact the tendency of the inner particles to expand and fill their proper space is checked and resisted by the superior compressive strain of the skin. Nor is the balance of the opposing forces disturbed by blows on the thick end of the drop, which vibrates as a whole, the vibrations not being transmitted from the exterior to the interior. But by breaking off the tail of the drop a vibratory movement is communicated along the crystalline surface, admitting of internal expansion, by which the cohesion of the particles composing the external skin is overcome, and the glass is at once reduced to fragments. As the skin of toughened VOL. TII. — 36 562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. glass can be cut through with the diamond, and as, moreover, its sur- face can be removed by polishing and cutting with the wheel, without injury to the mass, it is evident that it must exist under conditions very dissimilar from those of a Rupert's drop. Moreover, melted glass, on being dropped into De la Bastie's bath, gives a similarly shaped body, from which the tail can be broken off, piece by piece, without injury to the body, which can be scratched, knocked and thrown about, without exhibiting any signs of deterioration. Bearing upon this point, too, comes the fact that toughened glass can be ele- gantly engraved, either by Tilghman's sand-blast process, or by means of hydrofluoric acid, in the ordinary way, the surface or outer skin being thus removed. M. de la Bastie's invention marks a distinct era in the history of one of our most important industries. Never during the history of glass-manufacture, which extends over some 3,500 years, has any radi- cal change been effected in its character. The glass-blowers of Egypt, who practised their art before the exodus of the children of Israel, and representations of whom have been found on monuments as an- cient as that event, produced a similar glass to that of our own times. This has been proved by an examination of glass ornaments which have been discovered in tombs as ancient as the days of Moses. It has been proved, too, by a large bead of glass, found at Thebes, upon which was inscribed the name of a monarch who lived 1,500 years B. c, and which glass M^as of the same specific gravity as our own crown-glass. It is true Pliny mentions that a combination was de- vised in the reign of Tiberius, which produced a flexible glass ; but both the inventor and apparatus were destroyed, in order, it is said, to prevent the value of copper, silver, and gold, from becoming depre- ciated. There is, however, no evidence whatever that this was the toughening process of De la Bastie, nor does the record in any way detract from the merits of that gentleman as the inventor of an im- portant economic process. The fact remains that the world has now given to it for the first time, in a practical form, an invention by which the brittleness of glass is superseded by an attribute of the most valuable nature — toughness. It is by no means improbable that the old adage, " as brittle as glass," will soon be superseded by a new one — " as tough as glass." What may be the ultimate result of the introduction of this inven- tion in practice it is difl&cult to foresee, so wide-spread, so universal does its application seem. Not only is it desirable to render durable such articles as are at present made from glass, but to satisfy a want long felt in every dej^artraent of art, science, and manufacture, of such a material as toughened glass ; and this want can now be satis- fied. So numerous are the opportunities which present for its applica- tion, and so well adapted does it appear to be where cleanliness, trans- parency, resistance to heat and chemical action, and comparative in- FRESH -WATER MOLLUSKS. 563 destructibility are desiderata, that it would be idle to attempt to cate- gorize them. The invention is being taken up practically on the Continent, and no less in England. Messrs. Powell, of Whitefriars, are introducing it in their glass-works, and two other firms in the north of England are doing the same. It is by no means improbable that its first intro- duction in practice in this country will be at the aquarium now in course of erection at Westminster, where it is intended to use it for the tanks. There still remain some questions to be answered with regard to the phenomena exhibited by toughened glass — questions, however, which in no way affect the practical value of the material. Its pecu- liarities continue to form the subject of investigation, and, as soon as any conclusions of value to science have been arrived at, they will be made known, so that the physical aspect of toughened glass may again be reverted to in these pages. It only remains to observe that the re- markable character and unique nature of M. de la Bastie's invention are such as to render it probable that lie will not only materially bene- fit those of his own time, but will bequeath to posterity an invaluable legacy. — Popular Science Heview. 4»» FKESH-WATER MOLLUSKS.' Br Peof. EDWARD S. MORSE. T TNDER lily-pads and on the stems and leaves of other aquatic vJ plants, and on stones in rivers, snails of various kinds will be found. A dipper with the bottom perforated, or made into a sieve, and attached to a wooden handle four or five feet in length, will be Fig. 1.— Dippeb attached to a Wooden Handle fok collecting Snails. found useful in scooping up the sand or mud from the bottom of rivers and ditches. The dirt having been sifted out, the shells and other ' From " First Book of Zoology," now in press of D. Appleton & Co. 564 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. objects will be left behind. The clipper may be made as seen in Fig. 1. Shells collected with the snails inside, and cleaned for the cabinet, are called live shells. They are always more fresh and perfect than dead shells. Having made the collection, the snails should be kept alive in a wide-mouthed jar, or bottle, care being taken not to have more than fifteen or twenty in a jar holding a quart of water. Some of the following forms will have been secured : Fig. 2.— Fresh- Water Snails. The broad, creeping disk upon which the snail rests, and by which it retains its hold to the glass, is called the foot. The snail moves about, and crawls or glides slowly along, by means of the foot. The two little horns or feelers, in front, are called tentacles^ and, as the snail moves, the tentacles are seen stretched out in front, and occasionally bending, as if the creatui'e were feeling its way along. The eyes are seen at the base of the tentacles, as two minute black dots. The mouth is between the tentacles, and below. The jaart from which the tentacles spring is called the head^ and the opposite end of the body is called the tail. The surface upon which the snail rests is called the ventral or lower surface, and consequently that portion of the body which is above is called the dorsal surface, or back. In watching the habits of the snails he has collected, the reader will notice some of them crawling to the surface of the water to breathe air. The snail accomplishes this by raising the outer edge of the aperture to the water's edge, and then opening a little orifice in the side, through which the air enters to the simple lung within. This orifice is on the right side in those snails having dextral or right- lianded shells, and on the left side in those snails having sinistral or left-handed shells. Many kinds of snails which live in fresh water are called air-breath- ers, because they are forced to come to the surface of the water to breathe air. In doing so they first expel a bubble of air, which may be seen escaping from the breathing-orifice, as in Fig. 4, B. These fresh-water air-breathing snails may be kept under water for many hours before life is extinct. FRESH-WATER MOLLUSKS. 565 Among the snails collected, tliere will probably be found some which have a peculiar scale on the hinder part of the body. When the snail crawls, this scale will be seen just behind the shell, as in A view from the back, or dorsal view. side-mew. ventral view. Fig. 3. — A Feesh-Wateb Snail seen feom above, peom the Side, and from below. 1 1, Tentacles ; e e, Eyes ; b. Breathing-orifice ; m. Mouth. Fig 5, 0. This scale is called the operculum, and when the snail has contracted, or dr&wn within the shell, the operculum is seen to fit the aperture of the shell, closing the shell as a stopper closes the mouth of a bottle. Nearly all sea-snails, that is, snails which live in salt-water, and many species of fresh-water snails, and also many snails which live in damp places on the land, and which are called land-snails, have an 566 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. operculum. "When the snail has retired within the shell, the opercu- lum will look like this in the aperture of the shell (Fig. 6) : A series of concentric lines will be seen marking the operculum, and these are the lines of growth, the operculum growing around the outer edge by successive additions, just as the shell grows by successive additions to Its outer margm. Fig. 4.— Jak of Water, in which is contained a Number of Species of Mollusks. Some op them abe near the surface breathing alri A and Care taking in air ; B is just expelling a bubble of air from the lung ; I) is crawling on the surface of the water: E, G, and /, are in the act of crawling up, to get a fresh supply of air; and J" is a water-breather, having gills, but no lung. The Western rivers teem with species of snails having opercula. If the pupil has any of these operculated snails alive, he will ob- serve that they do not come to the surface to breathe air. Instead of a lung, they have a cavity containing an organ, or part, called the gill, by means of which the snail is capable of getting from the water what the air-breathing snail gets from the air, namely, oxygen. It will be seen that the head of the snail is shaped differently in the snails having an operculum, the mouth being at the end of a sort of FRESH- WA TER MOLL XJSI<:S. 567 proboscis or rostrum. [See Fig. 5.) The shells, too, are, as a general thing, more solid. Thus far we have examined those snails which live in fresh water. Some of these were air-breathers, and came to the surface of the water Fig. 5. — Skail with Operculum. 0, Operculnm ; e. Eye ; /■, Rostrum ; cf, Entrance to Gill-Cavity. at intervals to breathe air. We have studied other fresh-water snails which did not breathe air directly, but performed this function by means of an organ called the gill. And these snails were opereu- lated, that is, they all possessed a little scale called the operculum, which closed the aperture tightly when the snail contracted within the shell. Fig. 6.— Aperture of Shell closed by Operculum, o. We haA^e also learned that the shells grow in size by successive additions of limy matter deposited around the free border of the aper- ture, and that the delicate lines which mark the surface of the shell, and which run parallel to the outer edge of the aperture, are lines of accretion, or lines of growth. Looking over our fresh-water shells again, we find many that are known as muscles, or clams. These shells are common everywhere along the margins of brooks, rivers, and lakes. The musk-rats feed upon the soft parts of the muscles, and the remains of their feasts may be found in piles of mussel-shells all along the shores of certain lakes. The shell is composed of two pieces, or valves, as they are called. 568 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The two valves are often found united, and the margin along which they are connected is called the Junge-margin, because the shells hinge at this part, and Avill open and shut as a door swings upon its hinges. Let the pupil now examine a perfect fi-esh-water mussel, that is, a mussel in which the valves are united in this way, and he will observe that they are connected by a brownish substance, which is quite elas- tic when the shell is alive, but becomes brittle when dried. The shells are held together as the covers of a book are held together by the back. This substance is called the ligament, and the position of this ligament will indicate the back, or dorsal region of the animal. On the outside of the shell will be seen fine lines, which run nearly parallel to the outside margin of the shell. These lines are the lines of growth, and indicate the successive stages of growth, or increase of the shell, as in the lines of growth in the snail-shell already studied, and, as in the snails, the growth takes place at the margin of the shells. We may trace these concentric lines back, as they grow smaller and smaller, till they are found to start from one point at the back of the shell, and this point is called the beak or timbone. It represents the starting-point in the growth of the shell. In fresh-water mussels, the umbones are eaten away by some corrosive action of the water, and the early stages in the growth of the shell are usually destroyed. In very young shells, however, the early stages can be plainly seen. Back or dorsal region. u I ex. g 5' CD O P. / Veutra) region. Fig. 7.— a Fresh-Water Mussel. /, Ligament ; w, Umbone ; j. Foot ; ex., Excurrent Orifice ; in., Incurrent Orifice. The ligament is always behind the beak, or umbone, in fresh-water mussels, and in nearly all bivalve shells (so called, because they have two valves or pieces, while the snail-shells are sometimes called loii- valve shells, because they have but one valve or piece). FRESH -WATER MOLLUSK^. 569 Now hold a perfect mussel-shell in your hand (that is, a mussel in which both valves are together, and united across the hack), with the ligament uppermost, and the umbone away from the person, or beyond the ligament, and the valve on the left hand is the one which covers the left side of the animal, while 'the valve on the right hand covers the right side of the animal. The forward end will be the end away from the person, and the hinder end will, of course, be the end toward the person. {See Fig. 1.) Let us now endeavor to collect some fresh-water mussels alive. These may be found partly buried in the sand or mud of rivers and lakes. As they crawl along partly buried in this way, they plough up the sand, leaving a well-marked furrow or groove behind them. Every boy that goes in bathing is familiar with the peculiar furrow left by the fresh-water mussel. By following such a furrow, the mussel that made it will soon be found. Fig. 8 represents the appearance of a common fresh-water mussel in the act of crawling. Fig. 8.— Suowing Position of Mussel vmim cra-^tling. /, Foot buried below the Surface of the Sand s. Above the line s is supposed to be water, the line representing the bottom of a lake or river. Having collected a few in this way, they may be placed in a large, shallow pan of water, and allowed to remain quiet for a while. Grad- ually the shells will open a little, and from the hinder end a curious fringed border appears ; on examining this border, it will soon be found that it forms two openings which lead into the shell. Great care must be taken not to jar the dish, or the table upon which it rests. The slightest jar will cause the shells to instantly close. If some indigo, or small particles of dirt, be dropped near these openings, currents of water will be revealed ; one current pour- ing out of the opening nearest the back, and another current as stead- ily pouring in at the other opening. The opening into which the cur- rent of water is passing is called the incurrent orifice, while the orifice from wliich a current of water is passing is called the e?i'current orifice. The incurrent orifice is sometimes called the respiratory orifice, because the water is taken in to suj^ply the gills which are the breathing or 570 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. respiratory organs of the mussel, and this orifice corresponds to the siphon in the sea-snails already studied. This current of water, be- sides bathing the gills, also carries in minute particles which are float- ing in the water, and these particles are conducted to the mouth of the creature, and swallowed as food. At the opposite end of the shell from these openings, or the forward end, a whitish, fleshy mass will be seen protruding. This is called ihefoot^ and corresponds to the foot or creeping disk in the snails. By means of this foot the mussel crawls through the sand. The mouth is above the foot, and always concealed within the shell. In Fig. 7 the foot is shown, and also the excurrent and incurrent ori- fices, with arrows drawn to indicate the direction of the currents of water. In some small species of fresh-water bivalves, the excurrent and incurrent orifices are prolonged into tubes, and then they are called si2>ho?is. Fig. 9 represents a common species which the pupils may find in muddy brooks and ditches. By using the long-handled dipper already described, some specimens will jjrobably be found. They are quite small, from the size of a pea to that of a nickel cent. The siphonal tubes are prominent, and the foot is long and tongue-shaped, and the animal is very active in crawling about ; also in Fig. 4 £^ and Jj represent two of these small animals with bivalve shells. Fig. 9. The foot of these creatures resembles in appearance and action the foot of a fresh-water snail, only there is no mouth nor tentacles in sight. These parts are present, but are never protruded beyond the edges of the shell. When the fresh-water mussels are partly open, a fleshy border will be seen just wnthin the edges of the shell, and this is the border of the mantle, and corres[)onds to the same parts described in the snails ; the fringed membrane which formed the openings at the hinder part of the mussel is simply a continuation of the mantle. "When the shells are removed from the animal, the mantle will be found lining the shells, just as the blank pages line the inside of a book-cover. While the edge of the mantle deposits the successive layers, which increase the size of the shell, the entii'e surface of the mantle deposits the pearly substance which lines the inner surface of the shells, and which is so characteristic of the fresh-water mussels. Grains of sand, or other particles, getting in between the mantle and the shell, are soon covered by layers of pearly substance poured out, or secreted by the mantle. In this way pearls are formed. FRESH-WATER MOLLUSKS. 571 If pearls are broken open, a centre, or nucleus, will be found, con- sisting of some particle of dirt or sand, or some substance which had found its way by accident between the mantle and the shell, and around which the pearly matter has been formed in successive layers. B ^C30 0 O Fig. 10.—^, Pearly Concretions from a Fresh-water Mussel; B, Pearly Concretions from the Commou Oyster. In shells having a brilliant, pearly lining, or nacre, the pearls ob- tained are oftentimes very beautiful, and from certain Oriental species living in the sea, called Avicula, the most brilliant pearls of commerce are obtained. If, on the other hand, the nacre lining the shell is dull white, as in the common oyster, the pearls are dull colored. These kinds of pearls are often found in oysters. The Chinese have long been familiar with the art of making arti- ficial pearls. By partly opening the shells of certain fresh-water mus- sels, and inserting little lead images, or other objects, between the mantle and the shell, the objects soon become covered with a natural layer of pearl. Let us now study the markings on the inner surface of the shells of river-mussels. The shells of these creatures are called valves, and are spoken of as right or left valves, according to whether they are on the right or left side of the animal. Certain ridges and prominences will be seen at the hinge, and, when the valves are carefully joined, the ridges in one valve will correspond to grooves in the other valve. These ridges are called teeth. The short ones, near the beak, are called cardinal teeth, and the long ones lateral teeth. The margin upon which they occur is called the hinge- margin, for it is upon this margin that the valves turn. {See Fig. 11.) Certain scars, or impressions, will be found marking the inside of the valves, and these indicate the point of the attachment of certain muscles to move the valves, and to enable the animal to protrude its foot, and crawl along. These marks are hence called muscular marks, or muscular impressions, and will be found to correspond in the right and left valves. An irregular, round impression will be found at each end of the valve, near the hinge-margin. These show where the muscles are at- tached to move and close the valves, and hold them firmly together. The muscles run directly across from one valve to the other; and, to open a live mussel, it is necessary to pass a sharp blade between the 572 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. valves, and cut tlirough the muscles, before the valves will open. These muscles are called the adductor muscles^ and the scars or im- pressions on the valves are called the adductor muscular impressions. Very close to the adductor muscular impressions are seen smaller im- pressions, and these indicate where the muscles are attached whicli move the foot. These muscles are called the pedal muscles, and the impressions are called the pedal muscular impressions. One occurs just behind the anterior adductor impression ; the other will be found just above, and in front of the posterior adductor impression. Fig. 11.— The Eight Vaive of a Fresh- Water Mussel. f, Cardinal Teeth ; I, Lateral Tooth ; II, Lifcament ; aa. Anterior Adductor Impression ; pa, Poste rior Adductor Impression ; ap. Anterior Pedal Muscular Impression ; pp. Posterior Pedal Muscular Impression ; p, Pallial Line ; u, Umbone. Besides these marks, we see a delicate and slightly irregular line running from the anterior to the posterior muscular impression, just inside, and nearly parallel with the lower margin of the shell. This line is called the pallia! line, and indicates where the mantle is at- tached to the shell. It will be observed that, when the soft parts are removed from the shell, the mantle adheres along this line. When the mussel is opened by separating the adductor muscles with a knife, the valves slowly open, and after the animal is removed the valves still remain partly open, and, to preserve them closed, a string has to be tied around them, and in this condition, if the liga- ment is allowed to dry, the valves will then remain closed. From this it is evident that the ligament acts upon the valves to draw them apart. To keep them closed, then, the animal must continually exert itself by contracting the adductor muscles; and it will be found that, when these creatures are left in the water, undisturbed for a while, the muscles relax, and the valves partly open. The ligament is elastic, and is stretched as it were from one valve to the other, over the back. A possible imitation of the action might be represented by partly opening the lids of a book, and then gluing across the back, from one lid to the other, a sheet of elastic rubber. If, now, the lids are tiglitly HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 5*73 closed, the rubber is drawn out, or stretched across the back, and, if allowed to regain its elasticity, the lids are pulled apart. This experi- ment illusti*ates the way in which the ligament acts in those shells which have the ligament external. -♦■»♦- THE DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.' III. PUTTING aside, then, for the present, supernaturalism and all those views of God which are distinctively Christian, we find a theology in which all men, whether they consider it or not, do actually agree — that which is concerned with God in Nature. I do not here raise the question of causes or laws ; let it be allowed that Nature is merely the collective name of a number of coexistences and sequences, and that God has no meaning different from Nature. Let all this be al- lowed, or let the contrary of this be allowed. Such controversies may be raised about the human as well as about the Divine Being. Some may consider the human body as the habitation of a soul distinct and separable from it ; others may refuse to recognize any such distinc- tion ; some may maintain that man is merely the collective name for a number of processes ; some may consider the human being as pos- sessing a free-will and as being independent of circumstances; others may regard him as the necessary result of a long series of physical in- fluences. All these differences may be almost as important as they seem to the disputants who are occupied about them, but after all they do not affect the fact that the human being is there, and they do not prevent us from regarding him with strong feelings. The same is true of the Divine Being. Whatever may be questioned, it is certain that we are in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Being ; except through some of those exceptional perversions of the mind which I described in the last chapter, we cannot help the awe and admiration with which we contemplate him; we cannot help recognizing that our well-being depends on taking a right view of his nature. There are two ways in which the mind apprehends any object, two sorts of knowledge which combine to make complete and satis- factory knowledge. The one may be called theoretic or scientific knowledge ; the other practical, familiar, or imaginative knowledge. The greatest trial of human nature lies in the difiiculty of reconciling these two kinds of knowledge, of preventing them from interfering with one another, of arranging satisfactory relations between them. In order of time the second kind of knowledge has the pi-ecedence, and avails itself of this advantage to delay and impede the arrival of ' From a series of papers in Macmillan's Magazine, on " Natural Religion." 574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the first kind. Before the stars, the winds, the trees and plants, could be grasped scientifically, and the laws which govern them studied, they had been grasped, and as it were appropriated, by the human mind experimentally and imaginatively. The latter kind of knowl- edge was in some respects better than the foi-mer. It was more inti- mate and realized, so that, as far as it was true, it was more available. For practical purposes, accurate scientific knowledge of a thing is seldom sufiicient. To obtain complete practical command over it you must take possession of it with the imagination and feelings as well as the reason, and it will often happen that this imaginative knowledge, helped very slightly by scientific knowledge, carries a man practi- cally further than a very perfect scientific knowledge by itself. Wit- ness the instinctive, as we say, and unanalyzable skill sometimes possessed by savages. Moreover, this kind of knowledge is more attractive and interesting, and so has a more powerful modifying influence upon its possessor, than the other kind, for the simple reason that it takes hold of the most plastic side of his nature. But just because it is so fascinating, and is at the same time not by itself trustworthy, it has certain mischievous consequences when it comes, as it generally does, first. Then it fills the mind with preju- dices, hasty misconceptions, which, seizing upon the imagination, are stereotyped in the form of superstitions ; and these sometimes exercise by themselves a most pernicious influence, and in any case close the mind against the entrance of the sounder scientific knowledge. When this imaginative medley of observation and prejudice has long had possession, science arrives. Then follows a contest between the two kinds of knowledge, in which the human being suffers much. Truth cannot in the long-run be resisted, and so, after whatever defense, the fo-rtress is carried and the phantom garrison of superstition is driven out. The mind passes now under a new set of impressions, and places itself in a new relation to the universe. Its victory over superstition has been won by placing a careful restraint upon imagination and feeling. In order not to be misled by feeling, it has been forced arti- ficially to deaden feeling ; lest the judgment should be overwhelmed by the impressiveness of the universe, it arms itself with callousness ; it turns away from Nature the mobile side, and receives the shock upon the adamantine shield of the skeptical reason. In this way it substitutes one imperfect kind of knowledge for another. Before, it realized strongly, if that expression is clear, but scarcely analyzed at all ; now, it analyzes most rigidly, but ceases in turn to realize. As the victory of the scientific spirit becomes more and more decided, there passes a deep shudder of discomfort through the whole world of those whose business is with realizing, and not with testing, knowledge. Reli- gion is struck first, because the whole work of realizing presupposes faith, and yet, as the testing process comes late, faith is almost always more or less premature. But poetry and art suflTer in their turn. How HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 575 full has recent poetry been of this complaint ! One poet complains that " science withdraws the veil of enchantment from Nature ; " one ex- claims that " tliere was an awful rainbow once in heaven," but that science has destroved it : another declares that " we murder to dis- sect," that we should not be always seeking, but use "a wise passive- ness " in the presence of Nature ; another that " Nature made undi- vine is now seen slavishly obeying the law of gravitation ; " another buries himself in past ages " when men could still hear from God heavenly truth in earthly speech, and did not rack their brains." And yet to complain of the march of the scientific spirit seems as idle as to complain of the law of gravitation itself. Influenced, some by a deep faith in truth, a faith, I mean, that human well-being must depend ultimately on truth ; others by a fanatical truth-worship, de- termined to set up their idol even " amid human sacrifice and par- ents' tears ; " others by a scientific esprit de corps which hates re- ligion as belonging to a rival corporation ; others by that self-impor- tance which is gratified by inflicting pain so much more than by giving pleasure ; others by the tyrant's delight in having discovered a new and exquisite torture — influenced, in short, by all the mixed motives which have ever urged on a great destructive movement, the icono- clasts pursue their course. But we may look forward to a time when this transition shall be over, and when a new reconciliation shall have taken place between the two sorts of knowledge. In that happier age true knowledge, scientific, not artificially humanized, will reign with- out opposition, but, the claims of science once for all allowed, the mind will also apprehend the universe imaginatively, realizing what it knows. That kind of imaginative eclipse which is produced by the shadow of science passing over any natural object has afi"ected in turn the phenomena of Nature, taken separately, and man and God. The " fair humanities of old religion," which found objects of love in trees and streams, and filled the celestial map with fantastic living shapes — all this has long ago disappeared. More recently man has been subjected to the analyzing process. The mechanical laws which were traced in the physical world, it was long hoped, would never sufiice to explain the human being ; he at least would remain always mysteri- ous, spiritual, sacred. But nothing stops science ; hesitating between curiosity that drags him on and awe that holds him back, vexed not to know, yet half ashamed of knowing, man presses on into every sanctuary. He begins now to reckon his own being among things more than half explained ; nerve-force he thinks is a sort of electrici- ty ; man differs greatly, indeed, but not generically, from the brutes. AH this has for the time at least the efiect of desecrating human nature. To the imagination human nature becomes a thing blurred and spoiled, not really because the new view of it is in itself degrading, but be- cause the imagination had realized it otherwise, and cannot in any $7^ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. short time either part with the old realizing or perfect a new one. Lastly, Science turns her smoked eye-glass upon God, deliberately diminishing the glory of what she looks at that she may distinguish better. Here, too, she sees mechanism where will, purpose, and love, had been supposed before ; she dx-ops the name God, and takes up the less awful name of Nature instead. It is in this last case that the desecration produced by science is most painfully felt. This is partly, of course, because the sacredness violated was greatest here; but there is also another reason. Science cannot easily destroy our feeling for human beings. We are in such close contact with our own kind, our imagination and affections take such fast hold of our fellow-men, as to defy physiology. If it were otherwise we should want a word — Ananthropism — to answer to atheism. Even as it is the thing is occasionally to be seen. Among medical students there are not a few ananthropists, that is, men in whom human affections have not been strong enough to resist the effect of science in lowering the conception of humanity. But in gen- eral the imagination triumphs in this case over the reason. In the case of the physical world it is otherwise. This, for the majority of men, is, I fancy, almost completely desecrated, so that sympathy, com- munion with the forms of Nature, is pretty well confined to poets, and is generally supposed to be an amiable madness in them. But then this was not done by science, it had been done before by monkish Christianity. Chaucer complains, hundreds of years before the advent of physical science, of the divoi'ce that had been made between the imagination and physical nature — " But now may no man see none elves mo." It was owing, according to him, to the preachings and bannings of "limitours and other Jioly freres." Nature had been made not merely a dead thing, but a disgusting and hideous thing, by superstitions of imps, witches, and demons ; so much so that Goethe celebrates science as having restored Nature to the imagination and driven away the Walpurgisnacht of the middle ages ; and, indeed, by turning attention upon the natural world, by bringing a large number of people to take careful notice of its beauties, science may have given back to the imagination, in this department, as much as it has taken away. But the conception of God is so vast and elevated that it always slips easily out of the human mind. The task of realizing what is too great to be realized, of reaching with the imagination and growing with the affections to a reality almost too great for the one, and almost too awful for the other, is in itself exceptionally difiicult. To do this, and yet at the same time carefully to restrain the imaginations and affections as science prescribes, is almost impossible ; yet those who perpetually study Nature, unless they specialize themselves too much, will always in some sense feel the presence of God. The unity of what they study will sometimes come home to them and give a sense of HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 