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THE

POPULAE SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

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

VOL. XXII.

NOVEMBER, 1882, TO APRIL, 1883.

NEW YORK :
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

1, 3, and 5 BOND STREET.
1883.

»>

COPYIUfcHT BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1883.

i o 4 + 3

CHARLES ADOLPHE WURTZ.

*•

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

*

MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1882.

SEWEK-GAS.

By FRANK HASTINGS HAMILTON, M. D.

ON the 2d of February last Mr. Charles F. Wingate, sanitary-
engineer, read before the New York Academy of Medicine a
paper entitled " Practical Points in Plumbing," etc. Before intro-
ducing Mr. Wingate, the president, Dr. Fordyce Barker, read a brief
paper, relating his personal experience as to the dangerous nature of
sewer-gas, and asking for the earnest attention of the Academy to this
subject. The reading of Mr. Wingate's paper was followed by a series
of experiments, made by Professor R. Ogden Doremus, intended to
illustrate the difficulty of preventing the escape of these gases by
either water-traps, lead, iron, or earthen pipes. A large number of
physicians and surgeons were present, among whom were many who,
on account of their practical experience in matters of hygiene, had
been invited by the president to take part in the discussion.

Reflecting subsequently upon the great importance of the subject
which had been under debate, I prepared and read before the Acad-
emy, on the evening of March 16th, a paper entitled " The Struggle
for Life against Civilization and iEstheticism." The purpose of this
paper was to furnish a resume of the papers, experiments, and discus-
sions of the February meeting, and to suggest the conclusions which
seemed to be authorized, but which the Academy had not attempted
to formulate or declare.

Before closing my communication, attention was drawn by me to
other matters than plumbing, such, for example, as house sanitation in
general and physical hygiene ; but which subjects, at my request, were
not made matters of discussion on that occasion. My conclusions were
given as follows :

VOL. XXII. — l

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If these sanitary engineers, plumbers, chemists, and hygienists, who were re-
quested to take part in the discussion because of their acknowledged scientific
attainments, experience, and practical skill, have nothing more to suggest, how
is the evil to be successfully met ?

With all respect to the distinguished gentlemen, I must say that they have
suggested nothing of any importance which is new ; nothing that was not known
before ; nothing, indeed, which has not been tried, and which has not, for one
reason or another, proved itself to be either impracticable or insufficient, and in
many cases totally inefficient.

My reply to this question is that, in reference to these matters, science has
not kept pace with civilization, and that, without concessions on the part of
civilization, there is at present no adequate remedy. . . .

I repeat, then, that in order to render pure and innocuous the atmosphere of
our houses, whether the sources of its impurity are to be found in our present
systems of lighting, heating, or drainage, it will be necessary, first of all, that
civilization should make some concessions.

The term " civilization " is here used in its broad and legitimate sense, as in-
cluding not only mental culture, with progress in science and art, but also the
comforts, luxuries, and aesthetics of life, which are its natural and inevitable con-
comitants. If certain of the latter elements of civilization can not be dispensed
with, it will be found impossible, I fear, to contend successfully with typhoid
fever, diphtheria, and many other diseases which now contribute so largely to
the increase of our mortality rates.

If we liinit ourselves to the consideration of the unwholesome atmosphere of
our houses — although this does not by any means constitute the only possible or
probable source of sickness and physical decay incident to civilization — the con-
cessions demanded, as a condition of the successful application of our present
knowledge of the laws of hygiene, are :

1. That all plumbing having any direct or indirect communication with the
sewers shall be excluded from those portions of our houses which we habit-
ually occupy. In other words, that it shall be placed in a separate building, or
annex.

2. That we return to the open fire-place, or the grate, as a means of warm-
ing our private houses.

3. A diminished consumption of oxygen by gas-burners. It is still an open
question whether we shall be able to light our dwellings with electricity ; but
so long as we are obliged to depend upon gas we must content ourselves with
light, and not insist upon illumination.

The concessions demanded have been named in the order of their importance.
The necessity for each is urgent, but the first admits of no compromise.*

The purpose of the present paper is to determine whether, after the
citation and careful study of other facts and observations than those
laid before the Academy, my conclusions, so far as relates to the mat-
ters of sewer-gas and plumbing, can be regarded as defensible.

What is " seicer-gas " ?

This term has been employed a long time by chemists, sanitarians,
plumbers, and others, to indicate the ordinary emanations from sew-
ers ; but recently certain gentlemen have taken exceptions to the term,

* "New York Medical Gazette," March 25, 1882.

SEWER-GAS. 3

denying that there is any such thing as sewer-gas " having a peculiar
and definite composition." This is undoubtedly true, and it is proba-
ble that no intelligent man or educated physician ever thought other-
wise.

" What has been called ' sewer-gas ' is composed of air, vapor, and
gases in constantly varying proportions, together with living germs —
vegetable and animal — and minute particles of putrescent matter. In
short, it is composed of whatever is sufficiently volatile or buoyant to
float in the atmosphere, and in consequence of which buoyancy it is
permitted to escape through the various sewer-outlets. The term is,
in this sense, well understood ; and it is, moreover, just as correct as
would be the terms sewer-vapor, or sewer-air, which some have chosen
to substitute for it.

It is proper here to add that the offensiveness of odors is no test
of their insalubrity, but that the most fatal germs are often conveyed
in an atmosphere which is odorless. The absence of unpleasant odors,
therefore, furnishes no proof that the air does not contain sewer ema-
nations.

Have we succeeded hitherto in excluding sewer-gases from our
houses ?

Only those gentlemen who profess to have inquired carefully into
this matter, and whose names will be accepted as authority, will be
permitted to answer this question.

Colonel George B. Waring, Jr., sanitary engineer, writing for the
" Herald," and also the " Mail and Express," under date of April 2,
1882, says : " Few, I imagine, would question the substantial sound-
ness of Dr. Hamilton's position on the question of heating, lighting,
and ventilation, and no one probably at all familiar with the subject
will question what he says about the effect of the plumbing work of
city houses on the life and health of their occupants. From tenement-
house to palace they are very often, almost universally, disgracefully
and dangerously bad. ... It is quite true that such plumbing work
as is to be found in nine out of every ten houses, even in Fifth Avenue,
is unsafe, and ought not to be allowed to remain within the same four
walls with a family of human beings."

Mr. Charles F. Wingate, sanitary engineer, in his paper read be-
fore the Kings County Medical Society, April, 1882, says : " Any one
having opportunities for seeing the sanitary defects in the vast ma-
jority of city houses, whether occupied by millionaires or mechanics,
and whether situated on Murray Hill or Avenue B, can feel little sur-
prise at the statistics of increasing mortality in New York. The con-
stant demand for the doctor's services in so many houses in their nor-
mally bad state, and the fact that his services are no longer demanded
when they have been put in sanitary condition, tells its own lesson."

Mr. Wingate also intimates to the people of Brooklyn that their
houses are in no better condition.

4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

W. K. Burton, Resident Engineer to the London Sanitary Pro-
tective Association, writing for " The Sanitary Record " for March 15,
1882, when speaking of the iron drain-pipes of London houses, says :
" Either practically every house in London should have its drain un-
reservedly condemned, or a certain small amount of leakage must he
allowed to pass. I do not propose to enter into the question as to
what extent an inspector is justified in passing slight defects ; hut
would point out that such faults as are small in extent, are almost uni-
versal, and are generally passed by inspectors, do not come strictly
under the head of sins of the plumber."

These statements, made by acknowledged experts, render unneces-
sary any further evidence in support of the belief that we are at
present, and have been for a long time, wholly unprotected against
sewer-gas. They confirm an almost universal public sentiment also.
Whatever may be the explanation, whether this defective condition
of our plumbing is due to the ignorance or wickedness of plumbers,
architects, or sanitary engineers, or to other causes, the fact is undoubt-
edly as has been stated, and this is sufficient for our present purpose.

What has been the effect of its admission into our dwelling-houses
upon human life and health f

Formerly, medical men and hygienists seemed never to entertain
a doubt upon this question. Not until very recently has it been inti-
mated, from any source, that sewers were not, from their very nature
and contents, vast reservoirs of noxious gases and vapors. Receiving,
as they do in this city, and in many other large cities, the excreta, and
more, or less of the offal, animal and vegetable, of almost the entire
population, and these masses of filth being often detained in these
receptacles to undergo putrefaction in a warm and humid atmosjmere,
it would seem impossible that their exhalations should not be danger-
ous to life.

Dr. Fordyce Barker, President of the New York Academy of
Medicine, in announcing the pending discussion on the subject of
sewer-gas and plumbing, spoke as follows :

One of the avowed objects of this Academy, as expressed in its constitution,
is the promotion of the public health. Strictly speaking, all of our scientific
work is in this direction, but this meeting is, in a larger sense, devoted specifi-
cally to this object. There is not a physician in this city, engaged in active
practice, who is not frequently called upon to see disease of various degrees of
severity, often resulting in death, which has been caused by a poison. If we can
see our patients early enough, we can successfully meet such poisons as arsenic,
as corrosive sublimate, as aconite, and all of this class, because we have anti-
dotes which will prevent their effect. But where the poison is introduced into
the system so insidiously that the subject is unconscious of its absorption until
its effects are produced, then it is not a question of antidotes, but the problem
is, How shall we counteract its consequences, and how shall we keep our
patients alive until the life-destroying agents have ceased to put in jeopardy the
vital powers?

SEWER-GAS. 5

The special poisons to which I now refer are the gases resulting from defect-
ive plumbing, to which all classes — the poor occupants of tenement-houses, those
who are able to command the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, and
those wbo live in the most expensive houses, and whose ricbes can buy every-
tbing but health — are alike exposed. None but pbysicians can know how gen-
eral this poison is, and how positively it explains much of the disease that tbey
are called upon to treat, and of the many sad deaths which follow.

When I assert that it is a daily experience with me to see persons whose
general health is suffering from this poison, as manifested by malaise, loss of
appetite and strength, slight febrile symptoms, diarrboea, physical and mental
depression ; and that I have seen infants, children, and adults suffering from
diphtheria, scarlet fever of a mild type, complicated with this disease and
destroying life ; those in vigorous health, students in colleges, ambitious and
active young men in the professions or in the commercial or financial world,
stricken down by typhoid fever, some struggling through the disease and others
dying ; and that the cause has been demonstrated to be this poison — I only state
facts which are common in the experience of all physicians in this city. In
some cases this has been the result of ignorance of the very unsanitary con-
ditions which environed them. For example, two young men were stricken
down with typhoid fever, one of whom died. They were not acquaintances,
but occupied offices in the same building, iu the vicinity of Wall Street. On
investigation, it was found that there was not a trap in the whole building.
In a house in which, but a few months before, several hundred dollars had been
expended to put the building in perfect condition, a young man died of typhoid
fever, and others of the family became ill, when it was found that a defective
waste-pipe was saturating the house with poisonous gas. But such facts as
these are so common and so well known to the profession that I need not dwell
upon them.

It is the custom of many in this city, whose means will permit them to do
so, to take their families for health and pleasure to various summer resorts at
the sea-side, the mountains, and other attractive country hotels; but every year,
for some time past, some of these places have proved fatal to health, and often
to life, by typhoid fever. . . . None but physicians are alive to the fact that
many of those living in beautiful and expensive houses in this city are like
the inhabitants who dwell at the base of Mount Vesuvius, in a soft, balmy,
voluptuous atmosphere, surrounded by vineyards and gardens luxuriant with
the olive and the fig and the orange trees, which mask and hide the danger and
desolation of the lava and ashes of disease. . . . The physician should never
be an alarmist; he never can hoist the signal of danger, except when he sees the
forewarning signs of an impending storm. Unfortunately, he never can see the
danger from this position until its effects are already beginning to develop as
shown by disease.

At tins same meeting Professor Doremns gave us the painful story
of the sudden prostration of his two sons, one of whom died, and the
other recovered only after a prolonged illness ; in both of which cases
sewer-gas was ascertained to be the cause of the sickness.

' I would rather," said Professor Doremus, "have exposed my
sons to the deadliest poisons in my laboratory, for which we have anti-
dotes, while for the deadly effects of sewer-gas we have no remedy."

But what is the need of multiplying testimony upon this point

6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when it is so abundantly supplied by the experience of every medical
man, and, indeed, of almost every intelligent citizen ? The history
of civilized nations for the last few years is replete with startling
examples of valuable lives sacrificed in this manner. From sewer-gas
the Prince of Wales nearly lost his life in one of the princely houses
of England, and the Duchess of Connaught had to be removed from
Bagehot to escape death from the same cause, after about two hun-
dred thousand dollars had been expended to put the house in order on
the occasion of her confinement. We have still fresh in our memories
the terrible sewer-gas disaster at the National Hotel in Washington,
the fatal outbreak at the Philadelphia Centennial Fair-Grounds, the
Springfield boarding-school, and Princeton ; not to mention many
equally signal examples in our own city, in Brooklyn, and in many
parts of the United States, in all of which not a doubt could exist as
to the cause of sickness and death.

What special forms of sickness or of disease may be caused or con-
veyed by sevier-gas ?

Asphyxia, sudden death, or death occurring in a few hours after
exposure. Examples of this variety or degree of septic infection are
rare, and have seldom occurred, except when persons have entered the
sewers. Now and then, however, ever since sewers were first con-
structed, occasional reports of such cases have been made through
medical journals or other channels.

A general malaise, or dyscrasy, of an undefined character, but
indicated by a loss of appetite and of strength, by diarrhoea, nervous
prostration, or by a general impairment of health, which conditions
are known to predispose to the occurrence of other diseases, and espe-
cially to the diseases of infancy and childhood, including diphtheria
and scarlatina. It is known, also, as stated by Dr. Barker in the
quotation already made, that these conditions of the general system,
caused by the long-continued inhalation of sewer-gas, complicate the
contagious or zymotic diseases of infancy, from whatever source they
have been derived, and render them more intense and fatal.

To be more explicit, sewer-gas fertilizes the human soil, and renders
it more capable of receiving and developing the germs of specific dis-
eases.

Infants and children are in general constitutionally better prepared
for the reception and development of these germs, excepting, perhaps,
the typhoid, than adults.

It has been asked why, if these gases are so poisonous, plumbers
do not suffer. The answer is, that they do suffer frequently, and that
they would much more often were they not, when exposed, in most
cases in the full vigor of adult life and of health. Muhlenberg says
that " if the vitality of a rabbit is lowered by the administration of
phosphorus, micrococci, which under other circumstances do no harm,
increase so rapidly as to be fatal."

SEWER-GAS. 7

This sufficiently explains the immunity which adults usually enjoy,
and especially those who are most of the time away from home and in
the open air.

Typhoid fever has long been known to be caused by sewer emana-
tions. It is quite true that this is not its only source, but it is prob-
able that in all large cities, where sewer-pipes are connected with
the houses, sewer-gas causes more typhoid fever than all other causes
combined. In the country, also, and especially in the large hotels at
fashionable watering-places, examples of sickness and death from this
source are alarmingly frequent.

Diphtheria must be classed among the diseases which in all proba-
bility are, in many cases, caused or conveyed by sewer-gas. The testi-
mony upon this point is so well-nigh conclusive that many medical
men accept it as an established fact. For myself, I do not entertain
a doubt upon the subject ; and this is the opinion of Professor Willard
Parker, as expressed at the Academy.

In the report of the Michigan State Board of Health for 1881 oc-
curs the following passage :

It is probable tbat tbe contagium of diphtheria may retain its virulence for
some time, and be carried a long distance, in various substances and articles in
wbicb it may have found lodgment. Diphtheria contracted from germs carried
several blocks in a sewer may perhaps be as fatal as when contracted by direct
exposure to one sick with it. "While it is not definitely proved that the germs
of diphtheria are propagated in any substance outside the living human or animal
body, it is possible that they may be found to be thus propagated.

Dr. Janeway, addressing the Academy, said :

It is hard to distinguish between sickness from sewer-gas and sickness
caused by noxious disease-germs conveyed in the sewers. Small-pox may come
from germs in the sewers, but no one would attribute it to sewer-gas. In regard
to diphtheria, however, it is less plain. The portability of diphtheritic poison is
greater than is supposed.

Scarlatina. — Professor Barker declared to the Academy that sewer-
gas malaria had often, in his experience, been found to complicate
scarlatina, and render fatal an attack which might otherwise have
ended in recovery.

Dr. Alfred Carpenter, of London, a well-known physician and sani-
tarian, has in a paper of considerable length, published in " The Sani-
tary Record," London, for March 15, 1882, related many examples in
which scarlatina was propagated, perpetuated, and intensified by sewer-
gas ; the result of his careful observations being that in many cases,
in order to render the scarlatinous germs which came through the
sewers capable of successful inoculation, the patients need to have
been exposed for some time to the debilitating influences of the sewer-
gas ; in other words, as he affirms, a suitable soil must have been cre-
ated in these persons. In a letter addressed to me, dated Duppas

8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

House, Croydon, June 5, 1882, he says : "I have abundance of evidence
that scarlatina is distributed by sewers, or rather that the germs which
grow it are conveyed with sewer-air. If, however, the constitution of
those receiving the germ is not fitted to grow it and to lead to its
fructification, no fever will arise, and the germs will abort. It will
not develop in ordinary flesh and blood, but requires that the recipient
should be iu a special state as regards his own blood to enable it to
mature."

In addition to the evidence now presented, and which might be
greatly multiplied, as to the probability, or, as perhaps most phy-
sicians think, the certainty, that typhoid fever, diphtheria, and scar-
latina are thus caused or distributed from house to house, there is
the negative testimony presented in the fact that these three terri-
ble maladies are seldom seen in those Eastern Asiatic cities where
" modern improvements " in plumbing are unknown, and that with
us they have increased just in proportion to the extension of these
" improvements."

It is quite probable, if not actually demonstrated, that Asiatic
cholera is often propagated in the same manner. The length of time
its germs survive after being thrown off from the body, and the estab-
lished fact that the excreta are known to contain and convey the
germs, increase the presumption that it may be distributed by the
sewers, if indeed it does not render it absolutely certain.

Finally, no good reason can be given why every zymotic disease
may not in this manner, at certain times and under certain circum-
stances, be widely distributed, although no doubt the liability of such
distribution must depend much upon the viability of the germs and
upon other circumstances.

What are the practical difficulties in the exclusion of sewer-gas where
plumbing is extensively distributed through our ^dwelling -houses / and
is there at present any ground of encouragement that they will be over-
come ?

The Water- Traps. — Profossor Doremus illustrated to the Academy
by experiment that gases would pass through water in water-traps,
although there was free ventilation on the opposite side.

The applicability of these experiments to the question of the pas-
sage of sewer-gas and bacteria through water-traps has by some been
denied, and especially on the testimony of the experiments of Carmi-
chael, of Glasgow, in which experiments sewer-gases passed through
well-sealed and ventilated water-traps in only a small amount, and
bacteria were excluded altogether.

I am not a chemist, and this question I prefer to leave with those
who are alone competent to decide it.

Some experimenters, however, have not obtained the same results
as were obtained by Carmichael, Dr. Billings, and others. R S. G.
Paton, Ph. D., Chemist to the Health Department, city of Chicago,

SEWER-GAS. 9

having made a series of careful experiments, assisted by B. W. Thomas,
President of the State Microscopical Society, and in the presence of
O. C. De Wolf, M. D., Commissioner of Health for that city, they
have given it as their concurrent opinion that, as at present con-
structed, water-traps do not prevent the passage of " disease-germs "
into our houses. Dr. De Wolf takes pains to especially emphasize the
fact of "the readiness with which organic germs pass through the
water of a sewer-trap and are thrown off from the free surface into
the atmosphere of a room." (See " Report of the Health Department,
City of Chicago, April 15, 1881.")

But, although I can not speak as an expert in this matter, it will be
permitted me to say that there seems no reason, even if other and con-
flicting experiments had not been made, why the experiments of Car-
michael should be regarded as conclusive. That unwholesome gases
did not pass through well-sealed and ventilated traps, at a certain time
and under certain circumstances, in sufficient quantity to imperil life,
and that organic germs were excluded wholly, furnishes no conclusive
evidence that they might not pass through at another time and under
other circumstances. The amount of vapor, ah', and gas contained in
the sewers is greater at one time than at another. Their elasticity and
tendency to escape are varied according to the nature and amount of
the gases generated ; according to the temperature, which is changed
continually where pipes are in use by the alternate flow of hot and cold
water ; and according as the gases are moved upward with more or
less force by the direction and strength of the aerial currents through
the drains. In our own city, and in other maritime cities, and upon
the sea-coast generally, the action of the tides in obstructing the
outflow, and thus driving the contents of the sewers back toward the
houses where the pipes terminate, is often enormous, and such as, by
the most ample provision for escape through ventilators, can not al-
ways prevent a sudden pressure upon the water-traps sufficient to dis-
place their contents, or to force the gas through the water in the form
of bubbles, or, finally, to increase the capacity of the water to receive
the sewer-gas by absorption.

Muhlenberg says, " The bacillus typhi has been found in drinking-
water " ; and Dr. Janeway, addressing the Academy, said :

Another point is the possibility that much of the typhoid fever does not come
from breathing sewer-gas, but from drinking water containing the germs of dis-
ease, which have been drawn up into the water-pipes and are taken into the ali-
mentary canal. In a case under my observation several children were sick in a
large house. I turned the water on below, and then, turning it on above, the
air was sucked into the pipes below. These faucets were over some drain-pipes
connecting with closets where diphtheritic stools had been deposited, and the
water above, which was subsequently drunk, was thus tainted. This occurs also
where there is no trap, or where there is no direct communication with the
sewer. In one institution over seventy children were taken with typhoid fever
from this cause.

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Indeed, that water, especially when not in motion, will absorb
gases, including putrefactive and septic germs, is a well-established
fact ; and it is equally well established that germs will live and multi-
ply in water, and that they will even, in some cases, survive the action
of frost upon the water. Germs in a condition of extreme desiccation
and apparently long dead will, on being treated with moisture, if other
circumstances are favorable, become revivified and developed into their
most perfect and active forms.

It being indisputable that germs may be absorbed by water, and
that they may multiply in water, it seems irrational that they should
not by evaporation, or by the means of minute bubbles generated by
decomposition of organic matter in the wrater, or by agitation of the
water, escape into the surrounding atmosphere.

Professor Kerr, in an address before the British Civil and Mechan-
ical Engineers' Society, said :

We know that gas is generated by the decomposition of the decaying matter
in sewage when deposited, in however slight a degree, upon any interior surface.
What followed? We know this gas has two qualities which are extremely
obnoxious : one quality was that it ascended to the highest level by reason of
deficient specific gravity ; and the second quality was that when it reached the
highest level it exercised a pressure, being an extremely elastic gas. He need
scarcely point out the effect of these two considerations. When the sewer-gas
(a most excellent name, without going into particulars as to whether it should
be called gas or vapor; the name sewer-gas carried an idea of offensiveness
which was extremely convenient) when the sewer-gas had reached the highest
level, it exercised a powerful elastic pressure to force its way out, and succeeded
in forcing its way. It got into the houses ; and if there were no other grievance,
there was this to complain of — that this pestiferous and poisonous gas forced its
way from the sewers into our houses, and, of course, reached the vital organs of
those who occupied them.

Must we, then, accept as final the experiments made by Dr. Carmi-
chael, and perhaps a few other experimenters ? May we safely con-
clude that the gases and germs contained in the sewers can be effectu-
ally excluded by water-traps ? That well-sealed water-traps afford
some protection can not be questioned ; but the experiments of Car-
michael seem to me far from having rendered it certain, or even prob-
able, that they insure absolute safety.

The reader will observe, however, that, even if we admit that the
experiments of Carmichael establish all that has been claimed for them,
it is still none the less a fact that the water-traps give us no protection
when they are empty or defective ; and examples abound in the expe-
rience of almost every plumber, in which the traps are found empty,
either in consequence of the direct pressure of the air from below, or
of siphonage, or of leakage ; the leakage being sometimes due to the
erosive action of the gases, to which action the traps are especially
exposed, and sometimes to cracks occasioned by contraction and ex-
pansion, resulting from the alternate admission of hot and cold water,

SEWER-GAS. 11

to settling of the walls, floors, and fixtures. Sometimes, also, large
holes are made in the traps or leaden pipes by rats. I have in my
possession examples of all these varieties of defective traps, taken
from some of the best houses in this city, and the existence of which
defects was not suspected until disclosed by the plumber. The traps,
to be effective, it is unnecessary to say, must be kept in perfect work-
ing order, for this is a dangerous door to be left ajar, even for one

moment.

The complete protection of our houses against sewer-gas will not,
however, be accomplished when a trap shall be invented which shall
be liable to no accidents and shall never fail. The trap is a matter of
small consideration compared with the whole amount of plumbing
work, of which it constitutes only a fraction.

The Pipes. — Professor Doremus demonstrated at the Academy that
gases would pass readily through brick and stone, and through un-
glazed earthenware, even, in one instance, against a resisting pressure
of two and a half feet of water, and in another against the pressure of
a column of mercury thirty inches in height. The experience of every
practical plumber confirms these experiments. Gases escape more or
less readily, also, through iron pipes.

Lead and iron pipes are subject to the erosive action of the gases,
and of various reagents. They are also, like the traps, liable to be
broken by the settling of walls, floors, and fixtures, and they are occa-
sionally broken by their own weight. The leaden pipes may be eaten
by rats ; at the jointings, they are believed occasionally to be perfo-
rated by galvanic action. In nearly all these cases the holes are at
first small, but frequently a large number of these small holes will be
found at the same time in different portions of the plumbing. These
are the minute perforations to which Dr. Billings probably referred
when he said, " there is more danger from a pin-hole in a pipe than
from the traps " ; for, while it is true that a large proportion of the
germs perish for want of a favorable soil, it is equally true that one
germ of a malignant type, conveyed into a system fully prepared for
its nutrition, is as fatal as a thousand. Colin estimates that one bac-
terial rod, under favorable circumstances, will produce 281,500,000,000
in forty-eight hours ; and that, were it not for the unfavorable cir-
cumstances incident to its situation, it would fill the ocean in five
days. It is not impossible that this one " pin-hole " might admit the
typical bacterium into a typical soil.

Mr. Charles F. Wingate, sanitary engineer, says :

Even the best plumbing will not last for ever, but needs attention. Leaks
may occur to permit the admission of sewer-gas from drain-pipes due to defect-
ive castings, or to walls settling in houses built on made ground, or from the
strain of the alternate expansion and contraction from hot water, or even from
the forcing of lead joints by the pressure of steam discharged froja manufacto-
ries into the public sewer.

12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A no less serious evil is the corrosion of lead traps or lead waste-pipes, par-
ticularly in old houses which have imventilated drains. This may he caused by
the action of sewer-gas, so called, or from the use of certain popular disinfecting
fluids.

Lengths of pipe have been found completely honey-combed in this way. As
such corrosion usually occurs on the upper side of traps or horizontal pipes, it is
not easy to detect their presence from the absence of leakage, and the only safe-
guard is to avoid carrying waste or soil pipes horizontally ; also, to extend their
upper ends through the roof, and leave them open for ventilation. Lastly, to
substitute iron pipes for lead wherever possible, which is now the general rule
in all good plumbing practice. . . . Corrosion sometimes occurs at the joints of
lead pipes, contiguous to the line of solder, and is attributed to galvanic action
created by the contact of the zinc and lead, but as these openings are apt to
leak they are more liable to discovery.

It is a good plan to overhaul all plumbing periodically, say once every year
or two, to guard against accidents. . . . And here it should be remarked that
sewer-gas is created not in the sewers alone, but every inch of waste-pipe in a
house, even though used to convey nothing but soapy water or the waste of
melted ice from a refrigerator, can, and commonly does, produce foul gases.
The worst odors are from just such sources, and they are certainly unwhole-
some.

Moreover, it must always be remembered that no plumber's work, however
complete it may be at first, can be relied upon to remain perfect. (u Medical
News and Abstract," November, 1881.)

Says Mr. Collins, in " The Sanitary Record," London, for March

15, 1882 :

One hint more with regard to the house and its belongings, worth all the
rest : Do not imagine that when structure, drainage, water-supply, and the
various appliances appertaining thereto, are left in perfect condition, they will
always remain so, and that, unlike every other production, they will last unim-
paired for ever, or even that period of " for ever "—a few years.

The best plumbing will not, the experts say, last "for ever" ; but,
in order to render our houses perfectly safe, it ought to last as long
as the house will last, for we can in no other way know when the
danger is upon us. " It will not last that period of for ever — a few
years," says Mr. Collins ; and Mr. Wingate says it should be " over-
hauled every year to two, to guard against accidents." Mr. Wingate
has told us what he means by "overhauling" the plumbing, when he
said to the Academy that no inspection of the plumbing of a house
was of value unless it was overhauled from top to bottom. In no
other way could he give the occupant a guarantee that all was right ;
because, where one defect was found, the chances were that there
were many. This, we are then given to understand, is what should
be done " every year or two."

But we may be permitted to ask why the time should be fixed at
a year or two ? A leak might arise from any one of the many causes
enumerated to-day, which did not exist yesterday. Why, then, " to

SEWER-GAS. 13

guard against accidents," should not the plumbing be overhauled
daily ? Absolute security could only in this way be attained. The
public is notified, therefore, not by the writer, but by professed sani-
tary experts, that in this matter the price of safety is eternal vigi-
lance.

In searching for a remedy for defective plumbing and sewer-gas,
the public is still further embarrassed by the fact that the several
classes of professional experts, to whom it has been accustomed to
look for instruction in matters pertaining to house sanitation, seem to
have lost confidence in each other, and are heard constantly, and in
the most public manner, charging each other with incapacity.

The chemists, apparently, are not agreed. The plumbers have
been again and again charged with incompetency, and often with in-
tentional dishonesty, by sanitary engineers, by physicians, and by the
almost universal voice of the people, until to-day it is hard to find a
man with sufficient courage to utter a word in their defense. " The
sins of the plumbers " has become a proverb.

An architect, writing for the " The Architect," London, complains
that, by eminent doctors, men of his calling have been " sat upon,
blackguarded, lectured, blamed," etc., for their supposed ignorance of
matters of this sort ; and one gentleman, a sanitary engineer, has said,
publicly, that there was " probably only one architect in this city com-
petent to execute the specifications for the plumbing of large houses."
The same gentleman did not hesitate to say to the Academy that
physicians were regarded by plumbers as their ''most wrong-headed
customers," and as possessing only " a dangerous smattering " of
knowledge upon the subject ; the Academy was permitted, also, to
understand that he entertained the same opinion ; while a distin-
guished member of the National Board of Health said publicly that
he could count upon his five fingers all the sanitary engineers in this
country in whom he could place any degree of confidence.

If all that representative members of these several classes say of
each other were true, the outlook would be very unpromising. There
is, then, no class of professed artisans or scientists concerned in the
business of plumbing, architecture, or house sanitation, who can be
safely trusted.

It is believed, however, that there is some mistake as to the almost
total incompetency of plumbers, architects, sanitary engineers, physi-
cians, and chemists, to discuss and act upon these subjects intelligent-
ly. In short, as I have said before, " I am much more charitable to
the plumbers and architects than are the public or the sanitary engi-
neers. It seems to me quite probable that most of them are as com-
petent and as honest in their special departments as any other class of
citizens" ; and I am pleased to see that, so far as the plumbers are
concerned, the President of our City Board of Health entertains the
same opinion, he having recently declared, according to " The Sanitary

i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Engineer," that they have more scientific knowledge than they are
given credit for.

We ouo-ht, I think, to regard this mutual distrust and lack of con-
fidence among these various classes as only another evidence of the
overwhelming difficulties of the situation, and of the fact, so apparent
to all, that we have been defeated in every direction. As, when an
army of disciplined soldiers has been signally routed, the people begin
to lose confidence in their officers, and the officers fall to charging each
other with incompetency, neglect, and treason — so, also, in this case,
these murmurs of complaint and of wide-spread dissatisfaction, these
mutual criminations and recriminations, imply only a great failure,
and not necessarily a dereliction on the part of any one concerned.
The odds were against us ; and this is what everybody will, sooner or
later, come to understand.

The public need not lose confidence in either of these classes. Not-
withstanding our present seeming antagonism, which may be due in
part to a mutual misunderstanding, we are, as will be seen hereafter,
converging steadily and rapidly to the same point. It will be found
that we are practically united in our demand that plumbers, architects,
sanitary engineers, and physicians, shall acquire more knowledge and
skill than they now possess ; and that where their united knowledge
and skill fail to accomplish the end to which our efforts are at present
directed, namely, the exclusion of sewer-gases from our houses, the
people shall be urged at once to " to lop off superfluous luxuries " ; in-
structing them also that, in exact proportion as their luxurious distri-
bution of plumbing is diminished, their safety will be increased. They
should be informed, at the same time, that, if they are compelled to
submit to the presence of plumbing fixtures near their living apart-
ments, they should follow the advice of Professor Doremus, and em-
ploy constantly and freely proper disinfectants, of which it is unscien-
tific to say that they merely "disguise the bad odors" ; for, if it be
true that they do not cause directly the death of all germs, it is never-
theless true that they prevent putrefaction of organic matters, and thus
destroy the aliment upon which the germs subsist, and by which they
are enabled to multiply.

It would be unjust to say that plumbers, being interested in
having the amount of plumbing extended, will be the last to limit its
extension. So also, in a pecuniary point of view, are sanitary engi-
neers and physicians interested. But no one, I am certain, will charge
either of us with being influenced by such considerations.

Under the present system all that can be said is, that the united
skill of the specialists has not, according to their own often-repeated
declarations, and as every one knows, succeeded in rendering our
houses safe against sewer-gas. We have, indeed, from one source
and another, assurances that it can be done ; but there is no proof,
such as alone can be furnished by a sufficiently prolonged trial, that

SEWER-GAS.

lS

these assurances can be trusted. A generation has come and gone,
thousands upon thousands have died, and looking at our decimated
households we may well ask, How many more must be sacrificed to
this terrible experiment ?

The late rapid increase in the mortality of New York city has naturally caused
wide-spread alarm. Last year 88,600 deaths were recorded, against 31,937 in
1880 — an increase of twenty per cent. While the large additions to the city's
population from emigration and other causes may account for some of this in-
crease, it can hardly explain all of it.

Careful observers limit the increase in the population of New York to ten
per cent, and estimate the mortality of last year as therefore ten per cent greater
than during 1880. The percentage is just equal to the increase in deaths from
contagious diseases. — (Charles F. WiDgate, consulting sanitary engineer, "Prac-
tical Points about Plumbing," 1882.)

The writer proceeds to charge this increased mortality to the sani-
tary defects of our houses, especially in the matter of plumbing.

The death-rate of our city has continued to increase steadily since
Mr. Wingate wrote. In 1880 it was 26-47 per 1,000 ; in 1881, 31-08 ;
and for the two quarters of 1882, ending June 30th, the rate of mor-
tality had increased to 31*11, with a prospect of a much higher rate
for the year, inasmuch as, during two weeks of the month of July, the
rate was higher than for the corresponding period of any previous year
since 1872.

This increase of mortality has occurred notwithstanding the admit-
ted fact that our streets are in a better condition than they have been
for many years. It can not, therefore, be attributed to the unsanitary
condition of the streets, as has been the usual practice of newspaper
writers in previous years.

Nor does it seem proper to attribute it to our vicious tenement-
house and apartment-house system, which, no doubt, has its effect in
raising our death-rate, but which, according to the reports of our city
officials, has in many respects been greatly improved during the last
two or three years. Meanwhile, everywhere the plumbing, as it has
become older, has necessarily become more imperfect.

A member of the Board of Health, for whose opinion I have great
respect, has said to me, that " when we consider the unusual prevalence
of contagious diseases, and the large amount of immigration during the
first half of the present year, we must admit that sewer-gas alone can
not account for the increase in the death-rate over last year." Perhaps
not ; but it will not be pretended that the deaths of immigrants will
alone explain it ; and as to contagious diseases, these are precisely
those which, according to Mr. Wingate, Drs. Barker and Carpenter,
with many others, are most likely to be multiplied and intensified, and
thus rendered fatal by sewer-gas. The fact that the increased death-
rate is chiefly due to the increase of contagious diseases justifies the
suspicion that sewer-gas is, to a great degree, responsible for this result.

16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The President of our Board of Health is reported to have said that
" there has been a similar increase, during the last two years, all over
the world." It would be impossible to determine this fact, for the
reason that a large portion of the world makes no record of death.
Probably he said, or intended to say, that such was the fact in the
large cities of the most civilized portions of the world ; and inas-
much as this has not been a season of general epidemics, and there
have been no marked meteorological conditions to which it might be
ascribed, and in the absence of any other plausible explanation, it
would be quite as fair to attribute it to an extension of " modern im-
provements " in plumbing as to anything else.

A system of sewerage for the city of Memphis, Tennessee, was
commenced January 20, 1880, and completed July 1, 1881. When
completed it was found that thirty-three miles of sewer-pipes had
been laid, and three thousand five hundred and seventy-nine water-
closets had been connected with the sewers. On comparing the mor-
tuary records of the year preceding the completion of the work, and
before the houses were connected with the sewers, with the year suc-
ceeding the completion, it appears that the mortality of the city has
materially increased — although neither of these years was a year of
epidemic. The deaths from typhoid fever were the same each year ;
but the deaths from dysentery were nearly doubled, and the deaths
from diphtheria nearly quadrupled.

The " system " adopted is approved by many of our best sanita-
rians ; but it was not carried out, in all respects, as recommended and
agreed upon, and therefore may not be regarded as a fair test of the
value of the peculiar system adopted. But we have the authority of
the gentleman who claims to be its inventoi*, to the effect that " the
drainage of houses and their connection with the sewers has been
admirably carried out under strict regulations, faithfully executed,"
and that the system, so far as completed, is "an entire engineering
success."

In view of the facts as above stated, there is a sort of grim humor
in the letter of a " citizen of Memphis," who says, in confirmation of
the value of the work already done, " Memphis is a redeemed city,
and we are thinking of putting on airs, and advertising it as a summer
resort."

It has already been intimated that those to whom the public has
been accustomed to look for counsel upon this and allied subjects do
not differ so widely as some have supposed, but that there is actually
a very strong convergence of opinion as to what needs to be done.

Professor Willard Parker, one of our most distinguished physicians,
after listening to the discussions of the Academy, said : " If I were to
build a house, I would not have it connected in any way with a sewer.
I would construct a sort of annex." Into which, Professor Parker
was understood to say, he would gather all the pipes and fixtures,

SEWER-GAS. i7

water-closets, baths, and wash-basins. He further remarked : "I sup-
pose most of you would object to having a vault filled with dead bodies
a few yards from your house, and connected with it by a pipe. Yet
this is practically what we do. Water is no protection from the poi-
sonous germs which generate and live in this foul air. This matter
demands our most careful attention, for we are in a very critical and
unhealthy condition."

Colonel George B. Waring, Jr., sanitary engineer, addressing the
public through the daily press, gives the following advice : " Let us
take no step backward in the essential improvement of the adjuncts of
our daily life. Let us only lop off luxurious superfluities, and see that
what is really needed is good. . . . There is no doubt that the luxury
of a wide distribution of plumbing appliances throughout the whole
house has led to a great increase of risk and to a wide distribution of
dangerous defects. The use of stationary wash-basins in bedrooms
not immediately adjoining soil-pipes is to be deprecated ; and every-
thing should be reduced to the simplest elements that will give the
necessary sanitary control of the waste matters of the house."

Not long after Mr. Wingate had protested to the Academy against
" the foolish fear which prevails regarding the risks to health from so-
called modern improvements," declaring that there was no need of
taking a step backward, a circular was received from the Heath House,
Schooley's Mountain, New Jersey, containing a certificate from
" Charles F. Wingate, consulting sanitary engineer," a portion of which
reads as follows : " I found the plumbing fixtures all placed in an
extension, so as to be completely isolated from the rest of the hotel,
and with a free circulation of air around them. There are no basins
in bedrooms. ... In short, sanitary considerations seem to have been
studied at every point, and this, I am sure, will have due weight with
future guests."

It seems fair to assume that an arrangement which Mr. Wingate
can conscientiously recommend as contributing to the health and safety
of the guests of the Heath House he can conscientiously recommend
also to the occupants of any other house, and especially to the occupants
of city houses, where the danger from sewer-gas is tenfold greater
than at the Heath House.

If I have interpreted their language correctly, one of these dis-
tinguished sanitary engineers is substantially in accord with Dr. Par-
ker and myself, and the other is absolutely in accord ; and these are
the only sanitary engineers, so far as I am informed, who have pub-
licly, and over their own signatures, taken exception to our views.

It seems, however, that the people themselves, without asking the
opinions of sanitary engineers, or of any one else, have concluded, in
many instances, to " lop off the luxuries," and to practically adopt the
measures which I have suggested — these concessions on the part of
civilization being subsequently indorsed and approved by both sanita-

YOL. XXII. — 2

18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

rians and sanitary engineers. As has been seen, the proprietor of the
Heath House, at his own instance, placed his plumbing fixtures in an
annex.

C. and W. Leland, Jr., proprietors of the Ocean Hotel, Long Branch,
announce that " none of the sleeping apartments have water, nor are
they connected in any way with water or drainage pipes." Drs. Hunt
and Hughes, recognized sanitary experts, have examined the premises,
and certify that they regard the arrangements " as a sample of sanitary
completeness." The same thing has been done in the lately added
portion of one of the largest and most popular hotels in this city,
namely, the Sturtevant House ; and, about a year since, the Fifth
Avenue Hotel " changed the pipe-basins of about fifty of its best
rooms for basins with pitchers, to avoid any possibility of comjdaints
on the score of sewer-gas."

Mr. George Harding, of Philadelphia, has erected a very large and
elegant hotel on the Catskill Mountains — the "Hotel Kaaterskill" —
which is said to have no rival in its construction and completeness,
but in which there are no stationary basins, and the plumbing is con-
fined to the rear end of the building.

A gentleman is now constructing a handsome residence in Fifth
Avenue, and he informs me that, recognizing fully the danger from
sewer-gas, he has placed all those fixtures which he proposes to use at
the rear end of his house. He has, however, extended his plumbing
throughout his house, because in the case of his death the house may
be sold, and some might object to it if it did not contain all of the
" modern improvements " ; but he has made arrangements to cut off
completely all of the plumbing except that which is in the rear of the
house, and in this condition it will remain so long as it is occupied by
his family.

Mr. John Honeyman, while defending architects from the charge
of incapacity made by the doctors, says in the London "Architect,"
that they were " among the first to point out the dangers arising from
the general introduction of water-closets."

" The Sanitary Engineer," describing the " sanitary appliances " in
the elegant mansion of W. II. Vanderbilt, recently constructed in Fifth
Avenue, says, "As for stationary wash-hand-basins, they are almost
unknown, there being but two in the whole house — one in a dressing-
room or retiring-room off the billiard-room, and one in a pi'ivate bath-
room."

Indeed, stationary basins are now excluded from many of the most
fashionable hotels in the country, and, if I am correctly informed,
from several public and private houses in this city which I have not
mentioned ; although most of them continue the more objectionable
practice of having the water-closets in the same building with their
guests and their families.

The " Medical Record " for July 8, 1882, contains a letter from Dr.

SEWER-GAS. i9

Joseph A. Andrews, dated at Hong-Kong, May 9, 1882, giving a de-
scription of Canton, " the most characteristic of Chinese towns," in
which it is said, " No closed under-ground sewers or drains exist, save
a rudely constructed gutter in the center of the street, which carries
off the superfluous rain," etc. The contents of latrines are removed in
open buckets, generally during the day. And notwithstanding these,
with many other unquestionably unsanitary conditions, in a city con-
taining a population of one million, situated in a warm climate, " there
is no typhus, rarely typhoid, and none of the other diseases, diphthe-
ria, etc., considered the inevitable consequence of defective sanita-
tion."

Dr. Andrews adds :

The healthiness of the foreign population of Canton is certainly in a great
measure owing to the absence of water-closets in the dwelling-houses, which at
home are a fruitful source of disease. Sulphureted and carbureted hydrogen
gases are evidently not so injurious to health when given off in the open air as
when escaping from sewers. Canton, like the whole country, is a city of bad
smells, and yet the people do not seem to suffer from them, but, on the con-
trary, rather like them. The removal of excreta and the disposal of sewer-
water is the sanitary problem of the day at home and abread. Our sewers allow
the transference of gases and organic molecules from house to house and from
place to place. Occasionally, by bursting, leakage, or absorption, the ground is
contaminated, and the water-supply is in danger of being contaminated and poi-
soned ; and all these dangers are greater from being concealed. In China, there
is at least freedom from one of these dangers. It would certainly seem advisable
that our water-closets should he in a projection from the building, with a tube
passing to the outer air.

The italics are Dr. Andrews's.

Why did those in authority allow such defective sanitary arrangements? was
everywhere asked after the fever at Lord Londesborough's ; and this question
you heard repeated, regardless of the fact that sanitary arrangements, having
such results in this and other cases, were themselves the outcome of appointed
sanitary administrations, regardless of the fact that the authorized system had
itself been the means of introducing foul gases into houses.* — (" The Study of
Sociology," by Herbert Spencer, p. 3, and note on p. 405.)

Finally, the writer wishes it to be understood that he recognizes
the agency of many other conditions than the presence of sewer-gas
in dwelling-houses in causing the increased death-rate of large cities ;
but that, in what he has written, his chief purpose has been to place
before his readers the careful observations of scientific and practical

* Of various testimonies to this, one of the most striking was that given by Mr.
Charles Mayo, M. B., of New College, Oxford, who, having had to examine the drainage
of Windsor, found that " in a previous visitation of typhoid fever the poorest and lowest
part of the town had entirely escaped, while the epidemic had been very fatal in good
houses. The difference was this, that while the better houses were all connected with the
sewers, the poor part of the town had no drains, but made use of cesspools in the gardens.
And this is by no means an isolated instance."

20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

men, and to note their conclusions as to the probable responsibility of
these agents. In most of the points considered his own opinions have
been guided by and subordinated to theirs.

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD*

By EMIL DU BOIS-EEYMOND.

WHILE the memorial days of Frederick the Great and of Leibnitz
turn the view of the Academy back to the times of its origin
and of its new birth, this festival directs its vision upon the present.

Whoever, having a nature like that of an academician of the old
school, prefers to live a contemplative life far from the tumult of the
market and the strife of the forum, or even from the stimulating com-
petition of the lecture-room, intent only on the accumulation of the
treasures of knowledge, the solution of intellectual problems, the en-
largement of his inner circle of thought, he might well at this period
long for the undisturbed rest and the quieting gloom of a middle-age
Benedictine cell. Happy monks of Monte Casino and of Montserrat !
Concealed in the turbid wake of the people's flood, you looked down
from your peaceful height upon the world, whose strife and anxieties
troubled you not.

But the gates were opened, the walls fell long ago. The bright
daylight casts an incongruous illumination upon the rubbish and dust
of Faust's study-room. The inexorable to-day no longer allows a
peaceful dream-life. We need no Mephistopheles to tempt us into
an active career ; we are seized with a thousand hands, some rude,
some caressing, and the steam-horse instead of the enchanter's cloak
is our servant. Our only trouble is to resist these calls, to keep
our senses in the whirl that carries us along, to perform the outer
work imposed upon us and still be true to the inner work which is
our real calling. We can no longer, like our peers of old, freely fol-
low our personal inclinations, only exercising the gifts which God has
bestowed upon us. From childhood we belong to the state. Every
condition of exemption has vanished. Examinations, military service,
and the duties of citizenship, are common to all ; and, while one ought
not wholly to shun the duties of politics, he may regret the exagger-
ated prominence which its fruitless excitements, its ephemeral tri-
umphs, and its sharp partisan strifes, have assumed in the culture-life
of the day.

And how little quickening, in many respects, is this life of the
latest fashion ! The hydra of morbidly exaggerated patriotism raises

* Address delivered on the Emperor's birthday, in the Academy of Sciences, at Berlin,
March 23, 1882.

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD. 21

head after head in its circle, and comes between the learned of differ-
ent lands, who have hitherto felt themselves members of a single com-
munity. People who have done nothing for their fame except occa-
sionally to stir themselves lustily, put themselves boastfully and con-
tentiously into the fore-rank of those who have a thousand years of
intellectual creation behind them. Instead of dynastic wars, we are
threatened with incomparably more shocking race-wars, without the
religious wars having ceased much otherwise than in name. Have
not the last two years witnessed an agitation the shame of which we
considered as unlikely to fall upon us as that of the rack, of trials for
witchcraft, or of man-selling ? With this, sentimental ignorance, whose
well-meaning way can not be distinguished in its effect from slander-
ous accusation and vicious persecution, has dared to brand as mis-
chievous methods of scientific research which Robert Hooke, in the
bosom of the old Royal Society, and the God-fearing Haller, unques-
tionably used.

But even the later development of scientific life lets few distin-
guishing traits of itself be recognized. A persistent effort, devotedly
directed toward ideal objects, has rarely been pursued to the end by
the after-growing generation. A thousand busy workers, renouncing
high fame, are daily bringing in a thousand details, unconcerned
about inner and outer completeness, caring only to attract attention to
themselves for the moment, and to gain the best price for their goods.
Instead of honorable alliance, a reckless struggle for existence fre-
quently prevails in a very odious form. The men of one party regard
those of the other with the feelings of rival gold-diggers, but with
less security, for a kind of law prevails in the diggings. Whoever in
them acquires a rich claim is allowed to work it in security, without
any other one forcing himself into partnership.

The stream of knowledge is continually dividing itself into more
numerous and smaller rills, and there is danger of its getting lost in the
sands and marshes. In the onward-pressing haste, every pause for
survey or review seems lost time. With historical reflection passed
away one of the most fruitful germs of greatness, Carlyle's hero-wor-
ship ; with comprehensive survey, the possibility of comparing the
different branches of science together, and of causing one to illustrate
and fructify another. Instead of healthy generalization, the tendency
to unrestrained speculation again prevails in Germany. Brought up
in abhorrence of false philosophy, we have had to live to see that the
generation following us, which we thought we had strictly schooled,
is falling back into the faults from which the generation before us
scornfully turned away.

Finally, the complaint is generally set up that the more munifi-
cently laboratories and seminaries are founded, the more richly means
are poured out for scientific journeys and enterprises, the more indif-
ferent do youth hold themselves toward the treasures and expendi-

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tures which might in our time, alas ! have greatly benefited us ; and
the more rare are phenomena which surpass mediocrity.

To these dubious prognostications for science is added the view of
the transformation of human life by the later development of indus-
trial art, which is taking place on a far grander scale than that which
was inspired by the discovery of America and the inventions of gun-
powder and printing. The abundance of means and of forces brought
into play by this agency reacts through innumerable concatenations
on all circles and levels of society, and the final victory of utilitarian-
ism, whose precepts, moreover, were always clear to the multitude,
seems near.

Thus an evil time is foreboded for pure science, without any defi-
nite hope for an immediate turn of the wheel. It is about as if one
lived in the midst of a gradual, constant, self -completing change, such
as the earth used to suffer in primitive geological times, when, in the
course of physical, geographical, and climatic alterations, one so-called
period of creation gave way to another, and as if the past of the per-
ishing creation fell to us. The academies would then represent, as it
were, transitional forms between the earlier and the new creation, with
the excuses for their existence growing continuously more doubtful,
just as we may find examples of a similar character in the vegetable
and animal kingdoms. In fact, one does not need an ear of extraordi-
nary delicacy to hear the jealous questions : For what are those stiff
figures in the midst of the rushing life-stream that does not regard
them ? Of what use is a golden book in the midst of the general
Democritizing ? or, to pronounce the catch- word of the times, why a
ring of scholars ? Such are the terms in which a modern Heraclite
an adept in that worldly wisdom culminating in pessimism, which is
praised as the newest phase of German philosophy, might express him-
self to-day. We Berlin Academicians may, perhaps, be permitted to
adhere to the optimism of our founder.

To judge correctly concerning the present position of science, of
the single observer and the learned bodies, one must betake himself, as
it were, to a height above the clatter of the individual combats, whence
he can watch the course of the battle, the grouping of the advancing
masses, the closing circle of victory, and the unfolding of tbe j)Ian ;
and a modern popular contest is harder to view comprehensively than
a Homeric skirmish. From a proper point of view is observed the
comforting, exalting opposite of that which, only partially beheld and
imperfectly comprehended in the narrower circle of vision, was before
lamented. Never was science, remotely viewed, so rich in the sub-
limest generalizations. Never did it represent a more magnificent
unity in its objects and its results. Never did it advance more rap-
idly, with a more definite consciousness of its purposes, and with
mightier methods, and never did a more active co-operation exist
between its different branches. And, finally, never had academies

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD. 23

so evident a vocation, or did ours, at least, exercise a greater in-
fluence.

So unjust is the accusation that contemporary science is split up
into details, that we have to go back to Newton's time to find an
example of an enlargement of our theoretical conceptions, like that
which was effected by the enunciation of the doctrines of the persist-
ence of energy and motion, and of the mechanical theory of heat. As,
at the former time, the fall of bodies, the motion of the stars, the
refraction of light, capillarity, the ebb and flow of the tides, were rec-
ognized to be expressions of the same properties of matter, so now,
through the labors of our generation of investigators, the same prin-
ciple has been made to include the totality of the phenomena accessi-
ble to experiment, methodical observation, and calculation ; mechanics,
acoustics, optics, the Proteus electricity, heat, and the elastic phe-
nomena of the gases and steam. This principle is not merely, like uni-
versal gravity, an experimental proposition ; it conforms to the ulti-
mate fundamental condition of our intellect. Hence its value as an
aid to invention ; therefore it extends far beyond the limit of its strict
verification. It permits us to weigh the ether and measure the atoms.
The circulation of the waters over the earth, kept up by the force of
the sun's light, falls under it as well as the circulation, similarly main-
tained, of matter through plants and animals. Forward and backward
along the " corridors of time," as the Royal Astronomer of Ireland
recently expressed himself in a sharp metaphor, it leads the way, and
answers that very practical question for the thinker about the begin-
ning and end of the world, with a reservation of the limits of error, as
if we were dealing with measurements in the laboratory. The same
wizard's-formula lends itself to practical instruction in the ordinary
sense, and shows the machinist how he may reach a desired result in
the shape of mechanical force, the electrical current, or light, with the
smallest quantity of coal. Inorganic and organic chemistry, separated
from the beginning, now find an all-ruling principle in the quantiva-
lence of atoms.

As mechanics and physics discovered their guiding star in the per-
sistence of energy, and chemistry in the theory of equivalents, so is
the sphere of life composed by the theory of descent into a picture
which brings within a single frame the immense abundance of forms
of the present with the invisible traces of the most remote past. The
ban of the Cuvierian theory, to which Johann Miiller opposed him-
self, is broken. Instead of the lifeless system of the older schools,
that Darwinian tree, in whose evergreen crown man himself is only a
branch, waves before us. As zoological gardens and stations are to 1
collections of animals, stuffed or preserved in alcohol, as botanical gar-
dens to herbariums, so is the new knowledge of plants and animals,
biology, to the older science. A development-history, as it were, of
the transition of individual types from one into another, it leads back

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

through paleontology and geology to the fiery-liquid youth of our
planet, and hence extends its hand in the nebular hypothesis to the
theory of the persistence of energy, while anthropology, ethnology,
and the history of the primitive ages lay the bridge to linguistics, the
theory of knowledge, and the historical sciences. The examination of
the vital processes, physiology, has stripped off the larva-casing of
vitalism, and has burst from its cocoon as applied physics and chemis-
try. While the physiologists of Germany during the first half of the
century, and those of England and France in part till to-day, were
engaged only with morphology, and at most with experiments on
animals, for a generation past all the intellectual and instrumental
aids of the physicist, all the arts of the chemist, have been naturalized
in the physiological laboratory, and have been thereby much aug-
mented. Nothing better illustrates the lively interworking of the
different branches of science, at the present time, than that the inves-
tigation into original generation has helped surgery to the greatest
progress it has made since Ambroise Pare, and pathology to a con-
ception of the nature of the most destructive infectious disease, pul-
monary tuberculosis.

Sciences, also, whose circles once hardly intersected, have ap-
proached each other. The triumph of the inductive method rendered
historians and philologists like Thomas Buckle and Max Mtiller anxious
to make themselves masters of its advantages, for it was evident that
the difference between their activity and that of the naturalist was not
fundamentally very great : of course not, for induction is, in practice,
only sound reason sagaciously applied. To the interworking of archae-
ological and scientific labors we owe a well-founded acquisition of re-
cent times, the study of the primitive condition of mankind, created
jointly by the Danish scholars Forchhammer, Steenstrup, Thomsen,
and Worsaae, which is in many cases more interesting than real his-
tory.

It would be superfluous to extend the painting of this pictui-e. We
have given enough to show that the view that regards the science of
the present as having been seduced into by-ways, and as being dissi-
pated among special investigations definitely separated from each
other, and that the notion that it is lacking in general ideas, that the
wood can not be seen for the trees, are deceptive. It is, however,
probable that no more such comprehensive theories as those of the
persistence of energy and of descent will appear during the next dec-
ade, because a third theory of such moment is now hardly conceivable.
We may therefore well repeat what Dove said, at about the middle of
the last century, that " the impulse which science received in Newton's
time, through the co-operation of his great talents, was not responded
to by a proportionately rapid progress in the following period. Time
was needed to elaborate the thoughts which had been so grandly
aroused in the different fields, to adjust them in detail to the phenom-

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD. 25

ena, to fill up the interior of the outlined scheme, which more accurate
observations unfolded in continually increasing richness." Contem-
poraneously with the general thoughts requiring elaboration, have
arisen such new methods of research as spectral analysis and chronos-
copy, making possible conclusions that had not before been thought of.
Not only have the world's trade — likewise greatly enlarged to beyond
any extent which it had previously attained — and numerous scientific
journeys contributed an overwhelming mass of new materials to the
observing sciences, but an inexhaustible treasury has long been acces-
sible to them at the zoological stations. The excavations methodically
carried on unobtrusively, at different points of the old grounds of cult-
ure, are inundating antiquaries with a flood of discoveries, enough to
engage the industry of generations.

What can be more desirable than for hosts of laborers, satisfying
themselves with the solution of minute problems, to be occupying all
the places with their restless activity ? Why should there not be in
the pursuit of science, as in a factory, men at the vise giving valuable
service, even if they do not know what is to be done with the piece at
which they are filing ; foremen who know how to adjust the parts,
yet are not informed as to the destination of the whole ; and still fur-
ther sighted, more deeply initiated masters ? Art also laments the
lack of prominent talent under the generally elevated condition of
culture ; aside from casual instances of the production of talent, it
may be that we are only deceived through the unremarked grada-
tion of so many fellow-workers. The superfluity of aids at our com-
mand naturally causes a depreciation of these workers, in accordance
with the accepted law of the statics of the passions. Finally, if by
the force of precarious social conditions there are not only absolutely
but also relatively more young men to whom science is not the ex-
alted, heavenly goddess, but a milch-cow, that is but a small mat-
ter to the great whole. In this, as in many other human affairs,
ethical and rcsthetical demands unfortunately concur only in the sec-
ond line.

It all depends rather on the fact that something is accomplished, less
on how it is done. The more industriously and at the more places
anything is done from those motives, the more speedily does the ap-
parent interruption pass off, and the more securely and broadly is the
basis laid for new advances. It may be years or decades, the time
will come when investigation will collect her energies, no longer scat-
tered through a swarm of questions demanding priority of solution, for
the attack upon the highest problems now before us : What is gravity ?
AVhat is electricity ? What is the mechanism of chemical combustion ?
And what is the constitution of the elements that have not been de-
composed ? It will solve them, for, the more definitely we set the
limits of the knowledge of nature, the more securely can we build
on the possibility of knowledge within those limits. Beyond those

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

problems open others ; and so again and again in the infinity of the
periodic turns in the development-course of human knowledge.

The unparalleled spectacle to which Paris invited the civilized
world last fall not only shows that science is exercising its binding force
in spite of popular discords, but it at the same time teaches, better
than all words, that, if the recent brilliant development of technics has
dulled the taste for pure science, it has on the other hand compensated
a thousand - fold for this injury. The electrical apparatus of thirty
years ago filled a large room ; that of to-day, generally illustrated by
several specimens, filled a world's Exhibition-Building. Eilhard Mit-
scherlich has remarked of Herr Wiedeman's treatise on galvanism and
electro-magnetism that nothing speaks more eloquently of the power
of the human mind than that book filled with the clear facts which
physicists have procured. Deep in thought we walked, keeping these
words in mind, through the magic palace of the Elysian Fields, illumi-
nated by the electric light, and ventilated by electrical machinery. We
sometimes speak slightingly of Americanism, intimating that it bears
utilitarianism on its shield. But who does not feel a patriotic press-
ure for old Europe at the wonders of the telephone and the phono-
graph ? or at the report of the confirmation by Asaph Hall, with Alvah
Clark's objective, of the discovery of the astronomers of Laputa?
Hardly a year passes but that the newspapers report some new mag-
nificent institution for purposes of pure science which American public
spirit has called into life through private means, in a manner that is
known on this side of the water only in England. The names of
American historians, thinkers, and philologists are known along with
the best, and are particularly dear to this Academy. We must accus-
tom ourselves to the thought that, as the economical center of gravity
of the civilized world lies already, like the center of gravity of a
double star, between the old and the new continents, in the Atlantic
ocean, so also will the scientific center of gravity in time move strongly
toward the west. Enough : Europe may look out lest its science may
be in more danger from the militarism which is forced upon it by the
chauvinsm of all nationalities than American science from utilitari-
anism.

In one point, indeed, we may well reckon that leadership will not
so soon be wrested from us. The co-operation of a body supported
by the state, already fully composed into a permanent organization,
representing in the highest possible degree the aggregate of knowl-
edge, whose age and famous past give weight to its decisions, is a
force not to be created overnight, even with the most ample means
and efforts. Ingenious inventors, single though ever so worthy
scholars and investigators, can not take the place of academies in the
scientific life of a nation. It was a simple thing that the telephone
should be discovered ; remarkable that the explanation of it was re-
served for members of our Academy.

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD. 27

At the time of their foundation the older academies entirely con-
stituted the scientific world. In the universities, the so-called profes-
sional faculties had quite the upper hand over the philosophical, and
in them classical philology predominated. The academies had inter-
course with each other, but hardly exerted any influence on the outer
world, which was strangely out of sympathy with them, except
throuo-h their prize problems. Even in the comparatively idyllic
conditions of the first half of the century, they limited themselves
chiefly to the fulfillment of their inner calling, to their own scientific

labors.

In view of the constant pressure of forces of every kind and
deo-ree, of the atomistic division of labor around us, of the unregu-
lated assumptions, the short memory, of the overwhelmingly common-
place life of the present generation, the academies have an outer voca-
tion in addition to their inner one. It is their duty to preserve the
bond of connection in the division of labor, to have a look to the
welfare of knowledge in the flight of the phenomena of the day.
They should bring into competition with the dangerous enticements
of technics, the charm of pure knowledge. Her sacred instrument,
method, is in their care ; but in Germany, where the false gods of
perverted speculation are constantly finding willing Baal-servitors, it
is especially incumbent on them to throw these idols out wherever
they are smuggled in, and to drive away their priests. The necessary
complement of an externally acting influence of the Academy is a no
less vivid reaction from without upon the Academy, an interaction for
the maintenance of which an alert organ, ready for the combat, is
needed. The venerable but somewhat unwieldy form in which our body
has comfortably moved for some tens of years could not satisfy such a
demand of this "rapid, giddy-footed time." Our slowly and irregu-
larly appearing " Monatsberichte," which were overwhelmed in the
struggle for light and air with numerous active special journals, could
not perform this service.

The Academy has, therefore, made some quite important changes
in its arrangements and in the course of its business, which last year
received the sanction of our immediate protector, his Majesty the Em-
peror and King. Among other things it has doubled the number of
its class sittings, at the expense of the general meetings, and, in order
to keep pace with the rise of new branches of science, it has quad-
rupled the number of its ordinary members. Following the time-
honored example of its renowned sister of Paris, it has decided, not
without opposition, on a kind of publication of its proceedings, which
by means of weekly reports of meetings (Sitzungsberichte) shall satisfy
the desire of members as well as of strangers for the most speedy in-
formation of its transactions. Our arrangement still leaves it possible
to afford a place also for the former more complete and less urgent
statements. The external appearance of the new " Berichte," and we

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hope its contents also, will be worthy of the first scientific body in
the empire ; and, in order to afford to the mathematico-scientific circle
of readers the part of the substance of the reports most nearly inter-
esting them in a more acceptable form, the Physico-mathematical Sec-
tion has decided to prepare an extract from these reports under the
title of " Mathematical and Scientific Communications."

Rarely do important and accessible questions, at least in natural sci-
ence, now remain long unworked. The system of the putting of prize
questions, and the coronation of the best answer, is therefore less
adapted to our time than that of rewarding excellent, already published
efforts, which is usual with the practical English. Partly on account of
the tenor of the bequests to which the means for many of its prizes are
due, partly for other reasons, the Academy has adhered essentially to
the former way of awarding prizes. It will simply hereafter offer
higher prizes at longer intervals, and it reserves the right, in case a
prize question is not satisfactorily answered, to award the amount of
the prize as a testimonial of honor to the author of a meritorious
essay, not more than three years old, upon the same subject. It is
determinative of the character of the Academy that it is under the
protection of the state, and its authority is supported by that of the
state so far as such a thing is conceivable and desirable in scientific
matters. The state thus demonstrates the sympathy which it has
with science, as such, with ideal efforts. It expresses this immediately
by the means which it puts at the disposition of the Academy for sci-
entific purposes. It has been too little recognized, amid the tumult of
the great events of the time, that one of the first applications which
the Prussian state made of its lately enlarged resources was to increase
the annual subsidy of the Academy. Through the turn for the better
thereby effected in the circumstances of the Academy were produced
the works which now appear almost yearly on all branches of science
with our support ; the researches of all kinds, from epigrapbic and
diplomatic to micrographic and paleontological studies, for which we
supply means ; and the steamboat of the zoological station at Naples,
the expense of which we share with the state. Around the Academy
are crystallized several literary enterprises, the fame of which is re-
flected upon it, as well as endowments and institutes, whose resources
accrue to its benefit so far as it has the more or less immediate dispo-
sition of them. Hardly ever are we without travelers who are making
collections in remote parts of the world in our name and by our order,
or interrogating Nature or the monuments of antiquity on the spot.
The names of the travelers of the Humboldt Stiftung, to speak only
of them, Hensel, Schweinfurth, Buchholtz, Hilderbrandt, Sachs, are in
the mouths of all experts, and are associated with extremely impor-
tant results. The Academy will shortly hear, in accordance with our
new order of business, the reports which are now to be brought in
concerning the progress of those investigaions and the work of a part

THE SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT PERIOD. 29

of the societies and institutions associated with it. The opinion that
its influence was never greater than at this moment will be fully con-
firmed by the creditable series of these reports.

The first of all the academies, that Platonic one of which Herr
Curtius lately gave an eloquent sketch in this place, arose in a free
state. Since its birth no republican commonwealth has brought forth
a lasting and important work of the kind. According to M. de Can-
dolle's statistics, Switzerland has, from the middle of the last to the
middle of the present century, contributed, relatively, the largest con-
tingent of the foreign and corresponding members of the Paris and
Berlin Academies and of the Royal Society ; it has itself not founded
any academy. The origin of the Royal Society is lost in the storms of
the Commonwealth ; but it was not Cromwell's Puritans who prepared
a place for human knowledge, and the name of the young society be-
trays the effort to lean upon monarchical institutions. That popular
rule is not kindly to academies is shown by Bailly's and Lavoisier's
bloody heads, and by Condorcet's sad end. Certainly there would be
no place for the Academy in a social democratic state, which recognizes
no principle but that of common utility.

Not only because in Prussia crown and state have always been
one does our body, maintained, protected, and supported by the state,
bear the title of royal with better right than many so-called learned
societies. None of them have had so close relations to the ruling
house. The Hohenzollerns' own peculiar creation, borne on the hands
of Prussia's kings through good and evil times, the Berlin Academy
has likewise numbered the greatest among its fellow-workers. Grate-
ful expressions of thanks have often been given here for these recol-
lections ; to-day a word appears to be in place which it is our proud
prerogative to speak.

To praise the Emperor William, as the victorious hero, the restorer
of the empire of the German nation, the arbiter of the Continent, the
mighty warrior and the real prince of peace, as one of the most re-
markable figures described by history, is the task of others. It is for
us to say, what finds but a slight echo in the world, but what signifies
to the minds of those who are interested in affairs of the intellect an-
other laurel-leaf in his crown, that in this culmination of his life, in
the pressure of so important affairs of state, under the load of such
consuming cares, in the grasp of such world-stirring questions, the
Emperor William, true to the spirit of his house, has always had a
friendly, open ear for his Academy of Sciences.

3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

r
I

SOME CTJKIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS.

By W. H. LAEEABEE.

THE importance of trees to the earth and to life does not need to
be insisted upon. The condition of treeless regions is almost a
demonstration that without them the soil would not be tillable and
life would not be endurable. It is, therefore, natural that they should
have at all times shared the special regards of men ; and that not only-
particular species, but individual trees, should in their times and places
have been hallowed with a sacred, historical, legendary, romantic, or
mythical interest. The list of such trees, if one should undertake to
make it out, would fill a large catalogue. Our own country and time,
commonplace as their characteristics are supposed to be, are not with-
out them. Other trees have become famous by reason of their ex-
traordinary size, or some other remarkable features of their growth ;
and in these points we are able to present specimens with respectable
claims to honor. The big trees of California are equaled among the
trees of modern, and, so far as is known, of ancient, periods only by
a few Australian eucalyptuses. Many of the most remarkable speci-
mens of vegetable growth are familiar by description ; others are
added to the list, from time to time, as new quarters of the earth are
more thoroughly explored and their forests more closely examined, or
seen with eyes keener in observation.

The forests of Europe still contain a few remarkable trees, the
history of which has not become trite by familiarity. Mr. Gaston
Tissandier's " La Nature " furnishes us with descriptions and illustra-
tions of two noteworthy specimens of these growths.

Switzerland has its old chestnut-trees on the banks of Lake Leman,
and the ancient linden of Fribourg, the history of which is said to go
back to the time of the conflicts with Charles the Bold. M. Louis
Pire, President of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium, has found
a fir-tree in the forest of Alliaz, Canton of Vaud, which he believes
to be still older than the linden of Fribourg, and considers entitled
to be regarded as the oldest and most remarkable tree in the canton,
if not in the whole confederation. It is growing near the baths of
Alliaz, at a height of about thirteen hundred feet above the hotel,
and forty-five hundred feet above the sea, surrounded by a forest of
firs, which it overtops by more than thirty feet. The trunk of this
tree is ten metres, or a little more than thirty feet, in circumference
at the base. At about a yard from the ground it puts out, on the
south side, seven offshoots, which have grown into trunks as strong
and vigorous as those of the other trees in the forest. Bent and
gnarled at the bottom, these side-trunks soon straighten themselves
up and rise perpendicularly and parallel to the main stem. This feat-

SOME CURIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS.

31

ure is not, perhaps, wholly unparalleled, but another most curious fact
is that the two largest of the side-trunks are connected with the prin-
cipal stem by sub-quadrangular braces resembling girders. These
beams have probably been formed by an anastomosing of branches,

Fiq. 1.— The Fir-tree or Alliaz. (From a sketch by Madame A. Pire.)

which, common enough among angiosperms, is extremely rare among
conifers ; but it has been impossible to ascertain the manner in which
the ingrowing of one branch into the other has been effected. The

32

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

adaptation by which a limb, originally destined to grow free and
bear foliage, has been converted into a living stick of timber, is a
strange one, and affords a new illustration of the power of nature to
fit itself to circumstances. The space between the rough flooring
formed by the growing together of the offshoots, at their point of
departure, and the girder-limbs, is large enough to admit of building
a comfortable hermit's hut within it.

Several forests are still existing in Europe in a primitive condition,
some of the principal ones of which are situated on the vast estates

SOME CURIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 33

of Prince Schwartzenberg, in Bohemia. In these forests are beech-
trees a hundred to a hundred and twenty feet high, with trunks three
or four feet in diameter ; and pyramidal pines, four to eight feet in
diameter, and towering to a height of from one hundred and twenty
to two hundred feet. The dense foliage of these gigantic plants ex-
cludes the rays of the sun, and keeps all around them in impenetrable
obscurity. The voices of the birds are hushed, and the silence of the
solitude is broken only by the soughing of the wind through the foli-
age of the colossal trees. Old trees, which have fallen and decayed,
furnish a rich and congenial base in which young larches and pines
readily take root, and from which they may grow for centuries, draw-
ing nourishment from the juices supplied from the slowly rotting trunk.
This, at least, appears to be the case with the trees in our cut, which
represents an actual group of trees growing upon the trunk of a fallen
ancestor, some of which are nearly as large as the decaying monster
itself, while that still keeps its shape.

Herr Haeckel, in the " Letters of Indian Travel " which he is pub-
lishing in the " Deutsche Rundschau," gives some glowing descrip-
tions of the beautiful and curious forms of tropical vegetation which
he met in the forests and jungles and gardens of Ceylon. Down in
the valley away below him, as he journeyed by rail from Kandy to
Peradenia, he observed in the jungles which alternate with the culti-
vated lands, towering above all the other trees, the giant stems of the
talipat palm ( Corypha umbraculifera), " queen among the palms of
Ceylon." Its perfectly straight white trunk resembles a slender marble
pillar, and often rises to a height of more than a hundred feet. Each
one of the fan-shaped leaves of its stately crown covers a semicircle
sixteen feet in diameter, or a surface of two hundred square feet. Nu-
merous applications are made of the leaves, the most important, per-
haps, being for purposes of thatching. They formerly constituted the
only substitute which the Singlalese had for paper, and are still used
to a considerable extent for that purpose. The ancient pushola manu-
scripts in the Buddhist cloisters were all written with iron styles on
o/a-paper, or narrow strips of tali pat-leaves prepared by steeping and
drying them. The talipat blooms but once in its life, generally
between its fiftieth and eightieth year. The magnificent pyramid of
flowers rises from the top immediately above the mass of the foliage,
to a height of thirty or forty feet, and is composed of millions of
little whitish vellow blossoms; and the tree dies as soon as the nuts
are ripe.

On the road between Colombo and Point de Galle, although the
general character of the landscape varied but little, the traveler's eye
was never tired, for the constant charm of the cocoa and the inexhaust-
ible variety in the grouping of the palms prevented any monotony.
The delicately feathered leaves of the cocoas, with the fanning of the
sea-breezes, tempered the heat of the sun. without excluding his rays.

VOL. XXII. 3

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The eye was constantly delighted with the endless vai-iety of the cloth-
ing of the palm-stems with festoons of pepper-wort and other vines,
swung like beautiful and artfully arranged garlands from tree-top to
tree-top, and hanging down in bouquets of dense foliage set off with
bright flowers. Under and among the stately palms were other trees,
the noble mango and the large bread-fruit tree, with its thick, dark-
green crown of leaves. The slender, pillar-like stem of the handsome
papaya-tree ( Carica papaya) was elegantly inlaid and adorned with a
regular diadem of broad, palmated leaves ; and jasmin, orange, and
lemon trees in varieties were covered over and over with fragrant
white blossoms.

As the road neared the sea-shore, the pandanus, or screw-trees
(Pandanns odoratissimus), picturesquely growing upon the rocky
hills, attracted attention. These are among the most remarkable and
characteristic plants of the trojrics. They are nearly allied to the
palms, and are often called screw-palms, or, improperly, screw-pines.
The cylindrical stem of this plant, which seldom reaches more than from
twenty to forty feet in height, is bent and twisted, and its branches
are forked like a chandelier. Each limb bears on the end a dense tuft
of large, sword-shaped leaves, like those of the dracama and the yucca.
The leaves are sometimes sea-green, sometimes dark-green, and are
arranged spirally at the base, so that the limb resembles a regularly
turned screw. At the bases of the leaf -tufts hang clusters of white,
extremely fragrant blossoms, or large red fruits like the anana. The
most remarkable feature of the plant is afforded by the numerous air-
roots which branch out from the trunk and ramify again, lower down,
fastening themselves in the earth when they reach the ground, and
forming buttresses to support the main stem. The tree looks as if it
were walking on stilts.

The entrance to the Botanic Garden of Peradenia is through a no-
ble avenue of India-rubber trees. This tree, which is known to us of
the north only by puny specimens in greenhouses, grows in these trop-
ical regions to a giant's stature, of a size comparable to that of our
largest oaks. An immense crown of many thousand leaves covers
with the aid of its horizontal limbs, which are thirty or forty feet long,
the area of a stately palace ; while from the base of its thick trunk
extends a frame-work of roots over a space of often between one and
two hundred feet in diameter, and much larger than would correspond
with the height of the tree. This wonderful structure consists of
twenty or thirty chief roots proceeding from as many corresponding
ribs in the lower part of the trunk, and spreading themselves like great
snakes on the ground. The tree is hence called the snake-tree by the
natives, and has been compared by the poets to the coiled serpents
of the Laocoon. The roots, with the ribs which mark their swelling
out from the trunk, form strong buttresses to the tree, and enable it to
bid defiance to the storm. The spaces between the buttresses consti-

SOME CURIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 35

tute mimic chambers large enough for a standing man to conceal him-
self in them.

Among the other arboreal wonders of Peradenia are the giant
bamboos, which are a marvel to all visitors. They here form thickets
along the banks of the stream, a hundred feet high, and as many feet
wide, bending their great heads, like the waving plume of a giant, high
over the river and the adjoining road. On a nearer approach, each of
the thickets is seen to consist of cylindrical stems a foot or two thick,
which, closely crowded together below on a common root — offshoots
from a creeping stem — diverge as they rise, and bear on slight, nod-
ding branches dense tufts of the most delicate foliage. These gi-
gantic trees are nothing but grasses. Like all grass-holms, their great
hollow reed-stem is divided into joints ; but the sheath of the leaf,
which is represented in our tender grasses by a thin scale at the base
of the leaves, becomes in these gigantic bamboos a hard, woody plate,
that might without further preparation serve the purpose of an armor
for the whole breast of a strong man. A three-year-old child could
hide itself in one of the joints of the stem.

Not less interesting than the bamboos and the palms proper are the
groups of thorny climbing palms, or rattans (calamus), with their fine
waving feather-leaves. Their slender but hard and elastic stems, no
thicker than one's finger, climb into the tops of the highest trees, and
may reach a length of three or four hundred feet. They are the long-
est of all plants.

Herr Haeckel also speaks of the mangroves, whose branching roots
form impenetrable thickets at the mouths of the large rivers ; of the
cactus-shaped wolf's-milk {Euphorbia antiquorum), with its naked blue-
green prismatic limbs, near the rock-temple of Kaduwella ; and of the
Buddha-trees, Bogas, or saci-ed fig-trees (Ficus religiosa), generally
found near the Buddhist temples, which with their venerable stems,
fantastic roots, and colossal crowns of foliage, form a prominent feat-
ure in the picturesque surroundings of those buildings. " Their leaves,
which are heart-shaped, with long stalks, quiver like our aspens." At
one end of the town of Cultura, a magnificent banyan-tree (Metis In-
died) spans the road with its arch of roots. The gigantic trunk has
thrown out air-roots which have grounded themselves on the opposite
side of the road, and have grown up into large stems. These form
now, together with the main stem, a high Gothic archway, to which
picturesqueness is added by the ferns, orchids, and climbing vines that
have grown upon the trunk. Near it is an India-rubber tree, whose
buttressed roots, entwined together and rising in high lattices, form a
labyrinth, in the sinuosities of which, when Haeckel visited the place,
hosts of children were amusing themselves with playing at hide-and-
seek.

Australia possesses a diversified flora, consisting partly of forms pe-
culiarly its own, partly of those allied to African and South American

36

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SOME CURIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 37

types. Its myrtles, proteazeas, acacias, and gum-trees exhibit most
curious forms, and the grasses, ferns, beeches, araucarias, screw-palms,
and bananas are represented ; while the thorny rattans wind among
the thickets so as to form impenetrable copses.

One of the most curious trees of Northwestern Australia is the
monkey-bread tree {Adansonia Gregorii), a baobab, which is plainly
distinguished from the African baobab {Adansonia digitata), the only
species hitherto known, by its short fruit-stalks. The trunk is swollen
to a considerable extent, and the tissues are charged with a mucus like
that of the mallows, of which the sheep feeding in the region are very
fond, and which they find quite refreshing. The tree is remarkable,
among its fellow-plants of the sandstone table-land on which it grows,
for its habit of shedding its leaves periodically — a peculiarity which is
shared by hardly a dozen among all the Australian trees. Associated
with this baobab are relatives of other African plants, of the legumi-
nous Erythroplacum, or poison-tree, and the tamarind ; and to these
may be added an ally of the Indian crow-nut, or nux vomica.

Many of the Australian plants exhibit various aberrations in the
form of their leaves, with some of which specimens of their eucalyp-
tus have made us acquainted. The acacias, which are very abundant,
and appear in three hundred species, are many of them, as well as
some other leguminous plants, distinctly marked from similar plants
in Asia, Africa, and America, by having not veined leaves but phyl-
lods, or leaf -like structures, in which the petiole becomes so much de-
veloped as to assume the appearance and perform the functions of a
leaf.

Another remarkable adaptation of leaf-forms is exemplified in the
Brazilian plant called the Bauhinia, the leaves of which are deeply cleft
into two lobes, and given a form which is graphically described by
the name Unha de boi, " ox-hoof," which the Portuguese give to the
plant. At daybreak, the leaves are borne with both lobes spread out
horizontally ; as the sun rises in the sky, the lobes rise, and are drawn
toward each other, till, in the more sensitive species {Bauhinia Bra-
ziliensis), they are completely doubled up, with their backs in contact.
As the sun goes down, they begin to separate again, growing wider
apart as the afternoon advances, till in the evening they appear again
spread out level. During the night they again contract and become
folded together. Herr Fritz Midler had an opportunity while in Brazil
of observing one of these plants at noon, when a part of the leaves
were shaded by the tree under which he was resting. Leaves that
were quite closed together, or the lobes of which formed an acute angle
with each other, spread out as soon as the shadow struck them, and
eventually became horizontal, and even appeared to turn their lobes
downward. In no other instance, however, did Herr Muller find the
upper surface of the lobes of the leaves inclined to each other at a
larger angle than 180°.

33

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a %

Fig. 4.— Leaf of Baithinia Braziliensis. a, folded ; b, expanded.

An American prairie plant, commonly known as the rosin-weed or
turpentine-plant (Silphium laciniatum), bas also been named the com-
pass-plant, from the property its radical leaves bave of pointing north
and south. The phenomenon has long been known to hunters and
frequenters of the prairies, and has been scientifically verified by Gen-
eral Benjamin Alford and other American and European observers
since 1839. The secret of the property lies in the fact that the num-
ber of stomata is equal on both sides of the leaf, and both sides, there-
fore, are equally acted upon by light. Hence, if the leaf is equally
exposed to the morning sun and the afternoon sun, it will naturally
tend to assume a position of equilibrium between the two foi'ces, by
turning one side toward the morning, the other side toward the even-
ing, sun. This would throw its breadth in a north-and-south direc-
tion. Since attention has been turned to this subject, the leaves of
several other plants have been found to possess similar properties.

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE. 39

Among them are some lactucas (or lettuces), the Chinese arbor vitce,
and a number of Australian plants. Whenever this peculiarity has
been observed, it has also been found, on examination, that both sides
of the leaves were structurally alike. The property can be brought
out clearly under favorable conditions ; but it is liable to be modified
or marked, in the actual circumstances of growth, by any difference
in exposure to the sun or wind, on different sides of the plant.

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE.

By NATHAN ALLEN, M.D.,LL. D.

IT is almost one hundred years since the attention of T. R. Mal-
thus was first called to the subject of population and its changes.
As his views have had more influence than any other writer, it is well
to notice briefly what they were. His leading principle is, that " popu-
lation, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, while subsist-
ence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." He held that " popula-
tion is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence," and " invari-
ably increases where those means increase, unless prevented by some
very powerful and obvious check." He divides these checks into two
classes, the positive and the preventive : among the former are wars,
famine, diseases of all kinds, unhealthy occupations, extreme poverty,
great cities, etc. ; and in the latter class are abstinence from marriage
and sexual intercourse, from considerations of prudence. The last class
come more directly under the control of human agency.

The next writer of any note was Thomas Doubleday, who published
in 1840 a work with this title : " The True Law of Population shown to
be connected with the Food of the People." The term "true law"
was undoubtedly introduced in opposition to the doctrine of Malthus.
Doubleday attempted to demonstrate that " wherever a species or
genus is endangered, a corresponding effort is invariably made by
Nature for its preservation and continuance, by an increase of fecun-
dity or fertility ; and that this especially takes place whenever such
danger arises from a diminution of proper nourishment," and that con-
sequently "the deplethoric state is favorable to fertility." Thus,
" there is in all societies a constant increase going on among that por-
tion of it which is the class worst supplied with food — in short, among
the poorest."

The April number of the "Westminster Review" for 1852 con-
tained an elaborate essay by Herbert Spencer, introducing a "New
Theory of Population," deduced from the general law of animal fer-
tility. He " maintained that an antagonism exists between individual-
ism "and reproduction ; that matter in its lower forms, for instance, of

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vegetables, possesses a stronger power of increase than in all higher
forms ; that the capacity of reproduction in animals is in an inverse
ratio to their individuation ; that the ability to maintain individual
life and that of multiplication vary in the same manner also, and
that this ability is measured by the development of the nervous sys-
tem."

Fourier and some French writers have advanced the idea that "just
in proportion as individuals become advanced in civilization, in the
same proportion the race inclines to run out " ; but whether this depends
upon some change in physiological laws, or upon the influence of ex-
ternal agents, we are not informed. In establishing any law or gen-
eral principle, it is highly important to understand distinctly what this
principle is and its basis. During the present century, the above-
named persons are almost the only writers who have proposed any-
thing like a general law or principle to guide the growth and changes
of population.

The principle laid down by Herbert Spencer is the only one based
strictly upon physiology. All the discussions and views of Malthus
and Doubleday depend mainly upon food, climate, government, state
of society, epidemics, war, etc. They make the leading factors, the
primary agents in all these changes, outside, and in a great measure
independent, of the body. It would seem more consistent with com-
mon sense, and all natural phenomena, that the law which governs
the existence, growth, and changes of a living being should have
its basis and development in that same organization. From obser-
vation and analogy, we believe such a doctrine exists throughout
the whole animal and vegetable creation. The truth of this principle
is strikingly illustrated in the changes that have taken place in do-
mestic animals. The human system can not be made an exception
to a universal principle.

This law of increase or propagation — the most important of all
laws — must, in the very nature of things, be inherent in the body ;
must be incorporated into its very existence, though in its operations
it may be affected by extraneous causes and influences. However
powerful may be the effect of climate, food, and other external agents
upon the application or working of this law, whether to impede,
thwart, or modify its operation, the law must exist, we believe, in the
body itself, and in a great measure control it. The various changes
to which the human body is subjected, can not happen by chance
or accident ; neither can the causes be dissimilar or contradictory in
different nations and races ; neither can they radically change or vary
from one generation to another. Universality and unchangeableness
must characterize such a law. The reason why correct principles have
not been brought to bear more directly upon the growth and changes
of population is, that the principles of physiology were not formerly
understood. The science was scarcely known at the time when

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE. 41

Malthus and Doubleday published their works, that is, the principles
of the science in many of their most practical applications. In fact, it
may safely be said that some of these principles, as far as their appli-
cation is concerned, are still in their infancy. One of the most inter-
esting and important of these applications will be found, we believe,
in establishing a general law of human increase.

After many years of study, observation, and reflection, we have been
led to believe that there is such a law, and propose to submit some of
the facts and arguments upon which this belief is based. As the sub-
ject is so vast and complicated, a large volume would be required to
discuss it properly ; we can present here only a few points or heads of
topics, by way of argument and illustration. In order to present a
clear and connected view in a short paper, few quotations or refer-
ences will be given.

What, then, is the briefest definition that can be given of this
law ? It consists in the 'perfectionism of structure and harmony of
function/ or, in other words, that every organ in the body should
be perfect in its structure, and that each should perform its legitimate
function in harmony with all others. Though this perfect physical
organization is nowhere to be found in nature, we can readily con-
ceive of such a standard, and that there may be all manner of approxi-
mations toward it. The nearer this standard is reached, the more
completely the law of propagation will be carried out. Such a basis
harmonizes with the great fundamental or general laws of Nature, as
we find that they are all based upon the highest or most perfect devel-
opment of her works. Any other basis or lower standard would reflect
upon the Creator of all things, and interfere with the harmony and
order which exist in Nature's operations. Thus, in reference to every
organ in the human body, there is such a thing as a normal, perfect
structure, and, wherever this exists, they constitute a perfect model or
standard for the whole system. All diseases interfere at once with
the operations of this law, especially those that are considered heredi-
tary. This class of diseases changes with each generation, and some-
times becomes so intensified that they impair the vitality and strength
of the system to such an extent as to prevent propagation. There is
a class of diseases or weaknesses, described under the head of " ste-
rility," " barrenness," and " impotence," from which strong evidence
may be deduced in proof of a general law of increase.

There is a law in physiology, favorable to this theory, described by
Dr. Carpenter thus : " There is a certain antagonism between the
nutritive and reproductive functions, the one being exercised at the
expense of the other. The reproductive apparatus derives the mate-
rials of its operations through the nutritive system and its functions.
If, therefore, it is in a state of excessive activity, it will necessarily
draw off from the individual fabric some portion of aliment destined
for its maintenance. It may be universally observed that, when the

42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nutritive functions are particularly active in supporting the individ-
ual, the reproductive system is undeveloped, and vice versa."

Let, therefore, on this principle, any class of organs or any parts
of the body be unduly or very much exercised, it requires the more
nutrition to support them, thereby withdrawing what should go to
other organs. In accordance with this physiological law, if any class
of organs become predominant in their development, it conflicts with
this great law of increase. In other words, if the organization is car-
ried by successive generations to an extreme, that is, to a high nerv-
ous temperament — a predominance of the brain and nervous system —
or, on the other hand, to a lymphatic temperament — a predominance of
the mere animal nature — it operates unfavorably upon the increase of
progeny. Accordingly, in the highest states of refinement, culture,
and civilization of a people, the tendency has always been to run out
in offspring ; while, on the other hand, all tribes and races sunk in the
lowest stages of barbarism, and controlled principally by their animal
nature, do not abound in offspring, and in the course of time they tend
also to run out. The truth of both these statements is confirmed by
history. The same general fact has been observed among all the ab-
normal classes, such as idiots, cretins, the insane, the blind, the deaf
and dumb, and to some extent, with extreme or abnormal organizations,
such as are excessively corpulent or spare, as well as of unnatural size,
either very large or diminutively small.

It would seem that Nature herself is bound to put an end to organi-
zations that are monstrous, that are defective, and abnormal or unnat-
ural or imperfect in any respect. All history, we believe, proves that
such organizations are not prolific in offspring, and the number of
this class born into the world, reaching an advanced age, is compara-
tively not large. Such facts would indicate that there must be a
general law of propagation that aims at a higher or more perfect
standard.

If this principle is applied to distinct classes in society, some strik-
ing illustrations may be obtained. Take the families belonging to the
nobility, the aristocracy, or the most select circles, where by inherit-
ance, refinement, and culture the nervous temperament has become
very predominant, it is found that such families do not increase from
generation to generation in offspring, and not unfrequently, in time,
they become extinct.

A similar result has also followed the intermarriage of relations,
from the fact that the same weaknesses or predispositions are intensi-
fied by this alliance. On the other hand, in case these relations have
healthy, well-balanced organizations — it may be that they are cousins
— they will abound with healthy offspring, and the stock may improve,
and not deteriorate, from the mere fact of relationship.

Again, if we take those families and races which for several gen-
erations have steadily increased most, we shall find that, as a whole,

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE. 43

they possess a remarkably healthy, well-balanced organization. Illus-
trations of this type we shall find abound most among the middling or
working classes of the German, the English, the Scotch, the Irish, and
the Americans. The strictly native New-Englanders are, in some re-
spects, an exception, and require a more particular notice. During
the last century the colonists of New England, made up mostly of
English stock, multiplied rapidly. So great was their natural increase
that they doubled in numbers in less than twenty-five years. Malthus
regarded them as the best specimens, in this respect, of any people or
race, and based upon facts from this source his great principle of pop-
ulation. But a most surprising change has taken place within one
hundred years with this same people. From records carefully kept, it
appears that the average number of children to each family has de-
creased with every generation ; that they commenced with large fami-
lies— averaging eight or nine — but it is now doubtful whether the
average will exceed three children to a family, scarcely enough to
keep the original stock good in numbers. This change has occurred
in the same places, with the same people, having the same climate and
plenty of food. Making allowance for the " arts of destruction and
prevention " which may exist to some extent, we do not see how this
great decrease in birth-rate can be accounted for, except by some
change in physical organization. The first settlers of New England
were remarkably healthy — had well-balanced organizations — and this
fact was true of the women as well as of the men. But a great change
in this respect has taken place. The men are not so strong and vigor-
ous as their grandfathers and ancestors, and the women have deteri-
orated physically in a surprising degree. A majority of them have a
predominance of nerve-tissue, with weak muscles and digestive organs.
The most marked change in this one hundred years, in organization, is
this loss of balance or harmony in the organs, and especially in women
it is far more striking. They have been diverging more and more from
that normal standard upon which the law of propagation is based.

There is only one other people or race where there has been such a
natural decrease in numbers — that is the Sandwich-Islanders. Once
they were a strong and robust people. In 1830, when the first census
was taken — which was ten years after the American missionaries com-
menced their labors — the population was 130,000, but by the last
census there were only about 40,000, one third as many as fifty years
ago. In the mean time religious institutions have been introduced,
education has become general, and the family as an institution has
been established. All the elements of a Christian civilization have
been thoroughly established, but still the population has been stead-
ily decreasing at the rate of about one thousand each year. How
can this be explained ? It can not be from the want of food, nor
a well-regulated society, nor change in climate, nor want of a good
government ; there have been no wars, no famine, and only two or

44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

three epidemics, which were quite limited. The cause of this loss of
population can not arise from any external condition or agents, but
from some law growing out of and governing the physical system.
It is well known that certain diseases, resulting from licentiousness
and intemperance, have been brought by foreigners to these islands,
causing a physical degeneracy in the people. So powerful and far-
reaching are the effects of these diseases that neither the family, nor
education, nor Christianity, can eradicate them. The law of propaga-
tion has been violated to such an extent that it threatens the extinction
of that people.

The laws of hereditary descent afford strong evidence in favor of
some general law of propagation. The fact that " like begets like,"
subject to certain variations and conditions, can not be called in ques-
tion. The union of two agents, possessing similar and dissimilar quali-
ties, constitutes an important condition to which this law of propaga-
tion is subject. While it may be difficult to point out, in all cases,
the exact results of hereditary influences, still it has been demonstrated
on a large scale that, in the aggregate, there was the most unquestion-
able evidence of such agency, and that it was minute and extensive,
and continued for successive generations. Now, the same evidence
that proves the existence of hereditary agency, implies that there is
somewhere a general law, of which each and every part of this agency
is part and parcel ; and no one thing will throw so much light upon
this whole subject of inheritance as the recognition of a general law
of propagation, based upon a perfect standard in nature. Without
such acknowledgment, all these hereditary agencies are an enigma.
When this branch of physiology becomes thoroughly understood,
hereditary influences will more readily be traced back to their primary
sources, as well as to the secondary causes which serve at times to
change and modify them. In this case, far more intelligent and effi-
cient means will be employed to improve the race.

Again : powerful arguments in favor of this theory of increase may
be deduced from woman's organization. It is a settled fact that the
primary organism of her nature is the production of children — that by
this course her average health is better, and the mean duration of life
is longer. Hence there must be one type or standard of organization
better adapted for this purpose than all others. We maintain that the
perfect structure of her whole body and the harmony of function in
every organ constitute this normal standard of increase. The truth
of this assertion, we believe, can be demonstrated from four distinct
points — all most intimately connected with human increase : 1. In
case of pregnancy a woman with this organization suffers the least.
It is well known that this change frequently brings on many com-
plaints, and sometimes serious diseases. The more the body or certain
organs deviate from the normal standard, the greater the disturbance
and suffering. 2. At the time of confinement, or in the process of de-

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE.

45

livery, a woman with this organization suffers less — passes through all
its stages safer, and recovers from its effects quicker and better — than
those having any kind of a different organization. 3. In the matter
of nursing offspring, which constitutes a very important part of child-
bearing, this healthy, well-balanced organization is very necessary.
The fact that only about one half of the New England women can
properly nurse their offspring is very significant of some cbange of
organization — that there is a failure in the development of the mam-
mary glands and the requisite power of the digestive organs — and this
incapacity for nursing is constantly increasing. And, in the fourth
place, the difference in the physical character of offspring is very
significant. This is determined in a great measure by that of the
mother. The more healthy and perfect her organization, and the
better the balance of all her organs, the sounder and the more per-
fect will be the development of her offspring. The health and life of
the child demand it.

This theory of human increase derives strong evidence from an
analogous law in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. It is well
known that great improvements have been made within the present
century in domestic animals, and this, too, by the application of phys-
iological laws. To such an extent have the results of observation
and experiment been here carried, that this process of change and
improvement has been reduced almost to a science. The terms here
used — " pure blood," " thorough-bred," " pedigree," " breeding in-and-
in," and " cross-breeding " — may all be explained by two great leading
principles. One is a general law of propagation, based upon a perfect
standard ; and the other is the law of inheritance, subject to certain
conditions. The three first-named terms have originated more from
an observance or carrying out the first law — breeding from the best
stock ; but the two latter terms depend more upon the effects of in-
heritance. The results of the experiments in improving domestic
stock indicate clearly that there must be some settled rules or laws in
the process ; and, if so, is there not some great general law governing
and controlling all others? A similar law of propagation exists in
vegetable physiology. It is a fact well attested by gardeners that, in
order to produce flowers and fruit, the soil must not be too rich nor
too poor ; if the plant or tree grows too luxuriously, its branches or
roots must be pruned ; while, on the other hand, if unthrifty, it must
receive better culture and its roots be enriched before it will become
fruitful. It is well understood by gardeners that, in order to raise the
best fruit and vegetables, the fairest and best-looking seed must be
selected. So in setting out plants and trees the best-looking and well-
balanced specimens are always selected. Other facts and illustrations
might be cited from this source to prove that some general law
governed in the growth and changes of organic life.

Again, arguments in favor of a general law of increase may be de-

46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

duced from three other important points in physiology. Where do we
find the highest measure or the most perfect health ? It is in this same
normal standard of physiology, and the nearest approaches to it. In
some respects the human body resembles a complicated machine : the
more perfect the structure, and the more nicely adjusted are all the
parts of the machinery, the less likely is any one part to get out of
order. And when one part, however small it may be, gives out or
breaks, it at once involves the other parts, all of which must more or
less suffer. Thus the individual, the family, the people which possess
by nature the soundest and best-balanced organizations, will have,
other things being equal, the greatest aggregate amount of health.
Not only this, but they will secure the longest lives. This same stand-
ard of physiology, then, affords the material upon which the law of
longevity is based. A careful examination of the organization of all
those persons who reach a great age, we believe, will demonstrate that
they naturally possessed a remarkably healthy and evenly balanced
constitution.

Again, whenever physical standards of human excellence or models
of the best specimens of the race have been sought or adduced, they
have exhibited this harmonious development. The Apollo Belvedere
and the Venus de' Medici represent a beautiful symmetrical organiza-
tion ; and, the nearer all parts of the body approximate to this stand-
ard, the greater is the attraction and the more beautiful the form. If
there is a form or type of organization in the human species more
beautiful than any other, is not this the model, the standard ? We
believe the Creator of all things has established in physiology such a
standard of taste and beauty, and that this same normal standard, upon
which the law of increase is based, comprises that beautiful form or
standard of taste for the human body which, it has been admitted, ex-
isted, but is nowhere well defined.

Again, arguments in favor of this theory of increase may be deduced
from the writings of Charles Darwin. Two of his leading doctrines
are " natural selection " and the " law of variability." The former
doctrine may be defined thus : There is an inherent principle in nat-
ure, amid all its laws and changes, for betterment, for improvement.
The same result has been found out from long experience, that the
character of domestic animals can be improved by selecting the most
desirable qualities and by avoiding all that conflict with these. This
principle is most strikingly manifested in all organic beings in their
constant " struggle for existence," and is happily expressed in the
phrase often used by some writers, the " survival of the fittest." We
believe this same principle not only harmonizes with, but is nothing
more nor less than a great general law of increase, based upon the
perfectionism of all organization and harmony of function ; and what
are denominated " laws of variation " may be explained by the laws
of hereditary descent. When we take into consideration the fact that

THE LAW OF HUMAN INCREASE. 47

t
the true law of propagation is based upon a perfect standard in nature,
all changes or deviations from that standard or model result from what
are properly called laws of inheritance. With this explanation it will
be seen at once that a wide and varied field is laid open for their oper-
ations, dependent not only on the body itself, but upon external agen-
cies and conditions. But the question arises, Why this " natural se-
lection," why this "struggle for existence," and why the "survival of
the fittest " ? Do they not arise from a universal law in nature which
gives to those possessing this organization in the highest degree the
advantage over others ?

What is this inherent principle in nature ever aspiring for better-
ment or improvement ? What are the secret forces everywhere pre-
disposing in this direction ? Is there not some general, universal law
incorporated into organic life which favors such qualities ? As this
law is primarily based upon a higher or perfect standard, all its inher-
ent or predisposing forces have an upward or improving tendency.
Thus all who are so fortunate as to possess an organization of higher
grade or better than others have certain advantages. In this way the
doctrine of natural selection may be readily understood and the sur-
vival of the fittest.

This general law, applicable to all organic beings, resembles in
some respects that principle found in the human system called vis
medicatrix. It was early discovered by physicians that in case any
part or organ in the body became injured or diseased there was a sur-
prising recuperative power in nature of healing or curing. All the
sound parts of the body seem to conspire together to help the part or
organ affected. This influence to assist seems spontaneous and always
healthful. So it is with this law of propagation — it is not only con-
servative, but improving to all possessing more than an average share
of the inherent forces of this law.

Connected with this law of population there are several points
worthy of most careful consideration. While it possesses a sure and
permanent foundation, there are a flexibility, an elasticity, which are
self -regulating, and display a divine wisdom and power. Such is the
nature of this law that, in all its varied operations, it does not interfere
with the choice and free agency of man. When the character of this
law is fully understood, what on the one hand are the penalties at-
tached to the violation of any part of it, and, on the other hand, what
are the rewards for its observance, it presents to man the strongest
possible motives for his own improvement and the advancement of
human happiness generally. If man is created a free moral agent,
accountable for all his acts, the law providing for the propagating of
the species should certainly be of such a character that he can clearly
understand its nature and sanctions. According to those theories
on population where its increase and changes depend mainly upon
external agents, man is made, in a great measure, a mere passive

48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

agent, having but little control or responsibility in all those Important
matters.

If the theory here advanced is the true law of human increase, it is
not a mere theory or an abstract general principle, but is capable of
almost endless application, far more than can be enumerated. It will
enable us to understand far better the nature of man, his duties and
responsibilities in relation to himself, to the family, to society at large,
and particularly to his Maker. It will furnish us a guide or great
principle by which certain practices and fashions in society, certain
modes of education, systems of morals, acts of legislation, etc., can be
tested. It will throw new light upon what constitutes the true grounds
of human progress and the real sources of an advancing civilization.

In closing this paper, it may be proper to state briefly what are the
elements, or what is understood to constitute this law of population.
It is based upon a perfect development of all the organs of the human
body, so that there shall be a perfect harmony in the p>erforntance of all
their respective functions. It presupposes that other conditions are fa-
vorable, such as the age, the union, and the adaptation of the married
parties — provided no natural laws are violated or interfered with —
there will uniformly be found with such an organization, not only the
greatest number of children, but they will be endowed with the high-
est amount of physical vigor, strength, and health. We should also
expect the best development of all parts of the brain, giving balance
and symmetry to all mental qualities, whether social, intellectual, or
moral. It should be further added that, inasmuch as perfect standards
are not found, the nearer this normal standard of physiology is ap-
proached by all parties concerned, the more complete will be found the
fulfillment of this law.

SCIENCE m EELATION TO THE AETS *

By C. WILLIAM SIEMENS, F. E. S.

IN" venturing to address the British Association from this chair, I
feel that I have taken upon myself a task involving very serious
responsibility. The Association has for half a century fulfilled the im-
portant mission of drawing together, once every year, scientists from
all parts of the country for the purpose of discussing questions of
mutual interest, and of cultivating those personal relations which aid so
powerfully in harmonizing views, and in stimulating concerted action
for the advancement of science.

A sad event casts a shadow over our gathering. While still mourn-
ing the irreparable loss science had sustained in the person of Charles

* Presidential Address, delivered at the Fifty-ninth Annual Meeting of the British
Association, held at Southampton, August 23, 1882.

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 49

Darwin, whose bold conceptions, patient labor, and genial mind made
him almost a type of unsurpassed excellence, telegraphic news reached
Cambridge, just a month ago, to the effect that our Honorary Secre-
tary, Professor F. M. Balfour, had lost his life during an attempted
ascent of the Aiguille Blanche de Penteret. Although only thirty
years of age, few men have wTon distinction so rapidly and so deserv-
edly. After attending the lectures of Michael. Foster, he completed
his studies of biology under Dr. Anton Dohrn at the Zoological Sta-
tion of Naples in 1875. In 1878 he was elected a Fellow, and in No-
vember last a member of Council of the Royal Society, when he was
also awarded one of the Royal Medals for his embryological researches.
Within a short interval of time Glasgow University conferred on him
their honorary degree of LL. D., he was elected President of the Cam-
bridge Philosophical Society, and, after having declined very tempting
offers from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, he accepted a
professorship of Animal Morphology created for him by his own uni-
versity. Few men could have borne without hurt such a stream of
honorable distinctions, but in young Balfour genius and independence
of thought were happily blended with industry and personal modesty ;
these won for him the friendship, esteem, and admiration of all who
knew him.

Since the days of the first meeting of the Association in York in
1831, great changes have taken place in the means at our disposal for
exchanging views, either personally or through the medium of type.
The creation of the railway system has enabled congenial minds to
attend frequent meetings of those special societies which have sprung
into existence since the foundation of the British Association, among
which I need only name here the Physic.il, Geographical, Meteorologi-
cal, Anthropological, and Linnsean, cultivating abstract science, and
the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Naval Ar-
chitects, the Iron and Steel Institute, the Society of Telegraph Engi-
neers and Electricians, the Gas Institute, the Sanitary Institute, and
the Society of Chemical Industry, representing applied science. These
meet at frequent intervals in London, while others, having similar ob-
jects in view, hold their meetings at the university towns, and at other
centers of intelligence and industry throughout the country, giving
evidence of great mental activity, and producing some of those very
results which the founders of the British Association wished to see
realized. If we consider further the extraordinary development of
scientific journalism wdrich has taken place, it can not surprise us when
we meet with expressions of opinion to the effect that the British As-
sociation has fulfilled its mission, and should now yield its place to
those special societies it has served to call into existence. On the
other hand, it may be urged that the brilliant success of last year's
anniversary meeting, enhanced by the comprehensive address delivered

VOL. XXII.

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on that occasion by my distinguished predecessor in office, Sir John
Lubbock, has proved, at least, that the British Association is not dead
in the affections of its members, and it behooves us at this, the first
ordinary gathering in the second half-century, to consider what are
the strong points to rely upon for the continuance of a career of suc-
cess and usefulness.

If the facilities brought home to our doors of acquiring scientific
information have increased, the necessities for scientific inquiry have
increased in a greater ratio. The time was when science was culti-
vated only by the few, who looked upon its application to the arts
and manufactures as almost beneath their consideration ; this they
were content to leave in the hands of others, who, with only commer-
cial aims in view, did not aspire to further the objects of science for
its own sake, but thought only of benefiting by its teachings. Prog-
ress could not be rapid under this condition of things, because the man
of pure science rarely pursued his inquiry beyond the mere enuncia-
tion of a physical or chemical principle, while the simple practitioner
was at a loss how to harmonize the new knowledge with the stock of
information which formed his mental capital in trade.

The advancement of the last fifty years has, I venture to submit,
rendered theory and practice so interdependent, that an intimate union
between them is a matter of absolute necessity for our future progress. '
Take, for instance, the art of dyeing, and we find that the discovery
of new coloring matters derived from waste products, such as coal-tar,
completely changes its practice, and renders an intimate knowledge of
the science of chemistry a matter of absolute necessity to the prac-
titioner. In telegraphy and in the new arts of applying electricity to
lighting, to the transmission of power, and to metallurgical opera-
tions, problems arise at every turn, requiring for their solution not
only an intimate acquaintance with, but a positive advance upon, elec-
trical science, as established by purely theoretical research in the labo-
ratory. In general engineering, the mere practical art of constructing
a machine so designed and proportioned as to produce mechanically
the desired effect would suffice no longer. Our increased knowledge
of the nature of the mutual relations between the different forms of
energy makes us see clearly what are the theoretical limits of effect ;
these, although beyond our absolute reach, may be looked upon as the
asymptotes to be approached indefinitely by the hyperbolic course oft
practical progress, of which we should never lose sight. Cases arise,
moreover, where the introduction of new materials of construction, or
the call for new effects, renders former rules wholly insufficient. In
all these cases practical knowledge has to go hand in hand with ad-
vanced science in order to accomplish the desired end.

Far be it from me to think lightly of the ardent students of nature,
who, in their devotion to research, do not allow their minds to travel
into the regions of utilitarianism and of self-interest. These, the high-

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 51

priests of science, command our utmost admiration ; but it is not to
them that we can look for our current progress in practical science,
much less can we look for it to the " rule-of-thumb " practitioner, who
is guided by what comes nearer to instinct than to reason. It is to the
man of science, who also gives attention to practical questions, and to
the practitioner, who devotes part of his time to the prosecution of
strictly scientific investigations, that we owe the rapid progress of the
present day, both merging more and more into one class, that of pio-
neers in the domain of Nature. It is such men that Archimedes must
have desired when he refused to teach his disciples the art of construct-
ino- his powerful ballistic engines, exhorting them to give their atten-
tion to the principles involved in their construction, and that Telford,
the founder of the Institution of Civil Engineers, must have had in his
mind's eye when he defined civil engineering as " the art of directing
the great sources of power in nature."

These considerations may serve to show that although we see the
men of both abstract and applied science group themselves in minor
bodies for the better prosecution of special objects, the points of con-
tact between the different branches of knowledge are ever multiplying,
all tending to form part of a mighty tree — the tree of modern science
— under whose ample shadow its cultivators will find it both profitable
and pleasant to meet, at least once a year ; and, considering that thi;i
tree is not the growth of one country only, but spreads both its roots
and branches far and wide, it appears desirable that at these yearly
gatherings other nations should be more fully represented than has
hitherto been the case. The subjects discussed at our meetings are,
without exception, of general interest ; but many of them bear an inter-
national character, such as the systematic collection of magnetic, astro-
nomical, meteorological, and geodetical observations, the formation of
a universal code for signaling at sea, and for distinguishing light-
houses, and especially the settlement of scientific nomenclatures and
units of measurement, regarding all of which an international accord
is a matter of the utmost practical importance.

As regards the measures of length and weight it is to be regretted
that this country still stands aloof from the movement initiated in
France toward the close of the last century ; but, considering that in
scientific work metrical measure is now almost universally adopted,
and that its use has been already legalized in this country, I venture
to hope that its universal adoption for commercial purposes will soon
follow as a matter of course. The practical advantages of such a
measure to the trade of this country would, I am convinced, be very
great, for English goods, such as machinery or metal rolled to current
sections, are now almost excluded from the Continental market, owing
to the unit measure employed in their production. The principal im-
pediment to the adoption of the metre consists in the strange anomaly
that although it is legal to use that measure in commerce, and although

5z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a copy of the standard metre is kept in the Standards Department of
the Board of Trade, it is impossible to procure legalized rods repre-
senting it, and to use a non-legalized copy of a standard in commerce
is deemed fraudulent. Would it not be desirable that the British As-
sociation should endeavor to bring about the use in this country of the
metre and kilogramme, and, as a preliminary step, petition the Govern-
ment to be represented on the International Metrical Commission,
whose admirable establishment at Sevres possesses, independently of
its practical work, considerable scientific interest, as a well-found
laboratory for developing methods of precise measurement ?

Next in importance to accurate measures of length, weight, and
time, stand, for the purposes of modern science, those of electricity.

The remarkably clear lines separating conductors from non-con-
ductors of electricity, and magnetic from non-magnetic substances,
enable us to measure electrical quantities and effects with almost
mathematical precision ; and, although the ultimate nature of this,
the youngest scientifically investigated form of energy, is yet wrapped
in mystery, its laws are the most clearly established, and its measuring
instruments (galvanometers, electrometers, and magnetometers), are
among the most accurate in physical science. Nor could any branch
of science or industry be named in which electrical phenomena do not
occur, to exercise their direct and important influence.

If, then, electricity stands foremost among the exact sciences, it
follows that its unit measures should be determined with the utmost
accuracy. Yet, twenty years ago, very little advance had been made
toward the adoption of a rational system. Ohm had, it is true, given
us the fixed relations existing between electromotive force, resistance,
and quantity of current ; Joule had established the dynamical equiva-
lent of heat and electricity; and Gauss and Weber had proposed their
elaborate system of absolute magnetic measurement. But these in-
valuable researches appeared only as isolated efforts, when, in 1862,
the Electric Unit Committee was appointed by the British Association,
at the instance of Sir William Thomson, and it is to the long-continued
activity of this committee that the world is indebted for a consistent
and practical system of measurement, which, after being modified in
details, received universal sanction last year by the International Elec-
trical Congress assembled at Paris.

At this congress, which was attended officially by the leading
physicists of all civilized countries, the attempt was successfully made
to bring about a union between the statical system of measurement
that had been followed in Germany and some other countries and the
magnetic or dynamical system developed by the British Association,
also between the geometrical measure of resistance, the (Werner)
Siemens unit, that had been generally adopted abroad, and the British
Association unit, intended as a multiple of Weber's absolute unit,

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 53

though not entirely fulfilling that condition. The congress, while
adopting the absolute system of the British Association, referred the
final determination of the unit measure of resistance to an interna-
tional committee, to be appointed by the representatives of the several
governments ; they decided to retain the mercury standard for repro-
duction and comparison, by which means the advantages of both sys-
tems are happily combined, and much valuable labor is utilized ; only,
instead of expressing electrical quantities directly in absolute measure,
the congress has embodied a consistent system, based on the Ohm, in
which the units are of a value convenient for practical measurements.
In this, which we must hereafter know as the " practical system," as
distinguished from the " absolute system," the units are named after
leading physicists, the Ohm, Ampere, Volt, Coulomb, and Farad.

I would venture to suggest that two further units might, with ad-
vantage, be added to the system decided on by the International Con-
gress at Paris. The first of these is the unit of magnetic quantity or
pole. It is of much importance, and few will regard otherwise than
with satisfaction the suggestion of Clausius that the unit should be
called a " Weber," thus retaining a name most closely connected with
electrical measurements, and only omitted by the congress in order to
avoid the risk of confusion in the magnitude of the unit current with
which his name had been formerly associated.

The other unit I should suggest adding to the list is that of power.
The power conveyed by a current of an Ampere through the difference
of potential of a Volt is the unit consistent with the practical system.
It might be appropriately called a Watt, in honor of that master-mind
in mechanical science, James Watt. He it was who first had a clear
physical conception of power, and gave a rational method of measur-
ing it. A Watt, then, expresses the rate of an Ampere multiplied by
a Volt, while a horse-power is 746 Watts, and a Cheval de Vapeur
735.

The system of electro-magnetic units would then be :

1.

Weber, th

e unit of

magnetic

quantity

= 108 C. G. S. units,

2.

Ohm,

it

u

resistance

= 109

11

8.

Volt,

u

" electromotive force

= 108

11

■1.

Ampere,

a

ii

current

= io-1

11

5.

Coulomb,

ii

it

quantity

= io-1

II

6.

Watt,

ii

u

power

= 10'

11

1.

Farad,

it

ii

capacity

= io-9

II

Before the list can be looked upon as complete two other units may
have to be added, the one expressing that of magnetic field, and the
other of heat in terms of the electro-magnetic system. Sir William
Thomson suggested the former at the Paris congress, and pointed out
that it would be proper to attach to it the name of Gauss, who first
theoretically and practically reduced observations of terrestrial mag-
netism to absolute measure. A Gauss will, then, be defined as the

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

intensity of field produced by a Weber at a distance of one centimetre ;
and the Weber will be the absolute C. G. S. unit strength of magnetic
pole. Thus the mutual force between two ideal point-poles, each of
one Weber strength held at unit distance asunder, will be one dyue ;
that is to say, the force which, acting for a second of time on a
gramme of matter, generates a velocity of one centimetre per second.
The unit of heat has hitherto been taken variously as the heat re-
quired to raise a pound of water at the freezing-point through 1° Fahr.
or Cent., or, again, the heat necessary to raise a kilogramme of water
1° Cent. The inconvenience of a unit so entirely arbitrary is suffi-
ciently apparent to justify the introduction of one based on the elec-
tro-magnetic system, viz., the heat generated in one second by the
current of an Ampere flowing through the resistance of an Ohm. In
absolute measure its value is 10' C. G. S. units, and, assuming Joule's
equivalent as 42,000,000, it is the heat necessary to raise 0'238 gramme
of water 1° Cent., or, approximately, the 10100 part of the arbitrary
unit of a pound of water raised 1° Fahr., and the i0\0 of the kilo-
gramme of water raised 1° Cent. Such a heat unit, if found accept-
able, might with great propriety, I think, be called the Joule, after
the man who has done so much to develop the dynamical theory of
heat-
Professor Clausius urges the advantages of the statical system of
measurement for simplicity, and shows that the numerical values of
the two systems can readily be compared by the introduction of a
factor which he proposes to call the critical velocity ; this Weber has
already shown to be nearly the same as the velocity of light. It is
not immediately evident how, by the introduction of a simple multi-
ple, signifying a velocity, the statical can be changed into dynamical
values, and I am indebted to my friend Sir William Thomson for an
illustration which struck me as remarkably happy and convincing.
Imagine a ball of conducting matter so constituted that it can at
pleasure be caused to shrink. Now let it first be electrified and left
insulated with any quantity of electricity on it. After that, let it be
connected with the earth by an excessively fine wire or a not perfectly
dry silk fiber ; and let it shrink just so rapidly as to keep its potential
constant, till the whole charge is carried off. The velocity with which
its surface approaches its center is the electrostatic measure of the con-
ducting power of the fiber. Thus we see how " conducting power "
is, in electrostatic theory, properly measured in terms of a velocity.
Weber has shown how, in electromagnetic theory, the resistance, or
the reciprocal of the conducting power of a conductor, is properly
measured by a velocity. The critical velocity, which measures the
conducting power in electrostatic reckoning and the resistance in elec-
tromagnetic, of one and the same conductor, measures the number of
electrostatic units in the electromagnetic unit of electric quantity.
Without waiting for the assembling of the International Commit-

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 55

tee. charged with the final determination of the Obm, one of its most
distinguished members, Lord Rayleigh, has, with his collaborateure,
Mrs. Sidgwick, continued his important investigation in this direction
at the Cavendish Laboratory, and has lately placed before the Royal
Society a result which will probably not be surpassed in accuracy.
His redetermination brings him into close accord with Dr. Werner
Siemens, their two values of the mercury unit being 0-95418 and
0*9536 of the B. A. unit respectively, or 1 mercury unit = 0-9413 X 109
C. G. S. units.

Shortly after the publication of Lord Rayleigh's recent results,
Messrs. Glazebrook, Dodds, and Sargant, of Cambridge, communicated
to the Royal Society two determinations of the Ohm, by different
methods ; and it is satisfactory to find that their final values differ
only in the fourth decimal, the figures being, according to

^ . , ~, ~™~„ Earth Quadrant
Lord Rayleigh 1 Ohm = 0-98651 a .

J ° Second

Messrs. Glazebrook, etc. = 0-986439

«

Professor E. Wiedemann, of Leipsic, has lately called attention to
the importance of having the Ohm determined in the most accm-ate
manner possible, and enumerates four distinct methods, all of which
should unquestionably be tried with a view of obtaining concordant
results, because upon its accuracy will depend the whole future system
of measurement of energy of whatever form.

The word " energy " was first used by Young in a scientific sense,
and represents a conception of recent date, being the outcome of the
labors of Carnot, Mayer, Joule, Grove, Clausius, Clerk - Maxwell,
Thomson, Stokes, Helmholtz, Macquorn-Rankine, and other laborers,
who have accomplished for the science regarding the forces in nature
what we owe to Lavoisier, Dalton, Berzelius, Liebig, and others, as
regards chemistry. In this short word " energy " we find all the efforts
in nature, including electricity, heat, light, chemical action, and dy-
namics, equally represented, forming, to use Dr. TyndalPs apt expres-
sion, so many "modes of motion." It will readily be conceived that,
when we have established a fixed numerical relation between these
different modes of motion, we know beforehand what is the utmost
result we can possibly attain in converting one form of energy into
another, and to what extent our apparatus for effecting the conversion
falls short of realizing it. The difference between ultimate theoretical
effect and that actually obtained is commonly called loss, but, consid-
ering that energy is indestructible, represents really secondary effect
which we obtain without desiring it. Thus friction in the working
parts of a machine represents a loss of mechanical effect, but is a gain
of heat, and in like manner the loss sustained in transferring electrical
energy from one point to another is accounted for by heat generated

S6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the conductor. It sometimes suits our purpose to augment the
transformation of electrical into heat energy at certain points of the
circuit when the heat-rays become visible, and we have the incandes-
cent electric light. In effecting a complete severance of the con-
ductor for a short distance, after the current has been established, a
very great local resistance is occasioned, giving rise to the electric
arc, the highest development of heat ever attained. Vibration is an-
other form of lost energy in mechanism, but who would call it a loss
if it proceeded from the violin of a Joachim or a Norman-Neruda ?

Electricity is the form of energy best suited for transmitting an
effect from one place to another ; the electric current passes through
certain substances — the metals — with a velocity limited only by the
retarding influence caused by electric charge of the surrounding dielec-
tric, but approaching probably under favorable conditions that of radi-
ant heat and light, or 300,000 kilometres per second ; it refuses, how-
ever, to pass through oxidized substances, glass, gums, or through
gases except when in a highly rarefied condition. It is easy, there-
fore, to confine the electric current within bounds, and to direct it
through narrow channels of extraordinary length. The conducting
wire of an Atlantic cable is such a narrow channel : it consists of a
copper wire, or strand of wires, five mm. in diameter, by nearly 5,000
kilometres in length, confined electrically by a coating of gutta-percha
about four mm. in thickness. The electricity from a small galvanic
battery passing into this channel prefers the long journey to America
in the good conductor, and back through the earth, to the shorter
journey across the four mm. in thickness of insulating material. By
an improved arrangement the alternating currents employed to work
long submarine cables do not actually complete the circuit, but are
merged in a condenser at the receiving station after having produced
their extremely slight but certain effect upon the receiving instrument,
the beautiful siphon recorder of Sir William Thomson. So perfect
is the channel and so precise the action of both the transmitting and
receiving instruments employed, that two systems of electric signals
may be passed simultaneously through the same cable in opposite
directions, producing independent records at either end. By the ap-
plication of this duplex mode of working to the direct United States
cable under the superintendence of Dr. Muirhead, its transmitting
power was increased from twenty -five to sixty words a minute, being
equivalent to about twelve currents or primary impulses per second.
In transmitting these impulse-currents simultaneously from both ends
of the line, it must not be imagined, however, that they pass each
other in the manner of liquid waves belonging to separate systems ;
such a supposition would involve momentum in the electric flow, and
although the effect produced is analogous to such an action, it rests
upon totally different grounds — namely, that of a local circuit at each
terminus being called into action automatically whenever two similar

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 57

currents are passed into the line simultaneously from both ends. In
extending this principle of action, quadruplex telegraphy has been
rendered possible, although not yet for long submarine lines.

The minute currents here employed are far surpassed as regards
delicacy and frequency by those revealed to us by that marvel of the
present day, the telephone. The electric currents caused by the vibra-
tions of a diaphragm acted upon by the human voice naturally vary
in frequency and intensity according to the number and degree of
those vibrations, and each motor-current, in exciting the electro-magnet
forming part of the receiving instrument, deflects the iron diaphragm
occupying the position of an armature to a greater or smaller extent
according to its strength. Savart found that the fundamental la
springs from four hundred and forty complete vibrations in a second,
but what must be the frequency and modulations of the motor-current
and of magnetic variations necessary to convey to the ear, through the
medium of a vibrating armature, such a complex of human voices and
of musical instruments as constitutes an opera performance ! And yet
such performances could be distinctly heard and even enjoyed as an
artistic treat by applying to the ears a pair of the double telephonic
receivers at the Paris Electrical Exhibition, when connected with a
pair of transmitting instruments in front of the foot-lights of the Grand
Opera. In connection with the telephone, and with its equally remark-
able adjunct the microphone, the names of Riess, Graham Bell, Edi-
son, and Hughes will ever be remembered.

Considering the extreme delicacy of the currents working a tele-
phone, it is obvious that those caused by induction from neighboring
telegraphic line wires would seriously interfere with the former, and
mar the speech or other sounds produced through their action. To
avoid such interference the telephone-wires if suspended in the air
require to be placed at some distance from telegraphic line wires, and
to be supported by separate posts. Another way of neutralizing inter-
ference consists in twisting two separately insulated telephone-wires
together, so as to form a strand, and in using the two conductors as a
metallic circuit to the exclusion of the earth ; the working current
will, in that case, receive equal and opposite inductive influences, and
will, therefore, remain unaffected by them. On the other hand, two
insulated wires instead of one are required for working one set of in-
struments, and a serious increase in the cost of installation is thus
caused. To avoid this, Mr. Jacob has lately suggested a plan of com-
bining pairs of such metallic circuits again into separate working pairs,
and these again with other working pairs, whereby the total number
of telephones capable of being worked without interference is made to
equal the total number of single wires employed. The working of
telephones and telegraphs in metallic circuit has the further advantage
that mutual volta induction between the outgoing and returning cir-
rents favors the transit, and neutralizes, on the other hand, the retard-

58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing influence caused by charge in under-ground or submarine conduct-
ors. These conditions are particularly favorable to under-ground line
wires, which possess other important advantages over the still prevail-
ing over-ground system, in that they are unaffected by atmospheric
electricity, or by snow-storms and heavy gales, which at not very rare
intervals of time put us back to pre-telegraphic days, when the letter-
carrier was our swiftest messenger.