577 awe and delight, if not of love. But upon those who do not study Nature the advance of science can have no other effect than to root out of their minds the very conception of God, The negative effect is not counterbalanced by any positive one. With tliem, if the super- natural person whose will holds the universe together is denied, tlie effect is that the universe falls at once to pieces. No other unity takes his place, and out of the human mind there perishes the most elevating thought, and out of human life the chief and princij^al sacredness. Tlie remedy for this is to be found in the study of Nature becoming universal. Let all be made acquainted with natural laws ; let all form the habit of contemplating them, and atheism in its full sense will become a thing impossible, when no mind shall be altogether without the sense, at once inspiring and sobering, of an eternal order. But these remarks on the difficulty of harmonizing the scientific with the imaginative knowledge of things, are by way of digression. Our business at present is with the fact that knowledge is of these two kinds, anrl that the complete or satisfactory knowledge of any thing comes from combining them. When the object of knowledge is God, the first kind of knowledge is called theology, and the second may be called religion. By theology the nature of God is ascertained and false views of it eradicated from the understanding ; by religion the truths thus obtained are turned over in the mind and assimihited by the imagination and tlie feelings. When we hear it said, as it is said so commonly now, that the knowledge of God is impossible to man, and therefore that theology is no true science, of course the word God is used in that peculiar sense of which 1 have spoken above. Nature every one admits tliat we know or may know; but of any occult cause of phenomena, or of any supernatural being suspending the course of natural laws, it is denied that we can know any thing. But since every sort of theology agrees that the laws of Nature are the laws of God, it is evident that in knowing Nature we do precisely to the same extent know God. I am proposing for the present to treat the words of God and Nature as absolutely synonymous, which up to a certain point every one allows them to be. So long as we do so we are in no danger of tres- passing beyond the proper domain of human inquiry ; so long as Ave do so, theology, instead of being additional or antagonistic to science, is merely another name for science itself. Regarded in this way, we may say of God, that so far from being beyond knowledge, be is the one' object of knowledge, and that every thing we can know, every proposition we can frame, relates to liim. It may seem, however, that little is to be gained from giving this unusual sense to the word the- ology. If in the ordinary sense it is the name of an imaginary and delusive science, taken in this sense as a synonym for science itself, it is i)urely useless. By giving the word such an extension, it will be said, you destroy all its force. That we ought to study theology be- VOL. Til. — 37 578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. comes a truism if it means merely that all knowledge is valuable ; the old maxim, that in the knowledge of God is life, loses all its grandeur if it is interpreted to mean merely that the more things you know the more dangers you will be in a condition to avoid. Can we not, then, give more precision, more detiniteness, to the notion of the knowledge of God ? The notion is to. be limited in two ways, one of which has been partially indicated already. The scientific school themselves save us the trouble of explaining the first of these limitations ; it is they who, in this age, have made clear to every one the difl:erence between the study of the universe and mere universal study. When they tell us in the very language of theology that all hope and all happiness lies in the knowledge of Nature, that this is a treasure to be valued above rubies and precious stones, how do they limit the word Nature ? They mean it certainly to include the whole universe. What is it, then, that they exclude ? One would fancy at first sight that they are merely praising knowledge in general, and that they are not particu- lar about kinds of knowledge. Yet we know that they are remarka- bly exclusive in their notions of knowledge, and that they are as vehement in condemning some sorts as in recommending others. What is there, then , that can possibly be studied besides the uni- verse ? There is something which sets itself up as a just reflection of the universe, and which it is possible to study as if it were the universe itself; that is, the multitude of traditional unscientific opinions about the universe. These opinions are, in one sense, part of the universe ; to study them from the historic point of view is to study the universe ; but when they are assumed as an accurate reflection of it so as to di- vert attention from the original, as they are by all the votaries of authority or tradition, then they may be regarded as a spurious uni- verse outside and apart from the real one, and such students of ojjin- ion may be said to study and yet not to study the universe. This spurious universe is almost as great as the genuine one. There are many profoundly learned men whose whole learning i-elates to it, and has no concern whatever with reality. The simplest peasant who, from living much in the open air, has found for himself, unconsciously, some rules to guide him in divining the weather, knows something about the real universe ; but an indefatigable student, who has stored a prodi- gious memory with what the schoolmen have thought, what the phi- losophers have thought, what the Fathers have thought, may yet have no real knowledge ; he may have been busy only with the reflected universe. Not that the thoughts of dead thinkers stored up in books are not part of the universe as well as wind and rain ; not tliat they may not repay study quite as well ; they are deposits of the human mind, and by studying them much may be discovered about the hu- man mind, the ways of its operation, the stages of its development. HARM02^IES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 579 Noi' yet that the thoughts of the dead may not be of the greatest help to one who is studying tlie universe ; he may get from them sugges- tions, theories which he may put to the test, and thus convert, in some cases, into real knowledge. But there is a third way in which he may treat them which makes books the very antithesis to reality, and the knowledge of books the knowledge of a spurious universe. This is when he contents himself with storing their contents in his mind, and does not attempt to put them to any test, whether from superstitious reverence or from an excessive pleasure in mere language. He may show wonderful ability in thus assimilating books, wonderful reten- tiveness, wonderful accuracy, wonderful acuteness ; nay, if he clearly understands that he is only dealing with opinions, he may do good service in that department, for opinions need collecting and classify- ing as much as botanical specimens. But one often sees such collect- ors mistaking opinions for truths, and depending for their views of the universe entirely upon these opinions, which they accept implicitly without testing them. Such men may be said to study, but not to study the universe. There are other classes of men of whom much the same may be said. The scientific school, when they recommend the study of Na- ture, do not mean, for example, the mere collecting of facts, however authentic. Nature with them is not a heap of phenomena, but laws discerned in phenomena, and by a knowledge of Nature they mean a just conception of laws much more than an ample store of information about phenomena. Again, in an age like the present, when methods of inquiry have been laid down and tested by large experience, they do not dignify with the name of the study of Nature any investiga- tion, however earnest or fresh, of the facts of the world, which does not confoi-m to these methods, or show reason for not doing so. Knowledge of Nature understood in this sense, and obtained in this way, is what we are now told is alone valuable — what human happiness depends on. And assuredly it deserves to be called in the strictest sense theology. If God be the Ruler of the world, as the orthodox theology teaches, the laws of Nature are the laws by which he rules it. K you prefer the pantheistic view, they are the very manifestations of the Divine Nature. In any case the knowledge of Nature, if only it be properly sifted from the corrupting mixture of mere opinion, is the knowledge of God. That there may be another and deeper knowledge of God beyond it does not affect this fact. But is theology a mere synonym for science ? If so, the scientific man may fairly say : " I need not concern myself with it ; I have already a name for my pursuit which satisfies me ; it does not interest me to hear that there is another name which also is appropriate." Is there no special department of science which may be called theological, to distinguish it from the other departments? It is this which so many scientific men now deny. They say there is certainly such a special 58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. department, but it is not a department of science, for it lies outside the domain of science. It is concerned with causes, wliereas science knows nothing of causes ; it is concerned with supernatural phenom- ena which science puts aside as either impossible or unverified. All that this objection means is, that many theologies have been super- naturalistic, and have been occupied with causes, and that though as a matter of course they have not been exclusively supernaturalistic and occupied with causes, yet they have been so sufficiently to justify us in appropriating the word theology to systems that have these characteristics. To say, then, that theology is a spurious science, is to say that in most theological systems there is an element more or less predominant which is unscientific. But, even if it were con- venient to give to this element the name of theology, it would not follow because theology in this sense may be a spurious science — and etymologically theology is the science of God — that therefore the sci- ence of God is a spurious one. You may use the word theology in its etymological sense, or you may give it a more special technical sense to suit convenience ; but you must not confound the two senses of the word together. As I have said, all science beJongs properly to the science of God, and might legitimately be called theology. I believe also that there is a special department of knowledge which, Avith- out necessarily concerning itself with the supernatural, or with final causes, might both legitimately and conveniently be called theology. Considered in its practical bearings upon human life, the study of Nature resolves itself into the study of two things, a force within tlie human being, and a necessity without him. Life, in short, is a me- chanical problem, in which a power is reqiured to be so advantageous- ly applied as to overcome a weight which is greater than itself. The power is the human will, the weight is Xature, the motive of the struggle between them is certain ideals which man instinctively puts before himself — an ideal of happiness, or an ideal of perfection. By means of science he is enabled to apply the power in the most advan- tageous manner. Every piece of knowledge he acquires helps him in his undertaking. Every special science which he perfects removes a new set of obstacles, procures him a new set of resources. And in his conflict with natural difiiculties his energy and hope are in pro- portion to his power of knowing and measuring the force he has, and the resistance he will meet with. When he is able to measure this precisely, his hope becomes confidence even in circumstances which might seem the most alarming. We allow ourselves to be hurried through the air at the rate of fifty miles an hour, with a noise and impetus appalling to a by-stander, and all the while read or sleep comfortably. Why ? Because the forces we have set in motion are all accurately measured, the obstacles to be met fully known. When the measurement is only approximate, there is not confidence, but only hope predominating over fear. The experienced sailor feels HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 581 this ; he trusts himself to the open sea, because he knows that he is pretty well nnxtched against the necessity he provokes, though he cannot know that he is the superior because he can calculate a good many of the dangers, though not all. This is the case in each of the separate undertakings that make up life. To each of thera belongs its appropriate knowledge, upon which our equanimity and repose of mind, as far as the particular undertak- ing is concerned, depend. But life itsef, taken as a whole, is an un- dertaking. Life itself has its objects which make it interesting to \is, which lead us to bear the burden of it. These objects, like those minor ones, are only to be attained by a struggle between the power Will and the weight Nature, and in this struggle also both energy and success depend upon a certain knowledge which may enable us to apply the power with advantage. But the knowledge required in this case is of a more general kind ; it is not a knowledge confined to cer- tain sets of phenomena, and giving us a power correspondingly limited, but it is a general knowledoe of the relation in which human life stands to the universe, and of the means by which life may be brought into the most satisfactory adaptation to it. Now, by what name shall we call this knowledge ? Every one has his general views of human life, which are more or less distinct. Upon these general views more than upon any thing- else connected with the understanding depends the character of every one's life. Morality is theoretically independent of all such views, but practically and in the long-run it varies with them. What has life to give ? How far does it lend itself to our ideals ? These are practi- cally questions quite as important to morality as those which lie with- in the province of morality itself — as the questions, what are or what ought to be our ideals ? They are also quite as important to human happiness as all particular measures contrived to increase human hap- piness. No man fights with any heart if he thinks he has Nature against him. If a man believes that men are not made to be happy, he will lose the energy to do even what can be done for their happi- ness ; he will give up the pursuit of virtue if he meets with more than a cei-tain degree of discouragement in it. Of an unfavorable view of human life there are three principal consequences — crime, languor, and suicide. The majority of crimes, and still more of meannesses, it seems to me, are not committed from bad intentions, but from a despair of human life. " I am sorry, but I must do it ; I am driven to it ; everybody has to do it ; we must look at things as they are ; " these ai'e the reflections which lead men into breaches of morality. " Sic vimtur^'' says Cicero, selling Tullia. The feeling that life will not allow people to do always what is right, faint perhaps in each individual mind, grows strong when many who share it come together: it grows stronger by being uttered, stronger still by being acted upon ; it creates an atmosphere of laxity ; morality 582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. retires more and more out of view; until tlic thouglit of crime itself, and even of enormous crime, becomes familiar, and at last is carried almost unconsciously into act. It is not, then, from want of morality that men do wrong, but from want of another sort of knowledge. They know what is right and what is wrong ; it is not from overlooking this distinction that they fall into the wrong, nor would they escape the dan- ger by reflecting upon it ever so much. What determines their action is a belief in some sort of necessity, some fatality with which it is vain to struggle ; it is a general view of human life as unfavorable to ideals. Another such general view of human life produces apathy. A man who has persuaded himself that we are the creatures of circumstances, or that we are the victims of laws with which it is impossible for us to cope, will give up the battle Avith Nature and do nothing. Per- haps he has his head full of instances of the best endeavors after hap- piness failing entirely, or by some fatality producing extreme unhap- piness ; of the purest and noblest labors producing mischief which comjDlete inactivity would have avoided; how Queen Isabella intro- duced the Inquisition ; how Las Casas initiated the slave-trade ; how pauperism has been over and over again fostered by i:)hi]anthrop»y ; how the Prince of Peace himself, according to his OAvn saying, brought a sword upon the earth. He may think that human life, as it runs on naturally, is not a bad thing, but that all attempts to control it or im- prove it are hopeless ; that all high ideals are merely ambitious ; that purpose and, still more, system and all sophistication of life are mis- chievous. And so he may come to renounce all free-will, he may re- sign himself to the current of ordinary affairs, and become a mere con- ventionalist, reconciling himself to whatever he does not like, and gradually induced to tolerate with complete indifference the most enormous evils. Against such a perversion of mind morality is no defense ; what is needed is not anew view of what ought to be — such a man knows well enough what ought to be — but a new view of what can or may be, a more encouraging view of the universe. Sometimes the despair of human life goes to a much greater length. Human, life is a game at which we are not forced to play ; we may at any time throw i;p the cards. That only a few do so proves that more or less distinctly most of us have a general view of life not altogether unfavorable. We are for the most part hardly aware of this general view, because it is always the same. We should become painfully aware of it if it were suddenly to change. There is, as it were, a suicide-mark below which our philosophy is always liable to sink. If we came to think life irreconcilably opposed to our ideals, and at the same time were enthusiastically devoted to our ideals, life would be- come intolerable to us. If our sense of the misery or emptiness of life became for some reason much more keen than it is, life would at last become intolerable to us. With individuals one of these two things is constantly taking place ; they might just as well take place with HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 583 whole societies or nations. Something of the kind happened with the Stoics of the imperial period. Their philosophy was only just above suicide-mark, and was continually dropping below it. In Asia the same is ti'ue of whole populations, with whom the value of life has sunk to the very lowest point. Of all these classes of men we say very justly that they want faith. Their criminality or languor or despair are the consequences of their having no faith. But we sometimes express the same thing differently and say that they have no God, no theology. With our Christian habit of connecting God with goodness and love, we confuse together the notions of a theology and a faith. Let us reflect that it is quite possible to have a theology without having a faith. We may believe in a God, but a God unfavorable, hostile, or indifferent to us. In the same way we may believe in a God neither altogether friendly nor altogether the reverse. The different pagan theologies were of this kind, and even many Christian sects, while nominally holding the per- fect benevolence of God, have pi'actically worshiped a Being who in this respect did not differ from the pagan deities. It would be legitimate to call such general views of the relation of Nature to our ideals by the name of theology in all cases, and not merely those particular general views which are encouraging. If we believe that Nature helps us in our strivings, we have both a theology and a faith ; if we believe that Nature is indifferent to us, or hostile to us, we have no faith, but we have still a theology. We have still a definite notion of God's dealings with us. And this use of the word is not only justified by its etymology ; it is much more conformable to actual usage. To identify theology with the doctrine of the super- natural is, as I have pointed out, to narrow the meaning of the word unnaturally, and to appropriate it to a particular part of a jDarticular theological system. The practical effect of giving this technical sense to a word which in the common understanding has a much larger meaning, is to produce a deception. When those who reject the super- natural declare theology to be exploded, they are commonly under- stood to mean that a vast mass of doctrine, partly moral, partly his- torical, partly jihysical, in which the supernatural is mixed up, is ex- ploded, whereas all tliey really say is that just that part is exploded which is supported only by the evidence of the supernatural. In like manner it is but a small part of what is commonly understood by theology that has to do with final causes, and yet those who consider final causes not objects of knowledge are fond of drawing the infer- ence that all theological systems must be systems of spurious knowl- edge. Sometimes this juggle which is practised witli the Avord the- ology becomes grotesquely apparent, and a skeptic will tell us in the same breath that theology deals with matters entirely beyond the range of human intellect, and that theology has been refuted by the discovei'ies of modern science. 584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The questions which we ull understand to be theological are such as these : Is there a reward for virtue ? Is there a compensation for undeserved misery? Is there a sure retribution for crime? Is there hope that the vicious man may become virtuous ? Are there means by which the pressure upon the conscience produced by wrong-doing may be removed? Are there means by which the mind disposed to virtue may defend itself from temptation ? In one word, is life worth having, and the universe a habitable place for one in whom the sense of duty has been awakened ? These questions are answered in difter- ent ways by different men. But they are answered in some way by all men, even by those who consider themselves to have no theology at all. Christianity is the system which answers them in the most encoul-aging way. It says that virtue in the long-run will be happy partly in this life, but much more in a life beyond the grave. It says that misery is jjartly the punishment of crime, partly the probation of virtue ; but in the inexhaustible future which belongs to each individual man there are equivalents and over-payments for all that part of it whicli is undeserved. It says that virtue, when tried, may count upon help, secret refreshings that come in answer to prayer — friends provi- dentially sent, perhaps guardian angels. It says that souls entangled in wrong-doing may raise themselves out of it by a mystic union with Christ, and burdened consciences be lightened by sharing in the infi- nite merit of his self-sacrifice. If you ask on what so happy and in- spiring a belief rests, the evidence produced is in part supernatural. This is not only a theology but a faith, the most glorious of all faiths. But those who do not heartily share it, or who consciously reject it, yet give some answer to these questions. They have a the- ology as much as Christians ; they must even have a faith of some sort, otherwise they would renounce human life. It may be stated, perhaps, much as follows : " We have not much reason to believe in any future state. We are content to look at human life as it lies visibly before us. Survey- ing it so, we find that it is indeed very different from what we could wish it to be. It is full of failures and miseries. Multitudes die with- out knowing any thing that can be called happiness, while almost all know too well what is meant by misery. The pains that men endure are frightfully intense, their enjoyments for the most part moderate. They are seldom aware of happiness while it is present, so very deli- cate a thing is it. When it is past they recognize it, or perhaps fancy it. If we could measure all the happiness there is in the world, we should perhaps be rather pained than gladdened by discovering the amount of it ; if we could measure all the misery we should be ap- palled beyond description. When from happiness we pass to the moral ideal, again we find the world disappointing. It is not a sacred place any more than it is a happy place. Vice and crime very fre- quently prosper in it. Some of the worst of men are objects of enthu- HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 585 siastic admiration unci emulation. Some of the best have been hated and persecuted. Much virtue passes away entirely unacknowledged ; much flagrant hypocrisy succeeds in its object. " Still on the wliole we find life worth having. The misery of it we find ourselves able to forget, or callously live through. Fortu- nately we have not imaginations strong enough to realize the sum of it, and we contrive to turn our thoughts away from the subject. And though the happiness is not great, the variety and novelty are. Life is interesting, if not happy. In spite of all the injustice which shocks us in human destiny, the inequality with which fortune is meted out, yet it may be discerned that, at least in the more fortunate societies, justice is the rule and injustice the exception. There are laws by which definite crimes are punished, there is a force of opinion which reaches vaguer offenses, and visits even dispositions to vice with a certain penalty. Virtue is seldom without some reward, however in- adequate ; if it is not recognized generally or publicly, it finds here and there an admirer, it surrounds itself with a little circle of love ; when even this is wanting it often shows a strange power of reward- ing itself. On the whole, we are sustained and reconciled to life by a certain feeling of hope, by a belief, resting on real evidence, that things improve and better themselves around us." This is certainly a very different faith from Christianity. Whether it deserves to be called a faith at all, whether it justifies men in living and in calling others into life, maybe doubted. But it is just as much a theology as Christianity. It deals with just the same questions and gives an answer to them, though a diftereut answer. Both views, whatever may be professed, are views about God. Christianity re- gards God as a friend ; it says that he is Love. The other view re- gards him as awful, distant, inhuman, yet not radically hostile. It is said that such vague, general views do not deserve to be called science. This is of course admitted. There exists at the pres- ent moment no scientific theology independent of the supernatural and of the search for final causes. But this is not because no such theology can be constructed, but merely because it has not yet been con- structed. Evidently it is constructing itself fast. The more men come to know Nature and to feel confidence in their knowledge, the more eagerly they will consider what is the attitude of Nature toward human beings. This question is not one which is in' any way removed froiu human knowledge, it is not one which it can be considered mor- bid to betray curiosity about. Yet this is the question of theology. Not only is it the only question with which theology ought to be con- cerned ; it is the only question with which theology ever has been con- cerned. The theologies of the world ai'e merely different attempts to answer it. If they have for the most part trespassed upon the domain of the supernatural, this has not been because theology is necessarily concerned with the supernatural, but in some cases because the line 586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. between the natural and supernatural had not been clearly drawn, in some cases because it was honestly believed that supernatural occur- rences had happened and could be substantiated by suflBcient evidence, and that such occurrences were calculated to throw new light upon the relation of God to man. If this belief was a delusion, theology must fall back upon the evidence of Nature. She may have to alter her idea of God, she may have to regard liim with fear and cold awe as in the days before the Gospel was published; she may cease to be a faith, and may become instead an oppression — a scientific superstition. But theology will remain notwithstanding a perfectly legitimate sci- ence, one which, whether under that name or under another, men will always study with an interest they can feel in no other, one which stands in a more intimate relation than any other to morality, and must always be taught in conjunction with morality. We lay it down, then, that the subject of theology is the relation assumed by the universe toward human ideals, and, as we propose here to waive the question of the supernatural and to treat the universe as consisting solely of the order of Nature, this will be the same thing for our present purpose as the relation assumed by Nature toward human ideals. But here we must beware of a common misconception. It is often said that when you substitute Nature for God you take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness. Undoubt- edly the God in whom Christians believe has much more of love and goodness than can be discovered in Nature. But when it is said that there are no such qualities in Nature, that Nature consists of relent- less and ruthless laws, that Nature knows nothing of forgiveness, and inexorably exacts the utmost penalty for every transgression, a con- fusion is made between two different meanings which may be given to the word Nature. We are concerned here with Nature as opj^osed to that which is above Nature, not with Nature as opposed to man. We use it as a name comprehending all the uniform laws of the universe as known in our experience, and excluding svich laws as are inferred from experiences so exceptional and isolated as to be difficult of veri- fication. In this sense Nature is not heartless or unrelenting ; to say so would be equivalent to saying that pity and forgiveness are in all cases supernatural. It may be true that the law of gravitation is quite pitiless, that it will destroy the most innocent and amiable person with as little hesitation as the wrong-doer. But there are other laws which are not pitiless. There are laws under which human beings form themselves into communities, and set up law courts in which the claims of individuals are weighed with the nicest skill. There are laws under which churches and philanthropical societies are formed, by which misery is sought out and relieved, and every evil that can be discovered in the world is redressed. Nature in the sense in which we are now using the word, includes human nature, and therefore, so far from being pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 587 human family, and all the pity that they have accumulated, and, as it were, capitalized in institutions, political, social, and ecclesiastical, through countless generations. People are misled by the fact that Nature is often used in another sense, and opposed, not to the supernatural, but to man. Kature is, for shortness, often put instead of inanimate Nature. Inanimate Nature is of course pitiless. It consists of laws which, like the law of gravitation, take no note of happiness or misery, virtue or vice. But if we abandoned our belief in the supernatural, it would not be only Nature in this restricted sense that would be left to us ; we should not give ourselves over, as it is often rhetorically described, to the mercy of merciless powers — winds and waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and fire. The God we should believe in would not be a passionless, uttei-ly inhuman power. He would indeed be a God, often neglecting us in our need, a God often deaf to prayers. Nature including human- ity would be our God. We should read his character not merely in the earthquake and fire, but also in the still small voice ; not merely in the destroying powers of the world, but, as Mohammed said, in the compassion that we feel for one another; not merely in the storm that threatens the sailor with death, but in the life-boat and the Grace Darling that put out from shore to the rescue ; not merely in the intricate laws that confound our prudence, but in the science that penetrates them and the art which makes them subservient to our pur- poses ; not merely in the social evils that fill our towns with misery and cover our frontiers with war, but in the St. Francis that makes himself the brother of the miserable, and in the Fox and Penn that proclaim principles of peace, Let us take one of the principal maxims of the supernatural theol- ogy, and observe how it is modified by the rejection of the supernatu- ral. Tliat the just man will assuredly be rewarded with happiness is a maxim resting upon evidence involving the supernatural. It depends upon belief in a God of much more goodness and justice than we can find in Nature ; it assumes a future state of which science furnishes no clear evidence. Even when the Psalmist, speaking merely of the present life, wrote, " I have been young, and now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread," he perhaps thought of supernatural interpositions by wkich evil was averted from the just man. Suppose, now, that we repudiate all such beliefs, and confine ourselves strictlv to the facts of Nature as we dis- cover them from uniform experience. Let us suppose that the ordi- nary laws of Nature govern the lot of the just man, and that no ex- emptions are made in his favor. Do we find that these ordinary laws take no account of his justice, and that his prospects are in no respect different from those of the unjust man ? Is Nature, as distinguished from the supernatural, regardless of the distinction between virtue and vice ? No doubt Nature is not a perfectly just judge. The just 588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ni:in has misfortunes like the unjust; he may suft'er from accident or disease. His justice may be denied; he may suffer the penalties of injustice. All this may happen in particular cases, and yet no one doubts that on the whole the just man reaps a reward for his justice. A very simple law oj^erates to reward him. By his justice he benefits the community, and the community, partly out of gratitude, partly out of an interested calculation, repay him for the service he has done. This law fails of its effect in a good number of cases, but in the ma- jority of cases it does not fail. And when it fails, it seldom fails altogether. There is generally some reward for justice, if not always an adequate reward. Accordingly, not only Christians, or those who believe in something more than Nature, but those whose only God is Nature, and even those whose knowledge of Nature is very superficial, fully recognize that virtue is rewarded. " Honesty is the best policy " has become a proverb, and hypocrites have come into existence hoping to secure the reward without deserving it. We see, then, that those who believe in Nature only may be said to believe not only in a God, but, in some sense, in a personal God. Their God, at least, has so much of personality that he takes account of the distinction of virtue and vice, that he punishes crime, and that he relieves distress. — Mac- niillan''s Magazine. THE GREAT IOWA METEOR. By De. GUSTAVUS HINEICHS. ON the evening of Friday, February 12, 1875, at twenty minutes past ten o'clock, one of the most brilliant meteors, of modern times illuminated the entire State of Iowa, and adjacent parts of the States of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The southeastern portion of Iowa was bright as day, while the great meteor, in descend- ing to the earth, passed from Appanoose County to Iowa County. The meteor, in i*apidly moving through the atmosphere, produced a great variety of sounds — rolling, rumbling, and detonations of fearful intensity — which in a large portion of Iowa County shook the houses as if moved by an earthquake. But three days after the great phenomenon, a meteoric stone, weighing seven pounds, was found by Miss Sarah Sherlock, while on her way from scliool — precisely where observers had seen a "glowing coal " descend to the earth. In April and May, while the farmers were cultivating the land, about 400 pounds of meteoric stones were gathered on the meteorite-field of Iowa County. Quite recently two large meteorites have been found, aggregating 120 pounds. But these 500 pounds of meteoric stones apparently are only a portion of a smaller fragment of the entire meteoric body, so that the whole mass THE GREAT IOWA METEOR. 589 falling to the earth, as the great Iowa meteor of February 12, 1875, must have weighed aboiit 5,000 pounds. Even what has been gathered thus far permits us to rank this meteor among the best observed and richest in meteorites on record. Such are the meteors of Pultusk, Poland (January 30, 1868) ; Knya- hiuya, Hungary (June 9, 1866); Orgueil, France (May 14, 1864); Guernsey County, Ohio (May 1, 1860) ; Parnallee, India (February 28, 1857) ; and L'Aigle, France (April 26, 1803). Thinking that so remarkable a meteor and so rich a shower of meteorites deserve the attention of the readers of The Populak Sci- ence Monthly, we oifer a short description of them, and shall close with a few suggestions in regard to the origin of these bodies, and their place in the grand history of cosmos. I. The Great Iowa Meteor.' — The great Iowa meteor consisted of an elongated, pear-shaped mass of the most dazzling whiteness. The bulk of this mass was about 2,000 feet long and 400 feet in diameter; the narrow white trail was about 4,000 feet long and 40 feet in diame- ter. This body was posteriorly enveloped by a much less brilliant trail, shading from orange inside to greenish outside, and extending about nine miles along the described path of the meteor. Persons in the track of the meteor saw a brilliant circular disk of white light, surrounded by an orange to greenish halo, the dim light of which was constantly traversed by narrow bands of brilliant white, running from the central disk in irregulai-ly-curved lines toward the cii-cumference. As this body, increasing in brilliancy and apparent magnitude, was rapidly approaching, both men and animals were overcome with fear. The meteor, when by striking the atmosphere of the earth it be- came visible, was at an altitude of 150 miles vertically above the little village of Pleasantville, about midway between Kirksville and Milan, in Northern Missouri. Descending at an angle of about 45° tow- ard the earth's surface, it moved a little east of north, gradually de- viating more and more toward the east, so as to describe a curve,^ the concavity of which is turned eastward. This track of the meteor passed a couple of miles east of Centreville and Moravia in Appa- noose County, Iowa; almost directly over Eddyville on the Des Moines River; crossed almost diagonally the northeastern (Prairie) township of Keokuk County ; passed one and a half mile east of Marengo in Iowa Cou.nty, and finally exploded over a point three miles southwest of the little station of Norway on the Chicago & Northwest- ern Railway, over the boundary-line of Benton and Iowa Counties, at an altitude of about ten miles. ^ The facts in regard to the meteor we have collected from the very full and reliable "Account of the Detonating Meteor of February 12, 1875. By C. W. Irish, C. E., Iowa City, Iowa, Daily Press Job-Printing Office, 1873." ^ The total length of the orbit is 210 miles ; the time during which the meteor de- scribed this orbit was about ten seconds : hence the velocity was about 21 miles a second. 59° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. While the meteor crossed the northwestern (Prairie) township of Keokuk County, it was seen to divide into two unequal parts, a small eastern portion continuing its motion northeastward, but soon losing its brilliancy, and a seven to fourteen times greater western portion which remained intensely brilliant until its tinal explosion. It teas the smaller portion of the meteor which produced the meteorite shower in Iowa and Amana Toicnships of Iowa County; hence it is highly probable that several thousand pounds of meteorite, some in pieces of over a hundred pounds, will yet be found east and north of the final explosion of the main portion of the meteor, that is, in Florence Town- ship of Benton County, in Fairfax Township of Linn County, and in Lenox Township of Iowa County. In fact, observers have seen " large glowing coals," as they call them, fall in this region where Linn, Ben- ton, and Iowa Counties meet. Willie dividing, the meteor produced two tremendous detonations, and, after the main body had crossed the railroad at Marengo, it pro- duced three terrific detonations, which shook the buildings for miles around, so as to create in the residents the fear of an earthquake. Besides these detonations, the meteor was accompanied with a variety of other sounds, heard over a circular area of 150 miles in diameter. To those farthest away from the orbit it sounded as if their chimney was on fire, and an astonishingly large number of persons missed the sight of the meteor because they hurried to their stoves and flues to check the apparent fire. Those nearer the track heard a prolonged rumbling and rolling sound, which they compare to that produced by the running of a train over a high and long trestle-bridge. Others, still nearer the region of final explosion, hurried up-stairs, thinking that the plastering had fallen on the heads of their childi-en sleeping in the upper story. Many in this same region heard the clank and clatter of heavy, hard bodies striking against each other, or against the hard ground. II. The Iowa County Meteorites. — The meteorites thus far found occur in an elliptical area stretching from Amana vor der Huhe, in Amana Township, to Boltonville, in low^a Township, a distance of eight miles. The minor axis of this ellipse measures about three miles. The entire meteorite-field of Iowa County thus far covers, therefore, an area of eighteen square miles. In the northwest the largest pieces are found ; toward the southeast, the meteorites become gradually smaller. This agrees with their derivation from the minor portion of the meteor. As the entire drift was eastward, the resist- ance of the air would, to some extent, produce precisely this distribu- tion of the meteorites according to size. The pa-incipal village near the meteorite region is Homestead,* a ' I gratefully acknowledge many personal obligations to residents of this place, espe- cially to Messrs. William Moerschel, Frederick Moerschel, Geisler, Fehr, Dickel, Noe, and others. THE GREAT IOWA METEOR. 591 station on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, about twenty- miles west of Iowa City. This little station became the headquarters Fig. 1. — Iowa Township, Iowa Countt, Iowa. of the " meteor-brokers ; " for two dollars a pound had been offered for all these stones. Enormous pi'otits ' were made, creating a " meteor excitement " in the region. !FiG. 2. — Iowa County Meteorites. ^ One lot of stones, weighing 44 pounds, was found by Mr. Espenlaub on his hind at A, section six, Iowa Township. The above-mentioned agent bought this of Mr. Espen- laub for $2.50, and sold it to an astronomer for $88, thus making a profit of $85.50 on an outlay of $2. .50. 592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Mineralogy pertaining to my chair of physical science in the Iowa State University, I felt it my duty to furnish the mineralogical cabi- nets with good specimens of the meteorites which fell in my neighbor- hood. I have, througli the personal and financial assistance of the Hon. John P. Irish, of Iowa City, brought together three collections, the first two of which have been photogra])hed. The subjoined cut is a copy of the photograph of tlie first collection. It shows the gen- eral form of each of the specimens, numbered in the order of their weight. The photographs themselves, in one-fiftli natural size, are very excellent, permitting even a close study of the granulations and surface. The above cut gives the specimens in one-seventh of their natural size. The following catalogue gives the specimens of my collections in the order of their weight. The numbers correspond with those on the map of Iowa Township. No. 0 on the map indicates the " Sher- lock Stone," the first one found : Collection Wei ght, Weight in Presented to t)ie I. II. III. Lbs. Oz. Grammes. MineralQi^ical Mut^eum of .. .. 21 . . . . 20 1 . . . . 21 12 10 00 4 4 9,,500 5,761 4,650 Paris. 2 8 5 3,793 London. 3 .. .. 8 0 3,620 3,562 . . 10 . . 7 13 .. 11 .. 7 3 3,268 St. Petersburg. . . 12 . . 6 10 3,013 2 856 4 . . . . 6 5 Vienna. .. 13 .. 5 14 2,663 Brussels. 5 .. .. 5 3 2,634 Copenhagen. .. 14 .. 5 7 2,464 Haarlem. 6 .. .. 5 0 2,274 Berlin. .. 15 .. 4 11 2,142 Paris. 7 .. .. 4 8 2,040 Cliristiania. 8 .. .. 4 0 1,819 Stockholm. .. 16 .. 3 6 1,545 Munich. 9 . . . . 2 3 997 Lausanne. .. 17 .. .. 18 .. .. 19 .. 1 1 1 7 4 4 669 567 560 West Point, New York. Total 1 13] 01) 60,500 But a few days ago (on June 30th) I received a dispatch from the meteorite headquarters that quite a large specimen had been found. Since, an additional, somewhat smaller stone has been found on the same section of land, namely, on section thirty of the township, direct- ly north of Iowa Township — or about two miles nortli of the spot ji in section six of tlie map, but a little south of the society village called Amana vor der Hohe. I have visited this place, and been kindly per- mitted to examine these truly beautiful specimens. The larger me- teorite forms an ii-regular, rounded rhomb, 15 inches diagonal and 8 THE GREAT IOWA METEOR. 593 inches thick; it weighs V5 pounds, or 33.6 kilogrammes, and is com- j)letely covered with a black crust, i. e., a complete stone. The smaller meteorite forms an irregular rhomboid, the diagonals of which are 16 and 10 inches, while it is 12 inches thick; it weighs 48^ pounds, or 21.1 kilogrammes. One of its sides has but a secondary crust, so that another piece of perhaps 20 pounds must be found in the neighborhood. The smallest complete stone is in the possession of Mr. William Moer- schel ; it is a lenticular stone, weighing two ounces only. The largest stone found weighs, therefore, 624 times as much as the smallest ! The two admirable specimens just described belong to the largest meteoric stones * on record, as may be seen from the following table, which, however, is probably not quite complete below forty kilo- grammes. Meteokite of In Museum at Weight. Lbs. Kilogrammes. Knyahinya, 1866 Murcia (?) Vienna 614 251 147 103 92 74 48.5 35 33 22 21 279 114 67 46.7 42 33.6 21.1 16.0 15 9.9 9.5 Madrid (?) London Parnallee, 1857 Guernsey County, I860.. . Juvinas, 1821 Marietta, 0 Paris Amana Society Iowa County, 1875 Iowa County, 1875 Ohaba, 1857 Amana Society Vienna Vouille, 1831 Paris Mezo-Madaras, 1852 Iowa County, 1875 Vienna No. 21, Hinricbs's collection . The Amana Society has confided these two remarkable specimens to me for study. They appear to have formed but one stone when the meteor first struck our atmosphere. The number of meteorites thus far found in Iowa County is about one hundred; the total weight is over 500 lbs., or 225 kilogrammes. The Iowa County meteorites are all alike, bounded by irregular plane surfaces, indicating the usual fragmentary nature of meteorites. They are all covered with a black crust, formed during the cosmical part of their motion through the earth's atmosphere. This crust is not due to fusion, but simply to the heating of the outer layer of the stone to a red heat, as has been proved by Meunier. Indeed, the gray mass of these meteorites turns very readily black by exposure to a red heat. The surface of these meteorites shows all the ordinary impressions of meteoric stones; the finger-marks, granulations, ripples simulating the flow of fused matter, etc. The anterior side is, as commonly, deeper black than the posterior side; the latter has the smaller finger-marks. ' Of meteoric irona many of much greater weight are found in museums. The largest of all is the Cranhourne iron, Australia, of 4,000 kilogrammes, at the British Museum. Next in weight is the Charcas iron, weighing 780 kilogrammes, at the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The largest iron in the K. K. Hof-Mineralienkabinet at Vienna is from Elbogen, Bohemia, and weighs 78 kilogrammes. VOL. TII. — 38 594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY These meteorites are exceedingly tough, so that it is difficult to break them up ; this is due to the iron grains being partly connected by fibres and folia. Still, the nickeliferous iron is present in detached masses, or occurs sporadically in the stone. Hence these meteorites belong to the great class of Sjioradosideres of Daubree. In this class Daubree distinguishes three species : those containing much, little, or but very little iron, so that it can only be recognized by a magnifier or a microscope ; these species he designates as Poly-, Oligo-, and Krypto-Sporadosideres. Accordingly, the Iowa County meteorites are Oligo-Sporadosidi,res, that is, meteoric stones containing but little plainly visible metallic iron, in detached grains. I find that these stones contain seven per cent., by weight, of metallic iron. The spe- cific gravity of these meteorites is, therefore, rather low, namely 3.57. The fracture is very rough and uneven, showing the lustrous metallic iron, and also irregularly rounded spots of lighter gray to white on the dark-gray ground. These rounded stony concretions show very well on a ground surface of the stone; they have given rise to the name Chondrites, introduced by G. Rose, for this class of me- teorites. I find that the grains of lighter color contain less of iron sili- cate, but otherwise are composed of the same minerals. These minerals are essentially two, namely, Olivine, which is solu- ble in muriatic acid, and Pyroxene, which is not soluble in this acid. Besides, the stone contains some troilite, that is, iron sulphide. The following table gives the mineralogical composition of the Iowa County meteorites, according to a number of analyses : ( Troilite 1.8 Non-Magnetic ■< Olivine 52.9 ( Pyroxene. 44.9 Magnetic Nickeliferous Iron. . . 7.5 The olivine is the variety known as Hyalosiderite, which contains two atoms of magnesium to each atom of iron. In the pyroxene of these meteorites the same ratio of iron and magnesium obtains ; hence this variety is Hypersthene. The following table gives the result of my analyses of the average composition of the Iowa County meteorites : Soluble 54.7 Insoluble 44.9 METEORITES. i "3 o .a 02 Ferrous Oxide. .3 to 03 6 3 C3 in g 5 NoN-MAG^fETIC : Troilite 1.1 0.7 (1.5) 15.2 8.8 1.8 52.9 44.9 0.4 TTvfilosidprite 17.5 9.7 0.6 2.2 19.6 24.2 TTvnpr^thpnp Loss, traces Sum 1.1 6.6 0.9 0.7 24.0 27.2 2.8 43.8 100.0 7.5 Magnetic : Nickeliferous Iron . Total 7.7 0.9 0.7 24.0 27.2 2.8 43.8 107.5 THE aREAT IOWA METEOR. 595 A trace of mauganese remains with the ferrous oxide — also a small amount of alumina. The trace of sodium is sufficient to give a brilliant line in the spectroscope ; the lithium-line, while quite distinct, is not bi'illiant. An extended report of my examination of the Iowa County meteor- ite will be published, as soon as the more careful investigation of the concretions shall have been completed, which examination is delayed for want of material. I am unwilling to sacrifice any of the fine speci- mens above enumerated for this purpose. III. The Oeigij^ of Meteoeites. — The researches of Daubree and Meunier, of Paris, have demonstrated that meteorites are fragments of one or more planetary bodies, which, by some great convulsion, has been broken to pieces. Furthermore, we possess abundant evidence that the earth, in its structure, corresponds, at different depths, to the different varieties of meteorites : from those without iron (Asyderes), through the Oligosideres to those consisting exclusively of nickelifer- ous iron (Syssyderes). Hence if our earth, through the action of some cause, should be broken to pieces, these pieces would be meteorites and describe orbits around the sun similar to and near by the orbit of the earth. But the cosmical spaces are filled with a very rare, slightly-resist- ant medium. Hence, the fragments being different in density and in dimensions, would be differently affected by this resisting medium. The smaller fragments and those of less density would lose their ve- locity of revolution around the sun more rapidly than those of greater size and higher density. In other words, all fragments would, while revolving around the sun, also descend toward the same, bat at differ- ent rates : the smaller and lighter fragments would sink faster than the larger and heavier. These terrestrial meteorites would, therefore, gradually reach the orbits of the inner planets. On Venus first would appear meteorites composed of the rocks of our earth's superficial crust, limestone, shales, quartz, granite, serpentine, etc. These would be associated with small meteorites of more dense materials derived from the deeper portions of • the earth. At a later period, Venus would receive terrestrial meteorites from deeper portions of our earth, corresponding to Oligosideres. These would also be associated with small meteorites of denser mate- rials, thus foreshadowing the third meteorite era, in which the dense masses of the interior metallic core of our earth would have sunk far enough toward the sun to reach the orbit of Venus. The mechanical problem herein involved I pretty completely solved about ten years ago.' Now, it is furthermore well understood that it will be a long time ' "On the Density, Rotation, and Relative Age of the Planets," American Journal of Scie>ic€s, 1864, vol. xsxvii. " Introduction to the Mathematical Principles of the Nebu- lar Theory, or Planetology," America7i Journal of Sciences, 1865, vol. xxxix. 596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. before the earth is so broken up ; for celestial bodies pass through their cosmical cj^cles in times somewhat proportional to their magnitude. Tlierefore, long before the earth meets this, her final doom, the moon will have been so broken up that her "lunar meteorites" will have been placed in the mineralogical museums, I trust, at less than " two dollars a pound." Accordingly, we must look for the origin of our meteorites up away from the sun. \Ye believe that they are fragments of some of the more minute asteroids of which hundreds yet continue to move be- tween Mars and Jupiter. The frequent stony meteorites now falling, therefore, probably are the foi'erunners of a period of frequent iron meteorites, corresponding to the deeper portions of the same minute planet, the exterior layers of which have been reaching us quite fre- quently of late. The meteoric irons of our cabinets must have be- longed to another asteroid, broken up at an earlier date than the as- teroid now yielding the large and frequent crops of meteoric stones. This is not the place for a more complete development of this view. But, as every reader inevitably would ask the question, " Whence these meteorites ? " we deemed it best to give our answer. The nebular theory fully accounts for the planetary system in its glory ; but this harmony is finally followed by a breaking up and de- struction of each body, which then as meteorites continue to move, truly cosmical fossils, until they find a temporary rest on the orbs which are nearer the grand centre of our world, the glorious sun. -♦♦♦- HOUSE-YENTILATION. " /~\LD FULLER" — wise, witty, and thoroughly practical — pro- V_/ nounced by Coleridge to be " incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men" — tells us that "houses ought to be built to live in, and not to look at ; " and it seems strange that a truth so obvious should re- quire to be enunciated by an authority so great. Since Fuller's time w^e have in all respects vastly progressed. We are eminently a practical people, and are undisturbed in our utilita- rian pursuits by purely (esthetic proclivities. But, if we have not real- ized the beautiful in architecture, we ought at least to have advanced toward the attainment of utility. Unfortunately, however, the aim and development of our national characteristics have not taken the useful direction of making our houses "fit to live in" — but only to let, and to sell ! To live in a house in the Fullerian sense means, of course, exist- ence therein under the best attainable conditions of health, ease, com- HO USE- V EN TIL A TION. 597 fort, and economy. In other words, such desiderata mean proper shelter with efficient ventilation and adequate v:arming. And these now, as in the seventeentli century, are still indeterminate conditions in the problem of house-building. If houses in Fuller's time were not built to live in, at least they were pleasant to look at. They pleased the judgment even more than the eye, for they fairly grew out of the requirements of the age, and were, in a great measure, the natural result of the ordinary materials at command. Not so the houses of the present day. Other times can boast their own styles. The castellated, the ecclesiastical, the Eliza- bethan, all express some idea, and are types of their own several ages and wants. But the nineteenth century, with its unlimited resources of iron and glass and its own peculiar civilization, has no distinctive style. The highest reach of architectural effort is a slavish reproduc- tion of forms from which the spirit has lapsed with time and changed with custom. The interest attaching to a building of former ages arises partly from association and partly from the picturesque effect which age throws over it with its decay and damp. We might also say something of the poetic charm of desolation, the interest of rarity and historic truth — all, in short, which we instinctively feel can never be produced by the most perfect imitation. But all that imagination and feeling conjure up, wherewith to clothe the rude forms of the past, are evidences of disuse and a su- perseded civilization. They no more accord with the full life and en- ergy of the present age than hand-spinning does with the results of the steam-engine ; and low wainscoted rooms, narrow windows, grotesque ornamentations, and rude domestic appliances, are only en- durable when seen through the light of a tender, loving, hereditary pride. When, therefore, we see the constant and deliberate reproduc- tion of old forms, and on assumed aesthetical grounds, we are justified in saying that such choice betokens the surrender of the judgment to a perverted taste ; that the beauty of utility is not understood ; and that the true object of house-bvailding has yet to be learned. The anomaly is made more apparent, if the result is less uncom- fortable and unhealthy, when an architect breaks away from whole- some copying, and steals a little from various styles for the outside " treatment" of a modei-n dwelling. The result is a nondescrijjt med- ley. Simplicity is ignored, proportion defied, fitness unthought of. For a rich man's use expense is disregarded in profuse variety ; and for a poor man's dwelling — the balance is restored through the saving made in "jerry-building ; " the result being what we have already stated, that average houses in the present day are built neither to live in nor to look at, but to let or to sell. The anomaly of a medley of over-ornamentation and mixed styles in the individual villa, erected in the outskirts of large towns, is in- tensified into absolute mischief when such medley is applied to public 598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. buildings nnd street architecture. In the former it is bad taste ; in the latter it is bad taste j^his the evils that spring from a foul atmos- phere. Profuse embellishment, in a large town, is only another name for traps to catch soot. Passing from the perverted taste shown on the exterior, we must notice the unscientific arrangements in the interior of our average do- mestic dwelling. Pure air is as absolute a necessity to human beings as good food and untainted water. Bad air kills, however, by inches only, while innutritions food and foul water do their evil work with quick preci- sion— both, in the end, leading to the same results — impaired vitality, disease, and a high rate of mortality. Nature undoubtedly has a great power of adaptation ; but, under a prolonged state of unfavorable sani- tary conditions, that capacity is harshly exercised. Every abnormal condition of physical existence, arising from bad air, insufficient food, or undue exposure, and producing no immediate results, necessitates the drawing of sanitary bills on futurity to be paid with heavy inter- est ; and the very poor, from necessity, and the rich, from ignorance and apathy, spend shortened lives of prodigal thoughtlessness, ending in vital bankruptcy. Hence the crowded inhabitants of the back slums of large towns live, unconsciously, their life of lowered health, under conditions which would kill off the fox-hunting squire in a month. This depressed level of vitality and deferred penalty furnish one explanation of the general indifference to pure air. Another cause may be found in its omnipresence and the con- tinuity of its use. Providence has bestowed on mankind a limitless amount of pure air. It surrounds us, it is always ready without effort; its chemical composition never varies, and it costs no money. If the supply were less ample, or it could only be obtained by an out- lay of money or labor, or its use were intermittent, we, no doubt, should value it at its intrinsic worth, be more jealous of its misuse, and study more closely its influence upon health. The nineteenth-century house, however, has no special jsrovision for the admission of fresh air, and, excej^t in warm weather, its en- trance is jealously prevented. Ventilation is change of air, and, un- less scientifically arranged, and especially warmed in cold weather, such change of atmosphere means cold currents, with their attendant train of colds, catarrhs, bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, and the evils that spring from them. Again, perfect ventilation means the realization, in a great measure, of the condition of air out-of-doors ; and few persons, probably, have estimated the enormous flow of air requisite to effect this. The ordinary notion is, that the proper re- newal of the air in a room ought to be measured by the quantity passed through the lungs of an individual in any given time. But an ounce of poison may vitiate a gallon of water ; and nothing short of the removal and renovation of the whole of the tainted portion^ as fast HO USE- V EN TIL A TION. 5 99 as it becomes tainted, can insure perfect salubrity. Dr. Dalton esti- mated the average respiration of a man to be 24 cubic inches, and the average number per minute to be 20 : consequently, 400 cubic feet pass through the lungs of an ordinary man in twenty-four hours ; while the fallacy to which we have alluded assumes that a supply of 400 cubic feet in the room, in twenty-four hours, insures sufficient ventila- tion. Certainly, if any one would draw breath out of one bag, and discliarge the tainted air from his lungs into anothei', he would always breathe good air. But it is calculated that a man will taint and ren- der unwholesome by mixture 17,500 cubic feet of air in the twenty- four hours ; for every respiration not only robs the imbibed 24 cubic inches of a certain portion of its oxygen, but it has mixed with it a quantity of carbonic-acid gas and some vapor; and theoretically, at least, the second respiration, drawn from a room in which the air is stagnant, begins the process of blood-poisoning. The first rule, therefore, to be laid down in reference to perfect ventilation, prescribes the entire removal of the whole stratum of air tainted in a room by each respiration ; for by no less a movement do we conceive it possible to take away the polluted air. This removal must be effected no less than twenty times per minute. Part of the expired air being rarefied by the heat of the lungs will rise, and part — the carbonic-acid gas — will fall. Twenty-four cubic inches, thus spread, may be assumed to taint a stratum, at or about a mouth of an occupant, of 18 inclies. Any lateral movement would, in the case of several oc- cupants, simply sweep the air breathed by one person close by the lips of some other; and hence we hold, as a corollary to this rule, that the prescribed movement should be either up or down, not lateral. But the preceding calculation is based upon the minimum con- sumption of each person during quiescence. When talking, laughing, singing, walking, or dancing, the average respirations are, relatively, quickened, the consumption of air increased, and the necessity for a rapid change of atmosphere further enhanced. The amount of air in- spired has been found to be as follows : When lying down (say) 1-00 " sitting 1-18 " standing 1-33 " singing - - 1-26 " walking 1 mile per hour 1.90 " " 2 miles " 2.'76 u u 3 (i " ^ 3.22 (1 11 S " " " " and carrying 34 pounds " " 4 miles per hour 5.00 n " 6 " " 7.00 " riding (trotting) 4.05 " swimming 4.33 I 3.50 The above-ascertained accelerations of the respiratory organs suffi- ciently indicate the effect produced by all kinds of in-door exertion, 6oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and incontestably prove, from increased demand, the necessity for in- creased supply. This view, which we admit to be an extreme one, of ventilation requirements in dwelling-houses, may serve, at least, to impress upon many the advantage of living as much as possible out-of-doors, and of taking some regular exercise. On the other hand, it will certainly show the futility of the petty, peddling expedients adopted under the name of ventilation, when the prevailing apathy is stirred to such an extent as to cause " something to be done," which may be a little better tlian resting content with doing nothing at all. What we have said of the indifference, ignorance, or error as to ventilation, has had special reference to the designers of houses " built to look at," and to sell ; but a deficiency so general and complete can- not be ascribed to those only who, while they occupy the position of teachers, are compelled to take their cue from the taught. The edu- cation of public opinion is a delicate process. It is essentially one of action and reaction, requiring concurrence to initiate and cooperation successfully to work out. The illness of the Prince of Wales did much to amend house-drainage, for the torpidity of public opinion gets well aroused when royalty suffers ; and the asphyxiation of a nobleman or the blood-poisoning of a bishop would, no doubt, be a wonderful stimulus to the application of common-sense to house- ventilation. The second rule that we lay down relates to the conditions of the supply of the large volume of fresh air we have indicated as neces- sary for perfect health: it must be tempered — warmed. No raw, damp, frosty air of an ever-changing temperature ought to have un- controlled and constant ingress to our dwelling. Air out-of-doors is suited to out-of-door habits. It is healthy and bracing when the body IS coated and wrapped, and prepared to meet it, and when excercise can be taken to keep up the circulation ; but to live under cover is to live artificially, and all essential conditions must be dealt with to suit an abnormal state, and all the evils attaching to ventilation, as gener- ally effected, spring from the neglect of this consistency. We admit raw air, and we warm it most at the critical moment when we send it up the chimney ! We freeze our backs and scorch our faces. We sit with our feet in a current of cold air, and our heads are kept in an impui-e atmosphere, vitiated by human lungs, the products of gas-con- sumption, and loaded with animal matter. We have a torrid zone bordered by the hearth-rug, and the arctic regions in the neighbor- hood of the windows and door. Medical men shiver at the abstract idea of violent changes of temperature, but they raise no warning voice against delicate patients being subjected to a variation of 60° in a modern drawing-room. The notion is stereotyped that night air is unwholesome. The casual admission of air during the day is no longer permitted, all known apertures are carefully closed, and, if intention HO USE- V EN TIL A TION. 60 1 could be realized, not an atom of fresh air would be admitted during the hours of sleep. So little is the necessity for good air understood, that we find au able writer on health sanctioning, if not advocating, sleeping with the mouth under the clothes. His argument is that birds sleep with their heads under their wings, and he might have added, many animals with their noses buried in their fur; forgetful, however, that the feathers (and hair) form a natural respirator to warm and equalize the temperature of the air that passes freely through. There is therefore no analogy in a process for warming a constant supply of perfectly fresh air, and one for breathing the same air over and over again, and charged ad nauseam with organic impurities. Miss Night- ingale approaches the subject of night air from the side of reason, and common-sense, and experience. She says : "Another extraordinary fallacy is the dread of night air. What air can we breathe at night but night air? The choice is between pure night air from with- out and foul night air from within. Most people prefer the latter. An unac- countable choice. What will they say if it is proved to be true that fully one- half of all the disease we suffer from is occasioned by people sleeping with their windows shut? An open window most nights in the year can never hurt any one. This is not to say that light is not necessary for recovery. In great cities, night air is often the purest and best air to be had in the twenty-four hours. I could better understand in towns shutting the windows during the day thnn during the night for the sake of the sick. The absence of smoke, the quiet, all tend to making night the best time for airing the patients. One of our highest medical authorities on consumption and climate has told me that the air in Lon- don is never so pure as after ten o'clock at night." These are the words of sound sense and experience. We shall only have to add to them, by-and-by, that it is not necessary to encounter the oftentimes great risk of sudden changes in temperature during the night, if we arrange one principal source of admission day and night to the house, and warm the air admitted. We may further remark that if there be the least ground for shrinking from night air, it is be- cause of the often sudden and unforeseen change in the temperature, the very point overlooked in moving from fireplace to window in modern drawing-rooms. Latterly some attention has been directed to a plan for diiFused ventilation, adopted by Mr. M. Tobin. This plan consists of a series of vertical pipes placed along the walls, delivering fresh air in an upwai-d current. In a multitude of pipes there is safety — much more so than in a multitude of counselors on this subject. Commenting upon this plan of course many critics claim priority of invention, and superiority in their modes of application, and the interests of the public thus goto the wall without any result. It is a pity that it cannot be made intel- ligible that whoever first opened a window or a door, for the express purpose of admitting air, originated ventilation ; and that whoever first made a deeper recess for the lowest sash-bar, so that when the 6o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. window was slightly raised the opening would ouly be where the two sashes averlap, and the admitted air thus thi'own upward, originated Mr. Tohiii's principle of getting tlie admitted air diffused in the upper part of the i-oom ; and that whoever did this in a room, with apparently no prearranged outlet, first realized the process known by the name of "Tobination." We believe it was Sydney Smith who declared that if any one in London should stare continuously for a few minutes at the clouds he would be forthwith surrounded by a crowd of gazers, no one knowing why he gazed, intently interested in nothing, and quite unaware that the secret of his sympathy was the inspiration that makes the plough- man whistle — want of thought. For ourselves we do not undervalue this gregarious vacuous tendency. First catch your hare, says good Mrs. Glass, as the initiatory step to cook it. Fii-st secure your audi- ence in this matter, as the absolutely necessary preliminary to con- vince the understanding and stimulate to action. The excitement and satisfaction felt at the recommendation of a mode of ventilation, be- cause perfectly simple and thoroughly efficacious, and yet so obviously similar in its results to window-ventilation, we are disj^osed to hail as an encouraging symjitom, although such satisfaction seems wonder- fully like that felt by good King George when he adopted the simple expedient, xmder advice^ of shutting his movith to keep out the dust and dead flies on a windy day ! If the sanction of I'oyalty helped to promote so proper a mode of excluding dust and insects, so^ similarly, a report upon " Tobination," signed by six peers and gentlemen, and published in the Times on May 16th, may help to recommend the admission of fresh air as a use- ful method of ventilation. The phenomena attested are certainly sui- pi'ising in their concurrence, and we cannot but regi'et that these noble- men and others did not simply state their opinion, which every one would resjDectj without assigning proofs which most persons must question. "Nae plea is best," say the cautious Scotch, and we are further reminded of the dictum of a wise old friend, " My reasons may be all wrong, but I know that my conclusion is quite right." Now, if the report had simply attested the fact that at a certain time the atmospheric condition of the ward was good, this would have been " nae plea," and best ; for the raison d'etre of the said good atmospheric condition seems to us to be contradictory. What the said six found they thus describe : " In the ward of St. George's Hospital ventilated by Mr. Tobin's pipes we found the following phenomena : 1. Pure air agreeable to breathe. 