The under-ground system of telegraphs, first introduced into Ger-
many by Werner Siemens in the years 1847-'48, had to yield for a
time to the over-ground system owing to technical difficulties, but it
has been again resorted to within the last four years, and multiple land
cables of solid construction now connect all the important towns of
that country. The first cost of such a system is no doubt considerable
(being about £38 per kilometre of conductor as against £8 10s. the cost
of land lines) ; but, as the under-ground wires are exempt from frequent
repairs and renewals, and as they insure continuity of service, they are
decidedly the cheaper and better in the end. The experience afforded
by the early introduction of the under-ground system in Germany was
not, however, without its beneficial results, as it brought to light the
phenomena of lateral induction, and of faults in the insulating coating,
matters which had to be understood before submarine telegraphy could
be attempted with any reasonable prospect of success.

Regarding the transmission of power to a distance, the electric cur-
rent has now entered the lists in competition with compressed air, the
hydraulic accumulator, and the quick-running rope as used at Schaff-
hausen to utilize the power of the Rhine-fall. The transformation of
electrical into mechanical energy can be accomplished with no further
loss than is due to such incidental causes as friction and the heating of
wires ; these in a properly designed dynamo-electric machine do not
exceed 10 per cent, as shown by Dr. John Hopkinson, and, judging
from recent experiments of my own, a still nearer approach to ultimate
perfection is attainable. Adhering, however, to Dr. Hopkinson's de-
termination for safety's sake, and assuming the same percentage in
reconverting the current into mechanical effect, a total loss of 19
per cent results. To this loss must be added that through electrical
resistance in the connecting line wires, which depends upon their
length and conductivity, and that due to heating by friction of the
working parts of the machine. Taking these as being equal to the
internal losses incurred in the double process of conversion, there re-
mains a useful effect of 100 — 38 = 62 per cent, attainable at a distance,
which agrees with experimental results, although in actual practice it
would not be safe at present to expect more than 50 per cent of ulti-
mate usefid effect, to allow for all mechanical losses.

In using compressed air or water for the transmission of power, the
loss can not be taken at less than 50 per cent, and as it depends upon
fluid resistance it increases with distance more rapidly than in the case

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 59

of electricity. Taking the loss of effect in all cases as 50 per cent,
electric transmission presents the advantage that an insulated wire
does the work of a pipe capable of withstanding high internal pressure,
which latter must be more costly to put down and to maintain. A
second metallic conductor is required, however, to complete the elec-
trical circuit, as the conducting power of the earth alone is found un-
reliable for passing quantity currents, owing to the effects of polariza-
tion ; but, as this second conductor need not be insulated, water or gas
pipes, railway metals, or fencing-wire, may be called into requisition
for the purpose. The small space occupied by the electro-motor, its
high working speed, and the absence of waste products, render it
specially available for the general distribution of power to cranes and
light machinery of every description. A loss of effect of 50 per cent
does not stand in the way of such applications, for it must be remem-
bered that a powerful central engine of best construction produces
motive-power with a consumption of two pounds of coal per horse-
power per hour, whereas small engines distributed over a district would
consume not less than five ; we thus see that there is an advantage in
favor of electric transmission as regards fuel, independently of the
saving of labor and other collateral benefits.

To agriculture, electric transmission of power seems well adapted
for effecting the various operations of the farm and fields from one
center. Having worked such a system myself in combination with
electric lighting and horticulture for upward of two years, I can speak
with confidence of its economy, and of the facility with which the
work is accomplished in charge of untrained persons.

As regards the effect of the electric light upon vegetation there is
little to add to what was stated in my paper read before Section A last
year, and ordered to be printed with the report, except that, in experi-
menting upon wheat, barley, oats, and other cereals sown in the open
air, there was a marked difference between the growth of the plants
influenced and those uninfluenced by the electric light. This was not
very apparent till toward the end of February, when, with the first
appearance of mild weather, the plants, under the influence of an elec-
tric lamp of 4,000 candle-power placed about five metres above the
surface, developed with extreme rapidity, so that by the end of May
they stood above four feet high, with the ears in full bloom, when
those not under its influence were under two feet in height, and showed
no sign of the ear.

In the electric railway first constructed by Dr. Werner Siemens, at
Berlin, in 1879, electric energy was transmitted to the moving carriage
or train of carriages through the two rails upon which it moved, these
being sufficiently insulated from each other by being placed upon well-
creosoted cross-sleepers. At the Paris Electrical Exhibition, the cur-
rent was conveyed through two separate conductors making sliding or
rolling contact with the carriage, whereas in the electric railway now

60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in course of construction in the north of Ireland (which when com-
pleted will have a length of twelve miles) a separate conductor will be
provided by the side of the railway, and the return circuit completed
through the rails themselves, which in that case need not be insulated ;
secondary batteries will be used to store the surplus energy created in
running down-hill, to be restored in ascending steep inclines, and for
passing roadways where the separate insulated conductor is not practi-
cable. The electric railway possesses great advantages over horse
or steam power for towns, in tunnels, and in all cases where natural
sources of energy, such as water-falls, are available ; but it would not
be reasonable to suppose that it will in its present condition compete
with steam propulsion upon ordinary railways. The transmission of
power by means of electric conductors possesses the further advantage
over other means of transmission that, provided the resistance of the
rails be not very great, the power communicated to the locomotive
reaches its maximum when the motion is at its minimum — that is, in
commencing to work, or when encountering an exceptional resistance
— whereas the utmost economy is produced in the normal condition of
working when the velocity of the power-absorbing nearly equals that of
the current-producing machine.

The deposition of metals from their solutions is perhaps the oldest
of all useful applications of the electric current, but it is only in very
recent times that the dynamo-current has been practically applied to
the refining of copper and other metals, as now practiced at Birming-
ham and elsewhere, and upon an exceptionally large scale at Ocker, in
Germany. The dynamo-machine there employed was exhibited at
the Paris Electrical Exhibition by Dr. "Werner Siemens, its peculiar
feature being that the conductors upon the rotating armature con-
sisted of solid bars of copper thirty mm. square, in section, which were
found only just sufficient to transmit the large quantity of electricity
of low tension necessary for this operation. One such machine con-
suming four-horse power deposits about three hundred kilogrammes of
copper per twenty-four hours ; the motive-power at Ocker is derived
from a water-fall.

Electric energy may also be employed for heating purposes, but in
this case it would obviously be impossible for it to compete in point of
economy with the direct combustion of fuel for the attainment of ordi-
nary degrees of heat. Bunsen and Sainte-Claire Deviile have taught us,
however, that combustion becomes extremely sluggish when a tem-
perature of 1,800° C. has been reached, and for effects at temperatures
exceeding that limit the electric furnace will probably find advanta-
geous applications. Its specific advantage consists in being appar-
ently unlimited in the degree of heat attainable, thus opening out a
new field of investigation to the chemist and metallurgist. Tungsten
has been melted in such a furnace, and eight pounds of platinum have
been reduced from the cold to the liquid condition in twenty minutes.

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 61

The largest and most extensive application of electric energy at the
present time is to lighting, but, considering how much has of late been
said and written for and against this new illuminant, I shall here con-
fine myself to a few general remarks. Joule has shown that, if an elec-
tric current is passed through a conductor, the whole of the energy lost
by the current is converted into heat ; or, if the resistance be localized,
into radiant energy comprising heat, light, and actinic rays. Neither
the low heat-rays nor the ultra-violet of highest refrangibility affect
the retina, and may be regarded as lost energy, the effective rays being
those between the red and violet of the spectrum, which in their com-
bination produce the effect of white light.

Regarding the proportion of luminous to non-luminous rays pro-
ceeding from an electric arc or incandescent wire, we have a most
valuable investigation by Dr. Tyndall, recorded in his work on " Ra-
diant Heat." Dr. Tyndall shows that the luminous rays from a plati-
num wire heated to its highest point of incandescence, which may be
taken at 1,700° C, formed fa part of the total radiant energy emit-
ted, and y1^ part in the case of an arc-light worked by a battery of
50 Grove's elements. In order to apply these valuable data to the
case of electric lighting by means of dynamo-currents, it is necessary
in the first place to determine what is the power of 50 Grove's ele-
ments of the size used by Dr. Tyndall, expressed in the practical scale
of units as now established. From a few experiments lately under-
taken for myself, it would appear that 50 such cells have an electro-
motive force of 98"5 Volts, and an internal resistance of 13-5 Ohms,
giving a cm-rent of 7*3 Amperes when the cells are short-circuited.
The resistance of a regulator such as Dr. Tyndall used in his experi-
ments may be taken at 10 Ohms, the current produced in the arc would

98"5
be Tir^ — T7, — r — 4 Amperes (allowing one Ohm for the leads), and the
13'o + lO + i

power consumed 10 X 43 = 1G0 Watts ; the light power of such an arc

would be about 150 candles, and, comparing this with an arc of 3,308

candles produced by 1,162 Watts, we find that f -y— - J, i. e., 73 times

(OOAQv
TT-TrJi- e., 22 times the amount of light

measured horizontally. If, therefore, in Dr. TyndalPs arc yV of the radi-
ant energy emitted was visible as light, it follows that in a powerful arc

1 22-0
of 3,300 candles, T^v~7*7<r> or fully i, are luminous rays. In the case

of the incandescent light (say a Swan light of twenty -candle power)
we find in practice that nine times as much power has to be expended
as in the case of the arc-light ; hence J- x £ = fa part of the power is
given out as luminous rays, as against fa in Dr. Tyndall's incandes-
cent platinum — a result sufficiently approximate considering the wide
difference of conditions under which the two are compared.

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

These results are not only of obvious practical value, but they seem
to establish a fixed relation between current, temperature, and light
produced, which may serve as a means to determine temperatures ex-
ceeding the melting-point of platinum with greater accuracy than has
hitherto been possible by actinimetric methods in which the thickness
of the luminous atmosphere must necessarily exercise a disturbing in-
fluence. It is probably owing to this circumstance that the tempera-
ture of the electric arc as well as that of the solar photosphere has fre-
quently been greatly overestimated.

The principal argument in favor of the electric light is furnished
by its immunity from products of combustion which not only heat the
lighted apartments, but substitute carbonic acid and deleterious sul-
phur compounds for the oxygen upon which respiration depends ; the
electric light is white instead of yellow, and thus enables us to see
pictures, furniture, and flowers as by daylight ; it supports growing
plants instead of poisoning them, and by its means we can carry on
photography and many other industries at night as well as during the
day. The objection frequently urged against the electric light, that
it depends upon the continuous motion of steam or gas engines, which
are liable to accidental stoppage, has been removed by the introduction
into practical use of the secondary battery ; this, although not embody-
ing a new conception, has lately been greatly improved in power and
constancy by Plante, Faure, Volckmar, Sellon, and others, and promises
to accomplish for electricity what the gas-holder has done for the sup-
ply of gas and the accumulator for hydraulic transmission of power.

It can no longer be a matter of reasonable doubt, therefore, that
electric lighting will take its place as a public illuminant, and that,
even though its cost should be found greater than that of gas, it will
be preferred for the lighting of drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, thea-
tres and concert-rooms, museums, churches, warehouses, show-rooms,
printing establishments, and factories, and also the cabins and engine-
rooms of passenger-steamers. In the cheaper and more powerful form
of the arc-light, it has jn'oved itself superior to any other illuminant
for spreading artificial daylight over the large areas of harbors, rail-
way-stations, and the sites of public works. When placed within a
holophote the electric lamp has already become a powerful auxiliary
in effecting military operations both by sea and land.

The electric light may be worked by natural sources of power such
as water-falls, the tidal wave, or the wind, and it is conceivable that
these may be utilized at considerable distances by means of metallic
conductors. Some five years ago I called attention to the vastness of
those sources of energy, and the facility offered by electrical conduc-
tion in rendering them available for lighting and power-supply, while
Sir William Thomson made this important matter the subject of his
admirable address to Section A last year at York, and dealt with it in
an exhaustive manner.

PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 63

The advantages of the electric light and of the distribution of
power by electricity have lately been recognized by the British Gov-
ernment, who have just passed a bill through Parliament to facilitate
the establishment of electrical conductors in towns, subject to certain
regulating clauses to protect the interests of the public and of local
authorities. Assuming the cost of electric light to be practically the
same as gas, the preference for one or other will in each application
be decided upon grounds of relative convenience, but I venture to
think that gas-lighting will hold its own as the poor man's friend.

[To be continued.']

PHYSIOGNOMIC CUPJOSITIES.

By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

BUT, besides these local ideals (referred to in the preceding num-
ber), there is an inteimational standard of beauty which has sur-
vived the mutations in other canons of taste. Athenseus mentions the
ingredients of a once-famous sea-fish sauce, and the attempt to try his
receipt nearly suffocated the courtiers of Queen Christina with nausea
and laughter. Petronius, surnamed the Arbiter of Elegance, would be
kicked out by any modern publisher of obscene literature. The Greeks
admired the knife-grinder music of the tree-cicada, and their own
melodies would probably rout an American audience, but we all can
appreciate the merits of their sculptured paragons ; their Venus would
bag the prize-committee of an Alaska squaw-fair, as she captured the
stout knight Tannhauser.

" Beautiful features are the credentials by which Nature introduces
her representatives," says Wieland. Beauty is superior fitness, as a
Darwinian would say, and in this respect, too, the pre-eminence of the
ancient Greeks was probably the outcome of their general physical and
mental superiority to their fellow-men, though they themselves be-
lieved in the existence of a chemical pan-cosmetic. In the trial of the
arch-quack Cagliostro, it came out that, during the twelve years from
17G5-'?7, he had realized three million francs from the sale of his
"Recipe for Beauty," a recipe which has been more eagerly searched
for than the philosopher's stone, or the secret of longevity. Andreas
Cisalpinus made the notable discovery that an ointment of crushed
locusts and misletoe-juice would treble the charms of the fairest woman.
" What must I do to become very beautiful ? " the damsel in " Don
Quixote " asks the enchanted Moor's head. " Que seas muy honrada —
be very continent," replies the head. Paracelsus recommends meadow-
dew, gathered in the morning while the May -moon is on the increase ;
and Montaigne inquires into the habits of the most well-favored tribes

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of every country, but confesses that the problem is rather an evasive
one, the coast-dwellers of Sweden being as distinguished for their come-
liness as the highlanders of Aragon, and the Normandy cider-drinkers
not less than the Tuscan wine-drinkers. His only general rule, however,
still holds good : that out-door dwellers are never wholly ill-favored,
nor in-door workers altogether lovely ; and we might say the same of
alcohol-drinkers and total abstainers : the schnapps-worshiping na-
tives of the Tyrolese highlands make amends by their active out-door
life, as Lowell factory-girls by their teetotalism. There is a good deal
in race, though. " Angeli sunt • non Angli" Pope Stephen III wrote
more than a thousand years ago to Archbishop Cuthbert, who had sent
him a batch of Anglo-Saxon neophytes, and a trace of the same angelic
features may still be recognized among the little ragamuffins of many
a Schleswig-Holstein coast-village, where men subsist on brandy,
cheese, and sour rye-bread. Their neighbors, the Pomeranians, are a
manful if not celestial generation, and, in spite of their dreary moor-
lands, very fond of out-door sports. But farther east Nature suc-
cumbs to art, and the northern Russians are about as outrageously
unprepossessing as indoor-life and a combination of all vices could
make the image of the Creator. Extremes meet, though, and their
Emperor has the honor of commanding twelve regiments of the most
godlike men of the present world — the lance-cuirassiers of the body-
guard, recruited in the highlands of Lesghia and Daghestan. Nearly
all the natives of the Caucasus have that fatal gift of beauty which
made their land the favorite hunting-ground of the harem-agents, and
this gave the Czar a pretext for treating it as a Turkish dependency.
But no social degradation could counteract the combined influence of
the Caucasian climate, hardy habits, temperance, and frugality, for the
Circassian mountaineers are teetotalers by religion and vegetarians by
preference — figs, honey, barley-cakes, and milk, being the staples of
their diet. They are physically self-made men, for their language
proves that their ancestors were Turanians — first-cousins of the owl-
faced nomads of the Mongolian steppe.

Pernetti believes that "the study of physiognomy has been neglected
since men began to neglect their good looks, to which the classic nations
attached an importance which we can nowadays hardly comprehend."
Since Pernetti confines his remarks to his own sex we may plead guilty
to his indictment, and it is true that the ancients combined their hero-
ics with a good deal of Beau-Brummelism. " He abuses the right of a
man to be ugly," Madame de Stael said of one of her admirers, but the
ancient Greeks denied that right altogether, and their intolerance in
this respect seems to have surpassed anything one could mention of
contemporary notions, though it may be true that the military acade-
mies of Prussia and Saxony make homeliness a bar to admission.
Even Plato, in his "Republic," advises his lawgiver to oppose all
habits that might tend to lower the standard of physical aesthetics ;

PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 65

Zopyrus berated Socrates as if he had caught a pickpocket ; nay, the
Spartan Gerontes fined one of their kings for courting a thick-set lady,
because " they could not permit him to afflict the state with a race of
undersized princes." In the record of the battle of Platrea, a certain
Callicrates is mentioned simply because he was the fairest of all the
Greeks who fought on that day ; and Plutarch speaks of a slave whom
Nicias set free for winning the applause of all Athens in a play (or
religious festival), where he enacted the role of the Bacchus Methystes ;
and even more amazing is what Strabo tells us of one Philippus, who
joined in the expedition of Doricus against Erix, and who, after hav-
ing been slain and stripped by the people of Segeste, was taken up and
grandly buried by his foes, and long afterward worshiped as a demi-
god, on account of his great beauty.

But the nil admirari is not always a voluntary virtue. De Lagny,
in his account of a visit to the eastern tribes of Circassia, describes the
horrible sight of a battle-field in the rocky valley of Halistan, where
the day before six Russian regiments had been routed by the Lesghian
mountaineers. " But the victory was dearly bought," says he ; " in
the bed of the river, and all along the northern shore, we found the
unburied bodies of the heroes who had died in defense of their coun-
try. R was overcome by the sight, and asked us to hurry on,

but on the outskirts of a chestnut-grove, that shades the valley of a
tributary creek, he suddenly stopped, and soon we were all assembled
around the body of a Lesghian warrior, who had fallen, with a bullet
through his head, at the foot of a shattered tree. The man wore the
green scarf of his tribe, and, from the profusion of ornaments on his
belt and his neck, seemed to have been a chieftain among his com-
panions. Yet it was not his grotesque attire, nor his form, which was
that of a Hercules, which held us spellbound — it was his face, a face
which in manly beauty exceeded anything Phidias or Thorwaldsen
ever expressed in marble. We stood around, almost immovable, as
men will before a phenomenon they may see once and no more. No
one spoke a word, till Surgeon Herbert, of the Chasseurs d'Afrique,
broke the silence ; baring his head — " Hats off, messieurs ; void Vintage
de Dieu — we stand before the image of God ! "

The Duke de Rohan used to say that " it had pleased Providence
to put something between the eyes of a French cavalier which a ple-
beian could not look at without quailing." The guillotine seems to
have settled that difficulty, but it is true that there is an innate maj-
esty in some faces which commands the respect even of those who
would decline to recognize any other claims to superior rank, not ex-
cepting those of an established reputation. For some reason or other
— possibly the all-pervading hypocrisy of our Western civilization —
this vultus majestatis has almost become a monopoly of the Moham-
medan nations. During the revolt of the Wahabees, the commander
of the sectarian army had frequent occasion to notice the efficiency of

TOL. XXII. — 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

one Aboo Arish, a subaltern officer, whose stern command and intrepid
bearing bad often retrieved the fortune of a doubtful battle ; and after
the close of the war it occurred to him to utilize the stentorian talent
of his lieutenant in a different way. He made him the coadjutor of
his envoy to the neighboring chieftains, and had no cause to regret his
appointment, for, even on occasions that would have foiled the strategy
of a European diplomat, the mere presence of Aboo Arish never failed
to overawe the council of a hostile tribe.

This power of a physiognomic majesty is well illustrated by another
story from the Caucasus, which I find in Lermontoff's history of the
eventful campaign that ended with the capture of the prophet-chieftain,
Shamyl ben Haddin, on the plateau of Ghunib, September 10, 1859.
Eighteen hundred against twenty-six thousand, his men had defended
themselves from early morning till after noon, and, when his ammu-
nition was exhausted, began to hurl rocks and cannon from the para-
pets. But toward evening the citadel was taken by storm, and the
survivors of the garrison were led forth, torn and bleeding, but re-
solved to die game. The officers of the Russian headquarters had
adjourned for supper, as soon as the bloody work was done, but, when
the commanding officer was notified that the great chieftain was among
the prisoners, he gave orders to conduct him at once into his presence.
A noise of boisterous mirth greeted the arrival of Shamyl when his
escort halted before the commander's tent, but when he stood in the
presence of his captors, like Ormuz before the court of Ahriman, a
deep silence came over the assembly, and the insolent Junkers of Ba-
ryatinski's staff involuntarily rose to their feet, as if they felt the pres-
ence of a superior being !

" When he contracted his eyebrows, his look could assume a pene-
trative force that I have never seen equaled," says Lermontoff. Ma-
rius and Robert Burns had such eyes, and also Yasco de Gama, el de
los ojos terribles, who " could read a face like an open book," and once
quelled the spokesmen of a mutinous crew by simply keeifing them
under the fire of that terrible gaze.

How men can be affected by excessive ugliness history illustrates by
many amusing examples. We have already referred to the nose of the
first Hapsburger, which came so near defeating his nomination ; but, if
the descriptions of Caliph Walid's face are authentic, he was lucky that
his accession to the throne of the Prophet did not depend upon the
votes of men with physiognomic prejudices. His nose was crooked
and sharp like a reaping-hook, his cheeks so tumid that " they could
be seen from behind" ; his mouth was atrocious, and, to put a finishing
touch to the portrait, Abulfeda informs us that he was marked by the
small-pox as man was never marked before, " pits like auger-holes" dis-
tributed over his face from ear to ear.

" Non cuique datum est habere nasum • another Eastern potentate,
Ghengis Khan, had no nose to speak of, and was otherwise so fright-

PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 67

fully ugly that he found it easy to pass for a superhuman or subter-
human being. His next neighbors, the original Huns, were actually
believed to derive their origin from a diabolical liaison of the Scythian
witches ; such at least was the theory of the Visigoths, who, barbarians
though they were, enjoyed more than the average share of physical
beauty, and were altogether overcome by the aspect of those Turanian
fiends. " In many a battle," says Jornandes, " the warriors who had
withstood the onset of the Roman legions were seized with a name-
less terror and put to instant flight by the sight of those male Me-
dusas."

" Hatred at first sight is no impossibility. I know that from per-
sonal experience," says Charles Lamb, " and I can believe the story of
two persons meeting, who never saw one another before, and instantly
fighting." Marshal Vendome was so ugly that he avoided going near
a looking-glass. But once, on entering a tent that had been furnished
by proxy, he found a mirror over the wash-stand and could not resist
the temptation to have a good look at himself. But, as he looked, his
hand stole to his belt, and with a muttered curse and " Quelle figure ! '"
he broke the glass with a pistol-shot. La Maintenon had seen him
only once in her life, and ever afterward persecuted him with the ran-
cor of a personal enemy, and used to refer to his person as "ce cochon
d deux bottes."

But there is also such a thing as love at first sight, and in Schopen-
hauer's theory of sexual selection many of its apparent caprices have
been explained with ultra-Baconian ingenuity. " The ultimate object
of all love-dramas," says he, " is really more important than all other
human concernments whatever, and fully worthy of the deep earnest
of the actors. For what they decide is nothing less than the composi-
tion of the next generation. The apparently frivolous whims of Amor
determine the physical and moral peculiai'ities of the dramatis personce
who shall mount the stage after we are gone. The sexual instinct,j»er
se, only guarantees the perpetuity of the species ; our erotic caprices
determine the qualities of its representatives. ... In regard to the
human species the importance of this perpetual selection is enhanced by
the perpetual necessity of counteracting the influence of degenerative
agencies. Nature continually strives to correct all deviations from the
standard of her normal types, and thus assists the survival of the
fittest by preventing the birth of the most unfit. The metaphysical
rationale of passionate love is, therefore, the instinctive perception of
an opportunity to counteract individual abnormities, to neutralize them
in a being of the next generation. Unless circumstances limit the
scope of selection, every one chooses his or her physiological comple-
ment. A small man prefers a large woman, and vice versa ; the man-
liest man the most feminine female, while weaklings are apt to admire
a strong-minded woman. Pale blondes dote on a dark complexion,
blonde and whitish hair being, properly speaking, an abnormity, analo-

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gous to the albinism of certain rodents, or at least to the recognized
staminal inferiority of a white horse. ... A child inherits its charac-
ter from the father, its intellect from the mother. Firmness of will
and courage, as well as the innate kindness and uprightness of a man,
are therefore more potent elements of popularity with the other sex
than intellectual brilliancy. Mental obtuseness does not impair the
chances of an otherwise eligible suitor ; on the contrary, genius (as an
abnormity) may exercise an unfavorable effect. Hence the apparent
paradox of a gross and stupid fellow superseding a refined and sensible
man in the affection even of sentimental ladies ; and the frequency of
glaringly heterogeneous matches: he, practical, egotistical, and prosaic ;
she, all moonshine and poetry ; he, metaphysical and learned ; she, a
goose. . . . Men, on the other hand, are guided less by the character
qualities of a girl than by her intellectual attainments, though sec-
ondary to the importance of physical qualifications. In accordance
with the perception of this bias, mothers try to enhance the attractions
of their daughters by educational devices, music, painting, foreign lan-
guages, etc. Even a native sprightliness of the female mind is apt to
outweigh the rarer merits of the heart, whence so many Socrateses have
found their Xantippes — e. g., Shakespeare, Albrecht Diirer, Goethe,
Byron, and others. Female beauty, though, will eclipse both good-
ness and wit, while, in the rivalry of the males, strength in all its forms
is on the whole the main condition of success ; in the eyes of the nor-
mal woman even the extreme of turpitude (moral or physical) being
more pardonable than weakness."

When Bishop Lee sat down on his coffin and heard the sheriff's
command of " Ready ! " followed by the click of six Springfield rifles,
the attendant photographer requested him to assume a pleasing expres-
sion of countenance." There have been individuals who possessed the
requisite control over their facial muscles, though they might have
lacked the inclination to gratify the enterprising artist. "A prince
of the Church should know how to die with dignity," said Cardinal
Frascati when he had been treated to a dose of poison and felt his
senses give way. In spite of all entreaties he persisted in dying seated
upright, with his hands folded and his face turned upward in an atti-
tude of meditation. Savonarola kept up a controversy at the very
stake, and, while the flames scorched his knees, his eyes twinkled, as
he watched the effect of a caustic repartee.

When the French garrison of Detroit made a sally against the be-
sieging Indians, Boeuf-courant, an Ojibway chieftain, had both his legs
torn away by a cannon-ball. Carried into the fort, he refused medical
attendance, and his young son, who had never left his side, at his bid-
ding raked a pile of cold ashes from the guard-room chimney, and on
this pile deposited his crippled father, with the stumps downward.
Thus enabled to sit upright, he calmly smoked his pipe, till the com-
mander of the fort suggested his removal to a prison-cell. They gave

PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 69

him a quarter of an hour to finish his smoke, and he sat motionless as
a statue ; hut, when one of the soldiers went to remind him that his
time was up, they found that the fifteen minutes and the old chief had
expired together. James Nisbet, in his " Annals of California," relates
that in the fall of 1851, when Lynch-justice was the only law of the Ter-
ritory, a multitude of citizens assembled on the Plaza of San Francisco,
to hang a notorious rascal, who had amassed money by burglary, but
was at last caught in flagrante. Mr. Nisbet made his way through
the crowd, and seeing a gentleman standing a little apart, calmly smok-
ing a cigarette, he went up to him and inquired if he could tell him
who it was they were going to hang. The man thus addressed re-
moved the ashes from his cigarette, and with great politeness replied,
" Unless I'm quite mistaken, it's me, sir," and then resumed his smoke.
" Ten minutes after," says Mi*. Nisbet, " the same gentleman was
dangling by his neck from a balcony of the Pacific Hotel."

During the first war of the Carlists and Cristinos an attempt was
made to assassinate the Count de Santa Cruz, who commanded the city
of Barcelona, by blowing up an old stone chapel where he used to
transact his official business. A desperado undertook the job, and,
after planting his powder and lighting the match, he went to the
count's hotel, engaged him in conversation, and under pretext of
some official business started him toward the loaded chapel. Once
there, he calculated, the count would stay an hour or so, and he could
slip out before the explosion. But, just as they entered the inclosure
of the chapel, the building went up with an earth-shaking crash, and
the would-be assassin, though unhurt, stood trembling and pale as
death. Santa Cruz readjusted his hat, which had been knocked side-
ways by a flying fragment, and, turning to his companion, very quietly
observed: "You always ought to wet a slow match in such hot
weather, companero ; otherwise they burn double-quick, and the thing
goes off prematurely."

It is to men of this class that Lavater refers, when he speaks of
individuals who have such a conti'ol over their features that they pre-
vent even violent passions from impressing them with the marks they
would leave on other faces. As to the question what vices can be de-
tected by the expression of the countenance, opinions differ very widely.
Physical excesses always leave their mark, and there is no doubt that
an expert physician can recognize a drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton,
or an opium-eater without any difficulty, and even without confound-
ing the effects of their different vices. But, though phrenologists
assert, and every lover of justice should wish, it to be otherwise, over-
whelming evidence obliges one to admit that, as a rule, moral turpitude
leaves no such traces. If free from health-destroying habits, a plot-
ting fiend may disarm suspicion with the ideal forms and soft eyes of
Guido's dream-children, and the recoi'ds of history not less than those
of every-day life abound with instances of such masked scoundrels.

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Every large penitentiary in Anglo-Saxondom has inmates who might
pose for any saint in the Roman almanac, while an honest village-priest
of Southern Bavaria may combine in his face the deformities of
Breughel's seven devils by indulging in salted pork, lager-bier, and
sauerkraut. Some years ago I passed a few days at Brownsville, Texas,
during the session of the United States District Court. The cause cele-
bre of the season was the case of Francisco Hernandez, a Mexican ban-
dit, who had infested the Rio Grande frontier for more than three
years before he was caught in his favorite trick of robbing the poor
farm-houses of his countrymen, whenever the absence of the able-
bodied males gave him a chance of executing his designs with a mini-
mum risk to his own skin. Though he assured the court that he had
no hard feelings against any of his victims, he had been obliged, in
the line of his business, to kill eight different persons — all females and
minors. His last enterprise had involved a hand-to-hand fight with a
stout old woman, who broke his left arm before he dispatched her.
He was tracked to the Rio Grande, and, trying to swim the river in
his crippled condition, saw himself obliged to turn back into pistol -
range of his pursuers, was captured, and arraigned for five murders in
the second and three in the first degree. I strolled into the coui*t-house
while his trial was going on, expecting to see one of those bull-necked
old cut-throats of the negroid type, who abound in this region of mur-
der and mixed races. He proved to be a pale-faced creole, of some
eighteen or twenty years, slender-built, modest-spoken, and resigned-
looking to a pathetic degree. His profile was absolutely perfect, and
the same might have been said of his eyes, if their look had not been
too ghost-like spiritual to leave an agreeable impression. Csesar Bor-
gia, the natural son of Pope Alexander VI, was at once the wickedest
and handsomest man of his time. The fiend who aggravated the guilt
of the most unheard-of crimes by perpetrating them in the name of a
sentimental religion wore a face which, in the words of Delia Porta,
might inspire a saint to live up to every sublime precept of that creed.
The mere sound of his voice succeeded where the arguments of others
failed ; his eye could beam with the inspiration of a prophet while he
meditated those fatti assassini to which the records of the most bar-
barous nations furnish scarcely a parallel. It is a pity that his skuH
has not been preserved, though we need not doubt that it did exhibit
all those fine " developments " that were necessary to harmonize with
such a face.

Caesar Borgia had hostile biographers, who may have exaggerated
his faults, and artist-friends who, perhaps, flattered him in portraits ;
but the same can not be said of Mohammed II, the conqueror of
Constantinople, whose crimes were palliated by his abject courtiers,
and to whose majestic beauty his enemies bear witness. The histo-
rian Phranza, who lost his fortune and his country in the downfall of
the Byzantine Empire, and whose only son was stabbed by the hand

PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 7i

of the Sultan, describes Lira as the physical ideal of a perfect man. A
potentate of leonine bearing, with a beard that surrounded his face
like a mane, and a pair of wonderful Oriental eyes, combined with
features of classic regularity, he appeared " every inch a king," and
the embassadors who visited his court from all parts of the world
agreed that he was the manliest-looking man they had ever seen. Yet
this same paragon was an infidel alike to his faith and his friends,
inhumanly cruel, and mean to the rare degree of being at once ava-
ricious and overbearing. But, though his subjects groaned under his
yoke, no murmur ever reached his ears, and his presence inspired the
genuine reverence due to a superior being. He was uxorious and a
tool in the hands of his favorites, but his superintendence always in-
sured the success of a campaign ; he had that gift of commanding that
can dispense with personal courage by inspiring it in others. Absa-
lom, Cambyses, the younger Dionysius, Caligula, Louis le Debonnaire,
Churchill, King Christian of Denmark, Ali Pasha, and Benedict
Arnold, are well-known confirmations of a truth which, as Goethe
observes, the experience of every man, but nobody's instinct, teaches
him — that beauty and goodness are not identical. Children and child-
like men, and most men a priori, are prepossessed by a handsome
face and repulsed by an ugly one, and one can understand Madame
de Stael when she speaks of unpardonable faces. Ugliness is some-
thing abnormal, and originally, no doubt, the consequence of sin —
though, perhaps, quite unconscious sin — against the physical laws of
God.

But, even about moral aberrations, the language of the face is not
altogether silent, though it announces them in a different way. Be-
sides those of the studied, calm expression, there are indications in
what Sir Charles Bell calls the habits of the face, the manner of laugh-
ing, of speaking under the influence of passion, or of meeting a sudden
glance. In these habits even moral peculiarities may betray them-
selves to a shrewd observer, and often quite unbeknown to the object
of observation. Experience, in fact, can teach us to distinguish ac-
quired from hereditary beauty or ugliness. They may be combined
in the same face, but are altogether independent of each other, and
differ as forms from manners, or talents from culture. The tongue,
though, can be taught to refute this language of the features — hence
the significance of first impressions.

Physiognomy and craniology are yet far from having been reduced
to the rules of a logical system — " the one through want of cultivation,
the other in spite of it," as the physiologist Camper said of his and
Pastor Goetze's science. In the mean time we all practice physiog-
nomy instinctively, though by methods which it would not be quite
easy to define. What subtile differences in the form of the features
enable us to indicate the age of a man, his habits, his temper, the
average amount of his education, and even the country of his birth !

72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The traveler Kohl mentions a landlord in Kent Square, Liverpool, who
combined his restaurant with an emigrant boarding-house, and won
many wagers by his almost infallible faculty for recognizing the na-
tionality of his boarders : without asking them to speak, without taking
any cognizance of the peculiarities of their dress, he scrutinized their
features, and promptly announced the result of his observation.

Dr. Gellmayer, a druggist of Troppau, in Austrian Silesia, had for
years the casting vote on every lunacy commission of his native prov-
ince. He distinguished between chronic and transient (" emotional ")
insanity, and recognized the former exclusively by physiognomic symp-
toms. "I could approximately describe that expression," says he, "by
comparing it to the peculiar look of a person who has forgotten some-
thing, and is trying in vain to recollect it. In the large subdivision
of misanthropic lunatics that look is combined with a certain peevish
furtiveness of the eye." When his colleagues wished to release a
doubtful patient, Dr. Gellmayer sometimes withheld his opinion, but
his averse decisions proved always correct.

Could Spurzheim have deduced such verdicts from craniological
indications ?

THE BKITISH LION.

By W. BOYD DAWKINS.

THE British Lion to be dealt with in the following pages is not
that of the heralds, nor is it the amiable, shy, rather tame animal
just now crouching down behind "the silver streak," pretending to
fear lest the foreigner should get at him unawares through a tunnel,
nor yet is it the ephemeral much-to-be-pitied creature of the drawing-
room. It is a lion, indeed, the king of beasts, the story of whose com-
ing into Britain is a part of the greater story of his sojourn in Euro]:>e,
that can not be told properly without discussing the ancient geography
and climate, or without dealing with some vexed points in historical
criticism. It is a story which begins in the remote geological past,
revealed by pickaxe and shovel, and ends, well within the frontier of
history, in the works of ancient Greek writers.

The first view which we get of the lion in Britain in the geological
record is in the valley of the lower Thames, at Grays Thurrock and
Ilford in Essex, and at Crayford and Erith in Kent. The strata in
those places consist of loams, sands, and gravels swept down by the
Thames when it flowed at a height of at least seventy feet above its
present level, and swung in a series of bold curves from side to side in
the broad valley in which London stands, with a swifter current than
at the present time. They are all of the same general character, and
the brick-field at Crayford presents us with a most convenient stand-

THE BRITISH LION. 73

point for surveying the conditions of life in Southern Britain while
they were being accumulated. The visitor in Stoneham's Pit at that
place sees a -brick-pit several hundred yards in extent, composed of
sand, shingle, and mud-banks, containing land and fresh-water shells
and numerous fossil bones resting where they happen to have been
dropped by the current, and these strata he can follow until they abut
on the chalk forming the ancient side of the river. The land-shells
have evidently been swept down by the ancient Thames from its higher
reaches, and the fresh- water species have for the most part lived where
they are now found, in the old river-bottom. These last are now liv-
ing in our streams and lakes, with the three following exceptions. A
small bivalve ( Cyrena fluminalis), there very abundant, has long ago
forsaken the rivers of Europe. It still, however, lives in the Nile and
in the streams of Cashmere, and probably also in the rivers and fresh-
water lakes of Siberia, and is also used as food by the poorer people
inhabiting the banks of the rivers of the great plain of China. A
fresh-water mussel (the Uhio littoralis) still thrives in the rivers of
France, in the Seine and Loire ; and a tiny fresh-water snail (Paludina
marginata) abounds in the streams of Southern France. Thus in the
ancient Thames at this time fresh-water mollusca now living in Britain
were to be found side by side with species now to be sought in the
rivers of France or of Asia. The fossil remains of the mammalia scat-
tered through the brick-earths as they were dropped by the current
have been discovered in astonishing numbers, and most of them con-
sist of isolated fragments, such, for example, as a broken skull of the
musk-sheep. Huge tusks of elephants lie side by side with antlers of
stasis and skulls and bones of bisons and horses. Sometimes entire
limbs have been preserved with bones in place, and in one case the
entire skeletons of a family of marmots surprised in the attitude of
hibernation, with paws over their noses, young and old together, stand
out from a block of hardened loam. Such as these are the materials
for working into a picture the conditions of life in the valley of the
Thames while these fluviatile deposits were being formed.

The distinct was then haunted by many extinct wild animals, and
by living species no longer found together in any part of the world.
Stags and roe-deer lived in the forest side by side with the gigantic
and extinct Irish elk, the woolly rhinoceros, and the straight-tusked
elephant. Three kinds of rhinoceros, one of them covered with wool
and hair, fed on the branches and the undergrowth ; wild-boars
plowed up the ground in search of food, and the glades afforded
pasture to innumerable horses, bisons, and large horned uri ; and,
when forest and glade were alike covered with a snowy mantle, a few
musk-sheep, now the most arctic of all the herbivores, were to be seen
on the banks of the Thames in Kent. Among; the smaller animals we
may note the pouched marmot and the water-rat. These animals were
kept in check by numerous beasts of prey ; the smaller of them by

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stealthy foxes and wild-cats, and the larger by grizzly and brown bears
and packs of wolves. The stillness of night was from time to time
broken by the weird laughter of the spotted hyena and by the roar
that proclaimed the presence of the king of beasts. Otters pursued
their finny prey in the Thames at Grays Thurrock, and at Ilford bea-
vers were to be seen disporting themselves round their wonderful habi-
tations, and vanishing beneath the surface as if by magic at the splash
caused by the bulky form of the hippopotamus as he plunged into the
water.

Nor are we without a clew as to the vegetation then covering the
district, since the present flora of this country arrived here at a geo-
logical period long before the time under discussion. "We may there-
fore complete our ideal by picturing to ourselves oaks, ashes, and yews
among the important trees in the forest, while the thickets that shel-
tered such a strange assemblage of animals did not differ in any im-
portant particular from those in Britain at the present time. Then, as
now, dark Scotch firs clustered on the sands and gravels covering the
heights of Kent, and alders and willows marked the water-courses of
the low-lying district of Essex, until the view was closed northward
by the black pines covering the answering heights of Havering and of
Brentwood. We should alone miss the elms now so marked a feature
in the landscape.

Such as these were the surroundings of the lion when he first ap-
peared in Britain, huge in size and without a rival among the lower
animals. The central figure, however, in the picture is proved by
recent discoveries to have been man. Not only have flint implements
of the ordinary river-drift type been obtained from the brick-earths
of Crayford along with remains of the animals above mentioned, but
Mr. Flaxman Spurred has been able to fix the place where the hunter
sat on the ancient bank of the Thames and fashioned the blocks of
flint to his various needs. The river-drift hunter, armed with his
roughly chipped stone implements, doubtless had great difficulty in
making good his place in the struggle for existence among the beasts
of prey then in the valley of the Thames, and sometimes, when he
had the chance, he would be likely to eat the lion, and at other times
the lion would certainly eat him. They must often have come into
contact when engaged in the pursuit of the same animals.

The climate at this time in Southern Britain is proved to have been
in the main temperate, by the presence of animals such as the horse,
bison, and rhinoceros. A temperate fauna was then in possession of
the land, although a few Arctic stragglers, such as the musk-sheep,
were also present. The hippopotamus still haunted the banks of the
Thames, and can hardly be supposed to have been able to endure the
winter cold of the region now inhabited by the musk-sheep, any more
than that animal could be expected to enjoy the heat of the summers
in the present home of the hippopotamus.

THE BRITISH LION. 75

The next question which presents itself is the geography of North-
western Europe, while the above strange group of animals lived in
Southern Britain. It is obvious from the fact of the above animals
finding their way here that our island must then have formed part of
the Continent. The fiuviatile strata of Crayford have been met with
at a depth of forty feet below high-water mark near Erith, so that then
the whole lower portion of the Thames Valley was higher above the
sea than it is now. The land, however, must have stood at a consid-
erably higher level than that, since the soundings in the shallowest
part of the Channel reveal a depth of about two hundred feet, and there-
fore an elevation of land of more than two hundred feet is necessary
to allow of the migration of the lion and the other animals. The area
now covered by the "silver streak" was then composed of forest-clad
undulations, extending from the line of the chalk downs then reaching
from Dover to Sangatte, in the Pas de Calais, on the one hand, north-
ward into the fertile pastures now sunk beneath the North Sea, and on
the other, to the southwest along the whole length of the Channel.
Nor are we able to find evidence of the western sea-margin at this
time till the hundred-fathom line is reached, which sweeps far to the
west of Ireland, southward close into the shores of the Bay of Biscay,
and northward so as to include the Hebrides and the Orkneys, form-
ing a narrow fiord close to the present coast of Norway, that reaches
as far as Denmark. The view of De la Beche and Lyell, that all with-
in this boundary was dry land, only broken by the rivers and the lakes,
is most probably true. In this manner alone can we account for the
presence of some of the above animals, such as the spotted hyena, in
Ireland.

But when, it will be asked, were these things so ? The answer is
found in the fact of the presence of the living species of higher mam-
malia along with certain extinct species such as the mammoth, which
points to one, and one only, stage in the evolution of animal life — that
which is termed Pleistocene or Quaternary by the geologists, and fur-
ther, to the middle stage of it, when temperate animals abounded and
Arctic animals were rare in Southern Britain. The question is unan-
swerable if asked from the historical and not the geological point of
view, because, outside the records in which the intervals between events
are written down, we have merely a series of events which occun-ed
in a certain order, without reference to lapse of time. An attempt to
ascertain an historical date outside history is obviously idle, and is not
furthered by an appeal to the present rate of the retrocession of water-
falls, or by speculations as to ancient changes in climate having been
produced by changes in the relation of the earth to the sun. The
events with which we are dealing — the conditions of life when the lion
first appeared in Britain — are so far removed from the earliest records
that we can not form an idea of the interval separating them from our
own time. It must, however, have been very great to allow of the

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

changes in climate and geography, and in the wild animals of Europe,
as well as of the succession of the various races and the development
of civilization, which, so far as our experience goes, could not have
been swift.

The discoveries cited above prove that the lion and the river-drift
hunter lived in the valley of the lower Thames, along with many ani-
mals now only to be found in temperate climates, with some which are
now to be sought in warm climates, and with others that are extinct.
We have noted also the presence of a few Arctic stragglers. In the
long course of ages the climate gradually became colder in the valley
of the Thames, and vast numbers of reindeer wandered over the area
which had formerly been occupied by stags, uri, and the other animals
already mentioned. Their remains lie scattered through the river
gravels and loams at various heights above the level of the Thames,
from Oxford and Abingdon down to London. The numerous remains,
for example, found in digging the new cavalry barracks at Windsor,
belonged one half to the reindeer and the rest to bisons, horses, bears,
and wolves. They had evidently been washed down from a ford
higher up stream, which these animals were in the habit of using year
by year. The vast herds of migrating reindeer in Siberia and of
bisons in North America cross the rivers very generally at the same
points year after year, and are followed by the same kinds of beasts
of prey, which bring up the rear and prey upon the stragglers. The
lion, too, is proved, by the discovery of his remains in the gravel-beds
of London along with reindeer, to have shared in the attack on the
reindeer, horses, and bisons, as it is now to be seen among the ante-
lopes in tropical Africa. Could we follow it to its haunts in the wood-
lands then occupying the site of London we should see it springing
upon other animals, such as the Irish elk or the young of the woolly
rhinoceros, mammoth, or hippopotamus. And could we penetrate to
the banks of the streams, guided by a thin column of smoke rising
above the tops of the trees at Hackney or Gray's Inn, we should come
upon the rude shelters of the river-drift hunters — the men selecting
blocks of flint and chipping implements out of them, the women pre-
paring the meal of flesh, and the children looking on and breaking the
silence of the evening with their shouts, on those very spots where
now is to be heard day and night the voice of our great city. Man is
here, as before, the rival of the lion in the chase.

The lion, along with the above-mentioned group of animals, has
been discovered in the river deposits over the whole of Southern Eng-
land, and as far to the north as Bielbecks in the North Riding of
Yorkshire. It lived in the areas of Cambridge, Bedford, and Salisbury.
It is, however, far more abundant in the caves, into which, in most
cases, it has been dragged by the hyenas. The pack of hyenas in-
habiting the Cave of Kirkdale, in the Vale of Pickering, fed upon rein-
deer in the winter, and at other times on horses and bisons, and were

THE BRITISH LION. 77

able to master the hippopotamus, the lion, the slender-nosed rhinoceros,
or the straight- tusked elephant, and to carry their bones to their den,
where they were found by Dr. Buckland. The hyenas also inhabiting
" the Dukeries " dragged back to the dens fragments of lion. Here,
too, our researches at Creswell revealed the presence of man. In the
lower deposits in the caves were the characteristic implements of the
river-drift hunter, while in the upper were the more highly finished
stone weapons of the cave-man, along with articles made of bone and
antler, such as a needle, and the earliest trace of artistic design in the
figure of a horse incised on a polished fragment of bone. Here the
wild animals were for the most part of the same species as those living
in the area of London, and the same remark holds good of those found
in the hyena-dens in the vale of Clwyd or on the banks of the Wye.
The headquarters, however, of the lion in Britain were the Mendip
Hills in Somersetshire, which overlooked the fertile tract which then
extended from their foot under the present estuary of the Severn, and
joined the great prairie sweeping up the English Channel, and far to
the west of Ireland, and as far south as the mouth of the Garonne.
Over this vast feeding-ground the lions followed the migrating her-
bivores, and Banwell, Bleadon, and Weston-suner-Mare were their
favorite haunts. They lay in wait in the passes of Cheddar and Bur-
rington, and from time to time were surprised and overmastered by
the hyaenas on the banks of the Axe as it flowed through the pict-
uresque ravine of Wookey.

On the Continent the lion ranged over France, Belgium, and Ger-
many along with the above-described animals, and having the river-
drift man first of all, and then the cave-man for its rivals. Evidence
of this rivalry we have in a remarkable necklace found in the cave of
Duruthy, in the district of the Adour in the western Pyrenees, con-
sisting of forty canine teeth of bear and three of lion, adorned with
incised figures — a harpoon, glove, fish, or seal. It is a magnificent
trophy of the chase, buried along with the hunter in the floor of his
dwelling, which proves that human art was more than a master for
the claws and teeth of the most formidable beasts of prey — the lion
and the cave-bear— then living in the southwest of France. The
broken and burned bones on the floor point to the fact that reindeer,
horses, bisons, and stags were then abundant in the neighborhood.

The fossil remains of the lion are found also in Italy along with
the remains of living and extinct animals, such as the stag, Irish elk,
and mammoth in strata of the Pleistocene age. Nor is the range
of the lion confined merely to Europe at this time. An accumulation
of fossil remains was discovered many years ago in the United States,
in the valley of the Ohio, a few miles southwest of Cincinnati, in Boone
County, Kentucky, so great that it is known as Big Bone Lick. The
animals to which they belonged had been attracted to the morass in
which they perished by a deposit of salt, and present the same asso-

7 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ciation of living and extinct forms as we Lave observed in Europe.
Reindeer, musk-sheep, bisons, horses, elks, and bears were to be seen
along with the mammoth, the great elephant-like mastodon, and the
gigantic extinct sloth of South America. A lower jaw found in the
same place, which I have examined in Philadelphia, leaves no doubt
in my mind that the lion was among the carnivores of the United
States, which lived on the above-mentioned animals. It is not more
strange that the lion of the Old World should be found in the New,
than that the musk-sheep, now only alive in the Arctic regions of
North America and Greenland, should have ranged through Siberia
into Europe as far to the southwest as the Pyrenees. Asia was then
united to Northeastern America, and the Straits of Behring were then
an elevated tract of land offering free passage to migrating animals.

Thus far in our inquiry into the British lion, we have been led to
consider a condition of things in Britain quite different from that of
the present day, and in tracing the animal to the Continent, and
finally to the United States, we have seen that tracts of land, now
sunk beneath the sea, connected our islands with the Continent, and
joined North Asia to North America. It must also be remarked that
the lion appears in the Old and New Worlds at the same hour, if I
may use the metaphor, of the geological clock, when " the old order "
was yielding " place unto the new," and the living species were be-
coming more abundant than the extinct among the higher mammalia
— in other words, in the Pleistocene age.

We have now to direct our attention to the retreat of the lion from
Europe. At the close of the Pleistocene age the great extension of
Europe to the west sank beneath the Atlantic, and the North Sea and
the English Channel flowed over the hunting-grounds of the lion, and
formed " the silver streak " of which we have so much reason to be
proud. A change in the wild animals accompanied, as it always does,
the change in geography ; some animals became extinct, such as the
mammoth, while others retreated to more congenial districts, and
amon? them the lion. Not a trace of that animal has been discovered
in the peat-mosses and other superficial accumulations in Britain,
France, Germany, or Italy, which took place in the prehistoric age,
or the interval between the Pleistocene on the one hand and the
frontier of history on the other. It was probably at this time retiring
southward into the districts in which it lived in the time of the early
Greek writers.

The first discovery on record of the fossil lion was made in Hun-
gary. Strange to say, the earliest notice of the living lion relates to
the adjacent region divided from the valley of the Danube by the
Balkan Mountains. Herodotus (vii, c. 124-'6), in describing the march
of Xerxes through Roumelia, before the battle of Thermopylae, writes :

"While Xerxes was on the march in this direction lions fell upon the hag-
gage-camels. They came down by night and left their usual haunts, and touched

THE BRITISH LION. 79

nothing else, neither beast of burden nor man, but killed the camels only. I
wonder why on earth they should have abstained from the other animals and
attacked the camels only, beasts that they had never seen or tasted before.
There are in this district many lions and wild oxen with large horns (uri), which
the Greeks obtain from the inhabitants by barter. The boundary of the district
inhabited by the lions is the river Nestus (Oarasu) that flows through Abdera,
and the Achelous, that flows through Acharnania: for neither to the east of the
Nestus is there a lion anywhere in that part of Europe, nor to the west of the
Achelous in the rest of the continent, but it lives only in the district between
those rivers.

It must be remarked that in this precise account Herodotus, with his
usual accuracy, defines only the eastern and western boundaries, which
he knew, and says nothing about the unknown region to the north.
The story of the lions was still fresh in the memory of the hunters of
Chalkidike when it was picked up by Herodotus in his travels some
twenty-five years afterward, and used to light up his narrative. It is
certain, then, that the lion lived in b. c. 480 in the forests south of the
Balkans, between these two boundaries, and probably as far south as
the Gulf of Lepanto and the Isthmus of Corinth. It probably ranged
also northward into the valley of the Danube.

We are indebted to Xenophon, about a hundred years later, for
the next mention of the lion in Europe. In his " Treatise on Hunting "
(xi, i), which he wrote on his banishment from Athens in his splen-
did retreat in Lacedaemon, after he had exchanged the court and the
camp for the pleasures of gardening and hunting, he says : " Lions,
pardaleis" (probably a leopard), "lynxes, panthers, bears, and such like
beasts, are caught in foreign countries in the neighborhood of Mount
Pangreum, and Mount Cissus, which is beyond Macedonia, and in the
Mysian Olympus and in Pindus, and in Xyse that is above Syria, and
in other mountains that can support such animals." Mount Pangseum
is near the sources of the Xestus, and Cissus is close to Thessalonica,
and therefore this passage strongly confirms the truth of the story
told by Herodotus. It is, however, rejected by Baron Cuvier and Sir
G. C. Lewis, on the grounds that all these animals are not likely to
have lived in any one of the above localities, and that it is a general
statement relating to Europe and Asia Minor. Taken along with the
statement of Herodotus, and the further fact that the lynx and bear
still live in the same region, it seems to me that Xenophon knew what
he was writing about when he advised the hunters to capture the
above animals by the use of poisoned meat in those districts. Wheth-
er Xenophon's advice was taken or not, we find in the pages of the
next writer, some fifty years afterward, that the lions were becoming
rare in Europe. Aristotle describes their range nearly in the same
words as Herodotus, but in the interval of a hundred and fifty years
the " many lions " [ttoXXoI Xeovreg) of the one had become " the few "
(andviov Xtvog) of the other, and they had by that time been driven

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to their last foot-hold in Europe by the hunter and the husbandman.
The exact date of the killing of the last lion is uncertain ; but from
the melancholy passage of Dio Chrysostom Rhetor (Oratio 21) — "the
honorable have vanished away in the course of time, as they say
the lions have done which formerly dwelt in Europe " — it must have
happened before the close of the first century after Christ.

Sir G. C. Lewis, to whose papers in " Notes and Queries " we are
indebted for many references used in this essay, points out that the
mythology of Italy contains no allusion to the lion, while that of
Greece extends the range of the lion into Peloponnese, and to the
west of the Achelous, or, in other words, proves that the lion had a
wider range in Southern Europe before the time of Herodotus than it
had afterward. According to iElian, it had retired from Peloponnese
before the time of Homer.

The memory of the lion was preserved in its ancient haunts long
after it had become extinct. The scene of one of the prettiest stories
told by JElian * is laid in Mount Pangseum, which, from its mention
by Xenophon, must have been a famous haunt of lions :

Eudemus tells the tale that in PangflBum in Thrace a bear attacked the lair
of a lion, while it was unguarded, and killed the cubs that were too small and
too weak to defend themselves. And when the father and the mother came
home from hunting somewhere, and saw their children lying dead, they were
much aggrieved, and attacked the bear ; but she was afraid, and climbed up into
a tree as fast as she could, and settled herself down, trying to avoid the attack.
Now, when they saw that they could not avenge themselves on her, the lioness
did not cease to watch the tree, but sat down in ambush at the foot, eying the
bear, that was covered with blood. But the lion, as it were, without purpose
and distraught with grief, after the manner of a man, rushed off to the mount-
ains, and chanced to light on a wood-cutter, who, in terror, let fall his axe ; but
the lion fawned upon him, and reaching up saluted him as well as he could, and
licked his face with his tongue. And the man took courage. Then the lion en-
circled him with his tail, and led him, and did not suffer him to leave his axe
behind, but pointed with his foot for it to be taken up. And when the man did
not understand he took it up in his mouth and reached it to him. Then he fol-
lowed while the lion led him to his den. And when the lioness saw him, she
came and made signs, looking at the pitiable spectacle, and then up at the bear.
Then the man perceived and understood that the lion had suffered cruel wrong
from the bear, and cut down the tree with might and main. And the tree fell,
and the lions tore the bear in pieces ; but the man the lion led back again, safe
and sound, to the place where he lighted on him, and returned him to the very
tree he had been cutting.

With this simple story, told probably by the wood-cutters of Pan-
goeum to their children and handed down from generation to gen-
eration, we may conclude the history of the lion in Europe. In the
remote Pleistocene age the lion ranged over nearly the whole of Eu-
rope, south of a line passing through Yorkshire and the Baltic, over

* " De Natura Animalium," iii, 21.

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 81

the United States, and consequently also over the intervening conti-
nent of Northern Asia, when the climate and geography were differ-
ent from what they are now. From the close of that age, marked in
Britain by the development of " the silver streak," the animal has
steadily been retreating southward in the direction of its present
haunts through all the period recorded in history. This has probably
been brought about by the rivalry of the hunter, the loss of cover,
and the increasing scarcity of game. Its disappearance, however,
from Northern Asia and North America must have been due to some
other causes, as in the parallel case of the horse, which abounded in
North America in the Pleistocene age, and afterward became extinct,
although the conditions of life are now so favorable that the animals
introduced by the Spaniards have run wild, and now form vast herds.
It became extinct in Britain at the close of the Pleistocene age, and
in Europe between the time of Aristotle (340 b. c.) and that of Dio
Chrysostom Rhetor (80 to 100 a. d.). — Contemporary Review.

-»♦*-

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED.

By MANLY MILES, M. D.

IN the literature of every department of agriculture, the references
to the Rothamsted experiments are getting to be as familiar as
household words, and it is now generally admitted that they have had
an important influence on English farm-practice.

In this Country, however, the direct and practical bearing of these
experiments on the every-day business of the farm is not fully appre-
ciated, and this is perhaps largely owing to the fact that the American
farmer is owner of the soil he tills, and is not therefore compelled to
give that strict attention to every detail of the economy of farm man-
agement that is essential to the successful practice of farming in
Great Britain.

It would seem that the leading object of inquiry at Rothamsted
has been the solution of agricultural problems, but the relations of
science to agriculture are so broad that what may be considered purely
practical lines of investigation can not be limited to considerations
that are of interest to the farmer only, as they involve the discussion
of questions that are constantly presenting themselves in the progres-
sive development of the sciences of chemistry, botany, vegetable and
animal physiology, including dietetics and the laws of assimilation
and growth, and thus lead to an examination of topics that are prop-
erly included in the domain of social and sanitary sciences.

In fact, when the original object of inquiry is the attainment of
some practical end, the dominant work of experimentation, when

VOL. XXII. — 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

properly conducted, soon comes to be the investigation of special ques-
tions that strictly pertain to some department of the allied sciences.

In the well-planned experiments which have been so ably conducted
at Rothamsted for more than forty years, embracing a wide range of
topics, there is an abundant fund of information that must be of in-
terest not only to the farmer, who looks for results in pecuniary values,
but to the man of science, seeking the truth for the truth's sake, and
the intelligent general reader who wishes to trace understandingly
some of the leading facts in the world's progress.

Without including numerous newspaper articles, and the annual
"Memoranda of the Experiments at Rothamsted," that have been
printed for several years for the convenience of visitors, nearly one
hundred elaborate papers and discussions of the field, feeding, and
laboratory experiments, many of which are in the form of monographs,
have been published since 1847, every one of which has had its influ-
ence on questions of agricultural practice, as well as on the various
theories in science that have been prominent for the past half-
century.

These papers are to be found in the " Journal of the Royal Agri-
cultural Society," the " Reports of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science," the " Journal of the Chemical Society of
London," the " Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
London," the " Journal of the Society of Arts," the " Journal of the
Horticultural Society of London," the " Reports of the Royal Dublin
Society," the " Edinburgh Veterinary Review," the " Philosophical
Magazine," and other periodicals, and in official reports on special sub-
jects of investigation.

The titles alone of these papers would require the space of several
pages of this magazine.

Rothamsted, with its fine old manor-house, the home of Sir John
Bennet Lawes, is in Hertfordshire, England, about twenty-five miles
from London, on the Midland Railway, Harpenden Station.

Mr. Lawes was born in 1814, and succeeded to his estate in 1822.
He was educated at Eton, and at Brasenose College, Oxford. After
leaving the university, in 1835, he spent some time in London, in the
study of chemistry, which had been a subject of special interest to
him when pursuing his academic course.

Soon after taking possession of his hereditary property at Rotham-
sted, in 1834, he began a systematic course of experiments with differ-
ent fertilizers, first with plants in pots, and afterward in the field.

"The researches of Dr. Saussure on vegetation were the chief sub-
jects of his study to this end. Of all the experiments eo made, those
in which the neutral phosphate of lime in bones, bone-ash, and apatite,
was rendered soluble by means of sulphuric acid, and the mixture ap-
plied for root-crops, gave the most striking results.

"The results obtained on a small scale in 1837-1839 were such as

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 83

to lead to more extensive trials in the field in 1840 and 1841, and sub-
sequently."

Dr. J. H. Gilbert has been associated with Mr. Lawes since June,
1843, and has had the direction of the laboratory.

" In 1843 more systematic field experiments were commenced ;
and a barn, which had previously been partially applied to laboratory
purposes, became almost exclusively devoted to agricultural investiga-
tions. The foundation of the Rothamsted Experiment Station may be
said to date from that time (1843). The Rothamsted Station has, up
to the present time, been entirely disconnected from any external or-
ganization, and has been maintained entirely by Mr. Lawes. He has
further set apart a sum of £100,000 and certain areas of land for the
continuance of the investigations after his death."

In 1854 a subscription was made by agriculturists for a testimonial
to be presented to Mr. Lawes as an expression of their appreciation of
the great value of the services he had rendered to British agriculture.
The committee in charge of this fund, instead of expending it in plate
as had been intended, devoted it, at the suggestion of Mr. Lawes, to
the erection of a new laboratory, so that the facilities for experiment-
ing were largely increased.

The eminent services of Drs. Lawes and Gilbert, in the improve-
ment of agriculture and the advancement of science, have been repeat-
edly recognized. In 1854 Dr. Lawes was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society, and in 1867 the royal medal was awarded to him con-
jointly with Dr. Gilbert, by the council of the society. The gold
medal of the Imperial Agricultural Society of Russia was awarded to
Dr. Lawes, and last year the Emperor of Germany, by imperial decree,
awarded the gold medal of merit for agriculture to Dr. Lawes and Dr.
Gilbert jointly, " in recognition of their services for the development
of scientific and practical agriculture."

As a national recognition of the great value of the investigations
to which he has devoted his life, Dr. Lawes has this year been created
a baronet.

The number of assistants engaged in the work of experimenting
has gradually increased. At first only one laboratory-man was em-
ployed, but soon a chemical assistant was needed, and then a computer
and record-keeper.

" During the past twenty-five years the staff has consisted of one
or two and sometimes three chemists, and two or three general assist-
ants, one of whom is generally employed in routine chemical work,
but sometimes in more general work."

The general assistants superintend the experiments with animals
and the field experiments — the making of manures and their applica-
tion— the harvesting and weighing of the crops — the selection of sam-
ples which are prepared for preservation or analysis, and they also
make determinations of dry matter, ash, etc.

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" There are now more than thirty thousand bottles of samples of
experimentally grown vegetable produce, of animal products, of ashes,
or of soils, stored in the laboratory. A botanical assistant is also oc-
casionally employed, with from three to six boys under him, and with
him is generally associated one of the permanent general assistants,
who at other times undertakes the botanical work." Several com-
puters and record-keepers have for some time past been occupied in
calculating and tabulating the field, feeding, and laboratory results.
Additional chemical assistance is frequently engaged in London and
elsewhere. Professor Way, Dr. Frankland, and Dr. Voelcker, have
done more or less work on material obtained at Rothamsted, and their
published reports are of great interest. Mr. R. Richter, of Berlin, has
for some years past been almost constantly occupied with analytical
work sent from Rothamsted. A considerable, but of course varying,
force of agricultural laborers find employment in the field-work.

" The general scope and plan of the field experiments has been to
grow some of the most important crops of rotation, each separately,
year after year, for many years in succession on the same land, with-
out manure, with farm-yard manure, and with a great variety of chem-
ical manures ; the same description of manure being, as a rule, applied
year after year on the same plot. Experiments on an actual course of
rotation, without manure and with different manures, have also been
made. In this way experiments have been conducted as follows :

" With wheat, thirty-nine years in succession : thirteen acres, thirty-
seven plots, many of which are duplicates of others. On barley, thirty-
one years in succession : four and a half acres, twenty-nine plots. On
oats, ten years (including one year fallow) : three quarters of an acre,
six plots. On wheat, alternated with fallow, thirty-one years : one
acre, two plots. On different descriptions of wheat, fifteen years :
four to eight acres (each year in a different field), now more than
twenty plots. On beans, thirty-two years (including one year wheat,
and five years fallow) : one and a quarter acre, ten plots ; also twenty-
seven years : one acre, five plots. On beans, alternated with wheat,
twenty-eight years : one acre, ten plots. On clover, with fallow or a
grain-crop intervening, twenty-six years : three acres, eighteen plots.
The land is now devoted to experiments with various leguminous
plants, commenced in 1878. On turnips, twenty-eight years (includ-
ing three years barley) : about eight acres, forty plots. On sugar-
beets, five years : about eight acres, forty-one plots. On mangold-
wurzel, seven years : about eight acres, forty-one plots. On potatoes,
seven years : two acres, ten plots. On rotation, thirty-five years : about
two and a half acres, twelve plots. On permanent grass-land, twenty-
seven years : about seven acres, twenty-two plots.

"Comparative experiments, with different manures, have also been
made on other descriptions of soil, in other localities. Samples of all
the experimental crops are taken, and brought to the laboratory.

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 85

Weio-hed portions of each are partially dried, and preserved for future
reference or analysis. Duplicate weighed portions of each are dried
at 100° C, the dry matter determined, then^ burned to ash on plati-
num sheets in cast-iron muffles. The quantities of ash are determined
and recorded, and the ashes themselves are preserved for reference or
analysis. In a large proportion of the samples the nitrogen is deter-
mined, and in some the amount existing as albuminoids, amides, and
nitric acid.

" In selected cases — illustrating the influence of season, manures,
exhaustion, etc. — complete ash-analyses have been made, numbering
in all more than seven hundred. Also in selected cases, illustrating
the influence of season and manuring, quantities of the experimentally
grown wheat-grain have been sent to the mill, and the proportion and
composition of the different mill-products determined.

" In the sugar-beet, mangold-wurzel, and potatoes, the sugar in the
juice has in most cases been determined by the polariscope, and fre-
quently by copper also.

" In the case of the experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent
grass-land, besides the samples taken for the determination of the
chemical composition (dry matter, ash, nitrogen, woody fiber, fatty
matter, and composition of ash), carefully averaged samples have fre-
quently been taken for the determination of the botanical composition.
In this way, on four occasions, at intervals of five years — viz., in 1862,
1867, 1872, and 1877 — a sample of the produce of each plot was taken
and submitted to careful botanical separation, and the percentage, by
weight, of each species in the mixed herbage determined. Partial
separations, in the case of samples from selected plots (frequently of
both first and second crops), have also been made in other years."

This condensed statement of the plan of the field experiments, and
brief outline of some of the work performed in connection with them,
from the " Memoranda " for June, 1882, will give some general idea
of the extent of the Rothamsted Station, and of the thorough manner
in which all operations are conducted ; but, in our enumeration of the
other lines of inquiry now in progress, we can only mention the sub-
jects of investigation without referring to particulars in the methods
practiced, as we wish to save space for a discussion of some of the
leading results that have been thus far obtained.

More than one thousand samples of soil have been taken from the
experiment-plots, at different depths, for the purpose of analysis, to
ascertain the rate of soil-exhaustion under different conditions, and to
trace the relations of the soil to the crops grown and to the manures
applied.

For nearly thirty years the rain-fall has been measured in a gauge
having an area of one thousandth of an acre, and frequent analyses
have been made to determine the available supply of combined nitro-
gen in the form of ammonia and nitric acid that can be obtained by

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plants from this source. In some cases the chlorine has also been de-
termined. The absorptive capacity of soils and subsoils for water and
ammonia has likewise been investigated.

The quantity and composition of drain age- waters under various
conditions have been the subject of elaborate and extended experi-
ments for many years, and the results obtained are of the greatest
importance.

In 1870 three " drain-gauges " were made, each having an area of
one thousandth of an acre, and inclosing the soil and subsoil in a
natural state of consolidation to the depth of twenty, forty, and sixty
inches, respectively. As the surface-soil in these gauges is kept free
from vegetation, and no fertilizers are applied, their drainage repre-
sents, in effect, that of a bare, unmanured fallow. In the separate
drains of the permanent wheat-plots facilities were provided for col-
lecting samples of drain age- water from soils growing crops without
manure, with barn-yard manure, and with a great variety of chemical
manures.

Determinations of the nitrogen in rain-water were made at Rotham-
sted as early as 1846. The ammonia in the rain-fall for fifteen months,
in 1853-'54, was determined in the laboratory at Rothamsted, and
again in 1855-'56 by Professor Way. Dr. Frankland made analyses
of the rain-fall, and also of dew and hoar-frost in 1869-'70, since which
time a series of systematic investigations have been conducted in the
Rothamsted laboratory.

A large number of samples of the drainage-waters from the experi-
mental wheat-field were analyzed by Dr. Voelcker, the able chemist
of the Royal Agricultural Society, and by Dr. Frankland, previous to
1875, while over thirteen hundred samples have been analyzed since
that time at Rothamsted. The drainage of the " drain-gauges," from
1870 to 1874, was analyzed by Dr. Frankland, and since that date it
has been systematically investigated at Rothamsted.

A full report of these drainage experiments is given in an elaborate
paper "On the Amount and Composition of the Rain and Drainage-
Waters collected at Rothamsted," published in the last three numbers
of the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society" (1881-'82), which,
from its direct applications to questions of farm-j:>ractice, and the light
it throws upon the obscure subject of soil-exhaustion and on the econ-
omy of manures, is undoubtedly the most valuable contribution to
agricultural science that has appeared for many years.

Experiments were made for several years with plants representing
the gramineous, the leguminous and other families, and also with ever-
green and deciduous trees, to ascertain the amount of water given off
during their growth.

Observations on the character and range of the roots of different
plants, the relative development of leaf and stem, and their compo-
sition at various stages of growth, have been made in connection with

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 87

experiments to determine the differences in the amount and constitu-
ents assimilated by plants of different botanical families, under similar
conditions, and of the same plant under varying conditions. From
these investigations, so far as they have been published, it appears
that the chemical relations of the plant and soil are, to a great extent,
determined by botanical and physiological conditions.

In the experiments with the mixed herbage of "permanent meadow,"
for example, it was noticed, even in the first years of the experiments,
that " those manures which are most effective with wheat, barley, or
oats grown on arable land — that is, with the gramineous species grown
separately — were also the most effective in bringing forward the grasses
proper in the mixed herbage ; and again, those manures which were
the most beneficial to beans or clover, most developed the leguminous
species of the mixed herbage, and vice versa.''''

In the produce grown continuously without manure the average
number of species was forty-nine. Of these seventeen are grasses,
four leguminous species, and twenty-three of other orders. By weight
the grasses averaged sixty-eight per cent, leguminous species nine per
cent, and species of other orders twenty- three per cent.

In the produce of the plot most heavily manured and yielding the
heaviest crops, the average number of species was nineteen ; of which
twelve to thirteen were grasses, one only (or none) leguminous, and
five or six only of other species. By weight the grasses averaged
about ninety-five per cent, the leguminous species less than O'Ol per
cent, and other orders less than five per cent.

On the plot receiving annually manures that are of little avail for
gramineous crops grown separately in rotation, but which favor beans
or clover so grown, the average number of species was forty-three,
of which seventeen were grasses, four leguminous, and twenty-two
belonging to other orders. But by weight the grasses averaged but
from sixty-five to seventy per cent, the leguminous species nearly
twenty per cent, and all other species less than fifteen per cent.

The " struggle for existence " and the " survival of the fittest,"
therefore, determine the character of the species contained in the
produce under the conditions, and the chemical composition of the
crop varies accordingly. With an increase of the leguminous produce
the nitrogenous constituents are increased, and with a decrease in the
leguminous produce the nitrogenous constituents are diminished.

Experiments with leguminous, gramineous, and other families of
plants were made for several years in succession, at Rothamsted, to
determine whether plants assimilate free or uncombined nitrogen.

The relations of nitrogen to the growing plant and to the soil and
the sources of the nitrogen of vegetation have been prominent subjects
of investigation in all the Rothamsted field-experiments.

It is not my purpose, in this connection, to discuss the various the-
ories of vegetable growth, or to give an account of the many contro-

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

versies that have arisen in the developmental progress of science, but
simply to call attention to some of the leading lines of investigation at
Rothamsted which have had an influence in correcting our theories
of vegetable nutrition and soil-exhaustion and in improving our meth-
ods of agricultural practice.

The legitimate aim of all systematic, exact experiments is to lay a
foundation of well-ascertained and closely related facts on which may
be developed a superstructure of science to supersede the theoretical
speculations which form an important part of the prelude of scientific
discovery. In this work of reconstruction, Drs. Lawes and Gilbert
have for many years occupied a prominent position, and a full account
of their labors would involve in the record a history of agricultural
science for the past half-century.

From an agricultural stand-point one of the first steps in the study
of the laws of plant growth and nutrition is to ascertain the relative
influence of the soil and the air in the supply of plant-food, as they
are the only sources from which plants obtain the elements which
enter into their composition.

The atmosphere is a mixture of gases, of which more than three
fourths is nitrogen, and less than one fourth oxygen, with something
less than one part in ten thousand of carbonic acid. In addition to
these there are traces of ammonia and a variable quantity of vapor of
water.

As the carbon, which forms about one half of the dry substance of
plants, is all derived from the minute proportions of carbonic acid
found in the atmosphere, it has been assumed that the comparatively
small amount of nitrogen required by plants could be readily obtained
from the abundant stores of this element in the atmosphere, and that
wide-leaved plants, like clover and beans, could more readily assimilate
it than those with narrow leaves, like the grasses.

Experiments by Boussingault and the elaborate researches at Ro-
thamsted, however, show that free nitrogen, the most abundant con-
stituent of the air, is not assimilated by plants. The atmospheric
sources of nitrogen for plant-growth must, therefore, be limited to the
minute quantities of combined nitrogen in the form of ammonia and
nitric acid.

Important data as to the amount of nitrogen in various field-crops,
grown under a variety of conditions, and the sources from which it is
obtained, are furnished in the Rothamsted field-experiments.

For a period of thirty-two years, wheat, on plots without manure,
yielded an annual average of 20*7 pounds of nitrogen per acre. The
yield, however, declined from an average of more than twenty-five
pounds during the first eight years to an average of but sixteen
pounds during the last eight years of the experiment.

Barley, for a period of twenty-four years, on plots without manure,
yielded annually an average of 18-3 pounds of nitrogen per acre, with

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT RO TEAMS TED. 89

a decline from an average of twenty-two pounds over the first twelve
years to an average of 14-6 pounds over the next twelve years. Min-
eral manures, containing no nitrogen, applied to barley and wheat did
not materially increase the yield of nitrogen in the crop.

A succession of root-crops (with three years of barley intervening
after the first eight years), dressed with a complex mineral manure,
yielded an average of 26*8 pounds of nitrogen per acre, per annum,
over a period of thirty-one years ; with a decline from an average of
forty-two pounds over the first eight years to 13*1 (in sugar-beets)
over the last five years. Afterward, with the change of crop to man-
golds, the yield of nitrogen was somewhat increased.

Beans, for a period of twenty-four years, yielded an average of 31 3
pounds of nitrogen without manure ; and, with a complex mineral
manure, an average of 45'5 pounds of nitrogen per acre. The decline
in yield of nitrogen was, however, from an average of 48*1 pounds
over the first twelve years to only 14-6 pounds over the last twelve
years, when unmanured, and from an average of 61*5 pounds over the
first twelve years to but 29*5 pounds over the last twelve years, when
mineral manures were applied.

An annual average yield of nearly two hundred pounds of nitrogen
per acre was obtained in the clover grown for twenty-seven years in
succession on a plot of old garden-soil that was exceptionally rich in
nitrogen at the beginning of the experiment. As in the case of other
crops, there was a marked decline in the average yield of nitrogen in
the last half of the period, and there was also a great reduction in the
stores of nitrogen contained in the soil.

The leguminous crops, beans and clover, it will be seen, contain a
larger amount of nitrogen per acre than the gramineous crops, wheat
and barley. In the Rothamsted experiments it was, however, found
that manures containing nitrogen benefited the gramineous crops,
while they had but little, if any, influence upon the growth of legu-
minous crops. The chemical composition of the crop was not, there-
fore, an index of the mauurial constituents required to promote its
growth.

When turnips, barley, clover, or beans, and wheat were grown in
rotation for twenty-eight years, the average annual yield of nitrogen
per acre was 36'8 pounds, and in the mixed herbage of permanent
grass-land, when unmanured, the annual yield of nitrogen averaged
thirty-three pounds per acre.

The larger average yield of nitrogen per acre in the crops in rota-
tion and in the mixed herbage of the permanent grass-land, as com-
pared with the yield of nitrogen in gramineous crops when grown sep-
arately, is not entirely due to the larger amount of nitrogen in the
leguminous species themselves, but also to their influence upon the
gramineous species which are able to take up and assimilate more nitro-
gen when the highly nitrogenous leguminous crops have been appro-

9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

priating their larger supplies of the same element, as will be seen from
the following experiments :

" In alternating wheat and beans, the remarkable result had been
obtained that nearly as much wheat and nearly as much nitrogen
were yielded in eight crops of wheat in alternation with the highly
nitrogenous beans as in sixteen crops of wheat grown consecutively
without manure in another field, and also nearly as much as were
obtained in a third field in eight crops, alternated with a bare fal-
low."

And again : " After the growth of six grain-crops by artificial ma-
nures alone, the field so treated was divided, and in 1873 on one half
barley, and on the other half clover, was grown. The barley yielded
37*3 pounds of nitrogen per acre, but the three cuttings of clover
yielded 151*3 pounds. In the next year, 1874, barley succeeded on
both the barley and the clover portions of the field. Where barley had
previously been grown, and had yielded 37*3 pounds of nitrogen per
acre, it now yielded 39*1 pounds ; but where the clover had previously
been grown, and had yielded 151*3 pounds of nitrogen, the barley suc-
ceeding it gave G9*4 pounds, or 30*3 pounds more after the removal
of 151 "3 pounds in clover than after the removal of only 37*3 pounds
in barley."

We will now examine some of the evidence furnished by the Ro-
thamsted experiments, in regard to the sources from which the nitro-
gen of field-crops is obtained.

As free or uncombined nitrogen cannot, as we have seen, be assimi-
lated by plants, we will next consider the supply of combined nitrogen
in the form of ammonia and nitric acid, existing in the atmosphere.

From the earlier investigations of the rain-fall at Rothamsted and
likewise on the Continent, it was estimated that from eight to ten
pounds of combined nitrogen per acre was precipitated annually in the
rains of Western Europe. Later observations at Rothamsted show
that this estimate is probably too high, and Drs. Lawes and Gilbert,
after a full discussion of their records for twenty-seven years, fix the
probable amount at four to five pounds per acre.

As this is only one fourth of the average annual yield of nitrogen
per acre of the unmanured wheat over a period of thirty-two years,
and but little more than one fourth of the average annual yield ob-
tained with barley over a period of twenty-four years, to say nothing
of the much larger yield of nitrogen in leguminous crops, it must be
admitted that it is an entirely inadequate source of supply of nitrogen
for vegetation. The nitrogen condensed by the soil from dew and
atmospheric vapor has not been definitely determined, and is not,
therefore, included in this estimate ; but it is probable that it is less
than that brought to the soil by the rain. On the other hand, it has
been shown by numerous experiments, including those at Rothamsted,
that free nitrogen is evolved in the decomposition of organic matter,

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 91

and that the soil, under certain conditions, may suffer a loss of nitro-
gen in this form.

Of the rain falling upon the drain-gauges, the unmanured soil of
which, it will he remembered, is in a natural state of consolidation and
kept free from vegetation, for a period of ten years, about forty-four
per cent has appeared as drainage-water, and about fifty-six per cent
has been evaporated. Approximately, two thirds of the evaporation
takes place during the summer months, and one third during the win-
ter months.

The annual loss of nitrogen in the drainage-water has been, upon
the average, at the rate of 437 pounds per acre. This represents,
approximately, the loss involved under the conditions of a bare sum-
mer fallow.

When the roots of growing plants are distributed through the soil,
they take up the nitrogen as it becomes soluble in the process of nitri-
fication, and the loss by drainage is to that extent diminished.

The drainage from the unmanured wheat-plots contained nitrogen
at the rate of only from 1256 to 18*62 pounds per acre each year, and
during two seasons of excessive drainage, when every running from
the drains was analyzed, " it was estimated that from fifteen to seven-
teen pounds of nitrogen were lost per acre, per annum, by drainage
from plots which had received no nitrogenous manure for many years,"
and the average for thirty years was from ten to twelve pounds per
acre. During its period of active growth, the crop appropriated the
nitrogen of the soil, so that there was little or none lost by drainage,
and nearly the entire loss took place after harvest, and during the
winter and spring months.

The nitrogen lost by drainage on land receiving no nitrogenous
manure is therefore considerably more than can reasonably be esti-
mated in the supply from atmospheric sources.

When nitrogenous manures were applied, the loss of nitrogen by
drainage was materially increased, and on the average for more than
thirty years, and under the most favorable conditions of growth, less
than one third of the nitrogen applied as manure was recovered in the
increase of the crops, and much less than this when there was a de-
ficiency of potash or phosphoric acid in the soil.

In connection with these facts, relating to the amounts of nitrogen
removed in the crops and lost by drainage, and the inadequate supplies
of available atmospheric nitrogen for the purposes of plant-growth, it
becomes a matter of particular interest to trace the influence of this
system of continuous cropping, without nitrogenous manures, upon
the nitrogen contained in the soil itself.

The nitrogen in the soil of the unmanured wheat-plots has grad-
ually diminished, and Dr. Gilbert says, " So far as we are able to form
a judgment on the point, the diminution is approximately equal to the
nitrogen taken out in the crops, and the amount estimated to be re-

92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceived in the annual rain-fall is approximately balanced by the amount
lost by the land, as nitrates in the drainage-water."

Where the great decrease in the yield of nitrogen was observed, in
the case of the root-crops which were grown for thirty-one years in
succession, the soil at the end of twenty-seven years was found to con-
tain a smaller percentage of nitrogen than any other arable land of
the farm.

In the experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent grass-land,
" the soil of the plot which, under the influence of a mixed mineral
manure, including potash, had yielded such a large amount of legu-
minous herbage, and such a large amount of nitrogen, showed, after
twenty years, a considerably lower percentage of nitrogen than that
of any other plot in the series."

The soil of the garden-plot, which gave so large a yield of clover
over a period of twenty-seven years, was analyzed at the end of
twenty-six years, and Dr. Gilbert remarks, in regard to the loss of
the nitrogen of the soil, that " the diminution, to the depth of nine
inches only, represents, approximately, three fourths as much as the
amount estimated to be taken in the clover in the intervening period ;
and the indication is, that there has been a considerable reduction in
the lower depths also."

When nitrogenous manures were applied in the form of ammonia
salts or nitrate of soda there was little or no decrease in the nitrogen
of the soil, and in some cases there was an actual gain ; but the loss
from drainage was much greater, and it increased with each increment
of the manures applied under the same conditions. On plots receiving
43, 8G, and 129 pounds, respectively, of nitrogen in the form of am-
monia salts, mostly applied in the autumn, the estimated loss of nitro-
gen by drainage was 19, 31, and 42*4 pounds ; " and with 86 pounds
of nitrogen applied without, or with different mineral manures, the
estimated loss ranged from 31 pounds with the most liberal manure to
43-2 pounds with the ammonium salts continuously used alone."

The nitrogen of barn-yard manure, which from its comparative in-
solubility is more slowly available for purposes of plant-growth, was
not lost by drainage to the same extent as the chemical manures, and
there were decided indications of considerable accumulations of it in
the soil. The nitrogen applied in manures is not all accounted for in
the amounts removed in the crop, lost by drainage, and stored up in
the soil ; and it therefore seems probable, in the absence of any other
known disposition of it, that the estimated losses by drainage, based
on the materials discharged by the tile-drains, are altogether too low.
As the drainage -waters, with the substances they hold in solution, pass
from the upper to the lower strata of the soil, we can not avoid the
conclusion that a large proportion must pass below the level of the
drains without entering them. The drains of the experimental wheat-
fields are nearly twenty-five feet apart, and the underlying chalk at the

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 93

depth of from ten to fourteen feet furnishes good drainage for the
spaces between the drains.

The nitrogen applied in the manures that is not taken up by the
crop or stored up in the soil, or lost in the waters discharged by the
tile-drains, may therefore be fully accounted for in the amount that
must be carried, under the conditions of the experiments, by the drain-
age-waters to the lower strata of the subsoil, without entering the
drains. The estimated losses of nitrogen by drainage, based on the
amounts detected in the waters discharged by the drains, may there-
fore with good reason be increased by the amount not accounted for
in the crop and in the accumulations of the soil.

Practically, then, in the light of the Rothamsted experiments, we
may look upon the soil as the great source of the nitrogen of plants, as
the atmosphere can furnish but a small proportion of the needed sup-
ply, and this is more than counterbalanced by the losses from drainage.

In connection with this imperfect outline of some of the leading
lines of investigation that have been so successfully prosecuted at
Rothamsted, it would be interesting to examine the data that indicate
the relations of nitrogen to other elements of plant-growth, as sup-
plied in manures and assimilated by crops when cultivated in suc-
cession or in rotation with other species ; but these, with other cognate
topics, must be omitted, as we can not at this time undertake anything
like an exhaustive discussion of the results of these valuable experi-
ments.

The great importance of physiological researches and the compara-
tively subordinate influence of purely chemical methods in solving
the great problems of agricultural science, have been so fully illus-
trated in the experiments at Rothamsted that we must accept them
as the basis of a new departure in the development of a consistent
science of rural economy. In the light of these experiments the gen-
erally accepted theories of soil-exhaustion must be reconstructed, and
the action and relative value of manures must be investigated from a
new stand -point.

The exhaustion of a soil can no longer be estimated by th© constit-
uents removed in the crop, Wheat and oats, with other cereals, are
generally considered as exhausting crops, and a summer fallow is
looked upon as a means of increasing or restoring the fertility of
the soil ; but the grain -crops when grown by themselves, and the
summer fallow itself, are alike the occasion of a loss of fertilizing
materials, and in precisely the same way. In both cases there is a
long interval in which there are no living roots of plants in the soil
to take up the nutritive materials as they are transformed into the
soluble form, and they are lost by percolation to the lower strata of
the subsoil out of the reach of vegetation.

Many of what are called restorative plants feed in the deeper layers
of the soil, and they may, by their scattered foliage and thick roots,

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

add to the stores of plant-food in the surface-soil, which may be used
by plants of a different habit that are not deep feeders.

The physiological peculiarities of the different botanical groups of
plants must, however, be better understood before we can fully explain
the influeuce of one crop upon another that succeeds it. That the
special formula manures, so widely advertised in this country, and
which are claimed to pi-ovide, in due proportion, the constituents re-
quired by a particular crop, are based on false assumptions, is abun-
dantly shown in the Rothamsted field-experiments ; but we can not
now discuss the fallacy in detail.

The experiments with animals at Rothamsted must form the sub-
ject of a separate article.

-♦♦«>-

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAE"?

Br Professor GEANT ALLEN.

WHEN Sir Charles Lyell's " Antiquity of Man " and Mr. Darwin's
two great works first set all the world thinking about the ori-
gin of our race, there was a general tendency among scientific men
and the public generally to take it for granted that the earliest known
men, those whose remains we find in the river-drift, were necessarily
" missing links " between the human species and its supposed anthro-
poid progenitors. People naturally imagined that these very ancient
men must have been hairy, low-browed, semi-brutal savages, half-way
in development between the goi'illa and the Australian or the Bush-
man. Striking word-pictures painted the palaeolithic hunter for us as
an evolving ape ; and we all acquiesced in the pictures as truthful and
accurate. With the progress of discovery, however, another phase of
the question has come uppermost, and anthropologists have now for
some time inclined with marked distinctness to the exactly opposite
view. As we examined more and more closely the relics of the cave-
men, for example, it became clear that their works of art were those
not merely of real human beings, but of human beings considerably in
advance of many existing savages. Professor Boyd Dawkins, who
knows more about the cave-men than any one else in Britain at least,
unhesitatingly states his opinion that they were in all important re-
spects the equals of the modern Esquimaux, whom he indeed regards as
their probable lineal representatives. Any one who has closely exam-
ined the remains recovered from the French caves can not fail largely
to fall in with this view, so far at least as regards the high level of
palaeolithic art. In fact, it is daily becoming clear that the antiquity
of man is something even deeper and more far-reaching in its implica-
tions than Lyell himself at first imagined. For while on the one hand
geologists are inclining more and more to the opinion that pala?olithic

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 95

man was as old as or older than the last glacial period, anthropologists
on the other hand are inclining more and more to the opinion that this
pre-glacial and inter-glacial man was really quite as human and quite as
capable of civilization as any race now living, except perhaps a few of
the most cultivated European stocks. Instead of being the " missing
link," our cave-man turns out to be a mere average savage, living a
rude and unintelligent life, to be sure, but quite capable, so far as re-
gards his faculties, of becoming as civilized as the Sandwich-Islanders
have become within our own memory.

It is, of course, obvious that these facts may be easily turned by
opponents of Darwinism into powerful arguments against the theory
of man's evolution from a lower form. " Here we accept all your
facts," says the defender of the fixity of species ; " we allow that man
has inhabited the earth for as long a period as you choose, say 200,000
years ; and, when we go down to the very beginning of that period,
what do we meet with ? A missing link ? An evolving ape ? No ;
nothing of the sort ; a man exactly the same as the man of the present
day. However far back we push our researches in the past, we find
either no man at all, or else the same man that we now know. Your
theory of evolution is disproved by the very facts which you were
wont to allege in its favor. We used at first to argue against your
facts, because we did not see in what direction they really pointed :
nowadays we allow them all, and we find in them the very best bul-
wark of our own belief."

This argument, or something very like it, has lately been employed
with great effect by Dr. Mitchell, of Edinburgh, in his able and inter-
esting work, " The Past in the Present." The Scotch archaeologist
there shows good grounds for supposing that the cave-men and the
river-drift men were really, in faculties and potentialities, the equals
of most existing savages, if not even of our own average English
population. He gives excellent reasons for the belief that while we
have advanced very greatly in social organization and in material
comfort since that early date, we may have advanced very little, if
at all, in brain-power or in potentiality of thought. There are still
isolated communities in out-of-the-way parts of Scotland which use
hand-made pottery of the rudest primeval type, and spin with stone
whorls of the prehistoric pattern ; while their works of imitative art
are ruder and more unlike the originals they depict than anything
ever attempted by the earliest known men. Yet these people, as Dr.
Mitchell rightly observes, are fully the equals in intelligence and
moral feeling of their contemporaries in the great manufacturing
centers. Hence we must not confound mere material backwardness
with lowness of type or intellectual deficiency. It is probable, nay,
almost certain, that the ordinary cave-man was superior in ingenuity
and mental power to nine out of ten among our modern savages, and
quite equal to the fair run of our own laboring classes.

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Nevertheless, I believe it is allowable for us frankly to admit all
these facts, and yet remain evolutionists just as heartily as before.
No doubt our general tendency was at first in the opposite direction,
and many evolutionists will be staggered by the conclusions of Pro-
fessor Dawkins and Dr. Mitchell, while others will endeavor, under the
influence of false prepossessions, to dispute their facts. But modifi-
ability of opinion is the true test of devotion to truth, and honest
thinkers can hardly fail to modify their opinions on this question
in accordance with the latest discoveries. After frankly and fairly
facing all the difficulties of the situation, I believe we may come at
last to the following conclusions, which, for clearness' sake, I will
number separately : 1. The cave-men were not only true men, but
men of a comparatively high type. 2. But the river-drift men, who
preceded them, were men of a lower social organization, and probably
of a lower physical organization as well. 3. The earliest human re-
mains which we possess, though, on the whole, decidedly human, are
yet, in some respects, of a type more brute-like than that of any exist-
ing savages. 4. They specially recall the most striking traits of the
larger anthropoid apes. 5. There is no reason to suppose that these
remains are those of the earliest men who inhabited the earth. G.
There is good reason for believing that before the evolution of man
in his present specific type, a man-like animal, belonging to the same
genus, but less highly differentiated, lived in Europe. 7. From this
man-like animal the existing human species is descended. 8. Analogy
would lead us to suppose that the line of descent which culminates in
man first diverged from the line of descent which culminates in the goril-
la and the chimpanzee, about the later Eocene or early Miocene period.

In order to give such proof of these propositions as the fragment-
ary evidence yet admits, it will be necessary first to clear the ground
of one or two common misapprehensions. And, before all, let us get
rid of that strangely unscientific and unphilosophical expression, the
Stone age.

Most people who have not specially studied prehistoric archaeol-
ogy, and many of those who have studied it, believe that the period
of human life on the earth may be divided into three principal epochs,
the Iron age, the Bronze age, and the Stone age ; and that the last-
named epoch may be once more subdivided into the Palaeolithic and
the Neolithic ages. All the great archaeologists know, of course, that
such a division would be utterly misleading ; yet, in their written
works, they have often used language which has led the world gen-
erally to fall, almost without exception, into the error. The division
in question can only be paralleled by a division of all human his-
tory into three periods, the age of Steam, the age of Printing, and
the age of IJnprinted Books ; the latter being subdivided into the
mediaeval and the Egyptian ages. The real facts may much better
be represented thus :

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN?

97

There are two great geological epochs in which we find remains
of man. The first is that of the palaeolithic or old chipped-flint
weapons. The second is the modern or recent period, including
the three so-called Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages. The first or
paleolithic epoch is separated from the second or recent epoch by a
vast and unknown lapse of time. We may place its date at some-
where about 200,000 years back. The remains of human origin be-
longing to it all occur under the conditions which we ordinarily
describe as geological ; they are found either in the drift deposits of
our river-valleys or beneath the concreted floors of caves. They con-
sist chiefly of rude stone weapons, in unpolished flint, chipped off by
side-blows. What events caused the break in continuity between
palaeolithic and recent man in Europe we do not exactly know ; but
many of the best authorities believe that it was brought about by the
coming on of the last glacial epoch (that is to say, the final cold spell
of the recurrent pleistocene cycles). If these authorities are right,
then at a period earlier than 200,000 years since, Europe was peopled
by palaeolithic men ; and about 80,000 years ago these men were very
gradually driven southward by the spread of the polar ice over the
whole of the northern tenrperate zone. Be this as it may, however,
we know, at any rate, that they belonged to a far earlier state of
things, when the whole geographical condition of Europe differed in
many respects from that which prevails at the present day.

On the other hand, recent man in Europe dates back, probably,
only some twenty thousand years or so. His remains, whether of the
Neolithic, the Bronze, or the Iron age, are found in tumuli still stand-
ing on the surface of the ground. Since his reappearance here, no
notable changes have taken place in the face of the country. Instead
of occurring in deep natural deposits or under the solid floors of pri-
meval caves, his bones and his weapons are found in graves or mounds
of recent make. The neolithic men, though they used implements of
stone, polished them exquisitely by grinding and smoothing, and were
in all respects, save in the use of metals and a few similar particulars,
as advanced as their successors of the Bronze age. No great gap in
time separates them from the bronze and iron men, as a great gap sep-
arates all three from the palaeolithic cave-men and drift-men. They
were probably identical with two modern races, in three successive
stages of their culture ; whereas, the palaeolithic race is cut off utterly
from the recent race by a whole unknown interval, presumably repre-
senting the time during which Northern Europe was glaciated. Ac-
cordingly, with recent man we shall have nothing to do here.

Again, I must further premise that the very question which heads
this paper — who was Primitive Man ? — is in itself a somewhat irra-
tional one. For of course, if we accept the evolutionist theory at all,
there never was a first man. The early undifferentiated ancestors of
men and anthropoid apes slowly developed along different lines toward

VOL. XXII. — 7

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

different specific forms ; but there never was a point in the series at
which one might definitely put down one's finger and say, " Here the
man -like ape became a complete man." All that we can do is to de-
cide that the ancestors of modern man at such and such a given date
had progressed just so far in their way toward the existing highest type.

Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his recent work on " Early Man in
Britain," and in his discourse at the last meeting of the British Asso-
ciation, has so clearly summed up the results of all the latest investiga-
tions as to palaeolithic man that it will only be necessary here briefly
to recapitulate the views he has enunciated. He divides the men of
the Pleistocene period in Europe and Asia into two successive classes,
the earlier or river-drift men, and the later or cave-men. The drift of
the Thames, Somme, and other rivers is the earliest geological stratum
in which we find unquestionable evidence of the existence of man.
The evidence in point consists entirely of chipped flint instruments of
the very rudest type, incomparably ruder than anything produced by
the very lowest of modern savages. Man at that period was clearly a
rough and perhaps almost solitary hunter, using rude triangular stone
implements. Moreover, we have evidence of that homogeneous con-
dition which betokens an early stage of evolution, in the fact that im-
plements of precisely the same sort are found all over Europe, Asia,
and Africa. The primaeval hunter who chased the stag in Africa had
brethren who chased the fallow deer in Spain and Italy, and others
who chased the various wild beasts among the jungles of India. Over
the whole Eastern hemisphere, so far as we can judge, man was then a
single homogeneous race, living everywhere the same life, and pro-
ducing everywhere the same rude and primitive weapons.

The drift-men were succeeded, in Northern Europe at least, by an-
other and higher development of humanity, the cave-men. How far
they may have differed physically from their predecessors of the Drift
period we have no sufficient means of judging ; but the analogy of
other human varieties would lead us to suspect that they presented
some marked signs of advance ; for we know that among all existing
races there is a pretty constant ratio between social development and
physical peculiarities. At any rate, the cave-men were apparently far
more advanced in the rudiments of culture than the drift-men, espe-
cially toward the end of the cave period, during which they made
continuous advances in the arts of life. Their weapons, though still
chipped (instead of being ground, like those of the neolithic Europe-
ans and the modern savages), were more varied in shape and better
worked than the rude triangular hatchets of the drift. They manu-
factured, in their last stage, excellent barbed harpoons of good designs.
They made fish-hooks and needles of bone with some degree of finish.
They employed ruddle for personal decoration, and collected fossil
shells, which they drilled and strung as necklaces. Moreover, they
had a remarkable talent for imitative art, producing spirited sketches

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 99

on mammoth ivory or reindeer horn of various animals, living or ex-
tinct. In fact, they seem to have been in most essential particulars
almost as advanced as the modern Esquimaux, with whom Professor
Dawkins conjecturally identifies them.

But if Professor Dawkins means us to understand that the cave-
men were physically developed to the same extent as the Esquimaux, it
is necessary to accept his conclusion with great caution. It does not
follow, because the Esquimaux are the nearest modern parallels of the
cave-men, that the cave-men therefore resembled them closely in ap-
pearance. Several of the sketches of cave-men, cut by themselves on
horn and bone, certainly show (it seems to me) that they were covered
with hair over the whole body ; and the hunter in the antler from the
Duruthy cave has a long pointed beard and high crest of hair on the
poll utterly unlike the Esquimau type. The figures are also those of
a slim and long-limbed race. And when Professor Dawkins tells us
that the very earliest known man was unquestionably a man and not
a " missing link," it becomes a matter of importance to decide exactly
what the phrase " a missing link " is held to imply.

Man differs from the anthropoid apes mainly in the immensely
larger development of his brain ; for the other peculiarities of his pel-
vis, his teeth, and the position of his head on the shoulders, are mere
small adaptive points, dependent upon his upright attitude and the
nature of his food. Even the lowest savage and the oldest known
human skull have a brain-capacity far bigger in proportion than that
of the highest apes. Now, this brain could not, of course, have been
developed per saltum • it must have been slowly evolved in the course
of a long and special intercourse with nature. But between civilized
man and his early ancestor, common to him and the anthropoid apes,
there must at some time have existed every possible intermediate link.
Some such links still survive in the Bushman, the Australian black
fellow, and the Andaman-Islander. Other and earlier links probably
became extinct at various previous periods, under the pressure of the
higher varieties from time to time developed, just as these lowest sav-
ages are now in process of becoming extinct before the face of the
European colonist. But we would naturally expect the men of the
palaeolithic period to be still a trifle more brute-like in several small
particulars than any existing savages, because they were so much
the nearer to the primitive common ancestor, a few of whose distinct-
ive traits they would probably retain in a higher degree than any race
now living. In short, while it would be absurd to suppose that palaeo-
lithic men were " missing links " in the sense of being exactly half-way
houses between apes and Bushmen, it is yet natural to expect that they
would be the last or penultimate links in a chain whose other links are
many and wanting. Do we, as a matter of fact, find any such slight
traces of brute-like structure in the earliest human remains which have
come down to us ?

ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In dealing with this question we have to remember in the first
place that the number of quite undoubted palaeolithic human bones of
the earliest period is all but absolutely nil j and that even the few
dubious and suspected bodily remains which we possess, presumably
of that age, are for the most part mere broken fragments. Most of
our palaeolithic bones belong to the latest cave age, and represent a
comparatively high race of savages, known as the Cro-Magnon men.
Of their earlier predecessors we know but little. We have, however,
two remarkable portions of skulls, one of which is almost free from
suspicion, while the other, though more doubtful, is still accepted as
genuine by good Continental anthropologists. Both apparently belong
to the earliest age of the cave-men. The first is the celebrated jaw of
La Naulette. This is a massive and prognathous bone, with enormous
and projecting canine teeth ; and these canine teeth, as Mr. Darwin
notes, point back very clearly to a nearly anthropoid progenitor.* The
second is the much-debated Neanderthal skull, which possesses large
bosses on the forehead, strikingly suggestive of those which give the
gorilla its peculiarly fierce appearance. So good an anatomist as Pro-
fessor Rolleston assures us that, if these frontal sinuses had been
found without the skull to which they are attached, he would have
been a bold man indeed who would venture to pronounce them human.
The thickness of the bones in the rest of the Neanderthal skeleton, to
which Professor Schaaf hausen calls attention, also approximates to the
anthropoid pattern. " No other human skull," says that able anthro-
pologist, " presents so utterly bestial a type as the Neanderthal frag-
ment. If one cuts a female gorilla skull in the same fashion, the
resemblance is truly astonishing, and we may say that the only human
feature in this skull is its size." All the skulls of what De Quatre-
fages and Hamy call the " Canstadt race " show these same low char-
acteristics, and " must have presented a strangely savage aspect."
The other supposed relics of the earlier cave-men are either too slight,
too much crushed, or too uncertain, to be of much use for purposes of
argument. When we add that even the later cave-man was almost
certainly hairy, like the modern Ainos, we have before us the picture
of what may fairly be considered a sort of missing link, though only
the last in a long chain.

Moreover, it is a most deceptive practice to speak of the cave-men
as if they were a single set of people, representing a merely temporary
type. As a matter of fact, the period covered by the cave remains is
enormously long, and the men of one epoch must have differed widely
from those of another. M. de Mortillet has actually distinguished
three subdivisions of the cave period, marked by a successive improve-

* Since this article was sent to press, Professor Maska, of Neutitschein, has discovered
a human jaw-bone, associated with pleistocene mammalian remains, in the Schipka cave
(Moravia). This bone, which belonged to a very young child (as inferred from the devel-
opment of the teeth), " is of very large, indeed, of colossal dimensions."

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 101

ment in the arts of working stone and bone, to which he gives the
names of the Moustier epoch, the Solutre epoch, and the La Madelaine
epoch, from the stations which best typify each stage of primitive
culture. M. Broca has shown that, between the time when the Mous-
tier cave was inhabited by troglodytes and the time when the La
Madelaine cave was similarly inhabited, the valley of the Vezere had
undergone a denudation to the depth of twenty-seven metres ; while
from the date of the La Madelaine cave to our own time the denudation
was only four or five metres. In other words, the interval between
the two epochs was far greater than the interval between the last of
them and our own times.

As to the drift-men, the few bones attributed to them are so singu-
larly and suspiciously like those of neolithic times that it seems very
unsafe to build any definite conclusion upon them. Accordingly,
when Professor Dawkins tells us that " the river-drift man first comes
before us endowed with all human attributes, and without any signs
of a closer alliance with the lower animals than is presented by the
savages of to-day," I think we must venture to suspend judgment for
the present. Seeing that a later skull, like that of Neanderthal, is strik-
ingly ape-like in one most important particular, is considerably lower
in general type than that of the lowest living savage, and (as Professor
Huxley has shown) is rather nearer the chimpanzee than the modern
European in outline, it seems hazardous to conclude on very dubious
evidence that a still earlier race had skulls as wTell formed as those of
the neolithic Iberians. The least doubtful cases are acknowledged to
be identical in character with the far later Cro-Magnon remains (be-
longing to the latest cave age), which in itself is enough to rouse con-
siderable suspicion. So many supposed palaeolithic skeletons, like the
"fossil man" of Mentone, have turned out on further examination to
be neolithic or later, that it is unwise to base conclusions upon them,
when those conclusions clearly run counter to the general course of
evolution.

With regard to the previous history of the human race, we can only
guess at it by the analogy of the other higher mammalia. But late
researches have all gone to show that the general progress of mamma-
lian development has been singularly regular. If we apply this anal-
ogy, and couple it with the other known and observed facts, we may
be able still further to bridge over the gap between man and his an-
thropoid progenitor. As Professor Huxley remarks, " The first traces
of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded need no longer be
sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive
development, in the newest tertiaries ; they may be looked for in an
epoch more distant from the age of the JSlephas primicjenius than that
is from us."

The bifurcation of the European placental mammals begins in the
Eocene ; and it is to the Eocene that we must look for the earliest

loz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

appearance of the Primates. At that period, there existed lemurs in
Europe and America, of a transitional type, showing points of resem-
blance to the hoofed animals of the same age, the ancestors of our own
horses and tapirs. The Eocene was the epoch of the first great pla-
cental mammalian population, and we know that in such early epochs
of each main class, when the class is assuming a dominant position, it
always possesses an immense plasticity, rapidly dividing and subdivid-
ing into more and more definitely specialized types. Accordingly, it
was probably as early as this period that the ancestors of the higher
apes began to differentiate themselves from the ancestors of the mod-
ern lemurs. All analogy shows us that these divisions begin a long
way down in time, proceed rapidly at first, and grow less rapid as the
various creatures become more and more specialized, so losing their
original plasticity.

In the Miocene, the specialization of the Primates must have con-
tinued very fast ; for as early as the mid-Miocene strata we find in
Continental Europe a large anthropoid ape, identified by good authori-
ties as a close relation of the modern gibbons. Other apes of the same
date are similarly identified as nearly allied with other living genera.
Hence the question naturally arises — if the bifurcation of the Primates
had already proceeded so far in the mid-Miocene period that even ex-
isting genera of higher apes had been fairly well demarkated, must not
the ancestors of man have already begun to be generically distinct
from the ancestors of the other anthropoids ? Is it not consonant with
analogy to suppose that the monkey group should have separated from
the lemur group in the Eocene ; that the anthrojtoid apes should have
separated from the monkeys in the lower Miocene ; and that the hu-
man genus (as distinct from the fully developed human species) should
have separated from the anthropoid apes in the mid-Miocene ? There
seems to be good reason for this conclusion.

In mid-Miocene strata at Thenay, the Abbe Bourgeois has found
certain split flints, some of them bearing traces of fire, which he
believes to be of artificial origin ; and in this belief he is upheld by
M. de Mortillet, Dr. Hamy, MM. de Quatrefages, Worsaae, and Capel-
lini, and other distinguished anthropologists. Specimens may be seen
in the Musee de St. Germain, almost as obviously human in their work-
manship as any of the St. Acheul type. M. Delaunay has similarly
found a rib of an extinct manatee, which seems to have been notched
or cut with a sharp instrument ; and M. Ribeiro, of the Portuguese
geological survey, has noted wrought flints in the Miocene deposits of
the Tagus, which he exhibited in Paris in 1879. On the evidence of
these and other facts M. de Mortillet pronounces in favor of what he
calls Tertiary man. But as he carefully distinguishes him from Qua-
ternary man, "l'homme de St. Acheul" — the river-drift man of Pro-
fessor Dawkins — I suppose he means to imply that this species, though
belonging to the same genus as ourselves, was yet so far unlike us, so

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 103

little differentiated, as to be man only in the generic, not in the spe-
cific sense.

Professor Boyd Dawkins, on the other hand, argues apparently
against the existence of man in any form in Miocene Europe. " There
is," he says, " one important consideration which renders it highly im-
probable that man was then living in any part of the world. No liv-
ino- species of land mammal has been met with in the Miocene fauna.
Man, the most highly specialized of all creatures, had no place in a
fauna which is conspicuous by the absence of all the mammalia now
associated with him. ... If we accept the evidence advanced in fa-
vor of Miocene man, it is incredible that he alone of all the mamma-
lia living in those times in Europe should not have perished, or have
changed into some other form in the long lapse of ages during which
many Miocene genera and all the Miocene species have become ex-
tinct." But, if I understand M. de Mortillet aright j this is just what
he means by distinguishing Tertiary from Quaternary man. Pro-
fessor Dawkins argues as though the animal which split the Abbe
Bourgeois's flints must either have been man or not-man ; but the
whole analogy of evolution would lead us to suppose that it was really
a " tertium quid " or half-man ; as Professor Dawkins himself sug-
gests, a creature " intermediate between man and something else," a
creature which should " bear the same relation to ourselves as the Mio-
cene apes, such as the Mesopithecus, bear to those now living, such as
the Semnopithecus"

But Professor Dawkins, who seems strangely unwilling to admit
the existence of such an intermediate link, endeavors to account for
the split flints of the mid-Miocene by curiously round-about ways. " Is
it possible," he asks, " for the flints in question, which are very differ-
ent from the palaeolithic implements of the caves and river deposits, to
have been chipped or the bone to have been notched without the inter-
vention of man ? If we can not assert the impossibility, we can not
say that these marks prove that man was living in this remote age in
the earth's history. If they be artificial, then I would suggest that
they were made by one of the higher apes then living in France rather
than by man. As the evidence stands at present, we have no satis-
factory proof either of the existence of man in the Miocene or of any
creature nearer akin to him than the anthropomorphous apes. These
views agree with those of Professor Gaudry, who suggests that the
chipped flints and the cut rib may have been the work of the Dryo-
pithecus, or the great anthropoid ape, then living in France. I am,
however, not aware that any of the present apes are in the habit of
making stone implements or cutting bones, although they use stones
for cracking nuts." And, in a foot-note, Professor Dawkins further
observes : " Even if the existing apes do not now make stone imple-
ments or cut bones, it does not follow that the extinct apes were
equally ignorant, because some extinct animals are known to have

104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been more highly organized than any living members of their class."
Does not this reasoning exactly remind one of that which was current
when M. Boucher de Perthes first called attention to the Abbeville
flints ?

Now, I confess I am at a loss to comprehend why Professor Daw-
kins should be so anxious to escape the natural inference that these
flints were split by an ancestor of man. If he were a determined oppo-
nent of evolutionism, it would be easy enough to understand his atti-
tude ; but, as he is a consistent and bold evolutionist, one can hardly
guess why he should go so far out of his way to get rid of a simple
conclusion. lie argues most sti'enuously that man was fully developed
in the Pleistocene age. He can not imagine that man reached this
full development by a sudden leap or miraculous interposition. And,
therefore, he might naturally conclude that an early and less differ-
entiated ancestor of man was living in the Miocene age, and develop-
ing upward through the Pliocene times, till he reached that highly
specialized specific form wdiich he had demonstrably attained in the
later Pleistocene period. Implements such as we should naturally ex-
pect a priori to be produced by such an intermediate form are actually
forthcoming in the Miocene. The traces of use and marks of fire
upon them seem irresistible proofs — the edges are chipped and worn
exactly like those of undoubted flake-knives — while the regular repe-
tition of their shapes is most noticeable. Yet, for some unknown rea-
son, rather than accept the plain conclusion of M. de Mortillet, Pro-
fessor Dawkins prefers to believe that they were produced by apes,
and to leave man without any traceable ancestry whatsoever. Surely
he does not believe that man was suddenly evolved, at a single bound,
from a creature no nearer akin to him " than the anthropomorphous
apes." Yet this is certainly the conclusion which most readers would
draw from his facts and arguments.

It is clear that the difficulty in all these cases depends upon the too
great definiteness of our words, with their hard-and-fast lines of de-
markation, when applied to the gradual and changeful forms of evolv-
ing species. The very question as to the existence and character of
" primitive " man thus becomes one of mere artificial and arbitrary
distinctions. We try to draw a line somewhere, and wherever we
draw it we must necessarily cause confusion. Let us try, then, to set
forth the probable course of evolution in the line which finally cul-
minates in civilized man, from the Eocene age upward, using so far
as possible such language as will the least involve us in classificatory
distinctions.

In the very first part of the Eocene age man's ancestors were very
plastic and unspecialized placental mammals of the early " generalized "
type. They were still so little removed from the original form, so little
adapted for special habits and habitats, that they at the same time
closely resembled the progenitors of the horses and the hedgehogs.

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 105

But before the middle of the Eocene period this homogeneous group
had begun to split up into main branches. And by the later Eocene
times the particular branch to which man's ancestors belonged had
reached, even in Europe, the stage of lemuroid creatures — four-handed
and relatively small-brained animals, still retaining many traces of their
connection with the ancestral horse-like and insectivore-like forms.
These lemuroids were forestine, and, perhaps, nocturnal fruit-eaters.
They lived among trees, which their hands were especially adapted
for climbing.

In the lower Miocene times the lemuroids again must have split up
into two main branches, that of the monkeys and of the lemurs. We
fiud no trace of the monkeys in the remains of this age ; but, as they
were highly developed in the succeeding mid-Miocene period, they must
have begun to be distinctly separated at least as early as this point
of time. To the monkey branch, of course, the progenitors of man
belonged.

By the epoch of the mid-Miocene deposits the monkey tribe had
once more presumably subdivided itself into two or three minor groups,
one of which was that of the anthropoid apes, while another was that
of the supposed man-like animal who manufactured the earliest known
split flints. The anthropoid apes remained true to the old semi-arboreal
habits of the race, and retained their four hands. The man-like ani-
mal apparently took to the low-lying and open plains, perhaps hid in
caves, and, though probably still in part frugivorous, eked out his
livelihood by hunting. We may not unjustifiably picture him to our-
selves as a tall and hairy creature, more or less erect, but with a slouch-
ing gait, black-faced and whiskered, with prominent prognathous muz-
zle, and large pointed canine teeth, those of each jaw fitting into an
interspace in the opposite row. These teeth, as Mr. Darwin suggests,
were used in the combats of the males. His forehead was no doubt
low and retreating, with bony bosses underlying the shaggy eyebrows,
which gave him a fierce expression, something like that of the gorilla.
But already, in all likelihood, he had learned to walk habitually erect,
and had begun to develop a human pelvis, as well as to carry his head
more straight upon his shoulders. That some such an animal must
then have existed seems to me an inevitable corollary from the general
principles of evolution, and a natural inference from the analogy of
other living genera. Moreover, we actually find rude works of art
which occupy a position just midway between the undressed stone
nut-cracker of the ape and the chipped weapons of palaeolithic times.
This creature, then, if he existed at all, was the real primitive man,
and to apply that term to the cave-men or the drift-men is almost as
absurd as to apply it to the civilized neolithic herdsmen.

The supposed Miocene ancestor of humanity must have been ac-
quainted with the use of fire, and have been sufficiently intelligent to
split rude flakes of flint. But his brain was no doubt about half-way

106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between that of the anthropoid apes and that of the Neanderthal skull.
Such an intermediate stage must have been passed through at some
time or other, and the mid-Miocene is just about the time when one
would naturally expect it to have existed. The fact that no bones of
this man-like creature have yet been found militates very little against
the argument, for in all cases the mammalian remains, which we actu-
ally possess from any particular stratum, are a mere tithe of the spe-
cies which we know must have been living during the period when it
was deposited. And, after all, the works of man (or of a man-like
animal) are just as good evidence of his existence as his bones would
be ; for, as Sir John Lubbock rightly observes, the question is whether
men then existed, not whether they had bones or not.

During the Pliocene period, the scent does not lie so well, and we
seem to lose sight for a while of man's ancestry. Such gaps are com-
mon in the geological history, and need surprise no one, considering
the necessarily fragmentary nature of the record, based as it is upon a
few stray bones or bits of flint which may happen to escape destruc-
tion, and be afterward brought to light. Some cut bones, however,
have actually been detected in Tuscan Pliocenes, and may possibly
bear investigation. Professor Dawkins, it is true, objects that the
presence of a piece of rude pottery together with the bones casts much
doubt upon their authenticity. But Professor Capellini, their discov-
erer, now writes that Mr. Dawkins is mistaken in this particular, and
that the pottery belongs to quite a different stratum from the bones.
Other marked remains have been discovered in Pliocene strata else-
where ; and worked flints have been detected in the gravels of St.
Prest, which, however, are of doubtfully Pliocene age. Nevertheless,
the ancestors of man must have gone on acquiring all the distinctive
human features during this period, and especially gaining increased
volume of brain. If we could find entire skeletons of our Miocene and
Pliocene progenitors, analogy leads us to suppose that naturalists would
arrange them as at least two, if not more, separate species of the genus
Homo. Whether we should call them men or not is a mere matter of
nomenclature ; but that such links in the chain of evolution must then
have existed seems to me indisputable.

In the Pleistocene period, we come at last upon undoubted traces
of the existing specific man. The early Pleistocene strata show us
no very certain evidence ; but in the mid-Pleistocene we find the ear-
liest indubitable flint flake, split by chipping, and very different in type
from the workmanship of the supposed mid-Miocene man-like creature.
In the later Pleistocene we get the well-known drift implements.
Without fully accepting Professor Dawkins's argument that the drift-
men were human beings of quite a modern type, one may at least admit
that the remains prove them to have been really men of the actual species
now living — men not much further removed from us than the Anda-
manese or the Digger Indians. Accordingly, we can not suppose that

WHO WAS PRIMITIVE MAN? 107

they had been developed straightway from a totally inferior quadru-
manous form, and reached their Pleistocene mental eminence by a leap.
" The implements of the drift," says Professor Dawkins, " though they
imply that their possessors were savages like the native Australians,
show a considerable advance on the simple flake left behind as the only
trace of man of the mid-Pleistocene age." They also show a still
greater advance upon the very rude chips of the unknown mid-Miocene
ancestor. Hence the j)rogressive improvement is exactly what we
should expect it to be, and we are justified, I think, in concluding that
by the beginning of the Pleistocene age the evolving anthropoid had
reached a point in his development where he might fairly be consid-
ered as a man and a brother. At the beginning of that age, he was
probably what naturalists would recognize as specifically identical with
existing man, but of a very low variety. By the mid-Pleistocene he
had become an ordinary savage of an exaggerated sort, and by the
age of the drift he had reached the stage of making himself mod-
erately shapely stone implements. The river-drift man, however, as
Professor Dawkins believes, has no modern direct representative — or,
to put it more correctly, the whole race, even in its lowest varieties, has
now quite outstripped him, certainly in culture, and probably in phy-
sique as well.

At last, we reach the age of the cave-men. By that period, man
had become to a certain extent cultured. He had learned how to
make finished implements of stone and bone, and to draw and carve
with spirit and with a rude imitative accuracy. It is possible enough
that the cave-man was the direct ancestor of the Esquimaux, and that
that race has kept its early culture with but few later additions and
improvements.* Nevertheless, it does not at all follow that in phys-
ical appearance the earlier cave-men were the equals of the Esquimaux,
or, indeed, that the Esquimaux are any more nearly related to them
than ourselves. They may have been darker-skinned and less highly
human looking ; they probably had lower foreheads, with high bosses,
like the Neanderthal skull, and big canine teeth like the Naulette jaw.
Even if the Esquimaux are lineally descended from the later cave-men
with little change of habit or increase of culture, the mere lapse of
time, aided by disuse of parts, may have done much to modify and
mollify these brute-like traits. " The fact that ancient races," says
Mr. Darwin, " in this and several other cases " [he is speaking of the
inter-condyloid foramen, observed in so large a proportion of early

* I am not, however, inclined to attach much importance to the evidence of Esquimau
art ; or rather, that art seems to me to point in the opposite direction. After carefully
comparing numerous specimens, I am convinced that the art of the cave-men is of quite
a different type from that of the Esquimaux, and far higher in kind. Both, it is true, rep-
resent animals ; but there the likeness stops. The Esquimaux represent them with
wooden stiffness ; the cave-men represent them with surprising spirit and life-like ac-
curacy.

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

skeletons], " more frequently present structures which resemble those of
the lower animals than do the modern races, is interesting. One chief
cause seems to be that ancient races stand somewhat nearer than mod-
ern races in the long line of descent to their remote animal-like pro-
genitors." We must not be led away by identifications of race in too
absolute a sense. We ourselves are, of course, the lineal descendants
either of the cave-men or of their contemporaries in some geologically
unexplored region ; yet it does not follow on that account that our
late Pleistocene ancestors were white-skinned people with regular
Aryan features. Granting that the Esquimaux are nearer representa-
tives of the cave-men than any other existing race (which is by no
means certain), it may yet be true that the earlier cave-men themselves
were black-skinned, hairy savages, with skulls and brains of the low
and brutal Neanderthal pattern. The physical indications certainly
go to show that they were most like the Australian savages.

With the cave-men our inquiry ceases. The next inhabitants of
Europe were the comparatively modern and civilized neolithic Euska-
rians — a race whom we may literally describe as historical. I trust,
however, that I have succeeded in pointing out the main fallacy
which, as it seems to me, underlies so much of our current reasoning
on " primitive man." This fallacy lies in the tacit assumption that
man is a single modern species, not a tertiary genus with only one
species surviving. The more we examine the structxtre of man and
of the anthropoid apes, the more does it become clear that the dif-
ferences between them are merely those of a genus or family, rather
than distinctive of a separate order, or even a separate sub-order. But
I suppose nobody would claim that they were merely specific ; in other
words, it is pretty generally acknowledged that the divergence be-
tween man and the anthropoids is greater than can be accounted for
by the immediate descent of the living form from a common ancestor
in the last preceding geological age. Mr. Darwin even ranks man as
a separate family or sub-family. Therefore, according to all analogy,
there must have been a man-like animal, or a series of man-like ani-
mals, in later, if not in earlier tertiary times ; and this animal or these
animals would in a systematic classification be grouped as species of
the same genus with man. In the Abbe Bourgeois's mid-Miocene split
flints we seem to have evidence of such an early human species ; and
I can conceive no reason why evolutionists should hesitate to accept the
natural conclusion. To speak of palaeolithic man himself — a hunter,
a fisherman, a manufacturer of polished bone needles and beautiful
barbed harpoons, a carver of ivory, a designer of better sketches than
many among ourselves can draw — as " primitive," is clearly absurd.
A long line of previous evolution must have led up to him by slow
degrees. And the earliest trace of that line, in its distinctively human
generic modification, we seem to get in the very simple flint implements
and notched bones of Thenay and Pouanc6. — Fortnightly Revieio.

LIFE AMONG THE B ATT AS OF SUMATRA. 109
LIFE AMONG THE BATTAS OF SUMATRA.

By Dr. A. SCHEEIBEE.*

ALTHOUGH the Battas have a writing and a very limited litera-
ture, it has never occurred to any one among them to compile
and preserve their historical traditions. Consequently their history,
as we know it, reaches hack for only a short distance in time, and
gives no clew by the aid of which we can learn when and whence they
came to Sumatra. They are not able to trace their origin to any
greater distance than the highlands of Toba, where the greater part of
their people now dwell. The tradition of their derivation from Toba
prevails, so far as I know, among all of their tribes, on every side of
the highlands. We are not well enough acquainted with the interior
of Northern Sumatra to be able to state how far they may have
pressed toward the southwest ; but they are found in the south to the
equator and on the west and east in single spots to points immediately
on the sea. They seem to have conquered their settlements in the
southern districts a considerable time ago, and to have subjected or
destroyed the Malayan aborigines.

We will go into a Batta town early in the morning. The night-
mists have not yet disappeared from the woods around, but we al-
ready hear a bustle, as we are approaching the edge of the village,
of women pounding rice. The rice, which is the principal food of the
people, is always kept in the hull, and is thrashed out day by day as
it is needed. The thrashing is done with hard-wood pestles eight or
ten feet long in wooden mortars made from a stump or a log. It is
hard work, yet the women are frequently accustomed to perform it
with their babies strapped to their backs, where the infant is exposed
to all the abrupt and awkward oscillations of the mother's head. The
rice must be carefully cleaned after it is thrashed, for the lord of tho
house will not be trifled with, and, if he finds a husk in his breakfast, it
may turn out a bad day for the woman.