2. Absolute equality of temperature at every level of the room, in which gas had been burnt for some time. 3. Freedom from all draught of air. "With a lighted taper we could detect no current in any portion of the room." HO USE- V EN TIL A TION. 60 3 As we have already indicated, this statement in reference to "the last new thing " in ventilation is, to say the least, puzzling. It vir- tually asserts the instantaneous and complete mixture of cold air with air heated by and with the gaseous products of combustion, and a simultaneous and necessarily rajjid diffusion throughout the entire space of the ward in !St. George's Hospital; and that this rapid min- gling, mixing movement of particles is done without any perceptible mingling, mixing process, or movement whatever ! It thus virtually states that the rapid change of air which alone constitutes perfect ven- tilation is effected without any ascertainable movement of such air. If such concurrent phenomena be really, as stated, " matters of fact," and not, as we take them to be, the honest but erroneous belief of persons not accustomed to scientific and chemical research, we can only ejaculate like Dominie Sampson — " Pro-di-gi-ous ! " We have so far played the part of critic. We have stated the abstract requirements of perfect ventilation, and have assumed that such requirements are inapplicable to most modern houses. We have condemned the general ignorance and indifference to the proj^er supply of one of the essentials to existence, and have ridiculed the miserable expedients which jjass current under false pretenses. We have further discussed the theory and practice of ventilation mainly distinct from its almost inseparable connection with house-warming. But, unless we are prepared to supply our houses by mechanical contrivances, such as fans, etc., it is impossible pi-actically to consider the thing to be done apart from the obvious means to carry it out ; and it is in heat that we find the ever-present and most applicable motive force. If we can give to our houses an average temperature of 55° with local exceptions somewhat in excess of this average, w^e make them, and particularly the lofty slip of building forming the common London street-house, into a warm air-shaft, having an upward draught. If we can properly arrange and control the entrances and exits of the necessary air, and secure that the supply be ample and the conditions of its motion innocuous, we have solved the problem of practical ven- tilation. Any one who can effect this solution will be fairly entitled to the gratitude of all ranks and classes of society — excepting, perhaps, that of the medical profession ! And whoever does this by a simple method — without using any scientific complications, and requiring no surrender of the average comprehension to the keeping of mechanical experts — who can reconcile sentiment with common-sense, and econ- omy with the Epicureanism of our present civilization, and who yields no vantage-ground to servantgalism to demand higher wages, nor otherwise trenches upon the time-lionored privileges of the servants' hall (to do little in the easiest way) — will have established a claim to social gratitude. The danger he will incur will be in the shape of a testimonial, which will most likely make Ai't shiver, and the descend- 6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ants of the receiver despise the ability of the progenitor which handed down to them a thing they hate to keep and dare not selL There is a hades, moreover, for inventors and teachers, as well as a paradise. Like people Avho write books, they give their enemies an advantage. The detailing of their plans is like drugging a coat at Don- nybrook Fair. They invite attack from every one whose interests they jostle, or whose pride they w^ound ; and hurt feelings are a species of cantharides to hostile criticism. Altogether, the man who steps ahead of the crowd is marked out for assault. He quits a comfortable insig- nificance, and, bidding for fame, usually achieves failure and gains ill- will. Clearly comprehending the possible results, we nevertheless venture to speak of a combined system of warming and ventilation which, from experience, we can state has proved successful. It aims at sur- charging a house with warm air, in reversal of the present custom of exhaustion. Ventilation is movement of air, or draughts ; and cold draughts are dangerous, and expensive. We therefore warm our draughts, and, in lieu of enemies, make of them friends. By super- seding the necessity for it, we put bad workmanship into its proper category of things to be avoided. A house being full of warm air, misfits and scamped work form outlets, not inlets, and are no longer mischievous. By generating heat in the most scientific way, and retaining the bulk of it in the dwelling instead of sending ninety per cent, up the chimney, we enlist the sympathy of the thrifty ; and, by considering the question from the house-maid's point of view, we avoid irritation and bickering, and, in spite of new-fangled arrangements — " We still have peace at home." Our plan is simply this : If the basement be dry and eligible, we form therein a fresh-air chamber by boarding off or otherwise making it, if possible, under the staircase-hall. We have it carefully cleansed, whitewashed, and purified. We jealously isolate it from any illicit communication with the usually damp and fusty atmosphere of ordi- nary basement premises, but give to it an ample communication with the outer air, being careful that the supply is drawn from untainted sources. Between this chamber and the hall we also arrano-e a com- munication thi'ough a large ornamental iron grid. Immediately under the grid in the air-chamber we have placed a large slow-combustion coke or German stove, and to prevent dust, noise, or effluvium during such lighting, we recommend a slide, or trap-door opening downward, to cut off communication until the fire has burnt up. Vbild tout! This simple arrangement, which does not merit the name of apparatus, sets a system of ventilation to work for which we claim the merit of efiiciency, by merely lighting and adjusting the stove-fire. Of course everybody has thought of this, and we dare say some persons have tried some such arrangement; but we question whether it has not been hitherto too simple for enthusiasts, too prac- HOUSE-VENTILATION. 605 tical for theorists, and in its results too jjliilosophical for " practical men." A grid with a clear opening of two to two and a half feet square, through Avhich air is sent at the rate of three feet per second, will change the entire atmosphere of an ordinary London house every hour; and a good-sized coke or well-constructed German stove will heat this volume of air from 65° to 70°, and maintain a temperature throus;hout such house of 50° to 55°. The bulk of the heat so generated will be utilized and diffused. The excessive loss of heat from fireplaces will be changed to use, and economy will be the rule instead of a waste — excessive, continuous, and expensive. And the whole of it will be in substitution — not in excess — of an undisturbed open fire-grate consumption of fuel, and this by a process of natural selection and persuasion. With a fairly equable temperature of .50° to 55° throughout the house, and highest where now it is usually lowest — the hall and passages — the demand for large open fires subsides. Small fires become the rule, and their going out the difficulty. There will be no dread of draughts from open doors ; no peevish injunctions to "shut that door;" no huddling over a hot fire, scorched on one side and chilled on the other ; no breathing at one moment of air at 100°, and the next, and without preparation or much gradation, one of 40°. In short, " the bull will be taken by the horns " and tamed. We have made friends of our foes, and we may cry Eureka ! — for the problem will be solved ! Now for the possible objections. We shall probably be told that stoves are unwholesome — that they spoil the air and make the warmed space " close." Our reply is, that stoves in unventilated rooms do all this, and more. They are usually unsightly, and tliey — even the most economical — rob the room of the bright, cheerful, moral influence of warmth with light. But none of the objections to which stoves are liable attach to their use under the arrangement we advocate. The stove is not placed in an vmventilated room, hut in a strong draught. No particle of air ever gets warmed twice over. None {^forced into contiguity with the heating surface. It takes up as it passes that sur- face its modicum of caloric, and wings it way to impart it to all and everything of a lower temperature than itself; and finally it escapes, when fairly deprived of it, by nicks and crannies and illegitimate out- lets, as well as by those prearranged for the best effect. Hence there are no whistling shreds of frosty air, harbingers of colds, catarrhs, toothache, earache, and neuralgic inflictions; no "sulphuring" from down-draughts in unused bedroom-fires; no shiversome " draughts" from open doors. By admitting air round about our heat-generator, full, free, and unconfined, we adopt the principle of the steam-engine governor. If the stove be overheated from negligence, the drauglit becomes quicker, the particles of air are heated sooner, but not neces- sarily much more. If the stove-fire is allowed to get low, each par- 6o6 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. tide of air lingers longer, until warmed enough to set off on its errand of ventilation and warming. Variations of heat in the stove quicken or retard the unconfined and full current rather than vary the heat of each particle, and we claim to accomplish by a self-acting process a fair uniformity of temperature. It will, no doubt, be urged that a house kept up to 50° and 55° makes people "delicate;" that they "catch cold" when they go out; that a hardening process is healthy, and so on. Our reply is, that a uniform temperature of 50° and 55° is natural and healthy. That the maintenance of this temperature in winter must be a question of clothes or fuel on the one hand, or of depressed functional action on the other. That the loving care which prescribes a cold bedroom and a hot, sweltering bed is of the nature of that kindness that kills. That children buried in blankets realize Prince Bismarck's coarse threat to the Pai-isians : that their delicate skins become overheated and relaxed while they are irritated by perspira- tion ; at the same time that the most delicate tissues of all, in the lungs, are dealing with air abnormally frigid. Fevered or relaxed, the poor little victims of combined ignorance and kindness toss and dream, troubled under a mass of bedclothes, while the well-meaning mother, "wrapped in her virtue," and soothed by a bedroom-fire, slumbers peacefully through the working out of the sad process of " the survival of the fittest." The only other objection to be urged against the use of a stove is the small part that the combustion of the fuel in it j^lays in tlie matter of ventilation. As the ventilation by means of an open-air fireplace is the principal cause of the waste of heat up the chimney, we cannot consider this gain from arrested waste as an objection, except in ex- treme cases of stove-misplacement. As, in the plan we are consider- ing, the stove is the agent to supply a very large quantity of air, the plea that it does not abstract any large volume, we take to be an ad- vantage, not an evil. The open fires become the chief difi"users, draw- ing the injected air within and then out of each room. We concede their employment to the claims of luxury as wasteful adjuncts, but minister still to comfort and luxury. At the same time we legitima- tize their action and leave them free to work. We are no long-er at enmity with Nature ; no longer spoiled children of civilization, strug- gling against " what is good for us ;" but, freely accepting the imposed conditions of an artificial life, we use reason and common-sense to make them the best of their kind. We cook our air as we cook our food. Both in a raw state are objectionable. Both subjected to the modifying influence of heat become pleasant ministers to our daily wants. One generates the blood which is the life, the other is its puri- fier and renovator. The use of both is health, vigor, and enjoyment ; the abuse of either counts up largely in the account we liave to pay for what of evil there is in tjie world. — Abridged from Westminster Review. CRANIAL AMULETS. 607 cea:n"ial amulets. By De. J. BEETILLON. TILL the other day nothing was known that would indicate the existence of a religion among the people of the Stone Age. But a little over a year ago there were discovered clear traces of a ckUks, the most ancient of which we have any idea. I propose here to nar- rate how we gained our first knowledge of the gross and oftentimes savage superstitions of our early ancestors. This important discovery was made by Dr, Prunieres, of Marvejols. As he was cleaning some skulls from the dolmens of Lozere, he found in the interior of one of them a bone disk carefully polished on the edges, and evidently made of a fragment of a cranium, perhaps of the parietal bone. The skull in which this disk was found presented a great hole, through which it might have passed ; still evidently it had not come from the part de- stroyed, being considerably thicker than the other bones of the skull, and, furthermore, differing from them in color. On examining this cranium at the point where it was mutilated, the edges of the opening were found to be carefully polished and beveled on the external sur- fjice, and it was plain that the hole itself, like the disk of bone, had been wrought by the hand of man. Was it also man who put the bone disk inside of the skull? One mioht think at first that it was the eifect of an accident similar to that by which the beads of a nock- lace often drop into the skull ; but, when other pieces were discovered similar to that described, it could not be doubted that it was the hand of man which placed the disk of bone in the skull. What was the intention ? It is impossible to say with certainty, but it is difiicult not to believe that the practice was coupled with a religious idea. A number of skulls found by M. Prunieres presented an opening more or less large, but contained no bone disk. These openings are often the size of a silver dollar, of variable form, but usually circular. That which has excited the greatest astonishment, however, is the fact that these perforations had been made during life, for their beveled edges had evidently commenced to cicatrize ; often, indeed, the loss of substance was entirely restored. The savants to whom M. Prunieres communicated his discovery then remembered that in many skulls they too had observed similar holes, with the edges more or less cica- trized. Up to that time they had supposed that they resulted from strokes of a hatchet dealt by an athletic arm, just as now a sabre often removes a portion of the skull. But what strength are we to imagine the men of that time to have possessed in order to make such terrible wounds with a simple stone hatchet ? Hence the explanation ofiered was not very satisfactory. All doubts were set at rest by the invalu- able discoveries of M. Prunieres, as interpreted by himself with rare 6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY sagacity. The theory of these liolcs being the result of a blow from a stone hatchet is indeed extremely improbable in itself; then, too, why should skulls so disfigm-ed be found in such numbers at Mar- vejols ? Peeforated Cranium from Lozere. Evidently these perforations were made by the hand of man, and with some design ; or, to speak more plainly, these people trepanned one another. For what motive did they practise this painful and often fatal operation ? Numerous hypotheses have been put forward. Some suppose, with a fair degree of probability, that it had a therapeutic ob- ject. The trepan, indeed, has been practised from the most remote antiquity. Hippocrates speaks of it as an operation widely diffused ; and, although the father of medicine is in the habit of citing authori- ties, and of naming the inventors of operations, he does not tell us the name of the originator of trejjanning, which leads lis to think that his name was not known, because it was lost in the night of time. It is true that the name, from rpeno), J turti, indicates that, when it was admitted into Greek surgery, it was performed, as it is now, by the aid of a centre-bit ; still, in primitive times ruder methods were no doubt employed. The trepan was in great repute among the Greeks, and durinsc the middle ages was resorted to for the cure of a number of maladies. The same practice widely prevails at the present time among uncivilized races. M. le Baron de Larrey, in a note communicated to the Paris Acad- emy of Medicine, relates that the Kabyles still frequently practise the operation, making with a saw four cuts in the shape of a parallelo- gram. General Faidherbe has sent to the Laboratoire des liautes CRANIAL AMULETS. 609 Etudes two skulls from Roknia, Algiers, with traces of this opera- tion. Mr. Squier presented to the Society of Anthropology a skull from an ancient Peruvian grave, upon which are distinctly seen the eicfht extremities of these saw-cuts. The traces of inflammation around the bone prove that the operation was performed about a week before death. If the person had survived some years, the traces of incision would have been effaced, the four angles would have become rounded, and the result would have resembled those which we now find upon the skulls of Lozere. M. Chil related, at the Congres at Lille, that there had been found a perforated skull resembling those discovered by M. Prunieres in the Canary Islands — a fact of great importance, if confirmed, for it would indicate that these islands were peopled by African negroes. The Medical Times assures us that the medicine-men of the South- Sea Islands practise, with a bit of glass, trepanning for troubles of the head, such as vertigo, neuralgia, etc. The remedy consists in making a T-shaped incision in the scalp, and scraping the skull with a frag- ment of glass, until the dura mater is reached, and a hole made one inch in diameter. In the minds of these savages the healing art is mixed up with a multitude of singular religious ideas. In their eyes the maladies of the body are caused by demoniacal possession. There- fore, when one suffers in the head, we must open a passage to let the demon out. It was thus that Jupiter, suffering from headache, es- caped the malady by causing Vulcan to strike him so violently that Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, sprang from the opening. Hence it may be that, for medical reasons, the men of the Stone Age trepanned the skull. But this does not account for all the facts. Why trepan the dead? Why introduce into some skulls the round plates of bone ? It is clear that the healing art had nothing to do with these post-mortem operations, and that here our forefathex'S were simply acting in obedience to some religious ideas which it is hard for us to imagine. In the first place, we would observe that, in all probability, these people bad a religion. M. Joseph, of Baye, has communicated to the Societe d' Anthropologic a discovery made at Baye (Marne) of artifi- cial grottoes excavated in the chalk during the Neolithic Age. He saw upon the walls of these caverns rude and almost shapeless sketches representing divinities in human form ; and in these same caverns he found skulls perforated similarly to those of M. Prunieres. Upon these grounds we may safely argue the existence of a system of religion. It has been observed that all the operations of trepanning were per- formed either upon infants or upon youths. " Why were not all ages subject to it ? why only infants or youths ? I hazard the conjecture that it was connected with some superstition, that it formed a part of the ceremony of initiation to some pi'iestly order. This, it is true, presupposes the existence of a religious caste ; but there is no doubt VOL. TII. — 39 6io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that the neolithic peoples had an organized religious system. These rude sculptures, ever repeated exactly, which represent a female divin- ity upon the walls of the grottoes of Baye, even prove that the reli- gion of Neolithic times had risen to the height of anthropomorphism. Now, a clearly-defined deity, a god in human form, must have priests that are regularly initiated ; and a surgical initiatory rite recurs over and over again even among civilized peoples. Is it ohjected that tlie cranial mutilations were of too dangerous a character to be practised in religious ceremonies ? But per se trepanning is not a dangerous operation. Very frequently, no doubt, it is fatal, but the reason is, because it is resorted to only in the last extremity. It is not the tre- 2)anning which kills the patient, but the cerebral lesions, which we seek to relieve in this way. Apart from these complications, its dan- gers are not very great. On the other hand, religious enthusiasm knows no bounds : and if certain deities exact human sacrifices, cer- tainly those should be considered lenient who require of a man only a piece of his skull. What is piercing the skull, compared with dis- emboweling ? And yet it is known that, among the negroes of West- ern Africa, certain individuals, to secure initiation in sainthood, and to prove the virtue of their amulets or gree-grees, open their bellies with their own hands, pull their bowels out, put them back, and sew themselves up. Many succumb to this butchery, but others rally and become the saints of their tribe." ("Bulletin de la Societe d'An- thropologie," 2° serie, tome ix., p. 199.) Doubtless those who survived the piercing of the skull became equally worshipful personages, held in honor during their lives and after their deaths. Out of their sacred skulls were cut plates of bone, as shown in the engraving. They were then kept as sacred relics, or even worn as amulets, for many of them are pierced through the centre evidently with the view of suspending them. The skull in the figure has undergone three mutilations, D, E^ and F, doubtless for the purpose of making amulets. Nor ought we to deride this super- stition which attaches supernatural virtue to a bone from the human head : as late as the last century, a powder made from certain bones of the cranium used to be prescribed as a cure for epilepsy. It has been remarked that all the skulls in which disks of bone were found, were pierced during the life of the individual. If our hypothesis be true, the only ones honored with this practice would have been those consecrated to the service of the gods. If, on the other hand, motives be sought wherefore the dead should be thus honored, we are irresisti- bly conducted to their steadfast faith in the immortality of the soul. A person who had been trepanned comes to die — one or more pieces are cut from his sacred cranium for amulets or relics ; but, inasmuch as the man could not live in another world with a mutilated skull, another piece of skull is given him to make him whole, when he reaches the abode of tlie blest. — La Nature. THE USE OF NARCOTICS. 61 1 THE USE OF NARCOTICS. THE indulgence in narcotics — something to dull, stupefy, and soothe the nervous system — is a predominant human Aveakness. Nature has been ransacked for narcotics. Tobacco, opium, betel-nut, Indian hemp, even some kinds of fungi, are employed for the desired object. When tobacco was first introduced into Europe, its use was nearly everywhere looked upon with dislike by the authorities. The efforts that were made to suppress it amounted to nothing less than persecu- tion, and their want of success furnishes a curious illustration of the uselessness of legislative interference with the individual's legitimate freedom of action. It serves also to illustrate in some measure the strong hold which the taste for narcotics obtains over the mind, es- pecially as tobacco is one of the mildest narcotics in use. Among our- selves, not to mention King James's well-known " Counterblast," many petty restrictions were laid on the sale of tobacco during that mon- arch's reign, and the import duty was raised from twoj^ence to six shillings and tenpence a pound. In England and elsewhere, remon- strance and penalties were equally unavailing. Tobacco made its way steadily into favor, and is believed to be now in use among not less than 800,000,000 of the human race. Measures of a severe nature have been tried in China to check the use of opium, and have been quite as unsuccessful. However apathetic the Chinese may be in respect to most things, they will not submit to the withdrawal of their favorite narcotic. But in case of so danger- ous a poison, some restrictions are as much needed as they are on the sale of spirituous liquors among ourselves ; for the effects of habitual excess are not less deplorable than those of habitual drunkenness. Of forty prisoners confined in the House of Correction at Singapore, thirty-five were found to use opium ; and of these, seventeen, who had been in receipt of eighteen shillings a month as wages, spent twenty-four shillings for opium, the difference being obtained by theft. From a sanitary point of view, the results are equally sad. The confirmed opium-eater in the East seldom lives beyond the age of forty, and may be recognized at a glance by his trembling steps and curved spine, his sunken, glassy eyes and sallow, withered features. The muscles, too, of his neck and fingers often become contracted. Yet incurring even this penalty will enable him to indulge his vice only for a certain length of time. Unlike the healthy enjoyment which we derive from our appetite of hunger, and which Nature herself re- news periodically, the enjoyment of the opium-eater gradually dimin- ishes as his system becomes habituated to the drug. From time to time he must increase the quantity which he takes, biit at length no increase will produce any effect. Under these circumstances he has 6i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. recourse to a dangerous expedient : he mixes a sma^l quantity of cor- rosive sublimate with the opium, the influence of which is thus for a time renewed. Then these means also fail ; when the victim must bear the miserable condition to which he is reduced, until probably, sooner or later, he sinks into the grave. On the excitable tempera- ment of the Malays and Javanese, a strong dose of opium causes a state of frantic fury amounting almost to madness, and this often ends in that homicidal mania which has been called " running amuck ; " in other words, in the individual attacking with his crease or dagger every one whom he meets, so that it becomes necessary to shoot him down with as little compunction as we do a mad dog. In Java, opium is not allowed to be sold except in an adulterated form, the risk of these evil consequences being thus in some measure lessened. So far as the effects of opium on the system are concerned, it is al- most entirely a matter of indifference in what way the drug is used. Whether it be taken in the solid form of pills, in the liquid form of laudanum, or inhaled from a pipe as heated vapor, it speedily exerts its pernicious and almost irresistible influence over the mind ; so that few possess the iron will needed to relinquish the habit when it has once been fairly acquired. How completely even the most intellectual and cultivated minds may become enslaved was well illustrated in the cases of Coleridge and De Quincey, whose highly-colored descriptions of their experiences are said to have been productive of much evil among the educated classes of this country. These descriptions must not, however, be regarded as safe criteria of the usual influence of opium on the colder temperament of the North European. According to Dr. Christisou, it seldom produces a more striking efiect on the Anglo-Saxon constitution than the removal of torpor and sluggishness, thus rendering the opium-eater a pleasant and conversable companion; but these small advantages, in turn, are purchased by a period of sub- sequent pain and depression, the misery of which it would be difticult to exaggerate. Opium, besides acting as a narcotic, possesses a remarkable power as a restorative. By apparently checking the natural waste of nervous energy, it enables the system to support fatigue, beneath which it must otherwise inevitably have sunk. For this reason it is much used by the Halcarras, the palanquin-bearers and messengers of India, who journey almost incredible distances, furnished with nothing more than a bag of rice, a little opium, and a pot to draw water from the wells. The Tartar comiers also use it to sustain them, when compelled to travel night and day in crossing the arid deserts of Central Asia; and in some paits of the East it is administered as a restorative even to horses. It is difficult to come to any definite conclusion as to whether the physical character of Eastern races who habitually use opium as a narcotic has deteriorated in consequence. No doubt the general be- THE USE OF XARCOTICS. 613 lief is that even moderate indulgence must necessarily be injurious, audit is easy to point to the enervated character of the Turks and other Oriental races as a probable result of the habit. But at the same time it is a disputed point among physiologists how far this belief correctly represents the truth. The opinions of many men well acquainted with the East might be quoted in opposition to it ; for example, Dr. Eat- well, formerly of the East India Company's service, in writing to the Pharmaceutical Journal, has affirmed that, as regards the great mass of the Chinese, no injurious effects of the opium they consume can be noticed, the people being generally a muscular and well-formed race. Dr. Macpherson has given similar testimony in respect to the Chinese, and Dr. Burnes in respect to the natives of Scinde and Cutch ; while, on the other hand, Dr. Little, of Singapore, is of opinion that the native population of that island would be in danger of becoming extinct from the use of opiates, were it not constantly recruited by immigration. It is, however, evident that the question can only be satisfactorily an- swered by knowing the real extent to which opium-eating prevails among the different Eastern populations, and of this no reliable statis- tics can be obtained. There is a similar want of definite information in respect to the United Kingdom. Attention was partially drawn to the subject so long ago as 1844, by an inquiry that was made into the state of large towns in Lancashire ; and since that time there is every reason to be- lieve that the evil has largely augmented. The increase in the quanti- ties of the raw material imported would alone be sufficient to render this probable; for, while in 1852 the importation amounted to 114,000 pounds, it had grown to 356,000 pounds in 1872. No doubt a large portion of this enormous quantity is employed in the manufacture of morphia or other alkaloids, and is either exported or employed for legitimate medicinal purposes; but it is difficult to account for an in- crease in twenty years of 200 per cent., except on the supposition that the drug is more largely used as a narcotic than is generally believed. The facility with which this form of vice can be concealed renders direct evidence on the subject difficult to obtain ; but such evidence as can be procured tends to pi-ove that the above supposition is correct. We have recently been informed by the medical attendant to the workhouse in one of our larger cities, that a week rarely i:)asses without a case of opium-eating coming to his knowledge among those who seek admission to the workhouse ; and that he has known women, when suffering from the depression consequent upon their enforced ab- stinence, even go down on their knees to beg tliat he would administer to them an opiate. Again, there is reason to believe that opium is a favorite stimulant with many underfed and overworked artisans and laborers ; and from inquiries made by parochial officials, clergymen, and others, this would appear to be especially the case in agricultural districts. In the fenny districts of Lincolnshire, a belief being preva- 614 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. lent tliat opium acts as a preservative against the effects of a damp climate, many of the inhabitants have in this way become addicted to its use. Another and even more reprehensible form of the opium evil among tlie lower classes is to be found in the practice of administering sooth- ing mixtures to young children for the purpose of keeping them quiet. In one instance, a mother, because her child was unwell, has been known to place a piece of crude opium in its mouth to suck, the death of the child being naturally the consequence ; and though cases of such gross and culpable ignorance as this are no doubt rare, it is certain that the administration of soothing sirups and cordials is too com- monly resorted to. In large manuiacturing towns, where mothers are often employed in factories during the day, their infants are frequently placed for the time in the care of nurses ; and these women seldom feel any compunction in administering an opiate to a child who is troublesome. It cannot be too widely known how gi'eatly such a practice tends not only to the direct increase of infant mortality, but also to the permanent injury of the constitution, by inducing convul- sions and other similar nervous diseases. Opium in one of its forms enters largely into the composition of many of the pain-killers and patent medicines so freely advertised fDr domestic use in the present day, and for this reason the greatest care is needed in having recourse to any of them. Taken, perhaps, in the first instance, to alleviate the torments of neuralgia or toothache, what proves to be a remedy soon becomes a source of gratification, which the wretchedness that follows on abstinence renders increasing- ly difficult to lay aside. The same must be said of narcotics, such as bromide of potassium and hydrate of chloral, frequently resorted to as a remedy for sleeplessness : the system quickly becomes habituated to their use, and they can then be relinquished only at the cost of much suffering. Indeed, the last-mentioned of these two drugs obtains over the mind a power which may be compared to that of opium, and is, moreover, liable to occasion the disease known as chloralism, by which the system ultimately becomes a complete wreck. Looking at the whole question of the medicinal use of narcotics, it is perhaps not too much to say that they should never be employed except with the authority of a competent medical adviser. Turning; again to the narcotics of savage or but semi-civilized races, we find a species of fungus {Amanita muscaria) employed by the natives of Kamtchatka and the adjoining provinces of Siberia. It grows plentifully in parts of Kamtchatka, and is there generally prepared for use in several ways. The inhabitants either gather it during the hottest months, and hang it in strings to dry in the open air, or leave it to ripen and dry in the ground, when it possesses stronger narcotic qualities. Small-sized specimens, covered with warty excres- cences and deeply-colored, are also considered more valuable than THE USE OF NARCOTICS. 635 the smooth pale ones. Sometimes it is eaten in soups and sauces, or is taken mixed with the juice of the whortleberry; hut the more usual method is to swallow it Avhole, rolled into the form of a pill, and a single large-sized toadstool thus taken is sufficient to cause the nar- cotic effects during a whole day. These bear a very close resemblance to those of ordinary intoxication, and, like them, often end in com- plete insensibility- Whatever may be the natural temperament of the indi\idual shows itself with unusual distinctness. A man who is fond of music or of talking will be constantly singing or chattering; and secrets often thus slip out, the disclosure of which is the source of much subsequent trouble. In this form of narcotism, too, the power of estimating the size of objects is temporarily destroyed, so that a man wishing to step across a straw or a small twig will raise Lis foot as though about to step across the trunk of a tree. The Siberian fungus is not the only nai'cotic in which this last peculiarity is foimd. Similar erroneous impressions are caused by the Indian hemp, which, though it is used in Southwestern Asia, and in- deed in the Brazils as well, is more proj^erly the narcotic of the African Continent, where it is known to the native races from the Mediterra- nean to the Cape of Good Hope, It is the same plant that is grown in Europe for the sake of its valuable fibre ; for, though probably in- digenous to India, it is able, like the potato and the tobacco plant, to adapt itself to a gi-eat variety of climates, and is grown even in the north of Russia. Its narcotic virtues de2:)end on a resinous substance contained in the sap ; and this is much more abundant in tropical cli- mates than it is in temperate. Indeed, the European plant is almost devoid of it, though it possesses a strong odor which has been known to make people ill who have remained long in a hemp-field. Thus, when the dried plant is either smoked or eaten, its effects are both rapid and powerful. In Morocco, where the dried flowers are generally smoked, a single pipe not larger than an ordinary tobacco- pipe is sufficient to intoxicate. Among the Arabs and Syrians, the usual method is to boil the leaves and flowers in water mixed with butter to the consistence of a sirup, which is called hasheesh^ and, as it has an extremely disagreeable taste, is eaten in a confection of cloves, nutmegs, and other spices. But however the narcotic may be used, the 2>leasure it affords is much the same in character. It has been described as consisting in " an intense feeling of happiness, which atteiids all the operations of the mind. The sun shines on every thought that passes through the brain, and every movement of the body is the source of enjoyment." But the most remarkable peculiar- ity of the Indian hemp has yet to be mentioned : a dose of the resin has been known to occasion that strange condition of the nervous sys- tem called catalepsy, in which, notwithstanding the force of gravity, the limbs of the unconscious patient remain stationary in whatever position they may be placed. 6i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The use of the coca-tree as a narcotic in Peru- and Bolivia is of very great antiquity. When the Spaniards landed under Pizarro, they found the natives chewing the dried leaves, in exactly the same way in which they have continued to chew them down to the present day. EtForts were indeed made, soon after the subjugation of the country, to put a stop to the practice, for the plant had acted an important part in the Peruvian religious ceremonies, and its use was looked upon by the conquerors as an obstacle to the spread of Christianity. Neverthe- less, the Indians persevered in spite of every prohibition and severity. Before long, too, the owners of mines and plantations discovered that it was to their interest to connive at the habit, as, with its aid, their laborers were able to perform more work on a given quantity of food than they could do without it. It has thus gradually become the uni- versal custom to allow from fifteen to thirty minutes, three or four times a day, for the purpose of chewing. At these times the first ob- ject of the Indian is to make himself as comfortable as possible, for the coca fails to produce its effect unless the chewer be perfectly quies- cent. He stretches himself at full length in the shade, on a couch of dry leaves or soft turf, and, rolling a few of the coca-leaves into a ball, conveys them into his mouth ; adding immediately, to bring out the full flavor, a small quantity of unslacked lime, or of the alkaline ashes of certain plants. When thus engaged, the apathy he displays to every thing around him is something marvelous. No entreaty on the part of his employer wdll induce him to move, and, if he be a confirmed coquero, he is indifferent even to drenching rain or the roar of wild animals in the neighboring thicket. In wdiat way the pleasures of the coca-leaf manifest themselves is not known, but they must evidently be of a very seducing kind, thus to render men insensible to personal danger. Notwithstanding the wide prevalence of the use of narcotics, little or nothing is known of the way in which their different effects are pro- duced on the system ; and the problem is complicated by the number of active substances that enter into their composition. Opium, besides other more ordinary ingredients, contains no fewer than eleven jjecul- iar organic compounds, all of which are believed to share in produc- ing its usual effects. It has, however, been noticed that many symp- toms of narcotism bear a close resemblance to those of insanity. The wild laughter of a man under the influence of the deadly nightshade cannot be distinguished from that of a manaic, and the false impres- sions as to the size of objects, caused by the Indian hemp and the Siberian fungus, are a permanent feature in the malady of many luna- tics. It has been suggested by Dr. Carpenter that much light might be thrown on the connection between the mind and the body by study- ing the phenomena of drunkenness, and it seems probable that those of narcotism in different parts of the world might be made to yield equally rich results. Of one thing we may be quite certain. The use SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HILGARD. 617 of tobacco has become a positive vice. The wastefulness of money which it causes, without a compensatory advantage, is alone deplor- able.— Chamher.s's Journal. SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HILGARD. WE tliis month present to our readers the portrait of Julius E. HiLGARD, First Assistant of the United States Coast Survey, and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at tlie meeting in Detroit, which takes place on the 11th of August of tlie present year. Mr. Hilgard was born in January, 1825, in the town of Zweibriicken, in Bavaria, where his father hold the position of Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Palatinate of the Rhine. At the age of nine years he came to the United States with his father, who settled on a farm near Belleville, Illinois, where his education, classical and mathematical, was continued by parental in- struction, aided by the part he took in the education of several younger brothers. At the age of eighteen he went to Philadelphia, and pursued the study of civil engineering under the advice of such eminent engi- neers as Roberts and Trautwine. His ardent desire for knowledge attracted the attention of Dr. Patterson, Prof. Buche, and other mem- bers of the Philosophical Society; and, soon after Prof. Bache took charge of the Coast Survey, he attached young Hilgard to the corps of assistants which he was about to form, and which, under his train- ing, has attained so eminent a position as a scientific body. Hilgard Avas soon recognized as one of the leading spirits of the work, and by zeal in active service, untiring application, and the improvement wrought in all branches of the work that he touched, rose to the posi- tion of Chief of the Bureau of tlie Coast Survey at headquarters in Washington. To this position, which he holds at the present time, he was assigned at the beginning of the war of the rebellion, which called forth the best efforts of every member of the Coast Survey, and brought into play its resources of important information gathered during previous years. Mr. Hilgard's scientific work has chiefly been in connection with his practical labors, consisting of researches and disciission of results in geodesy and terrestrial physics, and in perfecting methods and in- strumental means connected with the same. The annual reports of the Coast Survey contain numerous papers from his hand on the ap- plication of the method of least squares to geodesy, on determinations of latitude, azimuth, and longitude ; on methods of precision in meas- •urintr lengths, and on terrestrial mao;netism. In 1872 he executed, in connection with the telegraphic determination of the longitude be- tween America and Europe through the French cable, a similar de- 6i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. termination between the observatories at Paris and Greenwich, which supersedes the A'alue previously admitted, correcting it by nearly half a second of time. His essay on " Tides and Tidal Action in Har- bors," first jDublished as a lecture before the American Institute, is re- markable for its lucid and terse exposition of principles without the aid of mathematical symbols. While possessing great facility in em- ploying the aid of the higher mathematics, Mr. Hilgard systematically avoids, as far as practicable, their introduction in his writings, j^refer- ring to use logical statements of the processes of reasoning. As part of the duties of his office, Mr. Hilgard has charge of the construction and verification of the standards of weight and measure for the United States, and, by order of Congress, has been for some years past engaged in preparing metrical standards of great precision for distribution to the several States. In this connection he was ap- pointed a delegate to tlie International Metrical Commission, which met at Paris in 1872, having for its object the construction of new metrical prototypes of great precision and permanence, and which has since resulted in the establishment of an International Bureau of Weights and Measui-es at Paris, under the direction of a committee, of which Mr. Hilgard is a member. A valuable and instructive trea- tise on " Methods of Precision in measuring and weighing " was read by him before the Stevens Institute of Technology, but has not yet been published. When, in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences was chartered by Congress, Mr. Hilgard was one of the original members named in the act. He is at present the home secretary of that scientific body. The compliment of honorary membership has been conferred upon him by the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and the Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences of Boston. His frequent communications to the Philosophical Society of Washington are evidence of a very active interest in scientific research, maintained notwithstanding the exactions of his arduous official labors. A work of great interest, which he is now conducting outside of his official sphere, is a mag- netic survey of the United States, prosecuted at the expense of the Bache Fund, arising from a bequest of the late Alexander Dallas Bache to the National Academy of Sciences. No small part of Mr. Hilgard's services to science and education is to be found in the readiness and obliging disposition with which he has constantly given information and rendered facilities by the loan of instruments and apparatus to persons engaged in scieutitic research or instruction. Besides meeting numerous requests of this kind at home, he has given his best aid and advice to the equipment of gov- ernment surveys in the SandAvich Islands and in Japan. Although Mr. Hilgard's scientific work has been generally limited to the sjjhere em-, braced in his practical pursuits, he has been a very active student in other branches of science, especially dynamics and molecular physics. EDITOR'S TABLE. 619 EDITOR'S TABLE. A SOCIAL EXPERIMEyr. "TTTE observed, a while ago, the V V meeting of two gentlemen who, after salutation, broke at once into mu- tual and vehement expressions of dis- gust at the Beecher trial, and then sat down and discussed it for an hour. Such has been the general experience, Newspapers have bemoaned the neces- sity of publication, and then howled for the extension of the proceedings, mean- time sending out their interviewers in all directions, to rake the gutters of scandal for further and filthier details. Similarly, by the mass of readers, the reports have been first deplored and til en devoured to the last crumb. The protests were hollow concessions to de- cency ; what followed revealed the act- ual and honest mental condition of the parties. This aspect of the trial, as an index of public taste, is not without its in- structiveness. It was evidently rich in elements that are appreciated by our people, and that take a deep hold of their feelings. It fed the craving for personal and prurieut gossip, and, more- over, left something to bet on. It com- bined, in its various phases, the fasci- nations of the tea-party, the prize-ring, and the regatta. The lower education, by bringing the masses of the people up to the capacity of reading the newspa- pers, and the higher education, by ally- ing itself with the horse-racing passion, have well prepared the community to enjoy the drama lately acted on Judge Neilson's stage. True, it was the old story of private suftering turned to pub- lic sport, but with what refinements in its modernized aspect ! A dash of bru- tal bloodshed, a little gladiatorial human butchery, were indispensable to the per- fection of a Roman holiday ; but, in our higher Christian civilization, we get up a six-months' carnival of keen excite- ment by mangling a single reputation. It is certainly worth something to find out how our people can be best amused. We are far from agreeing with thoso who have filled the land with lamenta- tion over the unmitigated evils of the Beecher trial. It has undoubtedly had its mischievous influences, but these we believe will be transient and far out- weighed by the public benefits that cannot fail to arise from it. It was, of course, most painful to Mr. Beecher— and he has our deepest sympathy — but no one better than he could afford to make the sacrifice needed to insure the permanent good of such a thorough- going social experiment as this trial and its preludes have furnished. The case is of peculiar interest as a problem of the forces acting in society. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Plym- outh pastor was alone on trial. Action and reaction are equal and opposite in things social as well as in things phys- ical. The strain took eflfect all round ; and the triers have been on trial as well as the defendant. "We know a great deal more about lawyers and the law than we did before ; we understand better about judges and the judiciary than we did before ; and we have con- ceptions of the jury and the jury-system which we had not before ; while the result of the new knowledge is not by any means to raise our estimate of them. They have been brought to the bar of common-sense and the public judgment, and nothing 'has happened in the history of legal proceedings in this country that can compare with this case in exposing the weakness, the anomalies, and the vices of the system under which we live, called the perfec- tion of reason, for the administration of justice. Nowhere in society are in- 620 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. congruity *.ich the same way in which Kepler worked at the discovery of his laws, i. e., by pure trial of various hypotheses. The volume before us contains the results of such work, and we propose to present, in brief, an analysis of these results. The vol- ume opens witli a statement of Kepler's laws, and with a table showing the values of the masses, mean distances, and densities which the author assumes as the bases of his discussion. We notice here, as elsewhere in the book, that such data are usually taken not from the original sources, but at second hand. With regard to the Masses as given by the author, we note that the mass of Neptune is not " the Poul-Kova deduction ; " that the mass of Uranus should be credited to Struve ; that Encke's mass of Mercury, which is adopted, is not of equal value with Le Verrier's, which has been published for many years. In the second section the relations of the mean distances are considered : if of the distance of Neptune we take five- LITERARY NOTICES. 625 ninths, and of the number thus obtained we again take five-ninths and so on, we thus form a geometrical series of numbers. Of the first eight of these numbers four ex- press roughly the mean distances of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune (of course this distance is represented as it forms the starting-point of the process) : one is roughly the distance of Mercury in aphelion (not its mean distance, which is the element of the problem, but its largest distance from the sun) ; one lies between Venus and the earth, one between Mars and Jupiter, and one between Uranus and Saturn, but much nearer Uranus. So far all is fact, and the candid observer arrived at this point might be supposed to say. With five-ninths as a ratio I can satisfy only three out of the seven conditions I seek to satisfy, and hence five- ninths is not the ratio I want. But at this point the author makes three assumptions : 1. The earth and Venus have the " charac- teristics of half planets." That is, one of thera is on each side of one term of the author's utterly arbitrary geometrical series. 2. Uranus being on one side of another of these terms (although no planet is on the other side), it also will be considered as a " half planet." 3. Mercury has character- istics of a " double planet " because we are forced to consider it in its two positions, aphelioyi and perihelion, in order to make it agree with the above-mentioned arbitrary geometrical series. Now we have the basis for reducing these disorderly half, double, and missing planets, to something like or- der; for, putting nine-fifths (the reciprocal of f ths) equal to r, we have seen that the ratio r does very well for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune {ivhole planets); by trial we can see that r f does well for the '■'■exterior half planets" (those beyond the terms of the primary series), and also that r J will serve for Venus, an " interior half planet" " the only existing example of its kind in the planetary system." These are the principal conclusions of the first two sections of the work: with a given ratio f ths we have satisfied three terms out oi seven, and to reduce the four remain- ing terms to order we have made three arbi- trary assumptions. The author now pro- poses as a test to use the mean distance of the asteroid-ring between Mars and Jupi- ter according to his primitive scries. The terms for Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, are known, and that for the asteroids can be put in by a simple proportion. He finds by this process that the ratio »• ( = §ths) will satisfy the existing numbers better if we gradually decrease it as we go farther from the sun, and therefore this r, which at first was constant, is made variable, and the law of its variabiUty is determined from four terms (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and asteroids) the value of one of which (the mean dis- tance of the asteroid-ring) must long remain unknown ; and in this way a " criterion " is set up. After this it is impossible to speak of this part of the book as a work of sci- ence ; it is rather an exhibition of fancy. Tennyson has called the profession of the law " a multitude of single instances ; " and, without passing the limits of decorum or truth, we may characterize the steps by which these final laws are reached in the same way. After all this adjustment of values, the mean distance of Uranus as rep- resented by theory is in error by -^ of its entire amount — a trifle of 7,000,000 miles. A foot-note here says, " Why, after all, Uranus seems to have, as it were, fallen in from his appi'opriate position, may be con- sidered in another connection." The satellite systems of Jupiter and Saturn are next considered, and similar laws are found to obtain ; except that r, which for the planetary system was altered only into r \ and r \, here must become 'r\,r^,r\, r f, while for Uranus's satellites r becomes r |. Moreover, while in the planetary sys- tem r regularly increased from Neptune in- ward, in the system of Jupiter it decreases and in that of Saturn it is constant. It seems hardly surprising that, with so much liberty of assumption, any set of con- ditions can be approximately fulfilled, and it is well to remember that, even if a much better fulfillment of these conditions could be made, it would not show that a physical law existed. This fallacy underlies the whole book. Section 3 is devoted to " Theoretical Considerations," and here we will not fol- low the author, since what we have just ex^ amined is there assumed as fact. The author's theory of the Zodiacal light is given at some length, and the book. VOL. TII.- 10 626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY closes with a " Summation of Coincidences " sixty-one in number, which are supposed to support the author's position. From what has been said it will be evident that we doubt the willingness of a cautious person to follow the author in his conclusions ; and we must regret that the Smithsonian Insti- tution has given this book the sanction of its high name as a " contribution to knowl- edge." Geological Survey op Alabama. Report of Progress for 1874. By Eugene A. Smith, Ph. D., State Geologist. This Report is the first of a series promised, giving in detail the geology of the State, to be followed by a general sum- mary, with maps, charts, and illustrations. The final report will comprise the physical geography, geology, and paleontology, eco- nomic geology, agricultural relations, bot- any, and zoology, and will inaugurate a new era in the industrial progress and develop- ment of that State. In the present Report several counties are considered separately, giving their to- pography, geology, and mineral resources, with a chemical report, and appendix of altitudes, mining statistics, etc. The Re- port of Prof Smith is excellent in matter and method. Catalogue of the Fishes of the East Coast op North America. By Theo- dore Gill, M. D., Ph. D. This is one of the invaluable series of publications issued by the Smithsonian In- stitution, and is a revision of the catalogue prepared by the author in 1861. In that catalogue the number of species of fishes on our coast, from Greenland to Georgia, was given as 394, but accompanied by the re- mark that the number might be reduced by further observation. That has been done, and only 351 nominal species are enumer- ' ated in this catalogue, notwithstanding fifty species have been added since then. Our vast extent of coast is divided in the catalogue into geographical areas, with boundaries more or less perfectly de- fined by the fauna characteristic of each. Thus the Arctic Fauna or realm is confined to the Arctic and Greenland seas. The next in order is called the Syrtensian Fauna, in- cluding the coasts of Labrador and New- foundland. The Acadian Fauna extends thence to Cape Cod, but more southerly in deep water. The Virginian Fauna extends from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, and the Carolinian Fauna extends thence to the reefs of Florida. Prof. Gill has done eminent service in recognizing the great public want of popu- lar names to species of fishes. Throughout the catalogue popular or common names are appended to the scientific ones, and, in many cases, new names have been framed for species having no other distinctive ones. At the close of tlie catalogue is a very full bibliography of " East Coast Fishes," also an index to the catalogue of both scien- tific and popular names. A Manual of Diet in Health and Dis- ease. By Thomas King Chambers, M. D., Oxon. 310 pages, 8vo. Phila- delphia : Henrv C. Lea, 1875. Price, $2.75. The aims of this hand-book are purely practical, and therefore it has not been en- cumbered by the addition of the chemical, botanical, and industrial learning which collects round every article interesting as an eatable. Space has been thus gained for a full discussion of many matters con- necting food and drink with the daily cur- rent of social life, which the position of the author, as a practising physician, has led him to believe highly important to the present and future of our race. The book is divided into three parts. Part I., " General Dietetics," treats of " Theories of Dietetics ; " " On the Choice of Food ; " " On the Preparation of Food ; " " On Diges- tion," and "Nutrition." Part IL, "Special Dietetics of Health," treats of the " Regimen of Infancy and Motherhood ; " " Childhood and Youth ; " " Commercial Life ; " " Lit- erary and Professional Life ; " " Noxious Trades ; " " Athletic Training ; " " Hints for Healthy Travelers ; " " Effects of Cli- mate ; " " Starvation, Poverty, and Fast- ing ; " " The Decline of Life ; " and " Alco- hol." Part in., "Dietetics in Sickness," comprises " Dietetics and Regimen of Acute Fevers ; " " Dietetics and Regimen of Cer- tain other Inflammatory States ; " " Of Weak Digestion ; " " Gout and Rheuma- tism ; " " Gravel, Stone, Albuminuria, and Di- abetes;" "Deficient Evacuation;" "Nerve LITERARY NOTICES. 627 Disorders ; " " Scrofula, Rickets, and Con- sumption ; " " Disease of Heart and Arte- ries." It is written in the author's usual pointed style, and will prove serviceable ahke to the profession and to people of common-sense. Arch^ological Researches in Kentucky AND Indiana, 1874. By F. W. Putnam. This paper, which was read by Dr. Put- nam before the Boston Society of Natural History, and printed in its proceedings, is a very interesting statement of what the author discovered in the mounds and caves of Kentucky and Indiana during the last season, also of early discoveries in the mam- moth and other caves many years ago. He visited the spot in " Short Cave " where the famous " Mammoth Cave mummy " was found sixty years ago, and quotes a very full description of the mummy, written prob- ably by Mr. Merriam, of Brooklyn, New York. The paper is an important contri- bution to archaeological knowledge. Practical Guide to the Determination of Minerals by the Blovt-pipe. By Dr. C. W. C. FucHS, Professor in the Uni- versity of Heidelberg. Translated and edited by T. W. Danby, F. G. S. Lon- don : Field & Tuer. Price, $2.50. The author informs us that the manu- script of this work has long been used by members of his own classes, and is now offered as an introduction to the determina- tion of minerals by the blow-pipe process, and of crystallized specimens by their phys- ical characteristics. The work will be appreciated by stu- dents in the laboratory. It is of no value to the general reader. Eighth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archjeology and Ethnology. Presented to the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Cam- bridge, 18Y5. This Report opens with appreciative recognition of the services of the late Prof. Jeffries Wyman, to whose industry and great abilities as an osteologist the success- ful organization of this museum is largely due. He was appointed curator at the first meeting of the Board of Trustees held after Mr. Peabody's " letter of gift," dated Oc- tober 8, 1866, and in his first "Annual Re- port " stated that the collection consisted of about fifty specimens. The latest entries in the catalogue bring the numbers up to about 8,000. The Report, which is illustrated, com- prises the additions to the museum in 1874. Of these are varieties of jars, dishes, pots, drinking-cups, water-jugs, water-coolers, and statuettes, exceedingly curious and in- teresting. With ample resources and skill- ful management, the museum is a gratifying success. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Devonian Trilobites and Mollusks of Er- RERE, Province of Para, Brazil. By Profs. Ch. Frederick Hartt and Rich- ard Rathbun. This paper, reprinted from the " Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History," New York, shows that a close relationship exists between the Devonian fossils found in New York State, and especially in the Hamilton rocks, and those of Errere, in Brazil, the geological horizon, and many of the forms of life, being almost identical. Aside from the general scientific interest of the paper, these facts render it especially valuable. European Lighthouse Systems. By Ma- jor G. H. Elliot. New York : Van Nostrand. Pp. 284. Price, $5. Notes on Building Construction. Phila- delphia: Lippincott. Pp. 234. Report of the Michigan State Board of Health. 1874. Pp. 221. American State Universities and the University of Michigan. By Andrew Ten Brook. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 418. Price, $3.50. Algebraic Problems. By J. Ficklin, Ph. D. New York : Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. Pp. 192. Price, $1.50. Religion and Science. By Charles W. Shields, D. D. New York : Scribner. Pp. 69. Price, $1. What and How to Read. By G. A. F. VanRhyn. New York : Appletons. Pp.251. Bacon vs. Shakespeare. By Thomas D. King. Montreal : Lovell Publishing Com- pany. Pp. 187. Startling Facts in Modern SpirituaUsm. 628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. By N. B. Wolfe, M. D. Chicago : Religio- philosophical Publishing House. Pp. 570. Missouri University Report, 1875. Pp. 210. Report on the Mineralogy of Pennsylva- nia. By F. A. Genth. Pp. 206. The Physiological Reasons why. By A. Hutchins, M. D. Brooklyn : W. W. Swayue. Pp. 50. The Genera Geomys and Thomomys. By Dr. E. Coues. Pp. 73. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Science. Vol. II., No. 4. Mineral Deposits in Essex County, Mass. By C. J. Brockway. Boston : A. Williams & Co. Pp. 60. Price, 50 cents. Fishes of Indiana. By D. S. Jordan, M. D. Pp. 42. Reasons for embracing the Doctrines of Swedenborg. By Rev. G. Bush. New York : E. H. Swmney. Pp. 120. Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. May, 1875. Pp.140. Bureau of Education. Nos. 3 and 4, 1875. Pp. 108. Melanosiderite. By J. P. Cooke, Jr. Pp. 11. The Sun and the Earth, by Balfour Stewart ; Force, by J. W. Phelps. Boston : Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 31. Price, 25 cents. Insects of the Field. By E. S. Packard, Jr. Boston : Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 31. Price, 25 cents. MISCELLANY. rO HEEBEET SPENCEE. BY GRANT ALLEN.