The town is composed of a street about fifty feet wide, with a row
of respectable-looking houses, all built on piles, on either side. We
are, in fact, in a land of pile-houses, and nothing more than a glance
around is needed to convince the visitor of the fallacy of the notion
that all the pile-houses were built in lakes. The Batta houses are
some eight or ten feet high, frequently set up on still higher poles.
The poles are not very large, but are made of wood selected for its
lasting qualities, and often of heart-wood. They are planted in the
ground in rows, and so connected by cross-bars that, shake as much
as it may in time of storm or earthquake, the house will not fall

* Abridged from articles in " Das Ausland."

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

down. The house is reached hy stairs which are connected in some
cases with the gable-front, in others with a trap-door in the middle
of the floor. The buildings are of two distinct types. The dwelling-
houses proper consist of a tightly inclosed story, having a few small
windows, and covered with an overhanging roof, the high gables of
which permit the garret-space to be left open for the free circulation
of the outer air. Another class of houses, which are evidently pavil-
ions of luxury and indicate wealth, are built on larger posts than the
others, and have no inclosure whatever. They have a fire-place in the
middle of the floor, seats and lounges, and perhaps a balustrade around
the edge. The roof-space is separated from the rest by a flooring and
used as a granary. The lower open story of these sopos serves for a
variety of uses. Strangers and guests coming to the town are re-
ceived in them ; the men sit in them mornings and evenings, chatting
and smoking ; justice is administered and public business transacted
in them ; they are occupied during the day by women weaving ; and
at night strangers, widowers, and unmarried young men sleep in
them.

The Batta does not make his morning toilet in the house, but at
the special bathing-places, or pantjurs, with which every village is pro-
vided. These places are arranged at a running stream or a canal made
for the purpose, by fixing a water-pipe of bamboo in such a manner
that a man standing or sitting under it can have the water run all
over his body. Such baths are taken morning and evening. Separate
pantjurs are provided for the women. It is one of the morning duties
of the women and girls, even down to children of four and five years
old, to bring drinking-water in the gargitis, a water-vessel made of a
thick stalk of bamboo. The size and strength of growing girls are
generally measured by the number of gargitis they can carry.

Let us follow a woman into one of the inclosed dwelling-houses.
The floor is made of round bamboo beams about as large as one's arm,
across which are laid split bamboos far enough apart to let the water
and dirt through, and make sweeping unnecessary. Broad, raised seats
and lounges, covered with mats of various patterns and styles, are
arranged on either side. In the corners are fire-places of a primeval
simplicity, flat, square boxes filled with earth, and upon these some
thick stones, between which the fire burns quite briskly, while the rice
is cooked in home-made earthen vessels set upon them. The number
of families living in the house can generally be calculated from the
number of fire-places to be seen., No division is made in the day-time
between the parts of the house occupied by the different families, but
a separation is made between the sleeping-places at night by hanging
up mats. Ordinarily, only blood relations live together in the same
house. The children of both sexes, after they have grown up, sleep
outside of the house and not with their parents, the young men in the
sopos, the girls in parties of several with some old widow ; but the

LIFE AMONG THE B ATT AS OF SUMATRA. m

children, till they have households of their own, take their meals with
their parents. At meals the whole family sit around the rice-pots.
They formerly used leaves for plates, but they now generally have
European plates. As a rule, they eat immediately from the hand,
which is previously washed in a vessel of water kept ready for the
purpose. The nice point in eating consists in not allowing the finger-
tips to touch the lips, but in letting the rice drop from the fingers into
the hollow of the hand just before it is given to the mouth.

The Batta men do not always begin their day with breakfast. In
the busy season of rice-culture they often have a couple of hours'
work to do in the rice-field. If the man is wealthy enough to have a
buffalo, he has to drive him all around and over the field between the
rows, so as to destroy the weeds by treading them down into the soft
mud. It is most convenient to do this early in the morning, as the
buffaloes are driven from the yard to the pasture. If the man has no
buffalo, he has to dig at the weeds laboriously with his hoe. The buf-
falo is the principal domestic animal of the Battas, and is kept chiefly
for treading out the rice-fields. The value of the animal is regulated
by the length of his horns, and this is measured by comparison of the
length of his owner's arm from the forefinger. If the horns are long
enough to reach to the arm-pits on the other side, the animal corre-
sponds with the Batta equivalent for " thorough-bred."

The sugar-palm affords the common drink of the people, which
they call tunak, and of which a single tree, if properly taken care of,
will furnish a considerable daily supply for months at a time. Fla-
vored and made stronger by the addition of bitter roots, it is greatly
enjoyed by the many, though despised by a few, and may be indulged
in to a considerable excess without making drunk. It has become a
burning question, among those who have been converted to Moham-
medanism, whether the drinking of tunak is allowable under their
law, and the favorite beverage may yet become the occasion of a re-
ligious schism.

The Battas attribute all serious sickness to the work of evil spirits,
begu ; and, as they know by experience that persons who go down from
the highlands and remain for a considerable length of time on the
coast or in the flat country are liable to be attacked by a virulent
fever after their return, they have come to consider the begu of the
sea, the begu laut, a particularly malignant and dangerous spirit.

A woman who had been visiting her relatives in the flat country
was attacked and brought low with one of these fevers. Her husband
did not hesitate long, for she was a valuable help and had cost half his
estate in purchase-fees, but sent immediately for the most famous datu,
or medicine-man, in the region. An honorarium regulated by the
value at which the wife was held was paid the doctor, and an equal
sum was promised him in case of recovery. Incantations and external
means were tried for a few days with no beneficial results, and then

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the doctor decided that he must make a parsili: this was a figure of
the sick person, of about her size, cut out of the soft stem of a banana-
tree, and clothed with a few rags. It is dedicated to the particular
object it is designed to serve, with a certain set of magic forms, and
is laid in the road outside of the town, with the expectation that
the wicked spirit will come out of the sick person and go into it.
As another means of making sure that this should happen, the sick
woman was " stolen," or secretly taken in the night to another house.
When all this proved to be of no avail, the medicine-man declared
that he had an extremely perverse spirit to deal with, and must use
the most energetic means to drive it out. He pounded up a double
handful of the terribly sharp red and green Spanish peppers, and
sprinkled the juice into the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears of the poor
sick woman, in order to bring the spirit to terms by means of the
fearful pain the operation excited. When this did not help, the medi-
cine-man lost confidence, notwithstanding a hen was sacrificed in his
honor every day, and would not stay any longer. He did not say so,
however, but went off secretly ; for he foresaw that he would inevi-
tably suffer great shame and reproach if the patient should die on his
hands. Of course — for that is understood there — he would have to
go away empty-handed if the case proved fatal.

An expedient sometimes resorted to in desperate cases is to consult
the begu itself for advice. For this purpose all the sick person's family
connections living in the town, men, women, and children, assemble at
the house. The room having been cleared for the occasion, is dimly
illuminated by means of torches made by rolling up a leaf and pouring
melted pitch into it. The spectators take their places in a circle around
the room, while the actors in the drama are seated in the middle. On
one side are the musicians, two, four, six, or eight young fellows, armed
with drums of bamboo and deer-skin, and cymbals and gongs, bought
from the Chinese, which are kept with the greatest care, in cases spe-
cially made for them, among the most precious heirlooms of the family.
Of course no melody can be brought out from such instruments, but
the musical effect produced by them consists in a variety of rhythms,
some of which are quite complicated and characteristic. Opposite the
orchestra sit two men, one of whom is the sibaro or haroem ni begu,
or medium. Among the Battas who are still heathen, each family or
each town has two of these mediums, generally a man and a woman.
No one devotes himself to the office of medium of his own free-will,
and it requires the learning of no art ; but, when the sibaro dies or
goes away, the begu itself chooses a new one by taking possession of
him ; and, waiting this, the obligate music is kept up in the presence
of the whole family till the desired event takes place. The sibaro is
dressed in his ceremonial robes ; from his head hangs a strip of cloth
reaching to the floor, under which is a vessel of burning incense, the
smoke of which rises to his head. After the music has sounded for a

LIFE AMONG THE B ATT AS OF SUMATRA. u3

short time, the body of the sibaro begins to tremble. He throws off
the cloth and rises, and begins, with outstretched arm and a fixed look
at the distance, slowly to turn to the rhythm of the music. At the
same time a time-keeping convulsion, beginning in his fingers, extends
from limb to limb, finally engaging the whole body, till at last the
man dances in spasmodic leaps, which continue till he collapses in ex-
haustion. The music now ceases, and the time has come for the head
of the family to question the begu which has taken possession of the
medium, first asking its name. The begu, having given its name, then
asks why it has been called ; and in response to this overture the
whole occasion of the trouble is related, and the spirit's good advice
is requested. The most important question is, whether there is any
hope of the recovery of the patient, and what must be done to secure
that desirable result. If the family are not satisfied, as they are not
likely to be with the unfavorable answer that is generally given, the
music and the dancing are repeated, or the process is applied to the
second sibaro. It sometimes happens that the two mediums do not
agree in their revelations, and then the drumming and the dancing
and the questioning are kept up till they are of accord. If the final
answer is that there is no hope for the sick man, he is left to his fate,
which has most probably been made more certain by his having had
to endure the prolonged torture of witnessing these ceremonies ; if a
more favorable answer is given, all that the spirit requires as a con-
dition of recovery is performed in good faith.

If the ceremonies are interrupted by the death of the patient
during their performance, the music ceases and lamentations take its
place ; the company go away, leaving only the nearest relatives of the
deceased at the house ; a few shots are fired, either to drive away evil
spirits, or to give notice of the death, and preparations are begun for
the funeral.

The existence of cannibalism among the Battas and some pecul-
iarities connected with it suggest some questions respecting its origin.
The principal question is whether it is a survival from the original
barbarism of the people, or is an offense of later beginning. All the evi-
dence I have met in my investigations points to the latter conclusion
as more probable. Among the evidences is the fact that the practice
occurs, not among the more degraded tribes, but among those which
are most distinguished from their neighbors by intelligence and cult-
ure. Other facts, favoring the same view, are : 1. The Battas have
traditions of a primitive time when man-eating was unknown among
them. They say that it originated during a long civil war, in the
course of which the hostility of the opposite factions became so em-
bittered that they went to the extremity of eating captured enemies.
2. Cannibalism is unknown among other people evidently related to
the Battas — the inhabitants of the Island of Nias, for instance, whose
language is nearly the same, and who are of a lower degree of civili-

VOL. XXII. — 8

n4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

zation. 3. The fact that cannibalism is practiced, not to satisfy hun-
ger or gratify the taste, but only in cases regulated by law.

Accepting the theory of a comparatively modern origin of canni-
balism, the question still remains, of the immediate occasion of its in-
troduction. Aside from the tradition already mentioned, we can im-
agine but three grounds on which it could have been based. Human
flesh may have been first eaten under stress of necessity, and found so
palatable that the practice was continued ; superstition may have sug-
gested the idea that the eating of the flesh would secure the eater
against the bad influence of the spirit of the eaten one ; or, the igno-
minious extirpation of an offender may have been considered a good
method of showing the general abhorrence of him. This last view, ad-
vocated by Marsden, seems to me most improbable, for it is unthink-
able that cannibalism could have come to prevail in this way among a
people who had not previously known it. The second view, tbat of a
superstitious origin, appears more probable ; and it is no real objection
to it that the Battas now do not know anything of such superstition,
for there are many other customs of which the people who practice
them can not give a satisfactory account. The former view seems, how-
ever, still more probable, for it is most reconcilable with psychological
laws, and agrees with the traditions.

The region within which cannibalism prevails has been consider-
ably contracted within the last three years, in consequence of the ex-
tension of Dutch authority over Silindung and Toba ; for man-eating
is, of course, extinguished wherever Dutch influence prevails. The
heathenism of the Battas is, moreover, fast declining before the per-
sistent attacks of Christianity ; and Mohammedanism, with its most
repulsive traits, must also pass away.

-♦♦*-

SKETCH OF CHARLES ADOLPHE WUETZ.

CHARLES ADOLPHE WURTZ, President of the French Acad-
emy of Sciences, is one of the recognized leaders of modern
chemistry. Much of his work is regarded as of the first importance in
connection with chemical theory, and he is justly considered one of|
the chief pioneers of modern organic chemistry.

Professor Wurtz was born in Strasburg, November 26, 1817, and
was taught in his earlier studies at the Protestant Gymnasium in
that city. He afterward studied in the Medical Faculty of Strasburg,
where he was chief of the chemical department from 1839 to 1844,
and received his degree in 1843. He began his chemical career as an
assistant to Dumas. Having come to Paris, he was made preparateur
to the course of organic chemistry of the Faculty in 1845. He after-

SKETCH OF CHARLES ADOLPHE WURTZ. 115

ward filled the position of chief of the chemical department in the
School of Arts and Manufactures from 1846 to 1851, and was made a
fellow in 1846. He gained his first independent position in 1851, as
professor in the Agricultural Institute at Versailles. After the death
of Orfila, in 1853, and the retirement of Dumas, in 1854, the chairs
which they had filled were united in the chair of Medical Chemistry,
and Professor Wurtz was made its occupant. In 1866 he became
Dean of the Medical Faculty, and gained much credit as such by his
firm and moderate course during the troubles with the students in 1867
and 1868, when the best professors in the faculty were denounced to
the Senate. He resigned this office in April, 1875, and was appointed,
in the following August, Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Fac-
ulty of Sciences. He has also been a member of the hygienic com-
mittee, a member and secretary of the Chemical Society, and a member
of the Philomathic Society.

The chemical researches of Professor Wurtz have been numerous,
original, and important. The Royal Society's catalogue contains a
list of seventy-three titles to papers which were published by him pre-
vious to 1864. The publication of his investigations was begun in
1842, with a paper on the constitution of the hypophosphites. This was
followed by researches on phosphorous acid, sulpho-phosphoric acid,
etc., which greatly added to our knowledge of the phosphorus com-
pounds. It was during his experiments on the hypophosphites that
he discovered the hydride of copper, a substance which derives in-
terest from its own peculiarities, as well as on account of the rarity of
metallic hydrides. Professor Wurtz's next researches were directed
to the cyanic and cyanuric ethers, and brought forth, among other re-
sults, the discovery, in 1849, of the so-called compound ammonias
formed by the displacement of one of the atoms of hydrogen in am-
monia, by organic radicals like methyl and ethyl. A third important
investigation, published in 1855, resulted in the confirmation of the
theory of Laurent, Gerhardt, and Hoffmann, of the double nature of
the alcohol radicals — that the substances obtained from alcohol as
radicals were not the simple radicals, but were compounds of those
radicals with themselves. This has afforded one of the strongest ar-
guments in favor of the view now generally entertained by chemists,
that free hydrogen is a compound of hydrogen with hydrogen. Other
investigations, which must enter into the summing up of the work of
Professor Wurtz in this line, are those on the glycols, and on ethylene
oxide ; on the action of nascent hydrogen on aldehyde ; on the action
of chlorine on aldehyde ; on the action of hydrochloric acid on alde-
hyde ; on the synthesis of neurine ; and on abnormal vapor den-
sities.

In 1864 he was awarded, at the instance of the Academy of Sci-
ences, the Emperor's biennial prize of twenty thousand francs. Two
years afterward, or in 1867, he was elected a member of the Academy,

n6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the chemical section, in place of M. Pelouzet. In 1878 he received
the Faraday medal from the English Royal Society, and was elected a
member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Professor Wurtz presided at the meeting of the French Associ-
ation for the Progress of Science which was held at Lille in 1874,
and delivered the opening address, on the subject of the " Theory of
Atoms in the General Conception of the Universe." In this address
he revealed a catholicity of spirit, including all men of every nation
and creed, and every branch of science, in a community of interest
and privilege in the advancement of knowledge, and a poetic capacity
of temperament, to which his dry chemical researches gave few oppor-
tunities of expression. After sketching Bacon's plan, or dream, for
the universal exploration of the earth and the cosmic forces, he said :
" Two centuries and a half ago the conception of Bacon was regarded
as a noble Utopia ; to-day it is a reality. That magnificent pro-
gramme which he then drew out is ours, gentlemen ; ours not in the
narrow sense of the word, for I extend this programme to all Avho, in
modern times and in all countries, give themselves to the search for
truth, to all workers in science, humble or great, obscure or famous,
who form in reality in all parts of the globe, and without distinction
of nationality, that vast association which was the dream of Francis
Bacon. Yes, science is now a neutral field, a commonwealth, placed
in a. serene region, far above the political arena, inaccessible, I wish I
could say, to the strifes of parties ; in a word, this property is the
patrimony of humanity." Having reviewed the recent progress in the
sciences of chemistry, physics, and physical astronomy, and spoken of
the kinetic theory, he added that these sciences " teach us that the
worlds which people infinite space are made like our own system, and
the great universe is all movement, co-ordinated movement. But,
new and marvelous fact, this harmony of the celestial spheres of which
Pythagoras spoke, and which a modern poet has celebrated in immor-
tal verse, is met with in the world of the infinitely little. There, also,
all is co-ordinated movement, and these atoms, whose accumulation
forms matter, have never any repose ; a grain of dust is full of in-
numerable multitudes of material unities, each of which is agitated by
movements. All vibrates in the little world, and this universal rest-
lessness of matter, this ' atomic music,' to continue the metaphor of
the ancient philosopher, is like the harmony of worlds ; and is it not
true that the imagination is equally bewildered and the spirit equally
troubled by the spectacle of the illimitable immensity of the universe,
and by the consideration of the millions of atoms which people a drop
of water ? " The address concluded with the words : " Such is the
order of nature ; and, as Science penetrates it further, she brings to
light both the simplicity of the means set at work and the infinite
variety of the results. Thus, through the corner of the veil we have
been permitted to raise, she enables us to see both the harmony and

SKETCH OF CHARLES ADO LP HE WURTZ. 117

the profundity of the plan of the universe. Then we enter on another
domain which the human spirit will be always impelled to enter and
explore. It is thus, and you can not change it. It is in vain that Sci-
ence has revealed to it the structure of the world and the order of all
the phenomena ; it wishes to mount higher, and in the conviction that
things have not in themselves their own reason for existing, their sup-
port, and their origin, it is led to subject them to a first cause — unique,
universal God."

In 18T8 Professor Wurtz delivered the Faraday Lecture of the
English Chemical Society, taking for his subject " The Constitution of
Matter in the Gaseous State." In this lecture he gave a clear exposi-
tion of the kinetic theory of gases, which postulates them as " com-
posed of small particles moving freely in space with immense veloci-
ties, and capable of communicating their motion by collision or friction,"
and suggested that it had " shed a sudden clearness, an unexpected
light, on matters which seemed to be veiled in the deepest obscurity,"
and added that the labors by which this theory had been worked out
"mark a resting-place in our course, and are, perhaps, an approach
toward the eternal problem of the constitution of matter — a problem
which dates from the earliest ages of civilization, and, though dis-
cussed by all the great thinkers of ancient as well as of modern times,
still remains unsolved. May we not hope that in our own time this
problem has been more clearly stated and more earnestly attacked,
and that the labors of the nineteenth century have advanced the hu-
man mind in these arduous paths more than those of a Lucretius, and
even of a Descartes and a Newton ? From this point of view the dis-
coveries of modern chemistry, so well expressed and summarized by
the immortal conception of Dalton, will mark an epoch in the progress
of the human mind."

In the same year Professor Wurtz, having been charged by the
French Minister of Public Instruction to make inquiry into the organi-
zation of the laboratories and the practical instruction given in the
several univei'sities of Germany and Austi'o-Hungary, made a num-
ber of journeys to the great seats of learning in those countries. In
his report he insisted strongly on the danger of creating large estab-
lishments, where students are taught something of everything, and on
the necessity of creating special foci for every large section of experi-
mental science. He showed the advantage of special institutes, and
insisted upon the organization of chemical, physical, physiological,
anatomical, and pathological institutions, such as flourish on the other
side of the Rhine.

A second report on this series of observations has been published
within the present year. It contains descriptions of the great scien-
tific establishments of Berlin, Buda-Pest, Gratz, Leipsic, and Munich,
and is confined to a simple account of what the author observed in the
institutions described ; for, he says, " an unmeasured and uncritical

n8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

approbation in such a matter would be equally misplaced. . . . Every-
thing has been said upon the importance of high scientific training,
one of the treasures of the human mind. A great country should in-
crease it continually, in order to be able to diffuse it abundantly."

Besides the multitude of papers embodying the results of his spe-
cial investigations, and his addresses, Professor Wurtz is the author of
a number of works of a more general character, among which are his
" Traite elementaire de Chimie medicale " (Elementary Treatise on
Medical Chemistry), 3 vols., Paris, 1864-'65 ; "Lecons elementaires de
Chimie modern e " (Elementary Lessons of Modern Chemistry), 1866-
'68 ; " Dictionnaire de Chimie pure et appliquee " (Dictionary of Pure
and Applied Chemistry), 1868 and following years, with an introduc-
tion published separately in 1868, under the title " Histoire des Doc-
trines chimiques " (History of Chemical Doctrines) ; " Les hautes
Etudes pratiques dans les Universites Allemandes " (High Practical
Studies in the German Universities) ; and an unfinished " Treatise on
Biological Chemistry" (vol. i, 1880). The "Dictionary" just men-
tioned, which was completed in 1879, after twelve years of preparation
and publication in numbers, is pronounced by the "Revue Scienti-
fique " the most complete treatise on chemistry now existing in France.
In its preparation, Professor Wurtz was assisted by his fellow-chemists
and compatriots, who contributed special articles, each working in the
line to which he had given the most attention. Professor Wurtz him-
self furnished the theoretical articles, especially those having reference
to the theory of atoms and their unitary grouping in compounds, of
which he is the leading expositor. " In these articles," says the " Re-
vue Scientifique," " the reader will recognize the vigor and precision
of style which are the stamp of the works of M. Wurtz." In English
translations have been published " Chemical Philosophy according to
Modern Theories " (London, 1867), and " Theory from the Age of La-
voisier" (1869). His two latest works, in their English translations,
have gained considerable circulation in the United States. The " Ele-
ments of Modern Chemistry " (1880) is a text-book, the leading feat-
ures of which are defined by a discriminating critic in " Nature " to
be " clearness of statement, selection of typical facts from among the
vast array at the service of the chemical compiler, and devotion of a
comparatively large space to chemical theory, and to generalizations
which are usually dismissed in a few words in the ordinary text-book " ;
withal, notwithstanding its copiousness, the book " is exceedingly in-
teresting and eminently readable." The "Academy," reviewing the
same work, speaks of its author as " universally recognized as one of
the most able of living chemists ; he is also an exact thinker, deeply
imbued with philosophical ideas, and a very successful teacher." The
book comprises a complete introduction to both inorganic and organic
chemistry, and presents the newest ideas regarding such subjects as
atomicity and isomerism. The other book, " The Atomic Theory," is

SKETCH OF CHARLES ADOLPHE WURTZ. 119

one of the " International Scientific Series," and fits in well with what
is perhaps the most important work of the author's life ; for it records
the development and present position of a doctrine which he has had
as large a part as, if not a larger part than, any other man in bringing
to the shape in which it is now generally received by chemists. It
embraces an historical introduction, containing a concise, accurate, and
complete history of the theory of atoms from the times of the Greek
philosophers and Lucretius, and from the revival of the doctrine by
Dalton to the present time. A second part includes a full exj)osition
of the theory as it is now held and applied. It is described, by the
critic in " Nature " from whom we have quoted, as " at once a scien-
tific treatise and an artistic work, . . . marked with a distinct indi-
viduality and self-completeness," and as conveying a sharp impression,
"without making any great sacrifice of accuracy."

All of Professor Wurtz's later works are characterized by the
marks of his strong faith in his own conception of the atomic theory,
and for this he has been criticised — perhaps by some one whose theory
is a little different — as too much inclined to treat theoretical considera-
tions as identical with facts, and as, seemingly, supposing facts to be
explained when they are only stated in the language of his theory.
He has himself given an illustration of the manner in which this may
be brought about, by explaining in his Faraday lecture that, whenever
we attempt to make well-observed facts and their immediate conse-
quences— the only certain things in the physical sciences — the basis of
any general theory, " hypothetical data are apt to mix themselves up
with our deductions."

Professor Wurtz has been President of the Academy of Sciences in
Paris since 1881. His merits have been recognized by the French
Government by the bestowal of the decoration of the Legion of Honor
in 1850 and by promotion to the rank of officer in 1863, and to that of
commander on the occasion of his acting as a member of the French
section of the International Jury at the Great Exhibition in London,
in 1869. In July, 1881, he was appointed a Senator for life in the
French Senate, by a large majority, and became the third member of
the Academy of Sciences who was in the enjoyment of a seat in that
body, his two scientific colleagues being M. Robin and M. Dupuy de
Lome.

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THEORY OF THE SUN'S LIGHT AND HEAT.

Messrs. Editors.

IN the June number of "The Popular
Science Monthly," a new theory of the
origin of the light and heat of the sun is
attributed to Dr. II. R. Rogers, of Dunkirk,
New York. An able and succinct statement
of the theory was given by Dr. Rogers, in a
paper read before the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, in Cincin-
nati, August, 1881. But many persons had
already become acquainted with this electric
theory, through a work in which it is fully
and clearly stated, entitled " Light, Heat,
and Gravitation," published in 1879, two
years before the reading of Dr. Rogers's
paper. This work was written by lion.
Zachariah Allen, a well-known scientist and
distinguished citizen of Providence, Rhode
Island. Mr. Allen's new cosmical theory was
the result of a long period of devoted study
and experiment, but, though known to inti-
mate friends, it was not given to the world
till about three years ago. II. P. II.

Peovidence, E. I., June 23, 1882.

ORIGIN OF STORMS.

Messrs. Editors.

While out on the prairies of Dakota
this summer I have observed certain pecul-
iar storms which may throw some light on
the origin of storms. The birth of a storm,
as a writer in "The Popular Science Month-
ly " some time since declared, is a matter
upon which we have as yet no accepted the-
ory.

About a month since I observed late in
the afternoon a thunder-storm moving north-
east, the rain of which barely touched the
part of the country where I was. As this
edge of the storm was passing over, there
came an undercurrent of scudding clouds
from the northeast. These two currents
coming in conflict, there formed over and
near us rings and funnels. A large ring of
clouds would rotate for some minutes, send
down a funnel, perhaps, and then disappear,
forming a cigar-shaped cloud. One large
ring, no doubt more than a half a mile in
diameter, had the appearance of an invert-
ed crown, jagged clouds extending from it
earthward ; and another looked like a tur-
bine water-wheel. Through the whirlwinds
darted vivid lightning, followed by pecul-
iarly loud and ominous thunder. The light-
ning seem confined to the clouds. In about

twenty minutes the whirlwind passed over,
and the heavy thunder-storm traveled rapid-
ly to the northeast.

About a week since I saw almost similar
phenomena. A storm, apparently quite
light, was coming from the northwest, and
a light breeze was blowing from the op-
posite quarter. Scud soon came from the
southeast, and, the winds coming in con-
flict, whirlwinds appeared, resulting in cigar-
shaped clouds that rolled off to the southeast.
The rain was very heavy, but there was lit-
tle thunder or lightning.

While on the south coast of Lake Su-
perior two summers ago, I saw a storm gather
which presented similar features. Like the
two preceding cases it occurred late in the
afternoon of a rather warm day. There
formed a great ring of heavy cumuli which
extended around the whole heavens 20° or
30° from the horizon, and after rotating for
some minutes the cumuli were heaped to-
gether in the south quarter of the sky, and
the thunder-storm passed south.

From these instances I infer that some
storms have their origin in conflicting cur-
rents of air. Clouds form because of the
difference of temperature, and first assume
the form of rotating rings, sometimes with
funnels attached. These rings part, and
form themselves into rolling, cigar-shaped
clouds, which ultimately become ordinary
nimbi. Very truly, II. Stanley.

FOEESTBUEG, DAKOTA, AuQUSt 5, 1882.

CENTRAL AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL

NAMES.
Messrs. Editors.

I do not know whether it has ever be-
fore been noticed, but, if not, I should like
to call the attention of scholars interested
in the subject to the noticeable repetition,
in Central American geographical names, of
one of the principal (the accented) syllables
in the word " Atlantic," if we may divide it
thus: A-tlan-tic.

Some of these Central American names
are — Minatitlan, Hidalgo-titlan, Abasolotit-
lan, Morelotitlan, Barragantitlan, Allende-
titlan. There are, doubtless, a great many
more.

Without some proof to the contrary,
this coincidence would seem to add a little
weight to the belief that Central America
was the fabled (?) A-tlan-tis.

Yours respectfully, Berry Benson.
Augusta, Geoegia, August 29, 18S2.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

121

EDITOR'S TABLE.

M

MALLOCK AND BIS NEW SCIENCE.

R. WILLIAM HUEEELL MAL-
LOCK, having settled to his
own eminent satisfaction the little pre-
liminary question, "Is Life worth Liv-
ing ? " has now taken another step in
his intellectual career. And this new
step is, if possible, more ambitious than
the preceding, for he informs us that
he is the discoverer of a new science.
He has lately issued a little book enti-
tled " Social Equality ; a Short Study
in a Missing Science," * in which he
professes to have come upon the main-
spring of human progress, and to have
found the very tap-root of all civiliza-
tion. These are simply the desire for
inequality, which Mr. Mallock declares
to be an essential and universal element
of human nature. This is, no doubt,
a considerable thing to have accom-
plished, but it is not Mr. Mallock's spe-
cial discovery : what he claims is to
have discovered the " Science of Human
Character," while his philosophy of
inequality is but a deduction from it.
The " New York Evening Post," dis-
cussing Mr. Mallock's book in a promi-
nent article, makes light of his pre-
tensions, and closes by saying, " The
whole argument is really a juggle with
words, and his discovery of the science
of human character a monstrous mare's
nest." "We are inclined very much to
agree with this verdict, and to regard
Mr. Mallock's book, considered as a
contribution to thought, as not worth
reading.

But it will be asked, Why, then,
notice it ? The reply is, that a man,
though he may be of little account as a
philosopher, may yet have significance
as a phenomenon ; and that a book,
though essentially worthless, may still

* G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 212. Price, $1.25.

be influential and mischievous. Mr.
Mallock discourses freely, boldly, and
ingeniously on social science, and the
public to which he appeals is but very
imperfectly instructed upon that sub-
ject. And not only so, but it happens
that just now there is no little ferment
in regard to social questions, while so
much that is crude, shallow, and ridicu-
lous is passed off under the name, that
doctrines, no matter how absurd, if
emanating from a prominent author, are
sure to get attention and find accept-
ance. Mr. Mallock is, moreover, a lively
and agreeable writer, and this is so great
a merit as, with many, to excuse any
amount of speculative nonsense. That
a jaunty and garish litterateur should
announce himself as a great revealer of
new scientific truth would seem on the
face of it to be an excellent joke, but
nothing facetious is here intended. We
do not propose to analyze Mr. Mallock's
book, nor to answer his arguments, but
only to characterize the performance,
and extract from it its unintended lesson.
Of the author's claim to have dis-
covered a new science, we have sim-
ply to say that its impudence is only
equaled by its stupidity. Mr. Mallock
evidently neither knows what science
is, nor has he the faintest idea of the
conditions of its origin and develop-
ment. There can be little doubt that
he is profoundly ignorant of even its
rudiments, and has probably never made
a solitary original observation, if even
attempt at observation, in any of the
sciences, although encompassed by their
phenomena from childhood, ne cer-
tainly can know nothing of the diffi-
culty of scientific research, the amount
of labor it involves, or the mental dis-
cipline demanded for its successful pur-
suit, even in the elementary stages of
its investigation. He seems to be ob-

1 22

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

livious of everything relating to the his-
tory of the growth of scientific ideas,
their slow and gradual evolution by
the labors of many devoted students,
the successive introduction of new con-
ceptions, and the increasing complexity
of scientific problems, as the human
and social sphere of phenomena is ap-
proached. And yet, with an effrontery
unparalleled even in this brassy age,
Mr. Mallock announces that he has dis-
covered— not merely a new fact or a
new principle, which would alone be
sufficient to satisfy the aspiration of
many a life-long devotee of research,
but that he has discovered, and offers to
the intellectual world, a whole new sci-
ence, and that the most exalted of all,
the " Science of Human Character."

In entering the field of social study
Mr. Mallock finds, indeed, that others
have been there before him, although
he alleges that they have all missed the
great science which it has been his good
fortune to discover. Mr. Herbert Spen-
cer is the most prominent thinker of
our time on questions of sociology, or
the scientific exposition of man's social
relations, and to him, therefore, our
author gives his chief critical attention.
He declares that Mr. Spencer has missed,
or does not recognize, or does not know
that science of human character which
is at the basis of the science of social
relations. He says (page 92) :

Surely, one might think nothing could he
more clear than this. The science described
thus must not only, like Buckle's, point to a
science of character, but it can be nothing
more or less than the science of character it-
self. Such would be naturally our conclusion
from the extracts above quoted ; but, if we
follow Mr. Spencer further, we shall see that
it would be a wholly wrong one. The science
of character he does indeed touch upon ; but
he does this as though he hardly knew what
he was doing. Though he touches it, he does
not grasp it ; though he sees it, he does not
recognize it. Never wholly out of contact
with it, he is yet always sliding off it, as
though it were an inclined surface. Not once
does he fasten on it, as the real center of the
question.

These declarations are nothing less
than amazing. They evince the com-
pletest ignorance of the true character
of all Mr. Spencer's work. That which
distinguishes it and marks him off from
every other thinker in the field is the
comprehensive thoroughness of his
preparation for working out the prin-
ciples of social science. He published
a very original treatise upon the sub-
ject in 1850, which was far in advance
of the time, but he quickly found that
it was inadequate, and would require a
far broader preparation than hitherto
attempted to place it upon a secure and
sufficient foundation. The task pro-
posed was the establishment of general
principles of sociology, or the laws of
the origin, organization, and constitu-
tion of human societies. The whole field
was surveyed, the work laid out, and
its execution entered upon. A cyclo-
paedia of social facts was projected, de-
scriptive of the phenomena of all orders
of human societies, stationary and pro-
gressive, from the lowest to the highest
grades. This is simply a vast contribu-
tion to the science of human nature,
by displaying, on the largest scale, the
varied phenomena of social activity,
or how different kinds of men have be-
haved in their social relations.

Character is the sum of the qualities
which distinguish one thing from an-
other ; human character is the assem-
blage of traits that distinguish man as
man from other living creatures, and
the different kinds of men from each
other. These qualities that constitute
human nature consist of two groups,
bodily and mental; and the study of
human character involves the analysis
of man's corporeal and psychical nat-
ure so as to arrive at the general truths
in each department. The science of
human nature is, therefore, nothing less
or more than the working out of the
laws of man's physical and mental con-
stitution.

The units of human society are hu-
man beings, and the character of the

LITERARY NOTICES.

123

aggregate must inevitably depend upon
the character of the constituent units.
A biological and psychological analysis
of the human being was therefore an
essential preliminary to the study of
man in his social relations. Mr. Spen-
cer took up this problem in its widest
aspect in his " Principles of Biology "
and his " Principles of Psychology," to
each of which he devotes two elabo-
rate volumes. In these comprehensive
works the whole series of problems in
human nature, which are preliminary
to the science of society, is exhaustive-
ly treated ; so that these works are
nothing more nor less than broad sys-
tematic contributions to the science of
human character.

More than this, the new point of
view assumed in all of Spencer's philo-
sophic books had explicit reference to
the true understanding of the consti-
tution of human nature. The law of
evolution, as postulated and developed
in " First Principles," and carried out
in the subsequent works, gave a new
interpretation of the nature of man.
He is there considered in his total
character as a product of slow-working
natural agencies, internal and external,
by which he has been developed and
modified so as to become adapted to a
progressive social state. This great law
was worked out as a key to the right
understanding of human character, and
in subordination to a development of a
true science of human society. Thus,
in the logical line of his inquiry, each
essential step in the elucidation of the
law of evolution, the exposition of the
laws of life and the laws of mind, had
a definite and positive bearing upon so-
cial problems, simply by extending and
giving greater method and validity to
the science of human character.

But, although Spencer has contrib-
uted in this extensive way toward the
establishment of the principles of hu-
man nature, physical and mental, which
form the science of character, yet he is
the last man to make any pretense to

the discovery of such a science. Only
an ignoramus devoured with egotism
could put forth the preposterous claim
that he had made the discovery of a
science which is in reality but the sum-
mation of the scientific labors of multi-
tudes of men in many successive ages.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Ideological Etymology ; or, a New Method
in the Study of Words. By Stephen
Pearl Andrews.

Elements of Universology : Au Introduc-
tion to the Study of Philosophy and the
Sciences. With Special Reference to the
Science of Music. By Stephen Pearl
Andrews. New York : S. P. Lathiop
&Co.

The first of these little works was no-
ticed by us when it first came out as a pa-
per read before the American Philological
Association at its Newport meeting. It
purports to be a demonstration that there
is a new and heretofore untried method in
glottological study, and that the meanings
of all the several hundred root-words of the
Indo-European family of languages are re-
ducible to no more than three mother ideas.
These views are a part of that extensive
system of thought which Mr. Andrews has
been engaged for many years in elaborating.
lie claims to have originated and developed
a universal science — a science of the sci-
ences— to which, as is generally known, he
gives the name of " Universology." Having
taken up this point of view, and arrived, as
he maintains, at that which is both univer-
sal and fundamental in science, Mr. An-
drews then proceeded to make this the basis
of a new language, equally scientific and
universal, which he names "Alwato." The
claim is put forth by the adherents of Mr.
Andrews — Universologists and Alwatoists,
as they avow themselves — that there is a
wonderful originality and an immeasurable
importance in this new system ; and they
hold that its immensity alone has repelled in-
vestigation and hindered the progress of the
new ideas and discoveries. But they insist
that, in the claims which have been made, no
exaggeration has occurred, and that we have
really in these works of Mr. Andrews noth-

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

*ng less than " the culmination of philoso-
phy in its intimate and precise alliance with
all the special sciences, and with every phase
and form of human life, individual and col-
lective."

No doubt the reason thus given why this
philosophy has made its way so slowly has
truth in it, as large and extensively ramified
and complex conceptions can not be grasped
and mastered except through corresponding
effort. But there is probably another rea-
son which has also been operative in hinder-
ing the study of " Universology." Mr. An-
drews is an erudite philologist and a man
of great mental independence. As a con-
sequence he uses his vast lingual resources
with a freedom that borders upon license.
Rules are lightly regarded — he makes his
own rules; and, being an irrepressible in-
ventor, he coins new words as easily as he
breathes. These qualities are of course
necessary to the constructor of a new and
universal language ; but the practical effect
has been that even his English expositions
of universological doctrine have been so in-
laid and overlaid with new, technical, and,
according to accepted standards, outlandish
terms, that they have frightened off readers
and been a powerful hindrance to the stu-
dents of his system. A universal science
and a universal language, coming all at
once and from the same party, have favored
both discouragement in their acquisition
and a grave suspicion as to the genuine
quality of so vast an xmdertaking. And
this doubt has been unquestionably much
re-enforeed by the general acceptance in
recent years of evolutionary ideas, which
imply slow growth through long periods, by
small increments of change, in the mental
as well as in the material world. These
considerations, even if indecisive and ille-
gitimate, may help to explain the reluctance,
if not the prejudice, with which Mr. An-
drews's system has been received.

But, aside from the enormous friction of
the lingual medium employed, a system of
universal science is at best hard to repro-
duce in a newspaper article. Mr. Andrews's
radical idea is that of similarity or parallel-
ism of method or of analogy among the
sciences. He maintains that this is their
most fundamental relation, and that it
forms itself a distinctive and all-compre-

hensive science. The analogy of individual
life to the collective life of society, pro-
pounded by Plato, expounded by Hobbes,
and worked up into the modern doctrine of
" the social organism," may be taken as an
example of analogy among the sciences.
But in this case all the phenomena are of
a common kind, and fall within the single
category of biological science. An example
of remoter analogy is furnished where we
compare organic with inorganic sciences.
In his celebrated discourse on geological
reform, given in his " Lay Sermons," Pro-
fessor Huxley develops this idea very clear-
ly in tracing out the analogy between our
knowledge of the living creature, biological
knowledge, and our knowledge of the con-
stitution of the globe, or earth-knowledge,
as he terms it. He brings both these phe-
nomenal spheres under the large concep-
tion of " Evolutionism," and points out
the structural, functional, and development-
al similarities that are traceable between
them. Assuming the validity of this idea,
Mr. Andrews proceeds to carry it out sys-
tematically, and to bring all departments
of knowledge into unity on the analogical
basis. His work is done with great learn-
ing and great ingenuity. He has served a
long apprenticeship at finding analogies, and
he sees them everywhere. Not only are the
sciences as now advanced correlated by in-
numerable traces of cousinship, but all the
past stages of science are filiated by the
same ties — his net brings in everything.
Not only physics, chemistry, biology, mathe-
matics, astronomy, geology, but metaphysics,
ontology, philology, archaeology, history, and
all the stages of inquiry are enmeshed in a
grand analogical unity. The old doctrine
of fire, air, earth, and water, though now to
the scientific mind only representing a crude
stage of thought, altogether erroneous but
useful in an age of ignorance, is installed in
Mr. Andrews's exposition, as may also be
the total product of the mind of man in all
the stages of its growing intelligence.

The real question, of course, is as to the
value of this immense work, and to what
extent it has been pushed into the sphere
of mere fancy. To what degree is it legiti-
mate science ? It is not to be denied that
the history of scientific ideas is full of the
examples of futile effort in tracing out fan-

LITERARY NOTICES.

125

ciful relations in nature and holding them
to be truths of nature. The growth of true
science has been little else than an historic
fight of the human mind against its tendency
to substitute its own cheap and frivolous im-
aginations for verifiable facts and demon-
strative truths. Theology for thousands of
years interpreted nature by such superficial
conceptions of the relations of its parts as
could be arrived at without serious investi-
gation or any real knowledge. For thou-
sands of years the explanations of nature
were deduced from the properties of words,
and modern science only arose through a
protracted struggle with this tendency. It
is but recently that the connection between
succeeding forms of life, which paleon-
tology reveals as a great fact in the his-
tory of the earth, was held to be but an
ideal relation as taught by theology; while
the recent progress of biological science has
consisted in substituting for it a genetic
relation, or an actual dynamic causation.
Science, therefore, must be regarded as
most strictly occupied with its proper work
in establishing the actual causal and deter-
mining relations among phenomena. So far
as analogy can be made a help in arriving
at such positive and substantial results,
its function is legitimate for scientific pur-
poses ; but, pressed further, it will probably
continue to be regarded as an impediment
to fruitful investigation.

But Mr. Andrews is a courageous and
independent thinker, who wants no instruc-
tion from us as to the value or importance
of the work he is doing. He claims to be
already the center and master of a group
of disciples which form a normal school of
preparation for larger operations in the way
of propagating his ideas. We are, moreover,
informed that " a university for the elabora-
tion and diffusion of the new science (Uni-
versology) has for several years been char-
tered under the general act of Congress for
the District of Columbia, and is only waiting
more ample endowment to take on large and
imposing proportions." Certainly plenty of
work is cut out for such a university. A
part of its programme is " one language for
the whole world," the " future vernacular of
the planet." This might seem to be a vast
gain (assuming incidentally its practicabil-
ity), as we should hope that such a language

would supersede the multitudinous tongues
that are now such a burden in education.
But the hope is vain ; Mr. Andrews says
that " Alwato so facilitates the acquisition
of all other languages that the prior exist-
ing languages will be kept living, and the
valuable literatures of the world retained
and their acquisition made easy. . . . Eng-
lish, French, German, etc., will survive for
their special literatures and localities. . . .
So greatly is the scientific method superior
to the crude natural spontaneity which
merely lets matters drift 'at their own
sweet will.' " Nevertheless, this spontane-
ous drift of things in which Mr. Andrews
has so little confidence, inasmuch as it has
given us all the sciences and arts, and cre-
ated civilization, and brought the primitive
man through the route of development up
to his present status of intelligence and
cultivation, ought not, we think, to be too
lightly discarded in behalf of a university
at Washington, although chartered and even
endowed by the American Congress.

Vice Versa ; or, a Lesson to Fathers. By
F. Anstet. D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
349. Price, $1.

We have here a most humorous novel
with a very original plot. It is vigorously
and vividly written, and has a great deal of
naturalness in its descriptive and narrative
parts, while it is pervaded throughout by
a most fantastic and egregious absurdity.
After the first shock, however, the reader
accepts the ridiculous situation, and enjoys
the wit and fun with no little curiosity to
know what the author will make of his
whimsical fancy. The odd conceit upon
which the story hinges is the exchange of
personalities between a father and son ; that
is, they are mutually transformed in bodily
aspect, the father into the son and the son
into the father, while their minds are not
affected. The lad becomes outwardly the
dignified London merchant, though still re-
taining all his boyish ideas ; while the old
merchant is shrunk into the school-boy and
with the thoughts and feelings of an old man
is packed off to the hated school, where his
son had been before. The old gentleman's
misadventures in his new and extraordinary
situation in the school, and the boy's tan-
trums in charge of the old merchant's resi-

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

dence and business, are related with much
ingenuity and irrepressible humor. The
father at school and finding out how he
likes it is, however, the main figure, and the
book at once takes rank as a first-class
satire on English boarding-school life.

The Coming Democracy. By G. Harwood,
Author of " Disestablishment." Mao
millan & Co. Pp. 390. Price,

We have not been able to get interested
in this volume. It seems to be written from
the high Tory and the High Church point of
view, and professes to consider the growing
tendency of modern democracy in relation
to English institutions. The author first
takes up democracy in relation to foreign
politics, and then in relation to home poli-
tics, in which he considers its relation to
the crown, the House of Lords, the House
of Commons, the upper classes, the middle
classes, and the lower classes. Perhaps the
English may find some utility in the discus-
sion, but we can not share their discern-
ment.

The Change of Life, in Health and
Disease. A Clinical Treatise on the Dis-
eases of the Ganglionic Nervous System
incidental to Women at the Change of
Life. By Edward John Tilt, M. D.,
Past President of the Obstetrical So-
ciety of London. Philadelphia : P. Blak-
iston, Son & Co. Pp. 184.

An important work on a subject that
is too little understood and is not treated
with anything like adequate thoroughness
in ordinary medical works. It treats the
subject intelligently and intelligibly in its
various aspects, beginning with the physi-
ology and general pathology of the change
of life, and discussing afterward the special
pathology under the several heads of " dis-
eases of the ganglionic nervous system,"
"diseases of the brain," "neuralgic affec-
tions," " diseases of the reproductive or-
gans," "diseases of the gastro-intestinal
organs," " diseases of the skin," and " other
diseases."

The Cornell University Register, 1881—
'82. Ithaca, New York. Pp. 120.

The university was attended during the
year by 384 students. In the science de-
partments, the collection of apparatus for
physics has been increased by the expendi-

ture of about $15,000; a new, spacious, and
thoroughly equipped building for the de-
partments of chemistry and physics has
been begun, and will be ready for occupa-
tion about January, 18S3 ; large and impor-
tant additions have been made to the litho-
logieal collections ; and the organization
of a party of students for geological and
paleontological exploration during the sum-
mer vacation was contemplated. Special
attention is invited to the conditions on
which the State scholarships, 128 in num-
ber, are granted, and the construction, gen-
erally favorable to the candidate, which the
authorities of the university put upon them.
The right, especially, of every person who is
qualified, to enter the examination for the
scholarships, and to have it held, is insisted
upon.

Light : A Course of Experimental Optics

CHIEFLY WITH THE LANTERN. By LEWIS

Wright. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 367.
Price, $2.

The purpose of this volume, as declared
by the author, is to make a very full and
vivid presentation of the body of experi-
mental facts upon which the principles of
the science of optics are based. Avowedly
following Professor Tyndall, the author
adopts the experimental method of teach-
ing, and maintains that projection upon a
screen, with the use of a eommon lantern, is
far superior in general effect to any other
method of demonstration, besides having
the advantage of exhibiting the phenomena
to a whole class or to a large audience at
the same time. But while the magnificent
apparatus of the Royal Institution, by which
Professor Tyndall has carried lantern dem-
onstration to an extent and perfection
never before attained, is far too costly for
general use, the author maintains that the
greater number of experiments can be
shown satisfactorily to at least a science
class with only a good gas-burner, while a
satisfactory lantern can be made at small
expense, and is a very efficient piece of
apparatus. Though the work is based
throughout upon experiment, which implies
that the student should become familiar
with actual optical effects, yet it is very
profusely and elegantly illustrated, and the
numerous colored plates will be held to go

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

far in the way of replacing the actual lumi-
nous effects. The writer offers the follow-
ing prefatory observations in regard to
some points of his work :

In regard to the experiments described,
there are two things to be said. It would have
been desirable, if possible, to have stated the
originator of every experiment ; but it was not
possible. Attempt bas been made to indicate,
as far as known, the first to employ any striking
very recent experiment; but many of great
beauty seem now such common property that
it is diflieult to asceitain who first made them,
or first adapted them for projection. I strongly
suspect that we owe to Professor Tyndall many
more than it has been possible categorically to
ascribe to him; and am the more anxious to
state this, because his just claims in higher mat-
ters appear to me almost studiously ignored by
certain Continental physicists. Some arrange-
ments are, to the best of my belief, original ;
but none are put forth as such except one or
two expressly stated, and it should be perfectly
understood that no personal claim is implied
regarding any other experiments because no
credit is given to some one else ; the absence of
such credit is simply due to sheer ignorance
and the difficulty of acquiring knowledge con-
cerning such matters.

The other remark is, that the order of the
experiments differs considerably in some cases
from that usually adopted. All that can be said
upon that point is, that such is the result of con-
siderable reflection, and in the belief that the
order chosen is, upon the whole, best adapted
to the primary end of assisting vivid conception
of the physical realities considered and the re-
lation of the phenomena to one another. Also,
while no attempt is made to arrange the experi-
ments in set "lectures," the order followed is
believed to lend itself best to such a connected
course of experimental lectures as a teacher
would desire to give to his class, extended or
abridged as the case may require. I am not
without hope that, in such an extended course of
experiments as are here collected for his choice,
some hard-worked teacher may find real help in
this respect. The same may be said as to the
brief references made to the connection between
the phenomena of lisrht and the problems of
molecular physics. Brief ae they are, it is
hoped they may in some minds excite a real in-
terest in those problems, and deepen that sense
of the reality of the phenomena which is so de-
sirable.

Memoir op Daniel Macmillan. By Thomas
Hughes, Q. C. Macmillan & Co. Fp.
308. Price, $1.50.

Mr. Daniel Macmillan, founder and
head of the distinguished publishing house
of Macmillan k Co., was a man of mark, of
strong character, rare business talents, a
man of ideas, a deeply religious man, who

yet got free of the trammels of theology,
and a life-long victim of pulmonary disease,
which ended his life at the age of forty-
four. There is much that is interesting in
his biography, which is largely made up of
his correspondence, and which has been ad-
mirably edited by the accomplished author
of " Tom Brown's School-days." The book
is interesting chiefly as a personal delinea-
tion with no ambitious effort to point a
moral, and for this reason it will be chiefly
prized by the numerous friends and ac-
quaintances of the publisher, many of whom
were much attached to him. There are,
however, many reminiscences of books and
authors in the volume, that will be appreci-
ated by the lovers of literature.

Progressive Religious and Social Poems.
By Rev. George Vaughan, of Virginia.
Pp. 143. Price, cloth, $1 ; leather, $2.
To be had from the author at Ruther-
ford Park, New Jersey.

The author of this book, who had de-
voted himself with might and main to the
great unselfish work of human progress in
Virginia, was burned out there, and, as he
alleges, much persecuted by the bigotry of
that benighted community. So he has pro-
duced this volume of poems, and gets such
living as he can by the sale of it. Regard-
ing the book, Mr. Whittier wrote to the
author (1877): "I have to thank thee for
thy note with the inclosed poems. Their
humanitarian tone is excellent." Mr. Long-
fellow (1880) said : " I have read the poems
with interest, and coincide with Mr. Whit-
tier in his opinion of their merits." In the
presence of such authorities it would be
equally presuming and superfluous for us
to express an opinion ; but, as far as we are
competent to judge, we agree with the illus-
trious New England poets in their estimate
of this performance.

Water-Power of the Southern Atlantic
Water-Shed of the United States. By
George F. Swain, S. B. Washington :
Government Printing-Office. Pp. 164.

This is a part of a series of reports
made in connection with the work of the
Census Bureau, concerning the water-pow-
ers of the whole United States, and relates
to the rivers entering the Atlantic Ocean
south of James River. Reviewing the ob-

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

servations he has made and described, the
author concludes, at the end of his work,
that, leaving out of consideration the East-
ern, or navigable, district, the topography
of the region is very favorable for power.
The rivers have steep declivities, and often
cataracts or rapids of considerable mag-
nitude. The superior wooded condition of
the country and the deep, pervious soil tend
to make the flow of the streams constant,
though it is, perhaps, more variable than
that of the streams of New England and the
northern part of the Middle States. The
Southern streams, however, enjoy a greater
rain-fall than the Northern ones. The beds
of the streams are everywhere favorable for
the foundation of dams, and the banks are
generally suitable for the construction of
canals and buildings at the points where the
water-powers occur. The chief advantage
in the water-powers in the South lies in their
freedom from ice. On the whole, the au-
thor believes that he is justified in asserting,
from a purely technical point of view, that
the advantages for the utilization of water-
power in the Southern Atlantic States " are,
in many respects, as good as could be de-
sired."

Studies in Science and Religion. By G.
Frederick Wright, author of the
"Logic of Christian Evidences." An-
dover : Warren F. Draper. Pp. 390.

Though written from an orthodox point
of view, and strictly " A Companion to the
Logic of Christian Evidences," this is a
very fair book, liberal in its views, agree-
able in its tone, and instructive in its treat-
ment. It is dedicated to Professor Asa
Gray, with a pleasant reference to his
" Discussions of Natural Theology," which
are well known to be '' Darwinian" in char-
acter, and the volume might perhaps have
been more appropriately entitled " Studies
in Darwinism." At any rate, it is through-
out mainly a discussion of the group of
topics that are at present prominently asso-
ciated with Darwin's name. The author
does not avow himself to be a Darwinian,
and hardly goes further than to demand
that the new theories of development shall
be treated in future with more candor and
consideration than they have hitherto re-
ceived, lie aims to state the Darwinian

arguments with justice, and he draws upon
a wide and critical reading of its adverse
literature for the most effective arguments
upon the other side. We regard his book
as chiefly valuable for the fullness and
variety of its quotations bearing upon the
general subject.

But it seems to us that the antagonist
arguments brought forward acquire a facti-
tious force from the author's mode of rep-
resenting them, although we do not accuse
him in this of intentional unfairness. But
he nevertheless commits the grave error of
identifying " Darwinism " with evolution,
and, by bringing forward all that has been
objected to the principle of " natural selec-
tion," the accumulated illustrations of diffi-
culties, and Mr. Darwin's own retreat from
the claims he made at first, a case is seem-
ingly made out against evolution, which ap-
pears, to say the least, very embarrassing.
But it can not be too often reiterated in
these times that Darwinism is not evolution,
and that to assume them as the same thing
can only lead to confusion and mischievous
error. There can be no greater mistake
than to suppose that the proofs of evolu-
tion are in any large sense dependent upon
the proofs of natural selection, or that any
restriction of the range and operation of
this principle involves the varlidity of the
evolutionary theory. Mr. Darwin has never
attempted either the broad investigation or
the comprehensive discussion of the law of
evolution ; and, by confining himself mainly
to the consideration of " Darwinism," Mr.
Wright virtually evades the larger problem,
and to that degree his book is an inadequate
repi-esentation of the present relations of
science and religion.

Theologian as he is, he refers with dis-
paragement to the a priori method by ad-
monishing the reader to "note carefully
the character of Mr. Darwin's reasoning as
distinguished from the multitude of a priori
evolutionists who have espoused his cause."
Perhaps the author would object to the
a priori use of mathematics in its applica-
tion to physics or of any principles induct-
ively established to the interpretation of
phenomena ; but, however that may be, he
offers a very lame pretext for not dealing
with the subject of evolution as an elabo-
rated system of facts and principles of vari-

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

ous orders and multifarious proofs as it now
stands before the scientific mind of the age.
But we cordially commend Mr. Wright's
book as a well-intentioned and helpful con-
tribution, in good temper, to some of the
most interesting problems of the time.

Physiognomy: A Practical and Scien-
tific Treatise. By Mary Olmstead
Stanton, San Francisco. Printed for the
Author: San Francisco News Company.
Pp. 351. Price, $3.00.

The author counts herself among the
disciples of Spencer and Uaeckel. Many
scientific men have already accepted the
idea that the brain is not the sole and ex-
clusive mental organ ; but that the nervous
ganglia and plexuses of human and animal
organisms may also exhibit or assist in the
production of mental manifestations. The
author goes beyond this, and expresses the
belief that "it has been reserved for a
woman, however, to carry their observa-
tions and research to a finality," and that
she has been able to extend and make still
more comprehensive the location of mental
faculties, and to prove "that the viscera
also are instrumental in exhibiting mental
phenomena." The signs of character in
the face are reviewed in their various as-
pects, and the treatment of the subject is
continued in chapters on the "Origin and
Evolution of the Organs," " Signs of Health
and Disease in the Physiognomy," " Hy-
giene," and "Heredity."

Statistics op the Population of the
United States by States, Counties,
and Minor Civil Divisions. Compiled,
from the Returns of the Tenth Census,
by Francis A. Walker. Washington :
Government Printing-Office. Pp. lxxxix-
375. With numerous Plates.

This is one of the most interesting of
the many volumes of the census reports. It
presents in intelligible groupings, made
more plain by graphic aids, all the diversi-
fied classes of facts which are brought to
light in the final summing up of the reports
of the census. First, the progress of the
nation, from 1790 to 1880, is reviewed by
decades ; then are given the facts bearing
upon the settled area in 1880 ; statistics of
cities, and urban population ; the determi-
nation and position of the center of popu-
lation ; the elements of the population, as
VOL. xxii. — 9

classified by sex, race, and native or foreign
birth ; and the influence of physical feat-
ures (topography, temperature, rain-fall, lat-
itude, and longitude) on population. Un-
der these heads are presented the conclu-
sions arrived at, with minute explanations
of the reasoning and processes by which the
conclusions have been reached; and the
statements are supplemented by tables giv-
ing the detailed figures of statistics on
which the processes and conclusions are
based.

The Wave-Lengths of some of the Prin-
cipal Fraunhofer Lines of the Solar
Spectrum. By T. C. Mendenhall, Ph.
D., Professor of Experimental Physics
in Tokio Daigaku. Tokio, Japan : Pub-
lished by the University. Pp. 27.

The University of Tokio having received
from the makers, early in 1S80, an excel-
lent and powerful spectrometer and some
superior diffraction gratings, measurements
of the wave-lengths were made during the
unusually clear weather of November and
December. The results, which show a fair-
ly close agreement with those of Angstrom's
measurements, do not require a particular
notice, except in so far as the work illus-
trates the extent to which the most remote
lines of Western scientific investigation are
observed and followed up in the distant em-
pire of Japan.

Report upon Experiments and Investiga-
tions to develop a System of Subma-
rine Mines for defending the Harbors
of the United States. By Lieutenant
Colonel Henry L. Abbott, Corps of
Engineers. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 444, with Twenty-
seven Plates.

The author of this report was associated
with the Board of Engineers for Fortifica-
tions, in May, 1869, for the purpose of in-
vestigating and experimenting on the sub-
ject to which the report relates. The re-
sults of the experiments were embodied in a
manual for the use of the Engineer troops in
their practical duties as submarine miners,
which was completed in 1877, and forms
the basis of instruction at the School of
Submarine Mining at Willet's Point. The
present report embodies a full account of
the general researches undertaken in the
investigations, including the unsuccessful

i3o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

experiments, which naturally did not fall
within the scope of the text-book. Among
the principles on which the researches bear,
are the laws governing the transmission of
the shock of an explosion through the fluid ;
the relative merits of different explosives ;
and the resistance to be expected from the
best class of wooden hulls. Results are given
in reference to sub-aqueous explosions, elec-
trical fuses, and modes of ignition. These
facts determined, "the problem how to blow
up a ship-of-war," says the author, " would
then admit of the definite discussion usually
applied to works of practical engineering."

Chronological List of Auroras observed
from 1870 to 1S79. Compiled by First-
Lieutenant A. W. Greeley, U. S. A.,
Acting Signal-Officer and Assistant.
Washington: Government Printing-Of-
fice. Pp. 76.

The list has been compiled, with a few
exceptions, from the meteorological reports
made to the chief signal-officer of the army.
The arrangement is by States and Territo-
ries, the names of which appear in special
type, as well as by dates, so that the gen-
eral geographical limits of auroras at any
date can be readily ascertained, while the
names of particular stations are likewise
easily found under their respective State
heads. The descriptions by Sir George
Nares of displays witnessed by the English
Arctic Expedition of 1875— '76 at Floeberg
Beach are also included.

Statistics of Public Indebtedness. Em-
bracing the Funded and Unfunded Debts
of the United States and the Several
States, and of Counties, Cities, Towns,
Townships, and School Districts. Com-
piled under the Direction of Robert
P. Porter. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 667.

This report, a part of the series of census
reports, comprises: 1. An introduction, in
which is given a brief history of the growth
of the national debts of the principal na-
tions of the world, and tables are presented
showing the growth and distribution of State
and local indebtedness in the United States.
2. An historical and statistical account of
the national debt. 3. A statement of the
ownership and distribution, by States and
geographical sections, of the registered and
coupon United States bonds, and of the

amounts of each species held abroad. 4. A
history of the debts of the several States
from 1790 to the present time. 5. A con-
sideration of the power of the State Legis-
latures, and of county and city authorities,
to contract debts binding on the State, coun-
ty, or municipality. 6. An exhibit and an
analysis of the bonded and floating debts
and sinking funds of all cities and towns
of the United States having a population of
7,500 and upward. 7. An exhibit, by States
and minor civil divisions, all of which are
separately presented, of the State and local
indebtedness of the United States. 8. An
analysis, by geographical sections and States,
of the entire bonded State and local indebt-
edness of the country.

Arr-ALACHiA, June, 1882. Boston: Appala-
chian Mountain Club. Pp. 97. Price,
50 cents.

The present number of "Appalachia"
contains the President's annual address
and the annual reports of the club. The
work of the association is still directed
chiefly to the White Mountains, but not to
the exclusion of other ranges, and is almost
sure to become more catholic in its charac-
ter as the membership of the society in-
creases and becomes diffused over other
mountainous regions. Explorations have
been made about Moosehead and the Range-
ley Lakes ; the valley of the East Branch
and the New Zealand Notch, in the White
Mountains, have been traversed ; Bear
Mountain and Passaconaway, two compara-
tively unknown summits, have been exam-
ined ; and the Great Gulf in Mount Wash-
ington has been traversed and made acces-
sible by the completion of a path through
it. The route from the snow-field of Tuek-
erman's Ravine to the summit of Mount
Washington has been distinctly marked, and
several other interesting works have been
accomplished or improved. Paths over the
Twin Mountains, and a bracing up of the
rocks forming the " Old Man of the Mount-
ain," so as to prevent the destruction of
the profile by their disintegration, are in
view. A monograph, with sectional maps,
of " the Little Mountains east of the Cats-
kills," and a contour map of the Presiden-
tial range, are published in the present num-
ber of this journal.

LITERARY NOTICES.

131

Atlantis : The Antediluvian World. By
Ignatius Donnelly. Illustrated. New
York: Harper & Brothers. Pp.490.

Mr. Donnelly, who writes with an en-
thusiasm which only an unquestioning faith
in his theory can beget, undertakes to es-
tablish in this book —

That there once existed in the Atlantic
Ocean, opposite the mouth of the Mediter-
ranean Sea, a large island, which was the
remnant of an Atlantic Continent, and
known to the ancients as Atlantis ; that
Plato's description of such an island was not
fable, but veritable history ; that it was the
region where man first rose to civilization,
and became a populous and mighty nation,
whence settlements were made, all around
the Mediterranean, and in Western Europe
and Africa, in the regions of the Baltic,
Black, and Caspian Seas, and in parts of
America ; that it was the true Antediluvian
world, the seat of the gods, and the happy
lands, under whatever name the ancients of
different nations called them ; that the gods
and goddesses of the ancient Greek and
other nations were the kings, queens, and
heroes of ancient Atlantis, and that the acts
attributed to them in mythology are con-
fused recollections of historical events ; that
the Peruvian and ancient Egyptian mytholo-
gies represented an original Atlantean sun-
worship ; that Egypt and Egyptian civiliza-
tion were derived directly from Atlantis ;
that the implements of the " Bronze age "
were also derived thence, and iron was first
used there ; that the Phoenician alphabet, the
parent of all the European alphabets, and
the Maya alphabet of Mexico, were derived
from there ; that this island was the origi-
nal seat of the Aryan and Semitic families
of nations, and possibly also of the Tura-
nians ; and that the nation perished in a
convulsion by which the whole island was
sunk into the ocean with most of its inhab-
itants, but that a few escaped in ships or
on rafts, and spread the news through the
world, whence the flood legends of the vari-
ous nations.

A semi-historical support is claimed for
the principal feature of this theory in Pla-
to's record of what the Egyptian priests are
said to have told Solon of Atlantis and its
destruction, and in corroborative incidents
in other ancient literature. The possibility

of such a catastrophe as the destruction of
the island is afBrmed upon geological evi-
dence. The deep-sea surveys have furnished
evidence of the existence of an immense
elevation in the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean, the contour and profile of which are
in harmony with the descriptions of the an-
cient Atlantis. Some peculiarities of the
flora and fauna of the two continents which
have puzzled naturalists could be easily ac-
counted for if the existence of an interme-
diate continent as an original center of dis-
tribution could be predicated. The flood-
legends of all nations are quoted and ex-
amined by Mr. Donnelly, and shown to be
reconcilable with this theory, and through
it with each other. Numerous remarkable
features of community in the civilizations of
the Old World and the New — seeming evi-
dences of former intercourse between the
two continents, which seem to be constant-
ly increasing — and many now hard problems
in anthropology would no longer be difficult
to account for, but would appear quite nat-
ural if we were allowed to suppose that men
have radiated in all directions from a pri-
mary home in Atlantis. Numerous legends
in the mythologies of Eastern and Western
nations, curiously like each other in some
features, seem to point to such a place.
The Book of Genesis is found by Mr. Don-
nelly to be a fairly good history of Atlantis.
The origin of bronze has been an impenetra-
ble mystery. In the nature of things, cop-
per, and perhaps tin, must have been first
used separately ; yet no evidence of the use
of either has ever been found, except of
copper in the neighborhood of Lake Supe-
rior, where implements of that metal and
the marks of ancient workings of the mines
have been found. Mr. Donnelly postulates
as a solution of the mystery, that the At-
lanteans invented bronze and introduced it
into other parts of the world, and that they
may have been acquainted with Lake Su-
perior copper. Hundreds of coincidences
are traced between features of the monu-
ments, traditions, and customs of the an-
cient Eastern nations and of the ancient
Americans, and are referred to Atlantis for
explanation. Mr. Donnelly gives especial
attention to lingual and alphabetic analogies,
and devotes a whole chapter to tracing re-
semblances between the Maya alphabet, as

!32

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

recorded by Bishop Lancia, and the Phoeni-
cian alphabet ; and he suggests analogies
between American and Old-World word-
roots. No branch of speculation is more
seductive than this, and none more easily
misleading. The authenticity of the Landa
alphabet has been questioned by Dr. Valen-
tini ; but Dr. Le Plongeon is represented as
claiming that he has demonstrated it, and
has discovered affinities between the Maya
and the ancient Egyptian and the Aryan
languages. His testimony thus comes in
aid of Mr. Donnelly's conclusions. It is in
place to remark here, also, that at least four
papers read at the late meeting of the
American Association — those of Dr. Phene
on " Affinities between America and other
Continents," of Dr. Haliburton on " Atlas
and the Atlantis," of Mr. Hale on the " Ori-
gin of the Indians," and of Professor De
Hass on " Geological Testimony to the An-
tiquity of Man in America " — embody views
parallel with some of the arguments in this
book. Mr. Donnelly is sometimes carried
away by his enthusiasm, and leaves his
readers in danger of being carried away
with him. No thought of looking at the
other side, or of critical examination, is ap-
parent. The work is a kind of lawyer's
brief, on which the reader may ask to be
excused from making up his mind till the
other side has been heard and the court has
delivered its charge. It brings forward a
strong array of circumstantial evidence of
the possible former existence of the Atlan-
tean Continent, and of the origin of man-
kind and civilization from it, against which,
so far as we know, no positive evidence is
offered by history or science. The theory
would explain a thousand things which are
not explained and seem otherwise inexpli-
cable, and would not make a single problem
more difficult. But its verification, we fear,
must await the realization of Jules Verne's
vision, which enabled the travelers in the
fancied submarine ship to reach and make
a complete exploration of the sunken city,
(he capital of the antediluvian empire. Mr.
Donnelly even foreshadows such a realiza-
tion, and suggests that it is not impossible
that " the nations of the earth may yet cm-
ploy their idle navies in bringing to the
light of day some of the relics of this buried
people," and that as a hundred years ago

we knew nothing of Pompeii or Hereulane-
um, or of the Indo-European bond of lan-
guages, or of the monumental history of
Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires, or of
the ancient civilizations of Yucatan, Mexico,
and Peru — " who shall say that one hun-
dred years from now the museums of the
world may not be adorned with gems, stat-
ues, arms, and implements from Atlantis,
while the libraries of the world shall con-
tain translations of its inscriptions, throw-
ing new light upon all the past history of
the human race, and all the great problems
which now perplex the thinkers of our
day ? "

Report on the Meteorology of Tokio,
for the Year 2540 (1880). By T. 0.
Mendenhall, Ph. D., Professor of Ex-
perimental Physics in Tokio Daigaku.
Tokio, Japan : Published by the Univer-
sity. Pp. 81, with numerous Charts.

The present report covers the second
year during which meteorological observa-
tions have been systematically taken at the
University of Tokio. The tabulation of re-
sults is so arranged as to correspond in order
with the tables of the previous year, and to
facilitate comparison as much as possible.
Hourly observations were maintained dur-
ing March, June, September, and Decem-
ber, months which afford a good representa-
tion of the varying meteorological condi-
tions of the year. In addition to these
constant observations, an expedition was
made to the summit of Fooseeyama to de-
termine the force of gravity there ; thermo-
electric measurements of earth-temperature
were undertaken, but abandoned on account
of the difficulty of getting suitable insulat-
ing material ; experiments were made with
success for the determination of the velocity
of the sound-wave under widely varying
meteorological conditions ; and co-operation
in seismological observations is contem-
plated. It having long been known that
the disastrous fires with which the Japanese
capital is often afflicted are most frequent
in certain months, and that their occurrence
is intimately related to the direction and
velocity of the wind, Professor Yamagawa,
of the university, has devoted much time
to an investigation of the origin and course
of these fires, and to their classification in
reference to atmospheric movement.

LITERARY NOTICES.

l3:

The Chemistry of Sake-Brewing. By R.
W. Atkinson, B. Sc. (Lond.), Professor
of Analytical and Applied Chemistry
in Tokio Daigaku. Tokio, Japan : Pub-
lished by the University. Pp. 73.

Sake is the beer of Japan, and is made
from rice by processes similar in principle
to those by which our beer is made from
our grains, and which are described in their
details in the course of this work. The
Japanese brewers, it appears, discovered,
three hundred years ago, a process for pre-
serving their beer by heating it, thus antici-
pating a part of Pasteur's great discovery,
but did not have the art of putting the
heated liquor in perfectly pure germ-proof
vessels, so that they omitted, after all, the
most essential feature of Pasteur's process.
It is only by repeated heatings, whereby its
quality is injured, that they are able to keep
their beer for a very considerable length
of time. We learn, from the introduction
to this work, that the annual consumption
of sake in Japan is equivalent to about six
gallons per head of the population. If the
sake were diluted twice, so as to be of about
the same strength as English beer, the con-
sumption, twelve gallons a head, would be
but little more than one third the consump-
tion of beer in England, thirty-four gallons
a head. " The brewing of sake is, there-
fore, of relatively less importance than that
of beer in England, and this is doubtless to
be ascribed to the enormous consumption
of tea, which serves at all times, in sum-
mer and in winter, as the national bev-

Information relative to the Construction
and Maintenance of Time-Balls. Pre-
pared under the Direction of General W.
B. Hazen, Chief Signal-Officer of the
Armv. Washington: Government Print-
iug-Offics. Pp. 31, with Three Plates.

Frequent inquiry having been made at
the Signal-Service office for information rel-
ative to the erection of time-balls, or other
accurate time-signals, the general officer of
the service addressed a letter of inquiry to
the observers connected with the bureau
who employed the balls, concerning the
method of their construction and their op-
erative machinery. The present circular of
information is compiled from the replies to
his inquiries.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Programme of the Thirty-first Meeting of
the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, held at Montreal, August 23, 1882.
Montreal : Published by the Local Committee.
Pp. 215.

Address of Edward Atkinson at the opening
of tlie Second Annual. Pair of the New England
Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute, in Bos-
ton, September 6, 1882. Boston : Franklin Press.
1882. Pp.32.

The Growth of Children. By George W.
Peckham. Reprint from Sixth Annual Report
of the State Board of Health. Wisconsin. Pp.
46.

The International Time System. By Pro-
fessor John K. Rees. From "Transactions of
the New York Academy of Sciences." Pp. 10.

Annual Report of the Board of Directors of
the Chicago Astronomical Society, together with
the Report of the Director of the Dearborn Ob-
servatory. 1882. Chicago : Knight & Leonard.
Pp. 56. Illustrated.

Extracts from an Old History of Louisiana.
Translated. Pp. 19. Illustrated. Also, On the
Transmission and Transformation of Nervous
Diseases through Heredity. By Thomas Layton,
M. D. Reprints from New Orleans '• Medical
and Surgical Journal." 1882. Pp. 22.

" The Modern Stenographic Journal." Vol. I,
No. 1. Monthly. Buffalo, New York, September,
1882. Pp. 12. $2 a year.

Stricture of the Rectum. By Robert New-
man, M. D. Reprint from New England " Medi-
cal Monthly." 1882. Pp. 7.

New Check List of North American Moths.
Bv Professor A. R. Grote. New York. 1882.
Pp. 73.

The Alphabet of the Future. By George H.
Paul. 1882. Pp.12.

Sixth Annual Report of the State Board of
Health of Wisconsin. 1881. Madison, Wiscon-
sin. 1882. Pp. 230.

The House - Fly considered in Relation to
Poison Germ. By Thomas Taylor, M. D. 1862.
Pp.0.

Report of the Board of Commissioners of the
Ninth Cincinnati Industrial Exposition. 1881.
Pp. 314.

Report on the Character of Six Hundred Tor-
nadoes. By Sergeant J. P. Finley. Washing-
ton. 1882. Pp.19. With Plates.

Explosive and Dangerous Dusts. By Profess-
or T. W. Tobin, Ph. D. Milwaukee. 1882.
Pp. 14.

Dime Question Books. No. II. Literature.
Pp. 35. No. III. Physiology. Pp. 37. No. IV.
Theory and Practice of Teaching. Pp. 37. No.
VI. United States History and Civil Govern-
ment. Pp. 32. 10 cents each. Also, The New
Education, by Professor Meiklejohn. Pp. 35;
and A Small Tractate of Education, by John
Milton. Pp. 26. 15 cents each. Syracuse, New
York : C. W. Bardeen & Co.

On the A?e of the Tejon Rocks of California
and the Occurrence of Ammonitic Remains in
Tertiary Deposits. By Angelo Heilprin. From
the " Proceedings of the Academy of Natu-
ral Sciences of Philadelphia," July, 1882. Pp.

Contributions from the Laboratory of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. No. XX. Contribu-
tions to Mineralo'srv. By F. A. Genth. 1882.
Pp. 24.

Historical Sketch of Greene Township. Ham-
ilton County, Ohio. By C. Reemelin. Cincin-
nati : Robert Clark & Co. 1882. Pp. 33.

Nervous Control, or Equilibration. By James
T. Searcy. M. D. From "Transactions of the
Alabama Medical Association." 1882. Pp. 24.

»34

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Proceedings of the Biological Society of
Wisconsin. With the Addresses read at the
Darwin Memorial Meeting. Vol. I. November
19, 18S0, to May 26, 1883. Washington. Pp.
110.

Easy Star Lessons. By Richard A. Proctor.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1882. Pp.
219. $2.50. Illustrated.

The Peak of Darieu. An Octave of Essays.
By Frances Power Cobbe. Boston : George H.
Ellis & Co. 1882. Pp. 303. $1.50.

Constitutional History and Political Develop-
ment of the United States. By Simon Sterne.
New York, London, and Paris: Cassell, Petter
& Galpin. 1882. Pp. 383. $1.25.

The Solution of the Pyramid Problem. By
Robert Ballard. New York: John Wiley &
Sons. 1882. Pp.109.

Manual of Blowpipe Analysis. By H. B-
Cornwall. New York : D. Van Nostrand. 1882-
Pp. 308.

Essentials of Vaccination. By W. A. Harda-
way, M. D. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co.
1882. Pp. 14G. $1.

Practical Life and the Study of Man. By J.
Wilson, Ph. D. New York : J. Wilson & Sons,
Publishers. 1882. Pp. 390. $1.50.

United States Commission of Fish and Fish-
eries. Report for 1879. A, Inquiry into the
Decrease of Food-Fishes. B, The Propagation
of Food -Fishes in the Waters of the United
States. Washington : Government Printing-
office. 1882. Pp.846.

Report of the Commissioner of Education for
1880. Washington: Government Priuting-Office.
1882. Pp.914.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The Glacial Moraine in Pennsylvania. —

Professor H. C. Lewis read a paper before
the American Association concerning the
results of his efforts to trace the great
terminal moraine marking the southern
limit of the North American ice-sheet across
Pennsylvania. The moraine had already
been traced from Cape Cod across the Eliza-
beth Islands, Rhode Island, Long Island, and
New Jersey, and across Ohio, Indiana, Illi-
nois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota,
into the Saskatchewan region of the Do-
minion, but had not been remarked in Penn-
sylvania. Professor Lewis had found it en-
tering the State near Easton, whence he
traced it up and down to Potter County,
and thence into New York State. Then it
shortly turns to the southwest, enters Penn-
sylvania again, and passes into Ohio. It
was thus traced for four hundred miles. It
begins at a height of 240 feet above the
sea, reaches 2,480 feet in Potter County>
at the great divide between the waters that
flow into the Atlantic and those that flow
into the Gulf of Mexico ; is 2,000 feet high

at the extreme north point near Olean, New
York, and is 800 feet high in Eastern Ohio,
at the end of the portion examined. At
the Delaware Water-Gap the ice did not
pass down the valley, but across it. The
Pocono Mountain was a promontory project-
ing northwardly into the ice-sheet. The
glacial covering does not seem to have
formed tongues pushing down in river-val-
leys, as is the case with modern glacier sys-
tems. Bowlders of labradorite and other
crystalline rocks from the Adirondack and
Ontario highlands were found all along Uie
moraine line. In the discussion that fol-
lowed the reading of his paper, Mr. Lewis
asked Principal Dawson, as a leading oppo-
nent of the glacial theory, to explain certain
facts according to his hypothesis of floating
ice-fields. Principal Dawson replied, assert-
ing that a continental ice-field in Northern
America large enough to supply food for
the alleged glacier was a physical impossi-
bility, because, on account of the distance
of this territory from open seas, the climate
would be too dry for any such accumulation
of snows. It was possible, however, that
there might have been a river or a glacier
which produced the moraine in that part of
the country particularly referred to ; but he
could account for moraines in another way.
Whenever a cold current infringes upon a
warm current, it forms a moraine ; and this
is taking place in the region of the Gulf
Stream. He himself owned a piece of land
on the coast of the lower St. Lawrence, on
which a very good moraine was now in
course of formation.

The Gnlf Stream.— The work of deep-
sea soundings and determination of tempera-
tures has been carried on continuously in the
steamer Blake in the Gulf Stream for sev-
eral years. The paper on the subject read
by Commander Bartlett, at the recent meet-
ing of the American Association, describes
what was done in 1881 and 1882 under the
direction of Professor Hilgard. The Gulf
Stream does not run in a basin, nor is it
divided into cold and warm alternate layers.
The deepest bottom between Florida and
the Bahama Banks is 459 fathoms below
the surface, and the current runs from three
to eight knots an hour, with a temperature
of from 80° to 83° Fahr. A wide plateau

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

13?

exists off Florida, gradually narrowing as it
goes north. Off the Carolinas it is forty or
fifty miles wide. Near Savannah soundings
were made at 1,840 fathoms. The 500 and
1,000 fathom lines are very close to the
100 fathom line north of CapeHatteras and
up to the Georges Bank off Massachusetts.
Directly beneath the Gulf Stream is a hard
coral limestone, with no loose material.
The globigerina begins to appear at Charles-
ton going north, and increases in amount.
The cold water from the Arctic region flows
inside the Gulf Stream off the American
coast, and beneath it, falling down a depth
of a thousand fathoms. The Bahama sec-
tion showed a temperature of 44° at 459
fathoms, and washes in through the Wind-
ward Islands, south of Cuba, rather than
through the Florida Channel. Outside the
ridge, between Cuba and Hayti, the temper-
ature descended to 36£°, but the coldest
found in the Gulf of Mexico was 39J° down
to 3,400 fathoms. There is no Gulf Stream
in the Gulf of Mexico.

Indian Marriage Laws. — A paper on
this subject, read by the Rev. J. Owen Dor-
sey before the American Association, notices
some remarkable customs in relation to
marriage and kinship as prevailing among
the Dhegitha Indians, particularly the Oma-
has and Poncas.

When a tribe is hunting it camps, by
gentes or nations, in a circle, each gens bear-
ing the name of some animal. All the
members of one gens are relatives, and mar-
riage between members of one gens is abso-
lutely forbidden. Membership in a gens is
by descent in the male line, not in the
female. The relations of a man are de-
noted by colors ; for example — black, grand-
father or grandmother; blue, father or
mother. His connections are denoted by
mixed colors, such as a pink head and skirt,
with light-blue triangle on the body, for
sister-in-law. A man can marry his brother's
widow, and her children call him father
even before their father's death. His sis-
ter's children are only nephews and nieces.
His mother's sister is always called mother
for the same reason, and even his paternal
grandfather's brother's son is his father.
These, and many other distinctions, show
that the terms of relationship are far more

numerous and complicated with the Omahas
than with us. A man may marry any woman
belonging to another gens, whether con-
nected with him or not ; though marriage
into his mother's gens is also forbidden.
A man can not marry any woman to whom
he is related by the ceremony of the calu-
met-dance. Sometimes a man may take the
children of his deceased brother without
their mother herself. Sometimes the dying
husband, knowing that his male kindred
are bad, tells his wife to marry out of his
gens. If a widower remains single for two,
three, or four years, he must remain so for
ever. Widows, however, must wait four
years before remarrying. The same system
prevails among the Iowas, Otos, and Mis-
souris.

Hygiene in House-Walls. — Mr. T. R.

Baker, in a paper read before the American
Association, "On the Permeability of the
Linimrs of House-Walls to Air," assumed
that ordinary wall-paper made the walls of
dwellings nearly air-tight. Hygienically con-
sidered, the walls of a house should be por-
ous, like our clothing, so that our bodies can
have through them, as also through our
clothing, free intercourse with the external
air. Compact wall linings, even if their min-
ute pores are open, greatly interfere with this
intercourse; but if their pores are closed
with water, as when the walls are damp, it is
almost completely cut off ; and such linings
increase the dampness of walls by prevent-
ing their drying in wet weather. The pro-
longed dampness also prolongs other evils
produced by damp walls; therefore wall-
papers and their substitutes should be con-
demned, and the old-fashioned whitewashed
walls commended.

Succession of North American Flora. —

Professor J. S. Newberry, describing the
evolution of the North American flora, at
the meeting of the American Association,
said that the first flora was that indicated
by the plumbago of the Laurentian forma-
tion. The kind of vegetation can not be
determined. The second is in the Silurian.
The evidence of actual vegetable origin is,
however, defective ; the objects may be
corals rather than land-plants. The third
flora is in the Upper Silurian; the fourth
is in the Devonian. Two hundred species

i36

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at least are described by Dr. Dawson, con-
sisting of conifers, ferns, sigillarids, cycads,
lycopods, etc. Several interesting varieties
of this Devonian flora have recently been
discovered in Ohio. The fifth flora is the
Carbonaceous, the sixth the Liassic, and the
seventh the Cretaceous, a flora containing
broad-leaved plants of the angiosperms,
which, with slight change, has continued to
the present time. The Jurassic group is
plainly cretaceous, and is entirely unlike the
Tertiary. Not a single plant can be identi-
fied with any of the Old World tertiary flora.
The various tertiary floras of the Rocky
Mountains occur in the dried-up basins of
old lakes. When the glacial period came on,
the trees were entirely destroyed over the
northern part of the continent. After the
melting of the ice, the present flora made
its appearance.

The Depression of our Atlantic Coast.

— Professor George H. Cook, State Geolo-
gist of New Jersey, has presented, in a paper
which he has read before the American As-
sociation, a large array of evidence showing
that the Atlantic coast of our continent is
gradually subsiding. It consists largely of
the testimony afforded by the remains of
ancient forests, composed for a considerable
part of upland growths, which have been
found in various places from the Carolinas
to Greenland, either submerged at high wa-
ter or at depths beneath the surface lower
than the high-water mark of the neighbor-
ing coast, and at these places sometimes
with present or former swamps over them.
Sunken forests possessing some or other of
these characteristics are mentioned as exist-
ing in the Carolinas and Georgia, where
they were noticed by Bartram in 1773, Lyell
in 1845, Professor Tuorney, of South Caro-
lina, in 1846, and in Albermarle Sound,
North Carolina, by Dr. Emmons. General
Cutts, of the Coast Survey, has observed
timber in the place of its growth several
feet below the level of tide-water along the
shores of Chesapeake Bay, in Virginia. The
coast of New Jersey is marked by the oc-
currence of timber and stumps below the
present tide-level in the marshes which bor-
der the State from the head of Delaware
Bay to Cape May, and thence to the mouth
of the Hudson. A marked example of yel-

low-pine stumps may be observed in the
banks of the canal which connects South
River at Washington with the Raritan.
Similar submerged forests on Long Island
have been described by Elias Lewis, Jr., in
" The Popular Science Monthly." In Massa-
chusetts, they have been observed at Nan-
tucket, Ilolmes's Hole, Yarmouth, and Prov-
incetown ; in New Hampshire, at Eye Beach ;
in Maine, at Portland ; and at the head of
the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Other
evidences are afforded by the subsidence of
human structures since the period of settle-
ment; in the flooding of farm-lands that
have had to be abandoned, the submersion
of boat-stakes, and the approach of the sea
to buildings on the shore. Instances of this
kind are observable at Southampton, Long
Island, Barnegat, New Jersey, the shores of
Delaware Bay, and on the west coast of
Greenland. The encroachments of the sea at
Long Branch and the changes going on at
Sandy Hook are public facts. Professor
Cook believes that the change thus marked
is common to the whole northern hemisphere.
It is certainly taking place in parts of
Sweden. Some doubt has been thrown
upon the theory of a subsidence from the
fact that sea-shells and buried timber, both
of kinds now living, have been found in de-
posits a few feet above the present sea-level.
These instances are, however, regarded as
belonging to another era than the present
period of depression, and are distinguished
by several important differences of features
from those now under consideration. Pro-
fessor Cook thinks that they belong to a
previous period of depression ; that the
present period may not have been going on
for more than five hundred or a thousand
years, and that in the one which preceded
it the surface of the upland was ten feet or
more nearer the sea-level than it now is.
He adds : " A careful study of the numer-
ous cases like this will satisfactorily prove
that there have been other periods of alter-
nate depression and elevation in compara-
tively recent times, the phenomena of which
are so nearly alike that they are very com-
monly confounded with each other. And,
when they are clearly distinguished, it will
be found that the rise or the depression is
one common to our whole coast, and proba-
bly to the whole northern hemisphere."

P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY

l37

The Esquimaux. — Dr. John Rac, in giv-
ing an account of his Arctic explorations
before the American Association at its re-
cent meeting, spoke of the Esquimaux as a
generous and polite people, who had care-
fully preserved the tradition of events that
happened twenty years ago. They believe
they came from the West ; and they seem to
Dr. Rae physically like the Chinese. They
build their huts and boats in a similar way
with the Siberian natives, but appear very
short in stature on account of the shortness
of their legs. Dr. Flam, of London, had
said that the skeleton of an Esquimau in
his museum had thirty-five vertebras, or one
more than the average number. They are
not to be regarded as gluttonous, for the
large quantities of meat they consume seem
to be required by the climate.

Apparent Size of Magnified Objects. —
Professor W. E. Brewer reported to the
American Association concerning some ex-
periments he had made upon the estimation
by different persons of the size of images
of objects seen through the microscope.
More than one hundred persons, of all ages,
classes, and occupations, gave very many
different estimates. A common louse was
used as the test-object, and the magnified
image was projected at ten inches. By far
the larger number of persons underestimated
the size value theoretically given the image
by scientific microscopists, which was about
4-66 inches. Two estimates were of only an
inch ; several were of more than a foot.
One student likened the figure to a cock-
roach, another to a lobster. Mechanics and
artisans generally overestimate. A draughts-
man, who was accustomed to measure and
draw all his work, after careful examination
said the image was at least five feet long !
A professor of physics said he could make
the image look of any size he wished.

Fossil Ilnman Foot-prints in Nevada. —

Several communications have lately been
made to the California Academy of Sciences
respecting what seem to be foot-prints of
men which have been discovered in a sand-
stone hill in the yard of the State Prison at
Carson City, Nevada. The hill is about
sixty feet high, and stands at an elevation
of 4,592 feet above the sea. It appears to

have been formed by the deposition and
drifting of sand upon what was the bed of
an ancient lake. A surface of about three
quarters of an acre has been cleared by
quarrying to a depth of from fifteen to thirty
feet, and down to the layer of arenaceous
shale beneath the sandstone, which is sup-
posed to represent the bottom of the lake.
The tracks are in this shale. Accordimr to
the description of Dr. Darkness, they are
accompanied by the tracks of several ani-
mals— the mammoth, the deer, the wolf, the
horse, and some birds — and are in six series
of from eight to seventeen foot-prints each,
in regular order, and each showing more or
less plainly the imprint of a sandal. The
first series, consisting of sixteen tracks,
" were evidently made in a layer of sedi-
ment of, perhaps, two inches in depth, for
below this layer we find the compact sand-
stone. Li each instance the mud had been
raised by the pressure of the foot into a
ridge which entirely surrounded it." No
single impression affords complete evidence
that it was produced by a sandal, " but
when we study them as a whole," says Dr.
Darkness, " we find that what is wanting in
one is furnished by others which follow."
These tracks measure nineteen inches in
length, by eight inches in breadth at the ball
and six inches at the heel. The average
length of the stride is two feet three inches.
The distance between the feet, or the strad-
dle, is eighteen inches. A second series of
tracks was observed, made by an individual
who was walking in deeper mud, which clung
to and closed in and upon the foot. In an-
other part of the area are four other series,
at a level a few inches lower than those of
the first series, smaller, and possibly made
by moccasins. The toes of the tracks of the
first series turned outward ; " number two,"
says Mr. Gibbes, curator of mineralogy, in
his account, " toed the mark, and walked as
straight as a surveyor running a line. Se-
ries number three presents more irregular
steps with toes turned out, possibly those of
a woman bearing a heavy burden." Within
the same area are the immense tracks of a
mammoth, quite as plainly marked as the
others, and, in another part of it, marks
which Engineer Scupham, of the Central
Pacific Railroad, describes as " confused
tracks of a man and some lara;e animal.

138

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Only two or three steps of the man are dis-
tinct; then the confusion that appears to
mark a struggle, and then the impression
where a great body has fallen. After the
struggle the great crane has waded about
over the spot ; its tracks winding in and out
as if it had been avoiding w ith care the deep
impressions made by the combatants, till at
last, stumbling into one, it rises in startled
fright. Farther to the north are many hu-
man tracks, all telling different stories of
the track-makers." The question whether
the foot-prints are really those of men is
under discussion. Their size and the width
of the straddle are against them. Professor
Harkness suggests, however, that the sandal
is not necessarily much larger than would
be made to protect the side, as well as the
heel and toe, of a foot twelve or thirteen
inches long ; and persons laboring in heavy
mud would tend to make a wide straddle.
The stride corresponds well with that of a
man. Professor Joseph Le Conte, who also
has examined the tracks, has expressed the
opinion to the Academy that " no one who
studies them can fail to observe their re-
markable general resemblance to human
tracks." lie thought they might have been
made by a human foot inclosed in a raw-
hide sandal much larger, externally, than
the foot. He knew of no animal but a bi-
ped that could make such tracks ; and this
was possible for a man with sandals on to
do. As a judicial mind, he desired to hold
his final scientifically expressed opinion in
reserve, awaiting further testimony. Sev-
eral fossils have been found in the forma-
tion— tusks and teeth of elephants and
horses, vegetable remains, and the fresh-
water shells anadonta and physa. It is
difficult to determine the exact age of the
strata, but they are generally agreed to be
cither Quaternary or Pliocene.

The Infant Giant Jaw-Bone of Stram-
bcrg. — The Congress of Austrian Archaeolo-
gists, recently in session at Salzburg, was
the scene of an interesting discussion of
the human jaw-bone, m which the propor-
tions of a giant were found associated with
the teeth of a child, which was dug out, at
Stramberg, in Moravia, from under a for-
mation containing bones of the reindeer,
snow-owl, cave-bear, and other Arctic ani-

mals. Professor Schaffhausen maintained
that the jaw was one of a child, of between
eight and nine years old, in which the
change of teeth was going on. The incisors
had already changed, and an eye-tooth and
the premolars were developing in the jaw,
and would have appeared after the usual
time. The incisors showed considerable use.
The height and thickness of the jaw and the
size of the teeth reached the dimensions
of those of a full-grown man of our time,
and even surpassed them in some respects.
The forward part of the jaw retreated so
much as to obliterate the chin. These
marks, similar to those that are observed
in a still higher degree in other diluvial
jaws, show that we have to deal with a man
of very low organization. Professor Schaff-
hausen rejected the idea that the develop-
ment of the teeth had been prevented by a
pathological cause. Virchow opposed both
the view that the jaw was like that of an
ape and the one that it was a child's. The
case was a rare instance of heterotopy in
a man of gigantic size. The jaw was sub-
mitted to a committee, who subjected it to
a careful examination and comparison. No
one's views were changed, but the commit-
tee reported that the proportions of the teeth
considerably exceeded those of a child's
teeth, and reached those that are attained
only in a full-grown man ; it discovered
nothing ape-like in the chin, but found, on
measuring it, that, instead of retreating as
it appeared to do, its line was perpendicular
to the upper surface of the incisors, taken
as a horizon. By carefully cutting away
the plaster that held the left larger incisor
in the preparation, an extraordinarily thick
and plump root, rounded below, and quite
different in its proportions from the normal,
was brought to view ; and the committee
advised that the preparation of the speci-
men made by Professor Virchow be revised,
so that the jaw could be subjected to a
more thorough examination.

A Lignified Snake. — Naturalists are in-
debted to Senhor Lopez Netto, Brazilian
Minister to the United States, for introduc-
ing to their attention a specimen of a phe-
nomenon which, although it had been re-
garded as possible, had never before been
observed — that of an animal turned into

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

*39

wood. The specimen is that of a snake
called the jararaca, one of the most venom-
ous reptiles of the province of Matto Grosso,
in Brazil, which, having crept into a crack
in the bark of a tree, has died there, and
afterward become lignified. As
the cut shows, but less plainly
than the specimen itself, the
head, neck, and other parts of
the animal are clearly delineated,
and the most delicate details of
the organization are plainly visi-
ble in many regions — as in the
nostrils and the eye-cavities, and
in the disposition of the scales
and the cephalic plate on a whole
half of the surface of the head.
And the identity of the figure
with the little jararaca of Brazil
has been acknowledged to be evi-
dent by persons who are acquaint-
ed with that reptile. M. Louis
Olivier, of the Botanical Society
of France, who has made an ana-
tomical examination of the figure,
reports that he has found it to
be composed of cells and fibers
like those of the secondary wood
which surrounds it. " The forma-
tion," he says, " can not be ex-
plained by saying that it has re-
sulted from the deposition of the
elements in a hollow, which, hav-
ing been traversed by the animal,
has preserved its form ; for not
only the contour of the serpent,
but the whole relief of his form,
is recognizable in the wood. The
entire body of the animal has
been thus lignified, except the
center, where the constituent ele-
ments of the animal still exist.
Following the line of the projec-
tion of the head may be seen a
cylindrical figure, also in relief,
which seems to represent the
larva of an insect. The deduction
is therefore drawn that the reptile,
pursuing the insect into a crack
in the tree, had insinuated itself
between the wood and the bark, or into the
zone of the cambium, out of which the wood
and inner bark are formed. Having died
there, it went through the process of decay,

in the course of which each animal particle
as it was dissolved was replaced by a particle
of woody tissue deposited by the cambium.
The specimen was exhibited to the Botan-
ical Society of France on the 9th of April

last, when, as we learn from a note from M.
Olivier to Senhor Netto, there were present
M. Bonnet, President ; M. Chatin, General
Secretary, etc. ; M. Duchartre, Professor in

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Faculty of Sciences, etc. ; M. Prillier,
Professor at the Central School of Arts
and Manufactures and at the Agronomic
Institute ; M. Malinvaud, Secretary and Li-
brarian of the Society ; Dr. Edmond Bon-
net, of the Museum of Natural History ;
and M. Paul Petit. " These gentlemen,
after having examined the specimen sub-
mitted to them, with the most lively inter-
est, agreed, in explanation of the remark-
able phenomenon which it presents, that
there has been a gradual substitution of
ligneous fibers and cells for the constituent
elements of the snake. The reptile had in-
troduced itself into a fissure of the tree be-
tween the wood and the bark, and had died
there ; and as rapidly as its flesh decayed
the place which it had filled was occupied
by the cells produced by the generative zone
of the secondary wood, that zone becoming
hypertrophied on contact with the animal, as
is attested by the well-defined relief which
it still presents. No objection was opposed
to this interpretation of the facts ; but in
admitting the same explanation which I had
endeavored to give you before the meeting,
neither my colleagues nor myself intended
to depreciate the importance of the phe-
nomenon which is the object of it ; the wood
of the formation of the vegetable tissues
appears sufficient to give an account of it.
It is no less true that, in the opinion of the
most competent persons, the specimen which
you have made known to the scientific world
is the finest example that has so far been
brought forward in illustration of the theory
of the normal play and accidental hyper-
trophy of the generative tissues of plants."
The specimen was also shown to M. Van
Tieghen. He was very busy, and able to
give it only a cursory examination ; but
the opinion he expressed concerning its
nature was fully in accord with that of
his fellow-botanists. Dr. Edmond Bonnet
and D. Adanson had recollections of speci-
mens presenting similar characteristics to a
certain extent, but declared that no known
specimen offered nearly so complete an ex-
emplification of the wonderful phenomenon
of transformation as this one. The editors
of this journal have been permitted, by the
courtesy of Senhor Netto, to inspect the
specimen, and are glad to add to that of
the French botanists their testimony to its
remarkable character.

Progress of Scientific Forestry. — Sylvi-
culture, or the culture of forests, as it is
understood and applied in the countries of
Europe, where it has been studied as a
science, is the application to woodland prop-
erty of certain economical principles which,
in their spirit, contain nothing more than
what is held to be necessary for the well-
ordered management of landed property in
general ; and which may be summed up as
follows : 1. The obtaining, within approxi-
mate limits, of a regularly sustained revenue
from the land which the forest covers. 2.
The utilization, to the fullest extent possi-
ble, of the natural productive powers of the
soil. 3. Progressive improvement in the
value of the property. 4. Final realization
of the crop to the greatest advantage. " It
is in the development of these principles,"
says Colonel G. F. Pearson, in a lecture be-
fore the British Society of Arts, " and in
their application to forests of different sorts,
that the true science of forestry consists."
The rapid disappearance of the forests first
attracted attention, in Europe, at about the
beginning of the seventeenth century. The
first measures to regulate the evil were not
very efficient, but the subject came under
the attention of the distinguished naturalists
of the succeeding generations, and a system
— that of lire el aire — was adopted. Under
this system a period called a revolution was
fixed, in which the forest was destined to be
cleared off entirely, and reproduced by nat-
ural seeding. To this end the wood was
divided into a number of compartments
equal to the number of years in the revolu-
tion, one of which was felled every year, or
at such regular intervals of time as were de-
termined in the working plan, a few stand-
ard trees only being left as seed-bearers.
This system was continued till within the
last half -century, but did not prove efficient ;
and any approach to sound forestry was un-
known in France till the forest-school was
established at Nancy, in 1 824. Considerable
progress had been made before this time,
even before the close of the last century, by
the German foresters, who were the first to
base the principles of the art on observa-
tion, and treat it in a scientific manner.
Schools of sylviculture now exist in all the
principal countries of Europe, except Great
Britain ; and Dr. Hough, of the United
States, last year visited all the forest-schools

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

141

of Europe, with a view of founding an Amer-
ican school. Considerable progress has
been made in forestry in India, where steps
for forming a regular forest administration
were taken immediately after the mutiny.
A policy of sending candidates to foreign
schools to be trained has given the state a
body of able men, thoroughly grounded in
the management of natural forests covering
extensive tracts of country. Within the last
two years the Cape of Good Hope and Cy-
prus have been furnished with forest officers
from France. The Mauritius, Ceylon, the
Straits Settlements, Hong-Kong, Feejee, and
other British colonies, are all following suit,
and have recourse to Kew and other similar
institutions for foresters. Of all the British
colonies, South Australia is the one that is
giving most attention to the subject. More
would, undoubtedly, be accomplished in all
the colonies had Great Britain a central in-
stitution for training a sufficient number of
foresters to supply their needs.

Egypt as a Health Resort. — In estimat-
ing the merits of Egypt as a winter residence
for invalids, Dr. Edith Pechey specifies dry-
ness and equableness of temperature as the
characteristics of climate chiefly demanded
for such a purpose. Of the former quality
one soon has practical proof iu a Nile voy-
age. The hair gets very dry, the nails grow
slowly and are very brittle, and all articles
of use in some way give testimony of it.
The air becomes drier with the ascent of
the river, " and the dry heat is more easily
borne than moist heat. One experiences no
discomfort from the increase of temperature
as one approaches the tropics ; in fact, one
thoroughly enjoys there what in Lower
Egypt would be found quite oppressive."
Egypt is not exempt from occasional sud-
den and great changes of temperature, but
they are rare. Of much greater importance
are the variations. The temperature falls
suddenly at sunset for about half an hour,
and another depression takes place in the
early morning. The changes are very evi-
dent in a wooden boat, and from this fact
constitute a great drawback in the dahabeeah
voyage for invalids. In Nubia, the diurnal
variation is much less marked, and the
nights are only pleasantly cool. The life
on the dahabeeah is a very enjoyable one,

and " for cases of overwork nothing could
be devised more calculated to restore and
strengthen the intellectual powers than the
Nile trip, and here no physician need hesi-
tate for a moment. There are perfect rest,
no railway bustle or jar, the variety of trav-
eling in fact without the fatigue, with the
constant enjoyment of sunshine and fresh
air." Phthisical and rheumatic patients
will also be greatly benefited, if they are
careful in guarding themselves against the
night and morning chills.

Cowries and African Currency. — Herr
John C. Hertz has published a memoir, in
the " Transactions of the Geographical So-
ciety of Hamburg," on the use and diffusion
of the cowrie-shell (Cyprcea moneta) as a
medium of exchange. The author's father
dispatched a vessel to the Maldive Islands
in 1844 for a cargo of cowries, to be sold to
merchants for use in West African trade.
Not finding as many shells there as they had
anticipated, they completed their cargo with
the larger and less valuable species of Zan-
zibar, where the cowries are burned into
lime. Several cargoes of cowries were sent
annually to Whydah and Lagos, where they
were exchanged with the slave-traders for
the Spanish doubloons they received from
the sale of slaves. The Hamburg ship-
captains dispatched this money home from
Cape Town. The cowrie-trade continued
to extend as the slave-trade flourished, till
Brazil took measures to prevent the intro-
duction of African slaves. Simultaneously
with the extinction of the slave-trade began
the introduction of palm-oil, and a new trade,
in which that product took the place of the
Spanish doubloons, that grew as the use
of palm-oil was extended. It flourished
greatly during the Crimean War, when the
Black Sea tallow was excluded from the
markets. With it also flourished the trade
in cowries, which thus appears to be con-
nected with so many historical events that,
considered from that point of view, it may
be regarded as in some sort a measure of
historical development — a view which re-
ceived another exemplification in 185'2, when
England blockaded the coast of Dahomey,
and the trade in cowries was stopped. In
1845 the Sultan of Bornoo reformed his
currency, and introduced Spanish doubloons

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in place of the cotton-cloth that had hitherto
served as money, with cowries, at the rate
of four thousand to the dollar, for small
change. A large demand for cowries sprang
up, and the trade in them was stimulated to
such an excess that the market was glutted,
and it afterward languished for several years.
The present demand is quite lively. The
cowrie-shell is used as currency principally
in the countries near the Niger, except in
Ashantce, where gold-dust is the medium of
exchange. North of Ashantee, gold-dust and
the gera or cola-nut (Sterculia acuminata)
are used with cowries, a load of sixty pounds
of the nuts being considered equivalent in
value to about fifteen thousand cowries.
The shells have been used as a medium of
exchange from a high antiquity. Marco
Polo found them circulating in Yunnan in
the thirteenth century ; and they have been
discovered in prehistoric graves in the Bal-
tic countries. Herr A. Wormann says, in a
paper of the Hamburg society, on trade by
barter in Africa, that a variety of objects
besides cowries serve as measures of value
in the different countries of that continent.
Among them are pearls, little Nuremberg
looking-glasses, iron, copper, brass, cloth,
salt, tobacco-leaves, writing-paper, the cola-
nut, goats, horses, cattle, and slaves ; and
the regions in which each of these articles
circulates are defined by fixed limits. Iron
and copper from Egypt circulate in the up-
per Nile region ; Maria-Theresa thalers and
cowries in Soodan ; cowries, pearls, and
" Mericani " (unbleached goods) on the East
coast and in the region of the Arab trade.
South and west of these countries are distinct
trade-regions that have no direct connection
with them, in each of which a different cur-
rency is needed, although ivory and slaves
are the only products.

Shooting - Stars, their Traditions and
their Origin. — The appearance of comets
and shooting - stars announced to the an-
cients and to our ancestors the death of
some grand personage or some woe, and the
chronicles are full of notices of such phe-
nomena. The notices are, in fact, occasion-
ally so numerous as to be suspicious, for, as
Lubienietz remarks in his "Cometography,''
when an event of such a kind happened, it was
thought there must have been a comet about

the time, and so it was put down ; and an
amusing picture has been made of the per-
plexity of a cometographer who could not
find any comet for seventeen years, portent-
ous of the events that were to happen during
that period. The Chinese records are more
trustworthy, for their observers were con-
stantly at their posts, and formed a regu-
larly and scientifically organized body. The
documents recording the observations were
specially preserved ; for the Chinese, from a
time many centuries before the Christian
era, attributed to the different stellar groups
a direct influence on the different provinces
of their country. As shooting-stars may be
seen at almost any time, it was to be ex-
pected that a great number of notices of the
phenomena must have been recorded during
the forty centuries of which we have a lit-
erature of some kind. Plutarch, in his biog-
raphy of Lysander, makes a near approach
to the modern explanation of the origin of
these bodies, saying, "Some philosophers
believe that the shooting-stars are not de-
tached parts of the ether which go out in
the air soon after they have been inflamed,
that they no more originate in the combus-
tion of the air which is dissolved in great
quantity in the upper regions, but that they
are rather falling celestial bodies." The
general opinion is, that shooting-stars are
bodies of small dimensions that circulate,
under the influence of attraction, among the
planets in the same way as the planets them-
selves. When they cross our atmosphere,
the friction develops heat enough to consume
them, most frequently before they reach our
soil. The mean height at which the mete-
ors become luminous exceeds, however, the
estimated height of our atmosphere. Pois-
son has, therefore, suggested that, as they
could hardly have become inflamed from
friction at such a height, an atmosphere of
neutral electricity may exist considerably
beyond the mass of the air which is subject
to the earth's attraction, and is disturbed
by the entrance of the meteors, so that they
become electrified and incandescent. Any
theory to account fully for the origin of shoot-
ing-stars must explain the periodic swarms.
For this reason, the theory of ejectment
from lunar volcanoes must fail, even were
it not otherwise shown to be baseless. M.
Faye accounts for the August meteors by

NOTES.

H3

supposing a meteoric belt circulating around
the suu which crosses the ecliptic at a point
where the earth must meet it at the time of
the annual shower, but this leaves the No-
vember meteors still unexplained. Schiapa-
relli and Le Verrier have suggested that the
November meteors originate in a swarm of
corpuscles which move in orbits very close to
each other, having a period of about thirty-
three years, and elements very similar to
those of Temple's comet. Schiaparelli also
connects the August meteors with the comet
of 1861, and other swarms have been simi-
larly connected with different comets. The
Chinese annals furnish data which indicate
that the greater number of shooting-stars
are seen when the earth is passing from the
summer solstice to the winter solstice, and
this appears to be confirmed by the phenom-
ena of the August and November meteors.
The ancients and the authors of the middle
ages abound in notices of portents, falling
stai'S, fiery spears, fiery swords, burning
skies, showers of blood, etc., a large propor-
tion of which may be referred to shooting-
stars. The earliest record so far found is
the statement that Zoroaster was destroyed
by fire, assigned to 205V b. c, and the next
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
1915. Many of the middle-age accounts
give the phenomena the appearance of ar-
mies and battles in the sky.

NOTES.

Mr. Leonard Waldo, of the Thermo-
metric Bureau of the Observatory of Yale
College, reports that more than twice as
many thermometers were examined in 1881
-'82~as in 1880-'81, and that 4,552 certifi-
cates were issued during the year covered
by the last report. The attention of the
bureau has been directed to the study of a
test for the sensitiveness of thermometers,
or for the time required for each instrument
to reach its maximum. A sufficiently deli-
cate, simple test to meet the conditions of
medical practice has not yet been devised.

President Charles E. Fay, of the Ap-
palachian Mountain Club, considered the
nomenclature of mountains and rivers in
his last annual address. A good name, he
suggested, should be individual, and suggest-
ive of no other object than the one to which
it is applied. The Indian names are excel-
lent for that reason, and because in the

nature of things they can have no other
meaning for us than their special one. Per-
sonal surnames are not so objectionable as
they may seem to be, for, unless they are
derived from very conspicuous persons, they
may in time lose their associations with in-
dividuals and become merged in the identity
of the mountain. The names of the " Presi-
dential Range " are among the most ob-
jectionable of this class, because of the dif-
ficulty of shaking off their associations with
the Presidents. Artificially formed names
are apt to be awkward and hard to natural-
ize ; and descriptive names, unless they are
rarely well chosen, are liable to degenerate
toward the commonplace and irrelevant.

Mr. W. A. Hazen, in a paper on " Air.
Pressures west of the Mississippi River,"
published by the Signal Service, suggests
that the position and extent of areas of
high pressure in the region of Montana dur-
ing the winter months may have a very im-
portant bearing upon the meteorological
condition of the whole United States. His
view is based upon the fact that in Novem-
ber and December, 1880, a permanent area
of high pressure existed in Montana, and
extended over an immense territory, and the
winter was extremely cold over the entire
country ; while in November and December,
1881, the area of high pressure was less
marked and was to the west of the Rocky
Mountains, and the cold of the winter was
likewise very much less marked. Many
more years of observation will, however, he
concedes, be necessary before any fixed law
can be established.

The death is announced of Professor
Leith Adams, of Queen's College, Cork. As
a surgeon-major in the army, he received
much praise for his report on the epidemic
cholera in Malta, in 1865. Having retired
from the army in 1873, he was appointed
Professor of Zoology in the College of Sci-
ence, in Dublin, and afterward, in 1878,
Professor of Natural History, at Cork. He
was author of " Wanderings of a Natural-
ist in India," " The Western Himalayas and
Cashmere," "Notes of a Naturalist in the
Nile Valley and Malta," and works on the
" Natural History of Eastern Canada," and
on "British Fossil Elephants."

The " Gazette Maritime et Commerciale "
relates, in its column of marine accidents,
a curious instance of the formidable power
of molecular forces. The Italian ship Fran-
cesca, loaded with rice, had put in at East
London, leaking badly. A squad of work-
men was put on board to pump the vessel
out and unload it ; but, in spite of all their
diligence, the rice absorbed the water more
rapidly than they could discharge it, and
swelled until it forcibly burst the vessel to
pieces.

144

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A telegraphic despatch from Gottingcn,
Germany, September 25th, announces the
death of the chemist Friedrich Woehler,
Director of the Chemical Institute at that
place. Professor Woehler was born in
1 800, and was appointed to his position in
the Institute at Gottingen in 1836. Among
the important chemical discoveries with
which he is credited are those of a new
method of obtaining nickel pure, and the
isolation of the metal aluminium, for which
he was elected a chevalier of the Legion
of Honor. His text-books on organic and
inorganic chemistry are much used in Ger-
man schools. He contributed many original
papers to the German chemical journals.

Our readers will remember our account
of the experiments of Mr. Bjerknes, of
Christiania, Norway, in the production of
phenomena similar to those of electrical and
magnetic attraction and repulsion by means
of hydro-dynamic, mechanical action. Mr.
Stroh has performed a series of similar ex-
periments, and has produced phenomena
similar to those obtained by Mr. Bjerknes,
by means of sonorous vibrations in the air.
He uses a melodeon reed, the sound of
which goes into a brass tube in which the
reed is inclosed, and from this into a larger
tube, to which is attached a bifurcating
India-rubber pipe, each branch of which
ends in a tambour. The vibrations may be
made consonant or dissonant by adjustment
of the lengths of the India-rubber tube
branches. When the vibrations are conso-
nant, the tambours are attracted toward
each other ; when the vibrations are disso-
nant, they are repelled. If a tambour in a
state of vibration be presented to a disk
which is not vibrating, attraction takes
place. Thus, the phenomena of attraction
and repulsion are imitated in air as Mr.
Bjerknes has imitated them in water, except
that they present themselves in an inverse
sense from that in which they are exhibited
under electric and magnetic influences.

Dr. Stephen D. Peet maintains, in a
paper on the " Prehistoric Architectures of
America," that they differ from those of
any other continent, in that they exhibit
architecture in its lowest stages, and at the
same time give a clew to its development
throughout all its stages. They may thus
be used to aid in the study of the early
stages of historic architecture in other
lands. They, in fact, illustrate the transi-
tion between the prehistoric and the historic
states. In Europe, only the highest class
of prehistoric works can be called archi-
tectural ; in America, the lowest class are
worthy of that name. The American works,
therefore, begin where the European ones
leave off. Beginning at a point where
architecture is presented in an undifferen-
tiated state, the prehistoric works of Amer-

ica show a connected line of progress, es-
pecially observable in the gradation which
is apparent in the works of the different
sections of the continent as we go from the
east to the west.

Mr. Luctan J. Blake, of Boston, who
is studying at Berlin, on the Tyndall Schol-
arship, communicated to the Prussian Royal
Academy of Sciences, on the 15th of June,
through Professor Helmholtz, a paper on
the " Electrical Neutrality of Steam rising
from Still Surfaces of Electrified Water."
He describes a series of experiments from
which he draws the conclusion, contrary to
the theories of Becquerel and Sir William
Thomson, that in steam arising without eb-
ullition, when no spray is thrown up, no
convection of electricity takes place. He is
continuing his experiments to confirm this
law.

Dr. D. G. Brinton, of Philadelphia, is
about to begin the publication of a series
of works to constitute a " Library of Abo-
riginal American Literature." Each work
will be the production of a native, and will
have some intrinsic importance in addition
to its value as a linguistic monument. The
books will be printed in the original tongue,
with an English translation and notes.
The first volume, " The Chronicles of the
Mayas," will contain five works, written in
the Maya language, shortly after the Span-
ish conquest of Yucatan, and carrying the
history back several centuries, four of
which have never been published or before
translated into any European tongue, with
a history of the conquest written by a Maya
chief, in 1562, also from an unpublished
manuscript, and a history of the Mayas.
It will be published before the end of the
year, and will be furnished to subscribers
at three dollars a copy.

The annual congress of the German
Anthropological Society met at Frankfort,
August 14th. About five hundred members
were present. The president, Professor
Lucae, delivered the opening address on the
development of anthropology during the
last ten years, and was followed by Dr.
Schliemann, on his latest excavations at
Troy ; and Professor Virchow, on Mr. Dar-
win's relations to anthropology.

A famous rose-bush at Hildesheim, in
Hanover, which is said to be a thousand
years old, and is reputed to have been plant-
ed by Charlemagne, has this year been
covered with an extraordinary profusion of
blossoms — more, it is declared, than it was
ever known to bear before. New shoots
have been grafted on its stems within a few
years, and have grown finely. The bush
stands on the outer wall of the crypt of the
cathedral, with branches reaching to more
than thirty feet in breadth and nearly thirty-
five feet in height.

MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1882.

ME. GOLD WIN SMITH ON " THE DATA OF ETHICS."

By W. D. LE SUEUE, B. A.

" Because we must not dream, we need not then despair."

— Matthew Arnold, in Etnpedocles on Etna.

MUCH instruction has been drawn from the story of Naaman, the
Syrian, who, when he went to the prophet Elisha, to be healed
of his disease, expected that the man of God would " do some great
thing," and was greatly discouraged and offended when he merely
recommended him to so through a strenuous course of ablution in the
most convenient stream. There is one application, however, of the
narrative which we do not remember to have seen made, and yet which
is undoubtedly important. The prophet of olden times is represented
to-day by the philosopher, who also leads a life of retirement and se-
vere contemplation. And just as the contemporaries of the prophet
insisted on investing him with magical powers, while they undervalued
his real gifts of practical sagacity and spiritual insight, so do the men
of to-day demand of the philosopher to " do some great thing," while
they scorn the demonstration he offers that the truth has neither to be
brought down from heaven nor up from hell, but is very nigh them —
in their hearts and on their lips. Such errors are to be expected on
the part of the multitude ; but there are men who, from their general
breadth of view and clearness of perception, might be expected to do
justice to a scheme of philosophy just in proportion to its avoidance
of extravagant pretensions, just in proportion as its author had visibly
aimed at learning from nature rather than imposing upon nature his
own preconceptions. Of the class of men to whom we refer, no higher
example could be found than Mr. Goldwin Smith : of the kind of phi-
losophy to which we refer, no better type could be found than that of
Mr. Herbert Spencer.

VOL. XXII. — 10

146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

And yet, unless our own judgment is fatally at fault, Mr. Smith,
one of the very best-furnished critics of modern times, has signally
failed to do justice to Mr. Spencer's philosophy, or at least to the por-
tion of it embodied in his last volume but one, " The Data of Ethics."
The article contributed by Mr. Smith to the " Contemporary Review "
for February of this year constitutes the most serious attack, by far,
that has been made upon the volume in question. To mention Mr.
Smith as its author is to vouch for the force, perspicuity, and felicity
of the style, and for a large infusion of that common-sense philosophy
which carries persuasion to the general reader. Many have read that
article who never read " The Data of Ethics " ; and we have little
doubt that the opinion of these in regard to the questions at issue has
been largely molded by it. In these days of rapid literary produc-
tion it is a rare thimr to find an article remembered three months after
it is written ; but Mr. Smith's article still finds echoes in many quar-
ters of society, and particularly from the pulpit. It can not, therefore,
be considered too late to submit it to a careful examination, in order
to see how far Mr. Spencer's positions have really been shaken by the
arguments brought against them.

Mr. Spencer's book is essentially a study of human conduct (pur-
posive action) in its origin and development, with a view to discov-
ering the nature and sanctions of morality. That it is of the utmost
importance that men should feel strongly the distinction between right
and wrong Mr. Spencer everywhere implies ; and his object is to place
that distinction on a basis which, if not so imposing as that heretofore
furnished by theology, may at least not be subject to the vicissitudes
which seem to be the portion of all theological codes. We must pre-
sume our readers to be more or less familiar with the work in question,
and to have followed Mr. Spencer in his demonstration that, as purpose
takes a wider range, it gathers to itself an accompaniment of moral
emotion. In connection even with self -regarding actions, a certain
sense of moral power accompanies every subordination of an immedi-
ate impulse to one more remote. The individual awakens to a sense
of the capacity for choice, and the foundations are thus laid for moral
freedom. It is, however, the life of the family, the tribe, the commu-
nity, that lends the greatest enlargement to individual thought and
feeling. Care for offspring comes first to break down the tyranny of
exclusive regard for self. The family develops into the tribe, and men
learn to practice a certain measure of justice toward one another as
the essential condition of co-operation. The increasing harmony of
outward relations has its inward counterpart in increased strength and
breadth of sympathy. The moral quality of an action depends upon
the degree in which it tends to promote or diminish happiness ; but
this, as Mr. Spencer repeatedly points out, is in most cases to be de-
termined rather by the conformity or non-conformity of the action
with certain general principles ascertained to be favorable to happiness

MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON "THE DATA OF ETHICS:' 147

than by an inquiry into the results likely to flow from it in a special
case. Moral actions, in general, are those favorable to life, not only
to its preservation, but to its improvement ; immoral actions are those
which tend to the shortening or to the impoverishing of life. In
speaking of life here, we speak not only of the condition of animation,
but of all that successive experiences, successive enlargements of the
range of thought, action, and sympathy, have built into, or worked
into, the human consciousness. To help forward this work of integra-
tion is good ; to retard or counteract it is evil. In common speech the
terms good and evil are upon the whole applied to actions just in ac-
cordance as they tend, or are believed to tend, in one or other of these
directions.

As the aim of all voluntary action is the furtherance of happiness,
the test of perfection in an action will be its fully acconrplishing that
object. A man who procures a momentary gratification by some un-
wholesome indulgence has not performed, even from a selfish point
of view, a perfect action, seeing that its effects are partly, at least,
destructive of the end he has in view. The man who, losing his tem-
per, quarrels with a neighbor, does not, even from a selfish point of
view, perform a perfect action ; for, whatever satisfaction he may
derive at the moment from the utterance of angry words, he can de-
rive no benefit, but only the reverse, from the subsequent alienation of
his neighbor's feelings. From a social point of view, no action is per-
fect which benefits only the actor, or which benefits some one else at
the actor's expense. Self-sacrifice may be ethically noble ; but that
any necessity for it should arise implies some defect in the conditions
of existence, and therefore of action. If it enables us, on the one
hand, to estimate the moral resources of humanity, it points, on the
other, to evils which it behooves us to remedy ; for why, we ask,
should the gain of one be purchased by the loss of another ? To find
a perfect action, therefore, we must look for one all the effects of
which, so far as they can be traced, are good, which not only involves
no sacrifice of happiness, either to the actor or to the person who is
the object of the action, but which is equally beneficial to both. So-
cial evolution being a manifestly unfinished process, the region of the
social activities can not be expected to furnish the best examples of
perfect adjustment. In searching for such an example, Mr. Spencer
therefore falls back, in the first place, on the physical region, and cites
— to Mr. Smith's great amusement and scorn — the case of a mother
suckling her child. We quote his words :

Consider the relation of a healthy mother to a healthy infant. Between the
two there exists a mutual dependence which is a source of pleasure to both. In
yielding its natural food to the child, the mother receives gratification ; and to
the child there comes the satisfaction of appetite — a satisfaction which accom-
panies furtherance of life, growth, and enjoyment. Let the relation be sus-
pended, and on both sides there is suffering. The mother experiences both

148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bodily pain and mental pain; and the painful sensation borne by the child
brings, as its results, physical mischief and some damage to the emotional nat-
ure. Thus the act is one that is to both exclusively pleasurable, "while absten-
tion entails pain on both ; and it is consequently of the kind we here call abso-
lutely right.

Here we are asked to recognize the reductio ad absurdum of Mr.
Spencer's whole system of ethics. For our own part, we wholly fail
to see where the absurdity comes in. If what we are in search of is a
type to which all actions might advantageously conform, where, we
ask, shall a better be found than this? What would the condition of
society be if all the actions of men conformed to this type, blessing
alike the doers and those toward whom the actions were directed?
There is but one answer : it would be perfect. The end of all ethical
self -discipline, the end of all social adjustments, is precisely to bring
things as nearly as possible to this consummation. The good man, in
the highest sense of the word, is he who loves his neighbor as himself;
in other words, who desires that his action shall benefit his neighbor
equally with himself, and not one neighbor only, but all neighbors, and
who, therefore, regulates his actions with a view to universal utility.
And in all social reforms what is it that we desire to bring about but
this — that one man's gain shall not be another man's loss, but that the
gain of one shall be the gain of all ?

Mr. Smith places in contrast with the typical action chosen by Mr.
Spencer the case of an Italian physician who courted the infection of
a deadly plague in order that he might, for the benefit of his stricken
fellow-citizens, the better understand and describe its symptoms and
development. But is that the type to which we should wish all human
actions to conform ? That there should be such actions, Ave must, in
the first place, have plagues ; and in order that we may have plagues
we must have ignorance and filth. Would it really be worth while to
order these things, to the end that one Italian physician might, by an
act of sublime self-sacrifice, shed one ray of light athwart the general
gloom ?

Mr. Smith says that, according to Mr. Spencer, " the action of the
Italian physician ... is ethically inferior to that of a Caffre woman
suckling her child." This, however, is misleading. Though Mr.
Smith speaks of actions, the contrast which his words suggest is be-
tween motives. When we want to estimate the quality of an action
in relation solely to the doer, motive is everything ; but, when we de-
sire to estimate its intrinsic value as a link in the net-work of human
activity, motive must be left out of sight. The motives of the Inquisi-
tors were, we may presume, good, but their deeds were diabolical.
The motive in this case was of the highest possible order ; but,
when the act was completed, a noble life had been sacrificed. How
can an act which inwraps so much of irreparable loss be classed as
perfect ?

MB. GOLD WIN SMITH ON " THE DATA OF ETHICS:' 149

More important still is it to remark that Mr. Spencer distinctly
assigns the action which he cites to a lower plane altogether than that
to which the action of the Italian physician properly belongs. These
are the words with which he introduces his illustration : " Among the
best examples of absolutely right actions to be named are those arising
where the nature and the requirements have been molded to one
another before social evolution began." (The italics are ours.) The
adaptation found subsisting between mother and child was established
in a pre-social period ; and, though social evolution has since been
carried forward many stages, the relation in question retains its char-
acter as an almost wholly physical one. No doubt maternal love is
to-day a much tenderer and more complex thing than in savage days ;
but, as the higher affection is not always guided by adequate knowl-
edge, we must still look to the physical adaptation as the highest ex-
ample of perfect adjustment. The action of the mother nourishing
her child is " absolutely right," but " absolutely right " in a compara-
tively low sphere of conduct ; the action of the Italian physician is
only " relatively right," but it is " relatively right " in a much higher
sphere of conduct. It is, therefore, not correct to say, without care-
ful qualification, that, according to Mr. Spencer's philosophy, " the
action of the Italian physician is ethically inferior to that of a Caffre
woman suckling her child." What may be said of it is that it is typ-
ically inferior, although ethically higher ; that is to say, less adapted
to serve as the type of perfect action, though indicating the presence
of far superior moral elements. The distinction is not difficult to
seize.

The precise position from which Mr. Smith makes his attack on
Mr. Spencer is not very easy to discern. He evidently does not like
the evolution philosophy in its application to morals ; and yet it is
not very clear that he takes his stand distinctly on any other. A
most critical time, he thinks, has arrived in the intellectual develop-
ment of society, and what the result is going to be he does not venture
to predict. Serious breaches have been made in the defenses, not
only of revealed, but of natural religion ; the theistic hypothesis itself
is threatened. The breaches may be repaired — Mr. Smith does not
feel at all certain one way or the other ; but meanwhile he thinks it a
safe thing to point out the deficiencies of the evolution philosophy
as compared with a theistic philosophy. But supposing the breaches
should not be repaired, but, on the contrary, widened ; and supposing
we should have in the end to fall back on the evolution philosophy or
something like it, would it not then be the part of wisdom to make
the most of it — to show it in the most favorable, rather than in the
least favorable, light ? Mr. Smith seems to us to be somewhat in the
position of a man battering a house in which, according to his own
admission, he may some day have to live. Supposing the evolution
philosophy to be true, or to be an adumbration of the truth, any de-

i5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fects we may discover in it are simply defects in the constitution of
things as compared with our former conceptions on the subject ; and
finding fault with the constitution of things is not the most profitable
of employments.

Among the objections brought by Mr. Smith against a naturalistic
morality, the following seem to be the principal :

1. It would not favor such acts of devotion as are now prompted
by " the ideas and hopes " of religion.

2. It can not explain to us why a man surrounded with all imagi-
nable worldly comforts, but with a murder on his conscience, is un-
happy, while a man who gives his life for others is happy in the act.

3. It can not attach any meaning to such words as " the sacredness
of human life."

4. It furnishes no basis for moral approval or condemnation.

Let us attempt to deal with these objections in the order in which
they stand :

1. In regard to acts of devotion, it will be observed that Mr.
Smith speaks somewhat hesitatingly. Referring to the manning of a
life-boat for some perilous enterprise, he asks if we are " sure " that
the men would not be less ready to take an oar were they told that
death would make " an end for ever of them and of their connections
with those whom they loved." Well, we are not sure what the effect
would be of a sudden and most untimely announcement of that
character ; but that does not really seem to us to be the question.
The question, if we mistake not, is, whether, if the ideas contained in
" The Data of Ethics " prevailed in the world, it would be possible to
maintain a life-boat service at all ; and we should like to ask Mr.
Smith whether he is sure that it would not. If he is uncertain upon
this point, his uncertainty may perhaps balance ours upon the other.
Our own opinion, wdaich must pass for what it is worth, is, that it
would be quite possible. The foundations of devotion lie very deep
in human nature. That poor Caffre mother we were speaking of a
moment ago would illustrate it if the need arose. Every nation and
every tribe has had its heroes who cheerfully faced death for the com-
mon cause; and that without a thought of future reward, or, in a multi-
tude of cases, any definite expectation of continued existence. Describ-
ing one of the very worst periods of Roman history, Tacitus is yet able to
say, " Contumax etiam adversus tormenta servorum fides " (slaves were
found who braved even torture for the sake of their masters). Yet
these unhappy bondmen had no " village church " to serve as the cen-
ter of ideas and hopes relating to another sphere of existence. If we
may attempt an explanation of the matter in terms of the evolution
philosophy, we should say that the course of physical evolution cre-
ates in us a strong attachment to life, but that the course of what Mr.
Spencer has called super-organic evolution gradually creates for us
objects of thought and affection which may become dearer than life

MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON " THE DATA OF ETHICS." 151

itself. Our hope, therefore, is that, in the society of the future, not
only will "the milkman go his rounds" — a point upon which Mr.
Smith kindly reassures us, and, after all, one of no little significance —
but volunteers for the life-boat, the fire-brigade, and all necessary
heroic undertakings, will still be forthcoming. If, when the time ar-
rives, men have ceased to risk their lives, as they now so frequently do,
in foolish enterprises, without, so far as one can judge, being particu-
larly incited thereto by ideas or hopes connected with the village
church, it will be all the better.

2. Evolutionary ethics can not explain conscience, can not tell us
why the bad man is miserable in prosperity, and the good man happy
in adversity. Is it really so ? What is human character but a com-
plex of mental and moral habits, every habit incorporated into it be-
coming a more or less imperative voice vibrating through the man's
whole nature ? To know that you have not dotted an i or crossed
a t will sometimes give you an uncomfortable feeling. Make a rule
of anything, and you will not depart from it without uneasiness. How
powerful are the habits of the body every one knows, and those of
the mind are not less so. The murderer referred to by Mr. Smith
is ill at ease because he has allowed a momentary impulse connected
with the least authoritative * part of his nature, the mere desire for
personal advantage, to carry him into an act of rebellion against a
principle of conduct woven into his nature long before he was born,
and for which in his subsequent life he has constantly been compelled,
not only to profess, but to demand, respect. If it be said that it is
impossible to account on this theory for the tone of absolute authority
with which conscience urges its decrees, we would ask for a very care-
ful consideration of the passages quoted below from the "Data of
Ethics." Mr. Spencer has well shown that, just in proportion as the
reasons for doing, or refraining from, a particular act are dissociated
from what we may call the ultimate material inducements or deter-
rents, will the authority they possess be greater. When a man eats
because he is hungry, he feels the power, but not the authority, of ap-
petite. When, on the other hand, he refrains from a vicious indul-
gence because its later effects will be bad, or when he takes a walk
before breakfast because he believes it will conduce to his health,
though its good effects may not be immediately apparent, he recog-
nizes and feels the authority of sanitary rules. In these cases the
degree of dissociation between the rule or principle recognized by the
mind and the actual facts on which it rests is but slight ; yet the rise
of authority is plainly visible.

* Let the reader who needs to do so refresh his memory with the following passages
from Spencer, " Data of Ethics," chapter vii — " The Psychological View " : " From the
first, complication of sentiency has accompanied better and more numerous adjustments
of acts to ends. . . . Whence it follows that the acts characterized by the more complex
motives and the more involved thoughts have all along been of higher authority for
guidance. . . . When, led by his acquisitiveness, the thief takes another man's property,

152

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A rule of conduct once established, the mind, working quite inde-
pendently of the will of the individual, resents any attempt to impugn
its authority. Naturally enough, seeing that, to impugn its authority
means an unsettlement of all that the rule had settled. Take the case
now in question. We can not conceive the existence of any social
order, unless the principle is recognized that no man should, for selfish
purposes of his own, take the life of another. But, let a man be so
overmastered by his cupidity as to commit this crime, he can not by
that one act of rebellion undo the work already acconrplished in his
mind, by virtue of which he had learned to condemn murder on prin-
ciple. It is to his interest now to deny the principle, but he can not
do it without tearing his own mind to pieces ; for not more truly have
certain elements been compounded in his body, to form its various
organic substances, than have elementary experiences combined in his
mind to form those principles of thought which sustain its functional
activity and make it a living organism. And just as the true unit of
the body is not any elementary atom, but a cell, so the true unit of
the mind is not an isolated experience, or any cluster of unorganized
experiences, but a combination of experiences, a generalization from
experiences.

The murderer in the case supposed by Mr. Smith has eluded the
law, and not only paid no material penalty whatever, but actually
reaped vast benefits from his crime. Could any case be possibly
imagined in which — making, of course, allowance for the inferiority
of nature of a man who could commit murder at all — the violated
authority of perhaps the most fundamental of all social principles
should make itself more keenly felt ? Had the man been caught red-
handed, and come promptly under the sentence of justice, his remorse
would have been slight in all probability ; possibly he might not have
felt any. But, escaping as he did, and prospering by his crime, his
mind would remain continually open to tbe upbraidings of that part
of his nature which he had outraged by his deed, to all the rea-
sons which the experiences of every day as well as his invokintary
thoughts would suggest why the deed shoiild not have been done.
Is not this enouah ? Must we still call in the Eumenides before

*&'

his act is determined by certain imagined proximate pleasures of relatively simple kinds,
rather than by less clearly-imagined possible pains that are more remote and of relatively
involved kinds. . . . Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from the
lowest types of man up to the highest, self-preservation has been increased by the sub-
ordination of simple excitations to compound excitations — the subjection of immediate
sensations to the ideas of sensations to come — the overruling of presentative feelings
by representative feelings, and of representative feelings by ?*e-representative feelings. As
life has advanced, the accompanying sentiency has become increasingly ideal ; and, among
feelings produced by the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which have
evolved latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that as guides
the feelings have authorities proportionate to the degrees in which they are removed by
their complexity and ideality from simple sensations and appetites."

MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON "THE DATA OF ETHICS." 153

we can understand why the murderer should he wretched amid his
wealth ?

We must not, however, forget that Mr. Smith supposes the mur-
derer to he able to natter himself that he has probably caused more
happiness than unhappiness by his crime, Such a supposition might
perhaps embarrass a utilitarian of the old school, but hardly an adher-
ent of the "rational utilitarianism" taught by Mr. Spencer. Crude
utilitarianism assumes that an action can only be judged by the conse-
quences which directly and visibly flow from it ; rational utilitarianism
says that the criterion of an action is some rule of conduct established
by experience. The crude utilitarian is like a man who would discard
or ignore the multiplication-table, and insist on doing all sums involv-
ing multiplication by addition ; or who should insist on working out,
by tedious and uncertain arithmetical processes, problems which could
be solved with the far greater ease and certainly by algebra. Experi-
ence shows what lines of conduct, what principles of action, are favor-
able to happiness in general, and to the satisfaction of the instinct of
sympathy in particular ; and human civilization can not be carried
very far before the principle is established that harm must come from
the shedding of human blood. Such a principle gains authority over
men's minds ; and, when an action is done that conflicts with it, it is
in vain that the perpetrator tries, by a fresh calculation of all the sup-
posed elements of the case, to show that his particular crime may be
all right.

3. We are probably now prepared to estimate the force of the next
objection urged by Mr. Smith against evolutionary ethics, that they do
away with the idea of the "indefeasible sacredness of human life."
They would no doubt do away with any surplusage of mere sentiment
on the subject ; but, seeing that the first moral principle which emerges,
from the evolutionary point of view, is equity, and seeing that life is
what every man holds most dear, it is very hard to understand why a
system, which may be said simply to rationalize the Golden Rule,
should lead men to deal less carefully with human life than the sys-
tems of the past. What light does history shed upon the question ?
In what estimation was human life or human suffering held in the
ages of faith ? It was surely in a pre-e volution period that a man
could be hanged in England for stealing a sheep. Such things can not
be done to-day. Why ? Is it— we should like a candid answer to the
question — because there is a deeper impression than formerly that man
is made in the image of God ; or because the sentiment of justice has
grown stronger, and men have learned to sympathize more with one
another ?

4. Finally, we are told that Mr. Spencer, being an evolutionist,
must be a necessarian, and that, as such, it is not open to him to con-
demn any act as wrong, seeing that the doer of the act could plead that
his conduct was just what the point he had reached in evolution ren-

154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dered natural and necessary. Mr. Spencer is undoubtedly an evolu-
tionist, but we do not know that there is any distinct warrant for say-
ing he is a necessarian. We do not know that he is more embar-
rassed by the secular antithesis of free-will and necessity than others
have been before him, or are now. Were necessarianism a corollary
from evolution, it would be in order to remark that it has also been,
with a not uninfluential school of Christian thinkers, a corollary of the
conception of the divine nature. Mr. Smith, we observe, records his
own objection to the term " free-will " ; remarking that what has inap-
propriately passed under that name should rather be defined as " the
difference given us by consciousness between moral and physical causa-
tion. He thus recognizes moral causation ; and his objection to the ex-
pression " free-will " would seem to be grounded on its implied denial
of such causation. Mr. Spencer, on his side, objects to the free-will
theory because it denies the " cohesions " which demonstrably exist
between psychical states. Is it certain that between the two views so
great a gulf is fixed that Mr. Smith can afford to snap his fingers in
happy security, while contemplating the speculative torments of the
author of " The Data of Ethics " ? Seeing, however, that this is a diffi-
culty with which human thought has never been able to grapple suc-
cessful^, it might be as well to raise no question concerning it. The
evolutionist condemns a wrong action on this ground, that it conflicts
with some principle of proved utility, or of proved equity — the two
are really one — which, if not as potent so might be desired, still has
its place in the mind of the man who has neglected or overridden it.
We condemn moral inconsistency just as we do intellectual inconsist-
ency. When a man puts forward an opinion we regard as false, our
only hope of persuading him that it is false is by bringing into the
strongest possible relief some truth or opinion, accepted by him, with
which the opinion in question conflicts. Precisely parallel is the pro-
cedure when a man performs an act of which wTe disapprove : we call
some ethical principle accepted by himself, and acted upon at times
by himself, to bear witness against what he has done. By doing so
we re-enforce the higher principle, and perhaps bring about shame and
repentance for the improper act.

We have thus tried to deal with the chief objections formulated
by Mr. Smith against the evolutionary theory of morals. To speak of
that theory as a purely " physical" one (as Mr. Smith does) is hardly
correct. Mind, according to Mr. Spencer, is made up of feelings and
relations among feelings, and these are not properly physical. Mem-
ory and judgment may have a physical basis, but they are not them-
selves physical. The evolution of conduct, according to Mr. Spencer,
depends wholly upon accretions of capital, so to speak, in conscious-
ness. A dim and narrow consciousness renders possible only a most
imperfect self-direction ; a clear and highly developed consciousness,
on the other hand, gives a correspondingly increased power of self-

MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON " THE DATA OF ETHICS." 155

direction, which is used in the furtherance of life and happiness. There
is a school of French philosophers to-day * who, while making frank
profession of atheism, speak of man as the union of an organism with
an " immateriality." The language is uncouth ; but it might be used,
at least provisionally, to express Mr. Spencer's conception ; for, while
the whole direction of every human being proceeds from his con-
sciousness, that consciousness is not itself material or physical, the
very essence of materiality being objectivity to sense. From the evo-
lutionary point of view every mite of moral effort is just as precious as
from the theological point of view ; but what the evolutionary theory
does not do is to reconcile us to the miseries that have abounded and
still abound in the world, as possibly having their explanation and
justification in some supernatural scheme of government. If the suffer-
ings borne by our fellow-creatures are any part of the Divine scheme,
as Mr. Smith hints may perhaps be the case, what confidence can we
feel that we are right in trying to alleviate them ? With a strange
inconsistency, the partisans of a supernatural view of disease are always
ready to apply themselves most vigorously to abbreviating by natural
means the chastisements which they say are meant for their good ;
while the more sensible among them manage, by a careful attention
to the rules of health, to escape such chastisements altogether, or nearly
so. And so we have no doubt it would be if Mr. Smith had it in his
power to greatly ameliorate the general lot of mankind : he would do
it, and let the moral education of the race take its chance under the
happier conditions.

Evolutionary ethics tell us what is evil, and explain the why. They
tell us that whatever depresses the energies of any human being, or
comes between labor and its due reward, is evil. It drops no hints of
mysterious compensation hereafter for ills borne in this life — so making-
things a trifle more comfortable still for the " man in the suburban
villa, with a good business in the city," whom the voice of duty so im-
periously calls to take a regular luncheon every day, instead of merely
swallowing a hasty sandwich. That worthy citizen might, in the in-
terest of his digestion, like to think that the shivering, storm-tossed mari-
ner, the delver in the mine, the overworked and underfed farm-laborer,
and all the beaten and baffled and despairing ones whose lot is so dis-
agreeable a contrast to his own, should some day, after they had served
their turn here in the production of capital, have some modicum of
compensating happiness dealt out to them in a better world. If such
be his soothing fancy, he can not at least profess to draw it from the
doctrine of evolution, which proclaims, without reserve or qualification,
that suffering is suffering, that injustice is injustice, and that, if we
would remedy these, we must work while it is called day. It is the
weakness not the strength of theological and ultra-mundane doctrines

* The so-called " Socialistes Rationnels," whose organ, " La Philosophic de l'Avenir,''
contains some acute and powerful writing.

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that they lead, and have led, men to regard with more or less of
acquiescence the sufferings of " this present evil time." That there
may be a Providence inwrapping the whole of human life with its
environment, and that there may be, to higher faculties than ours, a
significance in life that we have never grasped, it would be most ad-
venturous and, indeed, unphilosophical to deny. Admitting such a pos-
sibility, however, or even probability, our duty is in no way changed.
The whole solar system may be hurrying on through space toward
some unknown goal, or in some infinite and incalculable circuit ; but
the motions that concern us are those that take place within the solar
system, that lend themselves to observation and calculation, and that
affect more or less the conditions of human life. We live in an envi-
ronment to which we are adapted : absolute truth lies beyond us, but
relative truth is within our grasp. The poet says that " things are not
what they seem," but things are (to us) what they seem. What else
can they be ? And it is our duty to deal with them as we find them,
with a constant view to the realizing of higher and higher harmonies
in life. Some notes we have already attuned, but there are discords
yet, many and harsh, to be subdued. Then let us set our faces stead-
fastly forward, not to " confront a void," for there is no void to con-
front— nothing has fallen out of the universe that ever was in it — but
with a determination to conquer more and more of moral freedom,
and, by our conscious efforts, to aid that unconscious labor of the
ages by which better and better conditions are ever being won for the
human race.

♦»»

TIME-KEEPING IK LONDON.

By EDMUND A. ENGLEE,

■WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.

I.

IT is proposed in this paper to describe some special features of the
instruments by which time is kept at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich, the means for correcting them, and the methods and in-
struments by which time-signals are distributed from the observatory
to London and elsewhere.

The primary standard time-keeper of England is a sidereal clock
kept in the basement of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. This
clock is of the best construction, and is, moreover, provided with the
most approved apparatus for compensation and correction.

Experience has shown that the best results are obtained when the
connection between the driving-weight and the pendulum of a clock
is as slight as possible. This has been accomplished in the Greenwich
clock by the use of an elegant escapement, the details of which are

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

157

shown in Fig. 1,* representing a back view of the clock-train. The
crutch-axis, supported by the arm (c) and the back plate {V) of the
clock-train, carries an arm (e), attached at f to the left-hand pallet
arm. The pallets are carried by the crutch-rod (d). At ^is attached
a detent projecting toward the left and ending in a light curved

spring. Near the top of the escape-wheel this detent carries a jew-
eled pin which locks the wheel. The action is as follows : When the
pendulum swings toward the left, the arm (e) lifts the delicate spring
at the end of the detent, the wheel is released and drops forward so
that a tooth presses against the face of the pallet and gives an im-

* Figs. 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6, have been taken from Lockyer's "Stargazing," through the
courtesy of JIacmillan & Co., London, publishers, by permission of the author.

l58

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pulse to the pendulum ; the spring at the end of the detent immedi-
ately locks the wheel again, and the pendulum swings on freely to the
left. When the pendulum swings to the right, the light spring at the

end of the detent lets it pass
without unlocking the wheel.
The right-hand pallet is only in-
tended to catch the wheel in
case of accident and forms no
essential part of the escapement.
Thus, it will be seen, the pendu-
lum is quite free except during
a part of every alternate second,
when it releases the escapement
and receives an impulse ; the
seconds-hand, attached to the
escape - wTheel, moves only once
every two seconds.

The most important source of
error in the running of a fine
clock is the change in the length
of the pendulum due to change
of temperature. Two methods
suggest themselves of eliminat-
ing this error : 1. To put the
clock where it will not be sub-
ject to changes of temperature.
2. To counteract the effect of
changes of temperature. To this
end various kinds of pendulums
have been devised, notably the
mercurial and gridiron forms,
which are known under the gen-
eral name of " compensating pen-
dulums." At Greenwich the two
methods are combined to insure
complete success. The clock is
placed in the magnetic basement
of the observatory, where the
temperature is as nearly uniform
as possible, and apparatus is pro-
vided to annul the effect of any
change of temperature which
might occur.

Tests made with a mercurial
pendulum disclosed the fact that the steel rod responded more quickly
than the mercury to a change of temperature, and that consequently

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

159

an appreciable interval of time was required for perfect compensation ;
a modification of the gridiron form, shown in Fig. 2, was therefore
adopted. The pendulum was designed by Messrs. E. Dent & Co., of
London, for the Transit of Venus Expedition (1874), but has since been
used for the primary standard time-keeper of the United Kingdom. Its
construction will be best understood by reference to the section shown
in Fig. 3. To the lower end of a steel rod, suspended in the ordinary
manner, is attached the screw for rating the pendulum. On this screw
and surrounding the rod rests a zinc tube, extending upward ; inclos-
ing the zinc tube and attached to its top is a steel tube extending down-
ward ; on a collar, at the lower end of the steel tube, hangs the cylin-
drical leaden bob, attached at its center. Slots and holes are cut in the
tubes in order to equally expose all parts. The following table, taken
from the official records of the Royal Observatory, is published by
Messrs. E. Dent & Co., for the purpose of showing the performance
of a clock with steel and zinc pendulum :

CLOCK— DENT 1914.

DATE.

Days. Hours

1871 — September 3 21..

17 21..

24 21..
October 1 22. .

8 21..

15 21..

22 21..
29 21..

November 5 22. .

12 22..

19 21..

26 22. .

December 3 21..

10 22..

17 21..
26 0..
31 22..

1872— January 7 22..

14 21..

21 21..

23 22..
February 4 22. .

11 22..

18 21..

25 22..
March 3 21. .

10 22..

17 21..

Clock slow of Green-
wich sidereal time.

Minutes. Seconds.

Mean daily-
losing rate
during each
interval.

Seconds.

Average tem-
perature of
external

14

318

. ,

15

34-1

44

62

16

2-3

40

54

16

342

4-5

50

17

51

4-4

52

17

36-9

4-5

46

18

8-2

4-5

54

18

37-8

4-2

47

19

7-8

43

47

19

36-2

4-1

39

20

5-8

43

35

20

36-3

4-3

34

21

67

4'4

36

21

33-9

3-9

30

22

6-6

4-7

40

22

45-2

4-8

42

23

13-2

4-7

43

23

46-3

48

42

24

20-7

4-9

40

24

542

4-8

39

25

30-2

5.1

42

26

64

5-2

44

26

41-4

50

47

27

16-0

5-0

44

27

50-0

4-8

45

28

24-1

49

46

28

58-1

4-5

49

29

31-2

4-8

45

During the whole time of rating, the clock was situated in a small
hut erected for observing the Transit of Venus. No record of the
temperature of the hut was kept, but the variations would be rery

160 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.

similar to those of the external air, whose average temperature for
each interval is given in the table.

The compensating action of the pendulum evidently depends upon
the relative lengths of steel and zinc, and it is easily possible that
great difficulty would be experienced in cutting and fitting tubes of
exactly the right length ; to complete the adjustment a very delicate
contrivance is added.

Two compound bars of brass and steel (h and i, Fig. 1), with small
weights at their ends, are hung to the crutch-axis by means of a collar
loose enough to be easily turned. The rods are so made that under
normal conditions the brass and steel are of the same length, and the
two bars are in the same straight line ; the center of gravity of the
rods and the weights (regarded as one body) is therefore in the axis,
and the weights are balanced in every position, no matter what angle
the line of the rods makes with the plane of the horizon ; they affect
the pendulum only by their inertia. But, when a change in tempera-
ture occurs, the brass and steel become of unequal length, owing to a
difference in the co-efficients of expansion of the two metals, the rods
are bent, and the center of gravity of the rods and weights is no long-
er in the axis, nor is it in the same vertical plane as the axis except
when the weights are in a horizontal line ; so that an unbalanced force
is introduced whose compensating action varies from a maximum
when the weights are in a horizontal line, to zero when the weights "are
in a vertical line. To be explicit, suppose the rods to be horizontal
and the brass uppermost, and let there be an increase of temperature.
The brass will expand more than the steel, and, the rods being bent
downward, the weights will be lowered. As the pendulum swings
the weights swing with it, and are continually trying to get back to a
horizontal position where they would balance each other ; if they were
swinging alone, they would evidently swing faster than the pendulum,
and therefore, being attached, they accelerate its motion. If the steel
were uppermost, the weights would be raised with an increase of tem-
perature and the pendulum retarded. If the rods were both vertical,
a change of temperature would only throw the center of gravity of
the two weights to one side or the other of the axis, but would not
raise or lower it ; this would only introduce a continuous force tend-
ing to make the pendulum oscillate farther on one side than the other,
but not affecting its rate. At intermediate positions between the ver-
tical and horizontal, the change in the position of the center of gravity
due to a change of temperature would vary with the angle made by
the line joining the centers of gravity of the two weights with the
plane of the horizon ; any required compensating action, between the
limits above mentioned, for a known change of temperature, can there-
fore be obtained by setting the rods at the proper angle.

In order to make a small change in the rate without stopping the
pendulum, the device shown in Fig. 1 has been employed : A weight

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

161

(k) slides freely on the crutch-rod shown back of it in the figure, but
is held by the screw on the end of the spindle (I) which bangs from
the nut (m) at the crutch-axis. By turning the nut (m) the weight
(k) can be lowered or raised, and this makes the clock gain or lose.

But the nicety of the correction of variations due to changes of
temperature has brought to light variations due to another cause
commonly quite overlooked ; it has been found that the pendulum is
affected by changes of barometric pressure. A change in the ba-
rometer of an inch and a half will sensibly alter the rate of the pen-
dulum. The difficulty might be avoided by placing the clock in a
vacuum, but this is evidently impracticable. In the Greenwich clock
the method shown in Fig. 4 has been adopted to counteract the effects

Fig. 4.— Greenwich Clock : Arrangement for Compensation for Barometric Pressure.

of barometric changes. To the pendulum-bob are attached two verti-
cal bar-magnets, one in front (a) with the north pole down, the other
at the back (and therefore not shown in the figure), with the south pole
down. Below these and normally at a distance of 3f inches from
them is a horseshoe magnet (b) which hangs on one end of a lever (c)
nicely balanced on knife-edges at A ; the other end of the lever (c)
rests by means of a rod (d) on a float (e) in the shorter leg of a siphon

VOL. XXII. — 11

i62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

barometer. Counterpoises are added at/" to balance the magnet {b).
A plan of the lever on a smaller scale and a section at A are also
shown in the figure. The barometer-tube is made so much larger in
the shorter than in the longer leg that a change of one inch in the
barometer would move the float in the shorter leg only two tenths of
an inch. A rise or fall in the barometer causes a corresponding mo-
tion in the horseshoe magnet, and thus varies the intensity of its
attraction for the magnets on the pendulum-bob. By proper adjust-
ment this varying attraction is made to furnish the required compen-
sation.

The small error which remains, notwithstanding the above-detailed
provisions for correction, is allowed to accumulate, but is determined
daily (unless clouds prevent) by transit observations,* so that the exact
sidereal time is always known.

The standard sidereal clock registers its beats upon the chronograph
record ; controls, by electric connection, all the sidereal clocks in the
different rooms of the observatory ; and drives a sidereal chronometer
{b, Fig. 5), in agreement with itself, in the computing and time-dis-
tributing room.

The secondary regulator of the time of England is the mean solar
standard clock at the Royal Observatory, which was specially erected
in 1852 for service in the time-signal system, of which it is now the
most important instrument. This clock has a seconds-pendulum,
which closes an electric circuit as it swings to the right. An electro-
magnet in the circuit lifts a small weight, which is discharged upon
the pendulum as it swings to the left, and gives it an impulse ; this
being repeated at each vibration is sufficient to keep it in motion. The
pendulum also closes other galvanic circuits — one as it swings to the
right, another as it swings to the left — which send currents alternately
positive and negative through electro-magnets, alternately attracting
and repelling bar-magnets fastened to an axis, which thus receives a
reciprocating motion. An arm projecting from this axis moves the
seconds-wheel one tooth forward each second ; proper gearing gives
motion to the minute and hour wheels.

The mean solar standard, besides controlling other clocks, to be
enumerated later, drives a seconds-relay (a, Fig. 5), which controls a
mean-time chronometer (c).

All the clocks controlled by the mean solar standard are required
to indicate exact Greenwich local time ; the error can not therefore be
allowed to accumulate, and the means of correction are provided.
Carried by an arm projecting from the pendulum-rod of the mean
solar standard is a magnet, five inches long, which swings just over a

* The difference between the clock-time of the transit of a star over the meridian
(corrected for errors of position of the instrument, and for " personal equation") and the
right ascension of the star for the day, taken from the nautical almanac, is the error of
the clock.

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

163

hollow galvanic coil, called " the accelerating or retarding coil," fast-
ened to the clock-case and operated by a special battery. The attrac-
tion or repulsion, between the magnet and the coil, produced by send-
ing currents in opposite directions, gives any required acceleration or

retardation to the pendulum. Care must, of course, be taken that the
correction be not made too quickly, else the clock, instead of being
controlled by the current, will break away from control, and the error
will be increased. It is now so arranged that the current will produce

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a correction of one second in about ten seconds. The correction is
made as follows : Between the sidereal chronometer (b, Fig. 5) and the
mean-time chronometer (c) there is a commutator (d). By moving its
handle toward the right, a current is sent through the " accelerating or
retarding coil " which accelerates the mean solar standard ; by moving
the handle toward the left, the current goes through the coil in the
opposite direction, and retards the mean solar standard ; in the inter-
mediate position (shown in the figure) no action takes place. The
operator, having ascertained the error of the sidereal standard and its
sympathetic chronometer, by astronomical observation as described,
applies this error to the face-reading of the sidereal chronometer, and
gets the exact sidereal time ; by simple reduction he finds the corre-
sponding mean solar time, and, by comparison, the error of the mean-
time chronometer ; he then moves the handle of the commutator, and
corrects the error of the mean solar standard, and of all the clocks
controlled by it, without leaving his position in the computing-room.
This correction can be made at any instant when the exact time is
desired ; it is usually made at 10 a. m. and 1 p. m., because at those
hours a general distribution of time-signals takes place.

The mean solar standard serves for the distribution of accurate
time in the following ways :

Nearly all the mean-time clocks in the Royal Observatory are driven
by the standard clock ; they are, in fact, simply dials whose hands are
moved in the same way and by the same battery as the hands of the
standard itself. These clocks are placed in the various rooms of the
observatory, so that the astronomers have the exact time close to any
of their instruments. One of them is in the wall surrounding the
grounds, and will be familiar to every one who has visited the observa-
tory ; several are placed in the chronometer-room, where the navy and
other chronometers are corrected and regulated.

The seconds-relay (a, Fig. 5), already referred to, is also driven by
the mean solar standard.

Until 1880 the standard clock controlled, by seconds-beats, a num-
ber of clocks on a private wire in London, which were made to beat
synchronously with the standard by an application of the Jones sys-
tem,* in which the electric current is used, not as a driver, but as a
regulator of clocks already running with small error and by means
of their own motive powers. This plan, though still used within the
observatory, has been abandoned in London.

With the standard clock is connected another electric circuit, open
in two places. These are both automatically closed by the clock, one
at the end of each minute, but the other only for some seconds on
either side of the end of each hour ; so that they are both closed only
at the end of each hour, and then only can the current pass.

* For an illustration of the Jones system for regulating clocks at a distance, see article
on " Time-keeping in Paris," "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1882.

THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 165

This hourly current acts on the magnet which drops the Greenwich
time-hall daily at one o'clock, and on the magnet of the hourly relay
(to the left in Fig. 5) which completes several independent circuits,
each controlling a separate line of wire. One of these extends to the
central telegraph station at the General Post-Office in London, and
another to the London Bridge Station of the Southeastern Railway.
The hell and galvanometer marked in Fig. 5 " P. O. Telegraphs" and
" S. E. R. Hourly Signal and Deal Ball " show the passage of these
currents.

Thus far the service is under the control of the astronomer royal,
and he holds himself responsible to send the signals described along
each line every hour of the day and night with the greatest attainable
accuracy. The signals are generally correct within one tenth of a
second of error. Should, however, by any accident, an hourly signal
be in error, even to half a second, another signal is immediately sent,
announcing that the last was not reliable. Special pains are then
taken that the next hourly signal be correct. Here the responsibility
of the astronomer royal (except for the dropping of the Deal ball, to
be explained later) ends.

On the other hand, it is to be remarked that the Post-Office Depart-
ment, which undertakes the distribution of these signals to London
and the country, agrees to furnish subscribers, not with correct sig-
nals, but with the signals which they receive from Greenwich. The
Greenwich signals, however, being considered everywhere in England
as absolutely correct, constitute a standard from which there is no
appeal.

[To be continued. ]

-<>♦♦-

THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES.*

By T. STEERY HUNT, LL. D. (Cantab.), F. R. S.

rp]

1HE occasion which brings us together is one which should mark a
new departure in the intellectual history of Canada. Science and
letters find but few votaries in a country like this, where the best
energies of its thinkers are necessarily directed to devising means
of subduing the wilderness, opening the ways of communication,
improving agriculture, building up industries, and establishing upon
a proper basis schools in which the youth of the country may be in-
structed in those arts and professions which are among the first needs
of civilized society. The teachers, under such conditions, can do little

* The President's Address before the Mathematical, Physical, and Chemical Section
of the Royal Society of Canada, at the first meeting of the society, Ottawa, May 27, 1382.
Reprinted, with an added note, from the " Canadian Naturalist," vol. x, No. 5.

166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more than interj^ret to their pupils so much of the wisdom of the past,
and of contemporary science, as may suffice for the immediate wants
of the country, and will have but scanty leisure for original investiga-
tion in the field of knowledge. There are, however, never wanting
earnest and curious minds who feel an almost irresistible impulse to
labor in this field, to enlarge the bounds of thought, and to grapple
with the great problems of man and nature. To foster this spirit, to
encourage its beginnings, and to extend the influence of its example,
should be the aim of wise statesmen and legislators who seek to ele-
vate their kind and ennoble their nation ; knowing that the brightest
glories and the most enduring honors of a country are those which
come from its thinkers and its scholars.

The world's intellectual workers are, from the very nature of their
lives of thought and study, separated in some degree from the mass
of mankind. They feel, however, not less than others, the need of hu-
man sympathy and co-operation, and out of this need have grown
academies and learned societies devoted to the cultivation of letters
and of science. The records of these bodies in Florence, in Rome, in
Paris, in London, and elsewhere, are the records of scientific progress
for the last three centuries. Such bodies do not create thinkers and
workers, but they give to them a scientific home, a center of influence,
and the means of making known to the world the results of their
labors.

It was with a wise forethought that more than a century since
Franklin and his friends founded at Philadelphia the American Philo-
sophical Society. Its planting then seemed premature, but its vigor-
ous growth during a century has served to show that the seed was not
too early sown. This, however, unlike many of the academies of the
Old World to which we have adverted, had no formal recognition from
the State, and there came a period in the growth of the American
Union when the need of an official scientific body was felt. Thus it
was that nineteen years ago, in the midst of the great civil war, the
American Congress authorized the erection of a National Academy of
Sciences, to which, as an American citizen, I have the honor to belong.
The aim proposed in founding this Academy was to gather together
what was best and highest in the scientific life of the nation, and,
moreover, to organize a body of councilors to which the executive au-
thority could always look for advice and direction in scientific matters
relating to the interests of the State. In this National Academy — at
first consisting of fifty, and now practically limited to one hundred
members (a number which it has not yet attained) — the domain of let-
ters is unrepresented ; while the Royal Society of London is, in like
manner — although scholars and statesmen seek the honors of its fel-
lowship— essentially an Academy of Sciences.

Our infant organization attempts a larger plan, and embraces, with
the mathematical and physical sciences, letters, philosophy, and his-

THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 167

tory, imitating the Royal Irish Academy, which, like this, is divided
into two classes ; that of the Sciences, on the one hand, and that of
Polite Literature and Antiquities on the other. The Institute of France,
made up of five Academies, embraces the Fine Arts in its still wider
scheme. The second class of our society, with its two sections, aspires
to cover the same ground as the Academy of Sciences of the Institute
of France, the Science division of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal
Society of London, and the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States.

The two sections into which our second class is now divided —
namely, III, including Mathematic, Physic, and Chemistry, and IV,
embracing Biology and Geology — are, in their aims and their objects,
closely related to each other, and widely separated from Sections I and
II, which are devoted respectively to French and English Literature
and History. Differences in language thus establish in the literary
department of this society a natural division into two sections. In
the department of the sciences, however, there is no natural basis for
a similar division, and it will probably be found in the near future
that subjects of common interest will draw more and more closely to-
gether our two sections until, as in the various societies which we
have named, the distinction between mathematical, physical, and
chemical studies on the one hand, and geological and biological studies
on the other, will be lost sight of. It seems to me therefore fitting
that we should consider the mutual relations of these two divisions,
and inquire into the value of the distinctions upon which they have
been based.

Apart from pure mathematic, which is based upon our intuitions
of space, the sciences which now concern us have to do with material
nature, and are properly called natural sciences. It is not their prov-
ince to look behind or beyond the material world of nature, nor to
grapple with the mystery of the Infinite, with which, in the last anal-
ysis, the inquirer always finds himself face to face. Our various
metaphysical systems are schemes which men have devised to solve
this mighty problem, and to translate into intelligible language their
efforts to comprehend it. What we call Nature is at once a mantle
and a veil in which the spiritual both clothes and conceals itself. " I
weave," Goethe makes the world-spirit say, " the living garment of
the Deity." This phrase embodies a profound truth. All nature is
living ; it is, as the word natura itself, equally with its Greek equiva-
lent, physis, implies, that which is growing, the perpetually-becoming
or being born ; and this sense, which underlies etymologically the
words natural and physical, should never be lost sight of.

It is a common reproach in the mouths of certain cavilers at sci-
ence that it does not explain the beginnings of life in matter. That
the plant and the animal are living, is evident to them, but they as-
sume that the air, the water, and the earth, the elements from which

168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the plant grows and is fed, are dead ; that life is a mysterious some-
thing which comes from without, and is extraneous to the organism.
Perhaps we may trace the origin of this conception to the ancient
legend, which appears in more than one form, of a human body fash-
ioned out of dead matter and waiting for vivifying breath or fire. The
student of inorganic nature, however, soon learns to recognize the fact
that all matter is instinct with activities, and finds that a great num-
ber of those processes which were formerly regarded as functions of
organized bodies are really common to these and to inorganic matter.
The phenomena of gravitation, of light, and of electricity, the dif-
fusion and transpiration of gases and liquids, the crystallogenic proc-
ess, and the peculiar relations of colloids, are all, when rightly under-
stood, manifestations of energies and activities which forbid us to
speak of matter as dead. To all of these dynamical (or, as they are
generally called, physical) activities of matter, supervene those proc-
esses which we name chemical, and which give rise to new and spe-
cifically distinct inorganic forms. The attaining of individuality by
matter, which has always seemed to me the greatest step in the prog-
ress of nature, is first seen in the crystal, but therein the forces of
matter are in a statical condition, except so far as certain dynamical
relations are concerned. It is not until solid matter rises from the
crystalline to the higher condition of the colloid, that it becomes
capable of absorption, diffusion, and even of assimilation ; that, in a
word, it assumes relations to the external world which show that it
possesses an individuality higher than the cyrstal, and is, in fact, en-
dowed with many of the activities belonging to those masses of col-
loidal matter which biologists have agreed to call living.

In these phenomena we have the first developments of individual-
ity and of organization, and I think that the careful student who
endeavors with a strong mental grasp to seize the true relations of
things will see that we have here to do, not with a new activity from
without, but with a new and higher development of a force which is
inherent in matter, and thus manifests itself at a certain stage in chem-
ical development. He will then, in the words of a philosophic poet —

"See through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth."

The adjective, quick, is here to be understood in its primitive
sense of living, as opposed to dead, and aptly defines the notion
which I have endeavored to convey. All the energies seen in nature
are in this view but manifestations of the essential life or quickness of
matter, whether displayed in the domain of what are called dynamical
or physical activities, in chemical processes, or in the phenomena of
irritability, assimilation, growth, and reproduction, which we may
comprehensively designate as biotical.*

* This view, upon which I have insisted in the essay on " The Domain of Physiology,"
cited below, was well set forth by Rosmini. According to him, in the words of his in-

THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 169

When we have attained to this conception of hylozoism, of a living
material universe, the mystery of Nature is solved. The cosmos is
not, as some would have it, a vast machine wound up and set in
motion with the certainty that it will run down like a clock, and arrive
at a period of stagnation and death. The modern theory of thermody-
namic, though perhaps true within its limitations, has not yet grasped
the problem of the universe. The force that originated and impelled
sustains, and is the Divine Spirit which

"Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates uuspent."

The law of birth, growth, and decay, of endless change and per-
petual renewal, is everywhere seen working throughout the cosmos,
in nebula, in world and in sun, as in rock, in herb, and in man ; all of
which are but passing phases in the endless circulation of the universe,
in that perpetual new birth which we call Nature. This, it will be
said, is the poet's view of the external world, but it is at the same
time the one which seems to me to be forced upon us as the highest
generalization of modern science.

The study of nature in its details presents itself to the mind in a
twofold aspect — as historical and as philosophical. The first of these
gives rise to a General Physiography or description of nature, which
we commonly call Natural History as applied to each of the three
great divisions designated as the mineral, vegetable, and animal king-
doms. This physiographic method of study in the latter two gives us
systematic and descriptive botany and zoology, with their classifica-
tion and their terminology ; while the physiography of the mineral
kingdom includes not only systematic and descriptive mineralogy as
generally understood, but those branches of geology which we desig-
nate as petrography and geognosy, or the study of the constituents of
the earth's crust, of their aggregation and their distribution.

terpreter, Davidson, " the ultimate atoms of matter are animate ; each atom having
united with it, and forming its unity or atomicity, a sensitive principle. When atoms
chemically combine, their sensitive principles become one. . . . The unit of natural exist-
ence is neither force nor matter, but sentience, and through this all the material and dy-
namic phenomena of nature may be explained." From the unifications of these sensitive
principles, or elementary souls, which take place in the combinations of matter, higher
and higher manifestations of sentience appear, constituting the various activities dis-
played in crystals, in plants, and in animals. From these elementary souls organic souls
are built up, and " when these are redissolved into the elementary ones through the dis-
solution of the organized bodies, the existence of the souls does not cease, but is merely
transformed." ^ (See " The Philosophical System of Rosmini," by Thomas Davidson, pp.
284-301.) This volume was unpublished, and these views of Rosmini were unknown to
me, at the time of writing the above pages.

The eminent biophysiologist, William B. Carpenter, in an essay on " Life," published
in 1S4Y, contends that organization and biotical functions arise from the natural operation
of forces inherent in elemental matter.— (Todd's " Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiol-
ogy," vol. iii, p. 151.)

i7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The second aspect of the study of nature, which we have desig-
nated as philosophical, regards the logic of nature, or what the older
writers spoke of as General Physiology. This is sometimes appropri-
ately termed Natural Philosophy, a designation which is the correlative
of Natural History. With this method of study in the organic king-
doms we are familiar under the names of physiological botany and
physiological zoology, which concern themselves with anatomy, or-
ganography, and morphology, and with the processes of growth,
nutrition, and decay in organized existences. The natural philosophy
of the inorganic world investigates the motions and the energies of the
heavenly bodies, and then, coming down to our planet, considers all
the phenomena which come under the head of dynamic or physic, as
well as those of chemistry. These various activities together "con-
stitute the secular life of our planet. They are the geogenic agencies
which in the course of ages have molded the mineral mass of the
earth, and from primeval chaos have evolved its present order, formed
its various rocks, filled the veins in its crust with metals, ores, gems,
and spars, and determined the composition of its waters and its at-
mosphere. They still regulate alike the terrestrial, the oceanic, and
the aerial circulation, and preside over the constant change and decay
by which the surface of the earth is incessantly renewed and the con-
ditions necessary to organic life are maintained." * Thus the physio-
logical study of the inorganic world, or in other words its natural
philosophy, includes in its scope at once theoretical astronomy and
theoretical geology or geogeny.

The twofold division which has been adopted in the scientific class
of our new society does not correspond to that which we have just set
forth, namely, of Natural History on the one hand and Natural Philos-
ophy on the other ; nor yet, as might at first seem to be the case, to
the more familiar distinction between inorganic and organic nature.
Our Section III has been made to embrace, it is true, much both of the
natural history and the natural philosophy of the inorganic world, in-
cluding, besides physic and chemistry, both descriptive and theoretical
astronomy and mineralogy. This same section has also been made to
include mathematic, which in itself does not belong to the domain
of natural science, though in its applications it becomes an indispen-
sable instrument in the study of nature ; whether we investigate the
phenomena of physic or of chemistry, or seek to comprehend the laws
which regulate alike the order of the celestial spheres, the shapes of
crystals, and the forms of vegetation.

Section IV, on the other hand, in its department of biology, in-
cludes alike the natural history and the natural philosophy of the
vegetable and the animal kingdoms. In this same section has, how-

* " The Domain of Physiology, or Nature in Thought and Language," by T. Sterry
Hunt, " London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine " (vol. xii, pp. 233-253)
for October, 1881; also separately reprinted, pp. 2S ; S. E. Cassino: Boston, 18S2.

THE RELATIONS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 171

ever, been included what we call geology, which is not a separate sci-
ence, but the application alike of mathematic and of all the natural
sciences to the elucidation of both the physiography and the physiology
of our planet. So far as geology concerns itself with the history of
past life on the earth, or what is called paleontology, it is biological,
but in all its other aspects the relations of geology are with Section III.
The logical result of this complex character of geology should be either
the separation of paleontology from the other branches of geological
study, which find their appropriate place in our Section III ; or else
the union of the two sections through this their common bond.

It wTill be noticed that in this brief survey of the field of natural
knowledge I have not spoken of the technical applications of science,
nor alluded to its important aspects in relation to the material wants
of life. On this theme, did time permit, I might speak at length.
There are two classes of motives which urge men to the pursuit of
knowledge ; on the one hand, those of worldly fame or profit, and, on
the other, the far nobler sentiment which has the finding-out of truth
for its object. It would seem as if, by a spiritual law, the great prin-
ciples which are most fruitful in material results are not revealed to
those who interrogate Nature with these lower ends in view. Newton,
Darwin, Faraday, Henry, and such as they, were not inspired by a de-
sire for the praise of men, or for pecuniary reward, but pursued their
life-long labors with higher motives; the love of truth for its own sake,
the reverent desire to comprehend the hidden laws and operations of
the universe. To such, and to such alone, does Nature reveal herself.
In the material as in the moral order, the promise of achievement is
given to those who strive after knowledge and wisdom irrespective of
the hope of temporal reward ; and the history of science shows that it
is such seekers as these who have attained to the discovery of those
secrets which have been of the greatest benefit to humanity. The ad-
monition is to all, that we are to seek first for truth and for justice ;
and with this comes the promise that to those who thus seek all other
things shall be superadded.

It is good and praiseworthy to labor to extract the metal from the
ore, and the healing essence from the plant, to subdue the powers of
electricity and of steam to the service of man. To those who attain
these ends the world gives its substantial rewards ; but far higher
honors are instinctively rendered to those who by their disinterested
researches, undertaken without hope of recompense, have revealed to
us the great laws which serve to guide the searchers in these fields of
technical science ; to those who have labored serenely, with the con-
sciousness that whatever of truth is made known by their studies will
be a lasting gain to humanity. " Thus," to repeat words used on
another occasion,* " it ever happens, in accordance with the Divine

* " The Relations of Chemistry to Pharmacy and Therapeutics," an Address before the
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, by T. Sterry Hunt. Boston, IS'Zu.

i72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

order, that the worker must lose himself and his lower aims in his
work, and in so doing find his highest reward ; for the profit of his
labor shall be, in the language of one of old, to the glory of the Cre-
ator and to the relief of man's estate."

BRAIN-WEIGHT AND BRAIN-POWER *

By J. P. II. BOILEAU, B. A., M. D.

ALTHOUGH the connection between the relative weight of man's
brain and his intellectual development is very well known, and
several illustrations of this connection have been published, I feel
assured that the following notes of a remarkable case may not only
well be added to the list of those already recorded, but that it is de-
sirable that this should be done. It is the case of an officer who died
at Netley last year, and I am indebted to a published memoir for some
particulars of his life.

A Scotchman by birth and parentage, he received his early educa-
tion in Edinburgh, and afterward went to Wimbledon School previous
to entering Addiscombe, where his career was exceptionally brilliant.
At the final examination there, he scored an unusual total of marks,
gained the sword of honor and Pollock medal, and several prizes for
specific subjects. On leaving Addiscombe in 1858 he proceeded to
India, where he was employed altogether in civil duties. At the time
of his death he was superintendent of the telegraph department. With
no military distinctions, he was, nevertheless, one of the foremost men
in his corps. Highly gifted intellectually, duty no less than inclina-
tion prompted him to cultivate his mind as a preparation for advance-
ment, for he held strongly that no one is fit for highly responsible
positions who fails to keep himself as far as possible on a level with
current events, and with the thoughts, investigations, and discoveries
of the day. His wide reading and tenacious memory made him a man
of mark in any society. His opinions were his own, formed independ-
ently, expressed, if necessary, forcibly, and followed always coura-
geously. He was an exceptional man, and his large-hearted and wide-
reaching sympathy won him admiration and love among high and low.
His remarkable qualities were as conspicuous in his earlier as in his
later years. He was a standard of conduct to his schoolfellows, and,
when at Addiscombe, the governor did him the extraordinary honor
of making a private report to the Board of Directors of the East India
Company, which was quoted by the chairman on the examination day.
The reputation with which he started increased daily, and was sustained
to the last. But the strain was too great. Exposure to a pernicious
climate — and his physical strength led him to expose himself only too

BRAIN-WEIGHT AND BRAIN-POWER. 173

carelessly — for twenty-four years, with but eighteen months' leave,
weakened a naturally magnificent constitution, and he was compelled
to take furlough. His intellectual vigor, however, was shown nearly
to the last, and only a few days before death he expressed his capa-
bility of undertaking difficult mental work. But a sudden change set
in, and in a few days proved fatal.

During his stay at Netley he suffered from extreme debility, in-
duced probably by intractable diarrhoea. A day or two before death
he complained of severe headache, and his axillary temperature rose
from 101°-102° to 106° Fahr.

It is very much to be regretted that, at the time I was called upon
to make the autopsy, I was not in possession of the facts narrated, for,
had I been, the examination would have been more complete in many
points. The diagnosis of the case was very obscure ; but hepatic ab-
scess was suspected, and it was to clear up this point that the exami-
nation was made. The severe headache, however, and the rise of tem-
perature, pointed to some cerebral or meningeal mischief, and it was
thought advisable to find out if such existed. For this purpose the
cranium was opened.

Abstract of Autopsy (made not only with the full permission of
relatives, but, I believe, by request). — Cranial bones very dense ; dura
mater extremely vascular ; brain-substance generally firm and normal.
On opening the left ventricle pus was observed in the anterior cornu ;
the origin of this was in the anterior part of the intraventricular por-
tion of the left corpus striatum, which here was quite destroyed and
broken down into soft shreds. Before dissection the brain weighed
26,130 grains avoirdupois, or 59*72 ounces. After examination, a por-
tion of it, weighing 22,785 grains, was found to displace eighty-six
cubic inches of water ; the specific gravity was, therefore, l-049. The
lungs were perfectly healthy, with the exception of the lower lobe of
the right. In this there was a circumscribed abscess-cavity, measuring
in its longest diameter three inches. It communicated with a small
abscess in the liver, through an opening, about the size of a florin, in
the diaphragm. The heart was quite normal. The lining membrane
of the great blood-vessels was deeply blood-stained, that of the aorta
being very much roughened, in patches, by atheromatous degeneration.
Jejunum, ileum, and colon normal ; no trace of ulceration, but the
solitary glands of the latter were large and prominent. The liver
presented a uniformly brown color throughout, and was much softened.
In the upper portion of the right lobe there was a small abscess, about
one inch in diameter, and nearly surrounded by a dense, thick, fibrous
envelope. This abscess communicated with the lung. The spleen was
slightly enlarged, weighing 4,375 grains. The kidneys appeared to be
quite normal ; they were enveloped in a large amount of fat.

The chief interest in this case lies in the great weight of the brain,
and its high specific gravity, in relation to the highly gifted intellectual

174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

power exhibited by the individual during life. As this brain weighed
very nearly 60 ounces, it exceeds that of all others usually quoted, with
the exception only of Cuvier's, which weighed 64^ ounces, and that of
Dr. Abercrombie, which weighed 63 ounces.* Sir J. Y. Simpson's
brain weighed 54 ounces, and that of Agassiz 53*4 ounces. It is well
known that the average weight of the adult male brain is under 50
ounces. The specific gravity of the brain I examined was 1*049, and
this is as high as any recorded. From Professor Aitken's work I find
that the average specific gravity of the brain is 1*036, and the highest
specific gravity of the densest part of a brain ever taken by Professor
Aitken, or any one else, I believe, is 1*049.

The weight of the brain in this case was, in the first instance, taken
by the orderly corporal in charge of our microscope room, and recorded
by him on the blackboard in the mortuary. I immediately verified its
accuracy by weighing the organ myself, and I also verified the correct-
ness of the weighing-machine. The specific gravity was taken very
carefully. Surgeon-Major Hogg, Army Medical Department, was
present at the time.

The average cranial capacity of the adult male head is, I believe,
about 90 cubic inches. Cuvier's is reported to have been about 118,
In the case which I now record it must have been about 108. — Lancet.

THE CELL-STATE.

By Professor FEKDINAND COHN, of Breslav.

"VTOTHING is more sure than that all life is subject to age and
-L- i death, and yet nothing is more contradictory to our feelings.
In the vigor of youth our body feels as if it was created to last for
ever ; why must the highest work of art wear out and break down
with time? The more formidable the contradiction between inex-
haustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which
reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world
of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy
eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of
the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of
real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times. . . . But
the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it
is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no
dream-picture ; it requires no adept to find it : it streams forth inex-
haustible in all living nature.

* A case is recorded in the " British Medical Journal," October 26, 1872, by Dr. Morrisj
in which a brain examined at University College, London, weighed 67 ounces. It was
that of a bricklayer, who could neither read nor write.

THE CELL-STATE. 175

Nature continues eternally young ; the earth adorns itself every
spring with leaf and flower, having the same freshness and youthful
vigor as when for the first time He " let it bring forth grass, the herb
yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind." The
grasses and flowers, it is true, which this year are cut or withered,
the leaves and blossoms which the wind has to-day blown from the
trees, will not assist in forming its robe in the next spring, but Nature
draws out new shoots from the old roots, new leaves from the old
branches, and thus rejuvenates herself with every new year. And
although the human race, although also the other kinds of animals and
plants, show as yet no trace of age in spite of the numerous thousands
of years in which they have dwelt on the earth, still each individual is
perishable, it grows old and dies ; but new generations shove them-
selves uninterruptedly into the gap, so that the whole abide in the fresh-
ness of youthful vigor. Rejuvenation so dwells in nature that every
individual runs through a limited circle of development, and is finally
worn out and cut off, to be replaced by fresh members which pass anew
through the accomplished cycle.

If we apply this view which we have gained of the rejuvenation
of nature to the consideration of a single being, whether it be man,
animal, or plant, we shall perceive that all life rests upon a constant
renewal. Life is an uninterrupted contest with death, which attacks
it every moment, but is beaten back by rejuvenation. It would be an
error to represent a living being as anything constant, its appearance
as anything steady ; life in truth resembles a water-fall, which only
apparently preserves a constant form, while in reality none of the par-
ticles of water keep their places, but are continually removed and re-
placed by new ones. The visible form of stillness is kept up only in
perpetual movement. Life resembles a flame, which restlessly con-
sumes itself and can shed an even light only when new particles come
up in place of those which have been burned, only to be dissipated in
their turn a moment later. So in living bodies the combination and
arrangement of the matter on which their outer form and internal
disposition depend are at no two instants the same, but an uninter-
rupted change of matter is taking place. The particles which are
together in this moment at one point are in the following moment
separated and replaced by others. For only a short time are the atoms
of which bodies are built up adapted to the service of life ; sooner or
later they leave it in order to follow the free play of the forces of
attraction which join the elements in the enduring combinations of
lifeless nature. Therefore, the living body is obliged constantly to
take up from without new elements of nourishment, by means of
which it repairs its loss ; and these insinuate themselves so closely in
the place of the separated ones, that even the eye of the naturalist,

176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

armed with the most effective aids supplied by modern science, has
only recently remarked, after a long time, that any change has taken
place.

In reality every living body is subject to an uninterrupted change,
which goes on in an appointed course. Life is like a stream, which
gushes out of a hidden spring ; slowly increases, flows on for a time
with even strength, finally with diminishing velocity, to disappear in
the sea of eternity. We designate the course of changes which every
living being, plant, and animal, as well as man, goes through, as its
development. Development begins with the moment of birth and
ends with death.

But with the death of the single being its race does not disappear ;
the property dwells in every living being by which a part of it can
drop off from the whole, continue to develop itself independently,
be nourished and rejuvenated by a change of matter. We call this
dropping off of a part, capable of development, from the whole, propa-
gation ; with propagation is transferred the history of development ;
the separated part, which we denote as an egg or spore, a seed or
embryo, a bud or spawn-knob, passes in substance through the same
course of changes as the whole from which it has been separated.
Like arises from like ; the children resemble their parents, and, as these
again resemble their ancestors, the character of the species is kept up
essentially unchanged, in spite of the perishability of individuals,
through all the generations.

That life is nothing but a constant development and an uninter-
rupted rejuvenation is expressed in the plainest and clearest manner
in the world of plants. It is, indeed, not easy to comprehend the life
of plants aright, and many regard the term as a figure of speech, not
properly applied. Plants, they say, do not feel or move ; they have
no consciousness, no soul, like animals ; how can we speak of their life ?
If motion, feeling, and consciousness alone constituted life, there might
be some doubt as to whether plants lived, though it would still be
worth while to inquire whether these higher attributes were really
wanting in plants. Darwin has lately shown, in connection with many
older observations, that all the parts of plants participate in a regular
circling motion, and that single organs show sensibility enough to
make them comparable with the brains of the lower animals. But
when, instead of the highest acts of life, we confine ourselves to its
general and essential manifestations, it becomes undoubtedly clear
that plants are living in the same sense as animals and men. Only
plants are distinguished, not from animals generally, but from the
higher animals that rank nearest to men, and from which our concep-
tions of animal life in general have been formed, in that in them unity,
or individuality, is expressed in a much more imperfect manner. The
mammal, bird, fish, insect, is a separate, single, and indivisible being.
Its members are fixed and limited in number ; not one of them can

THE CELL-STATE. j77

perform its functions when separated from the whole. No part, not
the smallest, can be separated from the body without the whole suf-
fering.

It is very different with the plant. A tree indeed appears to be a
single being, sinking the net-work of its roots into the ground, raising
its slender trunk into the air and spreading out above the web of its
limbs and boughs. The members of which the tree consists may be
regarded as its organs. It sucks up its nourishment through its roots,
it breathes through its leaves, it propagates its species through its
flowers. But the connection of these members with each other is of
an infinitely looser character than that of the organs of the animal. I
can strip as many leaves as I please from a willow, the rest lives on ;
I can cut off its limbs, those that are left grow more vigorously ; I can
cut it down near the roots, new shoots spring up from the stump ; I
set the rootless stem in moist earth, and it continues to live. If I wish
to make a layer, I have only to plant the end of a bough, and it takes
root and grows. In many plants a single leaf has the capacity of living
and growing. The plant is not therefore indivisible, like the animal ;
its individual members are in a much higher measure independent and
competent to live. "We may say the animal is a single being, each of
its members is only a part, not itself a whole, only an organ, not itself
an individual. The plant, on the other hand, is a composite being, a
chain of individuals, each of which possesses an independent life, but
all of which are connected in a collective life of a higher order ; the
plant is an organism the organs of which are themselves organisms.

This relation may be made clear by a suitable figure. A state is,
without doubt, in many respects a single organism, which maintains
an independent, often sharply denned, unchanged character through
centuries, and marks its domain as an indivisible, also as a real indi-
vidual. Each state has its own development-history : it is founded, it
grows, reaches its prime, and decays ; it has its life-economy, for the
functions of which it maintains its particular organs, its officers. The
state also acts in external affairs as a single organism ; it makes war,
it establishes enterprises for the general benefit, it builds important
works, etc. But if the state thus appears as a single whole, so also it
may be regarded on the other side as a collection of provinces ; each
province is a state in miniature, likewise organized in itself ; and his-
tory furnishes us with numerous examples in which single provinces
have been able to cut loose from the collective state and maintain
themselves as independent state-organisms. The province, again, can
be regarded as an association of villages which represent the smallest
social organizations ; every village is also a state in miniature, with
independent economy, and capable of maintaining itself independently
in case of necessity, and, in fact, of growing up, as Rome, Carthage,
and Venice have shown, into mighty states. If we carry our simili-
tude to the end, we may liken the animal to a compact, centralized,

VOL. XXII. — 12

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

unitary state, the members of which have entirely lost their inde-
pendence, and in which a single will rules the whole ; while we may
represent the plant as a freely organized federal state, the members of
which, in spite of their resignation to the whole body, have yet pre-
served a certain degree of independence and self -administration.

In the federal state of the plant the limbs and boughs correspond
to the provinces, the leaves to the villages ; but the village is not the
last member of the chain : it is itself a union of citizens, each one of
whom, though a member of the state and the village, is an independent
being who lives first for himself, and has his own household, all of
whose efforts are first directed to the maintenance of his own exist-
ence. But while with a just egoism the citizen knows his own good
as his immediate object, he thereby participates directly in the ad-
vancement of the state organism and contributes to the support of
the whole state. Every citizen goes through his independent devel-
opment from birth to death ; but the village does not die with the
death of the individual, for in his stead come his children to fill the
vacant place ; and the village and state are renewed in the unbroken
succession of generations.

It is the same in the plant-state. If we compare the leaf with the
village, it also consists of a larger or smaller number of individuals
which may be regarded as independent organisms. The citizens,
through the union of whom the plant-state is formed, are called by
the botanist plant-cells. All plants, without exception, are composed
in all their parts of cells, just as every building, from the palace to the
hut, consists of building-stones or timbers. Every plant-cell pursues
an individual life. Its first effort is only to maintain and develop
itself ; it takes its own nourishment and assimilates it, and finally
dies, after having, as a rule, first left a posterity in its place. As the
cells unite to form cell-villages in the leaves, these unite again to form
the provinces of the foliage-boughs, and enter into an interchange of
life with each other, and so they maintain the life of the whole plant in
the same manner as the collective state-life comes into being through
the interworking of the lives of the individual citizens. What we see
going on in the life of the plant in the germ and shoot, in flower and
fruit-bearing, are only head and state actions in the development of
the cell-state and its citizens.

Our eyes can not perceive these citizens of the cell-state. It is not
strange, then, that their existence escaped the knowledge of naturalists
till about two hundred years ago. They would still be concealed, and
the key to the comprehension of plant-life would be withheld from us,
had it not been for the microscope.

We owe it to the microscope that, where the naked eye perceives
only uniform masses, we can now distinguish a wonderful diversity
of beautiful tissues ; and that where a rigid stillness seemed to prevail,
a fullness of life-processes quite incomprehensible to us is concealed.

THE CELL-STATE. i79

The microscope shows us in the plant, which was able to give to the
naked eye only obscure signs of its inner life, a highly organized state-
life of restless development and renewal.

We have represented the citizen of this state, the plant-cell, as an
exceedingly simply formed being : it consists of a round body of soft,
slimy substance, like a sack, the interior of which is filled with a
watery juice. The soft substance, forming the wall of the body, is
called protoplasm ; it is the most important matter in all nature, for
it alone is the bearer of life. With slight changes it forms not only
the bodies of all plant-cells, but also the white and yolk of the egg,
flesh and blood, the substance of the brain and nerves, milk and cheese,
the skin and hair of animals. While in lifeless nature nearly every
kind of stone has a different chemical constitution, in the world of life
one and the same fundamental substance forms the basis of the bodies
of plants, animals, and men.

But if the plant-cell consisted simply of soft protoplasm, it would
not be able to resist the presence and assault of strange bodies ; there-
fore it is surrounded with a hard shell, which it prepares as a dwelling
and for its protection, in a similar manner as the snail forms its shell,
by secreting over its surface a matter which soon hardens into a firm,
transparent envelope. This shell, which is called the cell-wall, does not
show the most minute opening, but incloses the protoplasm perfectly
tight. We might, therefore, liken the cell to an egg in which the soft,
living contents are concealed in the hard shell.

Plant-cells vary greatly in size. Those of elder-pith and of the
begonia-leaf may be perceived, with the naked eye, as resembling an
extremely delicate lattice-work ; the pollen of rye and of melons
separates in water into little dust-particles — single cells, just at the
limit of visibility. A drop of malt-yeast, on the other hand, is re-
solved under the microscope into millions of oval fungus-cells, one or
two thousand of which would hardly fill the space of a centimetre.
Plant-cells average about the size of a hair's-breadth, many only about
a third or a fourth as much ; others are larger, and particularly longer ;
the single fibers from which cotton and linen threads are spun are
plant-cells which, although very slender, are from two to six centi-
metres long.

But in nature nothing is great and nothing little, and there is
room, even in the smallest cell, for the greatest diversity and develop-
ment of the powers of life. A continuous formation and transforma-
tion, origin and decay, a constant change of matter, is going on in
every cell ; reception and assimilation of food, inspiration and expira-
tion ; certain atoms which have become of no use for purposes of life
are cast aside, others are taken up from without in their places ; on
this food and change of substance depend the renovation of the cell
and the maintenance of its life. Evidently not solid substances are
appropriated, for we know that the cell is incased in a perfectly closed

180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

envelope ; but liquid and gaseous foods can be easily absorbed. Al-
though the most perfect microscopes have never made any holes visible
in the cell-envelope, there is not the slightest doubt that this envelope is
porous, like a fungus, but that the pores are infinitely finer. Therefore,
we may understand that, when a cell is placed in a fluid, the envelop
absorbs it to fullness, and conveys to the inner protoplasmic body as
much as it requires ; and, inversely, certain parts of the cell-juices,
which the living protoplasmic body does not need for itself, are tran-
spired through the pores of the envelope and become applicable to the
use of other cells ; and the same may take place with air and gases.

The old naturalists believed that all bodies were composed of four
elements — fire, water, air, and earth. Modern physics and chemistry
have divested these elements of their high importance ; but they are
still full of meaning to the life of plants. Earth, air, and water are
the food of plants ; fire, or rather light and heat, are the forces that
set agoing the play of life in the cells. The most important food of
plants is contained in the mineral solutions which the water, penetrat-
ing the soil, extracts from it, and in the oxygen and carbonic acid
which they derive from the air.

Water, earth salts, and the gases — the raw materials which the
plants suck up — are changed within the cells into starch and sugar,
gum and woody fiber., albumen and wax, oil and resin, into powerful
medicines and deadly poisons. The simplest plant possesses an art
which the most skillful chemist has not been able to learn from it. It
is true that the chemist can artificially prepare in his laboratory many
of the substances which the plant-cell likewise produces ; he can con-
vert the starch of the potato into the sugar that gives the wine-grape
its sweetness ; this, again, he can transform into the fruit-acids which,
in connection with the sugar, give the berries their fresh and agreeable
taste ; he can even produce the flavor of the fruits from the fusel-oil
which he obtains by the fermentation of the sugar. He can make the
oil of bitter almonds from benzoic and formic acids ; he can, with as
good art, imitate the pungent taste of the pepper, and the biting one
of the mustard-seed, and the narcotic poison which only the night-
shade has hitherto prepared for the healing of sore eyes. He can
produce from the sap of firs the crystal-needles of the vanilla, for
which a Mexican orchid has heretofore been obliged to give up its
pods ; from the distillation of wood he obtains a smoky fluid, from
which he procures salicylic acid, for the production of which the flowers
of the meadow-sweet or the bark-tissues of the willow were formerly
required ; and from this he makes also the ink-coloring gallic acid,
which formerly only a little wasp knew how to draw out by its sting
from the cells of the oak, and the aroma of the wood-ruff. He has
made the work of the cells in the madder-root superfluous, for he has
fabricated its costly dyes, along with a hundred other splendid pig-
ments, out of tar-oil and stone-coal ; and is now on the point of taking

THE CELL-STATE. 181

its work away from the indigo-plant by artificially producing indigo.
But a raw material which has at some time been brought forth out of
the laboratory of a living plant-cell always lies at the foundation of
all these manipulations of the chemist, wonderful as they are. And,
notwithstanding the immense progress that modern chemistry has
made within the last ten years, its art is still limited at this point : no
prospect yet exists that it will be able, artificially, to produce the most
important of all the substances that go to build up the bodies of ani-
mals and plants, and to form their living cell-tissues — protoplasm, or
the envelope of the plant-cells, the matter of the muscles and nerves.
Chemistry shares this limitation of its means with animals. No animal
can live on air, water, and earth alone, like the plants ; no animal can
combine the simple chemical combinations, as they occur in lifeless
nature, into the life-substance protoplasm. The animal must draw the
substance of his flesh and blood from the plant, for his own vital forces
are not competent to produce it. The plant-cells alone possess the
faculty of ennobling the simple combinations of lifeless nature into
matter fitted for life. Every cell, furthermore, possesses another art,
that of forming different fabrics out of the same raw material. Hence
arises that infinite diversity of substances of different properties which
are drawn from the vegetable kingdom. Close together, in the shadow
of the same wood, grow crow-foot and wood-ruff, centaury and night-
shade ; the same soil gives food to their roots, the same air plays
around their foliage ; and yet the cells of one secrete a pungent, those
of another a narcotic poison, those of a third a bitter medicinal juice,
those of a fourth an aromatic flavor. The cell utilizes a part of its
food for its own growth ; but, sooner or later, the growth ceases, and
the cell, keeping the form and size it has acquired, becomes a per-
manent cell. It is round or oval, or resembles a many-sided crystal.
Some cells become flat and square, like a tile ; some put out rays, like
a star, or form a zigzag, like the wall of a fortress ; many lengthen
themselves out. The inner structure, also, of the cell changes with
age ; the envelope, delicate and thin in youth, afterward receives accre-
tions and ornaments. Some cells have within a hollow screw-way, like
a winding stair ; in others, the inside is covered with beautiful net-
tings, rings, flutings, or lattices. Most cells thicken their casings, as
the oyster does, by adding new layers over the older ones ; and, when
their hollows are quite filled up, they may rival stones and bones in
hardness, as, for example, the cells of the iron-wood and the ivory-
nut.

As the cell-wall grows thicker, fluids and gases penetrate its invisi-
ble pores with more difficulty ; and with continuous increase of thick-
ness the living protoplasmic bodies inhabiting its interior must finally
die for want of food. They in effect build their own coffin, immure
themselves living in their own cell-prison. But a wonderful provision
prevents the food being entirely cut off. While the cell- wall is arch-

i8a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing itself up more closely and thickly, a few doors and windows are
still left open in it, through which communication may still take place
with the adjoining cells ; this occurs by the cell-wall not becoming
strengthened at particular points ; and when, in the course of time, the
shell has become still thicker, these places appear as pores or canals,
which lead outwardly from the interior of the cell. And it is worthy
of remark that at each point where such a canal penetrates the thick-
ened cell- wall a corresponding passage is also left open in the next cell,
so that the two canals meet each other, and are only sej)arated by a
thin partition. Communication continues uninterrupted by these pore-
canals.

The plant-cell is, nevertheless, subject to the fate of all life —
it grows old and dies at last. It seldom survives a summer ; toward
the end of the fall its activity becomes weaker. Dissolution gradu-
ally overcomes the dead protoplasmic bodies, and only the empty cell-
wall is left, which may continue to exist as a vacant chamber for years
and centuries after the living nucleus has perished. As a rule, the cell
propagates itself before it dies ; as an earth-worm may be divided into
two parts, each of which will become an independent individual, so
the parent-cell divides itself into two daughter-cells, which supply the
place of the mother, and continue their life-activity with renewed
vigor.

II.

Such in its principal features is the economy of the plant-cell. It
is fed by the absorption of fluid and gaseous foods ; it elaborates those
foods into the most diversified products ; it respires ; it strengthens
and thickens its shell, yet in such a manner that it can continue in liv-
ing intercourse with its neighbors ; it propagates itself by splitting
into daughter-cells ; it grows old and dies. Let us now glance at the
arrangements and laws according to which the cells act in organic con-
nection as citizens of a single state. As there are wild bees that do
not live together in a hive, as there are human tribes that wander
around in the woods without organic connection, so there are plant-
cells that remain isolated during all their lives ; they all perform in
the same manner the business of their whole existence, which is highly
primitive, and unadapted to perfection ; their progeny does not con-
tinue in social connection, but separates into wholly free individuals.
Such plants, which always consist of single cells, are called one-celled ;
they are found among the lowest forms of the microscopic world,
among the algae and the fungoids. The green coating that covers the
rocks, the tree-trunks, and the shingles of the roof, is resolved by the
microscope into innumerable green round cells ; the brown scum that
floats upon ponds and ditches exposed to the sun, the yeast-plant, the
bacteria that produce putrefaction, are one-celled plants of this kind.

Generally, however, the plant-cell is, like man, a social being, which
finds its true calling only in state-life. In most growths, from that of

THE CELL-STATE. 183

the moss to that of the oak-tree, an incredible number of cells come
together to form an ordered state ; the number of cells in a small
plant may be compared with the number of the inhabitants in the
most powerful kingdoms ; and I have estimated that at least ten mill-
ion cells live together in a potato five centimetres (about two inches)
in diameter, and that a pine-stem twenty-five metres (about eighty feet)
high and twenty-five centimetres (about one foot) in diameter, of sym-
metrical growth, contains more than a hundred milliard wood-cells.

The leading idea that knits the plant-cells into a state-organism is
the same as in the bee-hive or the human state, the division of labor.
Each cell possesses its individual life and passes through its particular
course of development ; it, however, does not undertake all the works
of life, but limits the circle of its activities so as to reach a greater
perfection within a smaller limit. In this it works not for itself alone
but for the other cells also, while it commits to them those require-
ments for the satisfaction of which its individual activity is not suffi-
cient. Thus the different functions are so divided among the different
cells that one makes this, another that, occupation its own special busi-
ness. The cells of the cell-state so arrange themselves in their differ-
ent offices that they work mutually into each other's hands : one lives
for all, all for one. The more perfectly the division is carried out, the
more completely can each cell fulfill the duty for which it is designed ;
the more highly organized is the cell-state, and the higher position
does the whole plant take in the order of growths.

As in the bee-hive there are working-bees, so in the cell-state of
the plant there are working-cells ; other cells are fitted for sexual
existence, like the drones and the queen in the bee-hive, so as to in-
sure the production of posterity and the foundation of a new stock.

The cells which discharge the several functions in the plant are
not scattered confusedly in the mass, but are always grouped in greater
or smaller numbers of individuals precisely adapted for this or that
function, and together form a tissue. Plant-anatomists distinguish
three kinds of tissues, each of which discharges a particular function :
The fundamental tissue is composed of the cells which are the real
workers in the state ; the circulating tissue, of those cells on which the
duty of transportation is laid ; the bark-tissues, of those to which is
assigned the protection of the cell-state against the outer world. We
might designate as a fourth class the reproductive tissues, as including
the cells adapted to propagation, which are producing by continuous
divisions new colonies, new leaves and flowers, new buds and seeds.

The cell-state is, to speak with Herbert Spencer, organized after
the type of an industrial state, in which numerous industrious work-
men are co-operating on a footing of democratic equality to ennoble
the raw material of lifeless nature and convert it into the precious and
diversified productions of life. The fundamental tissue in a measure
represents the working-class ; trade is represented in the cells of the

184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vascular tissue, which are engaged, by means of well-trodden routes
of communication, in supplying the most remote parts of the domain
quickly and abundantly with food and raw material and in exporting
the finished fabric. But a defenseless kingdom would be an easy prey
to its enemies ; therefore the cell-state maintains, but peaceably, and
with no view to aggression, in the cells of its bark-tissues, a standing
army, on which depends the defense of the whole realm at its borders.
As Sparta believed it was most securely defended by the living walls
of its citizens, so does the cell-state. The cells of the bark-tissue form
a close cordon, through which no rain-drops, no hurtful gas-puff, no
hostile animal, no disease-generating spore can penetrate. They wear
a hard, siliceous armor, or are protected by an impermeable coating
of wax. They have no other purpose, they do no other work, than
in compact array to ward off hostile attacks. Single cells advance
before the line and oppose attacks with sharp-cutting weapons, finely
pointed briers or thorns, or weave themselves into intricate abatis, in
which hostile insects become entangled by their feet. The points of
many of these thorns are poisonous, as in the nettle, which, when
touched by the hand, breaks off and remains in the skin, and fills the
invisible wound with one of the strongest poisons known to nature
and science.

The cells of the bark-tissues are locked so closely to each other
that, like the members of a brave phalanx, they would be torn apart
before they would separate from each other ; and they can be separated
from the other tissues only as a connected layer, a thin membrane that
may be drawn off from all plants, and is known as the epidermis. This
living cell-fortification is interrupted in many places by round open-
ings like gates, which may be closed by a couple of cells as if with
double doors, by the opening of which the access and egress of gases
and vapors to and from the interior are permitted.

Thus the plant is protected from external enemies ; but its most
dangerous adversaries are the hungry members of its own kingdom.
Not all plants are supported by peaceful labors ; there is among them
also a predatory horde, whose members, the parasitical plants, unfit
for honorable occupation, and bearing the marks of their baseness in
their pale color and offensive smell, lurk in the darkness and in con-
cealment till they can find some victim to attack and overcome. Now
is the strength of the living wall of the plant tested : as long as it is
unbroken, the assault is repelled ; but the persistent enemy presses
into the smallest opening. Woe to the tree from which the wind has
broken a limb, or in which the careless gardener has made a bad cut !
The microbes, whose spores are floating through the air in unwhole-
some clouds, and fall with the dust, settle upon the wounded surface,
and soon its whole cell-structure is pervaded by their destructive
webs.

In peaceful times the other citizens of the cell-state attend to their

THE CELL-STATE. 185

business undisturbed, under the protection of the bark-cells. The
cells of the fundamental tissue, which is inhabited by the working-
people proper, unite in close association ; between them courses, with
numerous branches, a system of canals, which are connected with each
other like net-work, and find their exit through the clefts. In this
manner the air which they require for food and respiration is intro-
duced to the cells, and by the same road escape the gases and vapors
which the cells throw off, and which need to be removed.

The fluid foods are carried to the working-cells through the vas-
cular tissue in a special system of ducts, conduits, and fibers, which,
joined in strings and bundles, penetrate all the organs, the roots, stock,
limbs, and leaves, and are known as the ducts, or vascular bundles ;
they may be most easily perceived in the leaves when held against the
light, where they form the most beautiful vein-work. These conduct-
ing vessels are also traffic-roads, in which the products of the working-
cells of the main tissue are transported to other places, where they are
put to use. Thus an unceasing activity, like that of the bee-hive, pre-
vails in the cell-state of the plant. Gases go in and out ; juices circu-
late up and down, absorption and evaporation, distillation and refining,
forming anew, remodeling, or destroying the old, are going on all the
time without rest or cessation for an instant. As long as the cells
live, they are active ; when they cease to work, their death is near.
No one thinks, when he looks at a plant, what restless activity is at
work within it, for the cells perform their artful labor in stillness,
without buzzing and flying around as the bees do.

The wealth of those lands that possess coal-mines and ore-beds is
highly prized. But these treasures are not confined to single prov-
inces. Immense mines of ore, inexhaustible coal-beds, surround us
wherever we may be. For the minerals that are contained in the field-
soils are quite as precious as are the mines of iron and zinc, yes, even
of gold and silver. Man can not live on gold and silver ; but out of
the minerals of the field-soil, out of potash, lime, phosphoric acid, am-
monia, and sulphuric acid, the cell-state of the plant prepares bread
on which we live, linen in which we clothe ourselves, wood out of which
we make our vessels and tools, and the remedies which when we are
sick restore our lost health to us. The cells of the roots, like hewers
and miners, sink numerous shafts in the spaces assigned to them, drive
their galleries toward all points of the compass, in order to break up
these mineral treasures, separate them from the incasing stone, and
set the machinery of service in motion ; day and night with inexhaust-
ible diligence, they extract atom by atom of potash and ammonia,
phosphoric and nitric acid, and, without working up their ore, deliver
it over to the conducting vessels which transmit it by their powerful
system of sucking and forcing pumps to the stem and the leaves. The
leaves are cell-villages which perform their daily tasks in the air and
the light. Their principal business is to obtain coal, which is the chief

186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

constituent of the vegetable body. Our atmosphere is an enormous
coal-mine, many miles in thickness, that can not be exhausted in thou-
sands of thousands of years. The coal, indeed, is not found pure in
the air, any more than the metal in the ore, but is in combination with
oxygen as a transparent gas, carbonic acid, and a peculiar art is re-
quired to separate it.

In the mining districts, smelting-houses are erected beside the pits,
where the noble metal is extracted from the impure ores. The green
cells of the leaves combine the art of the miner with that of the smelt-
er, and have the power of extracting the pure carbon from the atmos-
phere. In order to perform this work, they must be shone upon by
the sun, for the sunlight alone can excite in them the marvelous
faculty. Having extracted the carbon, they combine it with water
and with the mineral substances that have been drawn from the soil,
and prepare from them the living matters out of which the plant itself
builds up its cells, and which, taken up into the body of an animal, is
transformed by it into flesh and blood.

As bees do not at once consume all the honey they collect, but lay
away a large portion of it in special cells for winter provision, so a por-
tion of the cells in the plant are set apart for the storage of capital in
anticipation of the necessities of the future. On the approach of winter
the leaves discharge the greater part of what they have produced
through the conducting vessels, which convey it to a subterranean maga-
zine. The cells of the root-stock, the tubers, and the bulbs, protected
from the frost by their covering of earth, are filled with starch, albu-
men, and other valuable food-material, which will be used again in the
coming spring when they will be most needed, for the expansion of the
leaves and flower-buds. When we eat a potato, we appropriate to our
own nourishment the provision which the careful mother-plant has laid
up in its cells during the previous year for the growth of the next
spring ; and we do what is substantially the same as when in the fall
we rob bees of a part of the honey which they have gathered for the
supply of their own state.

A necessary consequence of the short duration of the life of the
single cell is that a part of the plant, the cell- village, in which the life-
processes are now active, is generally dead in the next year, and unfit
for all work. Therefore the cell-state is subject to a constant mor-
tality. The leaves which perform their work in the summer wither
and drop off in the fall ; the cells of the root, also, which then drew up
the fluids from the soil, and those of the stem, which conducted it up-
ward, have at the same time grown old — have become woody, as the
botanist expresses it.

The greater part of the plant does not, in fact, survive the first
year. Most herbs sprout in the spring, blossom in the summer, ripen
their seed in the fall, and perish in the winter. Trees, on the other
hand, bushes and shrubs, possess a regular economical administration.

THE CELL-STATE. x87

They lay up, till fall, provision in their stems or roots, which does not
come into use again until the next spring. And, when the collected
capital enters into circulation again after the first warm days, the old
cells are not ahle to undertake anew the business of turning it to use.
The plant does not put its new wine into old bottles. It forms new
cells, new organs, adapted to the demand of the new season. Now
those tissues which we may call the procreative tissues come into play.
Their cells begin to undergo a continuous division ; their number is
multiplied — new colonies, new cell-villages are founded. New points
are formed at the ends of the roots, the young cells of which suck food
from the soil with refreshed vigor ; a new conducting tissue is formed
in the stem between the wood and the bark, representing a new yearly
ring. A grand act of renovation has also been in preparation at the
ends of the limbs and twigs and at the bases of the leaves. Little
cones of reproductive tissue are developed at these spots, in which in-
numerable cells originate by division, and, in accordance with an innate
structural plan, a definite number of vesicles shoot in most symmetrical
order of arrangement from each of these cones. Every cone is the
beginning of a little stalk, the vesicles that grow from them are the
beginnings of leaves ; the whole structure is covered with thick scales
and is now called a bud, in which the tender beginnings of leaves are
protected by the scales from frost and storm. The buds are started in
the summer, completed in the fall ; are dormant during the winter,
and are awakened to new life in the spring. The scale-armor now be-
comes superfluous, is cast aside ; the little leaves rack and stretch
themselves, and joyfully spread themselves out in the air and light ;
the little stalk grows longer and longer ; in a little while the buds
have shot out into young limbs, in the fresh foliage of which, excited
by the light of the sun, the restless labor of the cells begins anew ;
or, after a marvelous transformation into flower-stalks, they produce
those sexually developed procreative cells which are destined by a
series of mysterious processes to found a new cell-state.

Thus is the cell-state of the plant subject to a continual rejuvena-
tion. The individual citizens (the cells) and the villages (the leaves)
have but a short life, but the state in its entirety may endure for
centuries in lasting youth. If the hands of men, or the elements, do
not inflict a violent death, the cell-state, as so many primitive giant
trees have shown, may outlast the mightiest kingdoms of men.

Gifted writers on social politics have recently endeavored to illus-
trate the development and interrelations of human society by analogy
with a living being and its cells. "We have taken the converse course,
and have endeavored to make the life of the plant and its cells com-
prehensible by a similitude with a state organization and its citizens.
"We have endeavored to show that what man has regarded as the high-
est ideal of his conscious effort in the struggles of the world's history
has been prefigured in quiet accomplishment in the world of plants.

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is the representative of the idea of the state which leaves its indi-
vidual citizens to develop themselves freely according to their inborn
natures, and to work together on an equal footing for the good of the
whole ; which preserves to the villages and the provinces their self-
administration, and yet subjects them in every instant to the higher
interests and laws of the whole ; which appears ready armed against
the external enemy, preserves unity and peace within ; which applies
the capital accumulated by the common labor of all the citizens to the
advantage and advancement of the whole, without letting it be preyed
upon by any ; which in untiring activity never suffers a pause, and by
continuous renovation endures for centuries, always increasing, always
blossoming, and always bearing fruit.

-♦*♦-

AMERICAN AND FOBEIGN ASPHALTS.

By E. J. HALLOCK.

BITUMINOUS substances, apparently of organic origin, are found
in various parts of the world. Sometimes they occur in a free
state, as in the Island of Trinidad, and at others impregnating calcare-
ous rocks, or serving as a cement to hold the particles together, as
at Val de Travers or Seyssel.

For several reasons the asphalt lake in Trinidad possesses special
interest for us. The island, which is the southernmost of the Lesser
Antilles, lies off the northern coast of South America, and is easily
accessible from any of our sea-ports. Here, amid the most luxuriant
vegetation, is a lake three miles in circumference, on the surface of
which lies a crust of asphaltum of such tenacity that in the rainy sea-
son a person can walk across it ; but, under the influence of the hot
sun, it softens to a thick tar. This crust receives accessions from be-
neath, and formerly it would overflow and run into the sea, more than
two miles away. A similar substance, known as " Jew's pitch," is
washed ashore in considerable quantities around the borders of the
Dead Sea. In Texas, south of Shreveport, there is said to be a pitch-
lake containing large quantities of bitumen, but little is yet known
about it. In Southern California there are accumulations of asphalt
on the coast at Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, etc., which resembles,
when pure, that from Trinidad. It promises to supply the wants of
the western coast, as Trinidad will that of the eastern part of this
country.

In Kentucky there is a considerable quantity of asphaltic mineral
which may some time be utilized for road-making.

An interesting and valuable asphaltic mineral, known as Albertite,
is found in New Brunswick ; and a similar one, called Grahamite, oc-

AMERICAN AND FOREIGN ASPHALTS. 189

curs in West Virginia and other parts of the country. In the mount-
ains west of Denver, in Colorado, is a vertical bed of hard and brittle
asphalt, not unlike Grahamite, while Albertite is found in small quan-
tities in Lorain County, Ohio, and Casey County, Kentucky.

Bitumen is likewise found in Cuba, and is brought into commerce
under the name of chapopote, or Mexican asphalt.

In Europe asphalt occurs chiefly in limestone, which forms, when
crushed and packed, an excellent pavement. The principal points at
which it is found are the following : Val de Travers, in the Swiss
Canton of Neufchatel, fourteen miles from Neufchatel, and sixteen or
seventeen miles by rail from the French borders ; Seyssel, on the
Rhone, in the French department of the Ain, about thirty-three miles
from Geneva ; Lobsann, a small town in northern Alsace ; Vorwohle,
in Braunschweig ; and Limmer, near the city of Hanover. The Ital-
ian province of Caserta, in the neighborhood of Naples, supplies Rome
with an asphalt much used for terraces and flat roofs.

The quantity of bitumen in these limestones and the manner of
its dissemination are quite varied, but it is generally found that the
softer limestones contain more bitumen than those which are harder.
The average amount is about ten per cent, but it sometimes reaches
twenty or thirty per cent, and occasionally there are cavities in the
rock which are filled with bitumen. At other times the quantity sinks
to five per cent, or less, while nodules of limestone entirely free from
it are also found. The value of the rock depends on the percentage
of bitumen, and on other circumstances. If the stone is to be used
for making mastic, the higher the percentage the more valuable it is ;
but, if used directly for paving, a uniform distribution, not exceeding
eight or ten per cent, is desirable.

Asphalt-stone, to which Malo limits the name of asphaltum, varies
in color from gray to brownish-black, according to the richness in bitu-
men ; that of medium quality closely resembles chocolate in color.
That which is poor in bitumen is hard, and rings like ordinary lime-
stone ; but the fatter rock, when struck with a hammer, gives forth a
dull thud, like a block of wet plaster, and takes an impression from
the blow. If it contains more than ten per cent, it crumbles in the
hand, and can be cut with a knife, like chocolate. Good stone, with
about ten per cent of bitumen, has a specific gravity of 2*1. Some
asphalt-stone is of a spongy, hygroscopic nature, and consequently
lighter.

One peculiarity of the natural rock-asphalt is that, when heated
over a fire, it breaks up into a brown powder, and then, at a higher
temperature, all the bitumen is expelled, leaving a pure white powder.
An unsuccessful attempt was made in the Paris Conservatoire des
Arts et Metiers to imitate this asphalt-stone by forcing thick, pasty
bitumen into pure limestone by great pressure. When, however, the
lime-stone was boiled for a long time in a liquid mass of asphalt, it

igo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

became so completely saturated with it that the innermost fractures
resembled the natural asphalt-stone; but it differed from the latter in.
this most important property, that it did not crumble to a powder
when heated. On the contrary, the absorbed bitumen was expelled
by heat, leaving a hard limestone, instead of a calcareous powder.
From this it seems probable that the particles of the natural asphalt-
stone are simply cemented together by the bitumen, and both must
have been deposited at the same time.

In most mines the strata dip slightly toward the horizon. They
vary greatly in thickness ; sometimes there is only one stratum, at oth-
ers there are several superimposed on each other or separated by strata
of harder limestone or shale. At Val de Travers the strata that are
worked are from two to six metres thick, and rest on hard, non-bitumi-
nous limestone.

In some places it is mined in open trenches, in others by means of
shafts and subterranean tunnels. At Val de Travers, Seyssel, and
Lobsann, the latter alone are employed. The rock is blasted out
with powder, which works better in soft rock than dynamite. The
holes are bored with an ordinary hand-auger. At Limmer, owing to
the water in the mines, it is necessary to use dynamite.

The percentage of bitumen in the different varieties of asphalt-
stone is as follows : That from Limmer, 14*3 ; Val de Travers, 10*15 ;
Lobsann, 12-32 ; Ragusa, 8'92 ; Seyssel, 815 ; Vorwohle, 8*50.' It is
estimated by extracting it from the finely pulverized mineral with
carbon disulphide, benzene, or other solvent, and weighing the resi-
due after the solvent has evaporated. The quality of the bitumen is
determined by heating it to 430° or 440° Fahr. ; the less it loses by
evaporation the better its quality. The powdered mineral from which
the bitumen has been extracted should be white and soft. If it has a
gray color, and feels harsh or sticky, it is of poor quality. Too much
dependence can not be placed on chemical analyses, for much depends
on the physical properties as well.

The larger portion of the asphalt-stone used in Europe comes from
Val de Travers, which produces about 25,000 tons a year ; Limmer is
not much inferior in its yield, which amounts to about 21,500 tons ;
Seyssel furnishes 13,000 tons, and Lobsann about 9,000 tons. That
which is mined at Limmer and Vorwohle, being very rich, is only used
for making mastic.

The first operation to which the asphalt-stone is subjected, when it
reaches the factory, is pxilverization. For this purpose several differ-
ent machines are in use, the ordinary stone-breaker being unsuited to
the purpose. Four or five of these are figured in Professor Dietrich's
new work on " Asphalt Streets," * to which we are indebted for many
of the facts in this article.

The powder thus obtained may be employed directly for the com-

* " Die Asphalt-Strassen, ' E. Dietrich, Berlin, 1882, pp. 207.

AMERICAN AND FOREIGN ASPHALTS. 191

pressed asphalt pavements, or converted into " mastic " by mixing it
with one tenth to one seventh its weight of purified bitumen from
Trinidad and cooking five or six hours. It is then poured into cast-
iron molds without bottoms, which are placed on the sanded floor of
the shop. These blocks of mastic are fifteen inches in diameter and
four inches thick, weighing fifty or sixty pounds each. Those made
at Val de Travers are hexagonal in form, bearing a trade-mark of a
cross and ? ; those from Seyssel and Lobsann circular; the others ob-
long, with rounded corners.

The Val de TraVers mastic and asphalt rock are imported by the
Neufchatel Asphalt Company (54 Astor House, New York) ; the Seys-
sel mastic by the New York Mastic "Works (35 Broadway) ; the Lim-
mer and Vorwohle rock asphalt by C. Wichtendahl (111 Broadway,
room 97). In regard to their uses in this city we shall speak more
fully in another place.

Trinidad asphalt is imported and refined by the Warren Chemical
and Manufacturing Company (45 John Street). This substance, as it
occurs in nature, is very impure ; about one third of the mass con-
sists of water, another third is made up of clay and sand, so that only
one third is actually bitumen. It is melted in large kettles and heated
for twelve hours to expel the water, the earthy constituents settling to
the bottom. This partially purified asphalt, which still contains about
twenty per cent of impurities, is poured through a sieve into barrels,
where it solidifies. It now forms a brittle mass, which sells for twenty-
five dollars per ton. It is too hard for mixing with the pulverized
asphalt-rock, or for street pavements. At Val de Travers and Seyssel
the residues from the distillation of bituminous shale, known as " shale-
grease," are used to soften it, while in other places similar residues of
paraffine manufacture or petroleum refining are added to the natural
bitumen to form what is known as " prepared bitumen," or mineral tar.
In this country the so-called " still-bottoms " from petroleum-stills are
used in the proportion of fifteen parts of the latter to eighty-five of
the natural asphalt ; the portions may be varied to suit the climate
and other conditions.

Asphalt pavements may be divided into three classes. The first,
which is commonly known as mastic {asphalte coide), is best adapted
to sidewalks, court-yards, and other places where there is but little
heavy traffic. It is prepared by melting the blocks of mastic, already
described, in caldrons, adding a small quantity of prepared bitumen,
and afterward stirring in thirty or forty per cent of clear grit. When
thoroughly mixed it is carried to the spot in pails, and spread with a
wooden float by a skilled workman on his knees. It is then rubbed
until perfectly smooth, and fine sand strewed over it. Examples of
this pavement can be seen in Union Square, Tompkins Square, and
several other places in New York city.

Compressed asphalt is better adapted to heavy traffic, as in street

i92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pavements, and is much enrployed in Paris. The powdered rock is used
without any addition. It is applied hot, on a prepared bed of con-
crete, four to seven inches thick, and compressed, with heated rammers
and a heated roller, to the thickness of one and a half or two inches.
The smooth surface is given by a. heated smoothing-iron. One block
of compressed Val de Travers asphalt, two inches thick, laid on a Port-
land cement concrete foundation seven inches thick, may be seen on
Fifth Avenue, between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Streets.

The third form of pavement, which seems to be one of the best
for roadways, is the " Trinidad." It is made of prepared bitumen,
i. e., Trinidad asphalt and still-bottoms, mixed with about twice its
weight of calcareous marl or powdered limestone. None of the im-
ported asphalt mastics or rock are used in this pavement.

Various imitations of both asphalt and mastic have been palmed
off on the public, or substituted by dishonest contractors, some of
whom will keep a few blocks of real mastic of a well-known brand
lying about, as if they were to be used, while inferior materials are
thrown into the caldrons. Some imitations are but little inferior to
the genuine, while others are nearly worthless, and have done much
to bring asphalt into disrepute. Among the latter are those made in
whole or in part of the pitch left in the distillation of coal-tar. Al-
though useful for a great variety of purposes, it will not answer for
asphalt pavements. It is usually possible to distinguish good bitumen
by its smell when warmed. When heated with excess of concentrated
or fuming sulphuric acid for twenty-four hours, and then diluted and
filtered, the pure natural bitumen yields a nearly colorless solution,
but if pitch is present the solution will be dark-brown or black.
Another distinction between real bitumen and coal-tar is found in the
solubility of the latter in alcohol, the former being nearly insoluble.
If a grain of material that has been heated to 200° C. is pulverized and
mixed with 5 c. c. of strong alcohol, the latter will acquire a yellow
color and bluish-green fluorescence if there is more than two per cent
of pitch present.

There are several uses to which asphalt may be applied, the most
important being the one already so often referred to, namely, as paving
material. In Paris about thirty-three miles of street are covered with
asphalt pavement, more than three fourths of it being the so-called
" compressed asphalt," while the remainder is made of cast or mastic
asphalt. The use of asphalt pavements for roadways began in Paris
in 1854, since which time their use has been steadily increasing until
the present time. In London there are about nine miles of asphalted
streets. Asphalt pavements have but recently begun to find favor in
Berlin, and at the close of 1881 there were only six miles of street
paved with it. Of asphalt sidewalks, etc., Paris has three million
square metres, equivalent to four hundred miles of walks, seventeen
feet wide.

AMERICAN AND FOREIGN ASPHALTS. 193

New York city can boast of only a few small and isolated strips of
asphaltic street pavement, her past experience with the "poultice-
pavement " having induced the authorities to prohibit the laying of
similar pavements. In front of the Brevoort House, and the Hotel
Brunswick, samples of compressed pavement may be seen, while the
American mastic, or Trinidad, has recently been laid in Fifteenth
Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In Washington, D. C,
more than forty miles of the last-named pavement have been put
down, and it is said to be doing good service. There are a large num-
ber of the mastic sidewalk and court-yard pavements in this city, some
of which have already been referred to.

The advantages claimed for asphalt pavements are cleanliness,
noiselessness, and durability, while the wear and tear of horses and
wagons is less, and they are the pleasantest of all pavements to ride
on. On the other hand, they are often slippery, and horses are liable
to fall on them, while they are more difficult to repair when broken in
digging for water and other pipes, although it is said that water-pipes
are less liable to freeze under asphalt than under other pavements.

Asphalt does not emit sparks when struck with steel, and therefore
is useful for the flooring of powder-magazines, and of casemates in
fortifications.

As damp-proof coating for vaults and cellar-walls it is invaluable,
for, not only does it shut out damp from below, but prevents unhealthy
exhalations of the soil from entering the dwelling.

Asphalt has been used as flooring in stables, although there has
been some complaint that it is cut by the stamping of the animals. It
would seem to be an excellent material for the purpose, as it is un-
acted upon by urine, and, being without cracks, prevents the liquids
from passing through and saturating the earth beneath. It is in use
in the stables of the American Horse Exchange, Fifty-sixth Street and
Broadway.

Asphalt floors have found more extensive nse in breweries and su-
gar-refineries, for which they seem perfectly adapted. It is frequently
applied to cellar-bottoms in city houses, some careful citizens having
covered their cement floors with asphalt mastic.

A method of laying floors is much used in France, for barracks and
hospitals, which would probably answer for many other purposes.
Pieces of oak, usually two and a half to four inches broad, twelve to
thirty inches long, and one inch thick, are pressed down into a layer
of hot asphalt, not quite half an inch thick, in herring-bone pattern.
The edges of the blocks are planed down, beveling toward the bot-
tom, thus insuring adhesion to the asphalt, and the smallest possible
joints.

A coarse sort of canvas saturated with bitumen is used to prevent
dampness from rising through capillary attraction and penetrating the
walls of buildings, especially light-houses and marine structures. It is

TOL. XXII. — 13

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

made in strips twelve, sixteen, twenty, or twenty-four inches wide, to
correspond with walls made of three, four, five, or six courses of brick.
Its superiority to ordinary bitumen depends on the fact that it will
not crack, like the latter, from unequal settling of the walls. Damp-
resisting solutions are also sold for coating damp walls.

Asphalt mastic is much superior to tar for roofing purposes, owing
to its fire-proof qualities, and its use for this purpose is rapidly increas-
ing. At the present writing it is being applied to the Welles Building,
at the lower end of Broadway. It is said that, when a building cov-
ered with such a roof burns, the falling roof acts like a blanket in
smothering and extinguishing the flames.

Asphalt possesses another valuable property, that of absorbing
vibrations, and is hence useful for foundations of machinery running
at high speeds. A block of bituminous concrete weighing forty-five
tons formed the foundation of the Carr's disintegrator which made
fourteen hundred revolutions per minute at the Paris Exhibition. It
would seem to be especially adapted to serve as foundations for the
high-speed steam-engines used for generating electricity.

Asphalt forms an excellent insulator for electricity, but, as other
and cheaper materials may be employed, its use will not be so exten-
sive in this field.

The origin of asphalts is unknown, but several theories have been
advanced in regard to it. Professor J. S. Newberry believes that they
are the more or less perfectly solidified residual products of the spon-
taneous evaporation of petroleum. If we accept this theory (and
many do not), we are but one step nearer a solution of the problem,
for the origin of petroleum itself is still unknown. Some think that the
bitumen was formed first, and the limestone deposited in it ; others,
that the liquid bitumen was forced into the pores of limestone already
in existence ; while a third hypothesis assumes that they were formed
simultaneously, the bitumen from the organic matter, and the lime
from the shells of some ancient mollusks. The last-named theory
seems to have some support in the abundance of fossil ammonites met
with in the mines at Limmer ; the experimental attempts to impreg-
nate the rock artificially, as above described, render the second hy-
pothesis improbable, although its occurrence on the Dead Sea and in
Trinidad is in its favor. No explosive gases are met with in the
mines of Val de Travers, Seyssel, and Lobsann, so that open lights are
used ; but at Pechelbronn, a few miles from Lobsann, several explosions
have occurred. Although these were attributed to marsh-gas, they
were more probably due to the vapors of the lighter constituents of
petroleum, with which the bituminous sands of that locality seem to
be saturated.

There are several circumstances which indicate that bitumen and
asphalt are more nearly related to petroleum than to coal-tar, and that,
whether asphalt was made from petroleum or not, they have a similar

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 195

or common origin. Nor is it an unfortunate circumstance that coal-
tar can not be used as a substitute for bitumen, since the former con-
tains many constituents that are more valuable for other purposes,
while Trinidad offers an inexhaustible supply of the latter.

■»»»

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY.

By Professor W. K. BEOOKS,

OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.

AT a time when most naturalists who venture at all beyond the facts
of life-science are busied with the attempt to trace the relation-
ship between the various groups of living things, and to express this
relationship in a tree-like system of classification, it is startling to hear
from one of the highest authorities on life-science the statement that
" the time for genealogical trees is past. ... It seems hardly cred-
ible that a school which boasts for its very creed a belief in nothing
which is not warranted by common sense should descend to such
trifling." *

It is true that the context seems to show that the author does
not visit all attempts at phylogenetic classification with the sweep-
ing condemnation which the passage quoted seems to imply, yet the
fact that a high authority upon the subject has made such a statement
at all is a sufficient reason why those who believe that the status of
modern morphology is not without a basis of common sense should
carefully revise their grounds for this belief, in order to decide for
themselves how far, and in what shape, such speculations upon the
relationships of organisms are admissible, and favorable to the progress
of science.

The belief that the present life of the globe is only a very small
part of its total fauna and flora is hardly more firmly fixed in the
minds of the present generation of naturalists than the belief that the
recent species are the modified descendants of those which are extinct;
and there are few who would not acknowledge that their conception
of the origin of life would be fairly illustrated by comparing the living
things of the past and present to a great, many -branched tree, buried
in the ground so that only a few scattered groups of twigs are exposed
to our direct observation, although these groups show by their ar-
rangement a vague and indefinite relation to the branches below the
ground. The twigs which are exposed are the living things which now
people the earth, and those twigs and branches and larger trunks which

* " Embryology and Paleontology," by Alexander Agassiz. Address before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.

196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are below-ground are those organisms which are buried in the past,
and which we can study only through their fossil remains.

Most naturalists not only believe that, if we could trace back the
history of life, we should find each group bearing evidence of wider
and wider relationship as we receded from the present time, but
they also believe that we should ultimately find that every form of
life is related to every other in such a way as to show that, in the
remote past, they all met in a single starting-point — the common an-
cestor of all living things.

When we come to examine the evidence for this theory of the com-
mon origin of all life, we find that it is almost entirely general in its
character. There is a nearly complete absence of specific and definite
proof. We find an abundance of fossil forms, which we may regard
as connecting links between one great group of animals and another ;
but even in the mo it favorable cases the attempt to follow the history
of any particular species back for a considerable length of time soon
ends in a total failure, for we lose track of its line of descent en-
tirely, and can go on only by substituting, for the species with which
we started, the genus, family, or more comprehensive group to which
we have traced it.

Once in a while we find, in the later geological formations, a fossil
animal which exhibits such affinity to several closely related recent
species, that there is a strong presumption that it is the common an-
cestor from which they have descended. We have enough evidence
to enable us to trace the horse and its allies through several geological
periods with considerable accuracy, and to reach a form which is widely
different from the horse, and which shows relationship to quite differ-
ent groups of recent mammals. There are a few other cases where
the evidence is equally abundant ; but more usually it fails completely,
and, although the fossils of the later formations show a very close re-
lationship to their living allies, the resemblance is not exact enough to
prove that the fossil forms are the direct ancestors of the recent ones,
rather than more distant relations, connected by some unknown fossil
form.

In place of the exact evidence which would be necessary to prove
that the nearest fossil allies of recent species are in the direct line of
descent, we have only the vague general evidence which is furnished
by those fossils which unite in themselves the characteristics of widely
separated families, or classes, or orders of animals. While the attempt
to trace any particular species of bird and any given species of reptile
to a common ancestor would be hopeless, we do find fossil organisms
in whose structure certain general characteristics of the class Birds are
united to certain general characteristics of the class Reptiles, in the
way which we might expect if those animals are the descendants of
true reptiles and the ancestors of the true birds of the present day.
There is no proof that this actually is the case, and it is perfectly

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. lg7

possible that they are not in the direct line of descent at all. The
evidence is entirely circumstantial and indefinite, and it is impossible
to show that any of the reptile-like birds which have been discovered
have any descendants at the present day. All we can say is that,
if our birds are not their descendants, it is very probable that they
are the descendants of some other unknown form very much like
them.

At the best it is simply a question of probability, not of direct
proof, and paleontological evidence is never definite enough to enable
us to reach a specific conclusion which may not possibly be wrong, and,
this being the state of the case, we may fairly ask whether such specu-
lations upon probability, in the absence of direct evidence, are entitled
to be called science. In order to answer this question, and to show
that phylogenetic speculation may be strictly within the legitimate
scope of science, we will make use of an imaginary illustration.

Suppose that a large continental area, which is inhabited by a homo-
geneous human race, is invaded by a band of settlers from another
country, about as the first European settlers forced themselves upon
the homogeneous inhabitants of the United States.

Suppose that these settlers, increasing in numbers, gradually spread
over the whole country, interbreeding with the autochthones, until, in
later generations, the population comes to consist of two equally dis-
tributed races, represented by individuals of pure descent, with strongly
marked race-characteristics ; and, in addition to these, a great number
of hybrids, presenting the characteristics of the two pure races in all
degrees and manners of union.

As time goes on, imagine this latter class to increase at the expense
of the others, until few persons of pure blood are left ; and meanwhile
suppose that a number of persons of a third race are introduced, about
as the negroes were introduced into this country, and, after this immi-
gration has lasted for a time, suppose it to stop, and let this third race
spread and increase, and, after a time, gradually mix with the other
two. Let the same process take place again, until the population comes
to be made up of four quite dissimilar races with well-marked race-
characteristics, crossed in such a way that no individuals of the origi-
nal race or of the first immigration are of perfectly pure blood, while
there are a few nearly pure types of the third race, and still more of
the fourth. Suppose, now, that an anthropologist undertakes to study
the inhabitants of the country in order to learn what he can of their
origin and history, and let him begin by attempting to classify them.
Any attempt to divide them up into groups will fail, on account of
the complexity of their relationships ; and, although there are traces
of four types, it is not possible to arrange them in four classes, since
most of them have resemblances to more than one type. After long
study of their relationships, and an enumeration of all the forms which
are distinguishable, we may suppose him to hit upon some such expe-

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dient for tabulating their resemblances as that of arranging them in
four intersecting sets of concentric circles.

One type, the latest arrival, would be represented by a series of
larger and larger circles around a center — the center standing for the
few individuals of pure blood ; the next ring, overlapping the other
sets a little, would represent those persons, more numerous than the
pure specimens, in whom the characteristics of the race are slightly
obscured by characteristics of the other types. The next still larger
ring, intersecting still more rings in the other sets, represents the still
greater number of individuals of less pure descent, and so on ; each
larger circle, intersecting the other sets at more points, will represent
the manner in which the number of individuals increases as the purity
of the type disappears.

The race which has been a Lfctle longer in the country will, if it
has been equally prolific, and equally inclined to mix with the others,
be represented by a system with no center, but with a few very small
rings so near the center that they have few points of intersection with
the other sets — that is, there will be a few persons with nearly pure
blood, but none of perfect purity. The two older races will be repre-
sented by systems which are made up entirely of large intersecting
circles. After his studies have earned him thus far, we may suppose
the anthropologist to speculate how or why it is that the complicated
resemblances of this mixed people should follow a system which
admits of such a peculiar system of tabulation. He might perhaps
invent an hypothesis to explain it — the hypothesis of immigration.
As this hypothesis would account for all his facts, there would be a
probability in its favor sufficient to justify him in following it out as
far as possible, to see what it would lead to, and we may suppose him
to continue his studies historically. He would now find that the
number of pure specimens of the race which entered the country last
was greater a few generations back than at present, while the number
of persons who exhibit only slight traces of the characteristics of this
race become less numerous as he traces the history backward. Going
still further back he would find that the pure-blooded specimens of
this race not only become more numerous in proportion to those of
mixed blood, but also more restricted in their distribution over the
country.

Still farther back he would find records of the entrance of a few
perfectly pure representatives of this race into the country, and, con-
tinuing his studies, he would meet with no evidence of the presence
of any of them before this date.

Continuing his studies he would find that the second race gradu-
ally became more pure and more restricted, and, although he might
not meet with any record of their first appearance except vague and
contradictory traditions, he would find that there was no mention of
them in any of the records before a certain date. The older monu-

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 199

ments and records would contain references to only two races, and,
although there might be no traditions to show that either of these had
occupied the country longer than the other, the history of the lan-
guage and the architectural and other remains would bear witness to
tbe gradual introduction of one of them, and would show that in still
more ancient times there were no traces of the existence of more than
one race.

The interpretation of the relationships of the people to which he
had been led by the study of the living inhabitants would now be far
more than a working hypothesis, for everything which had been
learned about their past history could be shown to be exactly what
we should, by the hypothesis, expect, and he might therefore claim
that this was a strictly scientific explanation of the theory of their
origin. Although he would have definite proof of only one immi-
gration, he would be fully warranted in concluding that the present
inhabitants are the result of the crossing of four races ; that at one
time only one of these races inhabited the country, and that the other
three have been introduced from outside at different times in a defi-
nite order.

The mass of evidence which he could bring forward in favor of
this opinion would be sufficient to render it more probable than any
other explanation of their origin, and would fully justify its accept-
ance as a scientific truth, but a little examination will show that the
evidence is entirely circumstantial, and does not by any means amount
to absolute proof, but only to a very great degree of probability.
Although it may be true that it is very much more probable than any
other explanation, this may be due to imperfect knowledge, and some
other explanation may possibly be the true one.

In order to show this, let us suppose that the people of the country
have another account of their origin, and believe that the four types
were formed ages ago by the breaking up of an homogeneous race into
four castes, which have ever since borne substantially the same rela-
tions to each other. Suppose that this belief bears such a relation
to other traditions, and to certain manners and customs, that it has
assumed, in their minds, a very great importance, and is regarded as
a point of grave significance, resting upon irreproachable evidence.
They might answer the anthropologist somewhat in this manner : You
have certainly made out a very ingenious story, and have brought
together a mass of evidence which appears to render your view very
probable, but you have not shown that no other explanation is possi-
ble, and, as we do hold quite a different opinion upon evidence which
is satisfactory to us, you must be mistaken. We are open to convic-
tion, and are not unreasonable, but we must have proofs which leave
no room for doubt, for as long as there is a chance that you are wrong
we must hold to our old view. If you say that all natural knowledge
is simply probable, and open to the possibility of error, give us proofs

200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which are as direct as those which are furnished by the physical sci-
ences, instead of the general and circumstantial evidence which you
adduce. The student of physics does not ask us to believe that all
bodies attract each other according to the law of inverse squares until
he has shown us that he is able to prove that every body we bring
him does behave in this way ; and the chemist shows us that he can
separate every specimen of pure wTater which we furnish into oxygen
and hydrogen before he expects us to believe that all water is com-
pounded of these two substances. This is the sort of proof we want ;
something exact and specific in place of your generalizations. When
you can trace back the ancestry of any man we bring you with what
you call negro characteristics, tell us who his father and grandfather
were, and so on, until you reach one of your negro immigrants — when
you can do tbis with all our inhabitants, and show us that every man
with these characteristics is the descendant of one of these immigrants,
and that every man with European characteristics has some of the
blood of one of your European immigrants in his body, you may claim
that you have given us scientific proof of your hypothesis.

If that is too much to ask, trace one of our people back in this
way, for it must be plain to you that, if you are not able to do this,
your hypothesis is only a probability.

You trace us back for a generation or two with some exactness,
but then you make a great leap to some one wThom you find mentioned
in history, and you trace his ancestors and descendants for a genera-
tion or two, and then comes another break. There is no certainty
that he has any living descendants, nor is there any certainty that he
is at all related to any of your immigrants. We acknowledge your
proofs of a negro immigration, and we know that a few other negroes
have come to our country from time to time, but their race soon dies
out, and you must remember that wTe have satisfactory evidence that
our race had its present character long before the time when you say
the foreign elements were introduced.

Even if we grant the accuracy of all the facts which you claim to
have discovered, they only show that the history wdiich you have
traced out is such a history as your hypothesis would lead you to ex-
pect, but this does not prove the truth of the hypothesis. You have
only got at a few facts here and there, and future discoveries may
show that you are wrong. We are glad to know about the foreign
settlers, but you have by no means proved that they were ancestors of
ours.

I think that this illustration gives us a fair statement of the value
of the evidence for evolution which is furnished by paleontology.
There is an absolute and total lack of direct proof, and there must be
by the nature of the case, so there is no room to hope for the con-
version of any one who is determined to reject the theory as long as
doubt is possible; but the end of science is not to proselyte but to dis-

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 20l

cover, and the circumstantial evidence converges in such a way as to
give in this case every assurance of substantial accuracy.

There is not a single wild species of animal which can be traced,
by direct unbroken pedigree, to an ancestor belonging to a different
genus, and no zoologist has any hope of ever obtaining anything
more than circumstantial evidence of such a pedigree ; but we can
hardly overestimate the vast and increasing stores of evidence in favor
of evolution which are yielded by the structural, geographical, and
chronological relations between the fauna of the present day and that
of the past. It is true that all this evidence is circumstantial, and, al-
though it renders the theory of evolution vastly more probable than
any other explanation of the origin of species, it still leaves a possi-
bility that some other explanation may be the true one. Although
the investigator who is fully acquainted with all the evidence may
feel justified in ignoring this possibility, it still exists.

If the evidence which we have is so circumstantial that it does not
amount to absolute proof, it is clear that, even if we fully believe in
evolution, we can not hope to trace, with anything like minute ac-
curacy, the past history of any particular form of life ; but perhaps an
illustration may help to make this clearer :

Let the dots A, B, and C (Fig. 1), represent a number of recent spe-
cies, each of which has distinctive characteristics of its own, together
with other characteristics which are common to all; and let D, E, and
F be another set of species related to each other in the same way; and
suppose that certain of the common characteristics of D, E, and F are
also common to A, B, and C, while others distinguish the one set as a
whole from the other as a whole. According to the theory of evolu-
tion, we believe that A, B, and C are the descendants of an ancestor
from whom they inherit all that they have in common ; and that D,
E, and F are related to each other in the same way; that the common
ancestor of all the forms in the first group had, together with distinct-
ive characteristics of its own, certain other characteristics which it
shared with the ancestor of the forms in the second group, and that
this similarity was due to inheritance from a still more remote ances-
tor common to both. This system of relationship might be expressed

by a phylogenetic tree, like that which is shown by dotted lines

in the diagram, with six ultimate ramules, two large branches, and a
common stem, G. Now, suppose that we discover, in a recent geolog-
ical formation, a fossil form, M, which resembles A, B, C, D, E, and F
in all the features which they have in common. It is possible that
this fossil is the form G, from which A, B, C, D, E, and F are de-
scended, but it is not probable that this is the case, for the analogy of
recent species compels us to believe that the fossil M was one of sev-
eral closely related species, G, H, I, K, and L, any one of which may
have been the ancestor of the recent forms, and, as M is only one out
of several species, the chances are that it is not the root G from which

202

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A, B, C, D, E, and F are descended. Even if it could be proved to
be the only species of its genus, and therefore the direct ancestor of
the recent species, the precise manner in which these are related to it
would still remain in uncertainty, for it may have given rise, at about
the same time, to two divergent variations, represented by the dotted
lines, and these may have led to the two forms a and b, each of which
gave rise to variations which resulted in the recent species A, B,

Fig. i

C, and D, E, F, or it may have persisted for a long time, and be-
come slowly modified, through the stages c, d, e, f, into the form g,
different from the form G, and still more different from the known
fossil M, before it gave rise to the ancestors of the two recent genera.
In this case the phylogenetic tree would be represented by the con-
tinuous light lines of the diagram. It is possible, again, that A, B, and
C are not equally related, but that two of them, B and C, for instance,
have had a common ancestor which was not in the line which led to
A, and in this case their relationships would be expressed by the
broken lines —. — . — . — of the diagram ; or, finally, it is perfectly
possible, and many naturalists think it is very probable, that evolution
has been guided by some more fundamental law than that of the
natural selection of divergent variations, and, if this is so, the charac-
teristics which distinguish A, B, and C may be due to something else

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 203

than descent from a common ancestor, a, different from the common
ancestor b of D, E, and F, and all may be the descendants of G, in
the way shown by the heavy lines, or A may be the descendant of I ;
B of K ; C of G, etc. If we were to attempt to indicate all the
possible ways in which the six living species, A, B, C, D, E, and F,
may be related to the fossil M, the diagram would become a confused
mass of lines, and we have pointed out enough to show that, in a very
simple case, where there are only two living genera and only six
species, the attempt to follow them back only two stages to a common
ancestor leads to so many possible systems of relationship that there
is a very great chance against the truthfulness of any particular one,
and we may fairly ask whether the attempt to express the relation-
ships of animals in a tree-like classification can have any scientific
value if the chances against its correctness are so very great. At first
sight it may seem as if no good could be expected from this sort of
speculation, and we may feel inclined to condemn the construction of
phylogenetic trees as unscientific ; but a little examination will show
that all the lines in the diagram agree in one important particular,
and trace the recent animals, A, B, C, D, E, and F, back to a remote
common ancestor with a general resemblance to M. This, after all, is
the essential thing, the gist of the whole matter, for the precise line
of descent has no more scientific interest than the exact pedigree of
each person would have to the anthropologist of our illustration.
Such an exact pedigree would have a certain value as a bit of specific
information, but the general evidence is of such a character that it is
more logical to accept the conclusion than it is to reject it, and it is
as truly scientific as the conclusion of our anthropologist.

We find that living things are related to each other in a pecul-
iar way, which can be explained upon the assumption that they are
the modified descendants of more ancient generalized forms, with
wider relationships, and this assumption can be readily expressed in
the form of a phylogenetic tree. We find, too, that so far as the
higher groups of vertebrates, the mammals, reptiles, and birds, are
concerned — groups which are of comparatively recent appearance, like
the last races of immigrants in our imaginary case — the fossil forms
which we meet with are such as our assumption would lead us to
expect. The presumption is, therefore, very great that the genetic
relations of living things may be expressed with general accuracy by
a phylogenetic tree, although the chances of minute accuracy of detail
in favor of any particular tree which is drawn up from paleonto-
logical evidence are very slight. This lack of minute accuracy
can not be urged as an objection to all attempts at following out, in
a general way, the lines of evolution of our present groups of ani-
mals, according to the best evidence which is attainable, and we must
remember that only a very small part of this evidence is furnished
by paleontology. If no fossils were known, the facts of comparative

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

anatomy, of embryology, and of geographical distribution would be
enough to satisfy us that the living things known to us are the
divergent descendants of more generalized ancestors, and that their
relationships can be most exactly expressed by a system of con-
verging lines, which meet and form larger branches to represent the
extinct ancestors from which our divergent species are descended.
The evidence is circumstantial, and only leads to general conclusions,
and a complete series of fossil forms is the only absolute proof which
we could have ; but, in the absence of this proof, the conclusions drawn
from the study of living animals are rendered extremely probable by
the fact that the fossil members of the more modern groups of ani-
mals, such as the mammals and birds, are just such forms as the
evidence from other sources leads us to expect, and the attempt to
read and interpret such records as we have, and to trace the history
of life with as much accuracy as possible, is therefore perfectly legiti-
mate, and may fairly claim the attention of the morphologist.

-+—*-

ANNUAL GROWTH OF TREES.

By A. L. CHILD, M. D.

ARE the concentric rings of a tree a reliable record of its age in
years ? Such has been the conception — in fact, the undisputed
knowledge — of the world, for all time past. I have no recollection of
ever having seen or heard the authority of this record disputed till
Desire Charnay, in his " Ruins of Central America," said, when speak-
ing of the age of the ruins as proved by such a record : " Unfortu-
nately for the argument, it is altogether fallacious and proves nothing.
I have put the evidence to a test. On examining a slice of wood of
a shrub that I knew as a fact was only eighteen months old, I found
that it had eighteen concentric rings. I thought it was an anomaly,
but, in order to convince myself, I experimented upon trees of all kinds
and sizes, and invariably found the like result produced in very nearly
like proportions." *

M. Charnay's statement was, in my estimation, rather loose, and
lacking in the proof of his absolute knowledge of the age of the trees
examined ; and again, so far as applicable to the case, was only so in
a tropical climate, where the conditions were entirely different from
those surrounding us in a higher latitude, and altogether raised but
little doubt on the subject.

In April of 1871 I planted a quantity of the seed of the common
red maple {Acer rubrum). In transplanting, in 1873, they were
placed too near each other, and it has become necessary to cut a part

* "North American Review," September, 1881, p. 401.

ANNUAL GROWTH OF TREES.

205

of them out. While cutting, I
noticed that the concentric rings
were very distinct, and it re-
minded me of M. Charnay's
statement. I took sections from
the butt-end of each tree (four
of them) and dressed the ends
off, at an angle of some 35°
with the line of the body, thus
largely increasing the exposure
of each ring, and then counted
them.

The situation, exposure, and
condition of these four trees
were, so far as I could see, iden-
tical. I had personal and posi-
tive knowledge that they had
each twelve years' growth upon
them, and I could count on each
of the different sections from
thirty-five to forty concentric
rings. True, I could select
twelve more distinct ones be-
tween which fainter and nar-
rower, or sub-rings, appeared.
Nine of these apparently annual
rings on one section were pe-
culiarly distinct, much more so
than any of the sub-rings ; yet,
of the remaining, it was diffi-
cult to decide which were an-
nual and which were not.

The thickness of these an-
nual rings varied from two and
one half millimetres to twenty-
eight. This measure, of course,
gave more than double the real
thickness ; but was preferable
to a right-angled measure, as it
gave better facilities for exact-
ness, and yet preserved the pro-
portion between the several
rings unchanged.