* Deepest and mightiest of our later seers, Spencer, whose piercing glance descried afar Down fathomless abysses of dead years The formless waste drift into sea or star, And through vast wilds of elemental strife Tracked out the first faint steps of yet unconscious life; Thy hand has led us through the pathless maze, Chaotic sights and sounds that throng our brain, Traced every strand along its tangled ways ; And woven anew the many-colored skein ; I Professor of Mental Philosophy in Queen's C!ol- lege, Jamaica. Bound fact to fact in unrelenting laws, And shown through minds and worlds the unity of cause. Ere thou hadst read the universal plan. Our Ufe was unto us a thing alone : On this side Nature stood, on that side man, Irreconcilable, as twain, not one : Thy voice first told us man was Nature's child, And in one common law proclaimed them recon- ciled. No partial system could suifice for thee, Whose eye has scanned the boundless realms of space ; Gazed, through the aeons, on the fiery sea, And caught faint glimpses of that awful face, Which, clad with earth, and heaven, and souls of men. Veils its mysterious shape forever from our ken 1 As tiny builders in some coral shoal. Eaising the future mountain to the sky. Build each his cell, unconscious of the whole, Live each his little hfe, and work and die ; Even so the lesser toilers in thy field Build each the httle pile his narrower range can yield. But, like a skillful architect, thy mind Works up the rock those Insect reasons frame. With conscious plan and purpose clear defined In arch and column, toward a single aim. Till, joining part to part, thy wider soul Piles up a stately fane, a grand, consistent whole. Not without honor is the prophet's name, Save with his country and his kin in time ; But after-years shall noise ala'oad thy fame Above all other fame in prose or rhyme ; For praise is his who builds for his own age, But he who buUds for time must look to time for wage. Tet, though thy purer spirit do not need The vulgar guerdon of a brief renown. Some little meed, at least, some little meed Our age may add to thy more lasting crown ; Accept an unknown singer's thanks for light Cast on the dim abyss that bounds our little sight. Sleep and Digestion. — Speaking from his own experience, which would appear to differ from the experience of other people, Frank Buckland asserts that the best time to go to bed is immediately, or very soon, after the principal meal of the day. " All animals," he remarks, " always go to sleep, if they are not disturbed, after eating. This is especially noticeable in dogs ; and the great John Hunter showed by an experi- ment that digestion goes on during sleep more than when an animal is awake and going about." Mr. Buckland finds a con- MISCELLANY. 629 firmation of his theory in the drowsiness which settles down on elderly men over their wine. " Nature says to them, ' Go to bed.' They will not go to bed, but still Nature will not allow her law to be broken, so she sends them to sleep sitting in their chairs." But, then, does not Nature quite as clearly indicate, by means of the night- mares and the unrest with which she tor- ments the would-be sleeper who has gone to bed directly after a heavy meal, that a full stomach is not the best preparation for slumber ? Many persons with whom this prescription for sleep would fail, may per- haps find another prescription given by Mr. Buckland more effectual, viz., eating onions, the essential oil of which possesses highly- soporific powers. The Use of Paris-Green. — The use of Paris-green in deaUng with the Colorado beetle has been condemned on the ground both that it poisons the soil, rendering it sterile, and that it is liable to be absorbed by the plant. Certain experiments made by Mr. McMurtrie, chemist of the Department of Agriculture, throw much light upon this question, and therefore are worthy of repro- duction here. To determine the first point, that is, whether the Paris-green poisons the soil, Mr. McMurtrie planted peas in a num- ber of flower-pots, each containing the same amount of earth, and all but one containing a certain proportion of Paris-green. The proportion of this substance varied from 100 milligrammes up to five grammes. The first five pots contained Paris-green as fol- lows : No. 1, none ; No. 2, 100 milligr. ; No. 3, 200 ; No. 4, 300 ; No. 5, 400. In all of these the peas grew equally. In No. 6, containing 500 milligrammes, the plant was less vigorous than in No. 5. This, then, may be regarded as the proportion of Paris- gr'een which impairs the fertility of soil. As the proportion increases, the plant grows feebler and feebler till No. 12 is reached, containing two grammes of Paris-green. Here the plant barely appears above the surface. In the rest of the pots, containing respectively three, four, and five grammes, the plant sends no shoot above the surface. The proportion of 500 milligrammes in the flower-pot No. 6 is equal to 145.6 grammes per cubic foot, or 906.4 pounds per acre, I calculating for a depth of one foot. Now, as less than two lbs. of Paris-green per acre is enough to use in warring against the beetle, it would take about 500 years to poison the soil, supposing the green to be applied every year, and that it was all retained. "But when rotation of crops is practised," says Mr. McMurtrie, " and appli- cation of the poison cannot therefore take place upon the same plot more than once in three or four years, it is probable that each application, being acted on by the natural solvents of the soil, will be removed by drainage before another is made." To the question whether arsenic can be absorbed and assimilated by the plant in the economy of growth, he replies in the negative. All of the plants grown, from the largest to the smallest, were examined according to Marsh's test for arsenic, but its presence could not be detected. Periodicity of Thunder-storms. — W. von Bezold lately presented to the Munich Acad- emy of Science a paper on the " Periodicity of Thunder-storms," basing his remarks up- on a series of observations which extended over a period of 105 years prior to 1869. A synopsis of this paper we here reproduce from the American Journal of Science. He finds that in years when the temperature is high and the sun's surface relatively free from spots, thunder-storms are abundant. But as the maxima of the sun-spots coin- cide with the greatest intensity of auroral displays, it follows that both groups of phe- nomena, thunder-storms and auroras, to a certain extent supplement each other, so that years of frequent storms correspond to these auroras, and vice versa. He observes that such a connection between sun-spots and storms does not by any means sanction the supposition of a direct electrical inter- action between the earth and the sun, but may be simply a consequence of a degree of insolation dependent upon the sun-spots. These changes in the insolation, accord- ing to Koppen, manifest themselves in dif- ferent latitudes not contemporaneously but successively. The phenomena of thunder- storms, on the other hand, do not depend alone upon the condition of the place in question with respect to temperature, but also on the condition of the atmosphere at 630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. points far distant and belonging to another zone. Tiiis appears most distinctly in the storms which accompany electrical displays. The peculiar intermediate position which the weather curve takes between the curves of sun-spots and temperature may possibly find its explanation in this fact. Observa- tions recently published in Saxony confirm these conclusions in a striking manner. Volcanle Outbreaks in Iceland. — Since the beginning of the present year volcanic action has been almost incessant in Iceland. The following particulars of the outbreaks we find in Nature : In March the Dyngjuf- joll was incessantly vomiting fire, and the eruption was steadily spreading over the wilderness. The farmers in the region around the My-vatn Mountains were obliged to remove in order to find pasture for their stock, the country being covered with ashes. Early in April a new eruption had broken out in a southeasterly direction from Bar- fell. A party went out from Laxardal to explore, and on approaching the place of eruption they found the fire rising up from three lava-craters. At a distance of 100 to 150 yards to the west from the cra- ters a large fissure had formed itself as the fire broke out, and the land had sunk in to the depth of about 18 feet. Into the hol- low thus formed the lava had poured at first, but now it flowed in a southwest direc- tion from the two southern craters. The northernmost crater had the appearance of being oblong, about 600 yards in length, and from this crater the molten red-hot lava was thrown about 200 or 300 feet into the air in one compact column. The top of this column then assumed a palmated ap- pearance, and the lava fell down in small particles, hke drops from a jet of water, which, as they became separated from the column, grew gradually darker, and split into many pieces, bursting into lesser and lesser fragments as they cooled. No flames were observed, but the glare proceeded from these columns and the seething lava in the craters. At times the explorers could count twenty to thirty of these columns. No real smoke accompanied the eruption, but a blu- ish stream, which expanded and whitened in color as it rose to a greater distance from the crater ; and such seemed to be the pow- er of this blue jet of steam that it rose straight into the air for many thousand feet, despite a heavy wind blowing. How we keep our Mouths shut.— Bon- ders asserts that the mouth is kepi closed, not by the action of the muscles connected with the lower jaw, but by atmospheric pressure. He has investigated this phe- nomenon experimentally. By employing a manometer, communicating with the space between the tongue and the hard palate, he finds, when the mouth is kept shut, a nega- tive pressure corresponding to from two to four millimetres of the mercurial column. There are two suctorial spaces in the mouth : the principal one is bounded by the tongue below, the hard palate above, and the soft palate behind ; the other is situated be- tween the tongue and the floor of the mouth. The former is used in sucking hquid through a straw ; the latter (some- times) in smoking. Both are employed when we endeavor, with the mouth closed, to extract a foreign body from between the teeth. The mouth may be shut during sleep, when the muscles of mastication are relaxed. If a man fall asleep in the sitting posture with his mouth open, his jaw drops ; the tongue not bemg in contact with the hard palate, the suctorial space is oblit- erated; the soft palate no longer adheres to the root of the tongue ; and, if respira- tion be carried on through the mouth, the muscular curtain begins to vibrate, and snoring is the result. Aliaskan and ilentian Maniinies. — The custom of preserving or mummifying the bodies of the dead, as formerly practised by the natives of the islands in Behring Sea, is accounted for very ingeniously by Mr. William H. Ball, in the American Natu- ralist. On the main-land, either on the Asi- atic or the American side, the custom does not appear ever to have existed. In the Chukchee Peninsula, on the Asiatic side, there is no soil in which to bury the dead, and cremation is impossible from the want of wood ; hence the natives expose their dead to the tender mercies of bears, dogs, and foxes. In the Yukon Valley, Alaska, the soil is frozen hard, and excavation is extremely difificult ; but timber abounds, I MISCELLANY. 631 and the bodies of the dead are boxed up in wooden coffins and elevated on four posts. On the islands the soil is not permanently frozen, and graves might be easily dug, but wood is scarce. Here the bodies might easily be buried, were it desirable. But, then, why bury the dead, if there are no wild animals to disturb the remains ? The islands have no such animals, and hence the natives laid their dead away in nooks and crannies of the rocks. Mr. Dall describes as follows the method adopted by the Kaniags and Aleuts in pre- serving dead bodies : First, an opening was made in the pelvic region, and the internal organs removed. The cavity was then filled with dry grass, and the body placed in run- ning water. This in a short time removed most of the fatty portions, leaving only the skin, bones, and muscles. The knees were then brought up to the chin, and the whole body secured as compactly as possible by cords. The bones of the arms were some- times broken to facilitate the process of com- pression. The remains were then dried. When thoroughly dried, the cords were re- moved, and the body usually wrapped in a shirt made of the skin of aquatic birds, with the feathers on ; over this were wrapped pieces of matting, varying from coarse to exceedingly fine. Over this sometimes a water-proof material, made from the split intestines of the sea-lion, sewed together, was placed. Outside of this were usually the skins of the sea-otter, or other fur-ani- mals, and the whole was secured in a case of seal-skins, coarse matting, or similar ma- terial, secured firmly by cords, and so ar- ranged as to be capable of suspension. Age of the Niagara Gorge. — It has for thirty years been the received opinion of geologists that the whole of the gorge of the Niagara, from Queenstown to the Tails, was excavated since the glacial period, and the work here done has been assumed to be a more or less accurate measure of the time elapsed since that period. But Mr, Thomas Belt, on a visit to Niagara last year, discov- ered what he takes to be sufficient evidence for asserting that the post glacial gorge ex- tends only from Queenstown up to the whirl- pool, and that between the latter point and the Falls the Niagara flows in its preglacial bed. The author holds that the present river is cutting back the gorge much more slowly than Lyell estimated ; that, instead of one foot yearly, the retrocession is not more than, if it is as much as, one foot in ten years ; and that, allowing for the com- parative softness of the rocks below the whirlpool, we must put back the occurrence of the glacial period to at least 200,000 years ago, supposing the entire gorge from Queenstown to the Falls to have been ex- cavated since that time. " But if," says Mr. Belt, "the conclusion at which I have arrived is correct — that the gorge, from the whirlpool to the Falls, is preglacial, and that the present river has only cut through the softer beds between Queenstown and the whirlpool, and above the latter point merely cleared out the preglacial gorge in the harder rocks — then 20,000 years, or even less, is amply sufficient for the work done, and the occurrence of the glacial epoch, as so measured, will be brought within the shorter period that, from other considera- tions I have argued, has elapsed since it was at its height." Have Animals a Sense of Humor ?— A writer in Nature, George J. Romanes, brings together some instances tending to show the existence in some animals of a sense of hu- mor. A young orang-outang in the Lon- don Zoological Gardens used frequently to amuse the spectators by inverting on her head her feeding-tin, and the animal was evidently gratified when her conduct called forth a laugh. A Skye terrier belonging to Mr. Romanes, "while lying upon one side and violently grinning, would hold one leg in his mouth." The animal was much pleased whenever this "joke" was duly appreciated, but would become sulky if no notice was taken of it. This dog was fond of catching flies upon the window-panes ; but, if ridiculed when unsuccessful, he was evidently much annoyed. Having failed repeatedly on a certain occasion to catch a fly, he eventually became so distressed that " he positively pretended to catch the fly, going through all the appropriate ac- tions with lips and tongue, and afterward rubbing the ground with his neck as if to kill the victim. So well," continues Mr. Romanes, " was the whole [jrocess simu- 632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY lated, that I should have been quite de- ceived, had I not seen that the fly was still upon the window. Accordingly I drew his attention to this fact, as well as to the ab- sence of any thing upon the floor; and, when he saw that his hypocrisy had been detected, he slunk away under some furni- ture, evidently very much ashamed of him- eelf" Mecbaukal Action of Light. — It has been supposed that the rays of light, as distin- guished from heat-rays, can produce no mechanical effects, such as repulsion and attraction ; and the circumstance that these rays are unable to propel the arms of a vane suspended in vacuo has even been employed as an argument against the truth of New- ton's emission theory of light. Mr. William Crookes, however, at a recent meeting of the London Royal Society, exhibited an ap- paratus which he calls " the radiometer," by means of which he proves that the luminous rays produce direct mechanical effects, after all the thermic rays have been strained out. The radiometer is described as consisting of four pith disks, fixed at the extremities of two crossed arms of straw balanced on a pivot at the point where the straws cross each other, so that they can spin round on the pivot. These pith disks are white on one of their sides and black- ened on the other. The entire arrangement is inclosed in a glass bulb, from which the air is removed by means of a Sprengel pump. On being subjected to the action of light from which ninety-five per cent, of the heating rays had been strained out by means of an interposed plate of alum, the disks rotated with a speed little inferior to that when the heat-rays were allowed to mingle with the rays of light. And what is very singular, it is the blackened surface which is repelled by the luminous rays. Inasmuch as light is reflected by a white surface, and absorbed by a black, one should expect that in the experiment the white faces of the disks would rather be re- pelled. This anomaly Mr. Crookes does not attempt to account for, and he is con- tent to let the facts speak for themselves, being confident that in due time the laws governing them will be made manifest. It having been suggested by Prof. Os- borne Reynolds that the movement of the little vane might be due to evaporation and condensation on the surface of the pith disks, Mr. Crookes showed that this was not the ca.se. He exhibited the very same effects with a lever-arm of platinum, sus- pended by an arm of platinum, the whole of which had been heated to redness again and again, during thirty-six hours of ex- haustion by the Sprengel pump. Prof. Dnxley on the Amphioxns. — In a preliminary note upon the brain and skull of Araphioxus (the lancelet), Prof. Huxley shows that, although these organs are not fully differentiated in this animal, yet well-marked divisions of the nervous axis and spinal column exist which answer to the encephalon and cranium of the higher fishes. The homologies of the anterior pairs of nerves are worked out, and the skull is considered to be represented by the seg- ments of the body which lie in front of the fifteenth, counting from before backward. The many points of resemblance in struct- ure between the lancelet and the young form or larva of the lamprey {petromyzon) are insisted on, and it is suggested that Amphioxus should be regarded as the type of a new primary division of the class Pisces, to be called Entomocrania, as con- trasted with all other known fishes, in which the primary cranial segmentation is lost, and for which the term Holocrania is proposed. What Savages think of Twins. — In Africa, according to Dr. Robert Brown ("Races of Mankind"), the birth of twins is commonly regarded as an evil omen. No one, except the twins themselves and their nearest relatives, is allowed to enter the hut in which they first saw the light. The children are not allowed to play with other children, and even the utensils of the hut are not permitted to be used by any one else. The mother is not allowed to talk to any one not belonging to her own family. If the children both live till the end of the sixth year, it is supposed that Nature has accommodated herself to their existence, and they are thenceforth admitted to as- sociation with their fellows. Nor is this abomination of twin births restricted to MISCELLANY. 633 Africa. In the island of Bali, near Java, a woman who is so unfortunate as to bear twins is obliged, along with her husband, to live for a month at the sea-shore or among the tombs, until she is purified. The Khasias of Hindostan consider that to have twins assimilates the mother to the lower animals, and one of them is frequently put to death. An exactly similar belief pre- vails among some of the native tribes of Vancouver Island, Among the Ainos, one of the twins is always killed, and in Arebo, in Guinea, both the twins and the mother are put to death. Father Secchi on Solar Spots. — In sum- ming up the results of his observations on solar prominences and spots from April, 1871, the Roman astronomer, Father Secchi, states that since that date there has been a very marked diminution both in the num- ber of groups of sun-spots and in their area — a result of the eleven-year period, the maximum having occurred about 1871. But he has observed the same diminution in the number of prominences: in 1871 the daily average was about fifteen, while now it is six or seven. In the same period the number of groups of sun-spots in each rotation has de- creased from about twenty-five to eight, and the mean area has diminished to about one- fifth. Further, the prominences are now very rare near the poles. Secchi further remarks on the discordance between his results of 1852, showing a difference of temperature between the solar equator and poles, and those of Prof. Langley, and infers that there has been a change in the sun in this respect, consequent on the decrease of solar activ- ity. He objects to Langley's method of moving his thermopile to different parts of the image instead of moving the telescope so as to bring the points of the image in succession on the thermopile, and thus to avoid differences of inclination to the axis of the lenses. Prcf. Loomis on the Storms of the United States> — This eminent meteorologist pre- sents, in the July number of the American Journal of Science^ his third paper on storms, founded on the weather-maps of the Signal-Service. He is now able to confirm what was stated in his previous papers in regard to the general progress, direction, and barometric phenomena of storms in the United States. These papers of Prof Loomis are admirable in method, and of very great value. The general di- rection of the storms which traverse the United States is found to be a little north of east, but varies somewhat with the sea- sons. Thus, July storms are most southerly in their direction, being a little south of east, those of February being most northerly. Rarely, storms move for a time northward or southward. By direction of a storm is meant the movement over the country of the whole storm, not the direction of the winds, and its progress varies greatly in rapidity. The average velocity during the past three years has been 26 miles per hour, the storms of August being slowest, those of February and March being most rapid. The storm of February 22, 1874, moved at the tremen- dous rate of 53.3 miles an hour, or 1,280 miles in a day. It is also shown that the progress of storms is not uniform throughout the day, but has a uniform daily variation. The velocity is greater by 25 per cent, from 4.35 p. M. to 11 p. M. than during other portions of the day, and this is constant during each month of the year. The greatest velocity occurs at about 7 p. m. without apparent relation to the wind's ve- locity, or absolute temperature. " But," the professor observes, " it is the time when the temperature of the day is declining most rapidly." Now, this change of temperature has direct relation to those conditions which cause precipitation and extend the rain-area. By reference to a former paper of Prof. Loomis it will be seen that condensation in front of the storm-centre is one means by which a storm progresses. It is continually making up in its front where the air is va- por-laden, not in its rear where the air has been deprived of its vapor. It will hardly admit of question that the velocity of a storm's forward motion is usually accompanied by an extension of the rain area in the direction in which the storm progresses. The average extent of this area in front of the storm-centre during three years is found to be 542 miles. Now, if this be increased 100 miles, the velocity 634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the storm is also increased, and the re- verse occurs when the area is diminished. The general outline of a storm-area is an oval, the longest diameter of which is in direction of the stoi-m's progress. Around the centre of a storm are points or lines of equal barometric pressure, and the lines thus formed are called isobaric curves. These are, in shape, irregular oval, and the longer diameter may be, or may not be, in the direction of the storm's longer axis. The prevalent direction is a little north of northeast. Prof. Loomis suggested in a former paper that intense and sudden cold arises from vertical movement or displacement of air, by which the warm air suddenly, in some cases almost instantly, rises, the cold air of the upper atmosphere displacing it by its descent. This conclusion is confirmed by recent observations. On the 15th of Jan- uary, 18Y5, the thermometer at Denver in- dicated a fall of temperature of 48° in one hour, and, in another instance cited, the change was 36° in five minutes ! It is sig- nificant that these sudden invasions of cold air appear first, as a rule, on the Eocky Mountains, or contiguous highlands. The presence of mountains seems to favor the development of cold, which would not be the case if the movement of the cold wave was an horizontal one from the arctic I'e- gions, as formerly supposed. ExperiniCDts ou the Sense of Taste. — In a communication to the London Physical Society on subjective sensations of taste, Dr. Stone called attention to two simple experiments, the first of which consists in applying a strong dilution of nitric acid to the root of the tongue by sucking it through a fine glass tube. If pure water be swal- lowed immediately after this, a sweet taste is produced. The author compared this effect to the complementary images seen in the eye after gazing at a powei'fully illuminated body. He then adverted to the taste of the galvanic current. In the well-known ex- periment with pieces of zinc and silver, the zinc is actually dissolved in the saliva. But if one pole of a strong battery (ten Grove's cells in this case) be applied to the nape of the neck, and the other brought to the forehead, besides the flash of light, a strong taste is experienced of a metallic charac- ter. It disappears on breaking contact ; and for this reason, as well as from the fact that the tongue is not in the direct line of circuit, and also that there is no substance in the saliva likely by decomposition to cause metallic deposition, it could hardly be referred to chemical action, but must result from direct stimulation of the sensory ap- paratus. Dr. Stone thought that a glimpse might thus be obtained of some correlation between the modus operandi of hearing and sight and that of taste. In the first case, a supplementary and automatic sensation, in the second the effect of a metaUic solu- tion, both entirely subjective, were excited without the presence of any sapid sub- stance. The explanation may be that both classes of phenomena are due to molecular motion. Do "Tliorongh-breds" revert?— The saying is a common one that domesticated animals tend continually to revert to the original or wild type, and do so revert if domesticating influences are withdrawn. At the Hartford meeting of the American As- sociation for the Advancement of Science, W. H, Brewer, Professor of Agriculture in Yale Scientific School, called attention to this subject. He cites remarks made by an eminent scientist at a previous meeting as follows : " The hog has been greatly changed by domestication, and yet when left to him- self he soon returns to the original type. During the late war some of the most im- proved breeds were turned loose and left to shift for themselves. Three years after I found them possessing all the physical char- acters of the wild-boar of Ew-ope. He also stated that a similar fact had been observed with Durham cattle. This statement, and all similar ones. Prof. Brewer sharply challenges. He refers to the confidence which owners and breeders of " thorough-breds " have in the perma- nence of acquired qualities ; and says he has failed to find a single instance of rever- sion, nor has he found any one who knows of its having taken place. He suggests that the dogma (reversion) is used as an argu- ment to sustain a certain scientific hypothe- sis. In order to ascertain the facts, Prof. Brewer has issued a circular containing the MISCELLANY. 635 following inquiries, and promises to give the results obtained at some future meeting of the association : " 1. Have you personally ever known any ease where thorough-bred short-horn cattle, because of climate, poor feed, neglect, or any other cause, have become in character any thing else than short-horns — in other words, where from any cause thorough-bred short-horns have degenerated into animals of any other breed or type ? " 2. Do you personally know of thorough- bred animals of any other breeds so chang- ing or reverting ? •' 3. Have you ever heard of such a thing taking place, in the experience of other breeders, so well authenticated that you be- lieve it to be a fact ? " The professor concludes his circular with the following remarks : " That grade ani- mals often ' revert,' that curious freaks and ' sports ' often attend violent crossing (and also that breeds deteriorate under bad management or bad conditions), are well enough known, but these facts do not affect the specific questions asked where the blood is supposed to be kept strictly pure.''^ Laborers' Domes. — Dr. Stephen Smith, in an address to the New York Public Health and Dwelling Reform Associations, points out various methods of improving the homes of the laboring classes in this city. He holds that every family almost may own a house for itself, and instances the city of Philadel- phia, where tenement-houses are unknown, and where the day-laborer may, and does, occupy a house which is, or is in process of becoming, his own property. In the city of New York, south of the Harlem Eiver, it is impossible for the poor to build houses, unless there be such a reconstruction of the land as will diminish the cost of individual lots, and allow of a larger number of single houses to the acre. Dr. Smith favors the plan of single rows of dwellings fronting at both extremities upon streets. Blocks thus laid out would have no inclosed courts, the dwellings would be flushed with free cur- rents of air on both sides, and a much larger number of people could be accommodated in the same area. The system of building associations, such as exist in Philadelphia, is highly commended by Dr. Smith. The relation of the laborer to the building association is thus stated: "He borrows $1,000 in cash, agreeing to pay $1,200 and the in- terest ; he stands charged with $1,200, paying $00 per annum : it would take twenty years to pay up $1,200. But at the end of the time, his share being worth $1,200, he stops paying, and the house is his own. In fact, however, he is a participant in the profits, the premium and the interest he pays going to reimburse himself, and it only takes in practice ten or twelve years to put him in absolute possession of his home." Dr. Smith's address is worthy the attention of all classes; it is published in full in the Sanitarian for July. In London, too, there exist various asso- ciations whose object is to provide improved dwellings for the laboring classes. At the present time these associations own 7,558 improved dwellings, capable of containing a population of 36,0*78. The buildings have been erected at a cost of about $6,000,000, and the enterprise is an undoubted financial success. But regarded from the sanitary and moral point of view the results are still more satisfactory. That the moral well- being of the inhabitants is promoted by the enlarged provision made in the model lodging-kouses for the decencies of life is self-evident. The sanitary advantages pos- sessed by these dwellings will be seen from a comparison of their death-rate witli the death-rate of England in general, of Lon- don, or of any district of London. " There is not one year," says the Sanitary Record, " in which the death-rate prevailing in the model lodging-houses is not much lower than in England, and in the country, city, and town districts with which it is brought into comparison. Take, for instance, the healthy year 1868 ; it shows a death-rate in the model lodging-houses of 15 per 1,000, the most favorable figure for any mixed popula- tion of male and female being 22 — a dif- ference of 7 per 1,000 in favor of the model dwellings." It is a very significant fact that whereas in 1874 the death-rate of children under ten in the general population of Lon- don was 48 per 1,000, in the lodging-houses it was only 24 per 1,000. And the saving of disease must be in the like proportion. But yet in these dwellings the population is 636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. very dense, at least four times as dense as in the most thickly-peopled districts of Lon- don. Thus in the most populous district of the metropolis (Westminster) the popu- lation is 235 persons to the acre, while in the dwellings provided by the Metropolitan Association, including the large court-yards and gardens, the average is 1,140 to the acre : in one instance is is even as high as 1,620 to the acre. Rate of Growths of CoralSi — It is stated by Prof. Joseph Le Conte, in the American Journal of Science, for July, that the well- known branching or tree-coral {Madrepora cervicornis) increases in the length of its branches by growth about 3^ inches in a year. He came to this conclusion in the following manner : At the Tortugas he found the prongs of this coral very near the surface, and all with their extremities at nearly the same level. All the prongs were dead for about the last three inches of their length, the lower limit of death appearing to be a perfectly hori- zontal plane. He ascertained that hundreds of acres were thus clipped, having the ap- pearance of a clipped hedge, and he traced this result directly to a change of level of the ocean during each year. This change is about ten inches at Key West, owing to prev- alent winds, the highest level being in Sep- tember, the lowest in January. It is obvi- ous that the branches of coral shoot upward with rise of water, and when near its great- est fall the new growth is destroyed. Lower down the corals are sufficiently beneath the surface to remain uninjured by the surface changes. The amount of dead coral indi- cates the growth, which is three inches for the growing period, or about S^ inches for the entire year for the madrepore-stems in this region. Methods of Physical Culture. — At a meet- ing of the alumni of Amherst College, Dr. Nathan Allen made some remarks upon physical culture, showing that by right it must form an essential part of a college curriculum. He instituted a comparison between boating and ball-playing on the one hand and gymnastics on the other, and said that while the former are calculated to awaken public interest on the subject of physical culture, and to improve the physical condition of great numbers, yet as a means of health they are not the best adapted for the scholar. They call into exercise chiefly certain muscles of the chest, the spine and the limbs, and when long continued pro- duce an abnormal development of these particular muscles at the expense of other muscles. But health rather depends upon an harmonious development of the whole body. Then, too, the exercises of boating and ball-playing become at times so violent and protracted as to cause congestion in the vital organs, resulting in serious dis- eases and endangering life. Furthermore, these exercises can be carried on only by a few individuals, in pleasant weather and at particular seasons — circumstances which render them unsuitable to the student. With gymnastics it is very different. These can be carried on daily and systemat- ically by all, with little loss of time or risk of injury to person or to good morals. They can be so varied as to call into exercise every muscle of the body, and, if need be, strengthen the weak parts and repress those in excess. While they are calculated to improve the general health, by producing a well-balanced organization, they aim to bring all the physical forces of the system into the most favorable condition for study and mental improvement. They tend to bring about the greatest possible harmony of action in every part, especially between the physical and mental, so that the ma- chinery of body and mind shall work to the best advantage. Distribation of Ferns in the Sonth Pa- cific Islands. — M.Eugene Fournier, from a study of the 259 species of ferns native to New Caledonia, whereof 86 are special to that region, and the rest common to it and other groups of islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, has been led to the conclii- sion that at one time New Caledonia and New Holland, as well as New Zealand, were united by means of Norfolk Island and other submerged islands. This hypothesis, he says, will explain the simultaneous pres- ence, in countries with different climates at the present day, of species belonging to homogeneous groups, which the currents would not have been able to transport in MISCELLANY. 