Now, to ascertain what rela-
tion or connection there might
be between the meteorology of

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206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the several seasons and the growth made during the same, I selected
from my meteorological records the maximum, minimum, and mean
temperature, and the rain-fall, of the six growing months of sjiring
and summer of each of the twelve years of growth. These extracts I
have tabulated, and have also appended to each season the thickness
of the ring formed, as measured on the oblique cut previously described.
An examination of this table shows a general relation of cause and
effect between high temperature and large rain-fall, and greater growth.
But it falls very far short of proving a general law of " so much heat
and so much water during the growing season, to produce so much
wood." For example, compare the years 1875 and 1878. The tem-
perature of 1878 for the season is better than 4° in excess of the sea-
son of 1875, and the rain-fall only a little over four inches less ; and
yet the growth of 1875 is seven times what it was in 1878. This
almost unparalleled growth of 1875 — that is, as compared with the
other years — can not be explained by the above general law. But I
think the May and June record of that year throws light upon it.
We see there a maximum heat in May of 96° (higher than I have ever
known it in an observation and record of twenty-five years), and a
mean temperature of the whole month, also unequaled, of 71°; and
this great heat continued through the month of June, and no cold
spells after the heat set in sufficient to check the growth. Then, in
connection with this heat, the ground was well saturated with water
when this heated term began (May 6th) by 162 inch of rain on the
4th. From this on, to the 26th of June, 15 inches more of rain fell,
so apportioned over the time as to keep the ground saturated. This
synchronous excess of heat and water evidently produced the abnormal
growth. And probably, as this matter is further studied, it will be
found that these agents, rightly proportioned, operating synchronous-
ly, produce these thicker rings ; while as one or the other is in excess,
or absent, the growth is checked, and thus has time to condense and
harden, and form these sub-rings ; and the more frequent these alter-
nations, the greater the number of them.

SCIENCE m EELATION TO THE AETS.

By C. WILLIAM SIEMENS, F. E. S.

II.

AS is an institution of the utmost value to the artisan ; it requires
hardly any attention, is supplied upon regulated terms, and gives
with what should be a cheerful light a genial warmth, which often
saves the lighting of a fire. The time is, moreover, not far distant, I
venture to think, when both rich and poor will largely resort to gas as

G

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 207

the most convenient, the cleanest, and the cheapest of heating agents,
and when raw coal will be seen only at the colliery or the gas-works.
In all cases where the town to be supplied is within say thirty miles
of the colliery, the gas-works may with advantage be planted at the
mouth, or still better at the bottom of the pit, whereby all haulage
of fuel would be avoided, and the gas, in its ascent from the bot-
tom of the colliery, would acquire an onward pressure sufficient
probably to impel it to its destination. The possibility of transport-
ing combustible gas through pipes for such a distance has been proved
at Pittsburg, where natural gas from the oil district is used in large
quantities.

The quasi monopoly so long enjoyed by gas companies has had the
inevitable offect of checking progress. The gas being supplied by
meter, it has been seemingly to the advantage of the companies to give
merely the prescribed illuminating power, and to discourage the in-
vention of economical burners, in order that the consumption might
reach a maximum. The application of gas for heating purposes has
not been encouraged, and is still made difficult, in consequence of the
objectionable practice of reducing the pressure in the mains during
day-time to the lowest possible point consistent with prevention of
atmospheric indraught. The introduction of the electric light has
convinced gas managers and directors that such a policy is no longer
tenable, but must give way to one of technical progress ; new proc-
esses for cheapening the production and increasing the purity and
illuminating power of gas are being fully discussed before the Gas
Institute ; and improved burners, rivaling the electric light in brill-
iancy, greet our eyes as we pass along our principal thorough-
fares.

Regarding the importance of the gas-supply as it exists at present,
we find from a government return that the capital invested in gas-
works in England, other than those of local authorities, amounts to
£30,000,000 ; in these, 4,281,048 tons of coal are converted annually,
producing 43,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas, and about 2,800,000 tons
of coke ; whereas the total amount of coal annually converted in the
United Kingdom may be estimated at 9,000,000 tons, and the by-
products therefrom at 500,000 tons of tar, 1,000,000 tons of ammonia
liquor, and 4,000,000 tons of coke, according to the returns kindly fur-
nished me by the managers of many of the gas-works and corporations.
To these may be added say 120,000 tons of sulphur, which up to the
present time is a waste product.

Previous to the year 1856— that is to say, before Mr. W. II. Perkin
had invented his practical process, based chiefly upon the theoretical
investigations of Hoffman, regarding the coal-tar bases and the chem-
ical constitution of indigo— the value of coal-tar in London was scarcely
a halfpenny a gallon, and in country places gas-makers were glad to
give it away. Up to that time the coal-tar industry had consisted

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chiefly in separating the tar by distillation into naphtha, creosote, oils,
and pitch. A few distillers, however, made small quantities of ben-
zene, which had been first shown — by Mansfield, in 1849 — to exist in
coal-tar naphtha mixed with toluene, cumene, etc. The discovery, in
1856, of the mauve or aniline purple gave a great impetus to the coal-
tar trade, inasmuch as it necessitated the separation of large quantities
of benzene, or a mixture of benzene and toluene, from the naphtha.
The trade was further increased by the discovery of the magenta or
rosaniline dye, which required the same products for its preparation.
In the mean time, carbolic acid was gradually introduced into com-
merce, chiefly as a disinfectant, but also for the production of coloring-
matter.

The next most important development arose from the discovery by
Graebe and Liebermann that alizarine, the coloring principle of the
madder-root, was allied to antbracene, a hydrocarbon existing in coal-
tar. The production of this coloring-matter from anthracene followed,
and is now oue of the most important operations connected with tar-
distilling. The success of the alizarine made in this manner has been
so great that it has almost entirely superseded the use of madder,
which is now cultivated to only a comparatively small extent. The
most important coloring-matters recently introduced are the azo-scar-
lets. They have called into use the coal-tar hydrocarbons, xylene and
cumene. Naphthalene is also used in their preparation. These splendid
dyes have replaced cochineal in many of its applications, and have thus
seriously interfered with its use. The discovery of artificial indigo by
Professor Baeyer is of great interest. For the preparation of this
coloring-matter toluene is required. At present artificial indigo does
not compete seriously with the natural product ; but, should it event-
ually be prepared in quantity from toluene, a further stimulus will be
given to the coal-tar trade.

The color industry utilizes even now practically all the benzene, a
large proportion of the solvent naphtha, all the anthracene, and a por-
tion of the naphthaline resulting from the distillation of coal-tar ; and
the value of the coloring-matter thus produced is estimated by Mr.
Perkin at £3,350,000.

The demand for ammonia may be taken as unlimited, on account
of its high agricultural value as a manure ; and, considering the failing
supply of guano and the growing necessity for stimulating the fertility
of our soil, an increased production of ammonia may be regarded as a
matter of national importance, for the supply of which we have to
look almost exclusively to our gas-works. The present production
of 1,000,000 tons of liquor yields 95,000 tons of sulphate of am-
monia, which, taken at £20 10s. a ton, represents an annual value of
£1,947,000.

The total annual value of the gas-works by-products may be esti-
mated as follows :

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 209

Coloring-matter £3,350,000

Sulphate of ammonia 1,947,000

Pitch (325,000 tons) 365,000

Creosote (25,000,000 gallons) 208,000

Crude carbolic acid (1,000,000 gallons) 100,000

Gas-coke, 4,000,000 tons (after allowing 2,000,000 tons consump-
tion in working the retorts) at 12s 2,400,000

Total £8,370,000

Taking the coal used, 9,000,000 tons at 12s., equal £5,400,000, it
follows that the by-products exceed in value the coal used by very
nearly £3,000,000.

In using raw coal for heating purposes these valuable products are
not only absolutely lost to us, but in their stead we are favored with
those semi-gaseous by-products in the atmosphere too well known to
the denizens of London and other large towns as smoke. Professor
Roberts has calculated that the soot in the pall hanging over London
on a winter's clay amounts to fifty tons, and that the carbonic oxide, a
poisonous compound, resulting from the imperfect combustion of coal,
may be taken as at least five times that amount. Mr. Aitken has
shown, moreover, in an interesting paper communicated to the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, last year, that the fine dust resulting from the
imperfect combustion of coal is mainly instrumental in the formation
of fog ; each particle of solid matter attracting to itself aqueous vapor ;
these globules of fog are rendered particularly tenacious and disagree-
able by the presence of tar-vapor, another result of imperfect combus-
tion of raw fuel, which might be turned to much better account at the
dye-works. The hurtful influence of smoke upon public health, the
great personal discomfort to which it gives rise, and the vast expense
it indirectly causes through the destruction of our monuments, pictures,
furniture, and apparel, are now being recognized, as is evinced by the
success of recent Smoke Abatement Exhibitions. The most effectual
remedy would result from a general recognition of the fact that, wher-
ever smoke is produced, fuel is being consumed wastefully, and that
all our calorific effects, from the largest down to the domestic fire, can
be realized as completely and more economically, without allowing any
of the fuel employed to reach the atmosphere unburnt. This most de-
sirable result may be effected by the use of gas for all heating purposes,
with or without the addition of coke or anthracite.

The cheapest form of gas is that obtained through the entire distil-
lation of fuel in such gas-producers as are now largely used in working
the furnaces of glass, iron, and steel works ; but gas of this description
would not be available for the supply of towns owing to its bulk, about
two thirds of its volume being nitrogen. The use of water-gas, result-
ing from the decomposition of steam in passing through a hot chamber
filled with coke, has been suggested, but this gas is also objectionable,
because it contains, besides hydrogen, the poisonous and inodorous

TOL. XXII. — 14

2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gas, carbonic oxide, the introduction of which into dwelling-houses
could not be effected without considerable danger. A more satisfac-
tory mode of supplying heating separately from illuminating-gas would
consist in connecting the retort at different periods of the distillation
with two separate systems of mains for the delivery of the respective
gases. Experiments made some years ago by Mr. Ellisen, of the Paris
gas-works, have shown that the gases rich in carbon, such as defiant
and acetylene, are developed chiefly during an interval of time, begin-
ning half an hour after the commencement and terminating at half the
whole period of distillation, while during the remainder of the time,
marsh gas and hydrogen are chiefly developed, which, while possessing
little illuminating power, are most advantageous for heating purposes.
By resorting to improved means of heating the retorts with gaseous
fuel, such as have been in use at the Paris gas-works for a considerable
number of years, the length of time for effecting each distillation may
be shortened from six hours, the usual period in former years, to four,
or even three hours, as now practiced at Glasgow and elsewhere. By
this means a given number of retorts can be made to produce, in addi-
tion to the former quantity of illuminating-gas of superior quality, a
similar quantity of heating-gas, resulting in a diminished cost of pro-
duction and an increased supply of the valuable by-products previously
referred to. The quantity of both ammonia and heating-gas may be
further increased by the simple expedient of passing a streamlet of
steam through the heated retorts toward the end of each operation,
whereby the ammonia and hydrocarbons still occluded in the heated
coke will be evolved, and the volume of heating-gas produced be aug-
mented by the products of decomposition of the steam itself. It has
been shown that gas may be used advantageously for domestic pur-
poses with judicious management even under present conditions, and
it is easy to conceive that its consumption for heating would soon in-
crease, perhaps tenfold, if supplied separately at say one shilling a thou-
sand cubic feet. At this price gas would be not only the cleanest and
most convenient, but also the cheapest form of fuel, and the enormous
increase of consumption, the superior quality of the illuminating-gas
obtained by selection, and the proportionate increase of by-products,
would amply compensate the gas company or corporation for the com-
paratively low price of the heating-gas.

The greater efficiency of gas as a fuel results chiefly from the cir-
cumstance that a pound of gas yields in combustion twenty-two thou-
sand heat-units, or exactly double the heat produced in the combustion
of a pound of ordinary coal. This extra heating power is due partly
to the freedom of the gas from earthy constituents, but chiefly to the
heat imparted to it in effecting its distillation. Recent experiments
with gas-burners have shown that in this direction also there is much
room for improvement.

The amount of light given out by a gas-flame depends upon the

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 211

temperature to which the particles of solid carbon in the flame are
raised, and Dr. Tyndall has shown that, of the radiant energy set up
in such a flame, only the -^ part is luminous ; the hot products of com-
bustion carry off at least four times as much energy as is radiated, so
that not more than one hundredth part of the heat evolved in combus-
tion is converted into light. This proportion could be improved, how-
ever, by increasing the temperature of combustion, which may be ef-
fected either by intensified air-currents or by regenerative action. Sup-
posing that the heat of the products of combustion could be commu-
nicated to metallic surfaces, and be transferred by conduction or other-
wise to the atmospheric air supporting combustion in the flame, we
should be able to increase the temperature accumulatively to any point
within the limit of dissociation ; this limit may be fixed at about 2,300°
C, and can not be very much below that of the electric arc. At such
a temperature the proportion of luminous rays to the total heat pro-
duced in combustion would be more than doubled, and the brilliancy
of the light would at the same time be greatly increased. Thus im-
proved, gas-lighting may continue its rivalry with electric lighting
both as regards economy and brilliancy, and such rivalry must neces-
sarily result in great public advantage.

In the domestic grate radiant energy of inferior intensity is re-
quired, and I for one do not agree with those who would like to see
the open fire-place of this country superseded by the Continental stove.
The advantages usually claimed for the open fire-place are, that it is
cheerful, " pokable," and conducive to ventilation ; but to these may
be added another of even greater importance, viz., that the radiant
heat which it emits passes through the transparent air without warm-
ing it, and imparts heat only to the solid walls, floor, and furniture of
the room, which are thus constituted the heating surfaces of the com-
paratively cool air of the apartments in contact with them. In the
case of stoves, the heated air of the room causes deposit of moisture
upon the walls in heating them, and gives rise to mildew and germs
injurious to health. It is, I think, owing to this circumstance that
upon entering an apartment one can immediately perceive whether or
not it is heated by an open fire-place ; nor is the unpleasant sensation
due to stove-heating completely removed by mechanical ventilation ;
there is, moreover, no good reason why an open fire-place should not be
made as economical and smokeless as a stove or hot-water apparatus.

In the production of mechanical effect from heat, gaseous fuel also
presents most striking advantages, as will appear from the following
consideration. When we have to deal with the question of converting
mechanical into electrical effect, or vice versa, by means of the dynamo-
electrical machine, we have only to consider what are the equivalent
values of the two forms of energy, and what precautions are necessary
to avoid losses by the electrical resistance of conductors and by fric-

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion. The transformation of mechanical effect into heat involves no
losses except those resulting from imperfect installation, and these
may be so completely avoided that Dr. Joule was able by this method
to determine the equivalent values of the two forms of energy. But,
in attempting the inverse operation of effecting the conversion of heat
into mechanical energy, we find ourselves confronted by the second
law of thermo-dynamics, which says that, whenever a given amount of
heat is converted into mechanical effect, another but variable amount
descends from a higher to a lower potential, and is thus rendered un-
available.

In the condensing steam-engine this waste heat comprises that com-
municated to the condensing-water, while the useful heat, or that con-
verted into mechanical effect, depends upon the difference of temper-
ature between the boiler and condenser. The boiler-pressure is limited,
however, by considerations of safety and convenience of construction,
and the range of working temperature rarely exceeds 120° C, except in
the engines constructed by Mr. Perkins, in which a range of 160° C,
or an expansive action commencing at fourteen atmospheres, has been
adopted with considerable promise of success, as appears from an able
report on this engine by Sir Frederick Bramwell. To obtain more ad-
vantageous primary conditions we have to turn to the caloric or gas-
engine, because in them the co-efficient of efficiency, expressed by — ~— >
may be greatly increased. This value would reach a maximum if the
initial absolute temperature t could be raised to that of combustion,
and t' reduced to atmosj)heric tempei'ature, and these maximum limits
can be much more nearly approached in the gas-engine worked by a
combustible mixture of air and hydrocarbons than in the steam-engine.

Assuming, then, in an explosive gas-engine a temperature of 1,500°
C, at a pressure of four atmospheres, we should, in accordance
with the second law of thermo-dynamics, find a temperature after
expansion to atmospheric pressure of 600° C, and therefore a work-
ing range of 1500° — 600° = 900°, and a theoretical efficiency of

900
i &f\n o^< = a^out one half, contrasting very favorably with that

of a good expansive condensing steam-engine, in which the range is

ion 2

150 - 30 = 120° C, and the efficiency = =-. A good ex-

pansive steam-engine is therefore capable of yielding as mechanical
work two-seventh part of the heat communicated to the boiler, which
does not include the heat lost by imperfect combustion, and that car-
ried away in the chimney. Adding to these the losses by friction and
radiation in the engine, we find that the best steam-engine yet con-
structed does not yield in mechanical effect more than one seventh
part of the heat-energy residing in the fuel consumed. In the gas-
engine we have also to make reductions from the theoretical efficiency,
on account of the rather serious loss of heat by absorption into the

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 213

working cylinder, which has to be cooled artificially in order to keep
its temperature down to a point at which lubrication is possible ; this,
together with frictional loss, can not be taken at less than one half, and
reduces the factor of efficiency of the engine to one fourth.

It follows from these considerations that the gas or caloric engine
combines the conditions most favorable to the attainment of maximum
results, and it may reasonably be supposed that the difficulties still in
the way of their application on a large scale will gradually be removed.
Before many years have elapsed we shall find in our factories and on
board our ships engines with a fuel-consumption not exceeding one
pound of coal per effective horse-power per hour, in which the gas-
producer takes the place of the somewhat complex and dangerous steam-
boiler. The advent of such an engine and of the dynamo-machine must
mark a new era of material progress at least equal to that produced by
the introduction of steam-power in the early part of our century. Let
us consider what would be the probable effect of such an engine upon
that most important interest of this country — the merchant navy.

According to returns kindly furnished me by the Board of Trade
and " Lloyd's Register of Shipping," the total value of the merchant
shipping of the United Kingdom may be estimated at £126,000,000,
of which £90,000,000 repi-esent steamers having a net tonnage of
3,003,988 tons ; and £30,000,000 sailing-vessels, of 3,688,008 tons. The
safety of this vast amount of shipping, carrying about five sevenths of
our total imports and exports, or £500,000,000 of goods in the year,
and of the more precious lives connected with it, is a question of para-
mount importance. It involves considerations of the most varied kind:
comprising the construction of the vessel itself, and the material em-
ployed in building it ; its furniture of engines, pumps, sails, tackle,
compass, sextant, and sounding apparatus, the preparation of reliable
charts for the guidance of the navigator, and the construction of har-
bors of refuge, light-houses, beacons, bells, and buoys, for channel navi-
gation. Yet notwithstanding the combined efforts of science, invent-
ive skill, and practical experience — the accumulation of centuries — we
are startled with statements to the effect that during last year as many
as 1,007 British-owned ships were lost, of which fully two thirds
were wrecked upon our shores, representing a total value of nearly
£10,000,000. Of these ships 870 were sailing-vessels and 137 steamers,
the loss of the latter being in a fourth of the cases attributable to col-
lision. The number of sailing-vessels included in these returns being
19,325, and of steamers 5,505, it appears that the steamer is the safer
vessel, in the proportion of 4 -43 to 3*46 ; but the steamer makes on an
average three voyages for one of the sailing-ship taken over the year,
which reduces the relative risk of the steamer as compared with the
sailing-ship per voyage in the proportion of 13#29 to 3'46. Commer-
cially speaking, this factor of safety in favor of steam-shipping is to a

214

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great extent counterbalanced by the value of the steamship, which
bears to that of the sailing-vessel per net carrying ton the proportion
of 3 : 1, thus reducing the ratio in favor of steam-shipping as 13"29 to
10"38, or in round numbers as as 4 : 3. In testing this result by the
charges of premium for insurance, the variable circumstances of dis-
tance, nature of cargo, season, and voyage have to be taken into ac-
count ; but, judging from information received from shijD-owners and
underwriters of undoubted authority, I find that the relative insurance
paid for the two classes of vessel represents an advantage of 30 per
cent in favor of steam-shipping, agreeing very closely with the above
deductions derived from statistical information.

In considering the question how the advantages thus established in
favor of steam-shipping could be further improved, attention should
be called in the first place to the material enrployed in their construc-
tion. A new material was introduced for this purpose by the Admi-
ralty in 1876-'78, when they constructed at Pembroke dock-yard the
two steam corvettes, the Iris and Mercury, of mild steel. The pe-
culiar qualities of this material are such as have enabled ship-builders
to save 20 per cent in the weight of the ship's hull, and to increase
to that extent its carrying capacity. It combines, with a strength of
thirty per cent superior to that of iron, such extreme toughness, that
in the case of collision the side of the vessel has been found to yield
or bulge several feet without showing any signs of rupture, a quality
affecting the question of sea-risk very favorably. When to the use of
this material there are added the advantages derived from a double
bottom, and from the division of the ship's hold by means of bulk-heads
of solid construction, it is difficult to conceive how such a vessel could
perish by collision either with another vessel or with a sunken rock.
The spaces between the two bottoms are not lost, because they form
convenient chambers for water-ballast, but powerful pumps should in
all cases be added to meet emergencies.

The following statement of the number and tonnage of vessels
building and preparing to be built in the United Kingdom on the 30th
of June last, which has been kindly furnished me by Lloyd's, is of
interest as showing that wooden ships are fast becoming obsolete, and
that even iron is beginning to yield its place, both as regards steam-
ers and sailing-ships, to the new material mild steel ; it also shows
that by far the greater number of vessels now building are ships of
large dimensions propelled by engine-power :

MILD 8TEEL.

IEON.

WOOD.

TOTAL.

No.

Tons gross.

No.

555

70

Tons gross.

No.

Tons
gross.

No.

Tons gross.

Steam

89

11

159,751
16,800

929,921
120,259

6
49

460
4,635

650
130

1,090,132

Sailing

141,694

100

176,551

625

1,050,180

55

5,095

780

1,232,826

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 215

If to the improvements already achieved could be added an engine
of half the weight of the present steam-engine and boilers, and work-
ing with only half the present expenditure of fuel, a further addition
of 30 per cent could be made to the cargo of an Atlantic propeller
vessel — no longer to be called a steamer — and the balance of ad-
vantages in favor of such vessels would be sufficient to restrict the
use of sailing-craft chiefly to the regattas of this and neighboring
ports.

The admirable work on the "British Navy," lately published by
Sir Thomas Brassey, the Civil Chief Lord of the Admiralty, shows that
the naval department of this country is fully alive to all improvements
having regard to the safety as well as to the fighting qualities of her
Majesty's ships of war, and recent experience goes far to prove that,
although high speed and manoeuvring qualities are of the utmost
value, the armor-plate which appeared to be fast sinking in public
favor is not without its value in actual warfare.

The progressive views perceptible in the construction of the navy
are further evidenced in a remarkable degree in the hydrographic de-
partment. Captain Sir Frederick Evans, the hydrographer, and Vice-
President of the British Association, gave us at York last year a very
interesting account of the progress made in that department, which,
while dealing chiefly with the preparation of charts showing the depth
of water, the direction and force of currents, and the rise of tides near
our shores, contains also valuable statistical information regarding the
more general questions of the physical conditions of the sea, its tem-
perature at various depths, its flora and fauna, as also the rain-fall, and
the nature and force of prevailing winds. In connection with this
subject the American Naval Department has taken an important part,
under the guidance of Captain Maury and the Agassiz father and son,
while in this country the persistent labors of Dr. William Carpenter
deserve the highest consideration.

Our knowledge of tidal action has received a most powerful im-
pulse through the invention of a self-recording gauge and tide-pre-
dicter, which will form the subject of one of the discourses to be
delivered at our present meeting by its principal originator, Sir Will-
iam Thomson ; when I hope he will furnish us with an explanation
of some extraordinary irregularities in tidal records, observed some
years ago by Sir John Coode at Portland, and due apparently to at-
mospheric influence.

The application of iron and steel in naval construction rendered the
use of the compass for some time illusory, but in 1839 Sir George Airy
showed how the errors of the compass, due to the influence experienced
from the iron of the ship, may be perfectly corrected by magnets and
soft iron placed in the neighborhood of the binnacle, but the great size
of the needles in the ordinary compasses rendered the correction of the
quadrantal errors practically unattainable. In 1876 Sir William Thorn-

216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

son invented a compass with much smaller needles than those previ-
ously used, which allows Sir George Airy's principles to he applied
completely. With this compass correctors can be arranged so that the
needle shall point accurately in all directions, and these correctors can
be adjusted at sea from time to time, so as to eliminate any error which
may arise through change in the ship's magnetism, or in the magnet-
ism induced by the earth through change of the ship's position. By
giving the compass-card a long period of free oscillation, great steadi-
ness is obtained when the ship is rolling.

Sir William Thomson has also enriched the art of navigation by the
invention of two sounding-machines ; the one being devised for ascer-
taining great depths very accurately in less than one quarter the time
formerly necessary, and the other for taking depths up to 130 fathoms
without stopping the ship in its onward course. In both these instru-
ments steel piano-forte wire is used instead of the henrpen and silken
lines formerly employed ; in the latter machine the record of depth is
obtained not by the quantity of wire run over its counter and brake-
wheel, but through the indications produced upon a simple pressure-
gauge consisting of an inverted glass tube, whose internal surface is
covered beforehand with a preparation of chromate of silver, rendered
colorless by the sea-water up to the height to which it penetrates. The
value of this instrument for guiding the navigator within what he
calls " soundings " can hardly be exaggerated ; with the sounding-ma-
chine and a good chart he can generally make out his position cor-
rectly by a succession of three or four casts in a given direction at
given intervals, and thus in foggy weather is made independent of
astronomical observations, and of the sight of light-houses or the shore.
By the proper use of this apparatus, such accidents as happened to the
mail-steamer Mosel not a fortnight ago would not be possible. As re-
gards the value of the deep-sea instrument I can speak from personal
experience, as on one occasion it enabled those in charge of the cable
steamship Faraday to find the end of an Atlantic cable, which had
parted in a gale of wind, with no other indication of the locality than
a single sounding, giving a depth of 950 fathoms. To recover the ca-
ble a number of soundings in the supposed neighborhead of the broken
end were taken, the 950 fathom contour line was then traced upon a
chart, and the vessel thereupon trailed its grapnel two miles to the
eastward of this line, when it soon engaged the cable twenty miles
away from the point, where dead reckoning had placed the ruptured
end.

Whether or not it will ever be practicable to determine oceanic
depths without a sounding-line, by means of an instrument based
upon gravimetric differences, remains to be seen. Hitherto the indi-
cations obtained by such an instrument have been encouraging, but
its delicacy has been such as to unfit it for ordinary use on board a
ship when rolling.

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 217

The time allowed me for addressing you on this occasion is wholly-
insufficient to do justice to the great engineering works of the present
day, and I must therefore limit myself to making a short allusion to a
few only of the more remarkable enterprises.

The great success, both technically and commercially, of the Suez
Canal, has stimulated M. de Lesseps to undertake a similar work of
even more gigantic proportions, namely, the piercing of the Isthmus
of Panama by a ship-canal, forty miles long, fifty yards wide on the
surface, and twenty yards at tbe bottom, upon a dead level from sea
to sea. The estimated cost of this work is £20,000,000, and, more than
tbis sum having been subscribed, it appears unlikely that political or
climatic difficulties will stop M. de Lesseps in its speedy accomplish-
ment. Through it, China, Japan, and the whole of the Pacific Ocean
will be brought to half their present distance, as measured by the
length of voyage, and an impulse to navigation and to progress will
thus be given which it will be difficult to overestimate.

Side by side with tbis gigantic work, Captain Eads, the successful
improver of the Mississippi navigation, intends to erect his ship rail-
way, to take the largest vessels, fully laden and equipped, from sea to
sea, over a gigantic railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a dis-
tance of ninety-five miles. Mr. Barnaby, the chief constructor of the
navy, and Mr. John Fowler have expressed a favorable opinion re-
garding this enterprise, and it is to be hoped that both the canal
and the ship-railway will be accomplished, as it may be safely antici-
pated that the traffic will be amply sufficient to support both these un-
dertaking's.

Whether or not M. de Lesseps will be successful also in carrying
into effect the third great enterprise with wbicb his name has been
prominently connected, the flooding of the Tunis-Algerian Chotts,
thereby re-establishing the Lake Tritonis of the ancients, with its
verdure-clad shores, is a question which could only be decided upon
the evidence of accurate surveys, but the beneficial influence of a
large sheet of water within the African desert could hardly be matter
of doubt.

It is with a feeling not unmixed with regret that I have to record
the completion of a new Eddystone Light-house in substitution for the
chef-d'oeuvre of engineering erected by John Smeaton more than one
hundred years ago. The condemnation of that structure was not,
however, the consequence of any fault of construction, but was caused
by inroads of the sea upon the rock supporting it. The new light-
house, designed and executed by Mr. (now Sir James) Douglass, engi-
neer of Trinity House, has been erected in the incredibly short time
of less than two years, and bids fair to be worthy of its famed prede-
cessor. Its height above high water is one hundred and thirty feet, as
compared with seventy-two feet, the height of Telford's structure,
which gives its powerful light a considerably increased range. The

ai8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

system originally suggested by Sir William Thomson some years ago,
of distinguishing one light from another by flashes following at varied
intervals, has been adopted by the Elder Brethren in this as in other
recent lights in the modified form introduced by Dr. John Hopkinson,
in which the principle is applied to revolving lights, so as to obtain a
greater amount of light in the flash.

The geological difficulties which for some time threatened the ac-
complishment of the St. Gothard Tunnel have been happily overcome,
and this second and most important sub- Alpine thoroughfare now con-
nects the Italian railway system with that of Switzerland and the
south of Germany, whereby Genoa will be constituted the shipping
port for those parts.

Whether we shall be able to connect the English with the French
railway system by means of a tunnel below the English Channel is a
question that appears dependent at this moment rather upon military
and political than technical and financial considerations. The occur-
rence of a stratum of impervious gray chalk, at a convenient depth
below the bed of the Channel, minimizes the engineering difficulties
in the way, and must influence the financial question involved. The
protest lately raised against its accomplishment can hardly be looked
upon as a public verdict, but seems to be the result of a natural desire
to pause pending the institution of careful inquiries. These inquiries
have been made by a Royal Scientific Commission, and will be referred
for further consideration to a mixed Parliamentary Committee, upon
whose report it must depend whether the natural spirit of commercial
enterprise has to yield in this instance to political and military consid-
erations. Whether the Channel Tunnel is constructed or not, the plan
proposed some years ago by Mr. John Fowler, of connecting England
and France by means of a ferry-boat capable of taking railway trains,
would be a desideratum justified by the ever-increasing intercommu-
nication between this and Continental countries.

The public inconvenience arising through the obstruction to traffic
by a sheet of water is well illustrated by the circumstance that both
the estuaries of the Severn and of the Mersey are being undermined in
order to connect the railway systems on the two sides, and that the
Frith of Forth is about to be spanned by a bridge exceeding in grand-
eur anything as yet attempted, by the engineer. The roadway of
this bridge will stand one hundred and fifty feet above high-water
mark, and its two principal spans will measure a third of a statute mile
each. Messrs. Fowler and Baker, the engineers to whom this great
work has been intrusted, could hardly have accomplished their task
without having recourse to steel for their material of construction, nor
need the steel used be of the extra-mild quality particularly applicable
for naval structures to withstand collision, for, when such extreme
toughness is not required, steel of very homogeneous quality can be
produced, bearing a tensile strain double that of iron.

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 219

The tensile strength of steel, as is well known, is the result of an
admixture of carbon with the iron, varying between one tenth and two
per cent, and the nature of this combination of carbon with iron is a
matter of great interest both from a theoretical and practical point of
view. It could not be a chemical compound which would necessitate
a definite proportion, nor could a mere dissolution of the one in the
other exercise such remarkable influence upon the strength and hard-
ness of the resulting metal. A recent investigation by Mr. Abel has
thrown considerable light upon this question. A definite carbide of
iron is formed, it appears, soluble at high temperatures in iron, but
separating upon cooling the steel gradually, and influencing only to a
moderate degree the physical properties of the metal as a whole. In
cooling rapidly there is no time for the carbide to separate from the
iron, and the metal is thus rendered both hard and brittle. Cooling
the metal gradually, under the influence of great compressive force, ap-
pears to have a similar effect to rapid cooling in preventing the sep-
aration of the carbide from the metal, with this difference, that the
effect is more equal throughout the mass, and that more uniform tem-
per is likely to result.

When the British Association met at Southampton on a former
occasion, Schonbein announced to the world his discovery of gun-cot-
ton. This discovery has led the way to many valuable researches on
explosives generally, in which Mr. Abel has taken a leading part. Re-
cent investigations by him, in connection with Captain Noble, upon
the explosive action of gun-cotton and gunpowder confined in a strong
chamber, which have not yet been published, deserve particular atten-
tion. They show that while by the method of investigation pursued
about twenty years ago by Karolye (of exploding gunpowder in very
small charges in shells confined within a large shell partially exhausted
of air) the composition of the gaseous products was found to be com-
plicated and liable to variation, the chemical metamorphosis which
gun-cotton sustains, when exploded under conditions such as obtain in
its practical application, is simple and very uniform. Among other
interesting points noticed in this direction was the fact that, as in the
case of gunpowder, the proportion of carbonic acid increases, while
that of carbonic oxide diminshes with the density of the charge. The
explosion of gun-cotton, whether in the form of wool or loosely spun
thread, or in the packed compressed form devised by Abel, furnished
practically the same results if fired under pressure, that is, under
strong confinement — the conditions being favorable to the full devel-
opment of its explosive force ; but some marked differences in the
composition of the products of metamorphosis were observed when
gun-cotton was fired by detonation. "With regard to the tension ex-
erted by the products of explosion, some interesting points were ob-
served, which introduce very considerable difficulties into the investi-
gation of the action of fired gun-cotton. Thus, whereas no marked

220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

differences are observed in the tension developed by small charges and
by very much larger charges of gunpowder having the same density
(i. e., occupying the same volume relatively to the entire space in which
they are exploded), the reverse is the case with respect to gun-cotton.
Under similar conditions in regard to density of charge, 100 grammes
of gun-cotton gave a measured tension of about 20 tons on the square
inch, 1,500 grammes gave a tension of about 29 tons (in several very
concordant observations), while a charge of 2*5 kilos gave a pressure
of about 45 tons, this being the maximum measured tension obtained
with a charge of gunpowder of five times the density of the above.

The extreme violence of the explosion of gun-cotton as compared
with gunpowder when fired in a closed space was a feature attended
with formidable difficulties. In whatever way the charge was arranged
in the firing-cylinder, if it had free access to the inclosed crusher-
gauge, the pressures recorded by the latter were always much greater
than when means were taken to prevent the wave of matter suddenly
set in motion from acting directly upon the gauge. The abnormal or
wave-pressures recorded at the same time that the general tension in
the cylinder was measured amounted in the experiment to 42'3 tons,
when the general tension was recorded at 20 tons ; and in another,
when the pressure was measured at 29 tons, the wave-pressure recorded
was 44 tons. Measurements of the temperature of explosion of gun-
cotton showed it to be about double that of the explosion of gunpow-
der. One of the effects observed to be produced by this sudden enor-
mous development of heat was the covering of the inner surfaces of
the steel explosion-vessel with a net-work of cracks, small portions of
the surface being sometimes actually fractured. The explosion of
charges of gun-cotton up to 2'5 kilos in perfectly closed chambers,
with development of pressures approaching to 50 tons on the square
inch, constitutes alone a perfectly novel feat in investigations of this
class.

Messrs. Noble and Abel are also continuing their researches upon
fired gunpowder, being at present occupied with an inquiry into the
influence exerted upon the chemical metamorphosis and ballistic effects
of fired gunpowder by variation in its composition, their attention be-
ing directed especially to the discovery of the cause of the more or less
considerable erosion of the interior surface of guns produced by the
exploding charge— an effect which, notwithstanding the application
of devices in the building up of the charge specially directed to the
preservation of the gun's bore, has become so serious that, with the
enormous charges now used in our heavy guus, the erosive action on
the surface of the bore produced by a single round is distinctly per-
ceptible. As there appeared to be prima facie reasons why the ero-
sive action of powder upon the surface of the bore at the high temper-
atures developed should be at any rate in part due to its one compo-
nent sulphur, Noble and Abel have made comparative experiments

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 221

with powders of usual composition and with others in which the pro-
portion of sulphur was considerably increased, the extent of erosive
action of the products escaping from the explosion-vessel under high
tension being carefully determined. With small charges a particular
powder containing no sulphur was found to exert very little erosive
action as compared with ordinary cannon-powder ; but another pow-
der, containing the maximum proportion of sulphur tried (15 per cent),
was found equal to it under these conditions, and exerted very decid-
edly less erosive action than it, when larger charges were reached.
Other important contributions to our knowledge of the action of fired
gunpowder in guns, as well as decided improvements in the gunpow-
der manufactured for the very heavy ordnance of the present day,
may be expected to result from a continuance of these investigations.
Professor Carl Himly, of Kiel, having been engaged upon investiga-
tions of a similar nature, has lately proposed a gunpowder in which
hydrocarbons precipitated from solution in naphtha take the place of
the charcoal and sulphur of ordinary powder. This powder has among
others the peculiar property of completely resisting the action of wa-
ter, so that the old caution, " Keep your powder dry," may hereafter
be unnecessary.

The extraordinary difference of condition, before and after its ig-
nition, of such matter as constitutes an explosive agent leads us up to
a consideration of the aggregate state of matter under other circum-
stances. As early as 1776, Alexander Volta observed that the volume
of glass was changed under the influence of electrification, by what he
termed electrical pressure. Dr. Kerr, Govi, and others have followed
up the same inquiry, which is at present continued chiefly by Dr.
George Quincke, of Heidelberg, who finds that temperature, as well as
chemical constitution of the dielectric under examination, exercises a
determining influence upon the amount and character of the change
of volume effected by electrification ; that the change of volume may
under certain circumstances be effected instantaneously as in flint-
glass, or only slowly as in crown-glass, and that the elastic limit of
both is diminished by electrification, whereas in the case of mica and
of gutta-percha an increase of elasticity takes place.

Still greater strides are being made at the present time toward a
clearer perception of the condition of matter when particles are left
some liberty to obey individually the forces brought to bear upon
them. By the discharge of high-tension electricity through tubes con-
taining highly rarefied gases (Geissler's tubes), phenomena of dis-
charge were produced which were at once most striking and suggestive.
The Sprengel pump afforded a means of pushing the exhaustion to
limits which had formerly been scarcely reached by the imagination.
At each step the condition of attenuated matter revealed varying prop-
erties when acted upon by electrical discharge and magnetic force.

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The radiometer of Crookes imported a new feature into these inquiries,
which at the present time occupy the attention of leading physicists in
all countries.

The means usually employed to produce electrical discharge in
vacuum-tubes was Rukrnkorff's coil ; but Mr. Gassiot first succeeded
in obtaining the phenomena by means of a galvanic battery of 3,000
Leclanche cells. Dr. De La Rue, in conjunction with his friend Dr.
Hugo Miiller, has gone far beyond his predecessors in the production
of batteries of high potential. At his lecture " On the Phenomena of
Electric Discharge," delivered at the Royal Institution, in January,
1881, he employed a battery of his invention consisting of 14,400 cells
(14,832 Volts), which gave a current of 0'054 Ampere, and produced
a discharge at a distance of 0*71 inch between the terminals. During
last year, he increased the number of cells to 15,000 (15,450 Volts),
and increased the current to 0-4 Ampere, or eight times that of the
battery he used at the Royal Institution.

With the enormous potential and perfectly steady current at his
disposal, Mr. De La Rue has been able to contribute many interesting
facts to the science of electricity. He has shown, for example, that
the beautiful phenomena of the stratified discharge in exhausted tubes
are but a modification and a magnification of those of the electric arc
at ordinary atmospheric pressure. Photography was used in his ex-
periments to record the appearance of the discharge, so as to give a
degree of precision otherwise unattainable in the comparison of the
phenomena. He has shown that between two points the length of the
spark, provided the insulation of the battery is efficacious, is as the
square of the number of cells employed. Mr. De La Rue's experi-
ments have proved that at all pressures the discharge in gases is not
a current in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but is of the nature
of a disruptive discharge. Even in an apparently ])erfectly steady dis-
charge in a vacuum-tube, when the strata as seen in a rapidly revolv-
ing mirror are immovable, he has shown that the discharge is a pulsat-
ing one ; but, of course, the period must be of a very high order.

At the Royal Institution, on the occasion of his lecture, Mr. De La
Rue produced, in a very large vacuum-tube, an imitation of the aurora
borealis ; and he has deduced from his experiments that the greatest
brilliancy of aurora displays must be at an altitude of from thirty-
seven to thirty-eight miles — a conclusion of the highest interest, and
in opposition to the extravagant estimate of 281 miles at which it had
been previously put.

The President of the Royal Society has made the phenomena of
electrical discharge his study for several years, and resorted in his im-
portant experiments to a special source of electric power. In a note
addressed to me, Dr. Spottiswoode describes the nature of his inves-
tigations much more clearly than I could venture to give them. He
says : " It had long been my opinion that the dissymmetry shown in

SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 223

electrical discharges through rarefied gases must be an essential ele-
ment of every disruptive discharge, and that the phenomena of strati-
fication might be regarded as magnified images of features always
present, but concealed under ordinary circumstances. It was with a
view to the study of this question that the researches by Moulton and
myself were undertaken. The method chiefly used consisted in intro-
ducing into the circuit intermittence of a particular kind, whereby one
luminous discharge was rendered sensitive to the approach of a con-
ductor outside the tube. The application of this method enabled us
to produce artificially a variety of phenomena, including that of strati-
fication. We were thus led to a series of conclusions relating to the
mechanism of the discharge, among which the following may be men-
tioned :

" 1. That a stria, with its attendant dark space, forms a physical
unit of a striated discharge ; that a striated column is an aggregate of
such units formed by means of a step-by-step process ; and that the
negative glow is merely a localized stria, modified by local circum-
stances.

" 2. That the origin of the luminous column is to be sought for at
its negative end ; that the luminosity is an expression of a demand for
negative electricity ; and that the dark spaces are those regions where
the negative terminal, whether metallic or gaseous, is capable of ex-
erting sufficient influence to prevent such demand.

" 3. That the time occupied by electricity of either name in trav-
ersing a tube is greater than that occupied in traversing an equal
length of wire, but less than that occupied by molecular streams
(Crookes's radiations) in traversing the tubes. Also that, especially in
high vacua, the discharge from the negative terminal exhibits a dura-
tional character not found at the positive.

" 4. That the brilliancy of the light with so little heat may be due
in part to brevity in the duration of the discharge ; and that, for action
so rapid as that of individual discharges, the mobility of the medium
may count as nothing ; and that for these infinitesimal periods of time
gas may itself be as rigid and as brittle as glass.

" 5. That striae are not merely loci in which electrical is converted
into luminous energy, but are actual aggregations of matter.

" This last conclusion was based mainly upon experiments made
with an induction-coil excited in a new way — viz., directly by an alter-
nating machine, without the intervention of a commutator or con-
denser. This mode of excitement promises to be one of great impor-
tance in spectroscopic work, as well as in the study of the discharge in
a magnetic field, partly on account of the simplification which it per-
mits in the construction of induction-coils, but mainly on account of
the very great increase of strength in the secondary currents to which
it gives rise."

These investigations assume additional importance when we view

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

them in connection with solar — I may even say stellar — physics, for
evidence is augmenting in favor of the view that interstellar space is
not empty, but is filled with highly attenuated matter of a nature such
as may be put into our vacuum-tubes. Nor can the matter occupying
stellar space be said any longer to be beyond our reach for chemical
and physical test. The spectroscope has already thrown a flood of
light upon the chemical constitution and physical condition of the sun,
the stars, the comets, and the far-distant nebula?, which have yielded
spectroscopic photographs under the skillful management of Dr. Hug-
gins, and Dr. Draper, of New York. Armed with greatly improved
apparatus, the physical astronomer has been able to reap a rich harvest
of scientific information during the short periods of the last two solar
eclipses ; that of 1879, visible in America, and that of May last, ob-
served in Egypt by Lockyer, Schuster, and by Continental observers
of high standing. The result of this last eclipse expedition has been
summed up as follows : " Different temperature levels have been dis-
covered in the solar atmosphere ; the constitution of the corona has
now the possibility of being determined, and it is proved to shine with
its own light. A suspicion has been aroused once more as to the
existence of a lunar atmosphere, and the position of an important line
has been discovered. Hydrocarbons do not exist close to the sun, but
may in space between us and it."

To me personally these reported results possess peculiar interest,
for in March last I ventured to bring before the Royal Society a spec-
ulation regarding the conservation of solar energy, which was based
upon the three following postulates, viz. :

1. That aqueous vapor and carbon compounds are present in stellar
or interplanetary space.

2. That these gaseous compounds are capable of being dissociated
by radiant solar energy while in a state of extreme attenuation.

3. That the effect of solar rotation is to draw in dissociated vapors
upon the polar surfaces, and to eject them, after combustion has taken
place, back into space equatorially.

It is therefore a matter of peculiar gratification to me that the re-
sults of observation here recorded give considerable support to that
speculation. The luminous equatorial extensions of the sun which the
American observations revealed in such a striking manned (with which
I was not acquainted when writing my paper) were absent in Egypt ;
but the outflowing equatorial streams I suppose to exist could only be
rendered visible by reflected sunlight, when mixed with dust produced
by exceptional solar disturbances or by electric discharge ; and the
occasional appearance of such luminous extensions would serve only to
disprove the hypothesis entertained by some, that they are divided
planetary matter, in which case their appearance should be permanent.
Professor Langley, of Pittsburg, has shown, by means of his bolometer,
that the solar actinic rays are absorbed chiefly in the solar instead of

MUSICAL SENSATIONS. 225

in the terrestrial atmosphere, and Captain Abney has found by his
new photometric method that absorption due to hydrocarbons takes
place somewhere between the solar and terrestrial atmosphere ; in
order to test this interesting result still further, he has lately taken his
apparatus to the top of the Riffel with a view of diminishing the amount
of terrestrial atmospheric air between it and the sun, and intends to bring
a paper on this subject before Section A. Stellar space filled with such
matter as hydrocarbon and aqueous vapor would establish a material
continuity between the sun and his planets, and between the innu-
merable solar systems of which the universe is composed. If chemical
action and reaction can further be admitted, we may be able to trace
certain conditions of thermal dependence and maintenance, in which
we may recognize principles of high perfection, applicable also to com-
paratively humble purposes of human life.

We shall thus find that, in the great workshop of Nature, there are
no lines of demarkation to be drawn between the most exalted specu-
lation and commonplace practice, and that all knowledge must lead up
to one great result, that of an intelligent recognition of the Creator
through his works. So, then, we members of the British Association
and fellow-workers in every branch of science may exhort one another
in the words of the American bard who has so lately departed from

anions: us

" Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."

MUSICAL SENSATIONS.

Br M. HiniCOUKT.

IT is common, in defining music, to compare it with some other art,
painting, for instance, and say it is to the ear what that is to the
eye ; that it is the representation of the ideal by a means especially
adapted to the organ to which it is addressed, or by the combination
of sounds. Is that all that it is ? Do we not forget, when we simply
put it on a par with other arts, the exceptional part it plays in the life
of men ? The universal adaptation of music to all degrees of civili-
zation, the peculiar charm of which it is the source, and the extraor-
dinary power it exercises, are so many reasons for believing that it
is connected with our organization by a more intimate tie than that
which binds other arts to it, and that it is the manifestation of a
more general faculty. "When Fetis wrote, in 1837, the idea prevailed
that music originated in the imitation of the sonsrs of birds. He

VOL, XXII. — 15

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

contradicted this, and defined music as the double result of the con-
formation of the organs and the disposition of the soul, as the art of
awakening emotion by means of the combination of sounds. It is,
in fact, generally agreed that music addresses itself more directly to
our feelings and passions, and is correctly said that it speaks to them
in a special language. Descartes indicated this as its object.

In the theory of Helmholtz, music expresses the different dispo-
sitions of the soul by imitating the characteristic particularities of
movement in space, and by thus translating the forces and impulses
that produce the movement. While he admits that it may have been
at first only an imitation of the instinctive modulations of the voice
corresponding with the different states of the mind, he does not con-
sider this fact contradictory to his definition, for the natural processes
of vocal expression are capable of being traced back to the same
elements. " Rhythm and accentuation express directly the rapidity
and vivacity of corresponding psychical movements ; a vehement
effort causes the voice to rise ; the desire to produce an agreeable
impression on another person prompts us to select a pleasant tone ;
and thus the efforts to imitate the involuntary modulations of the
voice, to enrich and make more expressive the recitation of words,
may very probably have guided our ancestors in seeking out the
means for musical expression."

This is probably the real origin of music ; and it is in this direc-
tion that we should look in investigating its nature.

Two elements closely connected, but quite different and having
each its peculiar function, may be distinguished in the analysis of
spoken language — the intonation and the articulation of the emitted
sound. No doubt they are the interpreters of the two great human
faculties of intelligence and feeling. Speech, then, is a complex physi-
ological resultant, the double image of a double inner condition. The
elements it represents can not be conceived as isolated from each other,
any more than we can conceive a human organization a pure intelli-
gence. We all know the important part intonation plays in conver-
sation, and how by it the general sense, the whole expression of the
spoken words, may be varied indefinitely.

Having thus found the origin of music in the imitation of these
instinctive modulations of speech, it should be easy to draw from this
an exact idea of its nature ; for, without doubt, to read verse well, to
declaim with warmth and conviction, is only to perform in advance
the work of the musician. We have now a whole class of musical
phrases which are only exaggerations of spoken intonations ; they are
our recitatives. The music of uncultivated peoples is mostly recita-
tive ; so also was a large part of the music of the middle ages. The
rules and grammar of music and its particular features are the growth
of modern times.

This conception of music as the language of sensibility permits us

MUSICAL SENSATIONS. 227

to explain the characteristic features of its action. We must consider,
first, that this language, like its twin sister the language of ideas, has
suffered a progressive evolution, and has with us reached a great per-
fection, and consequently a great complexity in its laws and proc-
esses. Among primitive peoples of few ideas, whose feelings show
few variations of shade in expression, music is almost wholly con-
fined to a few modulations expressive of the principal divisions of
feelino- — love, joy, sorrow, and warlike ardor. Civilization, with its
refinements, has produced a music that has grown constantly richer in
shades and means of expression, to the point which has been reached
by the great masters of our age.

Neither language is intelligible to all, in its fullest degree of de-
velopment. As we must have the power of comprehending abstract
ideas in order to understand philosophers, so we must be more or less
accustomed to musical sensations to appreciate the great musicians ;
and it is interesting to observe how we learn by study to enjoy works
which at first fall cold upon us.

The application of such a word as comprehend, or understand, to
music, is a source of numerous misconceptions ; music does not under-
stand, it feels. It addresses itself only to that part of us which is
susceptible of emotion ; and we frequently lose all its charm by our
trying to undei'stand it, or to find in it ideas which it can not express.
We might exj^ect the same kind of a failure if we should try to find
sources of emotion in the working out of an equation.

It is true that persons exist who have no sense for music, and to
whom its language is a blank ; but they are rarely found, and prove
nothing. Opposed to them are much more frequent instances of ex-
cessively sensitive natures, on whom even simple single musical inter-
vals produce wonderful effects. Who has not made music without
suspecting it ? In certain states of feeling we are sometimes surprised
to find ourselves composing simple melodies that are never finished,
and are major or minor according as we are gay or sad, while we may
be totally ignorant of the existence of those modes. Some natures
seem obliged thus to express themselves in song. This is because
speech is really an imperfect means of expressing the feelings. It is
just as necessary to address the feelings, to make an emotion known,
as it is to address the intellect, to communicate an idea. Hence the
charm of the opera, in which the words describe the situation, while
the music enables us to see into the hearts of the persons who are
implicated in it. A certain school of operatic composers, indeed, are
not concerned about depicting the passions set forth in their dramas,
but are satisfied if they can introduce a few agreeable melodies good
to sing anywhere and to any words, and which will become favorites ;
but this is not the case with real dramatic music as illustrated in the
works of Gluck, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Verdi in his second style,
and Wagner.

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In songs, the expression is in an inverse ratio to the interest of the
words. Good poetry is hardly susceptible of any but an uncolored
music, just enough to sustain the voice ; the thought, in effect, crowds
out the feeling, and, a choice being forced upon the attention, too
much musical accent would weaken the thought. For a full musical
interpretation of the feeling, a third-rate poetry, only indicating the
subject, is best, for it permits the concentration of all the attention
upon the emotional expression. This is, ordinarily, the character of
the librettos of operas, in which everything is subordinated to the
music ; but the song, the interest of which lies in the conception, is
accommodated with a colorless melody.

By considering music as the language of the feelings, we are
enabled to account for the power it has over masses composed of the
most incongruous elements. An address can not affect alike persons
of different degrees of intellectual development, and must fall without
making any impression on a part of the audience. There is less dif-
ference in the capacity for feeling, and all are more or less subject to
the same transports of emotion. The masses feel more than they think.

It is interesting to remark the generally simple and touching ex-
pression of popular songs. The feeling is brought out in its purity
without science or preparation, and the result is a music full of artless
charms, the inexhaustible source to which composers, knowing that
they can not find better ones, go for the themes of their works. These
popular songs are generally of a sad character, and tell of vague
aspirations and indefinite desires. Thus have originated those dreamy
melodies with which working-people love to lull their melancholy,
and which are frequently the only source to which we can go for the
history of those who have lived and suffered in obscurity.

As different human races have their several languages, so each one
has its own musical system ; and these various systems, the existence
of which is explainable by the action of the same causes that have
made different words to designate the same things, prove that the
origin of the two languages is common, and that the one is the spon-
taneous expression of feelings, as the other is of thoughts. Like
alphabets, gamuts also may differ within certain limits. They are
also not fixed, and undergo the evolution common to all languages.
Most uncivilized peoples are unacquainted with semitones, and use
scales with full intervals. This is easily accounted for if we suppose
that these intervals are the ones which represent the elementary
intonations, and that they constitute a music near its origin. The
need of representing shades of feeling brings about a ]3rogressive fill-
ing up of the intervals. The ancient Celts excluded semitones, while
the music of the Greeks found refined expression in quarter-tones.
Our musicians are also sometimes tempted to reduce our minimum
interval of a semitone, and some performers abuse this process to an
extravagant degree.

MUSICAL SENSATIONS. 22Q

The effect produced upon our ear by music of a system different
from oars is generally painful ; but we have no right to say that the
Indians and the Arabs sing false. We have to learn a language to
understand it ; and a quite short accustoming is generally sufficient for
a music that appeared savage and harsh, at the first hearing, to become
supportable, if not agreeable.

Music nearly always commands the attention of animals ; and
every one knows what curious results have been obtained from experi-
ments on different species, from the elephant to the spider. This
language of feeling is really more within their reach than speech ;
and we may generally remark that when we address ourselves to our
domestic animals it is by the intonation alone, of greater or less force,
that we make them understand — that is, feel. Articulate words have
no meaning for them, except on condition of a previous education
based on the association of sensations. A dog is never mistaken as to
the intention of a person calling him, and the tone alone tells him
whether a caress or correction is in waiting for him. So music is
never heard by animals with indifference.

After what has been said it would be idle to consider the rank
which music holds among the other arts ; its origin, its nature, and its
effects give it a separate place. It is a language which everybody
understands, which nearly all speak to some extent, and in which
some rise to a sublime eloquence.

Poetry, with its measure and rhythm, is the first intermediary
between speech and music ; but it lacks vastly the power of the latter,
because of the degree of intellectual culture it exacts. Mimicry
comes nearer to music in its effects, for it leaves the idea vague, and
speaks more directly to the feelings ; and it is a great aid to the
orator. But the most powerful orator is he who has a musical into-
nation.

An interesting investigation might be made of the various musical
accents which answer to different conditions of feeling. To ascertain
this correctly would require a long and minute course of experiments.
It is curious to observe, however, that Gluck, Mozart, Berlioz, Meyer-
beer, and Wagner, when they have the same situations to depict,
whether in recitative or melody, use the same musical intonations. It
thus appears that the major third is generally employed in interroga-
tions and appeals, and that the appellative character of that interval
becomes more marked and impressive in the fourth descending, while
the fourth ascending denotes affirmation, decision, command. The
minor and major fifths express the feelings from prayer to violent
desire and menace. The sixth is the interval of passion ; it is the
symbol of a very accentuated emotion, and is inevitably met where
love is declared. A semitone higher conveys the idea of something
painful, which is resolved into a real expression of grief in the cry
of the seventh, the symbol of an excess of suffering. There are, in

230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effect, no two ways of saying the same thing in music, and it is only
in the way the phrase is introduced and sustained by the harmony
that authors vary. We are speaking, of course, only of those passages
of the songs in which the emotions are exploded, for it is in these
only that the author, not caring to expend his force over the whole
phrase, aims to bring out his full meaning. From these comparisons
of emotions and intonations we are able to discover the physiological
reason of the correspondence between the note and expression. The
smaller intervals are congenial with indifference, monotony, doubt,
melancholy, and sadness ; the group of moderate intervals affirms oc-
cupation, pleasure, and desire, which grow more ardent as we approach
the extreme intervals ; and in these we look for the most intense feel-
ing. Melancholy sentiments involving diminished vitality, we might
naturally conceive them to be expressed musically by diminished in-
tervals, the compass of which requires little effoi't ; while earnest de-
sires, strong passions, and pleasant and happy feelings, being accom-
paniments of a more active vitality, provoke more vigorous expres-
sions ; and these expressions, by giving an outlet to the excess of
vitality, furnish one of the best means for calming violent passions.

We add a few words on the nature of musical pleasure. It is
dependent on variety — the essential condition of all pleasure, that of
the mind as well as that of the senses ; variety of ideas for the former,
variety of sensations for the latter. Nothing, in fact, is more incom-
patible with pleasure than monotony, even in agreeable things. The
feelings do not escape this general law ; and the cause of musical en-
joyment must be sought in the infinite variety of conditions of feeling
through which the rapid succession of musical intervals makes us pass.
In this, Ave do not speak of the merely material pleasure of the sense
of hearing, which may exist aside from all attention ; but of the stir-
ring up of the whole being by the emotions. To this enjoyment,
which exists parallel with the succession of sounds, should be added
the pleasure of the hearer's adapting his personal feelings of the mo-
ment to the general sense of the performed music : a theme marked
with melancholy will move a whole audience of thousands to sadness,
each person of whom will associate his feeling with some particular
object. This impersonality of the musical phrase and its adaptability
to individual feelings explain the taste of the masses for music, and
its power over them. The system of tones, by furnishing a kind of
stable basis for the undulating variety of musical sounds, effects in
music a union of the two chief conditions of pleasure — variety in
unity.

It is impossible to treat of music without speaking of rhythm,
which, without being an essential part of it, enframes it, sustains it,
and gives precision to its otherwise vague expression. The origin of
rhythm need be sought no further off than in the movements and
paces of men. Descartes finds it in the efforts of the voice in sing-

IS FIN GAL'S CAVE ARTIFICIAL? 23,

ing, or the gestures of the instrumentalist ; every accent is preceded
by an inspiration or a drawing of the bow, marking the beginning of
a new effort. These efforts, methodically arranged, give musical
measure.

Different rhythms reflect the different paces of the walker or the
rider plainly enough to justify us in attributing their origin to them.
The same cause that makes one pace his room with gaits varying ac-
cording to the impressions of the moment, in the reverie of solitude or
in conversation, also determines the rhythm in music.

Just as our emotional being loves to be amused by rhythms sug-
gesting natural outer movements, so certain cadenced sounds casually
heard, such as that of a passing train, the trotting of a horse, or the
beating of oars, induce states of sensibility, under the influence of
which we surprise ourselves by humming old airs, or by improvising
melodies that naturally adapt themselves to the fortuitous move-
ment.

This conception of the origin of music explains the universality of
its domain and its power, as well as all the particular facts connected
with its different adaptations. — Translated from the Revue Scientifique.

IS FINGAL'S CAVE AKTIFICIAL ? *

Br F. COPE "WHITEHOUSE, M. A., etc.

IN venturing to ask a question and thus imply a doubt upon a point
on which geologists, statesmen, and poets have given their con-
sentient opinion for a century, it is not without regret that an opin-
ion, held without suspicion of challenge, should be subjected to criti-
cism, and better proof than prescription required for the title by which
this celebrated cavern has been held and enjoyed as the work of
Nature.

The process of reasoning which led me to believe that the cavern
owes its existence to the hand of man had little in common with the
arguments by which the inference is now supported. In June, 1881,
while examining the Giants' Causeway, it seemed evident that colum-
nar basalt showed no tendency to erode and form hollows. Where
the basalt, which for the height of some hundreds of feet above the
chalk is quite amorphous, and caps the low promontories along the
coast, is brought so low that more than one half of its thickness is im-
mersed in the sea, the remainder projects above the water and forms
the well-known natural pier. The caves on that coast are in the great

* A summary of an address made before the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science at Montreal, August 30th, and the Academy of Science at New York,
October 9, 1882, illustrated by photographs and diagrams.

232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ochre-bed or chalk. They are plainly artificial in their present form.
The peculiar Gothic door-way and the sheltered approach strengthen
the view that they bear a distinct relation to an ancient civilization,
and that it is not by accident that adjacent cliffs are crowned with
castles, neighboring mines were worked from unknown periods, beacon-
rocks bear mythological names, and manuscripts refer to maritime
expeditions to the Baltic and Mediterranean. It seemed antecedently
possible that the same race, Kelto-Iberian, Wend, or Phoenician, which
had formed harbors on the coast of Ireland, might also have been the
active agent in that perforation which has been termed the most re-
markable in Europe. This conjecture received strong and unexpected
confirmation. It was submitted to rigid examination ; it was strength-
ened by opposition. It has been adopted, by a considerable number of
eminent men, as a far stronger prima facie case than that commonly
stated by the text-books in favor of marine erosion. If not well
founded, it still suggests difficulties which have escaped observation,
and may also correct the inaccurate terms in which Fingal's Cave has
been described, and the imperfect representations which have gone
far to perpetuate the hasty conclusion of Sir Joseph Banks.

Fingal's Cave is not at the Giants' Causeway. It is in the southern
end of the Island of Staffa, whose apparent size and position are neces-
sarily exaggerated on the maps in common use. It is not " off the

Back "beg T£4.-neUgt_ / J%^&"^^^ W

so. ^-3S jS^S\ 8 \

37)

a ^\z

4i STAFiEA/^A^ ::MMl

$\

4&

lOCatTad J

[ 1 l'.ii!iii!!'!ii:r.iw, lmi'liiil'lll'ii.i't Mllimillllul MiViJU-iir „,

Fig. 1.— From the Admiralty Chart of Loch Ttjadh.

southwest coast of Scotland." It is deeply embayed in a large sinu-
osity formed by the Island of Mull, and nearly inclosed on the opposite
side by Iona and the Treshnish Islands. Beyond the latter a second
line is drawn by Tiree and Coll, while to the north but to a greater
distance are placed the islands of Minch, Rum, Eigg, and Canna. The

IS FIN GAL'S CAVE ARTIFICIAL? 233

circle is completely closed for 315° by land, distant at farthest from five
to seven miles. From Dutchman's Cap, bearing nearly due west, to
the " Stac " off Iona, there is comparatively deep water of forty to fifty
fathoms. The charts, however, show that rocks approach the surface.
" Five-Fathom Rock," " Dangerous Overfalls," and soundings of less
than ten fathoms, push half-way across the Passage of Tiree. Mac-
kenzie's Rock, which dries in four feet, guards the other entrance,
and no Atlantic surge could pass into Loch Tuadh or the Sound of
Iona, without changing its direction twice and almost at right angles.
But Donegal receives the impetus of the tremendous billows which
break against the steep cliffs of Mizen Head, or rush up the narrow
gorges with which the exposed coast of the Northern Hebrides is so
deeply scored. Staffa is singularly sheltered. It makes it antece-
dently extremely improbable that this particular spot would be selected
by the ocean as a place on which to " prove its strength." Words-
worth was both a landsman and a poet, and, as he says —

" In a motley crowd, each the other's blight,
Hurried and hurrying " —

only saw it. His language, however, has undoubtedly been made a
vehicle of scientific error.

" Caves worn by the sea are due to the set of the currents, the
force of the breakers, and the grinding of the shingle, which inevitably
discover the weak places in the cliff, and leave caves as one of the re-
sults of their work, modified in each case by the local conditions of the
rock " (" Encyclopaedia Britannica "). Assuming that this is a com-
plete statement of the law of marine erosion, how was Fingal's Cave
" hollowed out of columnar basalt," and therefore rightly classed by
Professor Boyd Dawkins, " among caves worn by the sea " ? There is
no current setting into this bay. The spring tides rise llf feet, neaps
8 feet, and range 4^- feet. The maelstrom of that part of the ocean
is " where Corryvrechan's surges driven " make " the caldron of the
spectral sea," but to the south, behind Colonsay. The force of the
breakers is inconsiderable. Either they are the result of local disturb-
ance formed to the east of Tiree, or the ground-swell and heaving of
the sea after a storm. The island is fully protected by its own fore-
shore. The perpendicular columns suggest an " unknown profundity
of depth." But the basalt on the west is over 50 feet above the sea-
level. A spit of conglomerated trap or tufa prolongs under water a
flat, rocky shore. There is a succession of rocks and shoals. The 20-
fathom line is a mile distant, the 10-fathom half a mile, immediately
followed by rocks, and 12, 15, and 9 feet of water. As the cave is in the
southern face, it appears to be impossible, in the present state of the
coast, that a wave with any momentum could strike directly upon that
end of the island. As MacCulloch sat on one of the columns, though
the long swell raised the water at intervals to his feet, the movement
was silent, and the surface of the sea apparently undisturbed. There is

234

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

■ T-. ■-§S8^.^^^«^^BB^™.*

Fig. 2.— West Side of Staffa, 14G3. G. W. W. Showing Arched Entrance to Cormorant's Cava;.

no shingle. The prismatic blocks are refractory. If a wave struck
with sufficient force to dislodge the drums, or if, undermining the tuff,
it strewed the beach with hexagonal or pentagonal blocks, these smooth
stones, with polished sides, buried in the finer material, would offer
very great resistance to any further waste of the cliff. Although a
channel of 18 feet at mean low water approaches and enters the cave,
there is no ledge over which the material could have been carried.
The sharp conchoidal fracture would not serve the purpose of such
crystalline rocks as quartz or granite, and furnish the fluid wave with
a serrated edere.

The cave is not formed in what would naturally be considered the
cliff ; least of all in its weakest place. After examining the Admiralty
Chart, " the reader will, no doubt, pass with pleasure to the rich de-
scription by Dr. MacCulloch." That author, however, says that the
whole of Fingal's Cave seemed like a ship heaving in a sea-way, and
therefore his survey may be considered less trustworthy than that of
Commanders Bedford and Creyke (Admiralty Chart, 1857). It seems in-
correct to say, " The caves are so numerous that they may be said to per-
forate at brief intervals the whole face of the island ; but those which

IS FINGAL'S CAVE ARTIFICIAL? 235

occur on the south {sic, query west) and the north sides are remark-
able neither for beauty nor for magnitude." The caves are sufficiently
numerous to furnish an argument. There are very few hollows worn
by the sea in the Scotch coast. The islet, which contains a dozen, has
not the yooWd Par* °f *ue indented line of the mainland, and bears an
infinitesimal ratio to the sea-board, including the islands. Its parent,
Mull, within whose bosom rests this irregularly oval rock, " measuring
about one and a half mile in circumference," has in the dimension of
length one hundred and fifty times better right to a " museum of won-
ders." The "Isle of Columns" is a speck too tiny to show on any
ordinary map. The chance that it would contain, as a legitimate yet
exceptional result of normal contact between igneous rock and sea-
water agitated by wind, "the most remarkable cave in Europe," is less
than 0. It is the V — 1.

The uneven table-land is formed of " three distinct beds of rock of
unequal thickness, inclined toward the east at an angle of about nine
degrees. The lowest is a rude trap tufa, the middle one is divided
into columns placed vertically to the plane of the bed, and the upper-
most is an irregular mixture of small columns and shapeless rock."
The columnar bed- is never more than GO feet thick. The island itself
attains a maximum height of 129 feet. It has no peak from which
rain-water might descend in a considerable quantity. There is no
series of fissures corresponding to the perforations. There is nothing
on the flat top to suggest the tunnels beneath. Proceeding toward
the south from the landing-place, there are six cases of alleged erosion,
each presenting its own seemingly insuperable difficulty, and cumula-
tively requiring a more thoughtful and serious consideration than the
fantastic phrases in which 'stupendous (!) columns, three feet thick
and thirty feet high, rise from a dark-red or violet-colored rock over
which the ocean rolls, and reflects from its white bottom a variety of
crimson and yellow."1

It appears now to be well established that the peculiar structure
of columnar basalt is due to contraction and splitting consequent upon
cooling. The analogy is rather to the splitting often seen in the mud
bottom of a dried-up pool than to ordinary crystallization. The vari-
ous conditions point to the contractile origin of the structure, at the
same time that the result suggests a curious mimicry of imperfect
crystallization. If the cooling mass of basalt be in one of its vertical
sections of such a form that successive isothermal couches, taken in
descending order, are not parallel to the original cooling surface,
as they are in all cases of straight and parallel prisms, but divergent
gradually from the cooling surface and from each other, then the lines of
the splitting of the prisms, always true to these couches, must be curved
in one direction. This will be true, whether the isothermal couches be
plane surfaces divergent from a thinner to a thicker part of the mass,
or whether they be curved surfaces arising from the mass reposing on

236

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a curved bottom and diverging in like manner. The crux of Staffa is
Scallop or Clamshell Cave. Inattention has caused the various authors
to describe it as if there was nothing astonishing in the sudden inter-
ruption of the columns, which are "bent so as to form on one side a

02

g

CO

6

series of ribs not unlike an inside view of the timbers of a ship," while
" the opposite wall is formed by the ends of columns, and bears a gen-
eral resemblance to the surface of a honey-comb. " Sixteen feet wide,

IS FINGAL'S CAVE ARTIFICIAL? 237

130 feet long, how could the sea attack the landward, southeast end,
and carve a trench 45 to 50 feet deep, where it is geologically impos-
sible that a " fault " or " weak place " aided the natural force ? The
channel of Bouchaillie, seen from the cliff above, is a canal cut through
the columnar basalt, and taking a slice from that conoidal pile of
columns about thirty feet high, which is seen a few yards to the right
of the Colonnade and Fingal's Cave. Where is the debris ? Why
should it be crossed at right angles by the passage leading into the
Clamshell Cave ? The Causeway here presents an extensive surface,
which terminates in a long, projecting point at the eastern side of the
Great Cave. It is formed normally. The heads of columns show in
a compact and serried phalanx. Each row protects the other in turn.
The tesselated pavement, as on the Irish coast, is a firm, impenetrable
mass, showing by its steepness its utter contempt for the wavelets
which could not break those ranks in a geological seon. There is
nothing to prepare the scientific mind, distrustful of abrupt changes,
for the adjacent excavation. Its dimensions are, from the top of the
arch to the cliff above, 30 feet ; to the water, 66 feet ; to the bottom,
88 feet. Its breadth of 42 feet continues to within a small distance
of the inner extremity, when it is reduced to 22 feet. The total
length is 227 feet.

It is usually said to have been formed by erosion at the base. The
columns, falling, dragged down a part of the roof, aided by a fissure
which divides the ceiling. The tuff is not eroded even at the south-
west end of the island. These pillars, however strong and enduring,
are each composed of many separate joints or pieces, built up one upon
another. They do not adhere in any way together, but merely rest
mechanically upon each other, and are easily detachable. The capitals
beyond cling to the roof. There is no fissure. In Boat Cave, tuff is
undermined for 1,800 square feet, yet the columns stand wedged across
12 feet of width. At Tanaga Island, in the Aleutian group, the broken
columns form a slightly convex roof across an opening 20 feet wide.
No such Gothic arch was ever formed by Nature. It is strikingly
Phoenician. No natural cave has an entrance higher than the interior.
A tidal or earthquake wave would not reach the top of the arch. The
cave is post-glacial. The upheaval of that part of Scotland is put at
25 feet. It would not bring the confused basalt within reach of the
waves. Their breaching power is easily calculated. It is determined
in this case by the frail wall to the east. For a merciless ocean select-
ing this victim of his fury, and

" Down-bearing with his whole Atlantic weight
Of tide and tempest on the structure's base,"

and " flashing to that structure's topmost height," in his blind frenzy
would have swept through the loose drums to the right. Montalembert
thought it far inferior to any cathedral, or even a monastic church
such as Cluny or Vezelay. If "raising (!) a minster," it would have

238

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been better to put all the chapels under one roof. The horizontal and
perpendicular sections are equally at variance with the curved surface
formed by a fluid in vibration. The columnar basalt would form a

6

W.

<

<
a
o

«
O

o

2

curved and not a rectangular water-line. What other cavern has a
uniform breadth from the opening, and five and a half diameters in
length ?

Cormorant's or Mackinnon's Cave is easy of access, and terminates

IS FINGAL'S CAVE ARTIFICIAL?

239

in a " gravelly " beach, where a boat may be drawn up. It is 50 feet
high, 48 feet broad, and 224 feet long. It is excavated in the lower
stratum. Thus two tunnels of the same dimensions are supposed to
have been driven into two different materials by the same force. The
interior dimensions are nearly the same to the end. As no sentimental
or religious motive can be assigned to Nature for this freak, it is amen-
able to comparison. The Blue Grotto of Capri is typical. Its entrance
is scarcely three feet in height ; in the interior the roof rises to a
height of 41 feet ; the water is 8 fathoms deep ; length of the grotto,

Fig. 5.— Fingal'8 Cave (looking out), showing Iona, distant Sis Miles.

175 feet ; greatest width, 100 feet. Here the great size of the aper-
ture is further increased. The superior part of the front, penetrating
into the columnar basalt, has hollowed a recess above the main open-
ing. The same Gothic tympanum, distorted by the material, not only
marks its artificial origin, but disproves the allegation that the col-
umns could not form a natural architrave. The Boat Cave is acces-
sible only by sea. It is a long opening, resembling the gallery of a

240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mine, excavated also in the tuff. Its height being about 16 feet (above
the sea '?), its breadth 12, and its depth about 150, it offers, in its pro-
portion of twelve and a half diameters, the greatest contradiction to
all other instances of sea-worn homogeneous rock.

But not only do Cormorant's and Fingal's Cave, each protected by-
its breakwater, face the adjacent land and not the open sea, and that
land the far-famed Island of lona, center of art and civilization, " dear
to Christendom for more than a thousand years," but from the end of
this deep cavity, to which a boat may sail in any ordinary weather, the
" Dun " or Hill of " Hy " or lona rises against the sky, in the middle
of the arc of a few degrees subtended by the grand doorway. Until
it is shown that a thousand yards of landlocked, iron-bound coast can
be cut and tunneled in utter disregard of every known law of mechan-
ical action, the caves in Staffa, on the west coast of Scotland, driven
into igneous rock, not modified by local conditions, or in the weak
places " of an exposed cliff," can not be classified as merely remarkable
instances of caves worn by the sea. Had the learned duke who com-
menced his description of lona with these words, " No two objects of
interest could be more absolutely dissimilar in kind than the two
neighboring islands of Staffa and lona," " mixed Celtic memories with
the Phrygian mount," recalled Athos, Tyre, and Carthage, or even the
twin Island of Lerins, he might have hesitated to put them in sharp
antithesis to say that only an accident of geography could unite their
names, or with " the mighty surge " of personal and social authority
drowned the faint cry for relief which reached his ears, and declined
even to consider the solution here offered of a problem whose com-
plex factors he had so forcibly stated.

-*»<>—

THE SPECTEOSCOPE AND TOE WEATHER.

By C. PIAZZI SMYTH,

ASTRONOMER ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.

WHAT may be done with the spectroscope in the matter of
weather is, for the present at least, confined almost entirely to
the question of rain — as, Will it rain, or will it not ; and, if it will,
heavily or lightly ? The manner in which the spectroscope accom-
plishes this useful part is by its capacity for showing whether there is
more or less than the usual quantity of watery vapor permeating the
otherwise dry gases in the upper parts of the atmosphere, this watery
vapor not being by any means the visible clouds themselves, but the
invisible water-gas out of which they have to be formed, and by
means of which, when over-abundant, they obtain their privilege for
enacting rain-fall. So that never were wiser words uttered and more

THE SPECTROSCOPE AND THE WEATHER. 241

terse philosophy than those which are to be found in the ancient hook
of Job, wherein, of the wondrously "balanced clouds" high up in
mid-air, it is said, "They pour down rain according to the vapor
thereof."

More or less of this water-vapor is always in the air, even on the
very clearest days, and a happy thing for men that it is so ; for, as Dr.
Tyndall and others have well shown, it moderates the excesses of hot
solar radiation by day and cold radiation of the sky at night, and is
more abundant in the hotter than in the colder parts of the earth.
Wherefore, according largely to its temperature for the time being,
the air — otherwise consisting almost entirely of nitrogen and oxygen
— can sustain, and does assimilate, as it were, a specified amount of
this watery vapor, invisibly to the naked eye, the microscope, or the
telescope ; but not so to the instrument of recent times, the spectro-
scope. And if the air vertically above any one place becomes pres-
ently charged with more than its usual dose of such transparent
watery vapor (as it easily may, by various modes and processes of
nature), the spectroscope shows that fact immediately, even while the
sky is still blue ; clouds soon after form, or thicken if already formed,
and rain presently begins to descend.

But how does the spectroscope show to the eye what is declared to
be invisible in all ordinary optical instruments ? It is partly by its
power of discriminating the differently colored rays of which white
light is made up, and partly by the quality impressed on the molecules
of water at their primeval creation, but only recently diseovei'ed, of
stopping out certain of those rays so discriminated and placed in a
rainbow-colored order by the prism and slit of the spectroscope, but
transmitting others freely. Hence it is that, on looking at the light of
the sky through any properly adjusted spectroscope, we see, besides
the Newtonian series of colors from red to violet, and besides all the
thin, dark Fraunhofer, or solar originated lines, of which it is not my
object now to speak, we see, I say, in one very definite part — viz., be-
tween the orange and yellow of that row of colors, or " spectrum," as
it is called — a dark, hazy band stretching across it. That is the chief
band of watery vapor ; and to see it very dark, even black, do not
look at a dark part of the sky or at black clouds therein, but look,
rather, where the sky is brightest, fullest of light to the naked eye,
and where you can see through the greatest length of such well-illu-
mined air, at a low, rather than high, angle of altitude, and either in
warm weather, or, above all, just before a heavy rain-fall, when there
is and must be an extra supply of watery vapor in the atmosphere.
Any extreme darkness, therefore, seen in that water-vapor band be-
yond what is usual for the season of the year and the latitude of the
place is an indication of rain-material accumulating abnormally ;
while, on the other hand, any notable deficiency in the darkness of it,
other circumstances being the same, gives probability of dry weather,

VOL. XXII. 16

242

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or absence of rain for very want of material to make it ; and the band
has, therefore, been called, shortly, " the rain-band." Thus, also, "rain-
band spectroscopes " have been specially constructed by several most
expert opticians in size so small as to be carriable in the waistcoat-
pocket, but so powerful and true that a glance of two seconds' dura-
tion through one of them suffices to tell an experienced observer the
general condition of the whole atmosphere. Especially, too, of the
upper parts of it, where any changes — as they take place there almost
invariably earlier than below — enable such an observer to favor his
friends around him with a prevision of what they are likely soon to
experience.

As an example of what may be done, and done easily, after a cer-
tain amount of experience and understanding of the subject has been
acquired, I append, from a lady's meteorological journal, her notes of
the mean temperature of the air and the intensity of the rain-band for
each of the first fifteen days of the present month, and in a final col-
umn have entered the amount of rain-fall measured at the Royal
Observatory, Edinburgh, on each of those davs. The darker the rain-
band the larger is the figure set down for it, and it will be seen pretty
plainly, on running the eye down that column and the next one, that
with an intensity of either 0 or 1 no rain follows, or, we might almost
say, can follow ; but with an intensity of 2 rain-fall begins, and with
3 it may be very heavy. All these rain-band notes have been made
with a spectroscope no larger than one's little finger, purchased some
six years ago, and taken on many voyages and travels since then :

DATE, September, 18S2.

Friday, 1

Saturday, 2 . . .

Sunday, 3

Monday, 4 . . . .
Tuesday, 5 . . . .
Wednesday, 6 .
Thursday, 7 . . .

Friday, 8

Saturday, 9 . . .
Sunday, 10
Monday, 11...
Tuesday, 12. . .
Wednesday, 13
Thursday, 14 . .
Friday, 15.

Mean tem-
perature of the

Deg. Fahr.
571
59-2
5S-6
54-4
55-7
55-2
53-8
59-4
54-0
57-0
52-2
48-6
528
49-5
56-2

Bain-band
intensity.

Depth cf rain

measured in

gauge at Koyal

Observatory,

Edinburgh.

3

2
2
0
1
0
1
0

1
1
1

0

1

3

2

Inch.
•044
•353
•015

0

0

0

0

0

0

0
•040

0

0

•62
.570

But, if so much can be done by so small a spectroscope, the ques-
tion may be well asked whether more still might not be accomplished
with a bigger and more powerful one, especially seeing that the dis-
persive powers of both chemical and astronomical spectroscopes have

THE SPECTROSCOPE AND THE WEATHER. 243

in late years been increased to a most astonishing extent. The ques-
tion is important, and somewhat new as well. I propose, therefore,
to devote the remainder of my space to its answer, rather than to the
practical rules for using the smaller instruments, especially, too, as
they have been already introduced to the public, both by my friend
Mr. Rand Capron, in his pamphlet " A Plea for the Rain-band," and
by myself, in the fourteenth volume of the " Edinburgh Astronomical
Observations"- also in the "Journal of the Scottish Meteorological
Society," and in the September number of the " Astronomical Regis-
ter for 1877."

The greater part of higher power spectroscopes are not suitable to
rain-band work, for their fields are usually too dark. But having
recently built up for myself a large-sized variety of the instrument,
possessing perhaps the greatest combination of power with transpar-
ency yet attained, and having it always mounted in an upper chamber
looking out at an altitude of about 5° over the northwestern horizon
(or most suitably for rain-band work), I will try to describe shortly its
action therein.

The classical " rain-band," which in the little instrument is merely
a very narrow fringe to an almost infinitely thin black line, is so mag-
nified laterally in the larger instrument as to fill the whole breadth
of the field. The thin black line before spoken of is now not only
split into two, but these are both strong, thick, sharply defined lines,
separated from each other by six or seven times the breadth of either.
These are the celebrated solar D-lines, Dl and D2, arising from the
sodium metalloid burning or incandescent in the sun. They are,
therefore, perfectly uninfluenced by changes of the terrestrial atmos-
phere, hot or cold, wet or dry, and are, therefore, invaluable as ref-
erences for degree of visibility of the water-vapor lines and bands
which rise or fall in intensity precisely with those changes. There are
several of these earthly water-vapor lines and bands in and between
and about the D-lines themselves ; then a long breadth of band to-
ward the red side of Dl; then a pair of lines not so widely apart as
the D-lines, but sometimes just as sharp and black; then two or three
fainter bands ; then a grand triple, of which the nearer line some-
times attains greater blackness than either D-line; then beyond that
three distinct, equal-spaced, isolated bands ; and, farther away toward
the red, a stretch of faint haze and haze-bands.

All these go to make up the one thin rain-band of the little spec-
troscopes ; and I fortunately had, through the month of August and
the early days of September, occupied myself each morning in noting
the greater or less intensity of each and all these water- vapor lines and
bands in terms of the two solar constants Dl and D2 ; and every such
morning there was an abundance of details to see, to recognize, and
to measure. But on the morning of Monday, September 4th, when the
little instrument had truly enough marked 0 on its very small scale,

244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I almost started at finding in the large instrument every member of
its long rain-band group, unless it were a vanishing trace of one or two
of the strongest, utterly gone; while the two D-lines were in their
accustomed strength, but far greater clearness, for now they were all
alone in the field save the ultra-thin solar nickel line between them
and one or two others, equally thin and solar on their blue side. The
stages of perceptible shade of water-vapor lines which had thus been
swept away, between their this day's invisibility, and their tremen-
dous strength no longer before than the previous Friday, might have
been expressed by a scale not divided into three parts only, but into
thirty; and implied such a very unusual amount of absence of water-
vapor, that I not only felt sure of no rain falling either next day, or
perhaps for several days after, but that the weather must also be
coming on colder as well. Therefore it was that I took the step of
instantly writing as I did to a local paper, promising the perplexed
farmers dry weather at last, though probably sharp and cold, to get in
their crops.

And how was that expectation fulfilled ? Various meteorologists
in different parts of the country have already declared themselves
well satisfied with it. But I would now beg further attention to the
little daily register already quoted, showing that from and including
that day, Monday, September 4th, up to and including the next Sat-
urday, not a drop of rain fell at the observatory. Between the follow-
ing Sunday and Monday, a drizzle, but only amounting to O04 inch,
occurred, and after that there were three more days equally dry with
the preceding ones. But on Thursday, the 14th, the rain-band reap-
peared in both spectroscopes in all its force ; rain began to fall the
same day, and next day's measure at the observatory amounted to
more than half an inch. Wherefore it is to be hoped that the farmers
had busied themselves effectively while the dry weather lasted, for
the return of these spectral lines of watery vapor showed that their
autumn opportunity was then gone by. — London Times.

-*♦♦-

CKIMDTALITY 1^" ANIMALS.

By A. LACASSAGNE,

PROFESSOR OF LEGAX MEDICINE IN THE FACTTLTT OF LYON.

IT is a recognized fact that the anatomy and physiology of animals
have afforded valuable help in the study of the human constitu-
tion. We might, indeed, say that physiology, toxicology, and thera-
peutics are based upon exj>eriraents which have been made on animals.
Why, then, have we halted at this stage ? Why has it not occurred
to medical experts in criminal law to study the phenomena of crimes

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 2+5

among animals for the purpose of reaching a better understanding of
those which are committed by men ? If animals are liable to the
greater proportion of the organic maladies to which we are subject,
if they are liable to epidemic or contagious diseases, there appears to
be no reason why they should be exempt from mental diseases. Just
as we recognize that there occur among men malformed individuals,
organically defective and furnishing proofs of their organic faults in
their acts, feelings, or thoughts, so we should expect to find similar
individuals among animals, or at least among those species which stand
constitutionally nearer to man.

Two causes may be alleged for the neglect of this study : First,
animal psychology has not yet made much progress. The investiga-
tions of veterinary physicians have not been directed to that side.
Pierquin said, in his " Traite de la Folie des Animaux " (Treatise on
Madness among Animals), in 1839, that till his time no professor of
veterinary medicine had ever spoken from his chair, either of the
brain, the nervous system, or the physiology of animals. The other
cause, and the most influential one, has been the difficulty most au-
thors have had in disembarrassing themselves of the scholastic ideas
which have promoted the belief in a great chasm between the moral
condition of animals and of men. As Gall has well said, the greatest
obstacle that it has ever been possible to oppose to the knowledge of
human nature consists in the fact that theorists have isolated it from
that of other beings, and endeavored to subject it to laws of its own,
different from those of their nature. He adds, subsequently : " Those
who account for the normal and intellectual acts of man, of the under-
standing and of the will, independently of the body, and those who,
being wholly strangers to the natural sciences, still believe in the
mechanism or the automatism of brutes, may find the comparison of
man with animals revolting and absolutely sterile. But such a com-
parison will be regarded as indispensable by those who have familiar-
ized themselves with the labors of Bonnet, Condillac, Reimarus,
Georges Leroy, Dupont, Nemours, Herder, Cadet Devan, Huber, etc.,
and especially by those who have become ever so slightly acquainted
with the progress of comparative anatomy and physiology."

The authors who are cited by Gall have furnished important data
for the comparison of animal species, and have laid the foundation of
a scientific comparative physiology. Buff on had already asserted that,
if no animals existed, the nature of man would be still more incompre-
hensible than it is. The observations of Georges Leroy and Gall have
shown that the elementary functions of the brain must be investigated
in the study of animals. These authors have been followed in this
way by Prichard, Pierquin, Darwin, Forel, Espinas, Houzeau, Biich-
ner, etc., from whom and from other naturalists and travelers, the
materials for this essay have been lai'gely borrowed.

The present work was suggested to me by Professor Lambrozzo, of

246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Turin ; and Professor Cornevin, of the veterinary school of Lyons, has
furnished me several valuable facts.

By way of an historical introduction to our study, we will cast a
glance at the relations which the human laws of different societies
have established between men and animals. The primitive peoples,
fetichistic in their feelings and habits, and not yet capable of meta-
physical subtilties, instinctively put animals and men upon a footing
of perfect equality as respected the penalties to be attached to their
crimes. It was so with all people during the middle ages, and even
in fact down to the last century. Then, by one of the sudden contra-
dictions which frequently appear in the history of mankind, a distinc-
tion between the actions of men and of animals was clearly defined.
The powerful influence of Descartes, the encyclopedists, and the sci-
entific men of the last century, who were more frequently demolishers
than constructors, affords the explanation of the change, which, it is
proper to say, was due rather to bad than to generous sentiments.
Gradually, under the domination of the metaphysical spirit, the con-
viction arose that animals were brutes, that it was difficult to appreci-
ate their moral state, and that this moral state was after all separated,
if it had any existence, by an immense distance from that of man. So
the law protecting animals was quite forgotten in the framing of our
codes.

Only a few scientific men or observers made approaches to the
admission of evolution and transformation. These ideas have become
common now, and nearly every one has adopted them theoretically,
but few admit them in practice, and it will not be surprising to us if
the title of our essay raises a smile on the face of many of its readers.

We will begin by showing how the human societies that have pre-
ceded ours have manifested their feelings with regard to certain acts
of animals. Among fetich-worshiping peoples, the animal is consid-
ered as a man, and a member of the human family to the same extent
as a slave. Its loss is an occasion for mourning, and its trespasses —
toward man — deserve punishment.

In ancient Egypt, when a cat died in the house, the inhabitants-
shaved their eyebrows ; if a dog died, they shaved their whole body.
In Athens, one of the laws of Triptolemus declared that no one had a
right to inflict a wrong upon a living creature. The Greeks were
aware of the tender and affectionate care which the young of the stork
exhibited for their old parents, and recorded that, when the latter lost
their feathers from age, the young stripped themselves of their down
for them and fed them with the food they collected. This was the
origin of the Greek law called " the law of the stork," by virtue of
which children were obligated to take care of their aged parents, and
those who refused to do so were declared infamous. How different is
it in our modern societies ! Pierquin remarks with reason that, as
man rises, he treats animals as if they were correspondingly degraded.

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 247

For a long time they had the same rights. During the middle ages
they were allowed a part in religious ceremonies. At Milan they fig-
ured in the festivals of the kings ; and processions of animals appear
in the bas-reliefs of the cathedrals of Strasburg, Mans, and Vienne
(Isere). On Holy Wednesday all the clergy of the church of Bheims
went to Saint Remi to make a station there ; the canons, preceded by
the cross, were arranged in two lines, each drawing a herring after
him with a cord ; and each one was intent upon saving his own fish,
and stepping upon that of the canon in front of him (Anquetil, " His-
toire de Reims "). At Paris, the procession of the fox was as much
enjoyed as the festival of the ass. The animal, dressed in a kind of
surplice, wearing the mitre, had his place in the midst of the clergy :
a fowl was put within his reach ; he often forgot his pious functions
to spring upon the bird and devour it in the presence of the faithful.
Philip the Fair was very fond of this procession (Sanval, " Antiquites
de Paris "). Only a few years ago, the procession of the fat ox re-
mained, a survival from the pagan feasts, a real piece of wreckage
from vanished civilizations.

While the rights of animals were thus recognized, their duties
toward man did not escape the earlier legislators, who severely pun-
ished their crimes and attempts upon human life. The law of Moses
(Exodus xxi, 28, 29) recites : " If an ox gore a man or a woman, that
they die : then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be
eaten ; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were
wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to
his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man
or a woman ; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put
to death."

Judgments based on this principle are recorded at Athens and
Rome. According to Pierquin, Democritus wished an animal, which
had occasioned some major damage, to be punished with death. Un-
der Domitian, according to the report of Martial, the ingratitude of a
lion toward its master was severely punished. Columella and Varro
say that the ancient Romans regarded the ox as the companion of the
labors of man, and that the act of killing one was regarded as a homi-
cide and punished in the same way ; and the ox enjoyed the same
privilege in Attica and the Peloponnesus. It is also said that the
Arabs in the mountains of Africa formerly crucified lions, guilty of
murders, upon trees, as warnings to others.

In the middle ages they prosecuted animals which committed mur-
der, those which had become dangerous to have at large, and females
which, having given birth to monsters, were suspected of criminal co-
habitations. Pere Theophile Raynaud, Ayrault, Gaspard Bailly, and
more recently M. Benoist Saint-Prix and M. Louandre (" Epopee des
Animaux," " Revue des Deux Mondes," 1854), have cited some ex-
tremely curious examples of such condemnations.

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In 1120 the Bishop of Laon issued a letter of excommunication
against the caterpillars and the field-mice. Under Francis I an official
advocate was provided for these animals, and pleadings were allowed
between them and the farmers. In 1356, at Falaise, a sow having
killed a child and begun to devour it, the judge condemned it to per-
ish by the sword. As it had eaten an arm and part of the head of
the child, one of its feet was cut off and its " face " was mutilated.
Then it was dressed in man's clothes before being led to punishment,
and the executioner received his customary fee of ten sous and a pair
of gloves. In 1543 the consuls and aldermen of Grenoble published a
decree demanding the excommunication of the snails and caterpillars.
In 1585 the Grand Vicar of Valencia ordered the caterpillars, with
which the country was infested, to evacuate his diocese. In 1587 an
action was brought against the insects which were ravaging a field
near Saint Jean de Maurienne, and they were condemned. Jean Milon,
an officer of Troyes, pronounced the following sentence on the 9th of
July, 151G : " Having heard the parties, and granting the request of
the inhabitants of Villenove, we admonish the caterpillars to retire
within six days ; and, in case they do not comply, we pronounce them
accursed and excommunicated."

M. Benoist Saint-Prix has collected eighty sentences of death and ex-
communications that were pronounced between 1120 and 1741 against
every species of animals, from the ass to the grasshopper. He adds
that, while in some countries animals have been employed as execu-
tioners, they have frequently been admitted in France as witnesses in
suits. Who does not remember the history of the dog of Montargis,
and the duel that Charles V ordered to be fought between the faithful
animal of Aubrey of Montdidier and the assassin of his master, Rich-
ard Macaire ?

The recital of these facts and a comparison of what has taken place
in our time permit us to appreciate the great modifications that have
been produced in the feelings of mankind. We have furthermore
learned that, until our epoch, an erroneous idea prevailed regarding
the offenses or crimes committed by animals. The actions of animals
toward other animals had passed almost unperceived, and did not seem
worthy of being noticed. It could not, therefore, enter the head of
any person to investigate their moral bearing. The animal was ad-
judged and punished only when his offense bore upon man or society.

It appears to us that the time has come for a scientific study of cer-
tain criminal acts of animals, for the purpose of comparing them with
similar acts committed by men and punishable by our laws. It is a
study in comparative criminal psychology. We believe that such a
work may have a higher bearing than that of a mere effort of scientific
curiosity ; and it seems to us, with Georges Leroy, that the moral con-
dition of wolves may throw light upon that of men.

According to Georges Leroy, three motives influence the animal

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 249

and become the principles of his thoughts, his judgments, his deter-
minations, and his actions. They are the seeking for food, the taking
of precautions for his safety, and the gratification of his amorous de-
sires. Leroy also suggests that we may recognize in beasts natural
passions, and other passions which might be called factitious or reflex-
ive. Of the former class are the impulses of hunger, the ardent desires
of love, and maternal tenderness ; of the latter are the fear of want,
or avarice, and jealousy, which leads to vengeance. Other authors,
among them Gall and August Comte, have endeavored to frame a
classification of the cerebral faculties. Without discussing here these
different systems which have been proposed chiefly to fix the number
of man's elementary faculties, we believe that it will be convenient for
the exposition of our subject to recognize among animals such instincts
or elementary faculties as the nutritive, the genetic, the maternal, and
the destructive instincts ; and, as among those easier to "establish with
man than with animals, the instinct of vanity and the social instincts.
We shall study particularly the exaggerations of these instincts, which
are injurious to other animals of the same species, and which result in
such specific acts as are regarded as crimes or offenses in human so-
cieties. " The animal and man," says Gall, " are organized for anger,
hatred, sorrow, fear, and jealousy, because there are things and events
which, according to their nature, deserve to be detested or loved, de-
sired or feared."

1. Acts of Offense committed by Animals under the Influ-
ence of the Nutritive Instinct. — No distinctions are observed
with regard to sex. When hunger makes itself felt, all animals ex-
hibit, in different and varied degrees, according to their nature, the
spectacle of the "struggle for existence." The fact is so well known
that it does not require any great elaboration. The animals longest
and most completely domesticated continue at feeding-time to steal
food from each other, and to quarrel about it. The use of separate
mangers, racks, boxes, and stalls, is based upon the knowledge of this
fact. The object of the most important features of the interior ar-
rangements of stables is to prevent the stealing of food and the tram-
pling of the weaker by the stronger. It is well known that among the
species which we see daily are individuals manifesting clearly the dis-
position to theft. Some of them have an exaggerated nutritive in-
stinct, are avaricious, and lay up provisions. Leroy says that when
wolves have brought down a large animal, they eat a part of it and
carefully hide the rest ; but this precaution does not abate their pro-
pensity to hunt, and they have recourse to their cache only when the
chase has been unsuccessful. The same observation may be made
with reference to dogs, foxes, and other animals.

M. Cornevin has remarked that, among species which live in com-
munity, not only is food stolen, but individuals which are on the point
of perishing are eaten. Wolves, in spite of the proverb, rats and mice, eat

250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

each other up. " Last year I observed several times among the Guinea-
pigs, which were the subjects of my experiments, that those that died
were eaten by the survivors. They were not troubled by hunger, for
they had all the corn they wanted. Possibly they sought to appease
their thirst in the blood of their victims." Biichner, in his psychical
lives of beasts, speaks of thievish bees, " which, in order to lessen their
labor or dispense with it wholly, made attacks in mass upon provisioned
hives, committed violence against the sentinels and the inhabitants, pil-
laged the hive, and carried away all the store of honey. If this exploit
was successful for several times, they, like men, acquired a stronger
taste for pillage and violence than for work, and ended by constituting
real colonies of brigands." There are isolated individuals which are
addicted to theft, and endeavor to slip, without being perceived, into
a strange hive ; their sly tricks demonstrate that they are forced to
concealment, and are conscious that they are transgressors. If they
succeed in their attempt, they afterward bring other bees to their
hive to tempt them to similar thefts, and thus form a society of
thieves. Biichner adds that bees may be artificially made thieves by
feeding them a special food consisting of honey mixed with brandy.
" Like man, they readily acquire a taste for this beverage, which exer-
cises the same pernicious influence upon them as upon him ; they be-
come excited, intoxicated, and cease to work. Do they feel hunger ?
Then, like man, they fall from one vice into another, and give them-
selves up unscrupulously to pillage and theft."

2. Acts of Offense committed by Animals under the Influ-
ence of the Genetic Instinct. — Such acts may be distinguished be-
tween those committed by the male and those committed by the female.
The former are more frequent and violent than the latter. Some ani-
mals indicate a feeling of decorous modesty, while others are absolutely
shameless. Without going into details on this subject, it may be con-
sidered sufficient here to remark that most of the sexual offenses which
have been defined by the law or put under the ban of human societies
may be observed among animals in their intercourse with each other ;
and instances are on record in ancient and modern history, though rare
and not always well authenticated, of attempts by animals against hu-
man beings.

3. Acts of Offense committed by Animals under the In-
fluence of Maternal Love. — The exceedingly marked develop-
ment of this instinct in female animals well justifies the epithet
maternal.

Gall has remarked that while the instinct for propagation is ex-
tremely ardent among the males of certain species — the cock, the dog,
the boar, and the stag, for example — without the animals taking the
slightest interest in the young, the instinct for propagation is also
generally more active in the male than in the female, and generally,
also, the female feels a stronger love for the offspring. Many animals,

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 251

as among the insects and ampkibise, and the cuckoo, take no care at
all of their young, although they mate ardently.

Other animals, as with ants and bees, do not exercise the act of
propagation at all, yet they very assiduously take care of the eggs
and larvre. The same author insists upon individual differences, and
cites cases, the counterparts of which would be called in human socie-
ties abandonment of children, abduction of minors, seduction, infanti-
cide, etc.

Some cows, mares, and dogs bear the loss of their young with a
degree of indifference ; others even abandon them regularly. Pigeons
generally, male as well as female, appear indifferent to their broods,
while the rail and the corn-crake are so devoted to them that their
heads are frequently cut off by the reaper's sickle. When a house in
which storks have a nest takes fire, the father and the mother stork
will fall into the flames rather than abandon their young. Boerhaave
has made the same observation with respect to the chimney-swallow.
The female partridge loves her own young with a strong affection, but
she chases away and kills the young of other partridges. The pheas-
ant, on the other hand, shows much less affection for her own young,
and does not mind the loss of those which stray from her, while she
receives joyfully and takes under her protection little pheasants that
are strangers to her.

Gall tells of mares that have such a passion for colts that they
kidnap the foals from other mares, and take care of them with a jeal-
ous fondness ; and Espinas notices the same fact among asses. Pier-
quin had a dog of a Scotch breed, which was shy of the male, but
would capture every puppy it met, and was in the habit of stealing
out of the house to go hunting for them.

Among facts of an opposite character, we cite the case of a friend's
dog which bore three or four litters, of which it would take proper
care during the first three months, and would then carry them away
into the mountain and leave them. We must also take notice of that
inexplicable aberration that leads many females among our domestic
animals to suffer their progeny to die, or kill them ; while other animals,
dogs, for example, become thieves during the whole time that they are
taking care of their young. Females of the larger domestic species
frequently refuse to let their young suck them, with the result that
the young die. This is most remarked of animals bearing for the first
time. The most astonishing fact is that of infanticide, which is almost
the rule with certain species, notably with swine.

4. Acts of Offense committed by Animals under the Influ-
ence of the Destructive Instinct. — This instinct acts when ani-
mals are urged to overcome the obstacles that oppose the satisfaction
of their desires. Thus they become murderous in time of heat ; they
seem to have gained new force ; their nature has become irascible and
furiously disposed ; and contests of the most bloody character take

252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

place between them. Pierquin adds that baffled love often leads man
as well as animals into a murderous monomania. Buffon cites exam-
ples of animals which were frequently subject to a murderous passion.
He speaks of canary-birds which were so wicked as to kill the female
that was given them, and which could not be broken of the practice
except by giving them two. Others are so barbarous in their inclina-
tions as to break and eat the eggs as soon as they have been laid ; and,
even if the unnatural father allows the eggs to be sat upon, he will
kill the young as soon as they are hatched. Pierquin mentions cross,
quarrelsome dogs that are always ready to fight upon the smallest
provocation. Wickedness of this kind may be manifested in certain
races ; it may be individual, permanent, and hereditary ; or, while it
is still individual, it may be accidental and transient, provoked by
particular circumstances.

We may call a specific malignity that which one species shows
toward another species that hunts it or is its rival in the struggle for
existence. The instinctive repulsion of dogs and cats is proverbial.
It is interesting, however, to observe how this repugnance can cease
under certain conditions, as when the struggle for existence becomes
less active. Commander Mouchez asserts that the cats and the rats
on tbe Island of St. Paul, where he went to observe the transit of Ve-
nus, have ceased to war upon each other, and have instead joined in
hunting birds. Cases of permanent and hereditary maliciousness are
not rare. All who have had to do with domestic animals, says M.
Cornevin, have observed that there appear among our subdued species,
horses and cattle, individuals, both male and female, which are in-
tractable, vicious, and absolutely useless ; just as individuals of a simi-
lar character sometimes appear in human society. Such traits are often
hereditary.

We have examples of the excitation of the destructive propensity
by higher faculties in which malice seems to be consecutive to a real
reasoning. First among them is the case of malice aroused by the
recollection of bad treatment. Animals with such passion become
murderers for revenge. They say that the mule always kee£>s a kick
in store for the master who maltreats it ; and examples are frequent
of asses, mules, and horses, that were very gentle till they were chas-
tised, remembering the blows they had received, and avenging them-
selves on the drivers who inflicted them. There are also murderers
for rivalry. A bull that has been gentle enough as long as he has had
his cows to himself will become vicious as soon as a rival is brought
into the field, and will try to kill him or drive him away, and always
keep watch over him.

M. Colin, in his treatise on the " Physiology of the Domestic Ani-
mals," cites two curious examples of criminality developed under the
operation of the nutritive instinct. A dog at the school of Alfort,
which was fed on the remains of dissected bodies, conceived a violent

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 253

and dangerous hatred for the skinner, who took away his meats.
Another dog, which was fed together with a hog, took such aversion
toward his commensal, that he broke his chain, jumped ujion the pork-
er, killed, disemboweled, and tore it.

Man has sometimes taken pains to develop the destructive instinct
of animals. Jacolliot tells of elephants that were fed with meat to
keep this faculty in a state of excitation. The Hottentots train cattle
in a similar way. A legend runs to the effect that an exiled king of
Garamanta returned to his country with an army of two hundred dogs.
It is said, also, that when the Cimbri were defeated their dogs de-
fended their chariots. The city of St. Malo is said to have been de-
fended once in a similar manner ; and during the night the animals
were let loose in the streets as a kind of police. At the camp of Lo-
bau, during the campaign in Italy, the soldiers trained large dogs to
take prisoners. Watchmen in some prisons are accompanied in their
night-rounds by dogs, to detect the prisoners who are out of their
beds.

5. Acts op Offense committed by Animals under the In-
stinct of Vanity. — Though less susceptible than man, animals are
very fond of praise and approbation. With what intoxication of joy
does the dog receive our commendations ! Every one has remarked
how sensible horses are to marks of affection, and how they exert
themselves in races so as not to allow a rival to pass them. Pierquin
had a monkey which, when a handkerchief was given it, draped it-
self in it, and manifested an extraordinary pleasure in watching the
train of its court-robe. Napoleon believed that man was only a more
perfect animal, and claimed for his horse memory, intelligence, and
love. " I had a horse," he said, " which could recognize me among all
the world, and which showed, by his prancing and his proud step
when I was on his back, that he knew he was carrying a person supe-
rior to all the others around him. He would not allow any one else to
ride him except a groom who regularly took care of him, and his move-
ments, when that man was upon him, were so peculiar that he seemed
aware that he was carrying a servant." This was perhaps the same
animal of which Constant wrote in his " Memoirs " : " The Emperor
had for several years an Arabian horse of rare instincts, that gave him
much pleasure. It was hard to discover any grace in him while his
master was out of sight, but whenever he heard the drums announcing
the presence of his Majesty he would raise himself in pride, shake his
head, paw the ground, and from that moment till the Emperor dis-
mounted from him he would carry as fine a head as ever was seen."
Such vanity is, in fact, quite common among Arabian horses, and the
treatment they receive is well adapted to develop it. It is compre-
hensible that, under the influence of this instinct, and the jealousy
that often results from it, animals may become malicious and quar-
relsome, and attack and even kill their companions. It has been

254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

remarked that these vain animals more readily attack ragged creat-
ures, especially if they dwell where they are unaccustomed to the
sight of misery.

6. Acts or Offense committed by Animals undeb the Influ-
ence of the Social Instincts. — Such social instincts as attachment
and reverence can not be found among all animals. They evidently
can not exist among animals which live isolated, or among those which
mate only temporarily. It is otherwise, however, with those that
live together, and between these a real marriage is established. So,
when several couples or families have a common habitation, elevated
social bonds are produced, quite comparable to those which are estab-
lished in human societies. Examples will not be wanting, if we look
at the bees and the ants, or at the republic of the rabbits. The idea
of property, says Georges Leroy, certainly exists among rabbits ; old
age and fraternity are much respected by them.

Doves, turtle-doves, the roe, the chamois, and the mole can not
support widowhood, and death generally follows the loss or absence of
one of a pair of them. Some curious stories are told of the conjugal
customs of storks. The males seem to be very jealous, and sometimes
put to death an unfaithful companion and her betrayer. The inhabit-
ants of Smyrna, who are well acquainted with the conjugal suscepti-
bility of the male stork, amuse themselves by putting hens' eggs into
the nests of these birds. The male becomes very angry at the sight
of this unusual product, and, with the aid of other storks, tears his
companion to pieces. There is certainly no need of calling up the
numerous facts that show that domestication has, in certain animals,
dogs, for example, developed these social instincts into a most touch-
ing devotion.

It seems to us that the review we have just made embraces a suffi-
ciently large number of facts to permit us to establish an almost com-
plete parallel between the criminal actions of men and those of animals.
The analogy would have been closer if we had cited examples of tricks
to show what combinations or means are at the disposition of an animal
when it is seeking to accomplish its purposes. We can not, how-
ever, help remarking that there are authentic cases of simulation or
deception which animals have worked out to save themselves from
labor or to procure some advantage. A military surgeon tells of a
horse which was accustomed to pretend to be lame on the days when
the horses were drilled, in order to avoid that duty. Coste mentions
a dog which, in the winter, when he found his comrades lying around
the fire in such a way as to prevent his getting near to it, would make
a great noise in the yard ; at this the other dogs would run out, while
he would slip into the house and, securing a good place for himself,
leave his comrades to bark as long as they pleased. He tried this trick
quite often, and always succeeded in it, for the other dogs had not
intelligence enough to find it out.

CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 255

With men, certain crimes tend to diminish or disappear under the
influence of civilization. It is the same with animals. The more the
domestication of a race is perfected, the less violent do its passions
become, and, consequently, such crimes as we have discussed grow
more rare. Not being troubled about their food, which is put before
them in abundance and good order every day, they are not subject to
the struggle for existence, and their character is mollified. Further-
more, by virtue of the law of organic balance, the development of the
digestive apparatus, consequent on plentiful and regular feeding, takes
place at the expense of the nervous system, whence less violence, less
irritability, and less sexual passion. Malice is extremely rare among
thorough-bred domestic animals, as, for instance, among the Durham
cattle.

A man subject to relapses — this is his forty-fourth sentence — a
man of quite solid education, yet who seems to pursue persistently
the most absurd of evil schemes, wrote to me a little while ago : "I
committed the first offense in my life, then repaired it. Repulsed
everywhere and by every one, I pretended to steal, so that I could be
arrested and condemned. All my condemnations have been for va-
grancy or breaking my parole. I have always behaved well when I
have had enough to eat. Misery makes a man wicked. With a piece
of bread one may, perhaps, prevent a wretch from committing theft or
murder." The criminal, says Hobbes, is a robust child ; and Georges
Leroy adds : " If we suppose a man to have strong desires, and to be
without experience, like a child, it is hard to conceive of anything that
will restrain him in the course he is pursuing. Our passions bring us
back to childhood by vividly presenting to us a single object with the
degree of intensity that eclipses everything else."

We believe that we have shown in this study that, if the acts, the
thoughts, and the feelings of animals are similar to ours, the same is
the case with their offenses and their crimes, so far as the same are
related to their interests and their passions. As in our own species,
the criminal animal is generally a type appearing sporadically, with
passions, desires, and instincts that are not those of its race. These
faults are transmissible and hereditary. Domestication and system-
atic feeding diminish, destroy, or transform these mischievous dispo-
sitions. We were right in saying, when we began, that the morals of
wolves may throw light upon those of men. — Revue Scientijique.

25 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN.

" rjlWO names," says M. Leo Herrera, in the " Revue Scientifique,"

JL " are inseparably connected with that grand movement of the
biological sciences that began about 1838, and of which we to-day
contemplate the superb bloom — Schleiden and Schwann. The two
laid the foundations of the cellular theory. Both exercised a power-
ful influence over their contemporaries ; both rendered lasting services
to science through their teaching, their pupils, their ideas, and even
through their errors."

Schleiden devoted himself variously to law, medicine, the natural
sciences, and philosophy, and his works bear the marks of those diver-
sified studies : but he was, above all, a botanist ; it was under this
title that he became famous, and by this his name must endure.

Matthias Jacob Schleiden was the son of the physicist, Andreas
Benedict Schleiden, and was born in Hamburg, April 5, 1804. On
quitting the gymnasium he entered upon the study of the law at
Heidelberg in 1824. He received his degree in 1827, and had entered
upon the practice of his profession in his native city, when, in 1831,
he concluded that the natural sciences were more to his taste than the
law. With the encouragement of his father, he returned to the uni-
versity, and studied medicine at Gottingen — where he enjoyed the
instructions of Bartling in botany — and the natural sciences at Berlin,
where his uncle, the botanist Horkel, enlisted his special interest in
that branch. In 1839 he was appointed, on the recommendation of
Humboldt it is said, Adjunct Professor of Botany at Jena, where he
continued to teach in the chair of that science till 18G2.

Schleiden was thirty -three years old when he published his first
works ; the scientific collections from 1837 to 1852 contain twenty-
seven memoirs contributed by him. The most striking of these essays
and the ones which contributed most directly to his rapid rise to
eminence, were those in which he propounded his theories of the
origin of plant-cells and of fructification. These were the " Beitrage
zu Phytogenesis " ("Contributions to Phytogenesis," 1838), and
" Ueber Bildung des Eichens und Entstehung des Embryos beim Pha-
nerogamen " (" On Formation of the Ovule and Origin of the Embryo
in Phanerogams," 1839) — his "most remarkable, most revolutionary,
and most erroneous works," which astonished the world, "just as
he had barely made himself known by a few anatomical and organo-
genical researches." Both of these works called forth lively re-
sponses. They were translated into English and French. They were
commented upon and discussed, and were the subject of passionate
debates ; in short, inquiry was awakened, and an impulse was given
to investigation, the force of which has not slackened to this day.

SKETCH OF MATTHIAS JACOB SCH LEIDEN. 257

The theory of cells, as given in the " Phytogenesis," may be briefly
stated as follows : There are two points in a plant well adapted for a
ready and safe observation of the production of a new organization ;
these are the embryo-sac and end of the pollen-tube (according to his
fertilization theory, the first cells of the embryo should form there,
while in reality this is not the case). At both points, the formation of
nuclei causes turbidity in the homogeneous gum-solution — these in-
crease in size, and soon cytoblasts (a granular coagulation) appear.
In the free state the cytoblasts increase rapidly until they attain a
certain size, when they are surmounted by a fine diaphanous bubble ;
this is the young cell, at first a segment of a sphere, its plane side
formed by cytoblasts, and its convex side by young cells (the cell-
epidermis) similar to a watch-crystal on a watch. Gradually the bubble
expands, becomes more consistent, and the wall is composed of cyto-
blasts and of a gelatinous substance. The cell grows, overlaps the
cytoblasts, and then increases so rapidly that the cytoblast appears as
a small nucleus inclosed in a duplicature of the cell-wall. As the
growth progresses, the mutual pressure, exerted by the cells upon one
another, causes a certain regularity of form, frequently that of the
rhombendodecahedron. Only after the resorption of the cytoblasts
the formation of secondary deposits begins on the inner surface of
the cell-wall. Scbleiden assumes the process thus described to be the
general law of formation for the vegetable cell-tissues in the phane-
rogams. This theory was conceived while Schwann was still engaged
with his theory of the origin and propagation of animal cells.
Schwann has, in fact, acknowledged in his " Microscopic Researches "
that Scbleiden communicated his observations on the subject to him
before publishing them, and thus gave him the light that showed him
the way to his own results. So it has come to pass that, by means of
the joint labors of these two men, the cell has been recognized as the
peculiar element in both kingdoms of organic nature, and all the
processes of vegetable and animal life have been located in its little
laboratory.

Schleiden's theory has been proved to be a premature generaliza-
tion, based upon incomplete and inaccurate observations, and has been
refuted by Nageli ; but, incorrect and of little consequence as it was
in itself, it has also proved to be the grain of ferment which has
worked a transformation and revivification of biological science.

Schleiden's theory of fructification was announced just at the time
(1839) when those who denied sexuality in plants had seemed to carry
the day, and all botanists had agreed, to use the language of M. Her-
rera, in attributing the production of the embryo to the ovule, while
allowing to the pollen only a simple action of fertilization. " All at
once a botanist, already celebrated, proclaimed that he had seen the
embryo forming in the grain of pollen and penetrating the ovule with
the pollenical tube. This unexpected animalculist was Scbleiden. His

TOL. XXII. 17

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animalculisni was, however, limited to the vegetable kingdom. He
did not aspire to extend it to the other kingdom. To explain the con-
tradiction which thus appeared between the fecundation of animals
and that of plants, he regarded the vegetable ovule as a male organ,
and the grain of pollen, producer of the embryo, as a female organ.
The announcement of this discovery came like a clap of thunder. It
soon had enthusiastic partisans and angry critics. The critics were in
the right, the partisans were at fault ; but what does it matter now ?
Schleiden had again given a powerful impulse to the spirit of investi-
gation, and that is the essential thing. His memoir, otherwise, is far
from containing anything good or exact."

" Schleiden had disciples who were eager to adopt the doctrine of
their master and promulgate it. At the same time, however, Mirbel
and Brongniart skillfully guarded their opinions, and Meyen attempted
a formal refutation of the new theory. A general and hot contest
arose and lasted for more than twenty years, in which all the distin-
guished botanists of every country became engaged. Amici in 1842
confirmed and extended the previous observations of Mirbel, Spach,
and Brongniart. He asserted that he had seen the embryo produced
at the expense of a part of the embryonary sac, and this seemed to
settle the question against Schleiden. Schleiden, however, hastened
quickly to refute Amici's assertion. The great Modenese naturalist
returned to the charge with his observations on the orchids. In 1850
the Academy of Amsterdam crowned a work of Schacht, a disciple of
Schleiden's, who vigorously defended his master's theory. Tulasne,
Hugo Mohl, Brongniart, Ch. Midler, and Hofmeister came forward to
oppose it. It gave way and seemed to be dead ; then it rose again
and renewed the contest. On the 19th of December, 1854, Schacht
triumphantly announced to the congress of naturalists, at Berlin, that
a young man, Th. Deecke, a partisan, like himself, of Schleiden's doc-
trine, but more fortunate than he, had succeeded in making a micro-
scopic preparation of Pedicularis sylvatica which was of such a nature
as to reduce for ever to silence the adversaries of that theory. This
preparation had a great repute. The story was passed around from
city to city, but, while Schacht pretended that it was unanswerable,
Hugo Mohl declared that he saw nothing conclusive in it. This was the
last flickering of the theory of Schleiden. Radekofer published numer-
ous observations against it in 1856, and announced at the same time
that* Schleiden had himself abandoned the theory which he had put
forward. Shortly afterward, Schacht also acknowledged that he had
been in error, and the theory, left dead on the battle-field, was buried
for good."

With the vitality which Schleiden and his contemporaries had in-
fused into botany a new era was inaugurated for the science. To
mark its coming and extend the comprehension of the principles and
aspirations. of the new school, were needed a compendious and method-

SKETCH OF MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN. 259

ical treatise for students and a popular book for readers. Schleiden
composed both. The time had passed when the study of living beings
should form a separate branch of science, and when those who dis-
carded the dry enumerations of the classifiers would have to fall into
the ideal reveries of the " philosophers of nature." It needed to be
shown that botany was not the mere dry skeleton which the former
would make of it, and that it did not require the tinsel with which the
latter assumed to adorn it. In the " Grundziige der wissenschaf tlichen
Botanik" ("Elements of Scientific Botany") of Schleiden, the science
was for the first time treated entirely according to the inductive
method, as physics and chemistry had already been considered ; and
the different branches of science, till very recently still isolated and
almost hostile, were made to interpenetrate and mutually illustrate
each other. The book was well adapted to enlarge the scientific hori-
zon, and to inspire youth and develop the spirit of research in them.
The reading of the first few pages of the book is sufficient to give this
impression of its motive. The dedication to Alexander von Hum-
boldt, unquestionably the man of most universal knowledge of his time,
attests the author's desire to connect botany intimately with the other
sciences. The capital importance which he rightly attached to method
is affirmed by the title which he gave to the second edition of his trea-
tise— " Botany as an Inductive Science." The very first lines of his
preface show that he does not intend to deal with a science of words
and dreams, but of observation, experiment, and independent thought.
" Whoever thinks he can learn botany in this book may as well put it
aside at once without reading it, for botany can not be learned from
books." In this work, says Dr. Karl Midler, Schleiden expressed for
the first time a full comprehension that natural science was essentially
a history of development, and expressed it in such a manner as to at-
tract enthusiastic youth to his doctrine while he incurred the hostility
of the elders in science. Among the salient features of his theory are
the ascription of a leading part in all morphological questions to the
study of the development of the organs, and his putting of the crypto-
gams upon a footing of equality in consideration with phanerogams.
Perhaps no innovation in science has been so fruitful as the step which
gave the prominent place in study to the first, stages rather than to
adult forms, to inferior beings rather than to elevated and complex
groups.

One passage in the " Grundziige " is worthy of especial remark, for
the evidence it bears of the completeness of the author's rejection of
the sterile categories of the older philosophers, and of his having been
endowed with the scientific spirit of later times. " The division of
natural objects into organic and inorganic could only have originated
at a time when students had only the two extremes to consider. A
person comparing a lion with a piece of chalk would, doubtless, say
that the difference is evident to all the senses. But let him compare

26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the small, almost spherical crystals of oxide of iron with the minute,
spherical articulations of Ehrenberg's Gallionella ferruginea, which
likewise consist almost exclusively of oxide of iron, and undeniably
represent organic forms, either animal or vegetable : the crude antithe-
sis disappears at once, and all who reflect will conceive for science the
possibility, still distant, of bringing the formation of both kinds under
the same law of nature. There are in nature thousands of these ap-
parent leaps, like that from the inorganic to the organism, in regard
to which attentive observation will reveal to us gradual differences in-
stead of a specific distinction."

This work excited a wide-spread and virulent opposition in conse-
quence of the bitterness of its polemics, its severe criticisms of the
didactic methods of investigation and the dry systems in vogue at the
time, and its sharp personalities. The book was called libelous in
France, for the author, according to Dr. Karl Midler, seemed to speak
well of no one except Robert Brown and Hugh Mohl, " the two living
men whom he most admired," and was not sparing in his criticisms of
them. " With incomparable acuteness, and with equal acerbity against
living and dead, he poured out such a flood of botanical satires and
personal antipathies that he would have had to be a god to escape the
reaction against his attacks ; and the day when this was to take place
was not long in coming." Yet, he did not let his vehement criticisms
go fofth without making an excuse for them. It was that " enough
merit still exists among true naturalists to permit us to leave the busi-
ness of mutual admiration to the literary beggars of belles-lettres jour-
nalism." Notwithstanding this opposition, the current in favor of
Schleiden's conception of the object of scientific study could not be
diverted ; and the medical faculty of Tubingen, one of whose mem-
bers was Schleiden's most eminent opponent in a number of special
cases, replied to his acrid charges by conferring upon him its honor-
ary degree.

Schleiden's other book, " Die Pflanze und ihr Leben " (" The Plant
and its Life "), the object of which was to popularize botany, had a
brilliant success. The first edition of 1848 was rapidly followed by
other editions, and the work appeared in the course of the next ten years
in one French, one Dutch, and two English translations. The author,
in the preface to this work, defines his object as follows : " Most peo-
ple of the world, even the most enlightened, are still in the habit of
regarding the botanist as a dealer in barbarous Latin names, as a man
who gathers flowers, names them, dries them, and wraps them in pa-
per, and all of whose wisdom consists in determining and classifying
this hay which he has collected with such great pains. This portrait
of the botanist was, alas ! recently true ; but, now that it is no longer
applicable to the majority among us, I have been grieved to see that
many still hold to it. So I have endeavored in these lectures to place
within the reach of all the real principles of botanical science, and to

SKETCH OF MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN. 261

show how it is intimately connected with all the leading problems of
philosophy and the natural sciences." Beginning with an account of
the structure of plants as revealed by the eye and the microscope, he
recognizes the labors of Mohl, Nageli, Payen, and others, and even has
the courage to admit that they have damaged his own theory of the
genesis of cells. The discussion of the nutritive elements of plants
gives him occasion to do justice to Hales, De Saussure, Boussingault,
and Liebig, his long-time adversary. Then, from applied botany, he
passes to the two sciences which were quite new at the time, of botan-
ical geography and paleontology ; and he concludes with a chapter in
which the whole subject receives an sesthetical treatment.

Before this work appeared, however, Schleiden, discouraged by the
success of the assaults upon his pet theories, had suffered a loss of con-
fidence in himself and of relish for pure botany. His last work in pure
science was a note on the fructification of the Rhizocarps, published
in 1846; the "Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Botanik" ("Journal
of Scientific Botany "), which he, with Nageli, had founded in 1844,
ceased to appear at the same time.

After completing the third edition of the " Grundziige " in 1850,
the failure to modify or improve which in any essential particular
emphasizes his loss of relish for the pursuit, Schleiden withdrew al-
most entirely from the arena of scientific botany. He turned his
attention to anthropology ; and, finally, in 1862, resigned his chair of
botany at Jena, whence he repaired to Dresden. "Still, however,
the old halo wavered around his head," and he was called to the Uni-
versity of Dorpat, as Professor of Botany and Anthropology, with the
rank of a Russian councilor of state. He was not permitted to stay
long there, however ; for, being accustomed to express himself too
freely on ecclesiastical subjects in his public addresses, he soon
raised a strong party against himself, and was obliged to resign his
second professorship in 1864. From this time till the end of his
life he resided by turns at Dresden, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Wiesba-
den, and again at Frankfort, where he died on the 23d of June, 1881.
Death surprised him while he was engaged upon a work on the horse,
one of three monographs in which he designed to illustrate the influ-
ence of natural agents upon civilization, choosing as examples from
each of the three kingdoms — salt, the rose, and the horse. The two
of these treatises which we possess are models of their kind.