637 preference to others, and which, living in interior mountainous regions, are less ex- posed than littoral species to be drawn off by extraneous agents. As to the Mauritian Islands, it is very difficult to explain, by the fact of transport, the singular affinities con- necting their flora with that of the oceanic isles. To suppose some lauds to have dis- appeared between Madagascar and Australia is a bold hypothesis which will, perhaps, impose itself one day on science — above all, after the results attained by geologists, and recently expressed according to the special studies of Alphonse Milne-Edwards. The Prairie Gopber. — Among the bur- rowing species belonging to the squirrel fam- ily, the prairie gopher {Spermophilus Jiich- ardsoni) holds prominent rank. Though one of the most abundant animals in our country, infesting hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory, almost to the ex- clusion of other mammahan forms, the prai- rie gopher has but lately received the htmor of an adequate description. This service has been rendered by Dr. Elliott Coues in the pages of the American Naturalist. The habitat of the prairie gopher appears to extend from the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains, and from latitude 38° to 55°. So numerous are they in Dakota and Montana that, according to Dr. Coues, should certain portions of these Territories ever be settled, the little gophers will con- tend with the husbandman for the land more persistently and successfully than the Indians can hope to. The animal seems to be a modification of the chipmunk; in the language of Dr. Coues, " If we take a chip- munk and crop its ears down close, cut oif about a third of its tail, give it a blunter muzzle, and make a little alteration in its fore feet so that it could dig better," we have a pretty good prairie gopher. The holes they dig are small, but many of them, like the burrows of the badgers, foxes, and prai- rie wolves, will admit a horse's hoof. In some regions so numerous are these holes that it is impossible to gallop a hundred yards except at the risk of life or limb. It is not easy to determine what particu- lar kind of ground the gophers most affect. " Passing over a sterile, cactus-ridden, al- kali-laden waste," says Dr. Coues, " there would be so many that I would say, ' Tliis suits them best ; ' in camp that very night, in some low grassy spot near water, there they would be, pleutiful as ever." If the animals have any preference, it is a choice of the lighter and more easily-worked soils ; and they seem to haunt especially the slight knolls of the prairie a few feet above the general level. One gopher to a hole is the universal rule, nor has the author ever seen any signs of a burrow being occupied by a pair. The female brings forth in June, but the young are never seen outside of the burrow till July, when they are about two-thirds grown. The number of young produced at a birth is supposed to be about eight. Dr. Coues is of the opinion that the go- pher is torpid during most of the winter. The animal hoards up food, it is true, but not in sufficient quantity to suffice for so active a creature during an entire winter. The author has often watched them, where the grass was taller than usual, gathering their store. They rise straight up on their haunches, seize the grass-top, and bite it off; then settling down with a peculiar jerk, they sit with arched back, and stow away the provender in their pouches, with the aid of their fore-paws. Their cheek-pouches, both together, would hardly hold a heaping teaspoouful. Though properly a vegetarian, the gopher derives no small share of his summer food from carcasses of buffalo. Recovery from Liglitning-Stroke. — In his valuable work on " The Maintenance of Health," Dr. Fothergill has the following on resuscitation after lightning-stroke : " Per- sons struck by lightning are not always dead when they appear to be so. There are few recoveries from this state, because no means are tried to restore the suffijrer. In the tropics there are many instances of persons, struck down by lightning, recovering after a heavy thunder-shower ; and it would appear that cold affusion to the body has a decided action in such cases. The injured cannot be harmed by the free use of cold water, and if only an occasional recovery took place it would be well worth the pains bestowed. The persons so injured should have cold water poured or even dashed freely over them." 638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The Air-Bladder of Fishes.— While en- gaged in measuring a degree of the meridian in 1806, the eminent physicist and astron- omer Biot accidentally made the discovery that fishes living at great depths have the air-bladder filled with almost pure oxygen. Another French scientist, Dr. Moreau, has recently confirmed and extended this ob- servation of Biot's. According to Moreau, the air-bladder secretes pure oxygen, and the presence of other gases is due to other causes besides the secretion of the organ. To prove this point, he examined fishes which had for a considerable time lived in very shallow water, and found, from several analyses, that the average amount of oxy- gen in the air of their swimming-bladders was about sixteen per cent. He then plunged the fishes in water to the depth of about twenty-five feet, and found that the quan- tity of gas in the air-bladder was increased. The oxygen was now from forty-five to fifty-two per cent. New Fossil Ungulates from Mexico.— In a communication to the Philadelphia Acad- emy of Natural Sciences, Prof. Cope de- scribes some new fossil Ungulata found by himself while employed in the Wheeler To- pographical and Geological Survey of New Mexico. One of these fossil ungulates, Pli- auchenia Humphreysiana (a new genus and species), is regarded as representing a genus of Camelidoe intermediary between Procame- lus occideidalts and Auchenia. P. Humphrey- siana was of about the same size as the former of these two animals, or somewhat larger than any of the existmg llamas. Another new species of this same genus is Pliauchenia vulcanorum, represented in Prof. Cope's collection by the left maxillary bone, which proves it to have been a camel of about the size of the existing dromedary, and considerably larger than the preceding species. The typical specimen was found near Pojuaque, a village of the Pueblo In- dians. Various bones of camels of the size of P. vulcanorum were also found, some of which doubtless belong to the same species. Of Hippotherium calamarinm, a new species of three-toed horse, the oral and palatine parts of the skull, with the superior dental series of both sides, were found near San Ildefonso. Dr. Cope points out the specific differences between this animal and Leidy's H. occidentalc, H. speciosum, and //. gratum. Aphelops jemezanus, a new species of fossil rhinoceros, is represented by a right man- dibular ramus, found near the town of Santa Clara, on the west side of the Rio Grande. Parental Instinct in Fishes. — The Trini- dad perch does not stand all alone among the finny tribes in caring for the safety of its young. A correspondent, after reading the article "A Motherly Fish," on page 126 of the present volume, writes us as follows : " I think it is known to our fishermen that the catfish watches over its young. For the fact that it does I can vouch. A friend whose place of business was on the quiet wharf of Havre de Grace, Maryland, had an opportunity, during more than a week and several times each day, of observing the parental care of this fish. There were always two fishes with the brood. When approached, one of these would dart off, while the other, naturally supposed to be the mother, could be seen to flap her tail against the bottom till a cloud of mud was raised, concealing herself and her little ones. W^hen the observer remained perfectly still for some time, the water becoming clear again, the mother could be seen hovering over a dark mass of moving small-fry a foot or more in diameter, while a little way off the other fish would be in attendance." Monthless Fishes.— Prof. Leidy lately exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences an apparently mouthless fish, found in the Ouachita River, Arkansas. The fish is the buffalo sucker ( Catastomus bubalus\ an inhabitant of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The specimen is fifteen inches long. The maxillaries, premaxilla- ries, and mandible, are absent, and the in- tegument is tightly extended between the end of the snout, the suborbitals, and the articular ends of the quadrates. In the centre of this expansion of the skin there is a small oval aperture one-fourth of an inch fore and aft, and one-eighth of an inch in transverse diameter. The hole is sufficient to admit a current of water for the purposes of respiration ; but it is difficult to under- stand how the fish had procured its food. The cyprinoids generally are remarkable for NOTES. 639 their small, toothless mouth, but it is never- theless important in its prehensile capacity. The condition of the specimen is of course a deformity, but appears to be the result of a want of development of the jaws, and not of accidental violence. Such fishes are often caught in the Ouachita, and occasion- ally even they have been reported without a vestige of an oral orifice. If the latter con- dition really occurs, the fish can only supply itself with food and with water for respira- tion through the branchial fissures, by the alternating outward and inward movements of the opercula. Hatehing Frogs nndcr Colored Glass. — In an experiment made by M. Thury, the eggs of Rana temporaria, a species of frog, were placed under identical favorable con- ditions, with the exception that some of the eggs received light through colorless glass, and others through green glass. The former developed rapidly, and by the end of May had a length of over one and a half inch, and well-developed hind-legs in most of them ; the others were slowly developed, blackish in color, hardly had a length of three-quarters of an inch by the end of May, and were without a trace of hind-legs. By the 10th of June the former had their fore-legs, and some were changed to frogs ; the others, still black, had no trace of legs, and breathed almost exclusively by means of their gills. By the 15th of July the one lot had become frogs ; the others still had no legs, and by the 2d of August they were all dead, without a trace of legs having ap- peared. Some of the young of this lot, transferred to the vessel in which were con- tained the developed frogs, finished their metamorphosis. Eqnine Idiocy. — A plant known in Cali- fornia as " rattle-weed " is said to produce in animals which eat of it symptoms much re- sembling those of amentia and frenzy. A correspondent of a San Francisco news- paper, writing from Monterey County, de- scribes as follows the effect produced by this plant on a herd of fifty horses on a ranche in the southern part of that county : " They became," he says, " crazy, forsook the farm, and wandered off one by one over the plain, paying no attention to their mates or any thing else. They were too muddled in their brains to seek for water, and most of them died of thirst. Although they were wild, and had never been handled, any per- son could walk up to them on the plain and hit them with his hand, when they would jump, perhaps, straight up in the air, per- haps some other way, and act as though they were trying to leap a fence at every step. They seemed to retain their sight, yet would not turn aside for any thing. The poor demented beasts would walk over a precipice without the slightest fear or hesi- tation." NOTES. The Cincinnati Industrial Exposition of the present year includes a Department of Natural History and Antiquities, and prizes are offered for the best collections in geol- ogy, and mineralogy, conchology, zoology, botany, numismatology, and archaeology. The managers promise that the greatest care will be taken of all specimens sent in for exhibition. The prizes consist of silver and bronze medals. A NOVEL form of snow-spectacles has been devised for the use of the British arctic expedition. These spectacles have neither glass nor iron in their composition; they are made of ebonite, and tied on the head by a velvet cord. They somewhat resemble two half walnut-shells fastened over the eye, and the wearer sees through a simple slit in front of the pupil. To give the wear- er a side view, the sides of the eye-box are perforated with minute holes. These spec- tacles are said to be of great service in reading by lamp or gas light. The Royal Agricultural Society of Eng- land has the most numerous membership of any similar association in the world. It has on its roll 5,846 names. Its " Transac- tions " are published in half-yearly volumes. The Phylloxera vastatrix has made its appaxrance in England. At a meeting of the London Entomological Society, Mr. McLachlan exhibited a portion of a vine- leaf on which were the galls of Phylloxera. The leaf had been plucked in a greenhouse near London. Bean's pneumatic-electric apparatus for lighting and extinguishing street-lamps is now in practical operation in a large part of the business portion of Providence, Rhode Island. The principle of this apparatus consists in a combination of compressed and rarefied air to open and close gas-cocks, and an electro-galvanic current, affording a spark to light the gas. It enables a single 640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. operator at will to light or extinguish all the street-lamps of a city. The "Khedival" Geographical Society of Cairo lately held its first meeting under the presidency of Dr. Schweinfurth. The Khedive gives to the society a local habita- tion, suitably furnished, and also subscribes 10,000 francs a year to its funds. Three soldiers were simultaneously struck by lightning at the Satory Barracks, Paris, May 15th. In two of them the light- ning produced complete relaxation of the muscles, and in the third muscular contrac- tion. The latter, unlike the former, retained consciousness throughout. All recovered in a few days. The metallic buttons on their clothing were not affected by the elec- tric current. The silver-mining region of Massachu- setts, we are informed by a writer in the Engineering and Mining Journal, appears to extend from Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the south, to Portsmouth, New Hamp- shire on the north, and from the Atlantic on the east to North Andover, Massachu- setts, on the west. The first discovered and thus far most prominent lode is the " Chipman," at Newburyport, which has been traced some three miles. The ore of this lode is chiefly galena, carrying from 50 to 150 ounces of silver to the ton. The average thickness of vein-rock on the Chip- man lode is about 60 feet. A MILL has been erected on the line of the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad, California, for the purpose of manufactur- ing the fibre of the cactus into paper-pulp. The experiment has been tried, says the Scientific Press, and an excellent quality of paper is the result. The managers of the great aquarium at Brighton, England, were very heavily fined a month or two since for keeping open on Sunday. A religious fanatic brought to the notice of the courts the violation, by the directors of the Aquarium, of an obso- lete statute " for preventing the abuse and profanation of the Lord's Day." In the mean time publicans are allowed to keep their places open on the " Lord's Day." In the American Journal of Sciences for May, Prof James D. Dana examines the evidences of the contemporaneity of man and the mastodon in Missouri, as presented in various pamphlets issued by Albert Koch, of St. Louis. Prof. Dana shows conclusively that Koch's " evidences " are worthless. In consequence of the excessive cold of the past winter, the deaths registered in the eight principal towns of Scotland in Decem- ber amounted to 3,906, or, taking into ac- count the increase of population, 1,000 in excess of the preceding month, and nearly VOO more than in any month since 1855, when registration of deaths commenced. The mortality in France from the same cause was equally great. Fayette County, Tennessee, is said, in the Report of the Department of Agricult- ure, to have suffered a very great loss of mules and horses last spring by the buffalo- gnat. The best remedy against these pests is to put the stock at once in a dark stable, to be kept filled with smoke. "Death," says the report, " doubtless is partly caused by loss of blood, but mainly by poisoning the circulation." In our sixth volume, p. 743, Dr. Abbott confirms Wilson's statement as to the out- side lichen covering of the yellow -bird's nest. A correspondent, writing from South- ern Minnesota, confirms Brewer's statement, viz., that this bird covers the outside of its nest with fine vegetable fibres. The fibre commonly used is hemp. The yellow-bird thus appears to construct its nest differently in the West from what it does in the East. As for the eggs, our correspondent says that all he has ever seen have been marked with brown splotches on the large end, and he has some specimens which are thickly spotted over the entire surface. The annual death-rate of various cities in the United States, for four weeks in April, as stated by the Sanitarian, shows a minimum (Toledo) of 11.04, and a maximum (Paterson) of 30.63. The rate in New York was 28.70, Philadelphia 24.42, St. Louis 12.65, Chicago 19.11, Boston 20.31, Balti- more 17.53, Cincinnati 15.15, New Orleans 21.09, San Francisco 17.71, Pittsburg 19.22, Charleston 27.82. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, as we learn from the Americari Naturalist, lately received from Mr. A. Agassiz a fine collection of objects illustrating the archae- ology and ethnology of Peru. The collec- tion includes a large number of vases, several mummies, and trinkets, utensils, etc., from burial-grounds; also a number of human crania from the burial-towers near Lake Titicaca. Sir William E. Logan, the geologist, recently deceased, was a native of Montreal, born in 1798. He received his early edu- cation in Edinburgh. His first geological researches were made in the coal-fields of South Wales. In 1841 he returned to Can- ada, and two years later was appointed chief of the geological survey of the prov- inces. He held this position till 1869, when age and infirmity compelled him to resign. " He has done," says Prof Geikie, " a great work in his time, and has left a name and an example to be cherished among the hon- ored possessions of geology." '^^ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. OCTOBER, 1875. BATS AND THEIR YOUIsrG. By Peof. BUET G. WILDEE. EXCEPTING the colder regions, all parts of the world are inhab- ited by bats. There are many kinds, and they often occur in very large numbers. Probably there are very few persons, young or old, who have not seen a bat. Yet, aside from professed naturalists, it is equally probable that there are still fewer who, from direct obser- vation, could give any accurate description of their appearance or their habits, their structure, or their relations with the " birds of the air," or the "beasts'of the earth," to both of which bats bear more or less resemblance. Nor is this strange ; for bats pass the day in caves and deserted buildings, and fly about in pursuit of prey only in the twilight. Much less rapid than that of birds, their ^ight is so irregular as to render it difficult to follow their course, and in the dusk they are often mis- taken for somewhat eccentric members of the swallow family. Their very aspect is repulsive ; they often emit an unpleasant odor ; and, worse than all, there is reason for believing them to serve as the vehicle by which the Gimex lectularius, that terror of house- keepers, has sometimes gained entrance to habitations where its presence would never have been suspected. "When taken they bite so fiercely that we may be thankful that they are no larger, and that, as a rule, they prefer insects to human beings as food. No tiger could be more violent in its demonstrations or more capable of using its only weapons, the sharp, almost needle- like eye-teeth. This accounts for the rarity of instances of the domestication of bats, and this, in part, for the difficulty of making any extended obser- vations upon them. Having found recorded but two such cases, I will begin my account of bats in general with a brief history of one individual which I succeeded in taming quite thoroughly. It was VOL. TII. — 41 642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. when I was a boy, and the details have escaped me, but the main facts are as follows : One of our common bats (probably either the " little brown bat," Vespertllio snbulatus, or the " little red bat ") flew into the house one evening and was caught under a hat. It squeaked and snapped its little jaws so viciously that all efibrts toward closer acquaintance were postponed until morning. When uncovered the next day it seemed as fierce as before, but less active in its movements, probably overpowered by the glare of daylight. When touched its jaws opened wide, the sharp teeth were Fig. 1.— Common English Bat {VespertUio communis). exposed, and from its little throat came the sharp steely clicks so char- acteristic of our bats. Nor did this fierce demeanor soften in the least daring the day, and when night approached I was about to let it go, but the sight of a big fly upon the window suggested an attempt to feed the captive. H':ld by the wings between the points of a pair of forceps, the fly had no sooner touched the bat's nose than it was seized, crunched, and swallowed. The rapidity of its disap- pearance accorded with the width to which the eater's jaws were opened to receive it, and, but for the dismal crackling of skin and wings, reminded one of the sudden engulfment of beetles by a hun- gry young robin. A second fly went the same road. The third was more deliber- ately masticated, and I ventured to pat the devourer's head. Instantly all was changed. The jaws gaped as if they would separate, the crushed fly dropped from the tongue, and the well-known click pro- claimed a hatred and defiance which hunger could not subdue nor food appease. So at least it seemed, and I think any but a boy-natu- ralist would have yielded to the temptation to fling the spiteful creat- ure out of the window. Perhaps, too, a certain obstinacy made me unwilling to so easily relinquish the newly-formed hope of domesti- cating a bat. At any rate, another fly was presented, and, like the former, dropped the moment my fingers touched the head of the bat. BATS AND THEIR YOUNG. 643 With a third I waited until the bat seemed to be actually swallowing, and unable to either discontinue that process or open its mouth to any extent/ Its rage and perplexity were comical to behold, and, when the fly was really down, it seemed to almost burst with the effort to express its indignation. But this did not prevent it from falling into the same trap again ; and, to make a long story short, it finally learned by experience that, while chewing and swallowing were more or less interrupted by snapping at me, both operations were quite compatible with my gentle stroking of its head. And even a bat has brains enough to see the foolishness of losing a dinner in order to resent an unsolicited kindness. In a few daya the bat would take flies from my fingers ; although, either from eagerness or because blinded by the light, it too often nipped me sharply in its efforts to seize the victim. Its voracity was almost incredible. For several weeks it devoured at least fifty house-flies in a day (it was vacation, and my playmates had to assist me), and once disposed of eighty between daybreak and sunset. This bat I kept for more than two months. It would shuflle across the table when I entered the room, and lift up its head for the expected fly. When traveling it was carried in my breast-pocket. In the fall it died, either from overeating or lack of exercise, for I dared not let it out-of-doors, and it was so apt to injui'e itself in the rooms that I seldom allowed it to fly. I should add that it drank frequently and greedily from the tip of a camel' s-h air pencil. The following bits of bat biography are from White's "Natural History of Selborne," and the " Annals and Magazine of Natural His- tory : " " Having caught a lively male specimen of the common ' long-eared bat ' {Plecotus auritus) and placed the little fellow in a wire-gauze cage, and inserted a few large flies, he was soon attracted by their buzz, and, pricking up his ears (just as a donkey does), he pounced upon his prey. But, instead of taking it directly into his mouth, he covered it with his body and beat it by aid of its arms, etc., into the bag formed by the interfemoral membrane. He then put his head under his body, withdrew the fly from the bag, and devoured it at leisure. " This appeared to be always the modus operandi, more or less clev- erly performed. Several times, when the fly happened to be on the flat surface of the ground, the capture appeared more difficult, and my little friend was, by his exertions, thrown on his back. The tail could ' I did not understand this at the time. If my readers will try it, they will find that it is very diflScult to even begin to swallow with the mouth open, and almost impossible to prevent the morsel from descending after reaching the back of the throat. 644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. then be seen turned round, with its tip and the margin of the mem- brane pressed against the stomach, forming a capital trap, hohling the fly, the captor remaining on his back till he had withdrawn the fly from the bag. " I had no opportunity of observing the action when the bat was in full flight ; but, if the insect was captured a few inches from the side of the cage, the mode was the same ! When flying, the interfemoral Fig. 2.— Long-eared English Bat {Tlecotus auritus). membrane is not extended to a flat surface (and appears not capable of being so stretched), but always preserves a more or less concave form, highly calculated to serve the purposes of a skim-net to capture insects on the wins. " Occasionally, when the bat was sleepy, sitting at the bottom of the cage, nodding his head, a poor, silly ' blue-bottle fly,' no doubt of tender age, and not read in the natural history of the Vespertilio- nidm, with the greatest confidence walked quietly under the bat, passing nose, ear, and eyes, without danger ; but, immediately he touched the sensitive membrane of the bag, it was closed upon him, and there was no retreat except by being helped out of the difiiculty by the teeth of the bat. " I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it any thing to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing ofi'the wings of the flies, which were always re- jected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when ofiered. ... I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion that BATS AND THEIR YOUNG. 645 bats, when down on a flat surface, cannot get on the wing again, by- rising with great ease from the floor. ..." So far, we have contented ourselves with treating of bats simply as such, and without reference to their internal structure, their rela- tionship with other animals, or even their differences among them- selves ; much less have we approached the deeper questions of their origin and destiny — the probabilities as to their ancestry, and the pos- sibilities as to their more or less remote descendants. In the same way the astronomer may, for a time, speak of a comet only as a certain well-known celestial phenomenon, which may be as obvious to the unaided vision of the ignorant as to his own. But, sooner or later, he cannot refrain from discussing its chemical and physical condition, its course through space, its relations to other comets and to the stars, and, finally, its probable origin from nebu- lous matter, and its possible transformation into a world like our own. The comparison may be carried one step farther. For, to the igno- rant and superstitious the sudden apparition of a blazing comet has often been a portent of disaster, while even the intelligent shrink with aversion from the flitting bat, and make comparisons with evil spirits. Fig. 3.— Vampire-Bat op South America (Vampirus specti-um). It must be admitted that most bats are " uncanny " in their aspect, and unfriendly in disposition ; while the legends of blood-thirsty vam- pires have only too much foundation in fact. But it is only fair to them (the bat family) to admit that the num- ber of species which thus injure men and the larger animals is very small ; and that, while all of our own bats, and most of those of other lands, are fierce devourers of insects, and use their sharp teeth for de- fense against their captors, there are many kinds, especially the larger (Roussettes, etc.), which live almost wholly upon fruits, and are, more- 646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. over, quite good eating themselves. So tliere should be made a dis- tinction between them as between the venomous and the harmless ser- pents and the more and the less poisonous spiders. Perhaps one element of distrust of the bat family arises from their apparent non-conformity to either of the common animal types. The bat seems to be either a bird witli hair and teeth, bringing forth its young alive, or a mammal with wings, and the general aspect and habit of a bird. Add to these exceptional features that their attitude, when at rest, is always head downward, and that their legs are so turned outward as to bring the knees behind instead of in front, and we may almost pardon the common dislike of the whole family of bats. Fig. 4.— FLriNG-Fox oe Roussette {Pteropus rubricollis) We may as well state at once that a bat is really a matmnal ; that is, it agrees with moles, rats, sheep, horses, cats, monkeys, and men, in bringing forth its young alive, and nursing them by milk ; in hav- ing red blood-corpuscles, which contain no nucleus ; in being clothed with hair; and in possessing a corpus callosum, that is, a band of fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres. There are other anatomical features which link the bats closely with the moles and shrews and hedge-hogs. Indeed, the bat might be described as a flying mole, or tlie mole as a burrowing bat. Twenty years ago one of these phrases might have been as accept- able as the other ; for they would have implied only an ideal connec- tion between the forms. But now, wdien the idoa of an actual evolu- tion or derivation of widcly-difterent forms from me another, or from common stocks, is rapidly becoming the fundamental postulate of all biological research, we are bound to inquire whether one mode of ex- Dression is not much more likely to be true than the oiher. BATS AND THEIR YOUNG. 6^,7 For the solution of this, as of most such inquiries, we must appeal to embryology, to the study of the development of animals, and of the resemblances between the earlier stages of some and the later stages of others. Our first object is to confirm the conclusion that bats are mammals rather than birds. And here, strangely enough, we find that the mat- ter of size, usually regarded as of little moment in zoological discrimi- nation, becomes of primary importance. All animals, mammals as well as birds, are formed from eggs. An egg, or ovum, is a cell with special endowments, and capable of availing itself of the peculiar con- ditions under which it is placed, the first of these conditions being the access of the zoosperms of the male. Now, the eggs of all mammals are small, usually microscopic. The human ovum is about j^ of an inch in diameter. Therefore, although the yolk or essential part of the egg of a humming-bird may be pretty small, it is far larger tfian the largest mammalian ovum ; while that of the ostrich or the Epyornis is sim- ply gigantic in comparison. Now, I am not aware that the ovum of a bat has ever been exam- ined, but there can be doubt of its minuteness as compared with that of any known bird. Fig. 5 shows, of its natural size, the earliest em- bryo of a bat I have ever heard of. Its length as it lies is much less than that of a humming-bird's egg. Moreover, since the young bird is developed upon the yolk, and the latter remains of consider- able size until very near the period of hatching, and since the yolk of our little bat either has been already absorbed or is too minute for detection, it may be considered that it was much smaller than that of birds. Finally, the simple fact that the little bat was taken out of the mother already somewhat advanced in development, is clear proof that it is not a bird.' Aside from the absence of yolk, the form of the smallest embryo, above figured, might not determine its mammalian nature ; but the remaining figures, however little some of them may resemble quadru- peds, are evidently not birds. The tail is too long (for any bird ex- cepting the Archeopteryx) ; the muzzle is rounded, the feet have five divisions more or less marked, while no bird has more than four toes ; and, although the hands may in some cases resemble a bird's wing, yet here too are five fingers, and the wing is evidently an expansion of the hand itself by the elongation and separation of the fingers, rather than a slender hand with feathers attached to the hinder border as with birds. 1 There are no known birds which normally produce living young; but I have a chicken-like body nearly three inches long, which was developed within the hen. It was shown at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this year. Its exact nature can only be learned after full examination of the structure. 648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. With the more advanced embryos the promiuent ear would be con- clusive against their avian nature, and the nostrils, where they show, are not those of birds. We may, then, dismiss from our minds any anxiety as to whether bats are partly birds and partly mammals, and conclude merely that, upon the essential mammalian structure, there have been superinduced features which enable the bat to fly in the air ; these, however, no more making it a bird than the form and habit of the whale and mana- tee render them fishes. The second question is, whether bats are to be regarded as the pro- genitors or the descendants of the moles and shrews ; or, to put it more accurately (since the idea of derivation does not imply that living species have descended from other living species, but from similar extinct species or from others which combined features since separated in the two forms), is it probable that the existing bats have been pro- duced from original stocks more nearly resembling the moles or the reverse ? That the former is the more probable, is indicated upon three grounds : 1. The bat form is peculiar among mammals, and does not, like the Ornithorhynchus and Echidna^ manifest any internal structural afiinity with birds. There is a much more marked resemblance to the extinct flying reptiles {Pterodactyli), but this is probably one of analogy. 2. The embryo bat resembles the ordinary small mammal ; the long fingers, the persistence of the web between them, and its continuation from the border of the body and tail, are features of later appearance. 3. In one embryo (Fig. 9), the thinness and prolongation of the muzzle as compared with the lower jaw may be compared with the elongated snouts of the " star-nosed mole " and the " elephant shrew." I have never had the opportunity of examining the young of moles or shrews. This would be very desirable, and, one would think, not difiicult to accomplish. Figs. 5 to 11 are intended chiefly to show the gradual develop- ment of the limbs, so the other parts are drawn with less detail, and no attempt is made to elucidate the manner of formation of the face from the visceral arches. The series begins with Fig. 5. Here the body is simply an elon- gated mass, longer and rounded at the head end, and tapering at the other extremity. It is twisted upon itself, as is often the case with young embryos. The yolk-sack and membranes are not well preserved, and are not shown at all in the figure. This embryo may be regarded as quite small for even a bat. The limbs have not appeared, so the tail does not form a distinct prolongation. (The lower figure is of natural size ; the upper is enlarged five diameters.) In Fig. 6 the arm {ar) and leg {pes) project as little flat pads from the sides of the body. There is no sign of subdivision into fingers and toes, and very little difierence between the two limbs. It is worth BATS AND THEIR YOUNG. 649 Fig. 5. Fig. (J. Fig. 7. Fig. 8. Fig. 9. Fig. 10. Embryo Bats. Fig. 11. All, excepting Fig. 11, enlarged 5 diameters. Explanation of Plate} Pigs. 10 and 11 from the little brown bat ( Vespertilio siibulatus), the others from a Brazilian spe- cies (NycHiiomm Brasiliemis) ; Fig. 11 and the smaller part of Fie. 5 are of natural size. All the others are enlarged 5 diameters ; that is, 25 areas. The lettering is uniform, as follows: u c, umbilical cord; not seen in 5 or 8. ff, head ; T, tail ; Ar, armus or anterior limb ; Pes, foot ; P, poUex or thumb, the anterior digit of the manus ; Pr, primus or srreat-toe, the ante- rior dactyl of the pes, which becomes the outer in the older bats, but is the inner with most animals ; W, web, the fold of skin which connects the digits with each other and with the leg and margin of the trunk; C, calcar, a spur-like process from the heel, serving to extend the web which reaches between the legs and the tail ; Ear, the ear ; in Fig. 7 fl' is the heart ; in Pig. 10 A is the rounded prominence corresponding to the cerebral hemispheres which are developed from the anterior cerebral vesicle; ^f represents the optic lobes, formed from the middle vesicle ; N, nostril ; Mo, mouth ; S, elbow ; K, knee. For further explanation, see the text. * Figs. 5 to 11 were all drawn and engraved from nature by Mr. Pbilip Barnard, 650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. noting, however, that the manus is already a little the wider and more prominent. In Fig. 7 the manus is not only larger but has protruded so as to display the wrist and elbow regions, and a slight prominence upon the anterior border marks the position of the thumb (pollex). In these three specimens I have not as yet found the ear, but in 3 and 4 the eye is quite apparent. In Fig. 6 the ear is a triangular flap, as in most early mammalian embryos,^ The manus and pes have enlarged and present shaded portions corresponding with the thinner tissue between the finger and toes. In the former this is to become the web ; in the latter it is wholly re- moved so as to leave the toes free. The muzzle is partly covered by the manus, but it is already somewhat pointed, as in the next figure. In Fig. 9 the manus and pes of the left side are shown as if re- moved from the trunk, so as to expose the flat and prominent muzzle. The ear is a large flap, but still projects forward so as to cover the opening. The pollex has separated from the other digits, and the latter are elongated and bent downward. The pes is longer and the signs of subdivision more distinct. A web connected the limbs and the trunk as in the older specimens, but it was somewhat torn, so that the exact extent could not be determined, and I preferred to wait for a better specimen to show it. The specimens above described were taken from a Brazilian species, I^yctino7nus Brasiliensis (which is also found in this country). Figs. 10 and 11 were from the common " little brown bat " ( VespertUio subu- latus). As might be expected, the increasing limbs are packed about the body more or less irregularly. But in Fig. 10 the limbs of the two sides are placed with almost exact symmetry so as to cover the face and the body. One eye is covered, the other peeps out over the index- finger. The ears are firmly held down by the thumbs, and one of the nostrils is partly hidden by the web. The lower part of the trunk and the tail are bent upward, and the knees are thrown outward so as to bring the great-toe (jor) upon the outer instead of the inner side. The whole suggests an efibrt upon the part of the embryo to not only occupy the least possible space, but also to screen itself from obser- vation, and neither see, nor hear, nor smell. In Fig. 11 is shown an older embryo, of natui-al size, outspread so as to display the characteristic features of bats ; the greatly-elongated fingers ; the separation of the thumb ; and the extension of the web, with the reticulated arrangement of vessels and neiwes upon it. This nervous expansion seems to enable bats to perceive the proximity of bodies by the change in the pressure of the air. ^ It remains to be seen whether the seals, whales, manatee, and dugong, have a pinna in the earlier stages, and afterward lose it. Upon the earliest embryo of a manatee yet known, see a paper by the writer in American Journal of Science, August, 1875. BATS AND THEIR YOUNG. 651 The Size of Bat Families. — It is not known that bats make a nest like birds, or that they have any other way of caring for their young than by carrying them hanging to their fur whether during flight or while suspended at rest by the legs. So we might naturally infer two things : first, that the young bats would be born in a somewhat advanced condition so as to be able as soon as possible to sliift for themselves ; and, second, that the number produced at a birth would be small. The former inference would seem to be true, judging from the large size of the little bats before birth, and the rarity of the cap- ture of the mothers with young. In one case the two unborn young weighed two-thirds as much as the parent, and the average of twenty individuals gave the weight of the young as four-tenths that of the parents. Upon the second point it is stated by Van der Hoeven (" Hand- book of Zoology," vol. ii., p. 731) that "bats commonly produce one or two young ones at a birth ; " but he does not say upon how many observations the conclusion is based. Prof. Owen (" Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates," vol. iii., p. 730) I'ecords two observations of bats [Vespertilio emarginatus and Y. noctula), with each one young, and concludes that this is commonly the case with all bats. A collared fruit bat ( Cynonycteris collaris) produced a single young February 27, 1870, and a second April 7, 1871.' In Jamaica Mr. Osborn observed several females of Jfolossus fu- marius and Monophyllus poeyi^ with each one young.' The same observer mentions two other species [Macrotus Water- housii, and Monophyllus Redmanii), without specifying the number of young ; but we may infer that, as in the other cases, each female had but one. In a single female of an undetermined Brazilian species I have found one young ; and in each of forty females of the Nyctinomus 3rasiliensis (from Brazil) a single young. These are certainly facts in corroboration of the opinions of Owen and Van der Hoeven, but let us not be hasty in generalizing from them respecting all bats. In June, 1874, there were brought to me twenty females of the "little brown bat" {Vespertilio suhnlatus). Each was found to con- tain two little bats in various stages of development.' Finally, Prof. Putnam, of the Peabody Academy of Science, has kindly allowed me to examine two females of the Lasiurus novehora- censis taken in Massachusetts, on each of which were three young bats. The foregoing observations indicate that, while one is the more 1 P. L. Sclater, "Proceedings of Zoological Society, 1870, 1871." * " Proceedings of Zoological Society, 1865," p. 81. 8 I have since seen a bat of another species, to which were clinging two young. 652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. common number of young produced by bats, two and three may occur. More extended inquiry may show that these larger families are less rare than now appears, and even that as many as four young may be produced at a birth. For while bats are usually credited with only two nipples, an extra pair exists upon the Lasiurus novebora- censis. The uniformity in number with each species is very striking. Twenty-two of one species had each two young, while forty of another had each one. In the former case the young were placed one on the right and the other on the left of the body. But in the latter case the single young was invariably on the right side ; while, in the single specimen of the undetermined Brazilian bat, the young was on the left side. Equally striking with the above facts is the isolation of the females with young. Among forty-three Nyctinomus Brasiliensis was but a single male. No males were found near the twenty-two Vespertilio suhulatus. Osborn says that, of Molossus fumarius, all of one large lot were males; while at another time, in a large hollow tree, he found in one cavity about one hundred males, and in a second about the same number of females, with " apparently a few males here and there." ' Evidently there is much to be learned respecting the domestic and social economy of these animals. Perhaps the males gather food for the females.' Perhaps the most important fact, from a practical point of view, is that of the power of the mother-bats to carry such a weight of young in addition to their own. Yet, so far as I know, all estimates of the extent of wing and size of muscle, which would be necessary to enable a man to fly, have been based upon the idea that the only flying mammal is a fair standard.^ These estimates should be corrected so as to conform to the fact that a bat can fly with nearly double its ordinary weight. Even this may not encourage us to hope for a future race of flying-men. But it renders it worth considering whether a man, naturally slight of frame, with small head, could not so far reduce his weight by a flesh diet, and by the amputation of his legs, as to enable him, by special cultivation of his pectoral muscles, to work efi^ctively a pair of wings less exten- sive than those now supposed to be required. ' The writer has not been able to examine the development of bats with the nasal appendages. He would be glad to receive information upon the habits of bats with young, and to exchange the latter for specimens of Amphioxus. ^ Harting (" Archives Neerlandisches," iv.) calculated that a bat the size of a man would require wings two and a half metres long, and with a surface of one and a half square metre. INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 653 mSTINCT AND mXELLIGENCE.' By Prof. JOSEPH LE CONTE. WHAT is instinct? What is its relation to intelligence? These questions form the subject of my lecture to-day. Many persons would probably object to this subject being treated at all in a course of physiology. Many persons doubtless think that these are questions for the psychologist, and not for the physiologist. But I think you have already perceived, in the course of these lect- ures, how difficult, yea, impossible, it is to sharply separate these two departments. As between all other departments of science, so also between these, there is a border-land, which is common ground. The physiology of the brain is that common ground. The precise relation of physiology to psychology it is extremely difficult to adjust. As there are two opposite errors in regard to vital force — one, the old error of regarding this force as something innate, underived, unrelated to other forces of Nature ; the other, the new error of regarding it as nothing but ordinary physical and chemical forces, and thus identifying physiology with chemistry and physics — so also on this subject there are two opposite errors : one the old error of regarding mental forces as wholly unrelated to and underived from vital forces, and psychology, as wholly disconnected from physi- ology ; the other, the new error of regarding mental phenomena as connected with the brain in the same clear and intelligible way that functions are connected with organs, and thus identifying psychology with physiology. But, as in the case of vital force, there is a truer view, viz., that which regards this force as indeed correlated with other lower forces and derived from them, but, nevertheless, as a very distinct /orm of force or cosmic energy, producing a very distinct and peculiar group of phenomena, the knowledge of which constitutes the science of physiology ; so also, on the subject of mental force, there is a truer view which comprehends and embraces the extremes men- tioned above. Let me briefly explain my views on this subject. In recent times physiology has indeed made great, and to many startling, advances in the direction of connecting mental phenomena with brain-changes. Physiologists have established the correlation of physical and chemi- cal with vital forces, and probably of vital with mental forces. They have proved in every act of perception the existence of a vibratory thrill passing along the nerve-cord from sense-organ to brain ; and in every act of volition a similar vibratory thrill from brain to muscle ; they have even determined the velocity of this vibratory thrill, and find it, to the surprise of those who identify nervous force with elec- ' A Lecture to the Class in Comparative Physiology in the University of California. 654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tricity, only about 100 feet per second. They have also established the fact of a chemical or molecular change in the brain corresponding with changes in mental states ; and with great probability, also, a quantitative relation between these corresponding changes, and thei'e- fore a relation between them of cause and effect. In the near future we may do more : we may localize all the faculties and powers of the mind in different parts of the brain, each in its several place, and thus lay the foundations of a scientific phrenology. In the far-distant future we may do even much more : we may possibly connect every diiFerent kind of mental state with a different and distinctive kind of molecular or chemical change in the brain ; we may find, for example, that a right-handed rotation of atoms is associated with love, and a left-handed rotation with hate. We may do all this, and much more. We may push our knowledge in this direction as far as the boldest imagination can reach, and even then we are no nearer the solution of this mystery than before. Even then it would be impossible for us to understand how brain-changes can produce even the simplest psy- {■hological phenomena such as sensation, consciousness, xoill. By no Tort of the mind can we conceive how molecular motion can pi-oduce sensation or consciousness. The two sets of phenomena belong to difi'erent orders — orders so different, that it is simply impossible to construe the one in terms of the other. It is not thus with other groups of phenomena in relation to one another. The phenomena of motion, heat, gravity, light, electricity, chemical afiinity — yea, also of vitality — have been, or may be, con- strued in terms of each other, and all in terms of molecular motion. Whether our present theories on this subject be true or not, may ad- mit of doubt ; but a true theory is at least conceivable ; all these may conceivably be reduced to the same order. But no amount of knowl- edge nor strength of imagination will in the least degree help us to understand the mysterious causal relation between the molecular changes in the brain and the corresponding efiects in the mind, or between changes in the mind and corresponding changes in the brain. I wish to put this as clearly and as strongly as I can. Suppose, then, an infinite human knowledge — infinite in degree, but human in hind ; suppose, in other words, an absolutely perfect science, such as was conceived and admirably expressed by Laplace — a science which had completely subdued its whole domain and reduced it to the greatest simplicity, so that the whole cosmos and its phenomena is expressed by a single mathematical formula, which, worked out with positive signs, would give every phenomenon which would ever occur in the future, or with negative signs every event which had ever occurred in the past. Even to such an infinitely perfect science the causal relation of molecular motion on the one hand to sensation, conscious- ness, thought, and emotion on the other, or vice versa, would still be utterly unintelligible. Like the essential nature of matter, or INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 655 the ultimate cause of force, this relation lies outside the domain of science. But, admitting this chasm which cannot be bridged — admitting the distinctness of psychology and physiology, a distinctness far greater than exists between any other two departments of science — still there can be no doubt that the changes in the brain and in the mind correspond with each other in the strictest manner. There can be no doubt that we have here two parallel series running side by side with corresponding terms, and that every change in the terms of one series is associated with a change in the corresponding terms of the other series. Whichsoever we take as cause, and whichsoever as effect, the correspondence is undoubted. This much seems certain, and this is sufficient to show that a knowledge of the terms of one series must throw light on the order of succession in the terms of the other series. In a word, physiology^ as the simpler and more funda- mental science, must form the only true basis of a scientific psychology. Again, as anatomy only became scientific by becoming compara- tive anatomy, i. e., by the study of the strtccture of organisms in their relation to each other, or as connected by the law of evolution ; as physiology, too, only became really scientific by becoming comparative physiology; i. e., by tracing the gradual evolution of organic func- tions j even so psychology can never assume the rank of 9, science until it becomes comparative psychology ; i. e., until it adopts the comparative method, until it studies the difierent grades and kinds of mentality in their relation to each other, and connects them all by the law of evolution. So much I have thought it necessary to say in order to show the importance of my subject, and its close connection with physiology. I now pass on to the subject itself. It is well known that many of the lower animals, especially certain species of insects, perform acts perfectly adapted to accomplish re- sults, and that without previous experience and without instruction. Often the results attained are of a very complex character ; results which could not be attained by ourselves except by the exercise of high intelligence, aided by much experience. The extraordinary capacity by which these results are reached with such unerring cer- tainty is called instinct. I need hardly refer you to examples: You are all familiar with the wonderful instinct of the common honey-bee ; their organized com- munities with perfect division of labor, the precision with which they make their honey-cells on perfect mathematical principles, the honors paid to their queen, their care of her eggs, their wise distribution of food to the larvae, both its quality and quantity, and the form and size of the containing cells being varied according to the function and even to some extent determining the character of the perfect insect, whether drone, or queen, or worker. You are already familiar with 656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. all this and much more which I cannot stop to recapitulate. You are also doubtless familiar with the still more wonderfully organized com- munities of ants, with their queens, their domestic laborers, and their warriors. You have heard of, if you have not watched, their maraud- ing excursions, their fierce but well-ordered battles, the triumphal return of the victors laden with spoil, and with captives whom they reduce to the condition of domestic servants. I barely mention these examples because they are familiar to all, but I must describe more fully one case of instinct from the same family, which is probably less familiar to you and yet no less wonderful : I refer to the case of the common mud-wasp or clay-dauber. These insects do not form organized communities, and therefore have no neuters or workers, but each female works for herself. Neither does she feed her young as do bees and other wasps, but provides appropriate food in abundance, and leaves them to themselves. But the mode of building her cells and supplying the appropriate food exhibits a marvelous wisdom. She gathers wet clay in pellets about the size of a duck-shot and commences to build. Going and coming from her clay-quarry to her work, with great patience, industry, and skill, she builds two or three cells side by side, two or three inches long and about half an inch in diameter. When finished she pro- ceeds to fill them with food. For this purpose she attacks all varie- ties of spiders, stings them, plunging her sting with the greatest precision directly into the principal nerve-ganglion, and, after laying an egg in the body of each, carries them ofi" and packs them away in the cells, until these are completely full, then seals them with clay and leaves them. In due time the eggs are hatched, the larvae feed upon the spiders, until they become perfect insects, and cut their way out of the cells. Observe, then, first, the walls of the cells must be thin and composed of porous materials, otherwise the eggs could not hatch, nor the larvse continue to live, for want of oxygen ; second, the spiders must be help- less hut not dead. If they were dead they would decompose or else dry up before they could be used as food. If, on the other hand, they were alive and active, they would destroy each other, a;id the con- tained eggs, and perhaps escape from the cell. But the poison is so adjusted as to quantity, and probably as to the place of insertion, as to produce a state of complete helplessness, a deep and permanent coma: the spiders are as it were chloroformed by the poison. If touched or irritated, they move only enough to show that they are not dead. As a boy I have many times watched these wasps gathering their mate- rials, building their cells, gathering their food-supply of spiders. I have many times broken open their finished cells and found them full of spiders in the condition described. If one desires to study spiders, he can gather more varieties in one day, by breaking open the cells of mud-wasps, than in a year in any other way. INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 657 Now, such actions performed by raan would sliow high intelligence and much experience ; and yet we cannot attribute such intelligence to these insects, because their actions in other directions and under other and new conditions exhibit but a very snuill amount of intelli- gence ; we are compelled to attribute these wise actions to another and somewhat diiFerent faculty, which by way of distinction we call instinct. Let, us then, contrast these two faculties (if they may be so called) and show their distinctive features : 1. Intelligence %corJcs hy experience^ and is wholly dependent on individual experience for the wisdom of its actions. — Wisdom in this case is a product of two factors, intelligence and individual experience. Intelligence alone produces nothing. Experience alone is equally valueless. With a given intelligence the product will vary as the experience, with a given amount of experience the product will vary as the intelligence. Thus intelligence works by experience to attain wise results. On the contrary, instinct is wholly independent of individual experience. The young bee or mud-wasp, untaught, works at once without hesitation, with the greatest precision and in the wisest man- ner, to accomplish the most marvelous results. Like the reflex func- tion of the nervous system, and like the still lower organic functions of secretion, excretion, circulation, respiration, etc., the wisdom and precision of its actions seem to he theresidt of structure, though unlike these the actions are not removed from the sphere of consciousness and will, if we call it intelligence ; then it is not indimdual intelligence but cosmic intelligence, or the laws of Nature working through inher- ited brain-structure to produce wise results. 2. Intelligence belongs to the individual, and is therefore variable, i. e., different in different individuals, and also improvable in the life of the individual by experience. — Instinct belofigs to the sp>ecies, and is therefore the same in all individuals and unimprovable with age and experience. It is true that close observation would probably detect a slight difference in the skill of different bees, and slight improvement with age, in some more than others, but this must be accredited to the individual, not to the inheiited element, i. e., to the small margin of intelligence which undoubtedly exists in these animals. 3. Instinct in its sphere is far ynore perfect and unerring than intelligence. — It makes no mistakes, because determined by structure, not by imperfect knowledge. In a word, intelligent conduct is self-determined and becomes wise by individual experience. Instinctive conduct is predetermined in wisdom by brain-structure. The former is free, the latter is to a large extent automatic ; the one is like the voluntary locomotion of the higher animals, free to turn whither it likes, but liable to mistakes and stumblings and hurtful falls ; the other like the motion of an engine laid upon a track which bears it swiftly and surely to its des- tined goal. VOL. VII. 658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. I have given, thus far, only a few very conspicuous examples of in- stinct, in order the more clearly to contrast this faculty wiih intelli- gence. I might have added many other conspicuous and well recog- nized examples, such as the migrations and nest-making of birds, the dam-building of beavers, etc. But we would have a very imperfect no- tion of tlie wideness of the operation of instinct if we confined ourselves to these conspicuous cases. Instinct in a less remarkable degree is uni- versal among animals, including man himself. But what is universal in the popular mind creates no surprise, attracts no attention, and seems to need no explanation ; yet it is these very universal and there- fore unobserved phenomena which are the most instructive to science. Not only the action of bees and ants and wasps, not only the migra- tions and the nest-makins: of birds and the dam-buildincj of beavers, must be accredited to instinct, but also all complex voluntary motions lohich are performed loithout experience. Such, for example, in many animals are the acts of running, swimming, flying, walking, and stand- ing, etc. Yes, even the simple act of standing or walking is really a marvelous feat in balancing — I'equiring the nice adjustment and perfect coordination of perhaps a hundred different muscles. Even the simple voluntary act of sight (looking) requires the most exquisite adjustment of the optic axes, the lenses, and the iris. These complex actions are acquired by us by experience., though there is doubtless also, evey% in igauge, and ^is the barometer. a IV- FlQ. 1. The whole being fitted up as here shown, and the apparatus being full of air to begin with, I passed a spirit-flame across the lower pai't of the tube at 5, observing the movement by a low-power micrometer : the pith-ball {a h) descended slightly, and then immediately rose to THE MECHANICAL ACTION OF LIGHT. 685 considerably above its original position. It seemed as if the true action of the heat was one of attraction, instantly overcome by ascend- ing currents of air. A hot metal or glass rod and a tube of hot water applied beneath the pith-ball at b produced the same effect as the flame ; when applied above at a they produced a slight rising of the ball. The same effects take place when the hot body is a])plied to the other end of the balanced beam. In these cases air-currents are suffi- . cient to explain the rising of the ball under the influence of heat. In order to apply the heat in a more regular manner, a thermometer was inserted in a glass tube, having at its extremity a glass bulb about one and a half inch diameter; it was filled with water and then sealed up {see Fig. 2). This was arranged on a revolving stand, so that by means of a cord I could bring it to the desired position with- out moving the eye from the micrometer. The water was kept heated to 70° C, the temperature of the laboratory being about 15° C. Fig. 2. Tlie barometer being at 767 millimetres and the gauge at zero, the hot bulb was placed beneath the pith-ball at b. The ball rose rapidly. The source of heat was then removed, and as soon as equilibrium was restored I placed the hot-water bulb above the pith-ball at «, when it rose again — more slowly, however, than when the heat was applied beneath it. The pump was then set to work; and when the gauge was 147 millimetres below the barometer, the experiment was tried again : a similar result, only more feeble, was obtained. The exhaustion was continued, stopping the pump from time to time to observe the effect of heat, when it was seen that the effect of the hot body regularly diminished as the rarefaction increased, until, when the gauge was about twelve millimetres below the barometer, the action of the hot body was scarcely noticeable. At ten millimetres below it was still less ; while when there was only a difterence of seven millimetres be- tween the barometer and the gauge, neither the hot-water bulb, the hot rod, nor the si^irit-flame, caused the ball to move in an appreciable degree. The inference was almost ii-resistible that the rising of the pith was only due to currents of air, and that at this near approach to a vacuum the residual air was too highly rarefied to have power in its rising to overcome the inertia of the straw beam and the pith-balls. A more 686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. delicate instrument would doubtless show traces of movement at a still nearer approach to a vacuum ; but it seemed evident that when the last trace of air had been removed from the tube surrounding the balance — when the balance was suspended in empty space only — the pith-ball would remain motionless, wherever the hot body was ap- plied to it. I continued exhausting. On next applying heat underneath, the result showed that I was far from having discovered the law govern- ing these phenomena; the pith-ball rose steadily, and without that hesitation which had been observed at lower rarefactions. With the gauge three millimetres below the barometer, the ascension of the pith when a hot body was placed beneath it was equal to what it had been in air of ordinary density ; while with the gauge and barometer level its upward movements were not only sharper than they had been in air, but they took place under the influence of far less heat — the finger, for example, instantly repelling the ball to its fullest extent. To verify these unexpected results, air was gradually let into the apparatus, and observations were taken as the gauge sank. The same efiects were produced in inverse order, the point of neutrality being when the gauge was about seven millimetres below a vacuum. A piece of ice produced exactly the opposite effect to a hot body. The presence of air having so marked an influence on the action of heat, an apparatus was fitted up in which the source of heat (a platinum spiral rendered incandescent by electricity) was inside the vacuum- tube instead of outside it as before ; and the pith-balls of the former apparatus were replaced by brass balls. By careful manipulation and turning the tube round, I could place the equipoised brass ball either over, under, or at the side of the source of heat. With this apparatus I tried many experiments, to ascertain more about the behavior of the balance during the progress of the exhaustion, both below and above the point of no action, and also to ascertain the pressure corresponding with this critical point. In one experiment, which is described in detail in my paper on this subject before the Royal Society,^ the pump was worked until the gauge ha