The character of Schleiden may be read in his writings. Ardent
and enthusiastic, he never praised or blamed by halves ; but, in his
most animated polemics, there appears a sincere and disinterested con-
viction that commands respect. To the end of his life he retained a
degree of youthfulness in his thought and style. He had the imagina-
tion of a poet, with the scientific spirit to guide it ; and instead of
being carried away, or letting his readers be carried away, in his
flights, he is constantly calling them back to reality and reason. He

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

erred in that he relied too much on his own deductions, and did not
sufficiently appreciate the importance of verifying them by experiment
and close observation. Thus it came about, as Karl Midler has re-
marked, that he has given us, in his works, " a diversified mixture of
philosophical prepossession, jejune observation, and fanciful descrip-
tion. Nevertheless, despite his peculiar weaknesses, his followers rec-
ognize him as a reformer of botany, and allot him a permanent and
eminent place in the history of that science."

Schleiden's works are numerous ; we will mention " Grundziige der
wissenschaftlichen Botanik" (two vols., Leipsic, 1842-'43) ("Elements
of Scientific Botany"), fourth edition 1861, translated into English
by Dr. Lankester, London, 1849 ; " Die Pflanz und ihr Leben "
(" The Plant and its Life"), sixth edition, Leipsic, 1864, translated by
Professor Henfrey, London, 1848 ; "Handbuch der medicinisch phar-
maceutischen Botanik" ("Manual of Medicinal Pharmaceutical Bot-
any"), (Leipsic, 1852) ; "Studien" ("Studies"), (second edition 1857);
" Handbuch der botanischen Pharmakognosie " (" Manual of Botanical
Pharmacology"), (Leipsic, 1857) ; "Die Landenge von Suez" ("The
Isthmus of Suez "), (1858) ; " Zur Theorie des Erkennens durch den
Gesichtssinn " ("Additions to the Theory of Determination by the
Sense of Sight"), (Leipsic, 1861) ; " Geognostische Beschreibung des
Saalthals bei Jena " (" Geognostic Description of the Valley of the
Saal at Jena"), (Leipsic, 1846) ; "Beitrage zur Botanik" ("Additions
to Botany) ; " Pflanzen und Thierphysiologie in Encyklopadie der
theoretischen Naturwissensckaf t " (" Physiology of Plants and Ani-
mals in Encyclopaedia for Theoretical Natural Philosophy "), (Braun-
schweig, 1850) ; "Gedichte" (pseudonym "Ernst"), ("Poems") (nom
deplume "Ernst "), 1858; " Das Meer " (" The Ocean "), (Berlin, 1865);
"Baum und Wald " ("Tree and Forest "), (1870) ; "Uber den Ma-
terialismus der neueren deutschen Naturwissenschaf t " (" Materialism
in Modern German Natural Philosophy ") ; " Die Bedeutung der Juden
fiir die Erhaltung und Wiederbelebung der "Wissenschaften im Mit-
telalter " (" The Signification of the Jews in the Conservation and Re-
vival of the Sciences in the Middle Ages ") — a work demonstrating
the high degree of culture maintained by the Jews, even during the
darkest periods of history, and the important part they had in the
development of science and letters in Christendom — (1877) ; "Die
Romantik des Martyriums bei den Juden im Mittelalter " (" The
Romance of the Jewish Martyrology of the Middle Ages "), (Leij^sic,
1878).

ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 263

ENTERTAINING VARIETIES.

Hindoo Ascetics. — Hindostan is the native land of religious fanaticism.

Burke ascribes it to the impressive grandeur of Nature (Himalayas, great rivers,
East Indian tornadoes, etc.) ; Jacqueniont, to subjective peculiarities of the East
Aryan races ; but the fact itself admits of no dispute : the Hindoos, as a nation,
have always shown a remarkable tendency to sacrifice reason to faith, earth to
heaven, and the welfare of the body to the fancied interests of the soul. The
cave-temples of Ellora are said to have been excavated by volunteer armies of
laborers ; and, in a country where large hospitals full of eupeptic monkeys can be
supported by voluntary contributions, such things are by no means impossible.
During the yearly assemblies on the " God-field," at the junction of the Jumna
and Ganges, many devotees sought a grave in the depths of the twice-holy flood,
and Father Ricot, who witnessed one of these festivals, ascribes the extrava-
ganzas of the pilgrims to the momentary inspiration of religious frenzy ; but the
achievements of the fakirs prove that even the modern Hindoos are capable of
the most deliberate self-sacrifice. At the court of Baroda the spectators often
leave the circus-games of the Guicowar to witness the stranger performances of
a self-torturer, who, " for the edification of the pious," skewers, scorches, or
mutilates himself in a way from which no mortal could recover. Nepaul, the
border-land of Buddhism and Brahmanism, swarms with fakirs as Spain with
begging friars. On the highway from Goorkha to Benares the traveler meets
them at every cross-road. Some of them content themselves with sitting bare-
headed in the open sun; others hang, head downward, from a bar, which they
clasp with their hands and knees; others exhibit self-inflicted wounds, gashed
faces, bared and splintered ribs, hands and feet bristling with tenpenny nails,
as if they had undergone crucifixion. In the larger cities, where the public is
used to such trifles, the more ambitious ascetics load themselves with wagon-
chains, or bend their bodies in the form of a right angle, till the inflection of the
spine becomes permanent. Nay, a not unfrequent "penance" consists in tying
the hands to the ankles, and turning round and round like a cart-wheel. Near
Goruckpoor the train of Lord Dalhousie met dozens of these animated monocy-
cles, some of whom had rolled along for a distance of several hundred miles!

The Buddhists, with their superior talent for organization, have whole con-
vents full of martyr-maniacs, who vie in the rigor and extravagant absurdity of
their penances. Even novices forswear clothes in winter and cold water in
summer, and sleep on gravel-piles. The sanctity of the presbyters is computed
by the quantity of nauseous drugs they can swallow. Some of them emulate
Dr. Tanner, and eat only once a day, and at certain seasons only once a week.
Near Rangoon, at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, a society of penitents have located
their convent in a pestilential swamp, and point with pride to their open windows,
that admit every variety of troublesome insects. A thousand miles farther north
the Thibetan monastery of Sookung braves the ice- storms of the eastern Hima-
layas at an elevation of fourteen thousand five hundred feet. The monks subsist
on the charitable contributions of the neighboring towns, and are often in danger
of freezing to death before they reach their castle in the clouds ; but their home-
life is said to be comparatively comfortable, especially in winter-time, when
visitors are rare, for asceticism of the more persistent kind seems somehow to

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

depend a good deal on public approbation. Simon Stylites bad visitors from all
parts of the Cbristian world, wbo admired and at last almost worshiped him.
Besides sticking to his pillar, he had a trick of doubling himself up till his fore-
head almost touched his narrow pedestal. At evening prayers he often treated
the spectators to a variety of Talmagian gymnastics, and, if they implored him
to come down, his only answer was a grunt of stern defiance. In a lonely desert
he probably would have anticipated their wishes. If there is anything meri-
torious iu self-torture, the Indian fakirs, too, get all the encouragement they de-
serve. A Hindoo, who might dismiss an ordinary beggar with a kick, would
share his last rice-cake with a mendicant presenting himself with a drag-chain
round his neck and a bull-ring in his nose. The inventor of a new torture can
count upon a liberal share of public patronage. Tbe English garrison of Cawn-
poor was once honored by the presence of a Mlschi/, or religious devotee, who
had stationed himself in a corner of their parade-ground, and promoted the wel-
fare of his soul by squatting down between two blazing fires, while the sun in-
flicted its caloric on his shaven head. A crowd of natives watched him with
respectful admiration, and, whenever one of his fires threatened to go out, they
fetched in a fresh supply of fuel, to further the progress of the good work.

The exploits of a sensational iilschu become the boast of his native place.
Rass-el-Shork and Rass-el-Hissam, two suburbs of Delhi, had several riots about
the respective merits of their fakirs. The matter was finally referred to a Mo-
hammedan umpire, and the men of Hissam proved that their hero had passed
forty-eight hours in tenter-hooks, and glorified Brahma by eating a three-pound
bundle of wormwood, while the Shork party claimed the prize of virtue for a
saint who had swallowed a gallon of cajeput-oil, and turned somersaults till the
arithmetic of the suburb failed to express the number of thousands. He had
also rolled himself from Delhi to Agra, fasted a full week, and abstained from
drinking water while he counted the number of grains in a two-bushel measure
of millet-seeds. But all his labors proved in vain when the umpire learned that
the Hissam champion had once sat two days and a night in a nest-hill of the
Formica rvfa (a kind of red horse-ants).

Our word fakir is derived from the Arabian falchar, a pauper, a mendicant.
The Mohammedan dervishes, however, do not entirely part with their reason,
though the Sufi sect believes in the sanctifying influence of celibacy and solitude.
The Brahmans and Buddhists are both ultra-ascetic, but with this difference :
that the former practice their penances as an expiation of some special sin ; the
others on general principles, and with a view of subduing the vitality of the
body, for the world-blighting dogma of the antagonism of body and soul seems
to have been first promulgated by Buddha Sakya-Muni, the Nepaul arch-pessi-
mist.

In the columns of the " Catholic World " for August, the Rev. J. F.

Callahan, D. D., discusses the " Cincinnati Pastoral " and its critics: "Liberty,"
says the Rev. J. F. C, D. D., "never did exist except under the shadow of the
cross. Equality has no home except at the altar on which the shadow of that
cross falls. Take the Catholic Church out of the world, and liberty would sink
into an eternal grave. If Protestant nations are free, it is because they once
were Catholics. If a republic was built in this New World, Catholic principles
were the architect."

The absolute truth of the above rivals the candor of Dr. Christlieb's " Short
Method with Infidels." Evidently the " persecuted classes," as the "Bavarian
Brewers' Union " calls the Romanists and liquor-dealers, are learning the art of

ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 265

turning the tables against their aggressors. The next issue of the " B. B. U."
will probably contain the following counterblast against the recent amendment
of the Iowa Constitution : " Happiness never did exist except in an atmosphere
of alcohol. Health has no home except at a fireside redolent with the smell
of that atmosphere. Take distilleries out of the world, and manhood would
sink into an eternal grave. Wherever a healthy constitution has been built up,
alcoholic stimulants were the architect. If total abstainers are healthy, it is
because their fathers were topers."

In " graphic descriptions " one touch of nature is worth a page of im-
aginary details: hence the realism of rustic poetry. The Ettrick Shepherd had
passages of that sort that redeem all his barbarisms, and beat Goethe and Words-
worth at their own tricks. E. g., his description of a Lanarkshire snow-storm
that cost the life of a Scotch Leander :

" But the snaw was so deep, and his heart it grew weary,
And he sank down to sleep on the moorland so dreary.
Oh, soft was the couch and embi'oidcred the cover,
And white were the sheets she had spread for her lover ;
But his couch is more white, and his canopy grander,
And sounder he sleeps where the hill-foxes wander.''''

■■ " A false system with a fabulous historical record, and enforced by pre-

posterously wrong methods," Diderot calls a certain anti-natural religion.

"Voltaire came before the Eevolution like lightning before thunder."

" Experience is like a persistent coquette. Tears pass before you can win
her, and, if you finally may call her your own, you are both superannuated, and
have no use for one another."

" The secret of every power consists in the knowledge that others are still
greater cowards."

" Our time is not favorable to logic. So many candles need snuffing, that
there is no chance for clear-seeing."

" All men love freedom. But the just demands it for all, the unjust for him-
self alone." — Ltjdwig Boene.

Some people seem born to be lucky in spite of themselves. General

Skobeleff was originally destined for the bar, but before he was too old his pug-
nacious disposition caused his expulsion from college, and thus drove him into
his right career, and by a series of equally well-timed scrapes at last into a field
where he could follow his penchant with glory, as well as impunity. His pet
project was a war against Prussia, and the timely accession of a Pan-Slavistic
Czar enabled him to achieve popularity by a free expression of his anti-German
sentiments. He became the idol of his nation, and died in time to escape the
horrible thrashing that will follow the attempt to realize his favorite project.

There is nothing new under the sun ; even our forestry associations had

their prototypes in pagan Borne and Moorish Spain. Al Moctader, the Caliph
of Bagdad (1094-1117), also planted millions of forest-trees ; and it is a distress-
ing fact that then, as now, many clear-sighted men foretold the consequences of
reckless forest-destruction, and that their protests had no appreciable influence
in checking the evil. The trouble seems to be that tree-felling is directly profit-
able and only eventually injurious, while tree-planting is directly expensive and
only indirectly advantageous. Forest-destruction has ruined our earthly para-
dise, and the scientific authorities of all really enlightened nations have de-

266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nouncecl it again and again ; but, before such arguments can influence the masses,
they must cease to seek their paradise in the clouds and their authorities in
Palestine.

In the general diffusion of knowledge, only the newspaper-educated

natives of our Northeastern cities can compare with the Saracens of the thirteenth
century. Under her last caliphs, Cordova alone had fourteen lyceums and nine
hundred and fifty primary schools ; the transcription of the ancient classics em-
ployed an army of copyists, and the provincial governors vied in patronizing
men of letters. From Leon to Granada every hamlet had its own library, and
the lord of every castle a private cabinet of curios or an astronomical observatory.
But during the next two centuries a horde of ecclesiastic Vandals marched in the
wake of the Christian armies, and special commissioners of the Casa Santa trav-
eled from place to place, burning Unitarians and destroying Arabian manu-
scripts.

"What literary treasures may have perished in that way ! The Spanish Moris-
coes, the last free and manly nation of the Old World, succumbed to the hirelings
of the Holy Inquisition; but Providence generally remedies a calamity of that
sort, and the fall of Granada coincided with the discovery of a New World.

A Maori Cosmogony. — Eichard Oberliinder, in his " Strange Peoples,"

gives the following as a cosmogony of the New-Zealanders : Maui was a hero
who performed as wondei-ful labors as the Grecian Heracles. He was not only
the inventor of the arts of making boats and building houses and the like, but
he appointed the paths of the sun and the moon, and was the creator of the
earth, which he fished out of the sea in this way : He said one clay to his five
brothers, who were devoted fishermen, that he would go with them and catch
so large a fish that they would not be able to hold him. Now, because they
knew what an enchanter he was, and were afraid of his art, they were not will-
ing to take him in the boat with them. Nevertheless, Maui went with them.
He changed himself into a bird, flew into the canoe, and did not make himself
known till they had got into the open sea. When they had got far out into the
sea, Maui wanted to fish ; he had a precious fish-hook with him, which he had
made out of his grandfather's jaw-bone; but his brothers, to keep him from
fishing, refused to give him any bait. Then Maui beat his face till his nose
bled, and soaked some tow that he found in the canoe with the blood. That
was the bait. Maui threw out his hook, and it was not long before he had a
bite, with a tug that made the brothers afraid the boat would be upset. So they
cried out, "Let go, Maui! " "Maui never lets go of what he holds," was the
answer, and it has become a proverb with the Maoris. He pulled and pulled at
the line till he pulled up a land. ^ Ranga ichenna! " exclaimed the brothers,
"the fish is a land! " Maui asked them if they knew the name of the fish, and,
when they said no, he told them " Eaha wheima" (the looked-for land.) After
the fish was pulled up, the brothers hastened to divide it among themselves ;
they pulled and tore in every direction ; hence come the inequalities of the island.
The canoe was stranded by the rising of the land, and the Maoris say now that
it lies on the top of Mount Iknurangi, near the eastern cape of the island, where
Maui is also buried. After this story, the northern island of New Zealand is
called AM na Maid (the fish of Maui).

" They sow not, they reap not, they trust in Providence, and honor you

by sharing the fruits of your worldly industry," is the gist of St. Francis of
Assisi's argument in favor of the mendicant friars. The Hindoos are consistent

ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 267

enough to grant the same privileges to monkeys and crocodiles. In Lucknow
there are two large monkey-hospitals, and several mahakhunds, where swarms of
able-bodied Entellus-apes (" Honumans ") and Rhesus baboons are fed at the
expense of true believers. They get rice-pudding and sirup for dinner, while
many hard-working but less sacred bipeds have to eat their rice " straight." But
during the Sepoy rebellion the Mohammedan insurgents destroyed one of these
establishments and expelled the inmates, including several venerable specimens
of the white-headed Entellus, the holiest animal in the menagerie of the Hindoo
Pantheon. For many weeks these long-tailed saints perambulated the streets in
quest of cold lunch ; and an eye-witness, Mrs. Allen Mackenzie, describes the
indignation of the orthodox natives, who organized relief committees and mon-
key soup-houses, though the protracted siege had almost exhausted their own
resources. To make matters worse, the streets swarmed with profane monkeys
who had to forage for a living, and had no hesitation in black-mailing their sacred
relatives. The Honumans had to submit to such outrages; nay, some of them
learned to eat their rice-pudding without sirup, and probably consoled them-
selves with the hope of a better hereafter. They wandered from house to house,
and in their great distress even accepted the assistance of unbelievers, but they
absolutely refused to work.

A Cheerful Summer Resort. — On the hunting-grounds of the lower

Lena, where the Fahrenheit thermometer often remains for weeks at 45° below
zero, the Russian convicts are dressed in linen jackets, and wear tretschhi (raw-
hide shoes) without stockings. And yet they form the elite corps of the Siberian
exiles — murderers, forgers, and highway robbers. Political offenders are sent
to the mines of Berezov, where the average duration of life, or rather of slow
death, is eight years and four months. The majority of the convicts die in less
than five years. Minors work there from 6 a. m. till noon, and from 2 to 6
p. m. ; adults from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m., without intermission. They have no Sunday,
and only one holiday in the year, the birthday of the Czar. Their rations are
those of a private soldier, viz., rye-bread and salt beef. After dark they are
confined in log-pens, and have to pass the nights of the long Siberian winter
between two army-blankets, the one covering the rough-hewed logs of the floor,
the other their starved bodies, wrapped in the coarse linen uniform which they
are permitted to change only once a month. Chimney-fires are allowed during
the supper-hour, i. e., from 6 to 7 p.m., but the majority swallow their food in
the dark, and devote the short interval of light and warmth to — entomological
researches. The discipline is that of a dog-kennel — kicks and cudgel-blows — and
malingering is discouraged by a simple and effective method : the sick (wounded
excepted) are put on quarter-rations. Attempts at flight are less frequent than
riots, for recaptured fugitives were knouted; mutineers are only shot.

Human beings can get used to worse things than Siberian rye-bread, but
never to Siberian frosts, and the monthly fuel rations of the Berezov convicts
are limited to one stavsnih (about half a cord) per cabin, though near the mines
of the western slope the same mountain-range abounds with densely timbered
districts. In an interview with the commander of Berezov, a correspondent of
the "Cologne Gazette" suggested the propriety of removing the settlement to
the timber-region. " It would probably please the prisoners," replied the com-
mander, but the comfort of their keepers was of more consequence, and all his
subalterns agreed that, on account of the trout-streams and cranberry-brakes of
the eastern slope, Berezov was a more pleasant summer resort.

268

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SPENCER'S IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

THERE was a strong and perhaps a
quite laudable curiosity on the part
of many pople to know what impression
had been made upon the mind of Her-
bert Spencer when first coming to this
country. It was certainly something
more than an idle curiosity on the part
of a large number of our citizens to
learn his impressions, because it was
widely kown that he is a philosophic-
al student of national institutions, and
probably the highest living authority
on the science of human society. He
has been very widely read and much
studied in this country, and it was felt
that his views, whether favorable or
not, would certainly be interesting, and
his criticisms, if he made any, suggest-
ive aud valuable.

And it was no doubt because of his
respect for this sincere desire, to get at
his real views, that Mr. Spencer persist-
ently declined to be hastily and prema-
turely interviewed by the professionals
of the press, whose ways of doing such
things are not always favorable to the
representation of important truths.
"What they generally most want is friv-
olous gossip and personal particulars,
to be dressed up for sensational pur-
poses, and to be had exclusively for the
benefit of enterprising newspapers. Mr.
Spencer was indeed repeatedly applied
to by reporters of a better character
who woidd have represented him in his
own way, and with fullness and fair-
ness, but the state of his health long
made it impossible that he could consent
to be questioned.

And there was certainly plenty of
reason why he should be in no hurry to
venture upon an expression of opinion
regarding American social and political
affairs. It was easy enough to say how
he was struck by the external aspects

of American life, but it was not so easy
to get familiar with the working of the
internal elements and forces of our
social and political life. It was easy
enough to compare our cities, steam-
boats, railroads, rural scenery, and open
habits of the people with those of the
olden countries, but a very different
thing to form an intelligent judgment
of the operation of complex institutions
and the slow-working social tendencies
in a nation that covers a continent. Per-
haps no living man is so well aware of
the magnitude and the difficulties of the
problems now being worked out by the
people of these associated States as Mr.
Spencer, and he could not but feel that
a two months' sojourn among us in a
very unfavorable state of health was
but a very insufficient preparation for
an intelligent verdict upon American
social and political problems. Yet his
previous occupation with such subjects
certainly qualified him to form opinions
of what he saw and heard and at the
proper time he had no hesitation in ex-
pressing them.

And that he was prepared to speak
a good deal to the point, to offer views
of moment, and suggest weighty criti-
cisms, has been sufficiently proved by
the way his opinions have been received
in all quai'ters. They have been very
extensively published from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, and as extensively com-
mented upon. No such message from
any foreigner has ever compelled equal
attention, or been received in a better
spirit. There has been very wide agree-
ment with Mr. Spencer's most impor-
tant statements, and, where assent has
been denied, it has still been recognized
that the questions raised are fundament-
al, and that Mr. Spencer has done us
an eminent service in setting people to
thinking about the sources of danger to

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

our institutions, and the duties of citi-
zens in regard to them.

In one respect the time of publica-
tion was somewhat unfortunate. The
results of the interview were offered to
the New York press to all the New York
newspapers at the same time and with-
out previous notice, and, as the columns
of the press are generally much crowded
in an active political campaign, there
was some difficulty in publishing the
communication. Several papers felt it
necessary to shorten it by omitting what
they regarded as the less important
parts, so that imperfect representations
of the interview were extensively cir-
culated and republished. This being
known, there has been a good deal of
call for the document in its complete
form, which could not be met. We have
accordingly thought it best to reprint
the interview in full. It will certainly
not be news to our readers, but it may
be well to have a permanent record of
it for future reference :

Hearing that Herbert Spencer had re-
turned to New York in a somewhat im-
proved condition of health, an intimate
American friend obtained his consent to be
questioned regarding his impressions of this
country to the following effect :

I believe, Mr. Spencer, that you have not
been interviewed since your arrival in this
country \

I have not. The statements in the
newspapers implying personal intercourse
are unauthorized, and many of them incor-
rect. It was said, for example, that I was
ill from the effects of the voyage ; the truth
being that I suffered no inconvenience what-
ever, save that arising from disturbed rest.
Subsequent accounts of me in respect of
disorders, diet, dress, habits, etc., have been
equally wide of the mark.

Have these misrepresentations been an-
noying to you ?

In some measure, though I am not very
sensitive ; but I have been chiefly annoyed
by statements which affect, not myself only,
but others. For some ten days or more
there went on reappearing in various jour-

nals, an alleged opinion of mine concerning
Mr. Oscar Wilde. The statement that I
had uttered it was absolutely baseless. I
have expressed no opinion whatever con-
cerning Mr. Oscar Wilde. Naturally, those
who put in circulation fictions of this kind
may be expected to mix much fiction with
what fact they report.

Might not this misrepresentation have
been avoided, by admitting interviewers ?

Possibly ; but, in the first place, I have
not been sufficiently well ; and, in the sec-
ond place, I am averse to the system. To
have to submit to cross-examination, under
penalty of having ill-natured things said if
one refuses, is an invasion of personal lib-
erty which I dislike. Moreover, there is
implied what seems to me an undue love of
personalities. Your journals recall a wit-
ticism of the poet Heine, who said that
" when a woman writes a novel, she has one
eye on the paper and the other on some
man — except the Countess Hahn-hahn, who
has only one eye." In like manner, it seems
to me that in the political discussions that
fill your papers, everything is treated in con-
nection with the doings of individuals — some
candidate for office, or some " boss " or wire-
puller. I think it not improbable that this
appetite for personalities, among other evils,
generates this recklessness of statement.
The appetite must be ministered to ; and in
the eagerness to satisfy its cravings, there
comes less and less care respecting the cor-
rectness of what is said.

Has what you have seen answered your
expectations ?

It has far exceeded them. Such books
about America as I had looked into, had
given me no adequate idea of the immense
developments of material civilization which
I have everywhere found. The extent,
wealth, and magnificence of your cities, and
especially the splendor of New York, have
altogether astonished me. Though I have
not visited the wonder of the West, Chi-
cago, yet some of your minor modern places,
such as Cleveland, have sufficiently amazed
me, by the marvelous results of one gener-
ation's activity. Occasionally, when I have
been in places of some ten thousand in-
habitants, where the telephone is in general
use, I have felt somewhat ashamed of our

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own unenterprising towns ; many of which,
of fifty thousand inhabitants and more,
make no use of it.

I suppose you recognize in these results
the great benefit of free institutions ?

Ah, now comes one of the inconven-
iences of interviewing. I have been in the
country less than two months; have seen
but a relatively small part of it, and but
comparatively few people ; and yet you wish
from me a definite opinion on a difficult
question.

Perhaps you will answer, subject to the
qualification that you are but giving your
first impressions ?

Well, with that understanding, I may
reply that, though free institutions have
been partly the cause, I think they have
not been the chief cause. In the first place,
the American people have come into posses-
sion of an unparalleled fortune — the mineral
wealth, and the vast tracts of virgin soil pro-
ducing abundantly with small cost of culture.
Manifestly that alone goes a long way to-
ward producing this enormous prosperity.
Then they have profited by inheriting all
the arts, appliances, methods, developed by
older societies, while leaving behind the ob-
structions existing in them. They have
been able to pick and choose from the prod-
ucts of all past experience; appropriating
the good and rejecting the bad. Then, be-
sides these favors of fortune, there are fac-
tors proper to themselves. I perceive in
American faces generally, a great amount of
determination — a kind of " do or die " ex-
pression ; and this trait of character, joined
with a power of work exceeding that of
any other people, of course produces an un-
paralleled rapidity of progress. Once more,
there is the inventiveness, which, stimulated
by the need for economizing labor, has been
so wisely fostered. Among us in England,
there are many foolish people who, while
thinking that a man who toils with his
hands has an equitable claim to the product,
and, if he has special skill, may rightly have
the advantage of it, also hold that if a man
toils with his brain, perhaps for years, and,
uniting genius with perseverance, evolves
some valuable invention, the public may
rightly claim the benefit. The Americans
have been more far-seeing. The enormous

museum of patents which I saw at Wash-
ington, is significant of the attention paid to
inventors' claims; and the nation profits
immensely from having, in this direction
(though not in all others), recognized prop-
erty in mental products. Beyond question,
in respect of mechanical appliances, the
Americans are ahead of all nations. If,
along with your material progress, there
went equal progress of a higher kind, there
would remain nothing to be wished.

That is an ambiguous qualification. What
do you mean by it ?

You will understand when I tell you
what I was thinking of the other day.
After pondering over what I have seen of
your vast manufacturing and trading estab-
lishments, the rush of traffic in your street-
cars and elevated railways, your gigantic
hotels and Fifth Avenue palaces, I was
suddenly reminded of the Italian republics
of the middle ages ; and recalled the fact
that, while there was growing up in them
great commercial activity, a development of
the arts which made them the envy of Eu-
rope, and a building of princely mansions
which continue to be the admiration of trav-
elers, their people were gradually losing their
freedom.

Do you mean this as a suggestion that we
are doing the like ?

It seems to me that you are. You re-
tain the forms of freedom, but, so far as
I can gather, there has been a consider-
able loss of the substance. It is true that
those who rule you do not do it by means
of retainers armed with swords ; but they do
it through regiments of men armed with
voting-papers, who obey the word of com-
mand as loyally as did the dependants of
the old feudal nobles, and who thus enable
their leaders to override the general will
and make the community submit to their
exactions as effectually as their prototypes
of old. It is doubtless true that each of
your citizens votes for the candidate he
chooses for this or that office, from Presi-
dent downward, but his hand is guided by a
power behind, which leaves him scarcely
any choice. " Use your political power as
we tell you, or else throw it away," is the
alternative offered to the citizen. The po-
litical machinery as it is now worked has

EDITOR'S TABLE.

271

little resemblance to that contemplated at
the outset of your political life. Manifestly,
those who framed your constitution never
dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would
go to the poll led by a " boss." America
exemplifies, at the other end of the social
scale, a change analogous to that which has
taken place under sundry despotisms. You
know that in Japan, before the recent revo-
lution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, nomi-
nally supreme, was practically a puppet in
the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun.
Here it seems to me that the " sovereign
people " is fast becoming a puppet which
moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine.

Then you think that republican institu-
tions are a failure ?

By no means ! I imply no such con-
clusion. Thirty years ago, when often dis-
cussing politics with an English friend, and
defending republican institutions, as I al-
ways have done and do still ; and when he
urged against me the ill-working of such
institutions over here ; I habitually replied
that the Americans got their form of gov-
ernment by a happy accident, not by nor-
mal progress, and that they would have to
go back before they could go forward.
What has since happened seems to me to
have justified that view; and what I see
now confirms me in it. America is show-
ing on a larger scale than ever before, that
" paper constitutions " will not work as they
are intended to work. The truth, first rec-
ognized by Mackintosh, that " constitutions
are not made, but grow," which is part of
the larger truth that societies throughout
their whole organizations are not made but
grow, at once, when accepted, disposes of
the notion that you can work, as you hope,
any artificially-devised system of govern-
ment. It becomes an inference that if your
political structure has been manufactured,
and not grown.it will forthwith begin to
grow into something different from that
intended — something in harmony with the
natures of citizens and the conditions un-
der which the society exists. And it evi-
dently has been so with you. Within the
forms of your constitution there has grown
up this organization of professional poli-
ticians, altogether uncontemplated at the
outset, which has become in large measure
the ruling power.

But will not education and the diffusion ot
political knowledge fit men for free institu-
tions ?

No. It is essentially a question of
character, and only in a secondary degree
a question of knowledge. But for the uni-
versal delusion about education as a pana-
cea for political evils, this would have been
made sufficiently clear by the evidence
daily disclosed in your papers. Are not the
men who officer and control your Federal,
State, and municipal organizations — who
manipulate your caucuses and conventions,
and run your partisan campaigns — all edu-
cated men? and has their education pre-
vented them from engaging in, or permit-
ting, or condoning, the briberies, lobbyings,
and other corrupt methods which vitiate
the actions of your administrations ? Per-
haps party newspapers exaggerate these
things ; but what am I to make of the tes-
timony of your civil-service reformers — men
of all parties ? If I understand the matter
aright, they are attacking, as vicious and
dangerous, a system which has grown up
under the natural spontaneous working of
your free institutions — are exposing vices
which education has proved powerless to
prevent.

Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous
men will secure the offices, and education
will aid them in their selfish purposes ; but
would not those purposes be thwarted, and
better government secured, by raising the
standard of knowledge among the people at
large ?

Very little. The current theory is that
if the young are taught what is right, and
the reasons why it is right, they will do
what is right when they grow up. But,
considering what religious teachers have
been doing these two thousand years, it
seems to me that all history is against the
conclusion, as much as is the conduct of these
well-educated citizens I have referred to ;
and I do not see why you expect better re-
sults among the masses. Personal interests
will sway the men in the ranks as they
sway the men above them ; and the educa-
tion which fails to make the last consult
public good rather than private good, will
fail to make the first do it. The benefits of
political purity are so general and remote,
and the profit to each individual so incon-

272

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spicuous, that the common citizen, educate
him as you like, will habitually occupy him-
self with his personal affairs, and hold it
not worth his while to fight against each
abuse as soon as it appears. Not lack of
information, but lack of certain moral sen-
timents, is the root of the evil.

You mean that people have not a sufficient
sense of public duty ?

Well, that is one way of putting it;
but there is a more specific way. Probably
it will surprise you if I say that the Ameri-
can has not, I think, a sufficiently quick
sense of his own claims, and at the same
time, as a necessary consequence, not a suffi-
ciently quick sense of the claims of others —
for the two traits are organically related.
I observe that you tolerate various small
interferences and dictations which English-
men are prone to resist. I am told that the
English are remarked on for their tendency
to grumble in such cases; and I have no
doubt it is true.

Do you think it worth while for people to
make themselves disagreeable by resenting
every trifling aggression? We Americans
think it involves too much loss of time and
temper, and doesn't pay.

Exactly. That is what I mean by char-
acter. It is this easy-going readiness to
permit small trespasses because it would be
troublesome or profitless or unpopular to
oppose, which leads to the habit of acquies-
cence in wrong, and the decay of free in-
stitutions. Free institutions can be main-
tained only by citizens each of whom is in-
stant to oppose every illegitimate act, every
assumption of supremacy, every official ex-
cess of power, however trivial it may seem.
As Hamlet says, there is such a thing as
greatly to find quarrel in a straw, where
that straw implies a principle. If, as
you say of the American, he pauses to con-
sider whether he can afford the time and
trouble — " whether it will pay " — corruption
is sure to creep in. All these lapses from
higher to lower forms begin in trifling
ways ; and it is only by incessant watchful-
ness that they can be prevented. As one
of your early statesmen said, " The price of
liberty is eternal vigilance." But it is far
less against foreign aggressions upon na-
tional liberty, that this vigilance is required,

than against the insidious growth of domes-
tic interferences with personal liberty. In
some private administrations which I have
been concerned with, I have often insisted,
much to the disgust of officials, that instead
of assuming, as people usually do, that
things are going right until it is proved that
they are going wrong, the proper course is to
assume that they are going wrong until it is
proved that they are going right. You will
find, continually, that private corporations,
such as joint-stock banking companies, come
to grief from not acting upon this principle.
And what holds of these small and simple
private administrations, holds still more of
the great and complex public administra-
tions. People are taught, and, I suppose,
believe, that "the heart of man is deceit-
ful above all things and desperately wick-
ed " ; and yet, strangely enough, believing
this, they place implicit trust in those
they appoint to this or that function.
I do not think so ill of human nature ; but,
on the other hand, I do not think so well of
human nature as to believe it will do with-
out being watched.

You hinted that while Americans do not
assert their own individualities sufficiently in
small matters, they, reciprocally, do not suffi-
ciently respect the individualities of others.

Did I? Here, then, comes another of
the inconveniences of interviewing. I should
have kept this opinion to myself if you had
asked me no questions ; and now I must
either say what I do not think, which I can
not, or I must refuse to answer, which per-
haps will be taken to mean more than I in-
tend, or I must specify, at the risk of giving
offense. As the least evil I suppose I must
do the last. The trait I refer to comes out
in various ways, small and great. It is
shown by the disrespectful manner in which
individuals are dealt with in your journals —
the placarding of public men in sensational
headings, the dragging of private people
and their affairs into print. There seems to
be a notion that the public have a right to
intrude on private life as far as they like ;
and this I take to be a kind of moral tres-
passing. It is true that during the last few
years we have been discredited in London
by certain weekly papers which do the like
(except in the typographical display) ; but
in our daily press, metropolitan and pro-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

273

vincial, there is nothing of the kind. Then,
in a larger way, the trait is seen in this
damaging of private property by your ele-
vated railways without making compensa-
tion ; and it is again seen in the doings of
railway governments, not only when over-
riding the rights of shareholders, but in
dominating over courts of justice and State
governments. The fact is, that free insti-
tutions can be properly worked only by men
each of whom is jealous of his own rights,
and also sympathetically jealous of the
rights of others — will neither himself ag-
gress on his neighbors, in small things or
great, nor tolerate aggression on them by
others. The republican form of govern-
ment is the highest form of government;
but because of this it requires the highest
type of human nature — a type nowhere at
present existing. We have not grown up to
it, nor have you.

But we thought, Mr. Spencer, you were in
favor of free government in the sense of re-
laxed restraints, and letting men and things
very much alone — or what is called laissez
/aire ?

That is a persistent misunderstanding
of my opponents. Everywhere, along with
the reprobation of government - intrusion
into various spheres where private activities
should be left to themselves, I have con-
tended that in its special sphere, the main-
tenance of equitable relations among citi-
zens, governmental action should be extend-
ed and elaborated.

To return to your various criticisms, must
I then understand that you think unfavorably
of our future ?

No one can form anything more than
vague and general conclusions respecting
your future. The factors are too numerous,
too vast, too far beyond measure in their
quantities and intensities. The world has
never before seen social phenomena at all
comparable with those presented in the
United States. A society spreading over
enormous tracts while still preserving its
political continuity, is a new thing. This
progressive incorporation of vast bodies of
immigrants of various bloods has never oc-
curred on such a scale before. Large em-
pires composed of different peoples, have,
in previous cases, been formed by conquest
and annexation. Then your immense plex-
VOL. xxii. — 18

us of railways and telegraphs tends to con-
solidate this vast aggregate of States in a
way that no such aggregate has ever before
been consolidated. And there are many
minor co-operating causes unlike those hith-
erto known. No one can say how it is all
going to work out. That there will come
hereafter troubles- of various kinds, and
very grave ones, seems highly probable ;
but all nations have had, and will have,
their troubles. Already you have tri-
umphed over one great trouble, and may
reasonably hope to triumph over others.
It may, I think, be reasonably held that
both because of its size and the heterogene-
ity of its components, the American na-
tion will be a long time in evolving its ul-
timate form ; but that its ultimate form
will be high. One great result is, I think,
tolerably clear. From biological truths it
is to be inferred that the eventual mixture of
the allied varieties of the Aryan race form-
ing the population, will produce a more
powerful type of man than has hitherto ex-
isted, and a type of man more plastic, more
adaptable, more capable of undergoing the
modifications needful for complete social
life. I think that whatever difficulties they
may have to surmount, and whatever tribu-
lations they may have to pass through, the
Americans may reasonably look forward to
a time when they will have produced a civ-
ilization grander than any the world has
known.

PRINCIPLE IN SMALL THINGS.

No part of the foregoing deliver-
ance is more true than that which re-
fers to American tolerance of interfer-
ence and dictation in the lesser affairs
of life. What people do, habitually il-
lustrates character, and American char-
acter in this important respect is un-
doubtedly of a low type. The forms
of free institutions have not engendered
the sentiment of personal independence
which resents encroachments and in-
sists upon justice. The institutions are
nominally free, but the citizens who
grow up under them are not free in
the sense of exemption from imperti-
nent meddlings and petty tyranny.

274

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There is wanting the spirit of resist-
ance to apparently trivial violations of
right. The man who would fight for
his country will not fight a despotic
neighbor, but will tamely acquiesce in
wrong for the sake of peace and neigh-
borly harmony. This spirit of compla-
cent acquiescence in wrongs inevitably
breeds wrong-doers to take advantage
of it. Where there is a low regard for
the strictly equitable, equity is sure to
be violated. There are always natures
that will encroach if not resisted, be-
cause the roots of aggression run deep
in the soil of selfishness. Boys of
strong wills that are petted and pam-
pered, or left unrestrained at home, be-
come bullies in the streets and tyrants
in their social relations. "Resistance
to tyrants is obedience to God," of
course, but that means the foreign ty-
rant, not the one next door, or in the
school-board, or church, or in the car,
or restaurant — to resist him might
make unpleasant disturbance. Habitu-
al submission to inflicted wrongs, how-
ever small, is simply moral cowardice,
and there is no disguising the fact that
it is a very large element of the Ameri-
can character. Mr. Spencer has diag-
nosed our condition in this respect from
a very few symptoms, but the illustra-
tions of wrong tolerated from timidity
and dread of what people will say, if
small aggressions are seriously resisted,
are all too plentiful. An excellent ex-
ample of it occurred recently, which it
is worth while to note.

Bicycles upon the sidewalks, as
everybody knows, are not particularly
conducive to the comfort of pedestri-
ans. Even the small machines impelled
by children, though hardly dangerous,
are often annoying. But large bicycles,
ridden rapidly by strong boys on the
sidewalk, are sources of constant solici-
tude to those who are walking, are
dangerous, often result in accidents,
and are simply nuisances that should
not be tolerated. In most English vil-
lages, as we are informed, bicycles are

not allowed on the sidewalks ; and the
hand-books issued by English manufact-
urers of bicycles caution their custom-
ers that it is a forbidden practice, while
in many places bells have to be at-
tached to the bicycles even when rid-
den in the streets. To what degree this
practice is general here in country
towns we do not know, but there has
recently been an experience in this
matter in the village of Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, which is quite American
in its way.

In the first place, Stockbridge is a
charming town among the Berkshire
hills, much resorted to as a summer
residence by city people. Moreover,
the people that go there and the people
that live there are eminently culti-
vated and refined ; wealth abounds, and
it is not a place where poor people are
much harbored. In education, intel-
ligence, and all the moral qualities
which are said to accompany mental
cultivation, Stockbridge is an Ameri-
can village of a superior sort. It will
be long, very long before American
villages generally come up to the Stock-
bridge standard of culture and good-
breeding.

Nevertheless, all grades of bicycles
were allowed upon the Stockbridge
sidewalks, and the vexation and danger
attending the practice were such, that
last July one of the summer residents
presented a petition, signed by eighteen
prominent residents, to the board of
selectmen, praying that the use of bi-
cycles on the sidewalks be prohibited.
Immediately after a remonstrance signed
by thirty residents was got up and
handed to the selectmen. Understand-
ing that the main objection to the orig-
inal petition was that it did not dis-
criminate between large and small bi-
cycles, the gentlemen who drew the
first document prepared a second draft,
asking only that large bicycles should
be excluded from the sidewalks of the
village, and this was signed by one
hundred and sixty - eight residents.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

275

Many who had signed the remonstrance
now signed the petition, so that the
consent of the village to the measure
proposed was regarded as practically
unanimous.

But there was an active party in favor
of the boys, who were determined that
they should not be interfered with in
their amusement, and so the selectmen
played into the hands of this party by
excluding all bicycles, large and small,
from the sidewalks, well knowing that
this step would cause such irritation as
to defeat itself. The consequence was
that the order of exclusion was rescind-
ed, and all bicycles, large and small,
were once more allowed to run freely
on the sidewalks, except in the small
portion of the village occupied by the
stores, hotel, and bank.

The gentleman, a distinguished pro-
fessor of Columbia College, who moved
in the matter, attempted to arouse pub-
lic sentiment upon the subject, and, as
there was no newspaper printed iu the
village, he posted up a handbill with a
list of thirteen accidents, and cases of
serious annoyance, that had occurred ;
and shortly after posted up ten addi-
tional cases, signed with his well-known
initials, to show by facts that the prac-
tice resisted was really a dangerous one.
These posters were removed by the
selectmen. He then printed a letter,
stating the case fully, and giving an
account of twenty accidents, and placed
a copy in every box in the village
post-office, addressed to the chief resi-
dents. One was also sent to the edit-
or of the " Springfield Eepublican,"
who made a notice of it, and one hun-
dred copies of his paper were distrib-
uted in the village, all of which failed
to produce any effect.

Now, our interest in this matter is
purely scientific. We take the data,
find their explanation, and draw con-
clusions respecting the true grade of
Stockbridge society. ^

The facts in a sentence are simply
these : Half a dozen boys, in the pur-

suit of a selfish gratification, persist in
violating the rights of citizens, and this
conduct is sustained by the community
which yet acknowledges the outrage.

And how is it to be explained ? By
the indifference of the people to the
subject as a matter of right and wrong ;
or a laxity of moral sense. The gen-
tleman who moved in the matter, and
should have been regarded as a public
benefactor, was not supported, but was
condemned for his action. Of course,
when such an issue was once raised,
there was tenfold necessity to put down
the openly immoral party ; but the
raising of the issue only cowed their
opponents, and disclosed the absence
of moral backbone in the Stockbridge
character. " It was really such a petty
matter, such small business, to be med-
dling with the enjoyments of the dear
boys ! " — from which we get an idea of
the quality of Stockbridge ethics, which
is far too much the American sort.
Small trespasses are to be tolerated, and
only outrages that comport with the
scale of American ideas are to be rep-
robated. Abuses that have in them
something of the breadth of the conti-
nent or the length of the Mississippi, or
the bigness of the national debt, are
worthy to excite indignation ; but mere
sidewalk offenses — nonsense !

It is to be presumed, of course, that
Stockbridge education conforms to the
standard of its public opinion. The
boys are sent to school, and taught
book -lessons in morality, including sen-
sitiveness to the rightful claims of oth-
ers, and especially solicitude for the
weak and helpless, and then they take
lessons in the out-of-door practical
morality of running over baby-car-
riages, upsetting old people, and dis-
turbing everybody, because the side-
walk is a little nicer than the street for
bicycle riding.

From all of which we may fairly
infer the grade of Stockbridge civili-
zation. Its people may be refined and
educated, affluent, polished, and devo-

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tional; but they are, nevertheless, bar-
barians : for the degree of barbarism in
any community is measured by the im-
punity with which its members seek
tbeir gratification at each other's ex-
pense.

LITERARY NOTICES.

George Ripley. By Octayius Brooks
Frothingham. Boston : Houghton, Mif-
flin & Co. Pp. 321. Price, $1.50.

Mr. Frothingham's life of Ripley is a very
pleasant and entertaining, if not in the high-
est degree instructive, book upon its sub-
ject. As a biographer, in this case he has
the advantage of having been long and inti-
mately acquainted with the man whose life
he delineates, of having a similar culture
and a broad sympathy with his aims. But
while these qualifications are favorable to
the appreciation of Mr. Ripley's character,
they are not so favorable to that criticism
of it which is perhaps necessary to extract
the highest lesson from its career. Mr.
Frothingham has given us a model biogra-
phy from a literary point of view, but we
suspect that in future the work of describ-
ing men's lives must more and more pass
into the hands of those who have a scien-
tific preparation for the work. We must
have something more than the mere narra-
tion of a career in a fine literary form ; we
must have analysis and a critical judgment
of character in relation to the circumstances
in which it was displayed.

Mr. Ripley's life was divided into several
stages. He was a bright, clear-headed boy
of unusual capacity, fond of books, and
learning from them with great facility. He
accepted the customary course of study,
and went through college early and with
distinction. He was absorbed in classical
studies, and paid very little attention to
science of any kind. His culture was there-
fore one-sided, and he was in consequence
to no small degree the victim to his uni-
versity education.

From college he passed into professional
life, taking the line of divinity. In prepara-
tion for this he had crammed German meta-
physics to an inordinate degree, and brought
a large theological erudition to his pulpit

labors. He worked zealously and most con-
scientiously in this field for upward of a
dozen years, and, being dissatisfied with the
result, decided to abandon it. We are of
opinion that with his strong common sense,
if he had any fair share of scientific culti-
vation, he would either have kept out of the
clerical profession or would have succeeded
in it by subordinating theology to truth and
making an independent career. He had abun-
dant talent for this purpose. But, as it was,
his theology broke down and he left it.

Mr. Ripley then entered upon the third
stage of his career, which was both very nat-
ural and not a little remarkable. Earnestly
desiring to realize a nobler ideal of life than
is fulfilled by the present state of society,
even under a religious organization which
he had faithfully tried, he resolved to em-
bark in a new social project that promised
to yield higher satisfactions than are derived
from the existing state of society.

He joined the association at Brook Farm,
now a curiosity of history, and resolved to
devote himself to the practical realization
of a more harmonious social life by an ex-
perimental trial of what is possible in this
direction. He had eminent coadjutors, who
were animated by the same high aspirations,
but Ripley was the life and soul of the
movement. Never, perhaps, was before
gathered a more sincere and unselfish band
of devotees than those who made the at-
tempt to carry out a reconstructive social
reform at Brook Farm. The experiment
failed, of course, and Ripley was left sad-
dled with its debts, all of which he after-
ward most honorably discharged.

We say Brook Farm failed " of course,"
and this for the very simple reason that
ideal states of society implying natures of a
high grade can not be suddenly manufactured
out of materials long shaped and adapted
to a lower social condition. The adventurers
of Brook Farm were sentimentalists, enthu-
siasts, and philanthropists, amiable and ear-
nest, but of the literary type which implies
a highly cultivated ignorance of all the nat-
ural laws by which terrestrial affairs are
governed. If George Ripley had studied
natural things when in college for half the
time, and got some tolerable idea of the
limitations of human nature under inexora-
ble natural ordinances, he would not have

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

plunged into so crude and futile an experi-
ment as that at Brook Farm. Of course, it
was a generous and noble, an heroic and
a chivalric endeavor, and creditable to the
hearts of those who turned their backs up-
on a selfish and sordid civilization to achieve
a more harmonious and elevated life ; but
it was discreditable to their heads that they
had not the intelligence to know that it
must end just where it did end — in hopeless
failure. Brook Farm collapsed because it
was a project of impracticables whose edu-
cation had been classical instead of scien-
tific.

With the failure of Brook Farm Mr.
Ripley took to the vocation of literature.
Tired of making the world over, he resolved
to accept it as it is, and make the most of it.
His success was small at first, but he was
an excellent critic, a fine writer, and an in-
defatigable worker, and these qualities were
sure to win success. His career as a jour-
nalist and editor is fully and admirably de-
scribed by Mr. Frothingham, and is very
interesting ; but it would be easy to show
that the lack of the scientific element in his
culture was as much a drawback in his later
labors as in those that preceded them.

The New Botany. A Lecture on the Best
Method of teaching the Science. By
W. J. Beal, M. Sc, Ph. D. Second edi-
tion, revised. Philadelphia : C. H. Ma-
rot. 1882. Pp. 16. Price, 25 cents.

There is no class of persons who need
teaching more than teachers. There are a
few born educators whose native instinct,
if not perverted by bad teaching, prompts
them to pursue natural and rational meth-
ods for teaching others, but the average
teacher teaches as he himself was taught,
so that bad methods are propagated and
spread indefinitely. The author of the
pamphlet before us draws an interesting and
life-like picture of the old way of teaching
botany, in which the sole end and aim was
to memorize the parts of the plant, and
then learn its name by the aid of an artifi-
cial key, thus obtaining a most formal intro-
duction to the stranger.

The new botany began to appear in this
country in 1862, and includes a study of the
subjects as set forth by Darwin, Sachs, Lub-
bock, Bessey, and others. It studies objects
before books, and sets the pupil to thinking,

investigating, and experimenting for him-
self. Teaching the new botany properly
" is simply giving the thirsty a chance to
drink." It also creates a thirst which the
study gratifies, but never entirely satisfies.
For young pupils object-lessons are very
popular for a while, but in most cases the
interest soon wears away ; there is too much
pouring in, and too little worked out by the
pupil. They bring forth the combined in-
formation of all members of a class, but
add little or nothing by way of research.
To be really appreciated, a student should
earn his facts in the study of biology. The
author says : " In the whole course in bot-
any I keep constantly in view how best to
prepare students to acquire information for
themselves with readiness and accuracy.
This is a training for power, and is of far
more value than the mere information ac-
quired during a course of study in natural
science."

The difficulty in the way of teaching the
new botany is a serious, almost a fatal one,
namely, it requires an actual knowledge of
the subject on the part of the teacher ; it
can not be taught, like history and geogra-
phy, by text-books; and, in addition, the
teacher must have tact as well as knowl-
edge. We have not yet reached the millen-
nium of education, when each science shall
be taught only by its true disciples and in-
vestigators.

Is Consumption contagious ? And can it
be transmitted by Means of Food ?
By Herbert C. Clapp, A. M., M. D.
Second edition. Boston : Otis Clapp &
Son. 1882. Pp. 187. Price, 15 cents.

That a second edition of such a book
should be called for within two years after
its first appearance is sufficient proof of the
interest felt in the subject by the people as
well as the profession. The author does
not set out to prove that consumption is
contagious, but presents the arguments ad-
vanced on both sides, with such an array of
cases that the reader feels almost convinced
that it must be either infectious or conta-
gious. Koch's discovery, which has been
made since the first edition, is referred to
in the new preface and described in the ap-
pendix. That this discovery has an impor-
tant bearing on the question propounded
by Dr. Clapp is evident, and in general is

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strongly favorable to an affirmative answer.
We need not here enumerate the various
other reasons presented on this side of the
question, such as the immunity of barbar-
ous races from phthisis until they begin to
be associated with the whites, its prevalence
in convents, harems, and barracks, the fre-
quency of the disease in wives who have
nursed tuberculous husbands, etc. Whether
the reader admits that the case is proved,
the dictates of reason favor the observance
of certain precautions, such as not allowing
the same person to remain in too constant
attendance on consumptives, nor permitting
another to sleep with them, securing the
most perfect ventilation possible, and the
exercise of great cleanliness with immediate
removal and destruction of sputa.

The remainder of the book is devoted
to a discussion of the effect of tuberculous
food, a subject of no less practical impor-
tance than the former. The occurrence of
tuberculosis among cows and oxen being
quite frequent, it is important that every
possible means be employed to prevent the
consumption of such beef by human beings.
Milk from cows affected by this disease is j
even more to be feared, owing to the diffi-
culty of preventing its sale, and the fact \
that the greater part of it is consumed
without cooking. In addition to this we
must consider that milk frequently forms
the entire food of young children, and is an
important article of diet with invalids, both
of whom are more liable to attacks of any
new disease than are older and more healthy
persons. Aside from the dangerous infect-
ive properties, such milk is objectionable
as an article of food, owing to its deficiency
in fat, sugar, and the nitrogenous elements.
The only remedy against these dangers
from beef and milk is to be found in a care-
ful, honest governmental inspection of all
the meat that comes into our markets, es-
pecially at the slaughter-houses, and of the
cows that furnish our milk, with particular
reference to the existence of this disease.
It may be a difficult and expensive under-
taking, but, for our safety, it must be done.
The book, on the whole, is not intended
to quiet the fears of nervous people, or to
convince the timid that there is little to be
feared from the dreaded scourge — consump-
tion.

The Sun. By Professor C. A. Young.

New edition.

We are glad to see a new and carefully
revised edition of this admirable and stand-
ard work, and also that successive editions
are called for abroad. Great pains have
been taken by the author to give the high-
est accuracy to the text, and he has ap-
pended, in the form of notes, all the new
and important information that has accu-
mulated since the first issue. None of these
additions discredit what may be regarded as
established facts and principles relating to
the sun, but they constitute interesting ex-
tensions of solar knowledge, together with
new and ingenious speculations, the value
of which time alone can determine. Pro-
fessor Young has done well in thus keeping
his book sharply up to the time, by which
it will maintain its leading position in astro-
nomical literature.

La Navigation Electrique (Electric Navi-
gation). By Georges Dart. Paris : J„
Baudry. Pp. 65, with 17 Illustrations in
the text.

The first part of this work gives the
history of the attempts to apply electrical
force to the propulsion of boats and air-
ships, including the first essay by M. de Ja-
cobi in Kussia in 1839, and the experiment
of M. Trouv6, which received the applause
due to an apparent success at the Paris Ex-
position of Electricity last year. A con-
trollable balloon proposed by M. Tissandier,
and the electro-motor which he would apply
to its propulsion, are also mentioned. The
second part of the work embraces a full
and detailed description of M. Trouve's
electrical motor, its application, and the de-
grees of speed attained with it. The whole
is hopeful for the ultimate success of electro-
navigation.

Annual Report of the Board of Regents
of the Smithsonian Institution for
1 880. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. 772.
This report, though tardy in appearing,
has a permanent value that justifies a no-
tice of it at any time. The record of work
done is very full in notices of explorations
and special investigations in which the In-
stitution has had a part ; the list of acqui-

LITERARY NOTICES.

2 79

sitions to the collections and of exchanges
is quite large. The " Kecord of Scientific
Progress," which forms one of the appen-
dices, is designed to take the place in part
of the " Annual Record of Science and In-
dustry," formerly published by Harper &
Brothers, and contains reviews in astrono-
my, by Professor Edward S. Holden ; geolo-
gy, by George W. Hawes, Ph. D. ; physics
and chemistry, by Professor George F. Bar-
ker ; mineralogy, by George W. Hawes,
Ph.D.; botany, by Professor William G.
Farlow ; zoology, by Theodore Gill; and
anthropology, by Otis T. Mason. Other
important articles in the appendix are " Ab-
stracts of the Smithsonian Correspondence
relative to Aboriginal Remains in the United
States," a description of the Luray Cavern,
Virginia ; a discussion of the barometric
observations of Professor Snell, of Amherst
College ; an account of investigations rela-
tive to illuminating materials, by Professor
Joseph Henry ; a bibliography of HcrscheFs
writings ; and reports of astronomical ob-
servatories.

The Peaks in Darien, with some other
Inquiries touching Concerns of the
Soul and the Body. An Octave of
Essays. By Frances Power Cobbe.
Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp. 303.
Price, $1.50.

The first of the essays in this book,
" Magnanimous Atheism," affirms the in-
efficiency of that creed of agnosticism, or
of Comtism, to frame a rule for moral guid-
ance ; the second, " Hygeiolatry," disputes
the doctrine that bodily health is the chief
good " for which personal freedom, cour-
age, humanity, and purity, ought all to be
sacrificed," and argues that there are num-
bers of instances in which disregard of life
and health is proper and even a duty. Com-
ing to particulars, it attacks the English
laws for the regulation of vice. Another
essay, on " Zoophily," is a vigorous but
one-sided protest against vivisection. In
other papers, Schopenhauer and his pessi-
mism are assailed, and the fitness of wo-
men for the ministry of religion is dis-
cussed. The essay which gives the title to
the book cites a number of instances of
cases wherein, in the opinion of the author,
" indications seem to have been given of
the perception by the dying of the blessed

presences revealed to them, even as the veil
of the flesh has dropped away." The papers
afford lively reading, but the book is one of
opinions and sharp thrusts rather than ar-

guments.

The Fire-Protection of Mills; and Con-
struction of Mill-Floors : Containing
Tests of Full-Size Wood Mill Columns.
By C. J. H. Woodbury. New York :
John Wiley & Sons. 18S2. Pp. 196.
Illustrated.

The avowed object of this book is to
reduce the risk of fire and its attendant
evils, as applied to mills, but many of the
precautions are applicable to other struct-
ures, and especially to all factories. The
first portion is devoted to a consideration
of those matters of equipment and general
management which experience has proved
to be efficient in the fire-protection of mills.
Under these we notice some practical sug-
gestions regarding fire-pails, and where and
how they should be kept ready for use. The
various forms of fire-pumps are described
and illustrated, the advantages and disad-
vantages of each being carefully stated.
The next subjects in order are hydrants,
stand-pipes, drip-couplings, hose-valves, and
nozzles ; also a table showing the quantity
of water discharged per minute from a one-
inch nozzle under pressure of from fifteen
to eighty-five pounds per square inch. Sev-
eral systems of " sprinklers," or perforated
pipes, intended for the more hazardous
parts of mills, are described. The efficiency
of these is often impaired by rust and paint
obstructing the orifices. The latter should
be guarded against by placing tacks in each
hole before the sprinklers are painted ; the
former by the use of a brass bushing. The
automatic sprinkler, the author says, is one
of the oldest devices for special fire ap-
paratus, the first patent having been granted
in 1806. A large number of automatic
sprinklers are figured, full size or half size.

The next subject treated is the causes
of mill-fires, among which we find that
spontaneous combustion holds a prominent
place, second only to friction and foreign
substances in the picker. Matches and
lighting apparatus, of course, are dangerous
elements, as well as lightning, fire-works, and
stoves. In one case a freshet caused such
a rapid oxidation of iron turnings as to set

280

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fire to the sawdust that was mixed with
them.

The advantages of electric lighting for
mills are dwelt on at some length, the dif-
ferent systems being described and the cost
compared. The latter contains the results
actually obtained at the Globe Mills in
Woonsocket, where the expense of lighting
a weave-room three hundred feet by sixty-
six, by gas, was nearly twice the cost of
lighting the same room by electricity, gas
costing $2.20 per thousand feet. Only one
hundred and seventeen incandescent lamps
were employed, where two hundred and six-
teen gas-burners had been used, making the
cost per light very nearly the same. The
dangers of electric lighting are admitted,
and the precautions to be taken are enumer-
ated.

The second portion of the book treats
of the restriction of injury from fire by
means of the application of sound princi-
ples of building pertaining to slow-burning
construction. The features of bad con-
struction and the elements of safe construc-
tion are considered, and formulae are given
for the strength of beams, planks, floors, etc.

The book is handsomely printed in large
clear type, on good paper, and bound in
" fiery red " cloth, which makes it rather
suggestive. It is a book that could be read
with advantage by many others than build-
ers and owners of mills, and it is to be
hoped that its practical suggestions may
accomplish what its author aims at — a re-
duction in the number and extent of mill-
fires, with the attendant loss of life and
property.

Easy Star Lessons. By Richard A. Proc-
tor. Illustrated with Forty-eight Star
Maps and Thirty-five Woodcuts. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1882. Pp.
219. Price, $2.50.

The object of this last book of the dis-
tinguished astronomer is to teach the star
groups, and enable the learner to find them
on the sky. Instead of the usual star maps
that represent the entire visible heavens
and require to be held upside down, or side-
ways, in tracing out the constellations, four
maps are given for each month of the year,
namely, a northern, a southern, an eastern,
and a western map, making forty-eight in

all. The maps are printed in blue, the stars
in white ; the principal stars of each con-
stellation are joined by dotted lines, and the
names of the constellation are given, but
the usual imaginary pictures of bulls, fishes,
and dragons are all omitted, so that the map
more nearly resembles the sky than is usual.
Lines are drawn to represent the horizons
of New Orleans, Louisville, Philadelphia,
and Boston ; also of London, England. The
zenith of each place is likewise given. Sev-
eral pages of letterpress accompany each
set of star maps, and explain the method
to be followed in tracing out each group,
and woodcuts are employed in the text to
exhibit the position of the larger stars as
related to the bulls and bears of the sky.
This method of separating the real from the
imginary will be a boon to the star-gazer
and the student, for it is very pleasant to
know the stars — to be able, like Milton's
hermit, to

"... Bit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show."

RErORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION

for the Year 1880. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 914.

The commissioner asserts that the im-
portant relation which his department sus-
tains to the interests of education is be-
coming constantly more apparent ; and that
the year covered by the present report was
marked by a great increase in the amount
and value of the information received at
the office with reference to the conduct of
education in our own and foreign countries,
and by a corresponding increase in the pub-
lic demand for the distribution of informa-
tion. The department is endeavoring to
secure a more exact particularity and defi-
niteness in the educational statistics from
the different States, so that they may show
more clearly the condition of the schools,
the proficiency of the pupils, and the degree
of attention that is given to each branch of
study. It has succeeded so far that the re-
ports from Ohio give the number of pupils
in each of the branches taught, and those
of more than a dozen other States give ap-
proaches to the result. Advance is claimed
in the consideration shown in the arrange-
ment of courses of study to psychological
conditions and the necessities of pupil life.
An approach has been made in the last ten

LITERARY NOTICES.

281

years toward uniformity in the general out-
lines of the school systems of the different
States, " which seems remarkable in view of
the diversity of educational conditions in
the several States prior to 1870, the oppo-
site theories which prevailed in different
sections, and the great contrast between the
newly settled States and older common-
wealths in social conditions and available
resources." Information concerning rural
schools being given now fuller and in more
explicit shape than formerly, their deficien-
cies and wants are in consequence more
clearly perceived, and there is ground for
belief that improvement in them will be
steady and rapid. Women's opportunities
to influence education as voters and school-
officers have been greatly enlarged in many
States, but the commissioner regrets to say
that the women have shown more indiffer-
ence to them than he had expected. The
usual annual review of the different classes
and grades of schools in the United States
is given, but, while it shows the general im-
provement in efficiency that was to be ex-
pected, reveals nothing new that calls for
especial remark. Papers are appended on
"Education in Foreign Countries," "Indus-
trial Education," "Popular Science Teach-
ing," " Evening, Army, and Summer
Schools," "Myopia," the "Physiology of
Reading and of Writing," and other topics
bearing upon the advancement and improve-
ment of education.

Manual of Blow-pipe Analysis, Qualita-
tive and Quantitative, with a Com-
plete System of Determinative Miner-
alogy. By H. B. Cornwall, Professor
of Analytical Chemistry and Mineralogy
in the John C. Green School of Science,
Princeton, N. J. New York : D. Van
Nostrand, 1882. Pp. 308.

The title of the book before us very
fully explains its nature and purpose. Pro-
fessor Cornwall's skill as a chemist and ex-
perience as a teacher peculiarly fit him for
the preparation of a manual that shall sup-
ply the student with all the needed infor-
mation for pursuing a complete course in
blow-pipe analysis.

The work is similar in plan, but wider
even in scope, than Plattner's well-known
manual, which was translated by Professor
Cornwall in 1872, and has since been the

standard text-book. In the present work,
many details have been added which tend
to lessen the labors of the instructor, and
adapt the book to the use of students who
are working alone, although it will be read-
ily understood that few persons will be able
to acquire skill in a branch requiring such
delicacy of manipulation without personal
instruction. The apparatus and operations
are first fully described and carefully illus-
trated by numerous woodcuts ; special tests
are then given for each of the elements, in-
cluding even the rare metals, for in blow-
pipe analysis it frequently happens that the
presence of only one or two substances is
to be sought, and it is then unnecessary to
go through a complete analysis. The fourth
chapter, however, contains special schemes
for complex substances, and methods for the
examination of metallurgical products and
paints ; also Professor Egleston's scheme
for complete analysis, as it appeared in
the author's translation of Plattner. The
system has been devised with the view of
employing the blow-pipe to the exclusion, as
far as possible, of wet methods, but a few
directions are given for the general opera-
tions in wet analysis, and a list of reagents
both solid and liquid required for the latter.
Mention is made of the use of citric acid, as
recommended by Professor H. C. Bolton,
for decomposing minerals ; also of the glyc-
erine test for boracic acid. We can not
help feeling that the addition of a list of
Bunsen's " flame reactions " would have
added to the value and completeness of the
book. The use of spectrum analysis is very
briefly described, and an (uncolored) litho-
graphic plate shows the position of the lines
and bands which characterize the metals
usually sought for in this way.

In the chapter on quantitative analysis,
the method of assaying gold, silver, cop-
per, lead, bismuth, tin, mercury, and co-
balt and nickel ores is fully described,
and the apparatus employed are illustrated.
In this sort of work the automatic ap-
paratus, described on pages 180, 181, are
very convenient, as a long-continued and
steady blast is essential. As the quan-
tity of ore that can be assayed is very
small, the operations of quantitative blow-
piping are very delicate, and an exceedingly
accurate balance is an absolute necessity.

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is well adapted to the assay of alloys, but
when ores are to be assayed very great care
is required to obtain a fair sample in so
small a quantity of material. With these
drawbacks, blow-pipe analysis offers many
advantages over wet analysis, as it requires
no special laboratory, and the apparatus are
much more portable.

Chapter VIII contains a description of
the important ores and coal, and the last
chapter is devoted to determinative miner-
alogy. In this chapter, the minerals, like
plants in a botanical key, are subjected to
an artificial classification depending on cer-
tain external properties. The classes are
then subdivided according to their reaction
before the blow-pipe, such as fusibility, odor,
or coat on charcoal. The method of writing
the mineral formulas is that followed by
Plattner and Kobell.

Professor Cornwall's book is, on the
whole, so complete and practical, that it
will soon take the place of the larger and
more expensive manual of Plattner in our
leading scientific schools.

Catalogue of 1,098 Standard Clock and
Zodiacal Stars. Prepared under the
direction of Simon Newcomb. Pp. 314.

This catalogue was commenced at the
Naval Observatory for the purpose of ob-
taining standard positions of reference stars
for use in the lunar and planetary theories,
especially in the reduction of the older
occultations. In 1877 the unfinished work
was turned over to the office of the Ameri-
can Ephemeris, and has been completed by
Chauncey Thomas, U. S. N., under the per-
sonal direction of Professor Newcomb.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

A Guide to Modern English History. By
William Corv. Part II. 1830-'35. New York :
Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 567.

HiBtorv of thfi Pacific States of North Amer-
ica. By Hubert Howe Bancroft. Vol. I. Cen-
tral America. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft &
Co. Pp. 704.

Practical Life and the Stndv of Man. Bv J.
Wilson, Ph. D. Newark, New York : J. Wilson
& Son. Pp. 400. $1.50.

The American Citizen's Mannal. Part I.
Governments, the Electorate, the Civil Service.
Edited hy Worthington C. Ford. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 146. $1.

Speech and its Defects. Considered Physi-
ologically, Pathologically, Historically, and Re-
medially. By Samnel O. L. Potter, M. A., M. D.
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 117.

How to Succeed. A Series of Essays by Va-
rious Authors. Edited, with an Introduction, by
the Kev. Lyman Abbott, D. D. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sous. Pp. 131. 50 cents.

Kchelling's Transcendental Idealism. A Crit-
ical Exposition. By John Watson, LL. D.. F.
R. S. C. Chicago : S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 251.
$1.25.

Swift. By Leslie Stephen. New York : Har-
per & Brothers. Pp. 205. 75 cents.

Sterne. By H. D. Traill. New York : Harper
& Brothers. Pp. 173. 75 cents.

Hints for Sketching in Water-Color from
Nature. By Thomas Hatton. Edited by Susan N.
Carter. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
69. 50 cents.

Drawing in Black and White. Charcoal, Pen-
cil, Crayon, and Pen-and-Iuk. By Mrs. Susan
N. Carter. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp. 55. 50 cents.

Potable Water and the Relative EfiBciency of
Different Methods of detecting Impurities. By
Lharles Watson Folkard. New York: D. Van
Nostrand. Pp. 138. 50 cents.

In Memoriam. Benjamin B. Redding. San
Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.
Pp. 18.

Is Tubercular Consumption a Contagious and
Parasitic Disease ? By Bela W. Cogshall, M. D.,
of Flint, Michigan. Pp. 12.

On Nocturnal Epilepsy, and its Relations to
Somnambulism. By M. G. Ecbeverria, M. D.
Lewes : " Sussex Advertiser " Office. Pp. 32.

Forestry Bulletins of the Census Office, 18 to
22.

A Plan for securing Observations of the Va-
riable Stars. By Edward C. Pickering. Cam-
bridge : John Wilson & Son. Pp. 15.

An Evolution Aspect of the Healing of
Wounds, with Deductions as to Treatment. By
C. Pitfield Mitchell, M.R. C. S., 30 E. 35th Street,
New York. Pp. 13.

The Pathology and Philosophy of Sea-Sick-
ness. By C. Pitfield Mitchell, M. R. C. S., 30 E.
35th Street, New York. Pp. 16.

Subscales, including Verniers. By Henry H.
Ludlow, U. S. A. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
Pp. 16.

On the Prevention of Fires in Theatres. By

C. John Hexamer. Philadelphia : " Merrihew "
Print. Pp. 18.

Some Points on the Administration of Anaes-
thetics. By George H. Rohe. M. D. Baltimore :
Office of the " Medical Chronicle." Pp. 18.

Use of the Ecrasenr for curing Deep-Seated
Fistula-in-Ano. By J. M. F. Gaston, M. D., of
Campinas, Brazil. Pp. 8.

Report of the Bureau of Statistics relative to
the Imports, Exports, Immigration, and Navi-
gation of the United States for the Year ended
June 30, 1882. Washington : Government Pnnt-
ing-Office. Pp. 112.

Analyses of Beethoven's First and Second
Symphonies. By George Grove, D. C. L. Bos-
ton : George H. Ellis. Pp. 16 each. 15 cents

Address delivered by the President of the
Homeopathic Medical Society of Pennsylvania.
September 5, 1882. By John C. Morgan, M. D.
Pittsburg: Stevenson & Foster. Pp. 13.

Radiant Heat an Exception to the Second
Law of Thermo-dynamics. By H. 1 . Eddy, f n.

D. Cincinnati. Pp. 12.

» The American Journal of Physiology." Ed-
ited by D. H. Fernandes, M. D. Vol. I, No. 1.
Indianapolis, Indiana. Pp. 8.

The Gulf Stream. Additional Data from the
Investigations of the Coast and Geodetic Steamer
Blake. By Commander J. R. Bartlett, U. b. N.
Pp. 16. With Map.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

283

Phonetics of the Kayowe Language. By Al-
bert 3. Gatschett. Pp. 6.

A Dictionary of Musicand Musicians. Edited
by George Grove, D. C. L. Parts XV and XVI.
London and New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp.
272. $2.

Sanitary Tracts. Issued by the Citizens'
Sanitary Society of Brooklyn. Pp. 12. 5 cents.

Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club. Transac-
tions No. 3. Ottawa, Canada : Citizens' Print-
ing and Publishing Company. Pp. 60. With
Two Plates.

The Practice of Gynaecology in Ancient
Times. By Edward W. Jenks, M. D., LL. D.
Chicago, Illinois. Pp. 46. With Two Plates.

Statistics in Relation to Gold and Silver.
Compiled by E. J. Farmer. Cleveland, Ohio.
Pp. 37. 25 cents.

The Analogy between Sound and Color. By
G. G. Finn. Cleveland, Ohio. Pp. 22.

The Muscles of the Limbs of the Raccoon.
By Harrison Allen, M. D. Pp. 30.

Tornadoes. Their Special Characteristics
and Dangers. With Practical Directions for
Protection of Life and Property. By John P.
Fiuley. Kansas City, Missouri ; Ramsay, Millett
& Hudson. Pp. 29.

Tornado Studies for 1882. By John P. Finley.
Kansas City, Missouri : Ramsay, Millett & Hud-
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Notes on Physiological Optics. By W. Le
Conte Stevens. Pp. 8.

Unscientific Materialism. A Criticism of
Tyndall's " Fragments of Science." Fifth edi-
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A New View of our Weather System. By
Isaac P. Noyes. New York: Fowler & Wells.
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POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The Flora of North America.— Professor
Asa Gray gave an historical account, at the
last meeting of the American Association, of
the study and compilation of the North Amer-
ican flora. The first "Flora" of the coun-
try was published by Michaux, in 1S03. It
embraced plants representing the whole re-
gion from Hudson Bay to Florida, and con-
tainedl, 530 species. The work of Pursh fol-
lowed about twenty years afterward, and
represented a much smaller territory, not ex-
tending west of Virginia or north of Lake
Champlain, but contained 740 genera and
3,700 species. Dr. Gray himself started on
his great botanical work in 1 830, while he was
an assistant in a doctor's office in New York.
It is not exactly known when Dr. John Tor-
rey conceived the idea of publishing a third
" Flora of North America," but he invited
Nuttall to join him in the work as early
as 1832. Arrangements were afterward
made with Dr. Gray, and the first volume
of the conjoint work was issued in 1838.
It was generally thought that the orders

remaining to be described could be soon
worked out, and the " Flora " completed, but
the rapid publication which the fulfillment
of such an anticipation required was not
possible. Dr. Torrcy had already been to
Europe and spent a considerable time in the
study of foreign herbaria. Dr. Gray also
visited Europe at the end of 1838, and spent
several months in the same work, paying
especial attention to the American herbaria
of Michaux, Pursh, De Candolle, and others.
A second volume of 500 pages appeared in
1840, and carried the " Flora " to the end of
the Compositce. The work was then inter-
rupted by the pressure of other duties, so that
the third volume was not added to the series
till 1880. The labor of pushing the work to
completion is very difficult now compared
with what Pursh endured when the species
were fewer and the number of specimens
collected of each was many times less. The
first volume of the present '' Flora " con-
tained about twice as many species as Pursh
gave for the same orders ; and the number
of species in these families has increased
greatly in the thirty years since its publica-
tion. American flowering plants can not
now be represented with less than 10,000
species, and the number is increasing daily,
so that soon 12,000 may be required. The
amount of material collected is vast ; addi-
tions are constantly pouring into the Har-
vard herbarium, and the time of the com-
pilers is severely taxed to work it over.
The work in the future must be divided up
among many persons, each doing a part ;
and Dr. Gray earnestly solicits the co-opera-
tion of all botanists.

The Proposed Geological Map of En-
rope. — The International Geological Con-
gress, which met at Bologna last year, de-
cided upon the preparation of a geological
map of Europe, which should exemplify a
uniform terminology and a uniform system
of coloring, and appointed an International
Committee to superintend the work. The
execution of the map will, of course, re-
quire many years, but its general plan and
the regulations under which it is to be
carried on have been already provisionally
agreed upon. The map is to be published
at Berlin, under the immediate direction of
Messrs. Beyrich and nauchecorne, of the

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Royal Prussian Geological Institute. The
data from each nation will be furnished
through its representative on the Interna-
tional Committee, if it has one ; or, if it is a
small state, and is not thus represented, by
its vice-presidents in the Congress. The
map will include the whole basin of the
Mediterranean and all of Europe to the
eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, and
will be made upon a scale of 1 to 1,500,000.
It will therefore cover a space of 372 by 336
centimetres, or about twelve by eleven feet,
and will, for convenience of use and bind-
ing, be divided into forty-nine sections of
about twenty-two by sixteen inches each.
The primary object of the map will be to
give a clear representation of geological
conditions. It will not be practicable con-
sistently with this to give particular at-
tention to orographical details. The river
systems, the principal towns, the more im-
portant mountain-ranges, and the curves in-
dicating sea-depths, will be denoted so far
as seems fitting. The topographical basis
of the map is to be reconstructed on the
proposed scale under the supervision of
Professor H. Kiepert, of Berlin. The total
expense of the work is estimated at 80,000
marks, or in the neighborhood of $20,000,
and is to be borne by the states interested,
the eight largest states contributing each
one ninth, and the smaller states together
the other ninth, of the whole. The sub-
scription price for the first edition will be
80 marks, or about $20, a copy of the whole
map. The price will afterward be raised to
100 marks, or $25.

Origin ot Petroleum. — The Huron and
Cleveland (Devonian) black shales of Ohio
contain from 2 to 22 per cent of organic
matter, which Dr. Newberry regards as of
marine origin, and are the source of some
of the petroleum-wells. Decomposition has
been carried on so far that all structure
seems to have been obliterated; but Dr.
Orton stated, in a paper read before the
American Association, that he had discov-
ered the organic substance to consist of spo-
rangia or spore-cases of Lycopodiacece. He
had found numerous resinous disks of from
zhu to -fa of an inch in diameter, translu-
cent, amber - colored, appearing as a rusty
crust, with ridged and furrowed surfaces,

burning freely, insoluble in alcohol, and
sometimes having stem -like attachments.
Different beds afford disks of different sizes.
The Pennsylvania and New York petroleum-
wells originate in the equivalent of the Ohio
black shales.

A Medal to Pastenr. — A medal commem-
orative of his remarkable discoveries was
presented to M. Pasteur at the sitting of
the French Academy of Sciences, June 26th,
by M. Dumas, on behalf of a committee of
scientific men and friends and admirers of
the distinguished investigator. M. Dumas
reviewed briefly the great services M. Pas-
teur had rendered to science, art, and indus-
try, through his researches among the vital
organisms of fermentation, and closed by
saying : " My dear Pasteur, your life has
only known successes. The scientific meth-
od, of which you make certain use, owes
you its finest triumphs. The Normal School
is proud to count you among the number of
its students ; the Academy of Sciences is
elated at your researches ; France ranks you
among her glories. . . . Science, agricult-
ure, industry, humanity, will feel eternal
gratitude to you, and your name will live
in their annals among the most illustrious
and the most venerated." Pasteur replied
modestly, acknowledging his obligations to
his teachers, and said : " Hitherto great eu-
logies have inflamed my ardor, and only in-
spired the idea of rendering myself worthy
of them by new efforts ; but those which
you have addressed to me, in the name of
the Academy and of learned societies, truly
overpower me."

Were the Monnd-Bnilders Indians? —

Dr. Hoy read a paper at the American As-
sociation in support of the view that the
mound-builders were the ancestors of our
present Indian race. He held that the age
of the mounds had been exaggerated. The
growth of large trees upon them is not cer-
tain evidence of great age, for some trees
grow very fast. It was also a mistake to
suppose that the mound-builders could be
distinguished from Indians by their being
an agricultural people. The Indians have
largely tilled the ground. De Soto lived
with his army four years among the Indians
of the South, and quartered his two hun-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

dred and eleven horses for forty days in one
spot. The absence of traditions about the
mound builders can not be regarded as evi-
dence of separate origin ; it is a fact that
the Winnebagoes and Menomonees have no
traditions going as far back as to Marquette,
or even to John Carver, not a century ago ;
and, in truth, their traditions are so short
that they deny that the Indians ever used
stone arrow-heads. The author concluded
that there was abundant evidence of an In-
dian origin in the mounds — including the
finding of European implements in them
that must have been placed there when they
were made — from the Gulf of Mexico to
Northern Wisconsin.

Dr. IIoy also discussed the question of
the origin of the copper implements that are
found in the neighborhood of Lake Superior.
He remarked that the explorers of the St.
Lawrence, Lake Superior, and the Eastern
coast, all say that the Indians had these im-
plements, and that the copper-mines of Lake
Superior show no evidences of great an-
tiquity. The Chippewas and Winnebagoes
both have copper ornaments. Professor But-
ler has a copper spear-head, plowed up in
Wisconsin, containing part of an iron rivet,
which had doubtless been made or used
after the Indians had traded with the
whites, and had had access to iron. The
author was of the opinion that the Iudians
of the Lake Superior district made copper
implements for themselves, and also for ex-
tensive barter, and did not see how any rea-
sonable man could assert that the Indians
knew nothing about the use of the native
metal. Professor Putnam discussed the same
subject in his paper on the North American
copper implements and ornaments under his
charge in the Peabody Museum. He had
no doubt that the Indians used copper, and
that its use was contemporary with that of
polished stone implements. The native
copper was hammered, not molded, into
shape ; and the speaker described the way
iu which the processes were carried out.
Some ornaments that had been connected
with Christianity were really only shaped as
they were easiest to make. Some classic-
al-looking ear-rings were shown, which had
been made from native copper beaten
out.

Formation of Prairies. — Mr. H. D. Va-

lin, of Chicago, has proposed a new theory
to account for the formation of prairies and
the elevation of the country west of the
Mississippi. Noticing that the prairies rest
generally on Silurian rocks, he believes that
they represent ground which has always
been inundated, or subject to periodical
overflows. The waters, when high, washed
away the rocks of the bluffs, and deposited
on the level surface beneath them the clay
resulting from the erosion ; while the de-
tritus forming the sod of the prairie dates
always from the last inundation. The con-
stant exposure of the prairie-soil to sub-
mersion accounts for the absence of trees.
The land has risen partly by deposition, but
in large part also because of the elasticity
of the earth's surface, " which, like matter
in general, always tends toward an equilib-
rium. For instance, the highest mountains
weigh about the same on the surface of the
earth that the deepest ocean does, other-
wise their respective levels would come into
one. Now, as the detritus of the rocks is
carried by streams into the sea, the porous
material grows heavier, though not increased
in size, and the equilibrium is forcibly re-
established by a slow upheaval of the land.
The pressure exerted laterally by such up-
heaval is, likely, the origin of volcanoes,
geysers, and earthquakes."

Physiological Analogies of the Roman

Letters.— Professor A. Melville Bell, in ex-
plaining the system of " visible speech " at
the late meeting of the American Associa-
tion, remarked that something like a physi-
ological principle may be found to pervade
our Roman alphabet. The actions of the
lip3, the most obvious of the speech-organs,
would naturally be the most definitely in-
dicated ; and it is among the labial letters
that we find the most numerous illustrations
of an apparently physiological basis. The
rounded form of the lips in pronouncing
0 is, for example, very suggestive of the
circle, which is the emblem of that element;
and in the letter B we have a perfect rep-
resentation of the profile of the closed lips.
The letter P as compared with B, seems to
suggest a sound of similar organic produc-
tion, but lacking something of the B sound
— and this is the exact physiological relation

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the elements. B and P are alike, except-
ing that B has a vocal murmur, which is
wanting in P. The letters P and F present
another instance of physiological consist-
ency, the closed part of P being opened in
F, as if to indicate a sound of similar for-
mation without obstruction of the breath.
The letter C exhibits the outline of the
back of the tongue in pronouncing the hard
sound of the letter, and the kindred letter
G consistently shows an element of similar
formation, but with the addition of some-
thing that is lacking in C. The letter K, a
duplicate for the sound of C hard, consists
of a C, angular instead of rounded, in con-
tact with a posterior line, and thus very sug-
gestively denotes the action of the tongue
against the roof of the mouth. The letter
T, in the same way, appears to denote the
position of the tongue in pronouncing the
sound ; the roof of the mouth being denoted
by the horizontal line, while the vertical
line shows the upward direction of the
tongue to contact with the palate.

Antiquity of Man in America. — " The

Geological Testimony to the Antiquity of
Man in America " was considered by Pro-
fessor Willis De Hass, in a carefully pre-
pared paper which he read at the American
Association. After referring to a skeleton
disinterred at Natchez, Mississippi, of very
uncertain antiquity, and the remains yielded
by the Trenton gravel formation, which he
was disposed to place at even a pre-glacial
period, the speaker mentioned the caverns
as constituting the best sources of informa-
tion as to human antiquities. They show
evidences of an existence of man on this
continent long antedating the mound period,
and would, he had no doubt, hereafter be-
come as celebrated for human antiquities as
were the caverns of Belgium and France.
He attributed the ancient copper-workings
of Lake Superior to a prehistoric race, and
asserted that a greater amount of labor had
been performed by its miners in a space of
less than two thousand acres than two thou-
sand men working twenty years could per-
form in our time. All the mines of the
Lake Superior region, he added, gave evi-
dence of having been wrought by a pre-
historic race. Professor De Hass did not,
however, consider that the mounds and mu-

ral works of the West and South bore evi-
dence of a high antiquity — or of more, per-
haps, than two thousand years. They might
be assigned to a people intermediate be-
tween the mound-builders and the Indians.

Ancient Cults among the Berbers of
Morocco. — Dr. Haliburton, of Ontario, has
taken advantage of a recent sojourn in Mo-
rocco to study the vestiges of ancient cults
of Europe and Asia which are still preserved
among the Berber tribes. Here he found
the crude stories of the twelve labors of
Hercules, of Apollo, of Minerva, of Isis and
Osiris, of Belus and Astarte. Numerous
observations indicated that here, too, must
have been the home of the myth of Saturn
and of the golden apples of the Hesperides.
A very interesting part of the paper on this
subject communicated to the American As-
sociation by Dr. Haliburton was the men-
tion of many names and stories connecting
these people with the Bible, such as those
of the gold of Ophir, the Queen of Sheba,
the land of Havilah, and of the vessels of
beaten gold and silver in the temples. On
the last point the speaker dwelt at length,
presenting numerous brass and silver works
and jewelry, made by the Shillooks in our
own day. The fables of Atlas and the At-
lantes were traced in the very cradle of the
people themselves. The fable of the head
of Medusa was traced to this place in ac-
cordance with the story of Herodotus, that
it arose from the custom of the people of a
certain region wearing leather trappings
on their heads. Dr. Haliburton showed a
leather ornament of a powder-horn with a
fringed leather border, like that on a Sioux
saddle-ornament, and similar to those de-
scribed by Herodotus. The whole paper
was full of allusions to classic mythology
and Biblical story.

The American Indians and the Aryan
Race. — " Have the Indians come from Eu-
rope ? " was the subject of a paper read by
Horatio Hale, of Clinton, Ontario, at the re-
eent meeting of the American Association.
After tracing the course of emigration of
the leading stocks of the Indian tribes, as
indicated by their languages, and the modi-
fications they seemed to have undergone,
the author remarked that the fact that the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

287

course of emigration seems to have been
from the Atlantic coast toward the inte-
rior might be regarded as evidence that
the ancestors of our Indian tribes were emi-
grants from Europe. Reference was made,
in support of this view, to the close resem-
blance in structure between the Basque and
the Indian languages. It was suggested,
also, that if the Aryan intruders, entering
Europe from the East, encountered and ab-
sorbed a population resembling the Ameri-
can aborigines, the fact would account for
the great change which the Aryan speech
underwent in Central and Western Europe.
It would also account for the remarkable
change which took place in the character of
the intruding race. The Aryans, who in
the East have always been a submissive and
contemplative race, devoid of the idea of
popular government, became, in Europe, a
high-spirited, practical, and liberty-loving
people. Mr. Hale concluded that the na-
tives of modern Europe were a people of
mixed race, forming a transition, in phys-
ical and mental traits, between the Eastern
Aryans and the aboriginal Americans.

Wine from Beets.— Induced by the havoc
wrought among the French vines by the
phylloxera, the Messrs. Brin, of Paris, have
patented processes for making red and
white wines from red and white beets. The
roots may be used raw, but it has been
found preferable to cook them. Perfectly
sweet and clean roots are chosen, and after
being cooked are reduced to a pulp. The
juice is then pressed out and strained, and
put into vessels of wood or cement, but not
of metal, with a certain quantity of water,
if desired, to ferment. This process is aided
by admitting steam or hot water through
serpentine coils placed in the receivers, and
adding some of the ordinary ferments, and
alcohol, according to the degree of strength
that is wanted. After fermentation the
whole is strained with tannin. The wine
obtained by this process is said to possess
all the properties of wine from grapes, and
is treated henceforth like grape-wine. It is
well adapted, by virtue of its sacchariferous
qualities, to improve wines poor in sugar
and rich in tannin. The red wine, more-
over, is good for adding color to other wines
that need it. The white wine is supposed

to be improved by the addition of a little
nitric acid at the moment of fermentation,
after which the whole is " well shaken."

Analogies of Ancient Old World and
American Customs. — Dr. Phene called at-
tention in the American Association to some
hitherto unnoticed affinities between ancient
customs in America and other continents.
He mentioned customs which have been
shown to have existed in the great river-
valleys of our countries or have been re-
vealed in the mounds, that had parallels in
various European and Asiatic countries.
Among them were those indicated by the
occurrence of figures of serpents, alligators,
or mythical dragons, and the human form,
the characteristic features of which were
curiously persistent in each case. Some of
the shapes of the semi-barbaric age of Mex-
ico corresponded with forms in Devonshire
and South Wales. In the vicinity of some
such figures of this character in the west
and east of the south of England were
enormous intaglio representations of the
human form corresponding to the intaglio
forms at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Drawing
attention to several other apparent corre-
spondences, the speaker said that they were
the result of a practice and culture trans-
mitted with concurrent customs by way of
the Pacific from one continent to another.

Russian Geological Research. — The

mining department of the Russian Govern-
ment has founded a geological institute for
the purpose of centralizing all geological
research in Russia, and preparing a detailed
geological map of the empire. The empire
has been explored geologically in a general
fashion by several men of science, who
have given accounts of observations, the
most complete of which is that of the Eng-
lish geologist Murchison. This is still a
classic work, and all recent geological maps
of Russia are only improved editions of the
one prepared by him. A continuous series
of geological expeditions, which have con-
siderably advanced the knowledge of Rus-
sian geology, have been conducted by the
mining department and private scientific
societies in connection with the universities ;
but all these researches have wanted the
system and connection which can be given

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

them only by referring them to some cen-
tral organization and direction like the
newly established institute.

Action of Citric Acid on Minerals. — Pro-
fessor H. C. Bolton read a third paper at the
recent meeting of the American Association
on the decomposition of minerals by citric
acid, detailing the results of his later re-
searches on the subject. Some of the con-
clusions expressed in the first of his two
previous papers were modified in the sec-
ond paper, in view of the results obtained
by the prolonged action of the acid. In
the third series of experiments Professor
Bolton found that many species which re-
sist the brief action of a boiling concen-
trated solution of citric acid are more or
less completely decomposed by prolonged
contact with the same solution at the ordi-
nary temperature of the work-room. He
has drawn up a table, in accordance with
the last series of tests, of thirty-two min-
erals or classes of minerals which are classi-
fied as those that are quickly, slowly, very
slowly, or not, decomposed by citric acid.

In an American Association paper Dr.
Britton describes a Post-Tertiary, pre-glacial
deposit, near Bridgeton, New Jersey, com-
pact enough to furnish a building material,
which contains casts of the shells of the
hard clam, with silicified wood, and in which
very fine impressions of leaves — including
those of the sweet-gum, or liquidambar, vi-
burnum, zizania, and elm — are occasionally
found.

NOTES.

According to the Census Bureau's bul-
letin of the statistics of the lumbering in-
dustry of the United States for the year
ending with May last, $181,186,122 are in-
vested in 25,708 establishments for the prep-
aration of lumber, and the total value of
the products for the year was $233,367,729.
Michigan leads the States in this industry
with 1,649 mills, $39,260,428 capital, and
$52,449,928 of products. Pennsylvania is
second, with 2,827 mills, $21,418,588 of
capital, and $22,457,359 of products. Next
are Wisconsin, with $19,824,059 of capital,
and $17,952,347 of products; New York,
$13,230,934 of capital, and $14,356,910 of
products ; and Indiana, with $7,048,088 of
capital, and $14,260,830 of products. Maine,
which used to be considered emphatically
the " lumber State," is now seventh in rank,

having 848 mills, with $6,339,396 of capi-
tal, and $7,933,868 of products.

Dr. Desire Charles Van Monkhoven,
who died on the 25th of September last,
just forty-eight years old, was at once dis-
tinguished as an astronomer, a chemist, an
optician, and a photo-chemist, and was also
an active and capable man of business.
He was best known by his researches in
optical questions bearing on photography,
and particularly by his practical applications
of them in the Monkhoven solar enlarging
apparatus, the Monkhoven tissue for carbon
printing, and the Monkhoven gelatine plates,
which he invented, and of which he directed
the manufacture. He was the author of a
general treatise on photography and of pa-
pers on his spectral and other researches,
contributed to various periodicals.

On the 22d day of April, and on rainy
days afterward, the water in some parts of
the city of Lille became unfit for use. M.
Geard, investigating, found the cause of the
trouble to be the growth of a mucidine of
the genus Cremoiryx, which, greedily ab-
sorbing iron, produces in the pipes masses
of ochreous matter, the putrefaction of
which disengages sulphureted hydrogen in
considerable abundance.

A venomous lizard has been presented
to the Zoological Gardens of London by Sir
John Lubbock. It is called Hthdcrma hor-
richim, or horrid warty-skin ; it is from Mexi-
co, and is described as about " one foot and
a half in length, of a somewhat thickish
form, and with a rather short, pointed tail.
Except in color its aspect is not prepossess-
ing." It is of a pale ochre, or corn-color,
coarsely reticulated with black marks. All of
its teeth are connected with poison-glands.

Mr. W. O. Crosby, of Boston, proposes
to account for the origin of the seams run-
ning in three directions, by which many rocks
are cut up into rectangular blocks, as from
earthquake-action. Professor H. F. Wal-
ling, of Washington, agrees with him. When
the papers of these gentlemen were read in
the American Association, Professor New-
berry, having expressed a sense of obliga-
tion to the authors for bringing the subject
forward, said that he was inclined to think
magnetic currents may have had some part
in the production of the joints. Professor
Hall called attention to the joints in the
clays at Albany, which could not well have
been subjected to pressure.

A correspondent of the London " Daily
News " states that some interesting objects
have recently been found in Neufchatel
which are considered by Swiss archaeologists
to throw a new light on the history of the
lake-dwellers. Among the objects are a
carriage-wheel with an iron rim, iron swords,
and many human bones.

HENRY DRAPER.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JANUARY, 1883.

THE GREAT COMET OF 1882.

By Professor C. A. YOUNG.

THE comet which is fading in the morning sky is one of the most
interesting that has ever appeared. Few, if any, have ever been
more brilliant, and though others have been larger, and have continued
visible for a longer time, none of them have presented more remark-
able phenomena.

Of late we have been much favored in the matter of bright comets.
According to the list given by Humboldt in his " Cosmos," it appears
that the average interval between such apparitions for the last five
centuries has been something like eight years. During the last fifty
years the frequency has been about the same, conspicuous comets hav-
ing appeared in 1835, 1843, 1858, 1861, 1862, and 1874. But since the
beginning of 1880 we have already had five which were visible to the
naked eye, and three of them comets of the highest rank. The comet
of 1880 was indeed visible only in the southern hemisphere ; but we
all remember the fine comet which appeared in June, 1881, and was
not much, if at all, inferior to the present one. Schaberle's comet,
which followed in August, would have been regarded as very satisfac-
tory had its predecessor been less brilliant ; and Wells's comet of last
summer, though not well seen in the United States, was a very respecta-
ble comet in South Africa.

It is not yet certain when or where the present comet was first seen,
but, so far as now appears, the priority belongs to Dr. Gould, or one of
his assistants, at the observatory of Cordoba in South America. In a
private letter to Mr. Chandler, of Cambridge, mainly occupied with
other matters, Dr. Gould, under date of September 15th, mentions
that a brilliant comet had been visible there near the celestial equator
for "more than a week" : he had already two observations, and was

VOL. XXII. 19

290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

waiting for clear weather again in hopes of being able to catch it on
the meridian. This would put its discovery on or before September
7th. It was seen on the 8th by Mr. Finlay, an assistant in the Royal
Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope ; and on the 12th it was ob-
served at Rio Janeiro, by Cruls, who telegraphed the news to Europe,
announcing it (erroneously) as the expected comet of 1812 on its return.
We have not yet sufficiently full accounts from the southern observa-
tories to know whether it was lost sight of at all after its discovery,
but we have the account of a most interesting and unprecedented ob-
servation made at the Cape Town Observatory, on the 17th. Mr. Gill,
the director of the observatory, writes : " The comet was followed by
two observers with separate instruments right up to the sun's limb,
where it suddenly disappeared at 4 h- 50 m- 58s- local mean time." This
was about an hour and a half before its perihelion passage.

A few hours previously it had been independently discovered by
Mr. Common in England, in the full blaze of sunlight, and clouds
alone prevented him from making the same observation as Mr. Gill.

It is evident that the comet must have been most intensely brilliant
to be visible under such circumstances. When it passed on to the
sun's disk (it was between us and the sun at the time), it disappeared,
being either transparent, or else practically as bright as a portion of
the sun's own surface. If this comet had been in the place of the lit-
tle " Tewfik " which was seen close to the sun at the time of the Egyp-
tian eclipse last May, it would have been something to remember.

On September 18th the comet had reached a greater distance from
the sun (about 3°), and had become so conspicuous that it was simul-
taneously rediscovered by a multitude of observers in all parts of the
world, and accurate determinations of its position were made at sev-
eral observatories. On the next day every one had heard of it, and
people interested in astronomy thought and talked of nothing else.

On the 19th and 20th the comet was still easily seen by the naked
eye. On the 21st it was visible only in places when the air was very
clear, and the sky darkly blue. On the 22d a curious observation of
it was made at Paris by M. Mallet, who, at the request of M. de Fon-
vielle, ascended for the purpose in a balloon provided by the latter,
thus getting above the clouds with which the city was thickly cov-
ered. Of course, it was not possible in this manner to make any pre-
cise determination of position, but the aeronaut obtained a fine view
of the celestial visitor.

For a few days after this the comet does not appear to have been
observed until it had receded far enough from the sun to become visi-
ble before sunrise. Then, for a while, during the early days of Octo-
ber, it was a most magnificent object, with a head at first rivaling
Jupiter in brightness, and a tail which, though not of unusual dimen-
sions, never much exceeding 60,000,000 miles, was remarkably well
defined, dense, and luminous. It moved slowly toward the south and

THE GREAT COMET OF 18S2. 291

west, and when, once in a while, a clear morning permitted the view, it
was seen to be growing fainter and more diffuse, though not smaller.

To the naked eye or opera-glass it has perhaps presented fewer phe-
nomena of interest than some other comets — that of 1858, for instance ;
it has not exhibited any of the peculiar secondary tails or straight
streamers which were so characteristic of that comet, nor has the stria-
tum of the tail been marked, though evident enough on close inspec-
tion.

From September 27th to October 1st, however, the tail was " rifted."
There was one obscure streak extending from the nucleus through its
whole length, described both by Ricco, of Palermo, and Dr. Hastings,
of Baltimore, and the latter mentions another fainter one parallel to
the first, and shorter.

On October 2d the tail, as seen at Princeton, was about 14° long,
exceedingly bright and sharp in its outlines, slightly curved and con-
vex to the horizon. It was especially well defined near the head, and
almost equally so on both sides. On the 4th the upper edge was
veiled and rendered indefinite by a faint nebulosity which appeared to
have emanated from the head. Ricco's drawing of it, as seen at this
date in the clear Italian sky, shows something resembling a bright
comet, enveloped in a fainter one ; but the smaller one is eccentric,
and south of the middle of the hazy envelope.

On the 10th this external nebulosity had considerably increased.
Professor Smith, of Kansas University, noticed on the 9th a pale stream
of light with parallel edges, and nearly as wide as the tail of the
comet, extending toward the sun. On the 15th the phenomenon
had become much more conspicuous. The streamer was now over
half a degree in width, well defined
at both edges, of nearly uniform
brightness throughout, though no-
where as bright as even the faintest
portions of the tail, and extended
from its origin, a degree or two
above the nucleus, to a distance
of two or three decrees below the
head, where it faded out. The dot-
ted lines in Fig. 1 indicate its form
and dimensions.

This streamer, which remained
visible only a few days, may have Fla *-0c™™ 15< 18S2-

originated in the enveloping comet of Ricco's figure just spoken of,
but no other comet is known to have shown anything of the kind. It
is not to be confounded with the sunward jets sometimes ejected by
cometary nuclei, nor did it at all resemble the anomalous tail, directed
toward the sun, shown by Pechule's comet (in December, 1880), in
addition to its ordinary tail.

> 292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

On October 9th, Schmidt, of Athens, announced the discovery of a
small companion comet, 4° southwest of the large one, and moving
parallel with it. So far as wre know, no one else has observed this
comjDanion, though it was carefully looked for at Washington, Prince-
ton, and elsewhere. On October 21st, however, Mr. Brooks, of Phelps.
New York, observed either the same or another one, some 8° south
and east from the large comet. Like Schmidt's companion it was very
faint (though large), and we have seen no observations of it from
other sources. We have no means of ascertaining whether these at-
tendants accompanied the comet on its way to the sun as separate
objects, or wThether they are fragments detached from the main body.
Mr. Brooks seems to think that the nebulous mass observed by him
was in some way connected with the faint envelope and streamer just
spoken of, which is not unlikely.

When the writer first saw the comet, on September 19th, it was
impossible, with the great twenty-three-inch equatorial, to make out
much except the nucleus itself. The comet was so near the sun that
the object-glass could not be screened from the direct sunshine, which
filled the wThole field with glaring light. The finder of the instrument
is itself, however, a powerful telescope of five inches aperture, and this
was perfectly screened by the great tube, so that it furnished an
admirable view of the beautiful object. To the naked eye the comet
looked like some white-winged bird in swift flight toward the sun.
The telescope showed the wings to be long, curved streams flowing
backward from each side of the head — backward, that is, with refer-
ence to the sun ; but they were, of course, really in advance of the
comet, which at this time was receding from the sun. The head of
the comet had for its center a small round and brilliant nucleus, not

well defined, but rather a nebulous
star, some 4" in diameter ; in front
of this at a distance of perhaps 30"
was an " envelope," and there was
a second one at a distance of 2' or
3'. They were connected by a pair
of eccentric circular arcs, and these
arcs, coalescing with the outer en-
velope and prolonged, formed the
skeleton of the " wings." Back
of the nucleus, traces of the usual
dark stripe could be detected. Fig.

Fig. 2.— Head of Comet September 19— 2 presents the main features in Ollt-
5-mcn Telescope. ,. x _, .,.

line, and every one will notice its
close resemblance to Brodie's picture of Coggia's comet as seen on
July 13, 1874. (The picture alluded to forms the frontispiece of
Chambers's " Descriptive Astronomy," third edition.)

On the next day the comet was seen at Princeton for a few mo-

THE GREAT COMET OF 1882. 293

ments through clouds, just long enough to get imperfect observations
for position, but nothing more. It was noticed, however, that the
•eccentric arcs had disappeared. On October 2d the comet was ob-
served for more than an hour before daybreak with the great tele-
scope. The most notable features were a single bright cap or enve-
lope at a distance of about half a minute from the nucleus, and the
nucleus itself, which, instead of being round, was considerably elon-
gated. There were, however, no jets, or starfish-like projections such
as the comet of 1881 presented so often. There was not much of
structural detail to be made out in the head of the comet, but the
dark stripe behind the nucleus was very conspicuous. This dark
stripe, by-the-way, is a very remarkable phenomenon, not yet ex-
plained, so far as we know, though observed in most large comets.
The common impression is, that it is merely a space behind the nu-
cleus, screened as it were by the nucleus itself, from the rush of
luminous matter which is being driven backward by the sun's repul-
sion. But if this be so, then, as Mr. Proctor has pointed out, in a
recent article, there is no reason why it should appear so well defined
and so dark. The cross-section of the tail, a little way behind the
nucleus, was, in the present case at least, 100,000 miles in diameter :
now, merely taking away the luminous matter from a tunnel 6,000 or
8,000 miles in diameter along the axis of the tail, could make but little
difference with the amount of light received by the eye at a distance.
If there were no tunnel, we should get from the central line of the
tail the brightness corresponding to a thickness of 100,000 miles of
luminous matter. Boring the tunnel would only reduce it to some
90,000 miles, and the difference would be hardly perceptible.

It seems more likely, if the writer may venture the suggestion, that
the stripe is a stream or beam of non-luminous, cooler vapor or gas,
which is nearly opaque to the radiation emitted by the same kind of
gas when luminous, and therefore cuts off all the light from whatever
portions of the comet's luminous drapery is behind it ; in the same way
that cool sodium-vapor, for instance, is relatively opaque to the light
of a sodium-flame. If this is correct, the dark stripe ought not to be
black, but just about half as bright as the neighboring nebulosity ;
which corresponds to the actual fact. If one could catch a star pass-
ing behind the stripe, it would perhaps be easy to settle the question.
At any rate, if the star shone more brightly when in the stripe, we
might be sure that the hypothesis is wrong. The star should be
dimmed a little, if anything, though, of course, stor-light would not
be so much affected as the light from cometary matter. Mr. Proctor
has suggested a different hypothesis, which seems to the writer rather
less probable, but there is no time to discuss it here.

On October 4th the nucleus had become much more elongated,
so as to be shaped something like an Indian club. The envelope,
which was conspicuous on the 2d, had disappeared, or degenerated

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

into an indefinite nebulosity, and the dark stripe had become much
fainter.

Continued bad weather prevented observation until the 10th, and
on this date the nine-and-a-half-inch telescope of the School of Science
Observatory was used. A great change had taken place. The nucleus
had become an irregular, spindle-shaped streak some 40" long, made up
of six or eight star-like knots of luminosity connected and veiled by
shining haze. One of these knots, about a third of the way from the
sunward extremity, was considerably larger and brighter than any of
the others, and should, perhaps, be considered as the true nucleus.
The next one beyond it (reckoning from the direction of the sun) was
second in size, and separated by an interval of 2" or 3", the space being
filled, however, with nebulosity. The dark stripe was still visible, but
directed, not along the prolongation of the nuclear streak, but inclined
at an angle of 8° or 10°, while a bright jet from the nucleus, two or
three minutes in length, touched one side of the dark stripe, and kept
nearly in the axis of the tail.

Fig. 3 is an attempt to illustrate the apjDearance and relation of

things by a mere outline sketch,
which, of course, can not be consid-
ered in any sense a representation,
since it fails entirely to give an
idea of the shading and gradation
of light. The head of the comet
presented no definite outline what-
ever, and the nucleus very little.
The knots were mere condensations
of brightness in the midst of diffuse
light. When the dawn came on,
the fainter parts successively dis-
appeared, so that at a certain stage
the nucleus seemed to be divided into two portions. A small telescope
would probably show things in the same way even before dawn, and
this is undoubtedly the origin of the reports that the comet had split
in two.

This great and unprecedented elongation of the nucleus is a most
remarkable phenomenon. If it had occurred at or near the time of
perihelion passage, it might have been naturally attributed to the di-
vellent action of the sun's attraction ; but it is a little difficult to see
why the thing should have pulled out and come to pieces in such a
way after getting safely by the crisis. It is worth noting that this
peculiarity of the comet adds greatly to the difficulty of making accu-
rate observations of its position : one does not know just upon what
point to direct his instrument.

Continuous cloudy weather prevented any observation of the comet
until the 15th. On that date the appearance of things as seen in the

Fig 3— Head of Comet October 10, 1SS2.

THE GREAT COMET OF 1882. 295

great equatorial was very much what it had been on the 10th with
the smaller telescope. There were no envelopes, and the only "jet"
was the bright streak following the nucleus. The dark stripe had
wholly disappeared, as if obliterated and replaced by the bright one.
The " knots " in the nucleus were seen to be irregular in form, and
were arranged not in a straight line, but in a somewhat broken curve,
conforming to the curvature of the tail, which at this time extended
18°, and was fully 60,000,000 miles in length. The bright stream
originated not at the extremity of the nucleus, but came out tangen-
tially from the convex side, and perhaps had its source in the largest of
the knots, which was now the third from the sunward extremity. The
whole length of the nucleus measured 48^", corresponding to a length
of more than 40,000 miles, the diameter of the largest single mass
being about 5,000 or 6,000 miles. The only other observation we
have been able to make at Princeton was nine days later, on October
24th. No material changes were noticed, though the comet was very
much fainter. The same lengthened granular nucleus continued, and
seems likely to persist until the comet disappears.*

The spectroscopic observations have been very interesting. On
September 18th the French physicist Thollon was an independent dis-
coverer of the comet, coming upon it accidentally in sweeping around
the sun. His spectroscopic apparatus consists of a so-called siderostat,
the mirror of which throws the rays from the object to be examined
upon the lens of a horizontal telescope nine and a half inches in diam-
eter and about twenty feet long. At the focus of this telescope in
a darkened room is placed a spectroscope, and, of course, this may be
of any form and power best suited to the occasion. In the present
case he used an instrument with a single prism of high dispersive
power. The most marked feature of the spectrum was the presence
of the lines of sodium in the spectrum of the nucleus. They were
very bright, and were displaced toward the red by an amount equal to
about one fourth of the interval between them, thus indicating that
the comet was rapidly receding from the earth. A very narrow,
bright, continuous spectrum was also shown by the nucleus. In this
the dark lines of Fraunhofer were not conspicuous if visible at all,

* Later observations, on November 4th, show the same general characteristics. The
nucleus, if it can be so called, was now 93" in length, or more than 90,000 miles. Three
stellar points could be detected in the forward portion of the nucleus, but only two in
the other. The separation between the two brightest points was about 10". The spec-
trum showed no new developments. To the naked eye the comet was unexpectedly
bright, although now distant from both sun and earth nearly 140,000,000 miles. The
head looked like a fourth-magnitude star, and the tail was 16° long and 4° wide at the
extremity. On November 20th the nucleus had almost vanished, appearing merely as a
brighter streak in the structureless nebulosity of the head. The tail was still nearly as
large as ever, and easily visible without telescopic aid, though of course much fainter
than on the 4th. The comet has held out remarkably, and, so far as now appears, it may
be observable for a long time yet, especially in the southern hemisphere.

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

showing that the principal brilliancy of the comet was not reflected
sunlight. The usual carbon bands of the cometary spectrum were
not visible through the sky illumination, and no other bright lines
except those of sodium were seen by Thollon. On the 22d the comet's
spectrum was observed in the early morning just before sunrise by
Ricco, of Palermo. He reports his observation thus : " The spectrum
was formed of the narrow continuous spectrum of the nucleus, trav-
ersed by a large and strong line of sodium (D) ; by enlarging the slit
I saw a globular, monochromatic image of the nucleus and coma.
Besides the line of sodium many others were present, but, my spectro-
scope not having a micrometer, I did not determine them. I observed
a band in the red, a line in the yellow near and after D, two others in
the green, and an enlargement of the continuous spectrum in the
green and blue." It is exceedingly unfortunate that the position of
these lines could not have been determined, at least approximately.
No one can predict when such an opportunity will occur again.

The weather in this part of the country was abominable up to
November. The writer attempted to get spectroscopic observations
on September 20th, but was foiled by clouds, and has since succeeded
only on October 2d, 4th, 10th, 15th, and 24th. On the first of these
dates the sodium-lines were still easily visible, though not conspicu-
ous. The carbon bands were magnificent, especially the brightest
one (in the green), in which could be clearly seen the three fine lines
observed in the spectrum of Coggia's comet. The band in the violet
was very faint. The nucleus gave a strong continuous spectrum, on
which the carbon bands were superposed ; and in the tail the pro-
portion of white light (continuous spectrum) to carbon light appeared
to be about the same as in the nucleus. The bands could be followed
far out into the tail by widening the slit, but were lost before the
continuous spectrum quite vanished. No dark lines were made out.
On the 4th the results were the same, except that the sodium-lines
were very hard to see, and they disappeared entirely before the next
date. The later observations added nothing more. It is much to be
hoped that, when the different results of all observers come to be col-
lected and published, something will be found to supply what is so
unfortunately wanting in Ricco's most interesting but incomplete ob-
servation— hiatus valde deflendus.

The highest interest of the present comet lies in its orbit, however,
its relation to preceding comets, and its possible speedy destruction by
the sun. Almost as soon as it appeared, Professor Boss in this coun-
try and Hind in England proposed the hypothesis that it is identical
with the great comet of 1880, the period of the latter comet having
been shortened by some resistance. If so, this comet will be back
again in a few months, and before long must fall upon the sun. They
have weighty arguments on their side, but on the whole a different
conclusion is more probable.

THE GREAT COMET OF 1882.

297

On September 17th the comet passed its perihelion at a distance of
about 750,000 miles from the sun's center, and witbin 300,000 of its
surface, rushing through the coronal regions with a velocity exceeding
300 miles per second: it swept over 180° of its orbit in three hours
and a half. Thus far we find in our lists of cometary orbits only four
with so small a perihelion distance, viz., the comets of 1608, 1G80,
1843, and 1880. (As to the comet of 1008 there is some doubt, be-
cause it was only observed for about three weeks, and its motion dur-
ing that time was such that it answers almost equally well to either of
two quite different orbits.) There are half a dozen others with peri-
helion distances between one and a half and five million miles, viz.,
comets of 1707, 1810, 1820, 1847, 1805, and 1870 ; and Wells's comet,
which disappeared only a few weeks ago, is just outside that limit,
with a perihelion distance of 5,075,000 miles. Now, as to the comets
of the first class, we find that, excepting that of 1080, their orbits
are extremely similar ; their plane and direction of motion are almost
exactly the same ; the perihelion distances are nearly the same for all ;
and the axes of the orbits all point to the same part of space ; they
liave all come toward the sun from the same region of the heavens, in
the immediate neighborhood of the great star Sirius. In the little
table below are given what are called the elements of their orbits:
9, is the longitude of the node, i the inclination of the orbit to the
ecliptic, n the longitude of the perihelion, and q the perihelion dis-
tance, expressed as a decimal fraction of the earth's distance from the
sun ; e is the eccentricity of the orbit ; and the — in the last line de-
notes that the motion is retrograde. The orbits of the first twTo are

1668.

1843.

1880.

1883.

n

i

357° 17'
35° 58'
277° 2'
0-0047
1-0

361° 12'
35° 41'

278° 39'

0-0055

0-99989

356° 17'
36° 53'
278° 23'
0-0059
0-99947

345° 50'
38° 05'
276° 28'
0-0076
0-99997

q

Direction

from the catalogue in Chambers's " Descriptive Astronomy " ; that of
1880 is the orbit computed by Meyer, of Geneva, from the whole as-
semblage of observations, and that of 1882 is the last orbit computed
by Mr. Chandler, of Cambridge, and may be found to need some cor-
rection when later observations come to hand. Fig. 4 shows in a rough
way how these orbits lie in relation to the orbit of the earth, and how
very long and narrow the comet's orbit is as compared with the circle
described by the earth.

Now, the similarity between these orbits may be explained in two
different ways. It might be accounted for by supposing that we have
to do with different visits to the sun of a single comet, or that Ave
have here a group or family of comets, very likely of common origin,

298

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but separate, and following each other. Hoek, of Utrecht, showed
some years ago that such comet-families exist. When we compare
the orbits of the comets of 1843 and 1668 there is nothing that foi*bids
the idea of their identity. The differences are no greater than prob-
able perturbations might account for. Then, again, the comets of

Fig. 4

1843 and 1880 may easily be "identical. Indeed, the orbit given for
the latter comet corresponds to a period of almost thirty-seven years,
and Meyer has shown that the observations can not be reconciled
with a period less than thirty or greater than fifty years. Now,
thirty-seven years would take us back just to 1843, so that it is very
likely that these two comets are really one and the same. So far the
" identifiers " have matters their own way. But, now, as to the comet
of 1882. Can it be identical with the comet of 1880 ? We think not.
The orbit of the latter was computed exclusively from observations
taken after its perihelion passage, so that no action of the sun depend-
ing upon its close approach at perihelion can account for its return in
less than three years, and the inclination of its orbit is such that ever
6ince it went out of sight it has been out of harm's way as to pertur-
bations by the planets. Then, again, the orbit of the comet of 1882
does not agree with the idea of identity. Whatever other effects may
have been produced by the resistance of the solar atmosphere at peri-
helion, this resistance must have tended to shorten its period, if it
changed it at all. Now, the observations thus far taken, though per-

THE GREAT COMET OF 1882. 299

haps not sufficient to settle the orbit definitively, seem to be absolutely-
inconsistent with a period of anything like three years (corresponding
to an eccentricity of 0*9963). The period can not well be less than
ten or twelve years, according to the last results, and may be several
thousand. It is to be noted, further, that, as regards Q, and q, the two
orbits differ more than can well be consistent with the theory of iden-
tity. It seems to be an almost necessary consequence that these two
comets can not be identical with each other, though they may, per-
haps, both be fragments of the comets of 1668 or 1843, or of some
comet more ancient than either.

It is an interesting fact that Mr. Chandler finds that his orbit, com-
puted entirely from post-perihelion observations, satisfies almost ex-
actly the observation of Mr. Finlay, taken on September 8th, as well
as the observation of the comet's disappearance at the sun's edge. If
the observations of Dr. Gould, when they come to hand, agree as well,
it will be proof positive that no sensible resistance or disturbance of
any kind was suffered by the comet in passing within 300,000 miles
of the sun's surface at the rate of 300 miles a second.

Of course, if the view we have taken is correct, there is no possi-
bility that our comet can return in six months and fall into the sun.
Not that there is any absurdity in the idea by itself considered. If
the comet of 1880, when receding from the sun, had moved in an orbit
corresponding to a three years' period, and if the present comet were
found to have a period of three years or less as it is now receding from
the sun, it would be almost impossible to refuse to admit their iden-
tity, and probable speedy absorption in the sun.

We close with a single word as to the probable consequences of a
comet's fall upon the sun. Unquestionably, the energy of the comet's
motion would be transformed into heat, and if the comet had any con-
siderable mass, say y^- the mass of the earth, the heat produced would
be enough to supply the sun's heat-expenditure for months. Prob-
ably, however, no comet has a mass anything like so great as that ;
more likely the present comet even, huge as it is, has a mass less than
j 0 0*0 0 0 of the earth's, so that its collision with the sun would produce
as much heat only as the sun would expend in eight hours.

Now, if the sun were a cool, solid, or even liquid mass, the sudden
accession of merely this quantity of heat would undoubtedly produce
an enormous rise of temperature and a great increase of radiation.
But, constituted as the sun is — mainly a mass of gas and vapor — the
effect would be entirely different, the energy being principally ex-
pended in producing expansion and evaporation, with comparatively
little increase of temperature or radiation. If one stirs up the fire
under an open kettle, the water gets no hotter — it only boils faster.
Probably the effect of the fall of a body, even as large as the earth,
upon the sun, would be hardly anything more than to restore the sun
to the condition it was in a century ago. The energy lost in the course

3oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of a century would be replaced — that is about all. During the few
moments while the body was passing through the sun's atmosphere,
there might be, and probably would be, phenomena of great interest
and beauty to those who were on the watch ; but it is very doubtful
whether people generally would know anything about the occurrence
until they read of it in the papers.

4«»

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHKOPY.*

By ALFRED EOUILLEE.

THE questions relating to public relief, population, and natural
selection are so inseparable that, in our age, thought has been
logically conducted from one to another of them, and has been led
to important discoveries. It was the problem of public relief, and the
observation of the effects produced by the poor-rates, that inspired
Malthus to compose his " Law of Population " ; it was the law of
population, in turn, that led Darwin to the discovery, first, of the law
of the " struggle for existence," and afterward of that of " natural
selection." We may say, then (and the fact is worthy of remark),
that it was a social and economical problem that provoked one of the
greatest revolutions in natural history. Even before Darwin, Mr.
Spencer, by studying m his " Social Statics " the influence of philan-
thropy on the movement of population, upon the artificial multiplica-
tion of the feeble in body or mind, and upon the deterioration of the
race, had shown how vital competition might produce, by means of
selection and elimination, sometimes progress, sometimes decadence,
of a species. He thus anticipated Darwin ; but he did not perceive, as
Darwin did, the capital fact of the divergence from the primitive
type which results from natural selection among living beings, and
produces the final variation of species. Nevertheless, natural science
and social science have shown an intimate connection in this respect,
which exists no less in all the other problems. Thus, we are not able
from this point to separate these two sciences. To reduce sociology
to the category of moral, economical, and political sciences is to con-
demn it to remain an abstraction, and to treat its problems incom-
pletely by ignoring essential data ; the legist, the economist, and the
politician, who take no account of the laws of biology, are like a doc-
tor who is not acquainted with the structure or the functions of the
organs, or, to use Mr. Spencer's comparison, resemble a blacksmith who
would work in iron without knowing anything of its properties. We
must, therefore, approve of labors which, like those of Messrs. Spen-

* Translated for " The Popular Science Monthly," from the " Revue des Deux
Mondes."

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 301

cer, De Candolle, Ribot, Galton, and Jacoby, include tbe study of the
effects of natural selection and physiological or moral heredity in
human society. Philanthropy ought not to content itself with reasons
of sentiment ; it should become scientific. Few questions are better
adapted than that of public relief to demonstrate the necessity of this
progress and the extreme complexity of social problems, in which the
most various rights are involved and the laws of natural history add
their force to those of political economy. What, in the Darwinian
point of view, becomes of the public duty of relief ? First, what is
its moral foundation, misconceived by certain partisans of Malthus
and Darwin, and what are its necessary limits ? Secondly, are there
not biological laws that intervene in a question at first sight entirely
moral ; and can the legislator neglect the social consequences of these
natural laws ? In short, has philanthropy regulated by science a salu-
tary or an injurious influence on the movement of population, and
does it produce in the race a useful or a harmful selection, progress or
decay ? These are the principal problems deserving a long study, to
which we will at least call the attention of readers. If we only show
clearly their difficulties, and vaguely forecast the solutions of them, we
shall not have wasted time or trouble.

The partisans of Darwin generally adopt in social science the law
of Malthus, from which Darwin himself has drawn most important
consequences in natural history. Now, Malthus has conceived that by
this law he could condemn absolutely that philanthropy which is prac-
ticed under the form of public benevolence. H3 not only denies all
duty of relief on the part of the state, but also declares private char-
ity dangerous and irreligious. Leave to Nature, he says, severely, the
office of punishing the improvidence of the father who calls to life
more children than he can support ; Nature will not fail to perform her
task, and it is a providential one. Since Nature is charged with gov-
erning and punishing, it would be a very foolish and misplaced ambi-
tion to pretend to put ourselves in her place, and take upon ourselves
all the odium of execution. Then give up that guilty man to the
penalty imposed by Nature. The aid and assistance of parishes should
be closed against him, and, if private charity extends any help to him,
the interest of humanity imperiously requires that that help shall not
be too abundant. He must be made to learn that the laws of Nature,
that is, the laws of God, have condemned him to a life of pain for
having violated them, and that he has no kind of a right as against
society to obtain from it the slightest portion of support. Can this
summary condemnation of public charity, pronounced by the Malthu-
sians and the radical Darwinians, be accepted from the point of view
of morals and right, and must we inevitably maintain it from the point
of view of natural history, or even of the laws laid down by Darwin ?

Regarding the question of right, it seems to us that a capital dis-
tinction should be made between the present and the future, between

3o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the duty of the state toward those who are born and its duty in re-
spect to those who may hereafter be born. There is at this moment
upon the earth enough, and more than is needed, to support the men
who are now living ; but the time may come when there will not be
enough to support all those who may have been called to life, and it
is only at that time that the Malthusian law of population will become
incontestable. The moralist should, then, place himself in succession
at both these points of view — points between which neither the Mal-
thusians nor the Darwinians have sufficiently distinguished.

To get a better comprehension of the question, let us begin by ex-
amining the simplest cases, after which we will consider the more com-
plex reality. To revive an ancient and classical example, from which
we may draw new consequences, let us suppose a man settled by him-
self on an island, on which there is not only all that he needs, but a
superfluity, and that a shipwrecked man is afterward cast upon the
island. Undoubtedly the first occupant is not obliged to give up that
which is indispensable for his own life, but he owes the new-comer a
part of his superfluity. If the island affords sufficient to support two
men, the first one has no right to monopolize the whole of it. He
ought, then, to surrender to the companion, whom chance has sent him,
a part of the soil. By doing this he will perform not only one of the
acts of benevolence discredited by the Malthusians and Darwinians,
but the act will be one of strict justice. Now, let other men come
upon the island ; let the soil be wholly occupied, appropriated, covered
with houses, and inclosed in fences ; and then suppose a new ship-
wrecked man lands upon it. The island either can or can not support
and maintain another man. In the first case, the inhabitants, unless
they desire to regard the new-comer as in a state of natural war as to
them and their property, must allot him a portion of ground ; or, if
the ground is already entirely appropriated and divided out among
the inhabitants, they owe him such employment as will furnish him
the means of subsistence. The obligation is incumbent not upon a
particular individual among the inhabitants of the island, but upon all
the individuals collectively, and it is the duty of each one to contribute
according to his resources to the common obligation. Assistance is
thus a guarantee and defense of property, a treaty of peace succeeding
the state of war. It ceases to be an act of justice, and begins to be
an act of pure charity only when the portion of the new-comers can no
longer be afforded them except by depriving the first occupants of
something they need. In this case it becomes necessary, in effect, to
sacrifice one man to save another.

Suppose now that, instead of being brought to the island by the
casualty of a storm, the new-comers have been introduced upon it by
the voluntary action of particular persons ; the right of these new-
comers to assistance will subsist for the present, but it is clear that
the mass of the inhabitants will have a right to watch over such intro-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 303

ductions in the future and regulate the conditions under which they
may be made. If the question, for example, is one of bringing chil-
dren into the world in greater numbers than the island can support,
the little state we are considering will not be able to assume the duty
of future assistance unless the individuals on their part renounce, as
John Stuart Mill has it, their right of indefinite multiplication.

It is through failure to make the preceding distinction that Malthus
rejects the whole obligation of assistance, and leaves it to Nature to do
justice. The penalty attached to improvidence by the laws of Nature,
he asserts, falls immediately upon the guilty one, and that penalty is
itself severe. But, we may ask, are not those who suffer from the
improvidence of the father, contrary to this assertion, the innocent
wife and children ? Let them alone, Malthus persists ; let God's jus-
tice take its course. These pretended laws of God, of which Malthus
tries to show us the justice, are injustice itself. The English pastor
had no other resource for escaping the objections of the moralists than
to invoke original sin. " It appears indispensable," he says, " in the
moral government of this universe, that the sins of the fathers shall
be punished in the children. And if our presumptuous vanity natters
itself that it could govern better by systematically contradicting this
law, I am led to believe that it will engage in a vain enterprise."
Where Malthus sees an effort of human vanity, social science sees an
effort of human justice, superior to the pretended justice of Nature or
of Providence. To trust to natural and providential laws for the pre-
vention or reparation of wrong is to act like beings without intelli-
gence or Avill — is to accept for man the fatality that controls animals,
" which," however, have not eaten of the forbidden fruit."

The argument of Malthus, adopted by many English economists,
as well as by the naturalists of the Darwinian school, is contrary, not
only to pure fraternity, but also to strict justice. Malthus reasons as
if there were at this very time not enough food on the earth for all the
men ; as if in the existing state of society there were to be found no
men enjoying superfluity, while there are, however, men who have
nothing to live upon. Instead of limiting his assertions to the future,
and to a future still far off, he speaks as if those harsh words which
have been so many times cast in reproach by the socialists against the
strict economists, as containing the most authentic formula of their
theories, were applicable even to the present time : " A man born into
a world already occupied, whose family has no means of supporting
him or of whose labor society has no need, has not any right to demand
any portion whatever of food. He is really one too many on the land.
No cover is laid for him at the great banquet of Nature. Nature tells
him to go away, and does not delay herself to put the order into exe-
cution." All is involved in that doctrine ; it is in effect the right even
of living that Malthus denies to a host of men. To solve the question
he has recourse to Nature, which knows neither pity nor justice ; he

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

should, on the contrary, have appealed to the reason and freedom
of man. In fact, it is not only at the "banquet of Nature," as Malthus
asserts, that the new-comers demand a place, it is more, and above all
at the banquet of humanity ; they are men, and men have called them
into existence : did any one consult them before giving them the light ?
And if their parents have brought them to life without their consent,
is it not on the implied condition that they will furnish them a share
of subsistence in exchange for a share of work ? When a child is
born into a family, it is rightly said, none of his brothers has the right
to prevent his sharing in the property of their father ; likewise, there
are no " cadets " in a nation. If the family fails, there is still above
it the great national family ; a solidarity exists between all the citizens
of the same country. It is by reason of this that you, legislators,
unable to establish a law to regulate the multiplication of the species,
have implicitly accepted certain charges in regard to the children who
are born, in the event of the failure of their natural fathers and
mothers. Such children are neither " usurpers " nor " intruders," for
they are not themselves responsible for their birth, and you have no
right to say whether you will accept or reject them, for there is act-
ually enough of subsistence for all. The Darwinians will presently
show us the necessity of society taking precautions for the future, but
the present charge, nevertheless, exists, and we must execute it. In
the existing society the capital is not lacking, but all the men have not
their share ; this state of affairs, the inevitable effect of economical
laws, creates in the laborers a condition of inferiority and servitude.
Here, then, is a place for the intervention of reparative justice in the
form of public assistance. Is the man who, in the midst of a dearth,
refuses to sell his corn, or who buys a large quantity of corn to take it
out of the market, exercising his right? He might, perhaps, claim
that he was the legitimate proprietor of the product of his fields or of
his purchases. But the identical principle on which property is founded
— that is, the right to work for a living — limits it by the equal right of
another. Society has not hesitated to impose restrictions and obliga-
tions as to many points on proprietors who assume to be " absolute ";
it prevents them from blocking the course of circulation ; it expropri-
ates for causes of public use ; it punishes the man who burns his
goods ; it can exact an indemnity from the one who lets his property
go to waste. As a rule, no right relative to exterior objects can be
absolute ; there is always a place for reciprocal limitations, and con-
sequently for conventions and compromises. Respect for already
existing properties, and for the established order, can not, in strict
right, be exacted from the new-comer unless some means of existence
are reserved for him. Here is a relation of contract, a tacit conven-
tion : I agree to respect your means of living, on condition that you
respect mine ; I consent to respect your right to live, on condition that
I do not see mine destroyed. There is then a stipulative relation which

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 305

establishes at the same time the foundation and the limit of the rio\ht

O

of property, on the one side, and of the right to live on the other.
The first is not more absolute than the second, but we can not ignore
the one without injuring the other.

We can not, however, from the fact that the philanthropic duty of
assistance may not be unlimited and unconditional, conclude with Mal-
thus and the naturalists of his school that the duty does not exist. If
such a conclusion were logical, we should have to apply it to all real
rights, for there is not one of them that is absolute and without limits ;
not the right of property any more than the others. The only legiti-
mate conclusion is, that it is necessary to confine assistance within cer-
tain boundaries, to restrict it by the consideration of other rights, to
submit it to conditions, and consequently to make it the object of a
contract, and thus to realize on this point as on all the others the ideal
of stipulative justice. The practical limitation of a right is always by
another right : the right of property, for example, is limited by the
right of circulation, by that of condemning it for public uses, etc., and
vice versa • and the means of fixing the limit is free parleying between
the parties, resulting in a contract. All legislation which neglects to
give a form of contract to the laws it promulgates, prepares conflicts
of every kind for society, and leaves a germ of war in the law itself.

But, while true philanthropy, which has to do only with social jus-
tice, ought to consider the present and the past, it has also to deal with
the f utui-e. It is in this point of view that the theories of Malthus and
Darwin gain the advantage ; here moral and juridical considerations
are complemented by considerations borrowed from natural history.
We have already recognized, with Malthus and Stuart Mill, that we
can not put this point aside unless we would produce artificially, in a
more or less distant future, an excessive multiplication of the species.
It now remains to examine, with Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin, another
rock in the way of the philanthropist — the danger of producing a
physical and intellectual deterioration of the species by overlooking
the laws of natural selection and heredity.

Philanthropy, apart from science, sees only the immediate influence
of the measures it proposes ; it entirely neglects their influence, infi-
nitely more important, on the physical status and the morals of future
generations. It forgets that every new measure in legislation or pol-
icy tends to produce modifications, for better or worse, in human nat-
ure.* These modifications are the inevitable effect of biological laws,

* Religious fanaticism, for instance, by its measures of persecution, has produced
effects which its partisans were far from foreseeing, and a kind of cross-action. " By a
course of penalties and poisonings," says Galton, in his " Hereditary Genius," " the Spanish
nation has been deprived of free-thinkers and drained, as it were, of a thousand persons
a year, during the three centuries between 14 74 and 1784 ; for an average of one hundred
persons were executed and an average of nine hundred persons imprisoned every year
during that period. During the three centuries, 32,000 persons were burned, 17,000
burned in effigy (the most of the persons themselves died in prison, or left Spain), and
VOL. xxii. — 20

3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that is, of the struggle for existence, heredity, and natural selection.
A benevolence that takes no account of those laws may become ma-
lign, and the short-sighted fraternity that considers only the existing
generation may be transformed, as we shall see, into a veritable injus-
tice toward future generations. The great danger to which a blind
charity, dissociated from science and stipulative justice, exposes itself
is that of depressing the physical and moral level of the race. What
are the conclusions of Darwinism on this point ? We may, with Mr.
Spencer, summarize them in the two propositions which every philan-
thropist, in his opinion, should have always present in his mind : " The
quality of a society is physically lowered by the artificial preserva-
tion of its feeblest members ; the quality of a society is lowered mor-
ally and intellectually by the artificial preservation of those who are
least able to take care of themselves." Let us successively consider,
and endeavor to restrict to their real bearing, these two capital propo-
sitions. The law of Malthus, from which Darwin has deduced the
law of the struggle for existence, tends to produce in the existing state
of society a numerical surplus of individuals who struggle for life it-
self. Excessive fecundity has good and bad results. All individuals
finding themselves subjected by its operation to an increasing difficulty
in gaining their living, there is produced in society a kind of pressure,
the natural effect of which is, on the average, a progress. Those alone,
in effect, can survive who are capable of resisting that pressure, and
even of advancing under its influence ; these, then, may be considered
"the elect of their generation." When an individual succumbs, it is
always for lack of power to triumph over some action of the environ-
ment— cold, heat, moisture, insalubrity of air, etc. He can not make way
against one or many of the numerous forces that act upon him, and in
the presence of which his vital activity is called upon to display itself.
He may succumb to them more or less quickly, according to the vigor
of his organization and the incidents of his career ; but, in the natural
course of events, those who are imperfectly organized pass away be-
fore having any offspring, and only the most vigorous organizations
contribute to the production of the succeeding generation. Such is
the natural selection, favorable to the improvement of the species,
which is produced in mankind when Nature is allowed to act without
contradiction. It is, says Mr. Spencer, a natural work of elimination
by which society is continually purifying itself. Suppose now that a

291,000 were condemned to prison and other penalties. It is impossible for a nation to
endure such a policy without suffering a great deterioration of the race. The taking
from the nation its most intelligent and most vigorous men had for its most noteworthy
result the formation of the unintelligent and superstitious race of contemporary Span-
iards." Attention has frequently been called to the disastrous effect of the military
regime of our epoch, which deprives the family and labor of the soundest part of youth,
and, leaving at home only the weak or sickly men, produces a selection backward in the
nation. When war is added to universal armament, it harvests the best part of a people,
and debases the generations which follow it.

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 307

philanthropy ignorant of social science and of the natural sciences un-
dertakes to correct Nature, to diminish at any price the chances of
mortality of the weak, to cause them by means of its care and its
assistance to survive artificially, what will be the results for future
generations? At first, population will increase more than it would
have done ; every one will then find himself subjected to a greater
difficulty in living, and exposed to destructive actions of the most in-
tense character. This increase of population might still produce good
results if it were not due to an increase in the number of the weak.
But the survival of the weak spoils all ; they marry with the strong,
who under other conditions would alone have survived ; such mar-
riages change the general constitution of the race, and cause it to come
down to a lesser degree of force, and what we might call tonicity, cor-
responding with the conditions of existence that have been artificially
created. Such an instrument, whose cords are relaxed, no longer gives
to strong or harmonious sounds as of old. An effeminacy of the species
is produced, and it has become at the same time a little more numer-
ous and a little weaker. In preserving the less vitalized part of the
present generation, we have prepared for the decadence of coming
generations.

This decadence is brought about also by other causes. Your phi-
lanthropy, say the Darwinians, suppresses or attenuates some noxious
influences, and this gives delicate constitutions more chances of sur-
viving and propagating themselves ; but you do not perceive that, in
place of the unfavorable influences suppressed by you, you cause new
destructive ones to arise. " Let the average vitality," says Mr. Spen-
cer, "be diminished by more effectively guarding the weak against
adverse conditions, and inevitably there come fresh diseases," for the
increase of diseases is the correlative of diminished vitality. Look at
the numerous diseases unknown among barbarians from which civilized
races suffer. Diseases of the brain, especially, seem to increase with
civilization ; the proportion of them to the whole population appears
to have doubled in France since 1836. The activity which is stamped
upon industry, the arts and the sciences, political and social agitation,
the fever of money-making, and the consuming life of cities are en-
gendering in civilized nations a condition of cerebral agitation resem-
bling intoxication, which must predispose to intellectual troubles. We
may add that the necessity of supporting the weak and non-producers,
as Mr. Spencer says, imposes an additional excess of burden on the
producers ; the weariness of the latter increases till it becomes a cause
of sickness and premature death, and the mortality which has been
evaded in one shape must come l-ound in another ; and, finally, it is
the inferiorly endowed who survive and the best endowed who perish.
If this misguided fraternity is perpetuated, it will end, according to
the Darwinians, by changing a vigorous and youthful society into a
prematurely aged society. Suppose a whole nation composed of old

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

men : old age differs from youth and the age of maturity in being
less active in production and less capable of resistance to destructive
influences ; men feeble in constitution, while they are still young, are
in an analogous position. A society of enfeebled persons would, then,
lead the kind of life that a society composed of old men, with no one
to wait upon them, would lead. The resemblance becomes complete
in the fact that in both groups life lacks the energy that renders labor
easy and pleasure keen. The old man sees the causes that give him
suffering increase and those that give him pleasure diminish, for phys-
ical exercise is the condition and the accompaniment of most pleasures.
Thus is produced a languishing, monotonous, and dreary life. Finally,
says Mr. Spencer, when the average type of the constitutions among
any people has fallen to a certain level of vigor inferior to that which
can without difficulty resist the ordinary strains, and perturbations, and
dangers, mortality is still not diminished, and, on the other hand, life,
ceasing to be an enjoyment, becomes a burden.

Such are the views of the Darwinians upon the physical deteriora-
tion of races by the operation of a mistaken philanthropy. These
considerations show well that moralists, economists, legislators, and
statesmen ought to come out from the traditional routine to study, in
the light of the laws of contemporary biology and sociology, what
will be the effects in the future of the measures they recommend or
adopt. Nevertheless, we should beware of exaggerating the bearing
and consequences of the theorem we have just postulated. There are
distinctions to be made, and those who share the views of Darwin
do not always make them. Let us first leave out of the account the
really sick, who are taken care of at home, or in the hospitals. Dis-
eases are, as a rule, generally accidental, except when they result from
an original constitutional defect or from some willful excess. Evi-
dently we are not rendering a bad service to society when we take
care of workmen who have been afflicted with sickness or are the vic-
tims of some accident. Suppose the wife of a vigorous and efficient
workman falls sick ; if the workman is very poor and no one comes
to his assistance, he will be obliged to overtax and exhaust himself to
take care of her ; and that would be a loss to the whole community.
His children, of good constitutions, who would have lived if the
mother had been assisted, will become ill or die if the family is reduced
to want. Is it necessary to let those whom disease attacks die without
pity, as armies are sometimes forced to abandon those who fall on the
road ? No Darwinian will in good faith maintain that. The theorem
of Darwin can apply, then, only to the infirm properly so called, to
whom philanthropy is accustomed to give assistance, as well as to men
attacked with accidental diseases. We may, however, here first call
attention to the fact that the infirm inmates of hospitals and those
who are succored at home are a small part of the nation ; and it is no
great inconvenience to the sound to take care of them. Moreover, the

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 309

infirm in the hospitals hardly ever contract marriage ; so that we need
not fear much from their posterity. Furthermore, we might, if it should
become necessary, impose conditions and even legal restraints upon
their marriage. The same is the case with the infirm who are assisted
at home ; if they have any important physical infirmity, they seldom
think of marrying, and are hardly ever able to marry. The Darwinian
theorem, moreover, proves too much, for it is applicable not only to
the weak in body, whom philanthropy takes under its protection ; to
be logically carried out, it should be taken home to each family, and
insist that no deformed or weakly child deserves to live. We should
say no more, " Woe to the conquered ! " but " Woe to the weak ! "
In effect, when a father and mother preserve the life of their child
only by the exercise of the greatest care, when a doctor employs all
his skill upon it, that fatherly and motherly care, that medical skill,
will only have succeeded in preparing " artificially for society a mem-
ber without vigor " ; and the latter, in his turn, by marrying, will put
into the world children still less vigorous. The Spartan method of
disposing of feeble children will then become that of the perfected
sociology. We shall test men as we now test our guns, throwing away
those which can not support a certain pressure. The struggle of art
against the natural elimination of the least vigorous is carried on in
the bosom of the family rather than in the hospitals. Public philan-
thropy does not, therefore, appear to be responsible for the principal
inconveniences it brings ; it is parental love that we have to deal
with, and, since that love is infinitely more advantageous than incon-
venient to society, it is our duty to brighten, not to obscure it.

It is rather before marriage than after the birth of children that
the real problem presents itself, and philanthropy should be exercised
in the interest of humanity itself. There is a moral question here,
and it is for the moralist to instruct the weak, delicate, or sickly per-
son, concerning the grave responsibility he assumes in contracting
marriage and running the danger of entailing upon his children the
evils from which he is suffering. Man, says Darwin, scans with scru-
pulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, his cattle, and
his dogs before matching them, but never takes such a precaution when
the question is one of his own marriage. It is certain that the person
who calls another being into life is not the only one concerned in the
matter, and that, if he has a good supply of physical evils in himself,
he ought to hesitate before condemning his posterity to them. But
must we go further, and make a social and judicial question of the
moral one ? Ought the state, the natural protector of the rights of
third parties, to intervene here in the physical interest of the children
and of the nation, as it interferes for their moral interests and even in
questions of mere future ? Darwin and his partisans, M. Ribot, for
instance, are inclined to have the state intervene now, or as soon as
custom shall have prepared the way for its intervention. When, says

310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Darwin, we shall have come to a better comprehension of biological
principles, of the laws of reproduction and heredity, for example, we
shall no longer hear ignorant legislators repelling with scorn a plan for
ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to
the species. According to Darwin, persons of both sexes should be pro-
hibited from marrying when they are found to be in too marked a de-
gree inferior in body or mind. The same rule would apply to those who
will not be able to save their children from abject poverty ; for poverty
is not only a great evil in itself, it also tends to grow by promoting in-
difference in marriage. M. Ribot expresses the just hope that custom
will eventually take account of the data of science in this grave ques-
tion, but he also contemplates the ultimate intervention of the law.
This is, in our view, a dangerous means. In aspiring to favor well-as-
sorted marriages in a physical respect, the law would, in the first place,
favor licentiousness and the birth of illegitimate children. Now, licen-
tiousness and the temporary union of the sexes unaccompanied by
forethought and determined responsibilities, would encumber society
with good-for-nothings to a much greater extent than the marriage of
weakly beings. In the second place, the intervention of the law might
impose hindrances, to a much greater extent than that of parents,
to morally and intellectually well-assorted marriages as well as to con-
genial ones. Finally, governments are still less infallible than parents
in the matter of making a decision concerning the future of children.
All that could be done would be to exact from those wishing to marry
some assurance that they have the means of living, and will be able to
take care of their children. It would still be necessary, we repeat, to
prevent such a policy operating, as it does in Germany, as a promoter
of illegitimate births. This question is not, however, in reality, within
the province of philanthropy properly so called, with which we are
particularly occupied. Philanthropy can be charged here only with
the assistance which it gives the feeble-bodied for the prolongation of
their existence, and for the means it affords them for bringing into the
world still feebler children. The Darwinians exaggerate the harm
caused by philanthropy in this respect ; for they forget that it can
not wholly transform nature. Its power is limited to prolonging the
life of an individual (which is no great harm), or to prolonging his
race for a time that is more or less brief. One of two things must be
the case : either the evil relieved by philanthropy is a fatal germ of
decay and death for the posterity of the assisted man, in which event
the benevolence will only delay without preventing the inevitable ex-
tinction of that posterity ; or, on the contrary, the evil is reparable
and posterity may recruit, strengthen, and perfect itself — that is, may
cross over the mountain instead of falling back upon it. Must we in
the latter case reproach Philanthropy for having held out the hand
of relief to those who were about to fall for ever? This dilemma can
be resolved only in each particular instance as it occurs ; what right

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY

311

have we, then, to prejudge the solution, and that in favor of the crud-
est sentiments ? We shall shortly see that the inconveniences, when
they exist, are compensated by the advantages. The logical conclu-
sion is that, if the moralist ought not to be too much occupied with
these complex problems, so the legislator can not be too prudent when
he is thinking about intervening, for his intervention will be much
more artificial, and may be more dangerous, than the intervention of
philanthropy.*

Let us now pass from the influence which philanthropy can exercise
directly upon individuals to that which it can exercise upon the envi-
ronment, by making it more favorable to the weak and wretched.
There is here an important distinction which the Darwinians too often
neglect to make. Among the conditions of the environment, of hy-
giene and of health, which can be managed for tbe whole of a popula-
tion, we should designate first the normal conditions which tend to
assure the normal development or performance of the organs, such as
pure air, nutritious and sufficient food, proper clothing, healthy houses,
the adjustment of the work to the strength, etc. A philanthropy which
endeavors to realize these conditions for the largest possible number of
men is evidently acting in the same direction with nature ; far from
enfeebling the generations, it is fortifying them. It would be a soph-
ism to assume that we could fortify the generations any better by
habituating them to do without these favorable conditions, for we can
not do without necessaries ; the budget of nature and life is fixed, and
can not be varied except within narrow limits. What would we say
of a father who, to exercise the nutritive functions of his children,
should try to habituate them to living without eating, who to exer-
cise their lungs should place them in a vitiated atmosphere, who to
exercise their sense of sight should make them work and read in an
unlighted room ? That would be to propose a problem as insoluble as
that of making a fish live without water. In fact, populations sub-
jected to unhealthy influences become wretched and sickly ; their
children fail to grow ; they are thin-blooded, feeble, small, thin, and
tainted with such diseases as goitre, pellagra, ophthalmia, and cre-
tinism. We can not add to the strength of men by making them
live in unhealthy districts instead of healthy ones. Excessive labor
likewise exhausts the minds and bodies of generations as it does of
individuals. Doubtless the strongest will survive, but they will sur-
vive enfeebled, and, although relatively strong, they will have really

* The fact is furthermore established by statistics that, notwithstanding the increased
propagation of the weak in civilized societies under the influence of philanthropic feel-
ings, and notwithstanding the increase of population, the length of life is now greater than
formerly. This proves that the decrease of some causes of mortality has been greater
down to the present time than the increase of other causes. Furthermore, the debility
of the existing generations may be a result of the stimulus which has been given to
industry under conditions which are still very defective, and which will be improved in
the future.

3i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

become weak ; they are the one-eyed among the blind. We shall
thus have obtained a survival of the weak, who will beget weak off-
spring. The argument of the Darwinians may then be turned back
upon them, and we may propose on our side the following theorem :
To realize the normal conditions most favorable to mankind is to
assume the development and selection of a majority of the strong
while saving only a minority of the weak ; for to be sick is the
exception when the conditions as to hygiene and food are at the
best.

The reasoning of Mr. Spencer, repeated by M. de Candolle, is, in
our view, valid only under abnormal conditions. If we bring up chil-
dren effeminately, in mental and physical idleness, if we feed them on
candies instead of bread and meat, if we keep them in a greenhouse
and out of the open air, if we do not let them take any exercise for
fear they will be tired, we shall evidently debase them, and prepare,
through them, for the debasement of the race itself. In short, the
causes for the deterioration of a generation are luxury, effeminacy,
and idleness. There is nothing strange from this point of view in Dr.
Jacoby's demonstration, that extinction is the ultimate fate awaiting
every royal and aristocratic family, that it has come or will come upon
the Csesars, the Medicis, the Valois, the Bourbons, our French nobility,
the Venetian aristocracy, and the English lords ; for it is in such fam-
ilies that the causes of decay, inseparable from power and riches, pro-
duce their fatal results. Sterility, mental disorders, premature death,
and the ultimate extinction of the race, do not constitute a future
reserved particularly and exclusively for sovereign dynasties ; all the
privileged classes, all families occupying exclusively elevated positions,
share the lot of reigning families, although to a lesser degree, which
degree is always in proportion to the grandeur of their privileges and
the altitude of their social state. But if we grant this principle for
once, we may still ask the pessimist disciples of Darwin if philanthropy
is in the habit of assuring to the needy the luxury and the soft life of
aristocracies. It at least, one may say, permits idleness ; but that is
the fault of those who come to the assistance of the suffering working-
men, for it is their right and duty to require an equivalent in labor for
the assistance they give.

We have as yet examined only the first of the Darwinian theorems
relative to the effects of misapplied philanthropy : a society may
deteriorate in a physical respect by the artificial preservation of the
weakest, if it does not conform to the real course of nature. The
Darwinians add to this that it will also deteriorate in a moral respect,
by the artificial preservation of the individuals " least capable of tak-
ing care of themselves." The principle on which this new theorem is
based is that the laws of heredity and selection are applicable to the
moral as well as to the physical side. We admit that Messrs. Galton,
Ribot, and Jacoby have undoubtedly established this principle. Moral

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 313

vices, like physical vices, end, after they have been for a long time
implanted in families or races, by transmitting themselves from gen-
eration to generation. Darwin insists much on the transmission of
that moral quality which he calls character, strength of will, courage,
self-reliance ; on the other hand, there are also, according to him, peo-
ple trifling, idle, and careless by right of birth, like the Irish. Trans-
port to the same country an equal number of Scotch and Irish, says
Darwin : at the end of a certain time the Irish will have become ten
times as numerous as the Scotch, but the latter, by virtue of their
hereditary qualities, will be at the head and occupying the highest
places. " If any one denies," says Mr. Spencer, " that children bear
likenesses to their progenitors in character and capacity, if he holds
that men whose parents and grandparents were habitual criminals, have
tendencies as good as those of men whose parents and grandparents
were industrious and upright, he may consistently hold that it matters
not from what families in a society the successive generations descend.
He may think it just as well if the most active, and capable, and pru-
dent, and conscientious people die without issue ; while many children
are left by the reckless and dishonest. But whoever does not espouse
so insane a proposition, must admit that social arrangements which
retard the multijflication of the mentally-best, and facilitate the multi-
plication of the mentally-worst, must be extremely injurious." Help
the least meritorious to propagate themselves by enfranchising them
from the mortality to which their absence of merit devotes them, and
merit itself will become more and more rare from generation to gener-
ation. Furthermore, besides seeing to their own preservation and that
of their families, the good will be obliged also to look to the preserva-
tion of the bad and their families, and will be thus in danger of being
overtaxed. This is what Stuart Mill also complains of. In conse-
quence of the unintelligent use of the income-tax, and the obligation
of every parish to support its poor, the workers are compelled to take
care of the idle. Is this justice? In some cases, this situation pre-
vents the industrious from marrying ; in others, it limits the number
of their children, or prevents their giving them a sufficient support ;
in others, it takes industrious men from their families ; in every way
it tends to arrest the propagation of the capable, to injure their con-
stitution, and to bring them down to the level of the incapable. Dur-
ing this time the latter will increase and multiply, conformably to the
misinterpreted wisdom of the Bible ; they will swarm at the expense
of others. This, says Mr. Spencer, is a deliberate storing-up of mis-
eries for future generations. We can not make a worse present to
posterity than to encumber it with a continually increasing number of
imbeciles and criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect,
the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a multitude of
enemies. We have a right to ask if the maudlin philanthropy which
thinks only of ameliorating the evils of the moment and persists in

3 H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

overlooking indirect mischiefs does not produce a greater total of
misery than extreme selfishness ?

Such are the objections of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin in all their
force. In our opinion, they still bear against the blind and irrational
exercise of philanthropy, rather than against philanthropy itself.
Pushed too far, the theorem relative to the moral and intellectual de-
basement of societies would have consequences still more inadmissible
than that relative to their physical debasement. In fact, the law of
mental and moral heredity, which is their principle, is much more
vague and loose than the law of physical heredity. What is the mean-
ing of the unprecise expression, " a society lowered by the artificial
preservation of the individuals least capable of taking care of them-
selves " ? Does Mr. Spencer mean that parents in the habit, for ex-
ample, of soliciting at the charitable institutions will beget children
endowed with the innate disposition to go to the same institutions ?
England certainly offers a spectacle of this kind of poor, who are as-
sisted from father to son by the parishes ; they are, we might say, the
lords of beggardom ; in them hereditary indigence is raised to the
dignity of an institution. Poor mothers surround themselves with
their numerous children as so many titles to assistance — they are Cor-
nelias of a new race. But whose fault is it ? Is it not that of the
distributors of the poor-taxes, which are, moreover, increasing every
day under this system ? Is it not, furthermore, the fault of the bad
education received by the children, rather than of heredity of temper-
ament ? If these children were brought up with the children of a
lord, would they exhibit an innate propensity to beg or to be assisted
by others ? We believe, generally, that Messrs. Spencer and Darwin,
as well as Messrs. Jacoby and Ribot, attribute too great a part to
heredity, too little a one to education and circumstances.

The part played by the social and political organization in England
must, moreover, not be forgotten. In France, by the operation of the
rule of equality, there are between four and five million proprietors,
and the increase of population is so slow as to give uneasiness to those
jWho regard the material and military power of a nation before every-
thing else. In England, the soil is owned by thirty thousand persons,
and half of it is in the hands of a hundred and fifty large proprietors.
In consequence of this feudal monopoly and this rule of inequality
(for which many of our contemporary writers utter Platonic regrets),
neither the workmen nor the villagers can live without the aid of the
poor-taxes. The lords having arrogated to themselves the monopoly
of wealth, a part of the nation would be reduced to the most extreme
wretchedness if they did not deign to compensate for their injustice
with their charity. We must admit that they come within a certain
distance of reaching this point, for the number of assisted has dimin-
ished one half during the last thirty years. In the greater part of
England the wages of the agricultural laborer vary between six and

TRACES OF A PBE-INDIAN PEOPLE. 315

twelve shillings a week ; bis lodging costs him one shilling a week ;
it is impossible for him to live on the remainder of his wages with a
wife and only two children. Now, by the zeal of biblical preachers,
and the traditional improvidence of the fathers, they have on the
average eisdit children, sometimes fourteen or sixteen. The result is
that they can not dispense with assistance, either public or private.
Not a day-laborer in the field, says Mrs. Grote, lives or supports his
family with his wages alone ; he subsists partly upon his savings and
partly on alms. Having no hope of becoming a proprietor, like the
French peasant, the English rustic is prodigal and exacting in the
matter of the comfortable ; and, as his fecundity realizes the ideal of
the Old Testament, his improvidence realizes that of the New. The
fecundity and improvidence of the workmen in the factories are still
greater.

Gold may be thrown out by the handful in vain ; it is impossible
to fill this sort of a cask of the Dana'ides ; pure charity, while it may
relieve the suffering, is incompetent to suppress the causes of misery
and supply justice. Neither can religion replace science. There is
one thing, says Mr. Spencer, which calls for especially severe reproba-
tion ; it is the waste of money inspired by a false interpretation of
the well-known maxim, "Charity covers a multitude of sins." " For
in the many whom this interpretation leads to believe that by large
donations they can compound for evil deeds, we may trace an element
of positive baseness — an effort to get a good place in another world,
no matter at what injury to fellow-creatures."

But, we ask, does Mr. Spencer see where the evil and the remedy
really are when he attributes the carelessness and the idleness of the
poor to heredity, and is especially concerned to prevent the transmis-
sion of these vices by the blood to future generations ? The best
processes of Darwinian selection would be without important results
in the absence of good education, and education would itself have
little power in the absence of just laws. These two essential elements
which the Darwinians have overlooked — education and laws — must,
then, be reinstated in the problem.

[7'o be continued.]

TRACES OF A PRE-INDIAN PEOPLE.

By CHARLES C. ABBOTT, M. D.

BY the cautious archaeologist all evidences of ancient man in East-
ern North America — exclusive of true palaeolithic implements —
are wisely referred to those Indian tribes that, to within a compara-
tively recent period, were the sole occupants of the territory named.
Perhaps, however, the time has come when it may be asked if all the

3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

traces of prehistoric man, gathered along our northern Atlantic sea-
board, are of one origin. In other words, have traces of a people
later than American palaeolithic man, and earlier than the Indian, been
discovered ?

When we chance upon a stone arrow-point lying in the soil, it is a
very different object to the archaeologist than the same specimen would
be lying in a cabinet. In the latter case, it is an example of man's primi-
tive handiwork merely ; in the former, it is not only the production of a
skilled worker in flint, but evidence that on the spot where found man
once tarried, if he did not dwell there, and tbat for him a necessity
for weapons existed. Further, if but a single specimen be found, we
may conclude that it is the point of some arrow vainly shot, or the
head of a lance that has been broken and lost. But if, on the other
hand, instead of one, we find a hundred scattered over a few square
rods of ground, then we have evidence not simply that arrow and
spear heads may be of various shapes and sizes, but that where they
occur was once a village, it may be, or a battle has been fought at
this point, or possibly that here an arrow-maker once plied his calling,
the more definite decision being reached whether we find pottery and
domestic implements also, or weapons only, or mingled with a multi-
tude of the flakes of such mineral as that of which the weapons are
made. Thus it will be seen that the practical results of an archaeolo-
gist's labors are to be derived from field-work only, not from simple
closet studies. He must seek out these hidden village sites, dig in
their weed-grown corn-fields, and invade their cemeteries, if he would
learn where they lived, where and how they toiled, and finally where
and in what manner they were laid to rest.

Of a series of nearly twenty-five thousand implements and weapons
of stone gathered from one limited locality by the writer, more than
four fifths have been placed together in a public museum. In looking
at them collectively, perhaps the most noticeable feature is that of the
marked difference in finish and material. Of the chipped objects, such
as arrow-heads, one instinctively separates them into finely wrought
objects of jasper and quartz, and ruder specimens made of a slate-like
rock.

The question is simply, Has this feature any ethnological signifi-
cance ? It is the purpose of this essay to determine this.

The bare fact that one arrow-head is roughly fashioned and another
beautifully wrought has no significance beyond the fact that there
were skillful and clumsy workmen in every tribe — professionals and
amateurs. On a closer examination a fact becomes apparent, however,
that should be critically regarded, and this is that the rudely made
objects are almost wholly made of the same mineral, while the finely
finished objects are of one of three closely allied minerals. The ex-
ceptions are too few to have any bearing on the question. Chipped
implements of Indian origin, such as occur in every nook and corner

TRACES OF A PRE-INDIAN PEOPLE. 317

of the Atlantic coast States, are made of flint in some one of its many
forms, as jasper, chert, chalcedony, agate, horn-stone, or they are of
quartz. I do not deny that they are also of other materials, hut that
more than ninety-nine hundredths are of this material — flint. In the
valley of the Delaware River there are found, also, enormous numbers
of similar objects, of quite uniform pattern and rudely finished, made
of a mineral characteristic of the locality— argillite. This term, " ar-
gillite," as employed by Professor M. E. Wadsworth, of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, to whom specimens of implements were submitted for
examination, is used to designate all argillaceous rocks in which the
argillaceous material is the predominant characteristic ; slate, or clay-
slate, clay-stone, etc., are simply varieties of it, the term " slate " being
only rightfully used when slaty cleavage is developed. The argillite
out of which these specimens were made has no trace of cleavage.

The question may now very pertinently be asked, Why may not
the Indians have used both minerals, flint and argillite, the one as fre-
quently as the other ?

There are no reasons why, indeed, they might not have done so ;
but, on the other hand, evidences that they did not are not wanting,
if the circumstances under which the objects are found have been
rightly interpreted.

The celebrated Swedish naturalist, Peter Kahn, traveled through-
out Central and Southern New Jersey in 1748-50, and in his de-
scription of the country remarks : * " We find great woods here,
but, when the trees in them have stood a hundred and fifty or a
hundred and eighty years, they are either rotting within, or losing
their crown, or their wood becomes quite soft, or their roots are no
longer able to draw in sufficient nourishment, or tbey die from some
other cause. Therefore when storms blow, which sometimes happens
here, the trees are broke off either just above the root or in the middle
or at the summit. Several trees are likewise torn out with their roots
by the power of the winds. ... In this manner the old trees die away
continually, and are succeeded by a younger generation. Those which
are thrown down lie on the ground and putrefy, sooner or later, and
by that means increase the black soil, into which the leaves are likewise
finally changed, which drop abundantly in autumn, are blown about
by the winds for some time, but are heaped up and lie on both sides
of the trees which are fallen down. It requires several years before a
tree is entirely reduced to dust."

This quotation from Kahn has a direct bearing on that which fol-
lows. It is clear how, to a great extent, the surface-soil was formed
during the occupancy of the country by the Indians. The entire area
of the State was covered with a dense forest, which, century after
century, was increasing the black soil to which Kahn refers. If, now,

* " Travels into North America," by Peter Kahn (English translation), London, 1771,
vol. ii, p. IS.

3i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an opportunity offers to examine a section of virgin soil and under-
lying strata, as occasionally happens on the bluffs facing the river, the
limit in depth of this black soil may be approximately determined.
Microscopical examination of it enables one to determine the depth
more accurately.

An average, derived from several such sections, leads me to infer
that the depth is not over one foot, and the proportion of vegetable
matter increases as the surface is approached. Of this depth of super-
ficial soil probably not over one half has been derived from decompo-
sition of vegetable growths. Indeed, experiment would indicate that
the rotting of tree-roots yields no appreciable amount of matter.
While no positive data are determinable in this matter, beyond the
naked fact that rotting trees increase the bulk of top-soil, one archaeo-
logical fact we do derive, which is, that the flint implements known
as Indian relics belong to this superficial or " black soil," as Kahn
terms it. Abundantly are they found near the surface ; more spar-
ingly the deeper we go ; while below the base of this deposit of soil,
at an average depth of about two feet, the argillite implements occur
in greatest abundance. The accompanying diagram more clearly sets

m^o gm

'f/t

;r.

to $0

G

ifU

o

0 G>*Q<=>*a_

forth the conclusions at which I have arrived, after years of careful
study of this subject. By this it will be seen that, as the depth
increases, the number of ordinary flint implements of Indian origin
decreases ; and that the reverse is true of the palaeolithic implements
which are a feature of the gravel-beds ; and is true of that inter-
mediate form which is characteristic of the stratum of sand capping
the gravels and blending insensibly with the surface-soil. This inter-
mediate form, which is always made of argillite, is both in workanm-
ship and design a marked advance over the palaeolithic implements,
and yet is so uniform in pattern and so inferior in finish, when
compared with the average flint implement of the Indian, that it has

TRACES OF A PRE-INDIAN PEOPLE. 3i9

been assigned to an earlier date than the latter, and considered the
handiwork rather of the descendants of palaeolithic man.

What is held to be convincing evidence of this has already been
given in the statement of the relative positions of the two forms —
Indian and pre-Indian — as seen in sections of undisturbed or virgin

soil.

Negative evidence of the soundness of this view is had in the
character of the sites of arrow-makers' open-air workshops, or those
spots whereon the professional chipper of flint pursued his calling.

In the locality where the writer has pursued his studies several
such sites have been discovered and carefully examined.* In no one
of these workshop sites has there been found any trace of argillite
mingled with the flint-chips that form the characteristic feature of
such spots. On the other hand, no similar sites have been discovered,
to my knowledge, where argillite was used exclusively. The absence
of this mineral can not be explained on the ground that it was diffi-
cult to procure, for such is not the case. It constitutes, in fact, a
large percentage of the pebbles and bowlders of the drift, from which
the Indians gathered their jasper and quartz pebbles for working into
implements and weapons.

If the absence of argillite from such heaps of selected stones is
explained by the assertion that the Indians had recognized the superi-
ority of jasper, then the belief that argillite was used prior to jasper
receives tacit assent. If, however, it was the earlier Indians who
used argillite, and gradually discarded it for the various forms of flint,
then we ought to find workshop sites older than the time of flint chip-
ping, and others where the two minerals are associated. This, as has
been stated, has not been done. Negative evidence this, it is admitted,
but, when considered in addition to the positive evidence of position
in undisturbed soil, it has a value that must not be overlooked. Suffi-
cient positive evidence to clear away all doubt of the presence of an
earlier people than the Indian on the Atlantic sea-board of America
will probably never be forthcoming, yet, to the minds of candid inquir-
ers, there is a degree of probability in the interpretation of known
facts that closely hugs the bounds of certainty.

Wholly convinced that valid reasons have been given for assum-
ing that the chipped stone implements made of argillite are older than
the similar patterns of weapons made by the Indians, it is desirable
to determine wThether these ruder objects are the handiwork of the
ancestors of the Indians of historic times, or that of the descendants
of palasolithic man, and therefore the relics of a preceding, prehistoric
race.

A forcible objection that has been urged against the assumption,
as it was held to be, of a pre-Indian occupancy of our sea-coast, is the
difficulty of realizing that a people sufficiently advanced to make so

* "Primitive Industry," chapter xxxi, p. 453, Salem, Massachusetts, 1881.

320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

well-designed a weapon as the argillite spear-head should not have
utilized stone in various other ways to meet their wants, precisely as
the Indian did subsequently. No other form of implement than these
spear-heads was clearly associated with them, except when found on
the surface, and so not clearly separable from the true Indian imple-
ments associated therewith. Recently, the occurrence of a stone ham-
mer, traces of fire — charcoal — and a flat stone bearing marks of a
hammer or rubbing-stone, at a depth of nearly three feet below the
surface, has rendered it quite probable that a proportion of the sur-
face-formed relics of these patterns should be regarded as of other
than Indian origin. If we examine a series of the stone implements
of the only other American race — the Esquimaux — we will find that
not only is the variation in pattern very considerable, but that pre-
cisely such forms of domestic implements as are now in use in the
Arctic regions, among the Chukches, are common " relics " in New
Jersey. In his recent volume of Arctic explorations, Professor Nor-
clenskiuld describes a series of stone hammers and a stone anvil, which
are used together for crushing bones.* Every considerable collection
of stone implements gathered along our sea-board, anywhere from
Maine to Maryland, contains numbers of identical objects.

While many of these hammers and mortars are unquestionably of
Indian origin, no valid reason can be urged that a proportion of them
are not of the same origin as the argillite spear-heads. Indeed, grooved
stone hammers have been found quite deeply imbedded in the sand —
as deep as the usual depth at which argillite arrow-points occur ; but
this, of itself, is scarcely significant. So unstable is the surface of the
earth, where sand prevails, that the actual position, when found, of
any single specimen, is of little importance. It is only when thousands
have been gathered with great care, and under the most favorable cir-
cumstances, that any inferences may be drawn. This is true of the
argillite arrow-heads, of which thousands have been gathered, and
presumably true of the hammers and mortars, because such implements
are common among an American race which uses also such spear-points
as are so abundant in New Jersey. The similarity between a Chukche
spear-point figured by Nordenskiold f and an Esquimau spear figured
by Lubbock J and the New Jersey specimens is very striking. Of
course, such similarity may be considered as mere coincidence, but that
it has an important bearing on the question becomes evident when the
many circumstances suggestive of a pre-Indian race on the Atlantic
sea-board are collectively considered. Singly, any fact may be held
to be of little or no value ; but when many of like significance are
gathered together, they are self-supporting, and the one central fact
becomes established.

Basing the supposition that palaeolithic man was not the ancestor

* "Voyage of the Yega," New York, 1882, p. 483. f Ibid., p. 571.

% "Prehistoric Times," second edition, London, 1S68, p. 493, Fig. 21 S.

TRACES OF A PRE-INDIAN PEOPLE. 321

of the American Indian, because there is evidence warranting the be-
lief that " the Indian was a late comer upon the extreme eastern bor-
der of North America — indeed, the oldest distribution of the Ameri-
can races does not antedate the tenth century," and therefore " the
appearance of the Skraelling (Esquimau) in the Sagas, instead of the
Indian, is precisely what the truth required " * — basing the supposition
thereupon, it was suggested f that in the Esquimaux we should find the
descendants of that oldest of all mankind — homo fialozolithicus.

Having given the strictly archaeological reasons for dissociating
certain of the stone implements found in New Jersey, let us now
briefly refer to the historical evidence bearing upon this question.
Have we any references to Esquimaux dwelling in regions significant-
ly south of their present habitat ? If there are such, then it is at
once evident that the weapons and domestic implements of such
people must now be buried in the dust of their ancient southern
dwelling-places, and, these same spots being subsequently tenanted by
the Indian, his handiwork must also be mingled with that of his pred-
ecessors.

The literature of this subject can be sufficiently outlined by refer-
ence to two authors. Major W. H. Dall, in " Tribes of the Extreme
Northwest," \ remarks : " There are many facts in American ethnology
which tend to show that originally the Innuit of the east coast had
much the same distribution as the walrus, namely, as far south as New
Jersey." I submit the rude argillite arrow-heads found in certain
localities in such abundance, and at a significant depth, as an addi-
tional fact, tending in the same direction.

In Rev. B. F. De Costa's admirable resume, of Icelandic literature *
there is given abundant evidence — ay, proof — that the people dwelling
along the coast of Massachusetts, 900 to 1000 a. d., were not the same
race that resisted the English on the same coast six centuries later.
The descriptions of the people seen by the Northmen show that, of
whatever race, they were well advanced in the art of war, and used
not only the bow, but hatchets and the sling. They were "men of
short stature, bushy hair, rude, fierce, and devoid of every grace." ||

It need, therefore, only be remembered that the relationship be-
tween the true palaeolithic implements and those of more advanced
finish and design is evident to every one who carefully examines a com-
plete series. At the same time, the student is confronted with reliable
historical evidence of the occupancy of the Atlantic sea-board by the
Esquimaux as far south as New Jersey.

Does not the impression derived from strictly archaeological

* " Popular Science Monthly," vol. xviii, No. 1, p. 38, November, 1880, New York,
f "Peabody Museum Report," vol. ii, p. 252, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

% "Contributions to North American Ethnology," vol. i, p. 98, Washington, 1877.

* "Pre-Columbian Discovery of America," Albany, 1868.

|| "Popular Science Monthly," November, 1880, p. 38, New York.
vol. xxn. — 21

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

studies, that all the stone implements of our Eastern sea-board are not
of one origin, go far to confirm the position of the historical student
that an earlier race than the Indian once resided here ?

De Costa remarks: "During the eleventh century the red-man lived
upon the North American Continent, while the eastern border of his
territory could not have been situated far away from the Atlantic
coast. In New England he must have succeeded the people known as
Skraellings. Prior to that time, his hunting-grounds lay toward the
interior of the continent. In course of time, however, he came into
collision with the ruder people on the Atlantic coast, the descendants
of an almost amphibious glacial man."

This " amphibious glacial man," I submit, is he who fashioned the
rude palaeolithic implements, that, with bones of extinct and Arctic
mammalia, are now found in the glacial drift of our river-valleys ; and
his " descendants," a rude people, with whom the Indian finally came
in contact, were those who fashioned the plainly finished argillite ar-
row-heads and spears that are now, in part, commingled with the
elaborate workmanship of the latest race, save one, that has peopled
this continent.

-*♦»-

BODILY DEFORMITIES IN GIRLHOOD.

By CHARLES EC-BERTS, F. R. C. S.*

HOPE the time is not distant when a careful study of the living
model of the child and the adult, and the whole period of the de-
velopment of the one into the other, will form a part of the student's
ordinary course of anatomy and physiology, as such knowledge is
essentia] to the surgeon engaged in removing and preventing deform-
ities of the body. Orthopedic surgery as a specialty is a great evil
both to the profession and the public. The specialist who concen-
trates all his attention on a narrow field of study and practice is
tempted to exaggerate its importance, and to analyze and disintegrate
his facts till he loses sight of their relation to and their dependence on
each other ; while, on the other hand, the general practitioner is dis-
heartened and repelled by the apparent complication of the subject,
and is induced to hand over to the specialist many cases which he is
quite competent to treat, or, as is too often the case, to undervalue
the importance or deny the existence of many deformities. How else
can we explain the difference in practice between the fussy mechanical
ingenuity with which many professed orthopedists treat the slightest
deformities of children— which, by the way, they often tell us are only
visible to their specially trained eye, and are hidden from that of the

* Late Assistant-Surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children, etc.

BODILY DEFORMITIES IN GIRLHOOD. 323

family doctor — and the sang-froid of the general practitioner who
meets the difficulties hy the administration of a few doses of steel and
quinine and rest in the recumbent position ?

No deformity of a child's body gives rise to so much alarm to par-
ents, or is the subject of greater diversity of treatment among medi-
cal men, as lateral curvature of the spine, and this is due, I believe,
to an imperfect acquaintance with its origin. Specialists are accus-
tomed to treat lateral curvature, knock-knee, and flat-foot as distinct
deformities, while in truth they are all links in the chain of one de-
formity. Lateral curvature may arise in different ways, but in all
cases it is due to the loss of the lateral balance of the body in the up-
right position, and is the result of an effort of nature to maintain the
center of gravity of the body and support the head and shoulders in
the position which requires the least expenditure of muscular effort.
The paralysis, wasting or loss of a limb, or the shortening of one of the
legs by disease of joint, rickets, knock-knee, or flat-foot in growing
children, will produce lateral curvature, and these are its chief if not
its only causes. It is not a deformity arising from general debility,
and I do not think it can be produced, as is often asserted, by an
awkward sitting position, as in writing and other school occupations.
The curvature of the spine which results from these causes is antero-
posterior, or what is commonly called round-shoulder (non-carious).
The tendency of debility, whether local or general, is to bring the
body into the prone or recumbent position, and not to tilt it on one
side.

Setting aside the cases of lateral curvature in children who have
been affected with rickets, disease of joints, paralysis or loss of a limb
in early life, and which affect both sexes and all ages equally, what
may be called the idiopathic or acquired deformity is rarely found in
children of either sex under the age of nine or ten years, and very
rarely in boys above that age. It is, indeed, almost peculiar to girls
verging on puberty, and is as often found in strong and healthy as in
weak and delicately built girls, and most commonly in those who are
too fat and heavy for their stature and age. It is a deformity wdiich
is less common among the laboring classes than among the rich and
well-to-do, and is largely associated with a life of indolence and
luxury.

A careful examination of the subject has satisfied me that this ac-
quired lateral curvature in girls is due to the change in the position of
the lower limbs, resulting from the development of the pelvis from
the infantile to the female type a year or two before the accession of
puberty. Any one who will examine the figures of young children
below this age will find little differences between the two sexes. The
legs of young girls are set on the body like those of boys, and, within
the limits of their training and dress, they can run as well and as
gracefully as boys ; but as puberty approaches, and the pelvis alters

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its shape, the heads of the femora are removed farther from the center
of gravity, and at the same time become rotated forward by the widen-
ing of the pelvis, and especially of the outlet of the pelvis. The effect
of these changes is to bring the knees closer together, and to produce
the weak-kneed condition and the awkward running gait peculiar to
women. This condition of the limbs is well seen in pictures and stat-
ues of the nude figure, and it is often exaggerated by the artist or
sculptor, probably to give a more distinct idea of a woman's helpless-
ness or modesty. The knee-cap in women looks straight forward,
while in men it is turned a little outward ; and in women the knees
touch, or even overlap each other, while in men they are quite free.
In running, a woman has to move the knees round each other, and to
throw the feet out in a succession of small semicircles, which accounts
for the peculiarity in her gait. This gait is not found in young girls
before the onset of puberty, and is useful as a diagnostic sign of pelvic
evolution long before the ordinary signs appear.

Although this weak-kneed condition is quite normal, it is a fruitful
source of deformity in growing girls. A little additional strain will
convert it into knock-knee, and, by throwing the weight of the body
on the inner ankle, it will quickly break down the arch of the foot and
produce flat-foot or complete eversion of one or both feet. It is here,
indeed, that nearly all the mischief lies, for according to my experi-
ence ninety per cent of the cases of lateral curvature of the spine in
girls are associated with flat-foot. This deformity is exceedingly com-
mon among women, and a French savant recently quoted it as a proof
of the physical inferiority of woman to man. To a slight extent flat-
foot may exist in all women, as the position of the lower limbs after
puberty would seem to produce it, and it may be Nature's plan to pro-
mote what anthropologists call marriage by capture ; but to a large
extent, and in its worst forms, flat-foot is the result of civilization.
Indeed, both the highly arched instep and the everted foot are peculiar
to civilized peoples, and are absent from the lower races, especially
those who go barefoot, and both conditions owe their existence to the
wasting of the muscles which flex the toes and foot by the constant
use of tight-fitting shoes. In India, where the native workman makes
use of his toes with almost the same facility as his fingers, the instep
is obliterated by the fleshy bellies of the abductor of the great toe
and the short flexor of the toes, which stretch across the arch from
their attachment to the heel-bone. The wasting of these muscles is
of little importance to us who have no need to use our toes in detail ;
but it is far otherwise with the deep flexors of the foot and toes which
are attached to the leg-bones, and whose tendons pass under the ankle-
joint and arch of the foot and form their chief support. It is, indeed,
from the wasting or inaction of the deep flexor muscles, coupled with
the turning out of the toes which fashion has imposed upon us, that
the ankle and arch of the foot give way under the changed position

BODILY DEFORMITIES IN GIRLHOOD.

325

of the limbs in girls at puberty, which I have described ; and what is
remarkable, and not easily explained, the deformity generally occurs
only in one foot, or is greater in one than in the other. In this way,
however, the legs become of unequal length, and we have obliquity of

The diagram shows the relation of the brim of the pelvis in the child, at puberty, and in the adult
female, from moasurements of pelves in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The
want of parallelism of the two inner pelvic curves shows that in the change from the infantile
to the female type evolution takes place chiefly behind, and that the legs must be rotated for-
ward and inward. The dimensions are— Child : breadth, 83 mm.; length, 73; index, 114.
Young female : breadth, 112 mm. ; length, 85 ; index, 132. Adult female : breadth, 143 mm. ;
length, 108 ; index, 132. The indices of the young female and the adult are the same, but the
bones of the former are not united together.

the pelvis, and consequently lateral curvature of the spine to correct
the balance of the body, and bring the head and shoulders into the
line of the center of gravity. Flat-foot also produces, or exaggerates,
the natural disposition to knock-knee in girls, which, in its turn, adds
to the inequality in the length of the two legs. Some observations
recently made in America show that even in adults of both sexes the
two legs are rarely of equal length, and there must be, therefore,
slight lateral curvature in all persons, and it is probable that these
natural curves become exaggerated, as in the development of round
shoulder the large antero-posterior curves of the spine are exaggerated.
It is to the wasting or non-development of the fleshy parts of the deep
flexors of the toes or foot that Europeans owe the small ankle and the
comparatively large calf of which they are so proud as distinguishing
them from the lower races. It is a distinction, however, which is more
than counterbalanced by the ugliness and inconvenience of flat-foot, to
which it frequently gives rise. The ingenuity of an Edison could not
devise a machine so favorable to the production of flat-foot as the tight-
fitting, high-heeled, long-topped boot at present worn by girls. Not only
does the rigidity of the front part cramp the action of the muscles, but
the high heels place the foot at such an angle with the leg that the
tendons are of least use in supporting the ankle-joint, and the long
tops hamper the development of the muscles in the remainder of their
course. The high heels, moreover, push the center of gravity forward
on the arch of the foot, and by propping up the heel gives greater lev-

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

erage, and a greater space for the arch to fall when once it gives way.
In the majority of cases the mischief would stop when the arch reached
the level of the natural heel, but the heels of boots favor a still greater
fall, which ends in e version of the foot. It is difficult to understand
how women submit to the discomfort of wearing high-heeled boots, or
can be so cruel as to let their daughters wear them. It is true they
give a fictitious height to the body, and disguise the slighter forms of
flat-foot, but on the other hand they exaggerate the severer forms, and
the boots are entirely wanting in proportion. Zeising's law of propor-
tion requires that the sole and the heel should have the relative length
of three to two, like that of the normal foot.

In treating the deformities of the spine and legs incident to healthy
girls, it is obvious that attention must be directed, in the first instance,
to correcting the def oi'med knees and feet. The very first signs of the
giving way of the arch of the foot, which is easily detected by exami-
nation, by growing pains, and especially a change of gait, should be
met by the wearing of flat-soled, well-fitting boots, with India-rubber
or felt pads inside to support the arch, and special exercises favorable
to the development of the deep flexor muscles. At puberty, and for
two or three years before, the growth is very vigorous, and in both
stature and bulk girls shoot ahead of boys of the same age, the period
of rapid growth of boys coming later. From ten to fourteen years the
stature of girls increases at a uniform rate of two inches per year, ex-
cept at thirteen, when it is two inches and a half ; but the weight in-
creases at a much greater rate. At ten years girls add four pounds,
at eleven six pounds, at twelve ten pounds, at thirteen twelve pounds,
and at fourteen and fifteen eight pounds to their weight, and this sud-
den addition to the weight tells rapidly on ankles, feet, and knees,
placed at a disadvantage by concurrent change in the position of the
lower limbs by the evolution of the pelvis and the cramping of the
muscles by tight boots. The arch of the foot often breaks down in
the course of a few weeks, without warning or apparent cause, and in
girls in perfect health, and especially those of an indolent habit. Fort-
unately, the remedy is as easy and complete, if applied promptly at
the beginning and adhered to persistently, as it is difficult and unsatis-
factory if put off till the deformity is firmly established. Support to
the arch of the foot prevents the formation of knock-knee and lateral
curvature of the spine. When it fails to do so, the knock-knee can be
corrected by the temporary application of long splints, especially in
bed at nights ; but no apparatus is necessary for the curvature of the
spine in its earlier stages, as it will disappear on restoring the lateral
balance of the body, and all treatment will be useless until this is done.
Much walking or standing should be avoided, and short but vigorous
gymnastic exercises substituted, and when possible the recumbent po-
sition assumed. Sitting on the ground or on a sofa, in the cross-
legged, Oriental position, serves to expand the pelvis, evert the knees

BODILY DEFORMITIES IN GIRLHOOD. 327

and invert the ankles, and counteract all the deformities ; while sitting
on chairs with the lec-s crossed one over the other directly favors them.
It is probable that most children spend too much of their time on their
feet, and that their power of walking is very much overrated. Run-
ning is the natural gait of all young animals, and children always run
if left to play by themselves. The dire effect of standing and walking
in producing flat-foot in children is shown by the following statistics,
taken from my paper on " Flat-foot," in the St. George's Hospital Re-
ports (1872-74) : Of 10,000 children, between the ages of eight and
thirteen years, which were examined, about one third were school-
children living in country towns and agricultural districts, another
third were school-children living in manufacturing towns, and the re-
mainder were factory-children. Among the first, 17'1 cases per 1,000 of
flat-foot occurred ; among the second, 30'7 cases per 1,000 ; and among
the third— i. e., the factory children, who were employed five hours
daily standing, walking, and carrying weights — 79 cases per 1,000 of
flat-feet were found. Among the latter the deformity was found to
increase rapidly with age — i. e., with the longer period of employment
in factories. Thus :

Of the age of 8 years, 15'1 per 1,000 had flat-foot.

" 9 " 45-6 " "

10 " 51-2 " "

u n « 104-2 " "

" 12 " 132-4 " "

At the period when these observations were made (1873) children were
allowed to commence work in factories at the age of eight years, in-
stead of ten as now, and the low rate of 15*1 per 1,000 represents the
normal rate before the strain of labor has begun to tell on the chil-
dren's feet.

There can be little doubt that children are made to stand and walk
far too much both at home and at school. Standing at lessons, parade-
exercise, and much of the military drill in schools are injurious to both
boys and girls, and especially to the latter. Instead of listless stand-
ing about, or taking long walks with adults, children should be per-
mitted and encouraged to play lively games, which they will generally
do even if left to themselves, to dance, and to perform short but spir-
ited gymnastic exercises with apparatus. Exercises which develop the
muscles of the feet and ankles, such as hopping and skipping, are es-
pecially necessary for girls ; and still better than these are the admi-
rable exercises preparatory to stage-dancing taught at the National
Training-School for Dancing.* These exercises are directed to the
development of the muscles and the free action of the joints of the
lower limbs, and are far preferable to the languid movements of or-
dinary dancing. For the development of the muscles of the trunk and

* Under the direction of Madame Katti Lanner.

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

arms the excellent system of gymnastics for girls recently established
by a lady * in various parts of London, with the approval, after care-
ful and repeated inspection by myself, of Dr. Richardson, Mrs. Gar-
rett Anderson, and others, is all that can be desired. The Swedish
and other exercises effected without apparatus are of little use, as idle
and indolent girls who stand most in need of physical training easily
comply with the form, but evade the spirit and hearty compliance
which such systems demand. These systems lack motive to complete
an exercise, while simple apparatus, such as balls, dumb-bells, and bars,
compel it by keeping the end in view, and giving an impetus to its
performance. With half the care which mothers spend on dressing
and decking-out their children, often in unsuitable clothing, they
might, with a little help from their medical advisers, prevent most of
the deformities which mar the physical beauty, comfort, and health of
their offspring ; and no time seems more appropriate than the present
for directing the attention of medical practitioners, and through them
of parents, to the means of attaining these objects, as the short walking-
dresses worn by women and girls at the present time reveal to all of
us to what a great, indeed unexpected, extent the ugly deformities of
the feet and ankles to which I have referred exist, especially among
the well-to-do and higher classes. — Lancet.

-$-»«-

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

By EDMUND A. ENGLER,

"WASHINGTON rNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
II.

THE distribution of the Greenwich signals from the General Post-
Office in London is effected by means of the Chronopher or Time-
carrier,! shown in perspective in Fig. 6, and in front elevation in Fig.
1.% To this instrument the hourly signal from the observatory is sent
by means of a special under-ground wire. Branching out from it are
four groups of wires : 1. Metropolitan, running to points in London
only. 2. Provincial Short, to points not more than fifty miles from
London, as Brighton, etc. 3. Provincial Medium, to points farther
away, as Hull, etc. 4. Provincial Long, to extreme points, as Edin-
burgh, Belfast, etc. # The ends of each of the four groups are brought

* Miss M. A. Chreiman, 69 Petherton Road, N.

f There are actually two of these ; the one shown in the figure is the new and larger one.

\ For a description of the chronopher, from which the above is condensed, and for
drawings from which Figs. 7, 8, and 9 have been made, the writer is indebted to Will-
iam H. Preece, Esq., Superintendent of Telegraphs, London.

* The Greenwich signals are sent into Ireland only for purposes of comparison ; Dub-
lin time is used throughout the island.

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

329

together, and each group has a separate relay, in order that the shorter
may not unduly deprive the longer lines of their share of the current.
The four relays are all worked by the hourly signal from Greenwich,
and therefore act simultaneously. The lines of the Metropolitan group
are used only for time purposes, and are therefore always connected
with their relay, and distribute the signals hourly. But the lines of
the other groups are in use generally for ordinary telegraphic pur-
poses, and distribute time-signals only at ten and one o'clock. At these
hours, therefore, the wires must be switched off from their ordinary
duty, and placed in communication with their respective relays to be

33°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ready to receive the time-signals. The electrical working of the appa-
ratus which accomplishes this will be understood by reference to Fig.
8.* Under normal conditions, the current from the observatory passes

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a

H
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PS

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directly through the chronopher, and out at the galvanometer G', to
the tower-clock at the Houses of Parliament, "Westminster. This clock
has a gravity escapement, and a metallic compensating pendulum,
very similar to the pendulum of the Sidereal Standard, already de-
scribed, and runs with a rate of less than one second per week. The

* The small figures 1, 2, 3, 4, to the right of Fig. 8 and to the left of Fig. 9, show the
connection between the wires.

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

331

-H

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current from Greenwich in no way controls the Westminster clock,
hut is simply used for rating the clock hy comparison ; when change
of rate is necessary, weights are added or removed at the pendulum.
Each of the line wires is in permanent connection with one of a set

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of jointed vertical bars (B, B', B"), which, except at the times for the
signal, are kept in contact by springs with cocks in the circuit of the
wire ; but at the times for the signal a long metallic bar (C) acting as
a cam (better shown in Fig. 7, in front of the vertical bars), is made
by clock-work to disconnect all these bars from their instruments. The
bar (C) is divided into three parts, corresponding to the long, medium,
and short provincial lines, insulated from each other, and connected
respectively with the bars of the relays (V, V, V") through the galva-
nometers (g, g', g", Fig. 8). The left or rest contacts of these relays
are in connection with the zinc poles of separate batteries, whose cop-
per poles are grounded, so that, when the bars of these relays are put
in connection with the line wires, a zinc or " preliminary " current is
ready to be sent out ; this current prevents the distant relays from
being actuated by contacts or accidental currents, and serves as a
warning signal. The right-hand contacts of the relays are connected
respectively with the copper poles of separate batteries whose zinc poles
are grounded, so that, when the bars are moved over to the right (which
is done by the incoming Greenwich current), the outgoing current is
reversed, and this constitutes the signal. The relay V" is for dis-
tributing the signals only to points in the metropolis, and, as the wires
on these lines are under ground, no " preliminary " current is necessary.
' The mechanical operation of the apparatus is as follows : On the
clock (R, Fig. 9) there is an ebonite wheel ( W) in which are two notches
(N, N') corresponding to 10 A. M. and 1 p. m. Shortly before 10 a. m.
the pin (P) on one arm of the forked lever (L) falls into the notch (N),
allowing the end (Q) of the other arm to rest on the ebonite hour-
wheel (T). About two minutes before the hour, the end (Q) comes
against the contact (S), and completes the circuit of the local bat-
tery (IT, Fig. 8) through the starting magnet (M, Fig. 9) and sets the
clock-train (shown in Fig. 7) in motion, pressing the cam (C) against the
vertical bars, disconnecting them from their instruments, and connect-
ing them respectively, in groups as already shown, with the relays
(V, V, V"), in readiness to send a " preliminary " current to the line
wires. At ten seconds to the hour an insulated pin (i, Fig. 9) on the
wheel (T) lifts the lower arm of the forked lever (F),so that its upper
arm comes in contact with a small cam on the arbor of the escape-
wheel (K). This contact closes the circuit of the battery (U) through
the coils of the two relays (Z, Z'). The relay (Z) puts on the earth con-
nection at (E), for the four relays (V, V,' V", V"), so that the current
from Greenwich may be received and divided between them, while
the relay (Z') disconnects the Westminster clock-wire and connects it
with the metropolitan lines to receive the signal from the relay (V").
The relays (V, V, V", V") have a resistance of 5,000 ohms to allow
of the splitting of the current. At precisely ten o'clock the Green-
wich signal reverses the current on the lines, and thus gives the exact
time. At ten seconds past the hour the contact between H and K is

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON

333

broken, the relay-bars go back to their normal position, the train-
work moves away the cam (C), and restores the vertical bars to con-
nection with their instruments.

The apparatus which effects the shunting at one o'clock is somewhat
different in construction. The pin (P, Fig. 9) falls into the notch (N'),

_4_„

Fig. 9.— Diageam showing Klecteic Connections of Clock ttitii Cheokophee.

a pin (p) on the wheel (W) coming against the arm (I) of the forked
lever (Y) raises the flexible arm (G) against the upper contact (D), so
that the circuit of the local battery (U) is closed through the starting
magnet (M), which operates the one o'clock train- work.

Wires which receive both the ten and one o'clock signals pass
through both switching arrangements.

For the hourly currents on metropolitan lines the relay (V") serves,
by closing the circuit of the battery (U) at the contact (K), the rest
of the apparatus remaining inoperative.

334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The actual interval during which the Greenwich as well as the pro-
vincial wires on which the time-signal is distributed are kept in circuit
being only twenty seconds, the chance of interruption from contact
currents is reduced to a minimum.

The batteries in use are large Leclanche cells, and the power is
distributed as follows :

Copper or " time " Zinc or " preliminary "
battery. battery.

Long lines 80 cells. 60 cells.

Medium lines 60 " 45 "

Short lines 40 " 30 "

Metropolitan lines 40 " . . "

The Greenwich signal, thus distributed by the chronopher, goes to
all parts of the kingdom, and affects receiving instruments provided
for the purpose. These are of various kinds ; ordinary telegraphic
sounders, electric bells, and galvanometers have been used with suc-
cess to note the arrival of the signal. The current has also been made
to drop time-balls on the tops of buildings, to expose a model time-
ball to view, and to fire guns.

To test the accuracy of the signals, experiment has been made by
returning a wire to Greenwich from the chronopher, and comparing
the signal received on this wire with the signal sent from the observ-
atory ; no difference could be perceived between the indications of
two galvanometers placed side hy side showing the passage of both
currents. The signals were thus shown to be entirely reliable. But
it does not seem likely that the chronopher will be introduced else-
where, because simpler means have been devised for splitting up the
current and distributing the signals.

The whole system is under the control of the Post-Office Depart-
ment. They own the wires — which, except in London, are the ordi-
nary telegraph-wires — and therefore contract to keep them in order,
to clear them each day at the signal-times, and to deliver at these times
the Greenwich signal. Maintenance of lines and apparatus not the
property of the department is undertaken by the department for any
period not less than one year at specified rates. A simple form of
agreement has been prepared, which every renter is required to sign.
This agreement, as a rule, is for not less than three years, and is ter-
minable at three months' notice given previous to the end of the fixed
term, or, failing such notice, on payment of such sum as the depart-
ment may accept instead. But where the expense of construction is
considerable, the term must not be less than from five to seven years,
the latter period being stipulated when the proposed line is in an out-
lying district and would be specially provided for a single renter, and
when it is not probable that there would be other renters.

The annual charges for the use of wires and apparatus are as fol-
lows :

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON. 33S

From London to the country : * For the 10 a. m. signal, £12 to
£17 = $60 to $85. For the 1 p. m. signal, £27 to £32 = $135 to $160.
In London : For the hourly signal within a radius of two miles from
the General Post-Office, £15 = $75. But if the person desiring the
signal is off the line of the telegraph, he must pay, besides a stipulated
rental, an additional sum for the use of the wire which the department
is compelled to put up specially for him. The rental is in all cases
payable yearly in advance.

In 1880 there were one hundred subscribers to the system, of whom
nineteen were in London, and eighty-one scattered through England,
with a few in Scotland and Ireland.

Besides this general automatic distribution of tbe time-signals, a
considerable distribution of the 10 A. m. signal goes on by hand. At
that instant the chronopher makes a sound which an operator sits
ready to catch by ear. Upon hearing it he immediately dispatches a
signal by the ordinary telegraphic instrument, and this signal is received
a"t six hundred or more places, which again serve as distributing points
for more distant places. These are usually railway or post offices in
towns not supplied by the chronopher, which by virtue of authority
become the regulators of the clocks of the surrounding district.

The wire from the observatory to London Bridge carries signals
hourly from the mean solar standard to a clock at the station of the
Southeastern Railway, which by changing connections sends Greenwich
time to different stations along the line as may be required. For this
service the Southeastern Railway gives the observatory the use of its
wire daily, for a few minutes, at 1 p. m. At this time the current
from the observatory drops the time-ball at Deal, which was erected
in 1855, to give time to the shipping in the Downs, and is the only
official coast time-signal. The ball in falling sends a " return " signal
to the observatory. The record shows that about once in two months
high wind prevents the raising of the ball, about once in six weeks it
fails to fall on account of some fault in the electric connections, and
about once a year it drops out of time. Under such circumstances it
is dropped correctly at 2 p. m.

By special arrangement with the observatory a few London jewel-
ers receive the hourly Greenwich current on private wires. This
they use for the correction of their own time-keepers and in some
cases for distribution. Prominent among these are the Messrs. Barraud
& Lund, of Cornhill, who have patented a method for the synchroni-
zation of clocks. Their plan is put forward as a simple and effectual
means of setting any number of ordinary clocks to the same standard
time. All attempts to control clocks have been set aside as impracti-

* Difference in charge for the same signal depends on the length of wire which the
department is compelled to put up specially for the subscriber. The one o'clock signal
is more expensive, because the wires are busier with telegraph duties at that hour than
at 10 a. m.

336

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cable, and a system adopted whereby the clock is automatically " set
to time " every hour, or at such intervals as may be arranged. The
apparatus can here be described only in brief. There are three essen-
tial parts, the standard clock, the distributor, and the synchronizer.

The standard clock is an astronomical regulator with mercurial
pendulum and dead-beat escapement, and closes an electric circuit at
the sixtieth second of each hour. Another regulator, technically called
" Lobby," is for use in case of accident to " Standard." They are so
connected that a single failure of " Standard " to send out a signal at
the proper time brings " Lobby " into action for the next signal, and,
in order that " Lobby " may always be ready for service, an inten-
tional breakdown of " Standard " occurs automatically at eight each
morning, and the nine o'clock signal is sent out by " Lobby " ; which
of the two is in operation is shown by indicators connected with the
clocks (Fig. 10).* Should a breakdown occur, the indicator of " Stand-
ard " would show missed, and that of " Lobby " at work.

-< LOBBY. CLOCK >

ISHUHTED

K.J

J

\

Fig. 10.— Baeratjd and Ltjnd's Indicatoes.

The error of the standard clock is determined daily by comparison
with the Greenwich signal. An ordinary dotting chronograph is set
to the standard clock, and the Greenwich signal makes a dot on the
chronograph-dial which gives at once the error of the standard and
can be read off at leisure. It is corrected by electric means. The
pendulum carries a small permanent magnet which swings over a re-
sistance-coil about -j1^ inch distant. The coil is connected with the
commutator in the test-box (Fig. 11), consisting of a clock commuta-
tor with plugs for " Standard " and " Lobby," a current commutator
with plugs for " Fast " and " Slow," and a small time-piece, shown at
the top. The time-piece has only a minute-hand, and is made so as to
stop itself and break circuit at XII, but closes circuit when running.
The working is thus : Suppose " Standard " is found to be slow. Plugs
are inserted for " Standard " and " Slow," and the hand of the time-
piece is set back a required number of minutes. It then runs to XII
and stops. In this interval the action between the magnet and the
coil has exactly corrected the standard clock. For every -fa second of

* Figs. 10, 11, 12, and 13, hare been reduced from drawings in "The Railway Engi-
neer," London, by permission of Messrs. Barraud & Lund.

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

337

error the hand of the time-piece must be set back five minutes. When
the setting is done, no further attention is required, all else being
automatic.

The distributor (shown in Fig. 11) consists of twelve contact-
springs, each connected with a line of wire running through a district
of London, and twelve contact-screws, each connected with a battery.

^M

3§£]

Fig. 11.— Test-Box.

The springs converging to the center press up against a small plate,
one inch in diameter, which is controlled by an electro-magnet in the
circuit of the current which the standard clock sends out hourly.
When the signal comes, the plate is pulled down and presses every

vol. xxii. — 22

333

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spring against its contact-screw, and the signal goes out over each of
the lines.

The synchronizer is the receiver of the signal, and consists essen-
tially of an electro-magnet, in the circuit of one or other of the lines
from the distributor, with armature carrying two counterpoised levers

Fig. 12.— The Synchronizer.

TIME-KEEPING IN LONDON.

339

each provided with a projecting pin. When the signal arrives, the
electro-magnet attracts its armature, and the two pins are brought
close together. The mechanical operation will be understood by ref-
erence to Fig. 12, where a side elevation, a plan, and a front elevation
are shown. This apparatus is fastened to ordinary clocks just back of
the dial-plate (Fig. 13). A curved slot is cut through the dial for a
short space on each side of XII, and through this the pins project.
When, at the end of the hour, the signal arrives, the two pins are
pushed together and bring the minute-hand exactly to XII. The posi-
tion of the pins before and just after the operation is shown in Fig.
14. Evidently the clock must not be in error more than two minutes
or so ; but, as the hand is set every hour, any ordinary clock can be
kept right by this device.

Pig. 13.— Face of Clock with Synchkonizer
attached.

Fig. 14.

Other ingenious arrangements have been added to guard against
danger, always present to long lines of wire, and for testing the
condition of the lines, but a description of them can not here be
given.

The advantages claimed for the system are :

1. That any number of clocks of any varying sizes can be syn-
chronized to any agreed standard time-keeper.

2. That the mechanism is, when not in momentary use, entirely
detached from the works of the clock.

3. That it can be applied to existing clocks.

4. That any failure in the transmission of the time-current leaves
the clock going in the ordinary way, to be "set to time " by the next
completed current.

5. That the clocks are kept to time whether having otherwise
either a gaining or losing rate, even if such rate amounts to many
minutes a day.

34°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In London the system has been in successful operation for about
five years, and has been used over a wire four hundred miles long.
The subscribers number about five hundred, among them many rail-
roads and public institutions.

In connection with the synchronized clocks, Messrs. Barraud and
Lund have also established time-bells and flashing-signals, which afford

Fig. 15 — Barraud and Lund's Time-Bell.

time-signals both to the ear and eye. These are shown in Figs. 15 and
16. The bell is an ordinary electric bell, and is rung by the regulat-
ing clock, which closes the circuit at the instant the signal is desired.
The flashing-signal consists of a red vertical disk on a vertical axis,
which normally shows only its edge, but is made to revolve once on
its axis in four sudden jumps, by simple mechanism in connection with
electro-magnets, when the regulator, by closing the circuit, sends the
current. The appearance is that of two flashes of red as the disk
revolves.

In many places where noise prevents hearing a bell, the flashing-
signal becomes a necessity. It is in use at the London Stock Ex-

A MASTODON IN AN OLD BEAVER-MEADOW. 341

change, and serves to indi
cate the exact instant of
noon.

The method of synchroniz-
ing clocks is becoming rapidly
popular throughout the world,
and has been patented in most
civilized countries. It is al-
ready in use in Australia and
South America, and in some
of the countries on the Conti-
nent of Europe. In this coun-
try, at New Haven, Connecti-
cut, a " Standard Time Com-
pany " Las been formed, who
have bought the patent for
the whole of the American
Continent, and are now en-
gaged in manufacturing syn-
chronizers. An effort will be
made by them to bring about
a concerted system of time-
signaling throughout the coun-
try. Local affiliated compa-
nies will be formed, and there
is little doubt that the great
simplicity and practical suc-
cess of the method, combined
with its cheapness, will se-
cure its extensive adoption
in all the large cities of the
country.

•♦»»

A MASTODON IN AN OLD BEATER-MEADOW.*

By SAMUEL LOCKWOOD, Ph. D.

ON the 7th of June, 1882, a farmer, while cutting a drain through
a meadow on his farm at Freehold, New Jersey, observing the
appearance of bones, stopped the workmen, and sent for me to inspect
the place. This I did the next morning. Approaching the spot, I

* " On a Mastodon Americanits (Cuvier), found in a Beaver-Meadow at Freehold, New
Jersey, by Samuel Lockwood." Read at the Montreal meeting of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, August, 1882.

342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

found it was a deep depression in the farm, and the site suggested the
possibility of an ancient beaver-dam. But in that case a stream should
be seen flowing through the middle. There was none there. I learned
afterward that formerly there was just such a stream, but that in order
to utilize the meadow it had been diverted to one side of the valley or
depression, and the channel thus left had been filled up by taking from
the banks or higher slopes ; after this it was planted with corn. I
found a drain about eighteen inches wide in progress of construction
across this meadow. The ditcher had literally cut through a buried
monster precisely at a point which took away a part of the bases of
the tusks and some portion of the face of the animal. It was indeed
a veritable mastodon. Digging under my direction was at once re-
sumed. Both tusks were soon fully exposed, and the left one was
successfully uncovered and removed to the side of the drain. Before
removal I took exact measurements, and fortunate it was that I did,
for in a very few minutes after being put on the dry ground it sepa-
rated or unfolded, like the concentric layers of an onion, and in a few
minutes more began crumbling into powder. The concentric rings
thus separated were uniformly a quarter of an inch thick, so that these
unfoldings gave no hint of the animal's age, for the ivory was so fine
and compact that no smaller divisions were discernible. This splen-
did ivory was in consistency like new white cheese, and the surfaces
of separation gave the precise feeling to the fingers as when they are
passed over a freshly cut piece of soft cheese. The left tusk was
removed almost entire ; the right tusk was nearly all removed, and
fragments of both were secured, though very soft and unsatisfactory,
for upon drying even these selected fragments crumbled to powder.

Four molars were obtained, which were found in exact relative po-
sition to the tusks. So soft were the bones that all further digging
only provoked sighs of disappointment. Of course, the position of
the two tusks indicated that of the skull. We tried carefully to
uncover the head so as to save it, but in vain. The spade took up a
spit of dark substance which proved to be the arched forehead of the
brute, which also crumbled away after a short time. But a wonderful
story that short time told. This high-vaulted forehead might please
some amateur phrenologist, but as a cerebral indicator of intellect it
was an immense fraud. It was the genuine elephant forehead, " only
more so." On cleaning it, by gently pulling out certain tufts of fine
roots and vegetable fiber, this great piece of bone was literally honey-
combed with air-cells, each one big enough to hold a hickory-nut.
These were the extraordinarily developed frontal sinuses.

But a word about the tusks. The two were in the normal posi-
tion, as of the animal lying on its right side, with the back toward
the ancient stream. The ditcher had nearly destroyed one of the tusks
by attempting to get it out before my arrival. The upper one, that
is, the left tusk, had lost all that portion which had been cut through

A MASTODON IN AN OLD BEAVER-MEADOW. 343

by the ditching. There was in the side of the ditch enough visible
before the uncovering to show that the destruction had taken away-
much of the base, being nearly all that part of the tusk containing
the pulp-cavity. The surface of the soil was carefully removed,
and measurements taken. The part uncovered was four feet four
inches long. Between this and the place of insertion in the skull was
about eighteen inches — and for insertion two feet should be allowed
— when the entire length of each tusk would be seven feet eight
inches, and the weight of the ivory in each hardly less than two hun-
dred pounds. The tusks had a slight upward curve.

The digging was continued next day, the whole area being exam-
ined. The peculiar dark stain covered a space not less than fifteen
feet in length and six feet in width. It was evident that the head was
inflected toward the chest. It is pretty certain, then, that a line taken
from the base of the trunk to the root of the tail would not be less
than seventeen feet.

The burial-place of this great beast is to me of intense interest.
The body lay on its side, on a hard sand bottom, the upper parts being
surrounded and but thinly covered with muck, or vegetable peat. I
am satisfied that it died on the dry bank of an ancient stream. Now
came a singular discovery which served as a key to the difficulty.
Lying on the skeleton at different parts were the sticks or heart-
remains of red cedars {Juniperus Virginiana, L.) ; they were beaver-
logs. Here a singular piece of experience came to my aid. I had
quite recently discovered and studied the details of two fossil beaver-
dams but two miles west of this place, and the physical features of
this mastodon's burying-place were in all respects indicative of a for-
mer beaver-dam. In fact, no other hypothesis could account for these
sticks, with others of different woods, which have been exhumed in
this meadow. It is observable that a pond made by beavers has in
time its meadow as a natural consequence, and that, after the pond is
deserted by these animals, the dam breaks down slowly, and, as the
pond area decreases, the swamp area increases, and a growth of vege-
tation sets in which becomes the peat-bog, afterward the meadow.
The place where the mastodon lay in course of time became covered
by the waters of the pond, for beavers keep lengthening their dam to
increase the area of the pond, and only stop so doing when the nat-
ural opportunities of the situation are exhausted. Of course, it was
only the skeleton of the beast which was buried, and the bones might
have been there long before peat-growth began over them. This
explains the decomposition of the bones, for peat is antiseptic, and
they should have been preserved, but it was a slow burial, and slow
decay had long before set in. A curious fact seems to me to confirm
the above. The huge air-cells in the bones and the great pulp-cavities
of the tusks were packed solid with vegetable matter, but so unlike
the imbedding peat as to be remarkable. This packing, which filled

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the slightest crevices and open spaces in the hones, was in every case
roctf-fibers. I took out of the pulp-cavity of one tusk a compact cone
of these rootlets. I have seen precisely the same thing when opening
a small drain-pipe which had become choked with the roots of a tree.

Two facts have much impressed me — the great geological antiquity
of the mastodons as a race, and the very recent existence of the indi-
vidual we are discussing. The race began in Miocene time ; this in-
dividual lived in the Quaternary age, and well up into the soil-making
period. There is little if any differentiation of the molars. The cusps,
or teats, on the crown are high and prominent, although 1 think it
must have been one of the very last of its tribe. Though the race
came before those great castors now extinct, this individual was con-
temporary with the existing beaver, and doubtless with the aboriginal
man.

It is singular that in the present controversy respecting the sub-
sidence of a part of the eastern coast-line of the United States, I have
never seen the testimony of the mastodon put in evidence. As already
said, this animal has run through a long stretch of geologic time. I
saw a tusk taken from the Trenton gravels of New Jersey which be-
long to the ice age, or glacial epoch. I have part of a tusk taken from
the shore in Monmouth County, New Jersey, after a storm. This
storm from the sea had washed away the drift which covered an an-
cient swamp, in which this relic, with other bones, had been entombed.
But that swamp had been far inland, sufficient for a depression to
exist far enough away from the action of the sea to enable it to sup-
port a non-marine, sub-aquatic vegetation. The subsidence had al-
lowed the sea to come up and uncover that creature's grave. Last
summer, at Long Branch, I saw a fine mastodon's tooth which was
taken up by fishermen out at sea. I have also some fragments of a
mastodon's tooth, besides an almost entire one of remarkable size. I
consider it the sixth,* or last tooth developed. It was given me as
coming from Long Branch, where it was obtained so long ago that
its history was forgotten. I detected upon it the microscopic skele-
tons of marine Bryozoa, the same species that I have often found on
the shells of our modern oysters. This tiny animal can only attach it-
self to a clean anchorage in the clear sea-water. Hence this tooth was
evidently got from the sea ; and, more, its old grave of mud or peat
was long ago invaded by the sea and churned up, so as to float it away,
leaving the tooth on the clean, sandy ocean-floor.

* Not counting the tusks, the elephant has only eight teeth in his mouth at any one
time — two molars on each side of each jaw. The forward tooth of each pair is pushed
forward until it disappears. The back one then is pushed forward, and replaces the one
lost. This goes on until six molars have appeared on each side of each jaw, so that the
full-aged animal has in its life-time twenty-four molars. The tusks are monstrously de-
veloped incisors. While the true elephant has normally but two tusks, the male mas-
todon has four, two small ones in the lower jaw, which, however, are shed before adult

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 345

So it is plain that the mastodon came into what is now New Jersey
ere the ice-sheet began. It receded south before it. It followed
the thawing northward, and so again possessed the land. It occupied
this part of the country when its shore-line was miles farther out to
sea than it is to-day. Here it was confronted by the human savage,
in whom it found more than its match ; for, before this autochthonic
Nimrod, Behemoth melted away.

-♦♦•♦-

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION.

Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

SOME of the higher animals have a peculiar faculty for accustom-
ing themselves to various kinds of poison ; and man, especially,
often owes his ruin to that unfortunate talent, for the instinct of taste
can be so perverted that the vilest and originally most repulsive sub-
stances become the most seductive.

There is a curious analogy between this corruptible sense and the
intellectual (rather than moral) constitution of the human mind. It
may be doubted if any man ever loved injustice for its own sake, or
voluntarily connived at its habitual exercise. History proves that
successful tyrants could maintain themselves only by favoring a strong
party at the expense of the wTeak. Pisistratus, Hiero, the elder Diony-
sius, Vespasian, Mohammed Baber, and Haroun, miscalled Al-Raschid,
were the idols of the army and of the poor. Even Mehemet Ali had
his redeeming qualities. Men can stand only a limited amount of
iniquity. But their intellectual tolerance has no such limits. Per-
sistent misrulers come to an evil end, but the founder of a sect, a
school, or a new creed, may

"... reign without dispute
In all the realms of nonsense, absolute " —

and it even seems as if in the struggle for supremacy the most insane
dogmas had the advantage over moderately absurd ones, just as opium
is apt to supersede brandy and tobacco. In China, where the neutral-
ity of the government gave all creeds a fair chance, the fate-worship
of Confucius was eclipsed by the Buddhistic worship of sorrow. In
Greece, the orthodox polytheists held their own against all heresies.
The pure theism of Abd-el-Wahab was throttled by the champions of
the Sunnitic traditions. In Rome, where the struggle for existence
was fought out by fourteen or fifteen different creeds, theists, panthe-
ists, Nature-worshipers, agnostics, and all kinds of speculative philos-
ophers had to yield to the Asiatic miracle-mongers with their Nature-
hating fanaticism and Buddhistic crotchets ; and Buddha himself was

346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

baffled by that ne plus ultra of systematic insanity, the creed of the
orthodox Brahraans. Buddhism, the worship of death and sorrow,
has, indeed, almost vanished from the land of its birth. Its infatua-
tions prevailed against the primitive religions of the Mongols, Siamese,
Cingalese, Tartars, and Thibetans, but in Hindostan the cow and
monkey worshipers carried the day ; the champions of Sakya-Muni
had found their match, and, after an hierarchical rough-and-tumble
fight of fourteen hundred years, their doom was sealed by a crushing
defeat. In vain the Dalai Lamas convoked council after council ; in
vain the bonzes howled on the highways and prayed day and night on
the public streets — the monkey Hanuman triumphed, and at this mo-
ment a hundred and twenty million Hindoos are ready to risk their
lives in defense of a creed which, in the words of Baron Orlich, " com-
bines the extremes of priestly arrogance with endless ceremonies and
the most extravagant dogmatic absurdities." The clerical tyranny of
Brahmanism may have been surpassed in papal Rome, and the com-
plexity of its rites in Thibet ; but its dogmatic absurdity is sui generis,
and can really defy competition. " Credo, quia absurdum videtur,"
said the chief theologist of the Patristic era, but the quintessence of
the Athanasian confession would seem insipid to devotees who have
been fuddled with the opium of Brahma ; and Father Hue expressed
merely the recognition of a practical impossibility when he advised
his countrymen not to send any more missionaries to Hindostan. The
clergy, missions, and convents of the Spanish church cost the country
a yearly aggregate of forty-two million dollars — after all, less than
twenty per cent of the total national revenue — and the emissaries of
that church may well shrink from the competition with a priesthood
that persuades its constituents to sacrifice two fifths of their field-crops
to a greedy swarm of four-footed divinities. The hunchback ox {Bos
JBramanus) enjoys the freedom of every East Indian town. Even
Calcutta has its " cow-dung subui-bs " (the British soldiers use a strong-
er term). He defiles the sidewalks, monopolizes the tree-shade, and
mingles with the crowd of the market-place. If he collects his per-
quisites by force, the natives remark that giving is more blessed than
receiving ; if he knocks them down, they feel with Cardinal Newman
that the devotion of the truly faithful shows itself in the endurance
of oppressive measures. In every larger city there are walled tanks
where sacred crocodiles await the contributions of the pious. In
Benares they subsist upon the rent of a real-estate legacy and occa-
sional donations of the wealthy produce-merchants. But even the
poorest of the poor contribute to the support of the sacred baboons.
The bhunder-baboon and the Hanuman ( Cercopithecus entellits) have
every reason to regard themselves as the primates of the animal king-
dom, and man as a humble relative, gifted with certain horticultural
talents for the purpose of ministering to the wants of his four-handed
superiors. Northern India is dotted with mahahhunds, or monkey-

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 347

farms, where thousands of long-tailed saints are provided with shel-
ter, respectful attendants, and three substantial meals a day, on the
sole condition that they shall renounce their sylvan haunts and bless
the neighborhood with the influence of their holy presence. Sick
monkeys are sent to the next bhunder-hospital, generally a well-en-
dowed and well-managed institution with a special dhevadar or re-
sponsible major-domo. The little town of Cawnpore has eight such
infirmaries, Benares twenty or twenty-five, some of them with a sub-
division for incurables and chronic dyspeptics !

To support these institutions is deemed a privilege as well as a
duty. Troops of children, with garlands around their ankles and
wrists, march in procession to offer the first-fruits of the season to the
major-domos of the next mahakhund. An embarras de richesse often
obliges that functionary to sell a portion of the donations and invest
the surplus in the guarantee funds of the institution. In very poor
districts, like Baroda and the northern part of the Madras Presidency,
a protracted famine sometimes exhausts these funds, and reduces the
menu of the sinecurists to two meals a day and half -measures of the
weekly treacle allowance, the full rice ration being generally guaran-
teed by deposit-drafts on a public store-house. At such times, when
human beneficiaries would feel grateful for the least assistance, the
four-handed %)roteges become peevish. They often abscond and try
their luck on the public highways, where orthodox pilgrims would,
indeed, part with their last crust rather than disregard the wants of a
sacred baboon. If hunger emboldens a low-caste monkey to approach
the precincts of a mahakhund, the irate boarders sally forth and pur-
sue him with a rancor as if they suspected him of being accessory to
the irregularities of the purveyance system.

When the (Mohammedan) Sepoys destroyed the large monkey-
asylum of Behar, the citizens of Nusserabad, though themselves on
the verge of famine, promptly organized a relief committee. A pro-
vision-wagon, drawn by lean horses and leaner fakirs, drove through
the city collecting comestibles, while the conductor of the team, in a
sort of sing-song chant, recounted the sufferings of the holy long-
tails : " They mourn among the roofless ruins. They sit hungry-eyed,
waiting in vain for the arrival of a moderate refection. No bread, no
sago-cakes, no rice for the righteous ones, while many a sinner " (with
a gleam of suspicion) "regales himself, perhaps, with yed-na-saccar'''' (a
sort of blanc-mange). " Their young ones look leaner than scrub-palm
lizards. While they fast the just trembles ; the eye that looks un-
moved may soon be moved by retaliative calamities. Promptly, ye
faithful, contribute, contribute ! " (C. Ritter's " Travels in Hinclostan
and Siam," vol. ii, p. 210).

Victor Jacquemont estimates that the Bengal Presidency alone
contains sixteen hundred monkey-asylums, supported chiefly by the
very poorest class of the population. In the rural districts of Nepaul

348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the hanumans have their sacred groves, and keep together in troops
of fifty or sixty adults, and, in spite of hard times, these associations
multiply like the monastic orders of mediaeval Europe ; but they must
all be provided for, though the natives should have to eke out their
crops with the wild-rice of the Jumna swamp-jungles.

The strangest part of the superstition is that this charity results
by no means from a feeling of benevolence toward animals in general,
but from the exclusive veneration of a special subdivision of the
monkey tribe. An orthodox Hindoo must not willingly take the life
of the humblest fellow-creature, but he would not move a finger to save
a starving dog, and has no hesitation in stimulating a beast of burden
with a dagger-like goad and other contrivances that would invoke the
avenging powers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-
mals. Nor would he shrink from extreme measures in defending his
fields from the ravages of low-caste monkeys. Dr. Allen Mackenzie
once saw a swarm of excited natives running toward an orchard where
the shaking of the branches betrayed the presence of arboreal maraud-
ers. Some of them carried slings, others clubs and cane-spears. But
soon they came back crestfallen. " What's the matter ? " inquired the
doctor ; " did they get away from you ? "

" Kapa-Muni," was the laconic reply, " sacred monkeys." Holy
baboons that must not be interrupted in their little pastimes. They
had expected to find a troop of common makaques, wanderoos, or
other profane four-handers, and returned on tiptoe, like Marry at's
sergeant who went to arrest an obstreperous drunkard, and recognized
his commanding officer. Unarmed Europeans can not afford to brave
these prejudices. Captain Elphinstone's gardener nearly lost his life
for shooting a thievish hanuman ; a mob of raging bigots chased him
from street to street till he gave them the slip in a Mohammedan sub-
urb, where a sympathizing Unitarian helped him to escape through the
back-alleys. The interference of his countrymen would hardly have
saved him, for the crowd increased from minute to minute, and even
women joined in the chase, and threatened to cure his impiety with a
turnip-masher.

This impiety, say the Brahmans, is merely the effect of ignorance.
Foreigners are apt to mistake a hanuman for a common yahoo, a filthy,
impudent bush-whacker, while the facts are as follows : The hanuman
is a lineal descendant of the great hero-ape who helped the Light-gods
in suppressing the power of Ravan, the prince of darkness. The war
raged for years with varying success, and the sun-spirits were once
almost nonplused, when their long-tailed ally bethought himself of
a stratagem that completely discomfited their adversaries : He set the
whole Island of Ceylon afire and escaped just in time to attend a grand
council of the sun-gods, who then rewarded his services by an hereditary
sinecure. In the midst of a solemn war-dance he discovered that his
own tail was ablaze, and had to save himself by a hurried trip to the

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 349

eastern Himalayas, where he extinguished the flames in a lake which
to this day bears the name of Bhunder-pouch, or Monkey-tail-pond — a
fact which alone suffices to refute the sophisms of narrow-minded
skeptics (" Asiatic Researches," vol. xiv, p. 44).

Crocodiles have a prescriptive right to our surplus of non-nitroge-
nous food, butter, goat-cheese, and the offal of the heretical meat-
shops. They are not divine, in a stricter sense, but "water-pure,"
free from the taint of hereditary sin, and their merits are often re-
warded by a quasi-immortality, synchronistic with the duration of this
planet. Their peccadilloes must be condoned ; the slayer of a gavial,
or sacred saurian, is an enemy of the public, for his deed is apt to re-
sult in a general calamity. In Agra a Buddhistic Chinaman once ob-
tained the post of crocodile-warden, but was soon after arraigned for
criminal neglect. A party of foreigners had visited the tank, and a
couple of gavials followed them toward the gate, in quest of cold lunch,
according to the theory of the prosecution, while the strangers sus-
pected them of homicidal intents, and, finding the gate closed, re-
treated behind a tree and fired their pistols as fast as they could load.
The negligent warden at last interfered, but too late ; both crocodiles
had been fatally wounded, and one of the victims happened to be a
gavial, a most reverend, and, barring such accidents, immortal amphib-
ian that had inhabited the tank since the time of Menu. The counsel
for the defense not only denied the charge of neglect, but proved that
the prehistoric reptile had been imported not more than five years
before. The court dismissed the case, and the Chinaman volunteered
to pay half the costs, but the Brahmans never forgave him. He lost
his place and, like the Rev. Augustus Blauvelt, was accused of having
betrayed his master.

The Koran contains some rather incomprehensible ordinances, un-
less Professor Sale should be right that Mohammed prescribed them
as preparatory exercises of faith. The founders of several monastic
orders seem also to have thought it necessary to strengthen the ortho-
doxy of their disciples by periodical renunciations of common sense,
but the Brahmans have carried this principle to an even greater length.
According to the Yagur-Veda, a spiritual-minded man should renounce
the world after following its ways long enough to see the son of his
son. To be quite safe, he had better go as soon as his hair begins to
get gray. A conscientious Sannyassi, or " renouncer," should make
his home in the forest, live upon fruits and edible leaves, and let his
hair grow. His tunic should consist of bark, his lower garments of
untanned antelope-skin. He must elevate his soul by the contempla-
tion of Brahm and humble his body by taking occasional rambles on
all-fours. This would be bad enough, but, in order to fulfill all right-
eousness, a Sannyassi must wear wet clothes in the cold, and pass the
midsummer noons between two blazing fires, in order to correct the
humors of his spirit. With a view of washing away his worldliness

35o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he must not only bathe twice a day, but expose his body to every
shower of the rainy season (Weber, " Indische Literatur-Geschichte,"

p. 395).

Yet this regimen was merely a palliative, prescribed to all refugees
from the temptations of this world, and positive sinners had to expiate
their guilt by quite different penances. In this higher art of self-
torture Buddhism unquestionably bears off the palm of insanity.
Under the influence of its dogmas Sannyassism became an elaborate
system for weaning the human mind — not from the errors of life, but
from life itself, a systematic mortification of all natural instincts and
desires, a negative method of suicide. The " renouncer " had first to
ascertain his dearest wishes and deliberately thwart them ; abandon
his friends, relinquish his worldly ambitions, and forego all gratifica-
tions of the senses. He next had to avoid whatever could compensate
such sacrifices : emulation, fame, and even the pleasures of self -appro-
bation. The candidate of Nirvana had to subsist on insipid food—
millet-seed, for instance, or even cresses (" Asiatic Researches," vol.
xvii, p. 238). He had to clothe himself in rags, and renounce all
worldly possessions, all earthly sympathies ; Buddha Ghoska, the
South Indian apostle of the great Nepaulese, goes so far as to warn
his disciples against sleeping more than once under the same tree, lest
their souls should be contaminated with an undue affection for any
worldly object (Schopenhauer's " Parerga," vol. i, p. 317). The civil
war of contending dogmas filled India with rival hordes of self-tortur-
ing fanatics. Brahmans and Buddhists vied in the invention of new
torments. Voluntary affliction became the chief criterion of mei'it.
The Buddhistic monasteries practiced the most approved methods for
making life hateful and death desirable ; among their ghastly peni-
tents all the monsters of La Trappe could have found their prototypes.
Troops of Brahmanic flagellants wandered from town to town ; the
Sannyassis had regular rendezvous, where their novices could profit by
the experience of the accomplished lunatics :

" So gathered they, a grievous company :
Some day and night had stood with lifted arms,
Till, drained of blood and withered hy disease,
Their slowly-wasting joints and stiffened limbs
Jutted from sapless shoulders, like dead forks
From forest trunks. Others had clinched their hands
So long and with so fierce a fortitude,
The claw-like nails grew through the festered palm.
Certain who cried five hundred times a day
The names of Shiva, wound with darting snakes
About their sun-tanned necks and hollow flanks . . .
Here crouched one in the dust, who, noon by noon,
Meted a thousand grains of millet out, '
Ate it with famished patience, seed by seed,
And so starved on ; there one who bruised his pulse

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 351

"With bitter leaves lest palate should be pleased ;
And next, a miserable saint, self-maimed,
Eyeless and tongueless, sexless, crippled, deaf."

(Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia," p. 18.)

Or Wieland's satirical resume:

" Der Glaube hiess es heilig, wenn

Der Fliegen, der Heuschrecken frass,

Und Jener gar mit seinera heil'gen Hintern
In einem Ameisen-haufen sass,

Um da andachtig zu ilberwintern."

Nor are those fancy sketches ; such things are practiced in Hin-
dostan to this day. Weber estimates the present number of pro-
fessional Sannyassis at six hundred thousand ; De Lanier at six
hundred and fifty thousand ; and Max Miiller even at one million
{vide "American Cyclopaedia," article "Fakir"). The pi-ocession
of the Juggernaut still frenzies the out-of-the-way villages of the
Punjaub ; the Brahma-whirlpool at the junction of the Jumna and
the Ganges still claims its yearly hecatombs of human victims. In
the southwestern presidencies the English Government has at last
succeeded in abating the suicidal epidemics ; the suttee-rite, for in-
stance, has been effectually suppressed by fining all accomplices and
abettors. But the beast-idolatry still flourishes, and bids fair to outlive
the British Tract Society, as it has survived the Portuguese auto-da- f'es.
Crocodile-hunters still take their lives in their hands ; the hanuman
humbug continues to paralyze horticulture, and the most popular argu-
ment of the Nana Sahib demagogues was, not the nepotism of the
foreign rulers, not the arrogance and partiality of the British bureau-
crats, but the " cartridge-grievance " : orthodox soldiers, in loading a
musket, had been obliged to open with their teeth a pasteboard car-
tridge that had been greased with a mixture of steatite and beef-
tallow !

The origin of zoolatry, or beast-worship, in some of its phases, is
not easy to explain. The supreme usefulness of black cattle made
them the representatives of the prithivi mdtar, the benevolent, all-
sustaining earth-mother. Crocodiles are invaluable scavengers, and in
the granaries of Egypt cats were indispensable enough to deserve an
apotheosis. But how did serpents and monkeys come by that honor?
In Africa snake-worship marks the lowest stage of "animism," but
nearly every nation seems to have passed through that stage. In a
very curious account of the customs and superstitions of the Ilaytian
negroes, Mr. Moreau (" History of St. Domingo," by Mr. L. E. Mo-
reau) describes the Voodoo idol as "a serpent supposed to be endowed
with the gift of prescience, which it communicates to its favorite at-
tendants, the high-priest, and priestess of the Voodoo temple." This
superstition Mr. Moreau believes to have been derived from Whydah,

352

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in Southern Congo, where the French had a trading-post. But did
not the Delphic Pythoness likewise derive her name from a serpent, the
great Python of Parnassus, begotten in the ocean-mud of the Deucalian
Delude ? The Hebrew word Ob is the equivalent of the Grecian ophis
and the Chaldean oheb, a dragon, a serpent ; and in the Vulgate the
witch of Endor, the " woman who had an Ob,'''' is described as a muller
pythonica ; and the " consulters with familiar spirits " (Deuteronomy,
xviii, 11) as "men who worshiped Ob," the temple of Bel (a contrac-
tion of Ob-El, the snake-god) was covered with representations of fly-
ing serpents, the wings having been added to indicate the swiftness of
the miraculous Python — perhaps the prototype of the Chinese dragon,
of our " old serpent," and possibly of the mediaeval dragon-myths. On
one of the temples of Thebes Belzoni discovered " a row of figures
representing three human beings resting upon their knees and with
their heads struck off. Before them a serpent-god (un dio pythonico)
erects his crest on a level with their throats, ready to drink the stream
of life as it flows from their veins." Columella, the Roman Huxley,
mentions a district of the province of Numidia where the natives tried
to break the spell of a summer drought by practicing strange rites with
a captive serpent. In the mythology of the Edda the Midgard-snake
encircles the globe of the whole earth, and the rupture of its folds will
usher in the final return of Chaos. According to Plutarch, the Edo-
nian witches of Thrace practiced their charms by the aid of a tutelary
deity in the form of a snake, which they carried from hill to hill in
search of a propitious conjuncture of times and places ; and among the
Veddahs of Ceylon Sir Emerson Tennent (" Ceylon : An Account of
the Island, Physical, Historical, and Political ") found traces of a very
similar superstition ; The staff of iEsculapius and the caduceus of Mer-
cury were entwined with serpents ; and, when the pious iEneas sacri-
fices at the tomb of his father, the " genius of the sepulchre " emerges
in the form of a miraculous snake. The two mysterious strangers who
announce the mission of Buddha vanish in the castle-hall, and when
the messengers of the king follow them to the gate two furtive serpents
glide forth : " The gods come ofttimes thus."

Yet Professor Ritter holds that ophiolatry is the oldest form of
demonism of devil-worship, the subtile and deadly serpent being the
fittest symbol of the tempter. Barthelemy-Sainte-Hilaire inclines to the
opinion that the Egyptian god-serpent was the emblem of immortality,
the idea being derived from the shedding of his skin ; the caves of
Elephantine bristle with serpent-heads ; and the strangest, but possibly
the only correct theory, is Sir W. Jones's conjecture that these shapes
are nothing but a modification of that rude symbol of the vis genera-
tiva — the old Indian phallus.

Monkey-worship is peculiar to Hindostan, and can hardly be ex-
plained by the usefulness or the superhuman attributes of poor Hanu-
man. Yet its antiquity is attested by the sculptures of Ellora and

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 353

the oldest traditions of the Eastern Aryans. Should it be a sort of
inverted anthropomorphism — a typical form of ancestor-worship f Dr.
Mivart is perhaps right that there were Darwinians before Charles
Darwin, who was merely the first systematic exponent of a very ancient
doctrine, for the dogma of metempsychosis itself is possibly nothing
but a dimly expressed anticipation of the evolution theory.

" Poor creatures, so humble and so sublime," says Lucretius (" De
JVatura Rerum" — published 45 b. a), "you must now recognize that
you are but the first of earthly animals. Your extraction is very base,
you have sprung from very low, but by a slow series of efforts you
have raised yourself above your inferior, brethren. I know your ori-
gin, but I can not see the goal to which you are tending ; yet persevere
and work on."

And Buddha :

" High above Indra's you may raise your lot,
And sink it lower than the worm or gnat ;
The end of many myriad lives is this,
The end of myriads that."

And is it so illogical to believe in the possibility of a metamorphic
retrogression, as well as progression ? Have not the most godlike
nations of antiquity "sunk their lot" very nearly to — and in some
respects decidedly below — the level of our simian relatives ?

Zoomorphism, as Carl Vogt calls the doctrine of metempsychosis,
was taught on the banks of the Ganges before Abraham's father sold
his stock-farm at Ur, in Chaldea, and there is no stranger fact in the
natural history of religion than the ubiquity of this most ancient and
most persistent form of supernaturalism. Its dogmas have tinctured
the creed of every nation, and often revive in the most unexpected
way. It is the basis of the eighteen Puranas of the Egyptian myths,
and the traditions of the elder Edda. The strangely suggestive tales
of the metamorphoses were probably borrowed from the religion of
prehistoric Italy. The nations of Northern Europe had similar super-
stitions which still survive the exodus of the Druids. The Christian
propagandists could persuade the Saxons and Celts to transfer their
devotion from Walhalla to Calvary, but they could not shake their
faith in were-wolves, kelpies, and amphibious Melusinas.

"That the creed of Mohammed," says Lecky, " should have preserved
its pure monotheism and its freedom from all idolatrous tendencies . . .
is a fact which we can only very imperfectly explain." But even the
Koran did not eradicate the zoomorphic superstitions of the Southern
Semites. Professor Brehm relates that his Bedouin guide implored
him in the name of the All-merciful not to fire upon a troop of spotted
jackals (Canis pictus), as these animals embodied the souls of potent
wizards who would cruelly revenge the death of a companion. After
the death of Caliph Walid— " El Caffer," the infidel, as the dervishes
vol. xxn. — 23

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

called bim — the citizens of Damascus were frightened by the rumor
that tbe great unbeliever bad reappeared in the form of a gaunt hyena
that prowled around the city at night ; and Abulfeda informs us that
before the battle of Aleppo the Karmathians saw a large eagle circling
above their vanguard, but were careful not to disturb it, " for they
at once recognized the spirit of Abu Taher" — one of their former
leaders who had won a great victory on that same battle-field.

Sitting Bull once declared that Father De Smet was the only white
man whose word could be implicitly relied upon ; but, according to the
observations of Mr. W. Everett, this confidence seems to refer to polit-
ical rather than mythological questions. Mr. William Everett, a gov-
ernment scout at Fort Custer, lived several years among the Sioux, and
convinced himself that they believe in the metempsychosis of distin-
guished chiefs, and on one occasion he saw Sitting Bull himself "mak-
ing motions with his hands, and talking to a large wolf, which appar-
ently understood what he said, for, whenever he made the sign for
' Do you understand ? ' the wolf would throw up his head and howl."
They deem it unlucky to kill a white wolf (like the Laplanders, who
entertain similar scruples in regard to the white polar fox), and only
famine will induce them to shoot at a white-tailed deer. During the
hard winter of 1865 six young braves took the risk, and, " were found
strangled with marks of fingers on their throats and horrified
looks, as if they had seen something awful " (vide "Popular Science
Monthly," vol. xxi, p. 422).

The Tyrolese mountaineers have an equally weird superstition
which their priests have not seen fit to discourage, namely, that an
unbaptized child is changed into a Fliih-vogel (a bird with a peculiar
wailing cry), and has for ever to flit about the desolate shores of the
highland lakes ; and the Albanian peasants believe that Constantin
Kastro, the companion in arms of the famous Scanderbeg, still haunts
his native mountains in the form of a black falcon.

[ To be continued.]

THE GOSPEL OF RECPvEATION.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
ADDEES9 AT HIS FAEEWELL BANQUET, NOVEMBER 9th.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: Along with your
kindness there comes to me a great unkindness from Fate ; for,
now that, above all times in my life, I need full command of what pow-
ers of speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere with
them that I fear I shall very inadequately express myself. Any failure
in my response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly

THE GOSPEL OF RECREATION. 355

disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Ameri-
cans at larffe, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks
are due. I ought to begin with the time, some two-and-twenty years
ago, when my highly-valued friend Professor Youmans, making efforts
to diffuse my books here, interested on their behalf the Messrs. Apple-
ton, who have ever treated me so honorably and so handsomely ; and
I ought to detail from that time onward the various marks and acts of
sympathy by which I have been encouraged in a struggle which was
for many years disheartening. But, intimating thus briefly my gen-
eral indebtedness to my numerous friends, most of them unknown, on
this side of the Atlantic, I must name more especially the many atten-
tions and proffered hospitalities met with during my late tour, as well
as, lastly and chiefly, this marked expression of the sympathies and
good wishes which many of you have traveled so far to give, at
great cost of that time which is so precious to the American. I be-
lieve I may truly say that the better health which you have so cor-
dially wished me will be in a measure furthered by the wish ; since
all pleasurable emotion is conducive to health, and, as you will fully
believe, the remembrance of this event will ever continue to be a
source of pleasurable emotion, exceeded by few, if any, of my remem-
brances.

And now that I have thanked you, sincerely though too briefly, I
am going to find fault with you. Already, in some remarks drawn
from me respecting American affairs and American character, I have
passed criticisms which have been accepted far more good-naturedly
than I could reasonably have expected ; and it seems strange that I
should now again propose to transgress. However, the fault I have to
comment upon is one which most will scarcely regard as a fault. It
seems to me that in one respect Americans have diverged too widely
from savages. I do not mean to say that they are in general unduly
civilized. Throughout large parts of the population, even in long-
settled regions, there is no excess of those virtues needed for the main-
tenance of social harmony. Especially out in the West, men's deal-
ings do not yet betray too much of the " sweetness and light " which
we are told distinguish the cultured man from the barbarian. Never-
theless, there is a sense in which my assertion is true. You know that
the primitive man lacks power of application. Spurred by hunger, by
danger, by revenge, he can exert himself energetically for a time ; but
his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily toil is impossible to him.
It is otherwise with the more developed man. The stern discipline of
social life has gradually increased the aptitude for persistent industry ;
until, among us, and still more among you, work has become with
many a passion. This contrast of nature has another aspect. The
savage thinks only of present satisfactions, and leaves future satisfac-
tions uncared for. Contrariwise, the American, eagerly pursuing a
future good, almost ignores what good the passing day offers him ;

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and, when the future good is gained, he neglects that while striving
for some still remoter good.

What I have seen and heard during my stay among you has forced
on me the belief that this slow change from habitual inertness to per-
sistent activity has reached an extreme from which there must begin
a counter-change — a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck with
the number of faces which told in strong lines of the burdens that had
to be borne. I have been struck, too, with the large proportion of
gray-haired men ; and inquiries have brought out the fact that with
you the hair commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than
with us. Moreover, in every circle I have met men who had them-
selves suffered from nervous collapse due to stress of business, or
named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork, or had
been permanently incapacitated, or had wasted long periods in en-
deavors to recover health. I do but echo the opinion of all the ob-
servant persons I have spoken to, that immense injury is being done
by this high-pressure life — the physique is being undermined. That
subtle thinker and poet whom you have lately had to mourn, Emerson,
says, in his essay on the gentleman, that the first requisite is that he
shall be a good animal. The requisite is a general one — it extends to
the man, to the father, to the citizen. "We hear a great deal about
"the vile body" ; and many are encouraged by the phrase to trans-
gress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those who
treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products, and leaves the
world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so
foolish.

Beyond these immediate mischiefs there are remoter mischiefs.
Exclusive devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to
please ; and, when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary
from lack of its sole interest — the interest in business. The remark
current in England, that, when the American travels, his aim is to do
the greatest amount of sight-seeing in the shortest time, I find current
here also : it is recognized that the satisfaction of getting on devours
nearly all other satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave
us a whole week's pleasure, I learned from the landlord of the hotel
that most Americans come one day and go away the next. Old Frois-
sart, who said of the English of his day that " they take their pleas-
ures sadly after their fashion," would doubtless, if he lived now, say
of the Americans that they take their pleasures hurriedly after their
fashion. In large measure with us, and still more with you, there is
not that abandonment to the moment which is requisite for full en-
joyment ; and this abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense
of multitudinous responsibilities. So that, beyond the serious physical
mischief caused by overwork, there is the further mischief that it de-
stroys what value there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life.

Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to posterity. Dam-

THE GOSPEL OF RECREATION. 357

aged constitutions reappear in children, and entail on them far more
of ill than great fortunes yield them of good. When life has been
duly rationalized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties
care of the body is imperative, not only out of regard for personal
welfare, but also out of regard for descendants. His constitution will
be considered as an entailed estate, which he ought to pass on unin-
jured if not improved to those who follow ; and it will be held that
millions bequeathed by him will not compensate for feeble health and
decreased ability to enjoy life. Once more, there is the injury to fel-
low-citizens, taking the shape of undue disregard of competitors. I
hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to crush
out every one whose business competed with his own ; and manifestly
the man who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inor-
dinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life
harder for all others engaged in it, and excludes from it many who
might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic mo-
tive, there are two altruistic motives which should deter from this
excess in work.

The truth is, there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back
through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find
that the ideal of life is variable, and depends on social conditions.
Every one knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim
among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous
peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven the time
was to be passed in daily battles, with magical healing of wounds, we
see how deeply rooted may become the conception that fighting is
man's proper business, and that industry is fit only for slaves and
people of low degree. That is to say, when the chronic struggles of
races necessitate perpetual wars, there is evolved an ideal of life
adapted to the requirements. We have changed all that in modern
civilized societies, especially in England, and still more in America.
With the decline of militant activity, and the growth of industrial
activity, the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable.
The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to fight ; and in the
one case, as in the other, the ideal of life has become so well estab-
lished that scarcely any dream of questioning it. Practically, business
has been substituted for war as the purpose of existence.

Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future ? I think
not. While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossi-
ble that ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate
to the ages of conquest by man over man, and spread of the strongest
races. The modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of
the earth and subjection of the powers of Nature to human use is the
predominant need. But hereafter, when both these ends have in the
main been achieved, the ideal formed will probably differ considerably
from the present one. May we not foresee the nature of the differ-

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ence ? I think we may. Some twenty years ago, a good friend of
mine and a good friend of yours, too, though you never saw him, John
Stuart Mill, delivered at St. Andrews an inaugural address on the
occasion of his appointment to the Lord Rectorship. It contained
much to be admired, as did all he wrote. There ran through it, how-
ever, the tacit assumption that life is for learning and working. I felt
at the time that I should have liked to take up the opposite thesis. I
should have liked to contend that life is not for learning, nor is life for
working, but learning and working are for life. The primary use of
knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as
shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are second-
ary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use of work is that
of supplying the materials and aids to living completely ; and that any
other uses of work are secondary. But in men's conceptions the sec-
ondary has in great measure usurped the place of the primary. The
apostle of culture, as it is commonly conceived, Mr. Matthew Arnold,
makes little or no reference to the fact that the first use of knowledge
is the right ordering of all actions ; and Mr. Carlyle, who is a good
exponent of current ideas about work, insists on its virtues for quite
other reasons than that it achieves sustentation. We may trace every-
where in human affairs a tendency to transform the means into the
end. All see that the miser does this when, making the accumulation
of money his sole satisfaction, he forgets that money is of value only
to purchase satisfactions. But it is less commonly seen that the like
is true of the work by which the money is accumulated — that indus-
try, too, bodily or mental, is but a means, and that it is as irrational
to pursue it to the exclusion of that complete living it subserves as it
is for the miser to accumulate money and make no use of it. Here-
after, when this age of active material progress has yielded mankind
its benefits, there will, I think, come a better adjustment of labor and
enjoyment. Among reasons for thinking this, there is the reason that
the pi'ocess of evolution throusrhout the organic world at lars^e brinsrs
an increasing surplus of energies that are not absorbed in fulfilling
material needs, and points to a still larger surplus for humanity of tie
future. And there are other reasons which I must pass over. In brief,
I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the " gospel of
work." It is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.

This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it
will be thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver some-
thing very much like a homily. But I have thought I could not bet-
ter convey my thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which
issues in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work affects
more especially the Anglo-American part of the population — if there
results an undermining of the physique not only in adults, but also
in the young, who, as I learn from your daily journals, are also being
injured by overwork — if the ultimate consequence should be a dwin-

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION. 359

clling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free institutions
and best adapted to them — then there will come a further difficulty
in the working out of that great future which lies before the Ameri-
can nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe
the unusual character of my remarks.

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the Germanic
on Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my inter-
course with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of
health has prevented me from seeing a larger number.

THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION.

IT was lately remarked in these columns that one of the dangers
attendant on education was that it might lessen men's powers of
observation. There is no doubt, we apprehend, that this possibility
does exist. Bookishness and absence of mind are no new faults among
students. Among the more cultivated classes they have, indeed, been
for a considerable time in process of diminution, and the last half-
century more particularly has seen a great change in this respect.
Physical science has roused students, who in former ages would have
been abstract thinkers and nothing more, to careful and steady obser-
vation of external things. Facilities of traveling have acted as another
stimulus in the same direction ; and the love of nature has been a
power over sentimental minds, and has led them insensibly from a
quiet enjoyment of their surroundings to more active investigation.
So that altogether the classes which at the present day have the ad-
vantage of the hig-her education are far more observant than were
their forerunners of three or four centuries ago ; and, though even
now many of the mathematicians and philosophers who walk the
streets of our universities live largely in a mood of abstract thought,
we must be careful of finding undue fault with this, for the inward
eye has some claims not lightly to be despised. But, with respect to
the mass of the nation, the question we have raised is one that deserves
a good deal of attention. Popular education is still in the bookish
stage ; and, without complaining of what is inevitable, we may and
ought to inquire whether literary study does now in the lower ranks
promote that vice of inobservance which it certainly promoted in
the higher ranks a century or two ago. Equally we have to inquire
whether the virtue which is the converse of this error may be fos-
tered ; whether and how the study of books may be made to minister
to powers of direct observation, instead of being adverse to them, and
to assist in the general business of life.

Litei'ary study may conceivably impede our observant faculties,

360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

either by suggesting problems that appear to demand pure thinking
alone for their solution, or by imbuing the mind with an ambitious
tone, in which the ordinary events of e very-day experience are looked
upon as unworthy of notice. In the latter case it must be acting mis-
chievously ; in the former case it may be mischievous, though it is
not always so. If a problem is really of a purely abstract character,
it is inevitable that external observation should be lulled during the
investigation of it. Newton was in many respects an inobservant,
absent-minded man ; but without that inobservance he could not have
been the master of abstract thought that he was, or have made the
discoveries that have been so powerfully beneficial to the human race.
But there are many problems which have an appearance of being ab-
stract, and soluble by pure thought alone, in which this is by no means
really the case. Questions of ethics, of political economy, of art, are
of this nature ; they have a delusive appearance of abstraction from
the actual world in which we live ; and many an inquirer has gone
round and round in them in a profitless circle, without being aware
that the element needed to render him successful was not brain-power
at all, but experience of men and things. The danger, however, that
the faculties of observation may be blunted by an excess of abstract
thought is not very great in the popular education of the present day.
But the danger that they may be blunted by mistaken ambition is a
real one. The clever and educated poor will at times despise the com-
mon incidents of daily life, in comparison with that larger sphere to
which books give them an introduction in imagination, though not in
reality. Housekeepers find that servants neglect the pots and pans
and dishes, can not find anything when it is wanted, can not see cob-
webs in the corners or dust upon the shelves and tables, while their
attention is devoted to the pleasures of literature in some, very often
questionable, form. Farmers, we have been told, complain of the de-
generacy of plowboys from the same cause. True, farmers are a
complaining race, and their misfortunes of late years may have made
them more querulous than usual ; but their testimony should not be
quite disregarded. Some considerable application of the maxim that
people should do their duty in their own station will be found to give
no unneeded help to the observant faculties at a time of large gen-
eral progress, when hopes and ideas are apt to be extensive and
vague.

But it is not enough that education should refrain from hindering
the faculties of observation ; it ought, if it is sound, actually to pro-
mote and enlarge those faculties. How this may be done is a problem
not without difficulty. While the fault of inobservance is simple and
single in its nature, the virtue of ready observation is complex, re-
lating to many different spheres ; he who possesses it in one sphere
may lack it in another. When Thales, looking at the stars, tumbled
into a well that lay before his feet, he was partly very inobservant,

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION 361

partly very observant ; by the one quality he doubtless incommoded
himself grievously, by the other he discovered how to predict eclipses,
saved mankind from a certain amount of irrational panic, and won for
himself a great reputation. To Thales the balance was for good ; but
it would not be safe to affirm that this would be the case with every
one who walked with his head in the air looking at the stars.

Thus the direction in which observation may be most usefully
practiced varies with the circumstances of the case ; with the circum-
stances of the pupil when education is in question ; and is not the
same in the different ranks of society. The problem has, we think,
been most successfully solved at present in the colleges, more or less
recently founded, of our great northern towns. There, physical sci-
ence is in demand for practical purposes, and educational institutions
accommodate themselves to the demand. But, in the elder universities
and the elementary schools alike, an equal measure of solution has not
yet been attained. Oxford and Cambridge students (to begin with
the higher rank) have not, as a rule, any plain and visible necessity
for physical science as an aid in their future employments. But there
is another side of science besides the immediately practical one — a side
which ought to be held of especial value in institutions that have un-
der their survey the largest interests of humanity. The great sciences
of observation — astronomy, geology, and the natural history of ani-
mals and plants — are more noticeable for their ideal than for their
practical side, though they do touch on practice also. They give sub-
lime views of the universe, such as it is a refreshment and consolation
to possess, and such as touch not remotely on the destiny and happi-
ness of man. We in England, at any rate, are not hopeless of the
reconciliation of these views with the religious ideal that we have re-
ceivecl. But it is the apparent collision, on certain points, between
the new and the old that has impeded the reception of these sciences
in those respects in which they are so calculated to elicit human feel-
ing, and therefore so appropriate as studies in our elder and chief uni-
versities. In astronomy, indeed, the collision with religion has been
long ago practically surmounted. But the observational side of astron-
omy has been rather sunk at Cambridge and Oxford in comparison
with its mathematical side. It may be suspected that many students
of astronomy (though not astronomers prcmer) have less knowledge of
the actual face of the heavens than had those Chaldean shepherds who
roamed the plains of the East thousands of years ago, in whom the
science originated.

When we come to the poorer extreme of society, though the ele-
mentary education of the country does not quite ignore the cultivation
of the observant faculties, neither does it, in our opinion, lay sufficient
stress upon them. The arts of reading and writing, and the study of
arithmetic, taken simply by themselves, have a tendency to withdraw
the mind from the outer world, and it needs a corrective to restore

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the balance. That corrective may, in certain cases, be supplied by
the subject-matter of the books read, if it is required that they shall
be intelligently understood. At the same time, such a requirement
must be very positive and direct in order not to be evaded. Though
the Education Department does at the present moment require from
children in elementary schools, not merely an intelligent style of read-
ing, but also (in the upper standards) an acquaintance with the subject-
matter of the books read, it would naturally be felt to be extremely
hard that a child should be declared to have failed in reading because
he or she showed a want of proper observation. But we should like
to see this whole topic of intelligent acquaintance with the subject-
matter of the books read removed from the mere art of reading, and
constituted into a separate subject by itself— say into a class subject,
such as geography and grammar are now. If this were done, it would
not be hard upon a child to demand from it some amount of observa-
tion as well as intelligence. If, for instance, the reading-book referred
to any agricultural operation, such as harvesting, or to some well-
known plant or flower or vegetable, or to cattle, or to birds, whether
migratory or permanent in the country, then in a country school the
children might fairly be questioned so as to bring out what they them-
selves had observed on these matters. In a town school questions
might be asked on other matters to which reading-books would also
now and then make reference — railways, stations, the different public
buildings and their uses, the trades or manufactures specially practiced
in the town. We can not but think that there is a real gap in the
training of children in the poorer classes, and that the step we here
recommend might do much to fill it.

It is true, and we note the fact with pleasure, that the Education
Department has of late encouraged methods of teaching geography
which brine: out that side in which it is connected with direct obser-
vation. The suggestion that in every school the meridian line should
be marked on the floor, in order that the points of the compass may
be practically known, is a valuable one in this direction. Still more
so is the suggestion, almost amounting to a requirement, that "good
maps of the parish or immediate neighborhood in which the school is
situated should be affixed to the walls." But of course the value of
these appliances depends on the way in which they are used. The
meridian line may be marked with exactness, the map of the parish
may be unexceptionable, but if the knowledge of these points is not
interwoven with the daily teaching it will be fruitless. And we can
not but regret that the Education Department should treat geography
as a subject inferior in importance to grammar. This is to place the
abstract before the concrete, which is contrary to all natural and true
method. We are sure that it needs far greater skill to render a gram-
mar-lesson really fruitful and beneficial than to render a geography-
lesson so. When grammar is made almost a necessity, while geogra-

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION. 363

phy is distinctly not a necessity, how is it possible but that geography
must go to the wall ? There is, indeed, another class subject recog-
nized by the Education Department in their New Code which would
cultivate observation even more, perhaps, than geography does —
namely, elementary science. But we presume it is the opinion of the
Department itself (as it certainly is our own) that this subject will
not be largely used ; for, in the recently issued " Instructions to In-
spectors " it is passed over very cursorily, without the least indication
as to the parts of natural science to be preferred, or any more than
the vaguest as to methods. Elementary science will have a very up-
hill battle to fight if it is to win any real recognition, where the rec-
ognition of it involves the discarding of the more familiar geography,
which by the terms of the Code it does. But our fear is that geogra-
phy and elementary science will alike play but a poor part, in view of
the superior importance and extended meaning given to grammar in
the New Code. And, while some of the " specific subjects " of the
Code are such as would encourage the observant faculties,, these sub-
jects are taken up by so small a number of children as hardly to affect
the broad question Ave are discussing.

A suggestion, however, has been made which, if it could be carried
out, would undoubtedly bring popular education into more direct re-
lations with the external world, and therefore encourage the observant
faculties more than is the case at present. This is that, just as girls
are taught needle-work, so boys should in the course of their education
be taught some elements of their future practical work in life. This
has especially been urged in the interests of agriculture, and it has
been thought that boys might be taught, while still at school, so much
of the rudiments of farming as would greatly improve their future
capacity. Of this proposal we can only say that we should be glad if
it could be found practicable, but we are afraid the difficulties of con-
necting practical farming with school-work would be found very great.
It might be easier to bring gardening into the school routine. But all
that can here be said is that this suggestion, like all others that tend
to relieve popular education from mere formalizing, deserves atten-
tion ; and that, if the difficulties which it appears to present could be
got over, it would certainly be a great benefit to the country. —
Saturday Meview.

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY.

By Professor W. K. BEOOKS,

OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
II.

WE will now examine our various sources of information, in order
to see how far the evidence which they furnish can be used to
establish phylogenies.

Comparative anatomy might not at first sight be expected to yield
much of this kind of evidence, for the only animals which we can
study thoroughly are those recent ones which have diverged very
widely from their remote ancestors ; and, while it is true that the study
of the structure of living animals does not furnish direct evidence,
the doctrine of homology supplies a means of sifting out, by general
comparisons, what has been recently acquired from what is more
deep seated, and of thus arranging animals in a series of groups of
greater and greater extent and less and less contact. This classifica-
tion of animals upon morphological grounds is essentially phylogenetic,
for the difference between a system of converging lines and a sys-
tem of more and more inclusive definitions is simply a difference in
the manner of expression ; nor can it be said that the one method
assumes the disputed point, genetic relationship, any more than the
other, for the naturalist who believes that classification is not simply a
matter of convenience, but that there is one natural system, and that,
according to this system, living things fall into a few great groups,
each of which is characterized by certain general features, and that
each of these groups is divided into smaller groups distinguished in a
similar way, and these again into smaller groups, and so on, tacitly
assumes that the natural system of classification or relationship is what
we should expect it to be if the theory of descent with modification is
true.

If there is a natural " systematic classification," it must be exactly the
same as a phylogenetic tree, and the idea of descent is no more essential
in the one case than it is in the other ; they are simply different ways
of expressing the same thing, the relationship of living things, and
neither of them involves more than the other any particular interpre-
tation of the word relationship ; nor can it be said that, while the one
method assumes that the larger trunks of the system have at some
time been embodied in actual organisms, the second method allows us
to believe that these groups are purely ideal, for, although this latter
conception may have been defensible to some extent in the early days
of morphological science, the progress of discovery has shown that
even nowadays animals exist in which the characteristics of a branch

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 365

or of a class or order are exhibited in their simplicity, and uncom-
plicated by the presence of the characteristics of any of the minor
divisions of the group : thus amphioxus is a generalized or diagram-
matic vertebrate, with structural features which are common to the
whole group, and none of the distinctive marks of any of the great
subdivisions of the group. In a phylogenetic tree such a form would
be represented by a line running almost directly upward from a point
where great branches diverge from a common stem ; and the fact that
these generalized forms are much more often found among fossil than
among recent animals is very suggestive.

This short analysis is sufficient to show that the essential similarity
between a system of classification based on homology and a phylo-
genetic tree is so great that all objections to the one method of gen-
eralizing from the facts must apply to the other. If phylogenetic
speculations retard science, speculations upon homology must do the
same thing, and the only way to avoid danger will be to stick to
facts, and, stripping our science of all that renders it worthy of think-
ing men, to become mere observing machines.

As it is plain that the strictest construction of the proper scope
and limits of scientific thought does not make any such demands as
this, we may feel at liberty to speculate upon phylogeny with such
a basis as is furnished by the comparative study of the systematic
relationship of living animals, but we are not able to go very far in
this direction, for nearly all living animals fall into a few great well-
defined groups, and generalized types are the exception. Our conclu-
sions must, therefore, be very vague and general, and we turn to the
paleontological record for more exact data ; but here, again, we soon
meet with limitations which prevent any very exact and definite gener-
alizations. One of these limitations, the imperfection of the record,
we have already examined, and another is due to the fact that most
of the main stems of the phylogenetic tree, and the minor branches of
many of them, were established before the time of the oldest fossil-
iferous rocks, and we can not hope to find fossil remains of the unspe-
cialized ancestors from which they were derived. This renders it
hopeless for us to attempt actual proof of the more deep-seated phylo-
genetic relationships ; and another consideration, which we will now
examine, renders the discovery of the exact relationship of smaller
groups of genera and species almost equally hopeless, even when the
most ample series of fossils is discovered.

All that we know of variation indicates that it is not induced in
the adult, but that it is congenital, and the effect of some force which
has acted upon or through the parents. Hence it happens that, when
a new variety is produced, it is not usually by the addition of some-
thing new to the characteristics of a mature animal, but by a diver-
gence which shows itself before maturity is reached. When we com-
pare two closely related species or varieties of birds, we do not find

366

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that one is like the other with additions, but we find that the young
are alike up to a certain point, where the divergence of the adults be-
gins. If the letter A, in diagram 2, represents an adult animal, and
the series of dots in the vertical line a few of the stages of its devel-
opment between birth and maturity, the relationship between A and a
closely allied species, B, would not usually be of such a kind that it

could be expressed by the line A B,
■ P but by a line B c, running back to
a younger stage of A. Since the
duration of mature life is usually
much longer than the period of de-
velopment, adults are generally more
numerous than young individuals,
and, as their hard parts are in most
cases more fully developed, there
is a much greater chance of finding
adult than young specimens of fos-
sil species. Even if we should find
in a recent geological formation the
adult fossil ancestor A of a recent
species B, the agreement between
the two would be inexact, and could
not be fully perceived until we had
compared a number of stages in the
development of B with correspond-
ing stages in the development of
A ; and a reference to diagram 2
will show that the actual relation-
ship of B to still another species, D, might be just as close as its re-
lationship to A, although B might be much more different from D
than from A. The complexity of the case would be still further in-
creased if D were met with in a more recent stratum than that which
yielded A, and in this case the preservation, discovery, and identifica-
tion of three distinct sets of young forms would be necessary before
the relationships of A, B, and D could be unraveled. In nature few
cases are so simple as this, and, where a dozen species are involved, the
complexity would be so great that no one who has had any practical
acquaintance with the difficulty of identifying immature animals with
certainty, without rearing them, could have any hope of complete, ex-
act, and definite evidence of phytogeny from fossils.

While this is true in every case, its truth is most obvious where
animals have become adapted to new conditions of life, not by the ac-
quisition of new specializations of structure, but by the loss of old ones.
The occurrence of unquestionable cases of simplification, or what is
usually called degradation, is well known to naturalists, but, as these
cases are not so well known to the unscientific public as their signifi-

Fig. 2.

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 367

cance in any general theory of life demands, a short account of one of
the less complex instances will not be out of place.

Entoconcha is an extremely simple, worm-like animal, which lives,
as a parasite, inside the body of an holothurian. It is fastened, by a
button-like head, into a perforation in the wall of the digestive tract
of the holothurian in such a way that, while its mouth opens into the
digestive cavity, its long, contorted body hangs in the body cavity of
its host, so that it is bathed by its fluids, and protected by its body-
wall. As the digested food passes by its mouth the animal sucks it
into its rudimentary stomach, and, as all its wants are thus provided
for, the conditions of its life are extremely simple, and its bodily
structure exhibits a corresponding simplicity, and it may be described
as a long, cylindrical, worm-like animal, with a simple, pouch-like
stomach which opens by the mouth at the anterior end, and occupies
about one half the length of the body, while the other half is filled by
the equally simple organs of reproduction. It is as lowly organized as
the simplest of parasitic worms, and it is only by a study of its devel-
opment that we learn it is not a worm at all, but a gasteropod mollusk,
which has become degraded or simplified to adapt it to a parasitic life.
The ordinary gasteropods, the snails, conchs, etc., are animals of quite
high organization. They are usually provided with a protecting
shell, and their organs of locomotion are well developed. In connec-
tion with a specialized muscular system, they possess a well-marked
and complex nervous system, as well as sense-organs, such as eyes,
tentacles, and hearing organs. The digestive organs are quite highly
specialized, and consist of parts which bear a close physiological re-
semblance to those of a vertebrate. The food is masticated by a very
complicated system of jaws and teeth, and after it has been mixed with
a secretion, which is poured into the mouth by salivary glands, it
passes through a long muscular oesophagus into the stomach, where it
is acted upon by fluids furnished by a liver and other glands, before it
passes into the long, convoluted intestine, where the nutritive portions
are absorbed into the blood, while the waste products are discharged
from the body through the anus. The nutritive matter is driven to all
parts of the body, with the blood, through a system of arteries and
veins, by a pulsating heart, and during a part of its course the blood
passes through respiratory organs, where it is aerated by contact with
the air or water. The waste products are excreted from the blood by
renal organs, and the organs of reproduction are extremely complicated
and highly specialized.

The animal which has been seen to hatch from the egg of ento-
concha is a young gasteropod, which, like the young of ordinary forms,
has a spiral shell, a muscular locomotor foot, tentacles, eyes, hearing
organs, and a nervous system like that of other gasteropods at the
same stage of growth. The digestive tract is divided into regions,
like those of an ordinary gasteropod, and the young entoconcha

368

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

C A

has no peculiarities to indicate that the structure and habits of the
adult are to be in any way strange or unusual ; but after a time it finds
its way, in some manner which has not been clearly made out, into the
body of an holothurian, and this change in its habits is accompanied
by a most marvelous change in its organization. It now has no shell,
since the body-wall of its host affords ample protection, and, as it no
longer needs to change its position in search of food, or to escape its
enemies, its foot and specialized muscles have disappeared. Its organs
of sense are wanting, and the nervous system is so rudimentary that
no traces of it can be discovered. It has no need of organs to capt-
ure, masticate, or digest its food, since it sucks this, already digested,
from the stomach of its host, and its digestive system has accordingly
become reduced to a simple pouch, with only one opening — the mouth
— and, as the whole surface of the body is bathed by the blood which
is aerated in the respiratory organs of the holothurian, it has no need
for gills, or heart, or blood-vessels, and, so far as our knowledge goes,
these organs are entirely lacking.

Of the highly specialized organs of a gas-
P teropod only the simple stomach, the reproduc-
/ tive organs, and the slightly muscular body-
wall remain, and no person who is not ac-
quainted with the fact that young snails with
spiral shells have been seen to come from its
eggs would suspect that entoconcha is a mol-
lusk.

Such cases, which modern research has
proved to be by no means infrequent, show
that the comparative study of adult animals
can not furnish a complete key to their past
history, and they also illustrate how little is to
be hoped for from paleontology.

No one who accepts the doctrine of descent
with modification, and is familiar with the em-
bryology of the gasteropods, can doubt that, if
we were able to trace back the pedigree of ento-
concha, we should be led to a remote ancestor
which was an ordinary gasteropod ; not neces-
-~ n sarily a species exactly like any we know, but
a form with general gasteropod characteristics
at least : nor can we doubt that, if we were able
to study the embryology of this ancestral form,
which we may represent by the letter A in diagram 3, we should find its
life, from the egg to maturity, to be made up of a series of stages, a, b,
c, d, e,f, etc., substantially like stages in the life of ordinary gasteropods,
B and C. The relation between the entoconcha of the present day, D,
and this gasteropod ancestor, is shown by the curved line to D. Start-

l

i

i

4-

i /

h

2

i

J

i

i

i

e

i
i
i

d

i
i

■

r

i

i

i

Fig. a

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 369

ing with the egg, the young entoconcha passes through a series of
stages, a, b, c, d, e,f, g, h, which are like stages in the development
of an ordinary gasteropod, and therefore like stages in the life of its
gasteropod ancestor, A ; hut, after reaching a certain point, it takes
the back track shown by the unbroken line, and, gradually losing the
structural complexity which has been acquired, becomes an adult, D,
which has reproductive organs, but is, in other respects, as unspecial-
ized as an ordinary gasteropod at one of its earliest embryonic
stages, b.

It is obvious that paleontology can give us little help in tracing
out such a life-history as this, and we turn to the remaining source of
evidence, embryology, to examine how far the facts furnished by this
department of life-science can afford a basis for phylogenetic general-
izations.

The case which we have just examined shows that the embryology
of two related forms may be essentially the same, since both of them
have inherited the greater part of their life-history from a common
parent, and it would seem at first sight as if all that we need, to enable
us to trace out the relationship of all living animals, is a complete
acquaintance with the embryology and metamorphosis of each one
of them. A comparison of all the stages in the life of one species
with all the stages in the life of another species of the same genus
ought to show essential identity ; and a comparison of the stages of
development of the species of one genus with those of the species of a
related genus ought to show how far their history has been the same :
the common features in the embryology of two allied families should
show how far the history of the species in one of them has been the
same as that of the species in the other, and so on, each wider and
wider comparison showing broader and broader relationships, until the
features which are common to the embryos of all animals unite them

into one great group.

As this may be clearer in a more abstract shape, I will try to state
it in the form of a diagram (see Fig. 4).

Suppose that, in studying the development of four species, 1, 2, 3,
4, we find that 1 passes through a series of stages, a, b, c, d, e,f, g, h;
that 2 presents the series a, b, c, d, e,f, i,j, Tc ; while 3 passes through
the stages a, b, c, I, m, n, o, p, q ; and 4 through the stages a, b, c, I, m,
r, s, t, u. A comparison of these four life-histories would indicate that
their common relationships are such as are represented by the four-
branched tree shown in Fig. 4. We have already seen that it is per-
fectly possible that n or c or e may not have been an adult animal,
but simply a stage in the development of an unknown adult, x ; so
there would not be much chance of finding m or e or c as a fossil, and
the embryonic record would not show us what the common ancestor of
1 and 2 or the more remote ancestor of all four species actually was,
but would simply show that they are related in this way ; but it would
vol. xxii. — 24

570

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

show this relationship as conclusively as the vertebrate relationship
of birds and mammals is shown by the presence of a backbone in
each of them. It will be seen that the facts in this imaginary case
belong to the same category with the facts of homology, but that they

1 2

\ '

\ J

M

e,

LL

\
t

/

w

\/7

/

»

n.

\

./

V

/

TO

/

CL

Fio. 4.

furnish a much more complete index of relationship, since they cover
the whole life of the animal, instead of its adult form alone.

As a matter of fact we do find in nature something like this hypo-
thetical case, and it is universally recognized that an acquaintance
with all the stages in the growth of an animal is the greatest aid to
the discovery of its true affinities ; as is well shown by the case of
entoconcha, and by the barnacles which were classed among the mol-
lusca until a knowledge of their development showed that they are
Crustacea. When descriptive embryology was in its infancy, it so fre-
quently happened that a knowledge of younger stages threw a flood
of light upon the affinities of doubtful forms, that naturalists felt a
growing hope that here was the true key to the natural system of
classification, and that all they needed for reading the riddle was a
thorough knowledge of the whole course of development of each form
of life. If the embryology of each animal were a fixed quantity,
this purely descriptive knowledge would undoubtedly furnish such a
basis for phylogenetic generalizations ; but the great advances which
have been made in this field within the last twenty years show conclu-
sively that this is not the case, but that the early stages in the life of
an animal may undergo modifications which are quite independent of
any which may meanwhile take place in the adult, so that, while the

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY.

371

paleontological record is faulty through incompleteness, that of em-
bryology is faulty through distortion and secondary modification. In
general we do find the young stages of related species more like each
other than the adults, and the distinctive characteristics of each are
usually acquired gradually during the process of development ; but
this rule is by no means universal, and there are very many cases in

Fig. 6.

Fig. 5.

which the adults of related species are more alike than the young, and
in some cases the difference between the young forms is so great that
their close relationship would hardly be suspected until each had been

372

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

traced to its adult form ; and we have the converse of the case of en-
toconcha where the true affinities of a greatly modified adult are shown
by its younger stages.

I give four figures to illustrate one such instance, which is not by
any means exceptional or extreme ; and in certain groups of animals,
such as the Crustacea, such cases are quite numerous.

Fig. 5 is a magnified side-view of a crustacean, Sergestes, which
is not quite full grown, but still essentially like the adult ; and Fig. 6

Fig.

is a similar view of a closely related form, Lucifer, in a similar stage
of development. Their close relationship is obvious at a glance, and
their resemblances, which are much more conspicuous than their dif-
ferences, are rendered more obvious by careful study ; but the case is

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY.

373

quite different when the younger stages are compared, and at first sight
no one would suspect that the Sergestes larva (Fig. 7) and the Lucifer
larva (Fig. 8) are corresponding stages in the development of two ani-
mals as similar to each other as those shown in Figs. 5 and 6.

Not only do we find animals whose young stages differ more than
the adults, but we also meet
cases — and they are very nu-
merous indeed — where the or-
der of appearance of organs
and features of the greatest
taxonomic importance differs in
the embryos of closely related
forms.

To take a particular instance,
it is plain that, since the features
which all the two-gilled cepha-
lopods have in common, and
which are characteristic of the
group as a whole, must have
been inherited from the com-
mon ancestor of the whole
group, they ought, unless the
embryonic history of the dif-
ferent recent species has under-
gone secondary modifications,
to appear in the same order in
the embryos of all the existing
forms ; and, if they do not, it
is clear that descriptive embry-
ology alone can not furnish a
key to systematic affinity.

As a matter of fact, each one
of the three species of two-gilled
cephalopods with whose embry-
ology we are most familiar dif-
fers from, both the others in the order in which such significant organs
as the arms, the shell, the eyes, the siphon, the gills, and the mouth
make their appearance ; and it must be obvious that, unless we have
some means of analyzing these three life-histories, and determining
which of them gives the true ancestral order, we can not make use of
their embryology as a key to phylogeny. One who is not familiar
with the whole field of life-science may fairly ask how it is possible
to discover the relationships of animals from the study of their embry-
ology if it is true that the early stages in the life of closely related
species may differ so greatly, and if it is true that the order and man-
ner in which structures make their appearance in the embryo are not

Fig. 8.

374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

alike in all cases. Before answering this question, we must call the
attention of the unscientific reader to a familiar fact which will throw
great light upon the matter.

The animals with which we are most familiar, the mammals and
birds, are born in substantially the form which they will have when
they reach maturity. They breathe the same medium ; they employ
the same organs of locomotion, in the same way ; they require the
same or nearly the same kind of food, and their habits and surround-
ings are the same as they will be during mature life, or at least the
differences are slight and insignificant, and the adult is little more
than the young animal grown to its full size, and with sexual charac-
teristics, and able to reproduce its kind. But we must recollect that,
in the greater part of the animal kingdom, this is not the case. In by
far the greater part of the species of animals the rule is that the
newly born young is very different, in structure, in habits, surround-
ings, and needs, from the adult, and its passage to the adult form is
not simply a process of growth, but a process of great change in every
particular.

The young butterfly crawls over the plant on which it is born, and
finds an abundant supply of proper food in the green leaves, which it
cuts to pieces with its strong, scissor-like jaws. Its capacious digestive
tract is fitted for dealing with great quantities of bulky but very
slightly nutritious food ; and its enemies, dangers, and means of de-
fense are very different from those of the adult winged insect, which
is furnished with highly developed sense-organs, and flies from place
to place in search of the highly concentrated liquid food adapted for
sucking up through the proboscis which has replaced the cutting jaws
of the young ; and we must recollect that the life-history of the butter-
fly, so far as its great changes are concerned, is a type of the life of
numbers of other animals, for nearly all the invertebrates pass through
a metamorphosis.

Whenever young animals are left to shift for themselves, without
parental protection, they are compelled to struggle for existence with
a host of competitors and enemies ; and in all cases where the struct-
ure and habits of the young differ from those of the adult, a variation
in the young animal may be as important for the welfare of the spe-
cies as one in the adult, and may, therefore, be seized upon and per-
petuated by natural selection, and in this way the young stages of
two closely related species may be modified in different directions
until they become quite different from each other, while the adults
may remain essentially alike ; and as natural selection may act in such
a way as to modify the life-history of an organism at any stage of its
existence, there is no limit to the secondary changes which may thus
be brought about. A larva may acquire new organs, or it may lose
old ones ; the order in which organs are acquired may be modified ;
stages of development may be dropped out of the series, or new ones

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 375

may be added. A young form may become adapted to a new mode
of life, or it may escape competition by seizing upon a new field ; its
enemies, dangers, and means of defense may change, and with these
changes of habits corresponding changes of structure may occur, so
that the primitive or ancestral record may become completely obscured
by secondary changes.

The examination of the various kinds of modification which may
be brought about in this way falls within the scope of a treatise on
comparative embryology, but it would be out of place here, although
one or two examples of the more common sorts of modification may
be of interest.

The chrysalis stage of butterflies is an instance of the secondary
acquisition of a new stage of development, which forms no part of the
ancestral record.

It is obvious that the inactive pupa, which takes no food, and
exhibits few of the ordinary activities of animal life, can not pos-
sibly have existed in the past as an adult ancestor of the butter-
flies, nor is it conceivable that any of the remote ancestry of this
group bore a general resemblance to a pupa. While it is impossible
to believe that the pupa stage is ancestral, we have good evidence to
show the manner in which it has been acquired as a secondary modi-
fication.

Lubbock has pointed out that the least specialized or most primi-
tive insects have mouth -parts which are indifferently adapted for
either cutting or sucking, and that these insects do not undergo a
metamorphosis, but are gradually converted into the adult form by a
simple process of gradual development. He also shows good ground
for believing that the common ancestors of all the groups of insects
were like these forms in these particulars ; and he holds that, as the
stock which led to our present butterflies was evolved from this
ancient stem-form, the young became adapted to a sedentary creep-
ing life, and their indifferent mouth-parts became gradually converted
into cutting jaws, while the adults became adapted to quite a different
mode of life, and the same indifferent mouth-parts became gradually
modified into a sucking proboscis. While the caterpillar and butter-
fly were thus diverging in two directions from the original unspecial-
ized form, and the structure and habits of the larva were becoming
more and more different from those of the adult, it is plain that the
metamorphosis must at the same time have become more and more
violent ; and, according to Lubbock, one of the periods of slight ac-
tivity which, in most insects, accompany the periodical molts, was
seized upon, and gradually extended into a long resting or chrysalis
stage, in order to enable the animal to exist while the highly special-
ized organs of the caterpillar are changing into the equally specialized
but very different organs of the winged insect. The growing but-
terfly now passes through a resting or pupa stage which connects tho

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

two periods of great specialization, and bridges over the gap between
them, and thus does away wTith a period of imperfect specialization to
both modes of life.

As an instance of the opposite kind of modification, the simplification
of an embryonic history by the loss of ancestral stages, we may take the
life of the fresh-water crawfish. Young lobsters, and most of the other
marine allies of the crawfish, leave the egg in a form which is quite
unlike the adult, in structure as well as in habits, and the new-born
young pass through a long series of stages of metamorphosis before
the mature form is reached.

The larval stages of the marine long-tailed Crustacea bear such a
resemblance to each other, and to certain lower Crustacea, that we
must regard them as ancestral ; and we must therefore believe that
they were one time present in the life-history of the crawfish, al-
though we find nothing of the kind now. These larval forms are
adapted to a swimming life at the surface of the ocean, and we can
understand that, when the ancestors of the crawfishes became adapted
to a life in fresh water, the larval stages must either have been modi-
fied to correspond or else been got rid of, and, in the crayfish, the.
latter has happened, and the new-born young is simply a very small
image of the adult, the whole metamorphosis having been suppressed.

A person who is unfamiliar with morphology may fairly ask whether
we are not entering upon treacherous ground, and why we are to regard
the life-history of the lobster as the ancestral one, and that of the craw-
fish as a secondary modification, rather than the reverse. This feeling
is not confined to unscientific thinkers, for many naturalists are inclined
to reject this conception of the falsification of the embryonic record,
and to say that, when wTe accept the evidence furnished by one species
as a basis for phylogeny, and reject the evidence of a related species
as of no taxonomic importance, we are actuated by mere caprice, or
by a desire to establish some pet hypothesis, and that this method of
reasoning can have no scientific value.

The most satisfactory answer to this objection would be a thorough
analysis of a specific example, but this would involve technical com-
parisons and discussions which could not be adequately presented with-
out a number of figures ; and a sufficient answer for our present pur-
pose may be found by a reference to the facts and conclusions of
comparative anatomy.

A whale differs from all the ordinary mammals in quite a number
of features in which it bears a close resemblance to fishes, and at the
same time it differs from fishes in a number of points of resem-
blance to mammals. The attention of the earlier naturalists was
attracted by the first set of resemblances and differences, and they
placed the whale among the fishes ; but later investigators have de-
cided that the second set of resemblances alone give any evidence of
systematic relationship, and that the whale is a mammal. Now, what

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 377

reason is there for regarding one set of resemblances as of taxonomic
importance rather than the other ? The answer is plain. It is easy
to show that all the features in which a whale resembles fishes are such
as we should expect to find if the whale is a mammal, adapted to an
aquatic life ; but the features of resemblance to an ordinary mammal
do not admit of any such explanation, and they must therefore be held
to indicate the true relationship.

If the crawfish originally passed through stages somewhat similar
to those of the growing lobster, we can see why they may have been
suppressed to adapt it to a life in fresh water ; but, if the life-history
of the crawfish is ancestral, we can find no reason, in the life of the
lobster, for the acquisition of larval stages which are like those of
more distantly related macroura, and, in rejecting one life-history and
accepting the other, we are simply carrying the accepted principles of
homological reasoning into wider fields, and applying them to a new
class of phenomena ; and a thorough acquaintance with the facts will
render our conclusions as thoroughly scientific in the one case as in
the other.

Those who are unfamiliar with the status of modern morphology
are still accustomed to regard systematic zoology as a science of obser-
vation, but our review of the subject shows that the attempt to trace
out the natural system of classification of animals carries us far beyond
the bare facts, and that the observed phenomena, although practically
infinite in numbers, bear about the same relation to the generalizations
of the science that the facts of mathematics or of astronomy do to the
general laws of these sciences.

The facts are so numerous and so difficult to observe, and our ac-
quaintance with the conditions of life is so slight, that our attempts
at general conclusions must frequently be tentative and provisional,
and in some cases future research may show that they are entirely
wrong ; but this is no valid objection to the use of such evidence as
we have. There is no more justice in the assumption that, because
they may possibly be wrong, phylogenetic speculations upon the basis
of paleontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology are adverse to
the best interests of science, than there would be in the assumption
that the attempt to trace the relationship of animals from the facts of
homology is unscientific, because Cuvier thought that he had discovered
homologies between the barnacles and mollusks, or because Agassiz
associated the vorticellas with the polyzoa.

The end of phylogenetic speculation is perfectly legitimate, but we
must rid our minds of the belief that it can be reached by mere obser-
vation and description. The evidence is often so hard to read that
the accounts of the best observers are contradictory, and in many cases
it is so scanty and incomplete that it must be submitted to a severely
critical process of comparison, analysis, cross-examination, and elimina-
tion, before a general conclusion can be reached. The field is so vast,

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the amount of evidence so great, and special features are so numerous,
that the thorough discussion of the problem in all its bearings will
furnish employment for the most acute and comprehensive powers of
analysis for an indefinite period ; but there is no reason to believe that
the subject is beyond our grasp, or that it is not a perfectly proper
field for intellectual activity.

We may fairly ask, though, whether, after all this is granted, it
pays to spend our time in speculation upon circumstantial evidence,
when all our conclusions may possibly be wrong, when they can not
possibly be true unless they are put into a general form, and when
the presumption in their favor is only a probability at best. Would it
not be wise for us to spend all our time in the observation of nature,
rather than to devote our energies to the discussion of general prob-
lems?

In matters where we are called upon to act we must weigh the
probabilities, and form the best judgment we can according to our
evidence ; but this is necessary because we must act in any case, and
it is no reason for carrying scientific thought into similar fields. In
life it is often wise to act against the probabilities, as when an old
man denies himself to make provision for a prolonged life, which he
has very little chance of enjoying ; but it does not follow that it is
wise to form a scientific conclusion against the probabilities, and, if the
analogy of actual life will not justify this, how can it justify a scientific
conclusion which is based upon probabilities in the absence of demon-
strative evidence ?

If science were a pure abstraction, standing by itself, this objection
might have weight ; but no part of the phenomenal world does stand
by itself, and nothing in nature is so independent of human interests
that broader knowledge does not conduce to wiser judgments and
actions : nor is the past history of life a remote subject, bearing so
slightly upon human interests that it may properly be left to occupy
the time and energy of future generations.

It has the same importance to us as living things that the history
of the human race has to us as human beings. The future history of
our race will be a continuation of the one line as well as of the other,
or, rather, one is included by the other. The end of the study of history
is not the discovery of what has been in the past, but the discovery of
general laws and causes that shall enable us to foresee what is to
take place in the future ; but this sort of historical knowledge, the
wisdom of history, does not come from observation, but from reflection
upon the inner relations, the causes and effects of phenomena — from a
weighing of the probabilities between one interpretation and another ;
and the wisdom which leads us to accept and act upon these probable
conclusions, as the best available basis for the guidance of conduct,
equally requires us to accept, in the same way, the results of the study
of our prehistoric life-history. Our conclusions may be wrong, but,

SPECULATIVE ZOOLOGY. 37g

so long as they are the best, we can not regard them as abstractions.
We must welcome them as something more than knowledge — as an in-
crease of wisdom in its widest sense.

If this justification of morphological speculation seems vague and
indefinite, we need not seek far for more concrete reasons for encour-
aging this kind of thought, one of the most important features of
which is its value as an intellectual discipline.

We can hardly overestimate the value of the power to reach log-
ical conclusions, for this power is the basis of all wise conduct, and that
education which aids in its acquisition has pre-eminent claims upon
our attention. In almost every case where we are called upon to form
a judgment, and to act upon it, the premises are so uncertain, the con-
ditions of the problem so numerous and so little known, and its rela-
tions to other things admit of so much variation, that our conclusion
can be nothing but a probability ; and it is of the greatest importance
that the mind should be trained in such a way as to fit it for forming
wise judgments upon this class of complicated and indefinite prob-
lems.

Now, the questions which are presented for solution in the more
exact physical sciences differ from the questions of morphology in
the same way that they differ from the problems upon which we are
constantly called to decide and act in ordinary life, but the degree of
difference is less.

While the number of factors involved in a morphological problem
is vastly greater than that of those which bear upon any problem into
which life does not enter, and while the relations between these factors
vary, in closely allied cases, in a way which has no parallel outside life-
science, the problems of general morphology are still vastly simpler
than those of society or of morality, or of almost any other department
of human conduct, although they are like them in kind, and supply the
same sort of evidence. The attempt to trace the mode of action of a
constantly changing environment upon a form of life inheriting from
an unknown series of ancestors a constitution that has been modified
by a series of changes that can not be repeated, is no bad training for
the attempt to foresee the working of a social reform that admits of
no experiment, but must be tried once for all ; which involves so many
side-issues that no exact parallel to it can be found, and which is so
complicated that it is impossible to foresee or follow out its results in
detail.

The problems of the physical sciences are too definite and simple to
afford much intellectual training in this most important field, and the
problems of human life and society are too involved, too diversified,
and too changeable to afford a proper field for studying the logical
basis of our opinions ; but in morphology we find what is needed, a
field midway between the two.

The discipline which is to be obtained by the careful mastery of

380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

such a work as Claus's speculation upon the origin of the Crustacea, or
by the critical study of the problem of the vertebrate skull, or by the
study of the literature upon the affinity between the vertebrates and
the annelids, is a better training in that logic of probabilities which
is the basis of all conduct than can be found in the study of the other
sciences ; and from this point of view it is plain that good may result
from honest but erroneous attempts at morphological speculation, for
the logical restrictions of sound reasoning are often studied to the best
advantage in the errors of acute thinkers.

-*-»♦-

PLAYAS AND PLAYA-LAKES.

Br ISRAEL C. EDSSELL.

OF the many characteristic features of the arid region of the far
West known as the Great Basin, none attract the attention of
the traveler more forcibly than the desert mud-plains that have been
left by the evaporation of former lakes.

These areas are known locally as mud-flats, salt-flats, salt-marshes,
borax-flats, alkali-flats, deserts, sinks, etc., the name usually indicating
some peculiar feature of the valley to which it is applied. As these
desert regions have an almost identical history, the Spanish word playa
— meaning shore or strand — has been adopted by geologists as a generic
term under which the various desiccated lake-basins may be grouped.
Valleys more absolutely desolate than the playas of the Great Basin
can not be found, even in the midst of Sahara. They occur as mud-
plains, occupying the lowest portion of arid valleys, and form a hori-
zontal, even floor that is soft and perhaps covered by a shallow lake
during the winter, but in the summer and fall becomes hard and dry,
and crossed by innumerable shrinkage-cracks that give the whole
broad surface the appearance of a tessellated pavement of cream-
colored marble. At other times, after the water has evaporated, the
salts contained in the mud of the playa are brought to the surface in
solution by the action of capillary attraction, and a saline incrustation
is formed on the surface of the desert when the water that held the
salts in solution evaporates. In such instances the playa appears as
white and dazzling as if covered with drifting snow. A journey
across such a plain during the heat of summer, when the mirage renders
even the most familiar land-marks uncertain, becomes the most weary
and trying that the explorer is called upon to make.

Examples of playas of broad extent are furnished by the desert
region that borders Great Salt Lake on the west, which was left as a
vast mud-plain by the evaporation of Lake Bonneville. This is an
absolute desert, more than a hundred miles long by thirty or forty

PL AY AS AND PLAYA-LAKES. 381

miles broad, composed principally of fine, tenacious, greenish clay.
Other areas that now exist as great playas occur on the Carson Desert
and on the Black Rock and Smoke Creek Deserts of Northwestern
Nevada : these are portions of the bottom of Lake Lahontan that have
been laid bare by the desiccation of the former lake. Playas of smaller
extent, but which are yet typical examples of the deserts left by the
withdrawal or evaporation of Quaternary lakes, are found in Diamond
Valley, White-Pine Valley, Gabb's Valley, and Osobb Valley. All of
these examples are in Nevada ; but hundreds of others, of greater or
less extent, might be enumerated that are scattered throughout the
length and breadth of the Great Basin. As already mentioned, many
of these playas are covered with water during the rainy season. Others
exist as lakes, excepting when the season is unusually dry. They then
become mud-flats that can not be distinguished from the playas that
become dry and hard every summer.

The lakes that cover playas at certain times, and appear and disap-
pear as the wet and dry seasons alternate, and are sometimes born of
a single shower, and become many square miles in area during a single
night, may with convenience be designated as playa-lakes, as they have
many features peculiar to themselves. These lakes are without out-
lets, are seldom more than a few feet deep, and usually hold no
more than a few inches of water ; they are commonly alkaline or
brackish, and are always, so far as the observations of the writer ex-
tend, of a peculiar yellowish or greenish-yellow color. The character-
istic tint is due to the extremely fine mud, and probably chemical pre-
cipitates, that the waters hold in suspension. Owing to the extreme
shallowness of these lakes, the fine mud at the bottom is agitated by
every breeze, and thus the clearing of the water by the subsidence of
the material held in suspension is prevented.

Playa-lakes, that form in the wet season and vanish again during
the summer months, occur in a great number of the desert valleys
and small inclosed basins to be found in the arid region between the
Sierra Nevadas and the Wahsatch range. Some of these annual lakes
are of considerable dimensions. On the northern part of the Black
Rock Desert, Nevada, where Quin's River enters the desert from the
northeast, a shallow lake is formed during the rainy season that is
reported to be from ten to fifteen miles broad and as much as forty
or fifty miles in length. When the dry season comes on, this lake
evaporates, and the river that formed it shi'inks back seventy-five or a
hundred miles, leaving its channel a dry water-course, with perhaps a
few water-holes to indicate its former extent.

Examples of playa-lakes that reach desiccation only during excep-
tionally dry seasons are furnished by Eagle Lake, Worth Carson Lake
(" Carson and Humboldt Sink "), and Yellow-water Lake, in Nevada,
and by Honey Lake and the lakes of Surprise Valley in California.

We have spoken of playas as being formed by the annual evapora-

382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion of small lakes ; others by the evaporation of lakes after a term of
years -when the season was unusually dry ; there are also other playas
that are only covered with water during exceptionally wet seasons.
One might perhaps include in the list of playa-lakes the great lakes
of the Quaternary, whose fluctuations extended through geological
periods, and whose desiccation has left the largest of all the playas.
Lake Bonneville and Lake Lahontan, however, can be called playa-
lakes only during the closing chapters of their history ; in the earlier
portions of their existence, they were fresh-water lakes of great depth,
and one of them, at least, overflowed.

When we examine the material composing playas more critically,
we find that they are formed of at least two varieties of sediments.
In the broad, open playas, like Great Salt Lake Desert and the two
desert regions of the Lahontan Basin in Nevada, the surface is com-
posed of soft, fine, greenish, saline clay, that is commonly saturated
with alkaline water at a depth of a few feet, and becomes tenacious
and difficult to handle. These clays are, without question, simply lake-
beds that were deposited by sedimentation at the bottom of the great
lakes that once occupied the valleys where they are found.

The second variety of playa-beds occurs in restricted basins and
in valleys that are without outlets. These are found very commonly
behind shore-bars of Lake Bonneville and Lake Lahontan, and in val-
leys and canons the mouths of which have been crossed by the em-
bankments of gravel built along the shores of these Quaternary lakes.
The material forming playas of this nature is always of a light yel-
lowish color, becoming almost white when dry ; is extremely fine, and
readily crumbles into dust between the fingers ; near the surface, the
beds are full of small globular vesicles that were apparently once filled
with gas or water. These characteristics hold good even when the
playas are surrounded on all sides by dark basalts, from the disinte-
gration of which the playa-beds must have been formed.

True playa-beds, composed of light-colored material as described
above, have been penetrated to the depth of five to six feet without
revealing any change in the composition of the deposit. The thick-
ness that may be reached by these slowly accumulating beds depends
on the nature of the basin in which they are deposited ; in some cases
they can not be less than twenty or thirty feet in thickness. The
coarse material swept down the sides of these inclosed basins by the
infrequent rains is invariably left at the edge of the playa, and in a
section of the^beds appears as thin wedges of gravel and angular frag-
ments, that thin out and become lost as we trace them away from the
shore. Playa-beds may become covered with lake-beds, thus forming
a peculiar light-colored stratum, in reality a fossil playa, that bears
record of a time of desiccation ; and, when lake-beds occur below, it
is evidence that a dry period has intervened between two periods of
more abundant precipitation.

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 383

The salts that form on the surfaces of playas are composed prin-
cipally of the chloride, sulphate, and carbonate of soda, but sometimes
contain borate of soda, sulphate of potash, sulphate of magnesia, and
other salts in smaller proportion. In places the surface of a playa is
sometimes formed of sulphate of soda several feet in thickness, as
near the Buffalo Salt-Works on the Smoke Creek Desert, Nevada.
Again, crystals of sulphate of lime (selenite), forming a bed more than
six feet thick, cover hundreds of acres of the playa-surface, as on the
eastern border of the Sevier Desert in Utah. Sometimes a playa for
many square miles in extent is covered by a layer of salt a few inches
in thickness, as was the case when Sevier Lake in Utah evaporated to
dryness a few years since, and as is shown also by the large salt-field
in Osobb Valley, Nevada. At other times the beds composing the
playa contain brine beneath the surface, which yields large quantities
of nearly pure salt upon evaporation ; the supply of salt from thi3
source in Nevada is practically without limit.

When by a change of climate a playa is no longer flooded, the
subaerial gravels that are constantly moving down toward the bottom
of a valley eventually overflow the entire surface of the playa, and
the valley acquires a rounded instead of a horizontal floor. The same
action tends to obliterate the beach-marks that a lake makes along its
shores, so that in time all records that a lake has once occupied a val-
ley become buried and erased : where once a broad, clear lake existed
in which glacial covered peaks were reflected, there now stretches an
arid desert, bearing only a scanty growth of artemisia. This, in
brief, is the history of a large number of the valleys of the Great
Basin.

-♦**-

SCIENTIFIC FAKMING AT EOTHAMSTED.

Br MANLY MILES, M. D.

II.

THE primary and leading object of the experiments with animals,
which have been conducted at Rothamsted during the past thirty-
five years, was the solution of practical agricultural problems ; but, as
in the case of the field experiments already noticed, the practical lines
of inquiry have naturally led to the investigation of a wide range of
topics belonging to the science of biology, which, in themselves, are of
more particular interest to the physiologist, or even to the student of
sanitary or of social science, than to the farmer.

From the number of animals under experiment, and the well-
planned and thorough methods of investigation, in all departments of
the experimental work, the results obtained have been of great value,

384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not only from the light thrown on many of the obscure processes of
nutrition, but also in laying a foundation for a consistent system of
feeding, in which the relations of the food consumed to the special
animal products obtained, and to the value of the manure produced,
as an incident of the process, are clearly traced.

In determining the amount of food and of its several constituents
consumed for a given live weight of the animal in a given time, aud
the amount of food and of its several constituents required to produce
a given amount of increase in live weight, several hundred animals,
including oxen, sheep, and pigs, were subjected to experiment. In
these researches, selected lots of animals were supplied, for weeks or
months, with weighed quantities of food of known composition, as de-
termined by analysis, and especially adapted to the particular point
under investigation. The animals were weighed at the beginning, at
intervals during the progress, and at the close of the experiment.

The composition of the manure produced from a given amount and
quality of food consumed, by oxen, sheep, and pigs, was determined
in a large number of cases by analyzing average samples of the food,
and then making an analysis of the solid and liquid excretions of the
animals. In these experiments, the oxen were fed in boxes in which
the manure was preserved with litter of known composition. After
feeding for from five to nine weeks, the total manure produced was
carefully mixed, weighed, sampled, and analyzed. By this method
the solid and the liquid exci-eta were not separately examined. With
sheep no litter was used, the animals, in lots of five, being fed on a
slatted platform with an inclined floor of sheet-zinc below it, so that
the urine was drained into carboys containing acid, while the solid
excretions were separately removed several times a day and preserved
for analysis. The constituents determined in the food and in the ma-
nure in the experiments with oxen and sheep were dry matter, mineral
constituents, and nitrogen, and in some cases woody fiber. As an
illustration of some of the difficulties that must be overcome in mak-
ing exact investigations of this kind, a more particular description of
some of the devices resorted to will be of interest. " In the case of
pigs, individual male animals were experimented upon, each for pe-
riods of three, five, or ten days only. Each animal was kept in a
frame, which prevented it from turning around, and having a zinc
bottom, with an outlet for the liquid to run into a bottle, and it was
watched night and day, and the voidings carefully collected as soon as
passed, which could easily be done, as the animal never passed either
fseces or urine without getting up, and in getting up he rang a bell
and so attracted the notice of the attendant. The constituents de-
termined were, in the food and fseces, dry matter, ash, and nitrogen,
and in the urine, dry matter, ash, nitrogen, and urea."

The amount and relative proportion of the different organs and
parts of the body were determined in two hundred and forty-nine

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED.

385

sheep, fifty-nine pigs, two calves, two heifers, and fourteen bullocks.
As the object of this investigation was to obtain average data as to
the proportions of the valuable carcass parts and the less valuable
offal parts, in animals in different conditions as to fatness, a variety of
animals were examined. The sheep under experiment may be grouped
as follows : five sheep of different breeds in the lean or store con-
dition ; one hundred sheep of different breeds moderately fattened ;
forty-five sheep of different breeds excessively fattened ; seventy-
eight Hants Down sheep moderately fattened on different foods ; and
twenty-one sheep of different breeds and modes of feeding of more
than average fatness. The fifty-nine pigs were moderately fattened
on a variety of fattening foods.

The percentage weights of the different parts of the body of the
three classes of animals, and of the sheep in the store, the fat, and the
very fat condition, are given in the following condensed table from
Dr. Lawes's lecture before the Royal Dublin Society :

PARTS OF THE BODY.

Average

of
16 oxen.

Average

of
249 sheep.

Average
of

59 pigs.

Average

of
5 store
6heep.

Average

of 100

fat sheep.

Average
of 45

very fat
sheep.

11-6
2-7

7-5
3-6

11.1

6-9

7-3
15-0

1-3

6-2

91

5-3

7-0
3 8

5-6
2-8

Internal loose fat

14-3

4-6

7'0

130

7-5
1-6

6-6

1-0

144

4-5

8-4
179

10-8
6-0

7-7

16-1

84
7'5

Heart, aorta, lung3, windpipe, liver )
and gall-bladder, with contents, >■
spleen, pancreas, and blood. .....)

Other offal parts

6-5
13-1

Total offal parts

38-9

593

1-8

40-3

59-2

0-5

100-0

16-7
826

0-7

45-2

53.4

1-4

40-6

5S-7

0-7

35-5

Carcass

641

Loss by evaporation, etc

0-4

Total

100-0

100-0

100-0

100-0

100 0

It will be seen that the stomach and contents make up 11*6 per
cent of the live weight of the oxen, 7*5 per cent of the live weight
of the sheep, and but 1*3 per cent of the live weight of the pigs, while
the intestines and contents rank in the inverse order, giving- the high-
est percentage in pigs and the least with the oxen. If the stomachs
and intestines are taken together, we find the highest percentage in
the oxen and the least percentage in the pigs. These figures corre-
spond very closely to the relative amount of work required in the
digestion of the food of the different animals, which is coarse and
more bulky in the case of the oxen, and comparatively concentrated and
of higher nutritive value in the case of the pigs. The greater relative
development of the intestines in pigs has a probable relation to the
more complete assimilation of the food of these animals. As a whole,
the glandular and circulatory organs, which are grouped together in
the table, are nearly in the same proportion in the three groups of
vol. xxii. — 25

386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animals, the range of variation being but little more than one half of
one per cent. It should be stated that the much smaller percentage
of offal parts, and the corresponding larger percentage of carcass, in
the pigs, is partly to be attributed to the head and legs being included
with the carcass of the pigs, while they are reckoned as offal parts in
oxen and sheep. With sheep there was a rapid decrease in the per-
centage of offal parts as the animals fattened, while the percentage of
carcass increased from 53*4 in the store condition to 64*1 in the very
fat condition. There was, however, an actual increase in the offal
parts from the store to the very fat condition in the proportion of one
to one and three quarters, but the carcass parts made a greater actual
increase, one pound in the store condition being raised to two and one
half pounds in the very fat condition.

In connection with the data furnished by the mass of facts relating
to the relative proportion of organs and parts of the body, which we
can not discuss in detail, it became a matter of interest to ascertain
the chemical composition of the increase of fattening animals obtained
from different articles of food, so that the relations of the food con-
stituents to the constituents of the increase coidd be determined. As
a chemical analysis of a living animal can not be made, it is of course
impossible to determine directly the chemical composition of the in-
crease, as an analysis would be required at the beginning and at the
close of the fattening period. The composition of the increase of
fattening animals must therefore be determined by indirect methods,
as by calculation from the data furnished by the differences in the
composition of the food and the excretions ; or from assumed con-
stants, in the form of averages obtained by analyzing a large number
of representative animals.

The most satisfactory data relating to this subject, that have ever
been published, will be found in the results of the numerous analyses
of the entire bodies and parts of animals, in different conditions a3
to fatness, that have been conducted at Rothamsted. Determinations
were made of the fat, nitrogenous substance, and mineral matter of
the entire body, and of certain separated parts, of ten animals, de-
scribed as follows : 1. A fat calf, of the shorthorn breed, nine or ten
weeks old, taken from its dam, feeding on grass ; 2. A half-fat Aber-
deenshire ox, about four years old, fed on fattening food, but which
had grown rather than fattened ; 3. A moderately fat Aberdeenshire
ox, about four years old ; 4. A fat Hampshire Down lamb, about six
months old ; 5. A Hampshire Down store sheep, about one year old ;

6. A half-fat Hampshire Down ewe, three and one fourth years old ;

7. A fat Hampshire Down sheep, one and a fourth year old ; 8. A
very fat Hampshire Down sheep, one and three fourths year old ; 9.
A store pig ; 10. A fat pig. The pigs were of the same litter, and,
when selected, were as nearly as possible alike, one weighing one hun-
dred pounds and the other one hundred and three pounds. " One was

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 387

slaughtered at once, and its contents of nitrogenous substance, fat,
mineral matter, etc., accurately determined. The other was fed on a
mixture consisting of bean-meal, lentil-meal, and bran, each one part,
and barley-meal three parts, given ad libitum, but accurately weighed,
for a period of ten weeks, when it had nearly doubled its weight. The
animal was then slaughtered, and analyzed as the other had been. The
composition of the food was also determined by analysis."

According to the generally accepted theory of nutrition at the time
the Rothamsted feeding experiments were planned, the constituents
of foods were divided into two leading groups, each of which was
assumed to serve a special purpose in the system. It was believed
that the nitrogenous constituents were the only nutritive elements,
and that the carbonaceous constituents (including the fat, starch, etc.)
served as fuel, which was burned in the system to keep up the animal
heat. In the published analyses of animals and of foods at Rotham-
sted, this distinction was recognized, and the results are given in terms
of these groups of constituents. A summary of the results of the
analyses of the ten animals described above is given in the following
table, in percentage values of groups of constituents, in the carcass
and in the total offal parts :

Mineral
mattor
<ash).

Nitrogenous

substance

(dry).

Fat (dry).

Total

dry

substance.

Water.

0 fi

§

0

C3 *

0§

0

1
0

u .

t
0

t
0

S V

a
>— 1

a «

a

« «

a

O "

a

HH

35-1

c 0

t-H

a

t-H

Fat calf

4-48

341

16-6

17-1

16-6

14-6

37-7

62-3

649

Half-fat ox

5-56

4*05

17-8

20-6

22-6

15-7

4G-0

40-4

54-0

59-6

Fat ox

4-56

340

15-0

17-5

34-S

26-3

54-4

47-2

45-6

52-8

Fat lamb

363

2-45

10-9

18-9

36-9

201

51-4

41-5

48-6

58-5

4-36

2-19

14o

18-0

23-8

16-1

42-7

36-3

5V3

63-7

Half- fat old sheep . ...

4-13

2-72

149

17-7 1

31-3

18-5

50-3

38-9

49-7

61-1

3-15

2-32

11-5

16-1

45-4

26-4

60-3

44S

39-7

55-2

2-77

3-64

91

16-8 !

55-1

34-5

67-0

54-9

3-°/0

45-1

Store pig

2-57
1-40

3-07
2-97

14-0
105

14-0
14-8

17-2

28-1
49-5

344

150

22-8

44-7
Gl-4

32-1
406

55'3
3S-6

67-9

59-4

369

3-02

13-5

210

516

41-2

4S-4

5S-8

This table furnishes some important data for an intelligible discus-
sion of the economics of nutrition, with reference to human dietaries,
but there are many points of interest presented in the details of the
analyses of these animals that can not be embraced in such a tabular
abstract. In the carcass of the fat calf, it will be noticed, the per-
centage of nitrogenous substance and of /at is the same, while in the
other animals the fat is largely in excess, even in those in store con-
dition. There is likewise a larger percentage of nitrogenous substance
in the offal parts than in the carcass in all cases. It was also found
that <£ the fat of the bones bears but a small proportion to that of the
whole carcass, while, of the whole of the nitrogen of the carcasses,
perhaps not less than one fifth will be in the bones. . . . As the animal

388

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

matures, the mineral, the nitrogenous, and the fatty matters all in-
crease in actual amount ; but the percentage of both mineral matter
and nitrogenous substance decreases, while that of the fat increases so
as to much more than compensate for the decrease in that of the other
solid matters. The result is that there is an increase in the percentage
of total dry substance." The young animals, as the lamb and calf,
had a larger proportion of water in the carcass than other animals in
the same condition ; and there was a larger proportion of bones in the
carcass of the calf than in the carcass of the other animals.

In estimating the composition of the increase in live weight of fat-
tening animals it was assumed that the composition of the original
weight, that is, the weight at the beginning of the feeding period,
was the same as in the "store" or "half- fat" animals that had been
analyzed ; and that the composition of the animal at the close of the
feeding period was the same as that of the " fat " or the " very fat "
animal that had been analyzed. By a proper exercise of judgment as
to the comparative condition and quality of the animals at the begin-
ning and end of the feeding period, and applying the data derived
from the analysis of animals of similar quality, a close approximation
to the composition of the increase could thus be obtained, and the
probable error would be reduced to a minimum when the averages
were made up from a large number of animals. In this way the com-
position of the increase was estimated in the case of ninety-eight fat-
tening oxen, three hundred and forty-nine fattening sheep, and eighty
fattening pigs, divided into numerous classes according to breed, con-
dition of maturity, and description of food consumed. The estimated
average percentage of mineral matters, nitrogenous substance, fat, and
total dry substance, in the increase of these animals, is given in the
following table :

ANIMALS.

Mineral
matter
(ash).

Dry

nitrogenous
substance.

Tat.

Total dry

substance.

98 oxen — average

1-47
2-34
0-06
0-53

TG9
7-13
644
7"76

66-2
70-4
71-5
631

75-4

349 sheep "

79-9

80 pigs "

78-0

71-4

Means

1-10

7-26

67-8

70-2

The averages of all the animals under experiment, fed under a
variety of conditions, and including the " fat " and the " very fat," are
here given. In the tables which follow, however, data from selected
cases are made use of, which do not change the general results, but
represent, it is believed, more nearly, the results obtained in ordinary
farm practice.

The percentage of mineral constituents in the increase of the sheep
as given in the table is undoubtedly too high, from the presence of
foreign matters in the wool which could not well be separated ; this

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 389

will of course affect the percentage of total dry substance which is the
sum of the figures given in the three preceding columns.

We may now consider the relations of the constituents of the food
to the constituents stored up in the increase. In the experiments to
determine the amount of food and of its several constituents, con-
sumed by an animal of given weight within a given time, and required
to produce a given increase in live weight, the foods presented a wide
range of variation in composition, and the rations were so planned
that the animals had a supply of ad libitum food containing more or
less nitrogenous substance, that enabled them practically to fix for
themselves the relative proportions of the nitrogenous and non-nitroge-
nous constituents consumed. In all of the feeding experiments it
was found that the amount of food consumed by a given live weight
of the animal, within a given tine, and also the increase in live weight
obtained from it, depended more upon the non-nitrogenous constitu-
ents, or even on the total dry substance, than upon the nitrogenous
constituents, which had been generally assumed to be the true measure
of nutritive value. In experiments with animals expending their
energies in the form of work, the same demand for the non-nitrogenous
constituents of the food was observed as in the case of fattening ani-
mals. A certain moderate amount of nitrogenous substances was
evidently needed in the food, but any increase beyond this required
quantity had no influence upon the returns obtained for food con-
sumed, either in the form of muscular force in working animals, or in
increase in live weight in those that were fattened, or even on the
amount of nitrogen contained in such increase. The nitrogen dis-
charged in the urine, in the form of urea, was found to have no rela-
tion to the activity of the muscles, but it was directly increased by an
increment of nitrogenous materials in the food. The age and habits
of the animals themselves, when growing or fattening, seemed, how-
ever, to determine, to some extent, the proportions of nitrogenous
materials in the stored-up increase.

The average results show that oxen supplied liberally with food of
good quality, containing a moderate proportion of grain or other con-
centrated food, would consume at the rate of from twelve to thirteen
pounds of dry substance * per week for each hundred pounds of their
weight, and that one pound of increase in live weight would be re-
turned for it. Sheep, of several different breeds, consumed, on the
average, about fifteen or sixteen pounds of dry substance of slightly
better food per week for each hundred pounds of live weight, and re-
turned about one pound of increase in weight for each nine pounds of
dry substance in their food. Pigs, with food composed largely of

* Cattle-foods differ widely in the amount of contained water ; the average being in
hay from ten to fifteen per cent, in grain from eight to fifteen per cent, and in roots from
seventy-five to ninety per cent. The strictly "dry substance," excluding this variable
element of water contents, is therefore taken as a basis in estimating nutritive values.

39°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

grain, consumed from twenty-six to thirty pounds of dry substance
per week, for each hundred pounds of live weight, and yielded one
pound of increase in weight for each four or five pounds of dry sub-
stance in their food. Oxen, therefore, consume more dry substance of
food, in proportion to their weight, than sheep, and sheep consume
more than pigs, while, in return for feed consumed, pigs yield more
than sheep, and sheep gave better results than oxen. It must be re-
membered in this connection, as has already been pointed out, that the
food of oxen contained more woody fiber, while that of the pigs was
comparatively concentrated and digestible, and therefore of better
quality. With sheep of different breeds it was found that, under the
same conditions as to age and fatness, the food consumed was in pro-
portion to their live weight. The relative value of the larger and
smaller breeds seems, therefore, to depend, to a great extent at least,
upon their habits and hardiness, and their adaptation to the conditions
of the locality in which they are placed.

In studying these experiments, it will be well to keep in mind the
twofold function of food in the animal economy : first, as the source
of energy for the performance of work in the various organs of the
body, which is required in elaborating the peculiar animal products
sought in the process of feeding (as milk, flesh, wool, etc.), and in car-
rying on the processes of repair and reconstruction to maintain the in-
tegrity of the animal machinery ; and, in the second place, as supplying
the materials for the construction or elaboration of the special animal
products. The popular notions of nutrition assume that this supply
of materials in the food for the new product sought is the most impor-
tant, and the supply of energy for the performance of work is over-
looked or assigned a subordinate position.

The results of the experiments relating to the use and ultimate dis-
position of the food consumed by animals when fattened under average
conditions, as to feed and increase, are given in the following table :

Each 100 pounds of dry substance in the food consumed was
disposed ofcs follows:

ANIMALS.

Stored up as
increase.

In manure.

Used in internal work
of the system, and
not accounted for in
manure or increaso.

Oxen

6-2

8-0

17-6

36-5
319
16-Y

'57-3

60-1

Pigs

65-7

The figures in the last column of the table are not intended to rep-
resent all of the internal work of the system. They simply show the
amount of non-nitrogenous constituents that are not accounted for in
the stored-up increase, or in the manure, and thus are properly desig-
nated as having been used in internal work. From an agricultural
etand-point, the proportions of food-constituents stored up as increase,

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED.

39*

and voided as manure, are of the first importance, as these are the two
factors that determine the economy of feeding. The expenditure of
energy in the system, from the nitrogenous constituents of the food, is
not, therefore, included in the last column, as all of the nitrogen of the
food that is not stored up as increase is finally excreted in the urine.
The first and second columns of the table, therefore, include the ni-
trogenous and the mineral substances of the food, and any energy that
may have been expended as a result of their metamorphoses is not
represented in the table.

From the data presented, it appears that more than one half (57*3
per cent) of the food of oxen when fattening is required in internal
work, or in keeping the animal machinery in repair, to say nothing of
the energy expended by the nitrogenous constituents, while but 6-2
per cent is stored up as increase in weight, and more than one third is
found in the manure. With sheep, 8*0 per cent of the food is stored
up as increase, less than one third appears in the manure, and 60*1 per
cent is used in work of the system. The pigs give 17*6 per cent of
the food in increase, or more than twice as much as the sheep, while
nearly two thirds is required for internal work, and the manure con-
tains less than one half as much as in the case of the oxen. The pigs
store up a much larger proportion of their food as increase than either
the sheep or the oxen, but a larger percentage is used in internal work,
and less appears in the manui*e. The increased expenditure in work
would naturally follow from the larger amount stored up as increase,
which involves as a matter of course an expenditure of energy in its
elaboration. But this is not the whole truth, as will be seen on mak-
ing a comparison of the figures in the first and last columns of the
table. For a given amount of increase stored up, the oxen actually
expend more in internal work than sheep, and the sheep expend more
than the pigs It evidently costs more, in internal work of the sys-
tem, to elaborate the stored-up increase from the crude feed of the
oxen than from the more nutritive food of the pigs. When the facts
are examined from a different stand-point, the relations of the increase
to work of the system will be more clearly seen, as in the following
table, which gives the results obtained from a given live weight of the
animals in a given time :

For each 100 pounds of live weight, per week.

Stored
as
increase.

Dry substance.

ANIMALS.

Consumed in
food.

Recovered in
manure.

Used in internal

work of the

system, and not

accounted for

in manure and

increase.

Used in internal
work for each
one pound of

stored increase.

Oxen

Pounds.
1-13
176
6-43

Pounds.
12-5
160

27-0

Pounds.
4-56
5.10
4-51

Pounds.
7-16
962

17-74

Pounds.
6-34
5-47
2-76

Sheep

Pigs

392

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The oxen make in increase but little more than one per cent of
their weight per week, the sheep make one and three fourths per cent,
and the pigs nearly six and one half per cent of their weight per week.
Nearly the same amount of dry substance of the food appears in the
manure of the different animals per week for each hundred pounds of
their live weight. In proportion to their weight, the pigs consume
more food, and a larger amount of food-constituents is actually used
in work of the system, but, from the greater rate of increase, the work
required to produce a pound of increase is less than one half of that
required in oxen. These facts are of particular interest in connection
with the differences already noticed (page 384), in the relative percent-
age weights of the digestive organs of oxen, sheep, and pigs.

The dry substance of the food has alone been taken into the account
in the preceding table, but, if we trace the final disposition of its sev-
eral constituents in the system, we shall find marked differences in the
proportions of each that are stored up as increase, voided in manure,
or used in work of the system. The percentage of each group of food-
constituents stored up as increase and voided in the manure is given in
the next table :

CONSTITUENTS OF FOOD

Each 100 pounds of food-constituents consumed was
disposed of as follows :

Stored up in increase.

Voided in mature.

Non-nitrogenous substance. . . .
Mineral matters

Oxen.
4-1

1-2
1-9

Sheep.
4-2
94
31

Pigs.

13-5

18-5

7-3

Oxen.
95-9
14-1
98-0

Sheep.

95-8

8-9

97-0

Pigs.

865

4-1

92*7

The nitrogenous substance and mineral matters, as will be seen, are
all accounted for in the stored-up increase and the manure, but there
remains from 77'4 to 81*7 per cent of the non-nitrogenous substances
that can not be found in the increase of the body or in the residual
manurial excretions, as they have been used in internal work and ex-
creted in the process of respiration.

Sheep store up as increase a larger proportion of all the food-con-
stituents than oxen, and pigs store up a much larger proportion than
sheep. The percentage of nitrogenous constituents stored up as in-
crease or voided as manure will vary widely with different foods. We
have seen, as a result of these experiments, that but a small proportion
of nitrogenous substance was required in the food, and that the needed
amount was comparatively constant under varying conditions. If the
food contains but a moderate amount of nitrogenous substance, a larger
percentage of it will be required by the system, and the amount ap-
pearing in the manure will be so much diminished ; but with highly
nitrogenous foods a small percentage of the nitrogenous constituents
will suffice for the purposes of the system, and the excess will appear
in the manure.

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 393

Among the many important results obtained in the experiments at
Rothamsted, the data furnished for estimating the relative value of
barn-yard manures are of particular interest. The essential constitu-
ents of barn-yard manure, or those having a commercial value, are
nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid, which are of course derived
from the feed consumed by the animals making the manure. The
composition of the food being known, the percentage of its several
constituents that are voided in the manure may be estimated from the
data obtained in these experiments, so that the relative value of the
manure produced from different articles of food can be determined
with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. From the results of
the Rothamsted feeding experiments, we can not avoid the conclusion
that the cereal grains and the highly nitrogenous linseed and cotton-
seed cakes have essentially the same value as fattening foods, and that
there is but little, if any, difference in the feeding value of timothy
and clover hay. When the production of manure is concerned, how-
ever, the clover has a much higher value than timothy, and the linseed
and cotton-seed cakes are worth very much more than the cereal grains.
That is to say, the digestible and available non-nitrogenous constitu-
ents of the food determine its nutritive value, provided always the
moderate required supply of nitrogenous materials is present, and the
comparative manurial value is determined by the nitrogenous constitu-
ents. A variety in the ration would undoubtedly be desirable for
nutritive purposes, as the best results can not be obtained with any
single article of diet.

From the facts already presented it appears that a large proportion
of the increase of fattening animals, in many cases more than two
thirds, is fat. It was formerly supposed that the fat of animals was
derived from the fatty materials in the food, but this source was found
to be entirely inadequate. The non-nitrogenous constituents of the
food — the carbo-hydrates — were then quite naturally looked upon as
the source from which the fat was elaborated ; but afterward Pro-
fessors Voit and Pettenkofer insisted that the fat of animals was almost
exclusively formed from the nitrogenous constituents of the food. In
experiments with pigs, which are evidently the most suitable animals
for experiments relating to the formation of fat, Drs. Lawes and Gil-
bert conclusively show that, with foods in which the ratio of the ni-
trogenous to the non-nitrogenous constituents was a suitable one for
fattening purposes — as in Indian corn and barley — a large proportion
of the fat in the stored-up increase must have been produced at the
expense of the non - nitrogenous constituents. There was also evi-
dence that the nitrogenous constituents of the food, when in excess,
might replace the carbo-hydrates, to some extent, in the formation
of fat.

The analysis of the entire bodies and parts of the ten animals made
at Rothamsted furnish some interesting data in regard to the compo-

394

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sition of the animal food consumed by man. It has been generally
assumed that the effect of animal food, in human dietaries, is to in-
crease the proportion of the nitrogenous constituents : from the results
of these analyses, however, we can not escape the conclusion that the
animal elements of a diet, as a whole, increase the proportions of the
carbo-hydrates or non-nitrogenous constituents. It appears that two
thirds of the nitrogen of the entire body, of the calf and bullocks, was
found in the carcass, and of this twelve parts were in the bones, leav-
ing fifty-four per cent of the whole nitrogen of the body in the soft
parts of the carcass. Of the thirty-three per cent of the nitrogen of
the entire body in the offal parts, it was estimated that in the calf
seven to eight parts, and in the oxen four to five parts, would be con-
sumed as human food. Of the total fat of the body, about seventy
per cent in the calf, and rather more than seventy-live per cent in the
oxen, were found in the carcass. Of the fat contained in the offal parts,
it was estimated that five sixths in the calf and one fifth in the oxen
would be consumed as human food. The percentage of the total ni-
trogenous and total non-nitrogenous constituents of animals, included
in the food of man, has been tabulated by Drs. Lawes and Gilbert as
follows :

ANIMALS.

Per cent consumed as human food.

Of the total

nitrogenous compounds

of tho body.

Of the total fat of
the body.

CO
60
50
50

78

95

80

95

75

90

According to this estimate, " there would be, in the fat calf ana-
lyzed, \\ time, in the fat ox 2| times, in the fat lamb, fat sheep, and
fat pig nearly 4| times, and in the very fat sheep 6^ times as much
dry fat as dry nitrogenous constituents " in the parts of the animals
consumed as human food. As one part of fat is equivalent to two and
one half parts of starch, as a source of potential energy which must be
taken as the measure of nutritive value, it will be necessary to estimate
the fat in its equivalent as starch in making a comparison of vegetable
and animal foods with reference to their nutritive value, and the rela-
tive ratio of their nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous constituents. On
this basis the results of the Rothamsted analyses have been tabulated
as follows :

SCIENTIFIC FARMING AT ROTHAMSTED. 395

RATIOS.

Proportion of dry fat to 1 of
dry nitrogenous compounds.

Proportion of starch-equiva-
lent of fat to 1 of dry
nitrogenous compounds.

In carcasses,

including

bone.

In estimated

consumed

portions of the

animals.

In carcasses,

including

bone.

In estimated

consumed

portions of the

animals.

1-64

4-09

2-01

....

5-02

1-27

l-o3

3-17

3-S3

2-11

2-51

5-27

628

1-00

1-54

2-49

3-85

2-31

2-76

6-78

6-91

3'89

4-40

8-49

11-01

3.96

4-37

9-S9

10-93

6-07

6-28

15-18

15-09

4-71

4-48

11-77

11-20

1-76

2-02

439

5.05

3-57

3-97

S-93

993

2-85

3-48

7-11

8-71

DESCRIPTION OF ANIMALS.

Store, lean and half -fat animals

Store sheep

Store pig

Half-fat ox

Half-fat old sheep

Fat and very fat animals :

Fat calf

Fat ox

Fat lamb

Fat sheep

Very fat sheep

Fat pig

Means :

Store and half-fat animals . . .

Fat and very fat animals

Of the ten animals analyzed. .

For comparison with these ratios of the nutritive constituents of
animal foods, wheat-flour hread was selected as one of the most im-
portant of the representative articles of vegetable food. The fat in
the bread itself, estimated at one per cent, which is probably above the
average, was reckoned in its equivalent of starch, and the ratio of ni-
trogenous and non-nitrogenous constituents was then found to be 1 to
6*8. Of the animals fattened for the butcher's use, the fat calf, only,
gives a smaller proportion of non-nitrogenous constituents than the
bread ; the fat ox has nearly the same, and the other animals very
much more. The averages also show that beef, mutton, and pork, on
the whole, are not deficient in carbo-hydrates or non-nitrogenous nu-
tritive constituents. After a full discussion of the subject, Drs. Lawes
and Gilbert come to the conclusion that the great advantage of a
mixed bread and meat diet, over one of bread alone, does not depend
on the nitrogenous substance, but rather in substituting fat for a por-
tion of the starch of vegetables. From the greater value of fat as a
source of energy, and the general advantages of a variety of nutritive
elements in the composition of a diet, this view of the influence of
animal food seems to be well founded.

The limits of this article will not allow us to notice the experiments
with sewage, and the feeding value of sewage-grown crops in the pro-
duction of meat and milk ; or the milling products of grain grown
under a variety of conditions, and other special subjects of investiga-
tion, that have been included in the work at Rothamsted..

It is perhaps worthy of notice that nitrogen was the prominent
object of interest in the Rothamsted field experiments, whilo the
carbo-hydrates or non-nitrogenous constituents of the food seemed to

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be the ruling elements in the feeding experiments. Is this apparent
contrast in the materials required as leading factors in the economy
of plants and animals a mere coincidence arising from the methods of
investigation, or does it represent one of the correlations of organic
life concerned in the conservation of energy ? The mineral and ni-
trogenous constituents of plants are taken up by their roots from the
soil, which is almost, if not quite, the exclusive source of these ele-
ments of plant-growth, while all of the carbon is elaborated by the
leaves from the supplies in the atmosphere. The mineral and nitroge-
nous constituents of the food of animals, on the other hand, are all
discharged from the system, after performing their functions, in the
liquid and solid excretions, and thus find their way to the soil, where
they can be appropriated as plant-food ; while a large proportion of
the carbo-hydrates are exhaled in respiration as carbonic acid, the at-
mospheric food of plants. By this constant circulation in their appro-
priate channels the conservation of the nutrient elements, of both
plants and animals, is fully maintained.

The legitimate objects of agricultural experiments are too often
overlooked, and it is certainly a satisfaction, in a review of exj^eri-
ments that have been systematically prosecuted for so many years, on
such an extended scale, to find that they have been fully appreciated
throughout the entire work. In one of the first reports of experiments
at Rothamsted, on turnip-culture, published in 1847, it is said, " The
object of the experiments has not been the production of immense
crops, but *to trace, as far as we were able, the real conditions of
growth required by the turnip, and to distinguish these from those of
the crops to which it is, to a great extent, subservient." In this en-
deavor to trace the laws which underlie the phenomena under inves-
tigation, results of permanent value have been secured ; and the prac-
tical benefits, measured in pecuniary values, which have been derived
from them are of greater importance from the fact that they are not
merely empirical and detached facts that are true only under certain
conditions, but have a foundation in principles of general application.
Too often experiments are made in which the practical or pecuniary
ends are the direct and immediate objects of inquiry, but such efforts,
in the main, must result in disappointment, so far as any permanent
interest is concerned, from the failure to trace the results obtained to
their appropriate causes.

The work so well begun at Rothamsted is now carried on with
undiminished energy, with a prospect of still more important results
in the future. Dr. Lawes is now expending in his experiments more
than 815,000 annually. A new building will be erected next year to
relieve the laboratory from its accumulated stores of samples, that
have a definite history and form the materials for future investigations.
From five to nine hundred samples of the ash of experimental crops
are collected each year, and with each sample of ash there is a dupli-

RECENT ADVANCES IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 397

cate plant that is dried and bottled. With the true spirit of an origi-
nal investigator, who sees that there is more to be learned than has
already been discovered, and with a modesty that well becomes one
who has accomplished so much, Dr. Lawes (now Sir John Bennet
Lawes) writes me : " We are getting greatly in arrears of what may
be called published work, and both Dr. Gilbert and myself are much
more interested in searching after the unknown than in making public
what little we do know. I think, however, it is not right to keep back
so much valuable matter, and I shall try and publish next year the
whole series of our ash analysis, without comment of any sort, merely
giving the history of the experiments in regard to manures, etc., so
that the reader may be able to trace tbe remarkable changes which
take place from time to time. You will see that we have got to a
point in our experiments in which the mere growth of the crop is one
item, and a very small one, in the scope of our inquiry ; the relations
of the crop to the manure and to the soil and atmosphere bring us
face to face with problems of great difficulty, which require several
life-times to elucidate."

-»-»♦-

KECENT ADVANCES IN PHOTOGKAPHY*

Br Captain ABNEY, E. E., F. E. S.

TAKING the case of a daguerreotype plate which has been ex-
posed, and which we are about to develop by the action of mer-
cury, I should like you to understand exactly what takes place in the
plate when it is exposed and developed. On the surface of the plate
we have a mixture of silver iodide and bromide ; but, for simplicity's
sake, I will suppose that it is simply silver iodide. When light acts
on such a compound, the result is the liberation of iodine and the for-
mation of a new salt, which we call silver subiodide, Ag„Ia = Ag3I + 1.
The iodine is taken up by the silver plate at the back of the sensitive
film. To develop the picture, mercury-vapor is caused to condense on
the subiodide, and leave the iodide intact. In the Talbotype process,
the picture, which has been taken on a paper that has been washed
with nitrate of silver, iodide of potassium, and nitrate of silver again,
is developed by washing with gallic acid and silver nitrate. The
picture begins to appear on washing after a very short exposure to the
light, and becomes gradually more visible as the washing goes on. A
paper process is a most fascinating process, because you can dabble
about, and do exactly what you like ; it is not like the gelatine plates
of the present day, which you have to leave to come out mechanically.
With paper, if you want to bring out a little better detail in one place,

* Abstract of four Cantor Lectures delivered before the Society of Arts.

398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

you can dab it out, and, if you want to keep it back, you can put a
little water over the place. There is no process like the paper process
to please an artist. Now, what is the meaning of the development in
this process ? This morning I was in my laboratory, and I saw lying
on the bench a feeble negative which I had badly developed, and
which I had fixed with hyposulphite of soda. On taking it up, I
found the salt had crystallized over the surface in the most beautiful
manner ; and I do not think I could point out to you anything which
would give you a better idea of what development is than those crys-
tals. When you have silver precipitated from a solution by any means
whatever, you have it always in a crystalline form, and, as all crystals
possess polarity, so crystals of silver possess polarity ; and where one
silver particle is deposited, there another silver particle will deposit.
I look upon this as a physical development ; we have a crystalline
action going on during development, and nothing else. The iodide of
silver is altered into a subiodide, and this, like the pole of a magnet,
attracts the precipitating silver, and from that time, where the silver
is deposited, other crystals of silver are deposited. That is what I call
physical development.

There is another kind of development which some call chemical
development ; it is shown by a change in the color or material of the
substance acted upon, and not by a building-up process, such as we
have just had illustrated. The process may be illustrated in the devel-
opment, by means of silver nitrate, of a picture which has been printed
on nitrate of uranium. The picture is formed by silver oxide reduced
by the particles of uranium nitrate which have been acted upon by
light, and by nothing else. The silver oxide reduced is an exact equiv-
alent of the uranium salt which has been acted upon by light. This
differs from the previous process in that the gallic acid, in the one
case, reduces the silver solution to the state of metallic silver ; and, in
the other case, the uranious image itself reduces it to the state of
silver oxide.

Another mode of development, called chemical development in
Germany, may, I think, more properly be termed alkaline develop-
ment. Its theory is, that when you have a strongly oxidizing agent
in the presence of an alkali and a silver compound, solid or in solution,
the last will bo reduced to the metallic state. Such an oxidizing agent
we have in pyrogallic acid, and the alkali generally used is ammonia.
Now, this kind of reduction is evidently useless, unless it can discrimi-
nate between a compound which has been acted upon by light and one
which has not. When pyrogallic acid is used, in order to make the
discrimination, something more has to be added as a restrainer to
cause the reduction inducing the change to take place only in the part
acted upon by the light. A solution of the bromide of an alkali is
generally used for this purpose. Without a restrainer, the tendency
is for those parts to be first reduced, but the action extends to that

RECENT ADVANCES IN PHOTOGRAPHY. m

which has not been acted upon by the light. It has been usually said
that alkaline development is only available for bromide of silver, but
my experience has taught me that iodide of silver is as amenable
to alkaline development as the bromide, although not so rapidly,
and that chloride is very amenable to it, and will give most beautiful
pictures.

Another mode of development, now very much in vogue, is that
with ferrous oxalate. In this case we have an organic salt of iron in
the ferrous state, which is capable of reducing silver bromide, iodide,
and chloride to the metallic state, while itself is reduced to the ferric
state. This process also requires a restrainer.

I have found a kindred developer, the use of which I consider one
of the most recent advances in photography. It is an iron developer,
which is capable of being used without any restrainer whatever. I
call it ferrous citro-oxalate. It is made by adding to a solution of
citrate of potash ferrous oxalate till no more will dissolve ; the result-
ing compound is probably citrate of iron, but in a stronger form than
is usually found.

Mr. Berkeley has lately introduced an improvement in the ordinary
alkaline developer, in which he mixes with the pyrogallic-acid solution
four times the weight of sulphite of soda. The action, apparently, is
that the sulphite of soda absorbs the oxygen with greater avidity than
does the pyrogallic acid, thus leaving that agent to do its work ; con-
sequently, we have a developer which remains uncolored for a very
long period.

Another developer, which is competent to work also without a re-
strainer, but has not been used to a very great extent on account of
its high price, is hydro-kinone. It is a much more powerful absorber
of oxygen than pyrogallic acid, to such a degree that one grain of it,
is as active as two grains of that substance. Not requiring any re-
strainer, even when so troublesome a salt as silver chloride is used, it
is able to give a better detail and allow a shorter exposure in the cam-
era than when the ordinary alkaline developer is used. It is applicable
to any plate with which you can work.

The next point to which I wish to call attention is the action of
sensitizers. It may be proper first to explain what a sensitizer is.
When you have chloride of silver exposed to light, you have a new
compound formed, which is called subchloride, or argentous chloride
(Ag2Cl2 = Ag2Cl + Cl), and chlorine is liberated. This chlorine is
very difficult to eliminate, if you do not give it something that can
take it up ; for instance, if you place perfectly pure chloride of silver
in vacuo, without any trace of organic matter present, you will find
that you get no darkening action, even if it is exposed to brilliant
sunlight for months. If a white powder of the kind was submitted
to you, to determine its character, you would say at once that it was
not chloride of silver, because it was not darkened, since one of the

400 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tests of chloride of silver, among chemists, is that it shall darken in
the light. Here I have a little bulb of it which was prepared, dried
carefully, and sealed up. It has been exposed for months to the light,
and is as pure a white as it was the first day it was put into the bulb.
Another experiment was made at the same time ; but, unfortunately,
as I thought then, a small globule of mercury got into the vacuum, and
was sealed up with the chloride ; the consequence was that the chlo-
ride of silver immediately darkened : although the mercury was not in
contact with the salt, the chlorine flew to the mercury, and formed
chloride of mercury. This is an instructive experiment, showing that
chloride of silver will darken merely in the presence of something that
will mop up the chlorine. Silver iodide, when exposed to light, splits
up into silver subiodide and iodine, and silver bromide into silver sub-
bromide and bromine. Now, in order that there shall be a ready dark-
ening of either of these salts, you must have something which will
absorb the iodine or bromine (or, in the case of the latter, allow it to
escape), according to the salt you expose to the light. This some-
thing is the sensitizer.

One point that has exercised the minds of a great many photog-
raphers is the illumination of their dark rooms. [The lecturer having
shown the relation of the several parts of the solar spectrum with the
absorption properties of different substances used in photography, pro-
ceeded to demonstrate the effect of differently colored glasses upon
the passage of rays, and announced his conclusions.] If photogra-
phers want to have an absolutely safe light in developing their pict-
ures, let them glaze their studios withe obalt glass and stained red, and
they will get nothing but the light of that particular refrangibility,
which will not affect any gelatine plate of the ordinary type. You
may glaze and glaze with ruby, but you will never get rid of blue
light entirely. Of course, it diminishes with every thickness you take.
If you want to use ordinary plates, which are not so sensitive that
you can not look at them, my advice is to use a combination of stained
red and ruby glass, which will give you a comfortable light to work
in, for it cuts off the blue and leaves the red in a brilliant patch. If
the operator wishes to be still more secure, let him use a combination
of cobalt glass and stained-red glass. A combination of red and
green is a fairly safe light for iodide plates or ordinary plates, but not
for gelatine plates, which are very sensitive. Next we come to a series
of pretty colors, which may be very useful to us : magenta, with which
the yellow is cut out entirely, and the green, leaving the blue, violet,
and orange ; aurine and chrysoidine, which cut off the blue ; a com-
bination of magenta and aurine, which gives a perfect red light, and
is very good indeed for the photographic studio ; and scarlet and
aurine, which give the same effect. If all means of securing the
right light fail, the photographer may use the ferrous oxalate de-
veloper, for you may bring the most sensitive plate out into a white

RECENT ADVANCES IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 401

light, when developing in a dish with a covering of that substance
over it.

In 1874 the discovery was made that an increased action of the
spectrum could be got by dyeing the film of sensitive collodion. If
you take one of the aniline dyes and expose it to the light behind a
piece of black paper, you get an image on the dye. What is the
meaning of tbat ? The meaning is, that the dye is oxidized, for, if you
apply an oxidizing agent, you get the same result. Dr. Vogel found
that if he dyed a plate with one of these fugitive dyes, he was able to
obtain an extension of the impressed spectrum, and he introduced the
term " optical sensitizer " to describe the fact. I object to the term,
for it gives a wrong impression of the action that takes place, which is
simply the reduction of the iodide or bromide of silver by the oxida-
tion of the dye, and the provision of a nucleus on which development
can take place.

Collodion emulsions have been in vogue for seven or eight years,
although they have now been superseded, to a large extent, by gela-
tine emulsions. Whether the last be an improvement over the former
process or not, the collodion process is admirably adapted for land-
scape-work. If the emulsion is of silver bromide or chloride, it is
easily formed ; an iodide emulsion is more difficult. The point in
emulsion-making seems to be to get the precipitate in as fine particles
as possible, and it is said that this can only be obtained, except at very
great cost of time and trouble, by first adding the soluble bromide or
iodide to the collodion. If you take the trouble to add the silver to
the collodion first of all, the aspect of emulsion-making is entirely
changed, and you can get any amount of fineness by adding the iodide
or bromide to the silver contained in the collodion so long as you keep
the silver nitrate in excess. If you put the iodide into the collodion
first, and then add silver nitrate, you will find that you have precipi-
tated the iodide of silver at the bottom of the bottle, and in a form
which will not emulsify at all. My advice to those who wish to make
collodion or gelatine emulsion is, to add the silver to the collodion or
gelatine, and then add the haloid salts afterward, and you will get as
perfect an emulsion as you choose.

It is a great comfort in the collodio-bromide process that the oper-
ator is able to give local intensity (a most desirable quality in all artis-
tic work) to the image. I do not believe any process is perfect until
that power is placed in the hands of the manipulator ; and the great
defect of the next. process to be mentioned is, that it does not give
that power, but leaves the operator at the mercy of his plate, on which
he must let come out what will. This next process is the gelatine
process, which may be described as one in which the silver bromide is
held in suspension in gelatine in the same way that in the previous
process it is held in collodion. Mr. Bennett showed how a gelatine
emulsion can be made very sensitive by keeping it at a comparatively
tol. xx:i. — 26

402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

low temperature in a liquid condition for many days. Colonel Wortley
afterward claimed that he could get the same sensitiveness by heating
up to 150° Fahr. for a short time ; and then Mr. Mansfield got it in a
few minutes by boiling. Another method was then introduced by Dr.
Monkhoven for the production of very sensitive gelatine emulsions by
adding ammonia with the nitrate of silver. The ammonia process
found many admirers, among them Dr. Eder, whose method of adding
a large quantity of ammonia has given very sensitive pictures, and
very vigorous ones when the sensitiveness is not too great. A process
introduced by Mr. Cowan is even superior to that of Dr. Eder. He
emulsifies his bromide in a very small quantity of gelatine with ammo-
nia, and adds sufficient gelatine when the emulsion is ripened. Dr.
Eder's method was to add the full amount of gelatine with the am-
monia. Mr. Cowan's method gives greater rapidity and greater cer-
tainty.

What is the reason of the sensitiveness of the gelatine emulsion ?
Pictures can be taken with it in a tenth of the time necessary for a
wet plate, and perhaps a thousandth of that necessary for an ordinary
dry plate. The first reason is, that the emulsion has a blue form.
Another reason is, that you can use a more powerful developer. If you
separate bromide of silver which has been emulsified in gelatine, and
place it in collodion, the extreme rapidity will be gone, for the simple
reason that you can not use as strong a developer as you can with a
gelatine emulsion ; in fact, the property that gelatine possesses of act-
ing as a physical restrainer comes into play : each little particle or
aggregation of particles of the salt is surrounded by gelatine, which
prevents the developer acting rapidly on them. Again, the fact that
by boiling, or by the ammonia process, you get a coarser deposit of
bromide of silver, also points to increased sensitiveness. Furthermore,
if you boil or heat bromide, or any haloid salt of silver, with an organic
substance, it has a tendency to separate into a metallic state ; in fact,
the bromide of silver is then in a state of very tottering equilibrium ;
the bromine is ready to be given off at the very slightest disturbance
of the molecule, much more so than before it is boiled. I think that
the fact that you so often get fogged emulsion when you overboil is
proof of this statement. If you were to ask me to illustrate the sen-
sitiveness of a gelatine plate, I should show you, not some of those
marvelous instantaneous photographs, but a photograph by Mr. Hen-
derson, by moonlight, and another of some under-ground cellars at
Reigate, by Mr. William Brooks, taken by lamp-light. If anything
can show what gelatine plates can do, it is the fact that candle-light
and moonlight can be utilized for impressing the surface with an
image. Dr. Vogel has recently introduced an emulsion made with
acetic acid, gelatine, pyroxyline, and bromide of silver, which is very
clean and very fairly rapid. Plates are more readily coated with it
than with gelatine emulsion, but less so than with collodion emulsion.

RECENT ADVANCES IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 4c3

Another very decided advance in photography is the doing away
with glass as a support for the emulsion. Mr. Warnerke has perfected
a process by which the photograph is taken on paper instead of on glass.
He has a sensitive tissue which can be made of any length, and can be
l-olled on a roller and exposed in the dark slide. By turning another
roller, a fresh surface is brought into the plane of the focusing-screen.
The sensitive tissue is developed in the ordinary way with alkaline
development. The film can be either stripped off, or else transferred
to glass. In the latter case, we come to another point which marks a
distinct advance. Mr. Warnerke has found that when you develop a
gelatine plate with alkaline development, the parts which have been
acted upon by light, and which have been developed, become insoluble
in hot water. He is thus able, after development, instead of using the
hyposulphite bath to fix the print, to transfer it to glass, and wash
away with hot water the parts of the film which have not been acted
upon by the light ; and he thus gets a transparency. To do this, it is
necessary that the back surface of the gelatine film should be exposed
to the water, as in carbon printing, and this is secured by transfer to
glass. Mr. Warnerke is not satisfied with doing away with glass for
the camera, but he does away with glass for printing ; and, in order to
accomplish this, he retransfers the negative from the glass to a sheet
of gelatine. I may say that the glass is freshly collodionized, and this
enables the film to strip off readily. It is one of the advantages of
these negatives that you can print from either side, each one yielding
sharp points — a desideratum when using processes where reversed
negatives are required. In the matter of gelatine films, we have Pro-
fessor Stebbings's, which are really workable. The gelatine emulsion
is apparently flowed on an insoluble film on glass, which is then
stripped.

The next point I touch upon is the enlargement of negatives. The
best way I know of, of getting an enlargement of a negative, is one
that was brought forward a few years ago by Mr. Valentine Blanchard.
He takes the original negative which he wishes to enlarge, and places
it in an enlarging camera. He then takes a transparency of the exact
size he wants his negative to be. He next takes a piece of common
albumenized paper, and prints that transparency upon it, and by this
means gets a very soft and beautiful negative. If you have a hard
negative, it is almost impossible to get a soft transparency by the wet-
plate process ; but, by this artifice of " printing out " your transpar-
ency and using that as a negative, you get a decidedly soft paper
negative.

One of the new applications of the gelatine process is the develop-
ment of a print on paper coated with gelatino-bromide. The paper is
prepared by coating ordinary paper with gelatino-bromide (of the
most sensitive kind, if you like). Such paper can then be exposed to
the image formed by an ordinary magic-lantern ; by that means you

404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

can get an enlarged print. We may thus say that an advance has
been made, when, by an ordinary magic-lantern, with a good negative,
you can get a perfect enlarged print by development. Perhaps it will
not have that luster which albumenized prints have, but it is a matter
of taste whether you like that gloss or not.

As gelatine plates are now prepared they all have an excess of
soluble bromide. While this is the case, the highest sensitiveness
possible will not have been obtained. Dr. Eder has found that an in-
crease of sensitiveness, two or three fold, may be produced by neutral-
izing this excess. The gelatine-plate makers have the problem to
solve, how to get rid of any possible excess of soluble bromide in their
films.

We will next consider what causes the destruction of the photo-
graphic image. You may destroy it by any substance which will
readily part with oxygen. You can destroy it, for instance, by bi-
chromate of potash, by any of the ferric salts, or by oxygen-yielding
substances, like permanganate of potash, ozone, peroxide of hydrogen,
or hydroxyl ; in fact, there is hardly any substance which will part
with oxygen, which will not destroy the developable image. The pho-
tographic image remains behind as a rule, though not always, but these
re-agents prevent it becoming developable. Bromine also acts some-
times as a destructive agent, by escaping, when the exposure is too
long, from the lower part of the bromide coating of the plate, and
forming a fresh film of bromide at the surface after it has been acted
on by the light.

A remarkable utilization of the oxidizing process has been proposed
and carried out by M. Bolas. Wishing to reproduce an ordinary
gelatine negative having the proper gradations of light and shade, he
took a gelatine plate, immersed it in bichromate of potash, allowed
the film to dry, and then exposed it to light behind the negative to be
reproduced. In this exposure he had an oxidizing agent present in
his film ; the oxidized parts were acted upon by the light, leaving the
other part intact ; and by that means he got a reversed image. Oxi-
dizing agents enable us also to get rid of fog. A gelatine plate, which
has been fogged by exposure to light, can be cleared by immersing it
in bichromate of potash.

I have learned in my experiments that halations, or the appearance
of haloes around the picture can be prevented, by touching the back
of the plate with asphaltum or some varnish ; the reflection is toned
down according to what medium is placed on the back of the plate.
The most perfect cure for halation is Brunswick-black. It admits
no reflection from the back of the plate, and thus enables the operator
to get rid of every tendency to f uzziness of the image.

A most useful instrument has been introduced by Mr. Warnerke,
which is known as a sensitometer, or measurer of sensitiveness, it
consists of squares of colored gelatine of different opacities through

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRAPER. 405

which light is allowed to fall on a sensitive plate, and is intended as a
guide to determine the comparative rapidity of the plates. Mr. War-
nerke has also introduced an actinometer, or instrument to measure
the intensity of light, which is dependent on phosphorescence for its
value. It consists of a phosphorescent tablet, by the exposure of
which to the action of light he is able to tell the photographic value
of the particular light. The discovery is of the more value, because
phosphorescence is induced by very nearly the same rays as those
which affect bromide of silver. Another simple way of telling the
amount of exposure to give the plates is by Woodbury's photometer,
in which a piece of bromide paper exposed to the light is compared
and read off with one of a series of tinted circles. A rule to be re-
membered in using this instrument is, that if a bromide plate is used,
a bromide paper only should be used for securing the tint ; if a chloride
plate, a chloride paper. Recent researches of mine have shown that
the dai'kening intensity and the developing intensity go hand in hand ;
therefore, when the operator has the number which gives the right
tint, he may always be sure of getting the right exposure.

Some of the most recent and striking exemplifications of the scien-
tific applications of photography are the composite photographs by
Mr. Galton, which may be peculiarly useful in the study of anthro-
pology. One of them is a typical family composite portrait composed
of a mother and two daughters, in which all three faces are blended
together. We are thus given a likeness of the female branch of the
family ; another, a blending of the father and mother, two sisters, and
two brothers, gives the typical family group. Other pictures, in
which the same principles are applied, give a typical group of engineer
officers and a typical group of sappers.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRAPER.

~T^T~0 greater calamity could have befallen American science than
-L.N the recent and sudden death of Professor Henry Draper. The
news of it was an inexpressible shock to his friends, and was felt with
painful regret by the whole community. But forty-five years of age,
with the full promise of apparent health, and in the midst of an active
and a brilliant career, he was cut off by an illness so short that but
few had heard of it when his death was announced. In an excursion
to the Rocky Mountains, in August and September, he had been sub-
jected to severe exposure and contracted a heavy cold ; he returned,
however, in October, considerably recovered and able to resume his
scientific labors. He gave a dinner to the National Academy of Sci-

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ences, at his residence, on November 16th, and made special and elabo-
rate preparations for the occasion by electric illumination of the din-
ing-hall in a way to produce some novel and agreeable effects. It is
supposed that the anxiety and exertion of this preparation were more
than he could well endure. He was attacked with severe pains in the
chest, and suffered much while at dinner, but thought that he would
get relief by a warm bath. But, instead of relief, his symptoms were
aggravated, and a physician was sent for who recognized his attack
as one of violent double pneumonia and pleurisy. It was hoped, how-
ever, that he might recover until shortly before his death, which oc-
curred early in the morning on the 20th of November.

Heney Deapeb was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia,
March 7, 1837, and two years later his father, Dr. John William Dra-
per, removed to this city to take the chair of Chemistry in the New
York University. Henry, at first, went through the course at the
public school, but at the age of fifteen he entered the Academic De-
partment of the university, though he did not graduate there. At the
end of his sophomore year he entered the Medical Department of the
university, which his father had been prominent in establishing, and
from which he took his medical degree in 1858. He at first thought
of practicing medicine, and received an appointment upon the medical
staff of Bellevue Hospital, which he held for sixteen months, and then
decided to abandon practice, and give himself to teaching. He was
elected Professor of Physiology in the Academical Department of the
university in 1860, and in 1866 became professor of the same branch
in the University Medical School. He resigned this post in 1873, and
afterward taught advanced analytical chemistry in the Academical
Department of the institution. After the death of his father he was
appointed to fill his chair, but previous to the opening of the last fall
term he severed entirely his connection with the institution.

Professor Henry Draper is one of the men who is not to be inter-
preted in his individuality alone. With his father he represents one
of the double stars in the firmament of scientific celebrities of which
we have now a considerable catalogue. Among the illustrious pioneers
of mathematical physics there are the Bernoullis, father and son ; in
chemistry, the Gmelins and the Brodies ; in botany, the De Candolles
and the Hookers ; and, in astronomy, the Cassinis and the Herschels ;
and to these must be added the Drapers, father and son. Many more
examples, though less eminent, might be given in which sons have
distinguished themselves by pursuing with success the branches of
research opened by their fathers, and to trace the influence that is
exerted and the effects that are produced in these cases would be an
interesting biographical study. In the present instance the son was
the inheritor both of his father's genius and of his subjects of research,
while his early education was shaped with a view to the pursuits to
which his life was devoted. This point is thus referred to in the

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRAPER. 407

sketch of Henry Draper which appeared in a late number of " Har-
per's Weekly ":

" He had for a companion, friend, and teacher, from childhood,
one of the most thoroughly cultivated and original scientific men of
the present age, who attended carefully to his instruction, and im-
pressed upon him deeply the bent of his own mind in the direction of
science. The boy was, in fact, immersed in science from his young-
est years, and not merely crammed with its results, but saturated with
its true spirit at the most impressible period. He was taught to love
science for the interest of its inquiries, and was early put upon the
line of original investigation in which he has won his celebrity. Henry
Draper inherited not only his father's genius, but his problems of re-
search. Dr. John W. Draper was an experimental investigator of
such fertility of resources and such consummate skill that the Euro-
pean savcmts always deplored his proclivity to literary labors as a
great loss to the scientific world. Henry Draper inherited from his
father in an eminent degree the aptitude for delicate experimenting,
and a fine capacity of manipulatory tact. The elder Draper was one
of the founders of the recent science of photo-chemistry. He worked
early and brilliantly in the new and fascinating field of the chemistry
of light, and more than forty years ago by his extensive contributions
to this subject he prepared the way for those who entered to reap the
fruits of his labors in the splendid field of spectrum analysis. But
the scepter was not to depart from the family. Henry pursued the
same line of research, and by his extension of it will have a permanent
place among the discoverers of the period."

Henry Draper's first important scientific investigation was made
at the age of twenty, and was embodied in his graduating thesis at
the Medical College. It was on the functions of the spleen, which
was illustrated by microscopic photography — an art then in its in-
fancy. Soon after receiving his degree he went to Europe, and while
there visited the widely-known observatory of Lord Rosse, and studied
the construction and working of his celebrated colossal reflecting
telescope. This led him to consider the problem of using reflecting
telescopes for the purpose of photographing celestial objects. On his
return home he constructed a telescope of this kind of fifteen and a
half inches aperture, and with it took a photograph of the moon fifty
inches in diameter — the largest ever made. His success spurred him
on to further improvements, so that he became an adept in grinding,
polishing, and testing reflecting mirrors. An equatorial telescope was
afterward constructed by him, with an aperture of twenty-eight inch-
es, for his observatory at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. The instrument
was wholly the work of his own hands, and was designed mainly to
photograph the spectra of the stars. After a long series of experi-
ments, it was finished in 1872, and has been pronounced by President
Barnard as ' probably the most difficult and costly experiment in celes-

4o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tial chemistry ever made.' He was the first to obtain a photograph
of the fixed lines in the spectra of stars, and he continued the work
until he had obtained impressions of the spectra of more than one
hundred stars.

When the commission was created by Congress for the purpose of
observing the transit of Venus, in 1874, Professor Draper was in-
trusted with the charge of the photographic department. He spent
much time in the preparations, for which he declined to receive any
compensation. So signal was the success of his disinterested exer-
tions, that the commissioners had a gold medal struck in his honor at
the Philadelphia Mint, bearing the inscription, though in an extinct
tongue, "He adds luster to ancestral glory." In 1878 he went to the
Rocky Mountains to observe the total eclipse of the sun, and there
successfully photographed the spectrum of the solar corona. For the
last two or three years he had been much engaged in the difficult work
of photographing nebulas, and he startled the scientific world by the
announcement that he had succeeded in getting a fine photograph of
the great nebula in Orion and of its spectrum.

Professor Draper was not a prolific author, like his father, and
only wrote one book ; but he died in the prime of life, and had he
lived would undoubtedly have given to the world the results of his
ripened investigations in enduring treatises. He, however, wrote
much for the scientific periodicals, describing the results of his work.
He contributed several papers to the " American Journal of Science
and Arts " and to "Nature." He published in 1864 a " Text-Book of
Chemistry," and a paper on the " Philosophic Use of Silvered Glass
Reflecting Telescopes." The paper was published in "The Philo-
sophical Magazine." In the same year he published a pamphlet on
"Silvered Glass Telescopes and Celestial Photography." "The Quar-
terly Journal of Science," in 1865, published his views of " Petroleum,
its Importance and its History," and " American Contributions to the
Spectrum Analysis." The Smithsonian Institution, in its " Contribu-
tions, vol. xiv., of 1864," published a paper on " Construction of Sil-
vered Glass Telescopes, Fifteen and a Half-Inch Aperture, and their Use
in Celestial Photography." The following papers have been published
in "The American Journal of Science and Arts" : "On the Diffrac-
tion Spectrum Photography," in 1872 ; " Astronomical Observations
on the Atmosphere of the Rocky Mountains," and " Spectra of Venus
and a Lyrce," in 1877 ; " Discovery of Oxygen in the Sun by Photog-
raphy, and a New Theory of the Solar Spectrum," which was fol-
lowed by another paper on the same subject, entitled " On the Coin-
cidence of the Bright Lines of the Oxygen Spectrum with Bright
Lines in the Solar Spectrum," in 1877 ; " Eclipse of the Sun in
July, 1878," in 1878 ; « Photographing the Spectra of the Stars
and Planets," in 1879 ; " Photograph of Jupiter's Spectrum," and
"Photograph of the Nebula in Orion, on September 30, 1880," in

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRY DRAPER. 409

1880 ; and " Photograph of the Spectra of the Comet of June, 1881,"
last year.

Probably Henry Draper's most important work was his discovery of
oxygen in the sun, which was duly chronicled and made a matter of dis-
cussion in " The Popular Science Monthly " at the time. It was the
result of great sagacity, experimental skill, and an immense amount of
labor. It was too unexpected and surprising to command the ready
assent of eminent physicists and astronomers, while its experimental
proofs were on such an expensive scale that the processes could not be
easily repeated. But the opinion has undoubtedly gained strength
that the discovery is valid, and by reference to a recent work by Pro-
fessor Young on " The Sun " and the " Popular Astronomy" of Professor
Newcomb, it will be seen that the weight of authoritative opinion is
in favor of its reality.

Henry Draper was a man of medium height, rather stoutly built,
with the appearance of vigorous health. His manners were agreeable,
he was a lively and a witty talker, and a very fluent and instructive
lecturer. He was enthusiastic in his passion for science, and persistent
and tenacious in carrying out his elaborate plans of research.

In 1867 he married the daughter of Courtlandt Palmer, Esq., a
cultivated lady who entered with a kindred enthusiasm into all his
studies, and rendered the most faithful and efficient service in his deli-
cate and arduous investigations. So thorough was her understand-
ing of the problems he was engaged upon, and so considerable her
share in the manipulatory practice, that it is hoped she may be able to
complete and publish his more important unfinished work. At the
death of his father-in-law, Professor Draper became a trustee of the
large estate, and was henceforth much absorbed in business. But,
though in command of very liberal means, his passion for science was
too strong to be diverted by new solicitations, and he set a noble ex-
ample by making use of his ample resources to carry on the work of
scientific research on a scale that is but rarely attempted because of its
great expense.

410

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TEE BANQUET TO EERBERT SPENCER.

ALTHOUGH the visit of Mr. Spen-
cer to this country has been in
some respects painfully unsatisfactory,
yet in other and the most important
respects it has been most gratifying and
successful. His state of health was such
that he was good for nothing for social
purposes. He has been long an invalid,
and compelled much to restrict his so-
cial life at home. He left England in
a bad condition, which was aggravated
by his voyage, and then made worse by
the exciting experiences of a new coun-
try, where he found many things very
different from those he had been used
to. Social intercourse was so exciting
and exhausting that he was compelled
to abstain from it, and many of his
friends were sadly disappointed that
they could not meet, welcome, and
converse with him, as is the habit with
other eminent strangers. This was a
serious drawback upon his visit, equally
to himself and to others, and will be a
source of lasting regret.

But now that Mr. Spencer is gone,
and has got home safely, everybody is
glad he came. They are pleased that
he has seen something of the country,
if but little, and that he will have more
correct and adequate ideas of what is
going on here than if he had never
come. It will be a fact of no small im-
port, perhaps, in his mental history.
But the chief significance and the most
gratifying feature of his visit will be
the way he has been received by the
American public. If he has not been
seen, he has been heard ; and the wide
effect is that he is both better known
and more highly regarded by friends
and enemies alike.

It had been determined by those in-
terested in Mr. Spencer that some ex-
pression of public feeling should be
made before he left, but it was long

uncertain whether the state of his
health would allow him to accept it.
And, when at length he decided to do
so, he at the same time found it neces-
sary to shorten the time of his stay.
This gave but a very limited opportuni-
ty to make the preparations for a ban-
quet that should be at all adequate to
express the interest of the occasion.
Excellent dinners are, of course, very
easy things to get up, and there are al-
ways plenty of fluent and sparkling
speakers to add to them the pleasure
of oratory. But there was something
of seriousness in this affair that was
not to be overlooked. We had with
us, perhaps, the most eminent thinker
in the wcrld, and one whose name has
now become identified with the greatest
movement of thought in this age. It
was every way desirable, therefore, that
the demonstration should be made sin-
cerely and even gravely expressive of
American appreciation of Mr. Spencer's
character, position, and work ; and this
was felt to be the more necessary as a
bare act of justice, because his quiet
and unobtrusive life has called forth no
signal opportunities for the declaration
of the profound regard entertained for
him by many men of the highest intel-
ligenca. Representing no party or sect,
supported by none of those associations
that are so efficacious for the encour-
agement of talent, representing rather
all that is most objectionable and un-
popular in modern opinion, he has been
left to the quietude of his solitary stud-
ies, and, while stamping himself deeply
upon the mind of the period, he has
been at the same time regarded as the
most impersonal of men. This has un-
doubtedly had its advantages, and is
not to be complained of. But it was
very properly thought that, when he
came to this country, where he is ad-
mired and venerated by multitudes who

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

are indebted to him for light, awaken-
ing, and emancipation, there should be
some formal and decisive utterance of
what may be fairly taken as the Amer-
ican estimate of the man. In obedi-
ence to this sentiment, the best arrange-
ments were made that the time would
allow for speeches more thoughtful and
even solid than are usual on such com-
plimentary occasions. The wisdom of
the policy was abundantly vindicated.
The temper of the gathering required
that the addresses should not only be
interesting, but weighty with apprecia-
tion of the opportunity. The guest of
the evening was received with enthusi-
asm, and listened to in utter silence,
that not a word should be lost. All
the other speakers were received with
the most cordial applause ; and when
Mr. Beecher ended his stirring and
whole - hearted address, at twelve
o'clock, there was a fervid enthusiasm
on the part of all that broke into a
common expression of pleasure at the
success of the affair. Many others there
were ready, and would have been glad,
had time allowed, to join in the em-
phatic tribute of respect and admiration
for the distinguished guest.

It may be added that the only draw-
back upon the Spencer banquet was the
large number of those who were disap-
pointed in not being present. Had
there been more time for preparation,
the committee of arrangements would
have chosen a place capable of seating
five hundred, instead of two hundred,
at table ; though, had publicity been
given to the affair through the press,
the same difficulty would have occurred
on a larger scale.

THE QUESTION OF OVERWORE.

In- his address at the complimentary
dinner tendered to him in New York,
Mr. Spencer took up the subject of
overwork — criticised the Americans as
faulty in this respect, pointed out the
evil consequences of excess in this di-
rection, said that it implied an imper-

fect social ideal, and intimated that as a
people we need more relaxation. His
criticisms and advice have been gener-
ally received as sound and proper, but
they have also elicited protests in vari-
ous shapes, some of which it may be
well to notice.

Mr. Spencer's countryman, George
Jacob Holyoake, was recently honored
with a reception in this city, and in his
remarks he referred to Mr. Spencer's
criticism dissentingly. He is reported
as expressing great admiration of Amer-
ican activity and enterprise. As for the
people being in too great a hurry, he
thought Mr. Spencer himself would get
to be in a hurry if he staid here six
months, in the midst of opportunities
and competitions that are enough to
make an angel hurry. Shrewd Eng-
lishmen understand that Americans love
to be told that they are smart and beat
the world in enterprise.

But can so clear-headed a man as
Mr. Holyoake fail to see that there is a
special danger whero the tendency to
exertion becomes so irresistible — where
individual impulses are only intensified
by surrounding influences ? The greater
the temptation the greater is the peril
of success, and the greater the need of
restraint. Will it be said that there is
no such thing possible as injurious over-
work, or that the powerful strain upon
men can be safely kept up without cor-
responding counteractions ? The very
question is absurd. The common ex-
perience of human nature testifies that
men can very easily kill themselves by
over-exertion. The problem is simply
one of a proper balance between op-
posing tendencies. Where there is great
stress in the direction of laborious ac-
tivity, adequate counter-checks are de-
manded. Mr. Spencer did not so much
condemn strenuous work, in which, in-
deed, he believes, as the lack of com-
pensating recreations to countervail its
mischievous effects.

Mr. Seymour Haden, another of Mr.
Spencer's countrymen, in a compliment-

412

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ary reception speech, expressed also
his quite emphatic disagreement with
Spencer, and his admiration of the spirit
of American enterprise and the splendid
activity of the American people. As
to the injury done by overwork, he did
not believe in it, and the eminent phy-
sician, Sir William Gull, told him he
had never known a man who had died
from it. It is worry, not work, which
kills, said Mr. Iladen.

Undoubtedly, but is not the deadly
worry one of the inevitable accompani-
ments and consequences of the over-
work under the conditions of competi-
tive enterprise in this country ? It is
work carried to such extremes as to
engender anxiety and harassment under
the fierceness of business struggles and
the eagerness of unchecked ambition
that is condemned. It is not claimed
that the man who kills himself at fifty
by unremitting labor has done it by too
much physical exertion. He has done
it by assiduous mental solicitudes with-
out break or reaction, and the neglect
of the conditions of health which that
absorption of thought and strain of
the feelings imply. Spencer's criticisms
were leveled at the want of regulation
and of a corrective in the shape of sys-
tematic relaxations that shall give more
contrast in life, and greater freedom to
the play of agreeable feeling, in place of
the vexatious solicitudes which spring
from devotion to work. To say that it
is not overwork that kills, but the worry
that is entailed, is merely to quibble
with the subject. Sir William Gull
might as well have declared that he
had never known a case of death from
cholera or consumption because it is
the lack of power in the constitution to
resist these diseases that is really the
cause of death. It is only by such cav-
iling that the notorious fact can be
evaded, that thousands of men in this
country sacrifice health and life to the
passionate eagerness of business pur-
suits. Every observing person can give
examples within the sphere of his own

acquaintance of such premature break-
downs by the score.

The New York " Sun " gives an edi-
torial to the subject, and maintains that
the warning of Mr. Spencer is quite
mistaken, as the Americans are far from
being an overworked people. " There
may be more fret and worry about
money-making due to the haste to get
rich, and the greater dissatisfaction with
a position in mediocrity, but real over-
work is not among our vices/' But it
would have been well to point out how
" frettand worry about money-making,"
" haste to get rich," and " dissatisfac-
tion with a position in mediocrity," op-
erate to produce discretion in the regu-
lation of our activities!

But the " Sun " gives expression to
a criticism of Mr. Spencer which has
been heard in various quarters, and re-
quires atteution. It intimates that he
is under an objective illusion, and has
simply generalized from his own mor-
bidities to the condition of everybody
else whom he saw. The editor says :
"It is not at all remarkable that Mr.
Herbert Spencer took this view of us,
and that he made it the subject of the
only speech he delivered while in the
United States. Himself suffering from
the lack of rest, he was naturally dis-
posed to"discover symptoms of the same
trouble among the men in the strange
country to which he had come on an
unavailing search for repose. He had
found in his American travels many
nervous sufferers who could sympathize
with him, just as every victim of a
chronic malady, no matter how seem-
ingly peculiar to himself, is sure to
meet others who are more or less in
the same state. His disease is natu-
rally foremost in his thoughts, and his
conversations are likely to lead up to
it, so that he gets in the way of hear-
ing of similar cases. There is a strong
sympathy which brings together inva-
lids of like kinds. They like to com-
pare symptoms."

This is a very easy theory of the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

4'3

case, but wholly groundless. Mr. Spen-
cer is the last man to perpetrate a fal-
lacy of this kind. He may be an in-
valid, but he is clear-headed enough to
deal with this subject on its logical mer-
its. When Mr. Schurz, at the dinner,
made a reference to " dyspeptic philos-
ophers "—although Spencer is a man of
excellent digestion— Mr. Beecher aptly
replied that, "at any rate, Spencer's
books have no dyspepsia." It seems to
have curiously occurred to many that
the tables could be turned upon Mr.
Spencer by referring to his own case,
although for the life of us we can not
see how his own experience of the very
matter he was treating could have dis-
qualified him from speaking upon it
with pertinence and intelligence. But
he did not choose to make it a personal
matter, although if he had done so it I
would have redoubled the force of his
argument. Mr. Spencer did undoubted-
ly break down badly, and long ago, and
has suffered the painful consequences
of it ever since.

But his invalidism has certainly been
of a kind not to affect the clearness,
rectitude, and soundness of his thought.
His work for a quarter of a century is
not only marvelous in its amount, but
it is unparalleled in its originality, aeute-
ness of insight, literary finish, and log-
ical stability. No faintest taint can be
traced anywhere in his books of the
nervous exhaustion of their author.
And the abundant reason is, that Spen-
cer has followed his own prescription,
aud made relaxation, amusement, and
recreation, in every form, a daily re-
ligious duty. By making work always
subordinate to the unbending that is
essential to its highest quality, he has
proved the value of recreations as tribu-
tary, not only to length of life, but to
the perfection of work. When, there-
fore, he spoke to the Americans upon
the subject, and warned them of the
dangers of their high-pressure civiliza-
tion, we have no right to assume that
there is any personal equation of un-

healthiness on his part to be corrected.
We are bound to take his advice as a
sound thinker of unclouded discern-
ment, and well disciplined in the work
of drawing safe conclusions from dis-
criminated facts.

But Mr. Spencer's argument is far
from ; depending upon breakdown sta-
tistics that he may have observed or col-
lected from others. The lesson that he
inculcated is broadly derived from his
social studies, and from his doctrine of
the evolution of society. lie pointed
out that the social ideals of men are
subject to change — that fighting as a
universal passion has passed away, and
that work as a universal passion has
taken its place. In this there has been
an euormous improvement, but the ex-
isting ideal is not a finality. It remains
to take a further step forward by organ-
izing more completely the means of hu-
man enjoyment. No advent of a poet-
ical or prophesied millennium is to be
expected, but men can nevertheless ad-
vance in this life to a happier state.
And this becomes an immediate and
practical question with every individ-
ual. The problem is only to be solved
by making rational enjoyment, in
larger measure, the object of life, and
of each day in life. This is the proper
end of knowledge and of work. It is
true beyond question that the lives of
immense multitudes in this country are
narrowed down to the one absorbing
gratification of money-getting, to the
exclusion of all other gratifications. Of
the nobler capacities of enjoyment they
know nothing, and they have lost the
power of even becoming interested in
anything but the purpose that enslaves
them. Can this be defended as a nor-
mal or satisfactory condition of the in-
dividual, or of a society largely com-
posed of such individuals? Work is
not an end, nor is study an end: work
brings a surplus of means, and study
should show how to use it for the most
varied gratification — both should be-
tributary to completer and richer life.

4H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

No timelier or weightier message
was ever delivered to a people than the
farewell words of Herbert Spencer to
the Americans on the eve of his de-
parture from our shores.

THE BARTUOLDI STATUE.

Everybody has heard of the enor-
mous statue of "Liberty Enlightening
the World," now nearly completed by
Bartholdi, the French sculptor, to be
presented to the Americans for erec-
tion in the harbor of New York. It is
of magnificent proportions, the figure
being one hundred and forty-five feet
in height, and is intended to stand upon
a massive pedestal of equal height. The
arm of the figure supports an uplifted
torch which will be a brilliant electric
light at an elevation of more than three
hundred feet above tide-water. It will
be a splendid object of art, and cer-
tainly embodies a grand idea, standing
as it will at the port of the commercial
metropolis of the United States — an
impressive symbol of the progress of
political liberty.

The statue has been constructed at
the cost of a quarter of a million of dol-
lars, which has been raised by the sub-
scriptionsof a hundred thousand French-
men. It is to be presented by the great
Republic of Europe to the great Repub-
lic of America, and its acceptance in-
volves only the single condition that
the American shall furnish a suitable
foundation to support it. It will be
ready for delivery and erection the
coming summer, and it is therefore de-
sirable to bestir ourselves to prepare
for it. The pedestal is to be paid for,
and will cost at least two hundred thou-
sand dollars. There are a hundred
American millionaires who would be
delighted with the opportunity of de-
fraying the whole expense if they could
have the name of the donor engraved
upon it in colossal letters, and thus
make it a monument of selfishness, but
it would be better to sink it in mid-

ocean than to suffer its perversion in
this way. It belongs to the American
people to construct this pedestal, and it
should be a burden upon nobody. Let
half a dozen puhlic - spirited and re-
sponsible men and women of each town
organize themselves into a committee
to obtain subscriptions from one dollar
to twenty-five dollars, and the amount
will soon be raised. It is no charity,
and there needs to be no begging.
There are plenty of people who would
like to have a little stock in this new
wonder of the world which will attract
multitudes from the four quarters of
the earth to behold it.

LITERARY NOTICES.

James Mill. A Biography. By Alexan-
der Bain, LL. D. New York : Henry
Uolt & Co. Pp. 426. Price, $2.

The influence of John Stuart Mill upon
the reputation of his father, James Mill,
has been twofold : he has advertised him,
and at the same time eclipsed him. It is
frequently said of James Mill that his great-
est work was John Mill ; and there are
many who suppose that this is his chief
title to be remembered. Others think that,
though the father may have been a man of
some consideration in his time, yet that he
has been so superseded by his son that all
interest in him has disappeared.

But James Mill is not to be disposed of
in this way. It is hardly questionable if
James Mill is not, in fact, the greater and
more original man of the two. If one is
to be regarded as an appendage to the oth-
er, the order of time will correspond to the
order of rank. No doubt the two Mills will
have to be taken together as representative
of one system of ideas. But the system, as
such, belongs to the father much more than
to the son. James Mill led in its develop-
ment and John Mill followed. The son con-
tinued the father's work, expanding, extend-
ing, and elaborating it ; but he inherited it
as a half-constructed system, and, if the fa-
ther was unable directly to give it its more
developed form, he did it indirectly by edu-
cating his son entirely with reference to the

LITERARY NOTICES.

415

fulfillment of his own mission as the founder
of a new school of philosophy.

In seeking to rectify past judgments and
to form a more just idea of the relative
greatness of these two eminent men, we
must remember, not only that the father
was self-made, while John Stuart Mill had
James Mill for a teacher, but we must re-
member also that the father had to make
himself over again after he had at first been
very bady constructed. He was educated
as a clergyman in the orthodox school of
Scotch Calvinism, and was of course early
saturated with the whole order of ideas
which belongs to that system. From this
he got himself free by a total rejection of
the whole body of theological belief that
belongs to Christianity. He therefore be-
gan the reconstruction of his views and
opinions late in life, and had to work them
all out for himself. His son, on the con-
trary, had the immense advantage of begin-
ning early a systematic training in the line
which he pursued without a break through
life. James Mill was an independent and
indeed a masterly thinker in the fields of
psychology, of political economy, of logic
and the philosophy of government, and he
was a pioneer of modern English liberalism.
John Stuart Mill ran in upon all these sub-
jects, revising, amplifying, and making them
his own through the accomplishments of a
wider erudition and a more thorough prep-
aration ; but if he had possessed more of
his father's quality he would have broken
loose from more of his father's errors, and
the system of thought that is now identi-
fied with both names might have been made
more enduring than it is.

Dr. Bain's life of James Mill is a very
interesting book. It is interesting in its
biographical features and as a delineation
of a strong and remarkable character ; and
it is also especially instructive as a history
of the times, as illustrated by the active
and influential career of a man who had
much to do with the reshaping of modern
liberal opinion in social and political affairs.
James Mill was a man of immense intellect-
ual activity, as shown not only by the " Anal-
ysis.of the Human Mind " and the " History
of India," but by a host of lesser produc-
tions, such as articles contributed to cyclo-
paedias and to many of the leading reviews,

all of which were able in thought and writ-
ten with remarkable clearness and force.

The Winners in Life's Race; or, the
Great Backboned Family. By Ara-
bella B. Buckley. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 36V. Price,
$1.50.

As a popular scientific writer the po-
sition of Miss Buckley is now assured. Her
knowledge is sound, her judgment trust-
worthy, and her power of elementary expo-
sition much above the common standard.
Her first book, " A Short History of Natu-
ral Science," was needed and was well done.
The "Fairy Land of Science" was also
excellent. " Life and her Children " struck
into the new biological path, and gave an
interesting account of the invertebrates, or
the lower forms of living creatures. The
present work is a continuation of it into a
higher field, although the present is an in-
dependent and self-explanatory work.

The work we now have from Miss Buck-
ley was much demanded. "We wanted a
popular book on the vertebrates, the back-
boned family from the historic or evolution
point of view. This made necessary un-
usual qualifications in the writer, and im-
plied a knowledge of geology and paleon-
tology, as well as natural history. Miss
Buckley had been for many years the secre-
tary and special student of Sir Charles Lyell,
: and had therefore the best opportunities to
become familiar with those branches that
have now become indispensable parts of
biology. Miss Buckley says of the method
of her book :

" I have therefore endeavored to de-
scribe graphically the early history of the
backboned animals, so far as it is yet known
I to us, keep strictly to such broad facts as
ought in these days to be familiar to every
child and ordinarily well-educated person,
if they are to have any true conception of
natural history. At the same time I have
dwelt, as fully as space would allow, upon
the lives of such modern animals as best
illustrate the present divisions of the ver-
tebrates upon the earth ; my object being
rather to follow the tide of life, and sketch
in broad outline how structure and habit
have gone hand-in-hand in filling every
available space with living beings, than to

416

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

multiply descriptions of the various species.
If my younger readers will try and become
familiar with the types selected, either
alive in zoological gardens or preserved in
good museums, they will, I hope, acquire a
very fair idea of the main branches of the
Backboned Family."

This acceptance of the evolution stand-
point, this tracing of the stream of life
along the great course of terrestrial changes,
this marking of the epochs of advancing or-
ganization in the ascending movement, and
this tracing of genetic relationships, all con-
cur in giving a new and impressive signifi-
cance to the idea of unity in the great
scheme of life, and give to natural history
a new element of almost romantic interest.
Miss Buckley has given attractiveness to the
subject by her wealth of information, the
clearness and simplicity of her descriptions,
and she has heightened the effect by the
skillfully conceived and finely executed
illustrations with which the volume is
filled.

Herbert Spencer on the Americans, and
the Americans on Herbert Spencer.
Being a Full Report of Mr. Spencer's
Interview, and of the Proceedings at
the Farewell Banquet. New York : D.
Applcton & Co. Pp. 96. Price, ten
cents, or $5 per hundred.

This pamphlet contains the most for the
money of anything that can be found in
the market. It has been carefully prepared,
so as to be entirely correct and authentic.
The newspaper reports were defective and
incomplete. The revised addresses of Hon.
William M. Evarts, Mr. Spencer, Professor
W. G. Sumner, Mr. Carl Schurz, Pro-
fessor 0. C. Marsh, Mr. John Fiske, and
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher are given in
full ; and to these are added the unspoken
speeches of Mr. E. L. Youmans, Mr. Lester
F. Ward, and Mr. E. R. Leland, together with
all the letters sent to the committee, and
which have not before been published.
The document is weighty with important
thought that can not fail to dispel much
prejudice, and every one who cares for the
dissemination of truth should send on his
five dollars and get a hundred to distribute
among his neighbors. They will be sure
to appreciate the favor.

Unity Pui.pit. Sermons of M. J. Savage.

Vol. IV. No. 9. Herbert Spencer : his

Influence on Religion and Morality.

Published weekly. Boston : George H.

Ellis. Price, $1.50 a year, or six cents

single copy.

There is no more encouraging sign of
the times than the indications we see that
the pulpit is beginning to yield to the spirit
of progress. As science slowly advances in
the reformation of knowledge, bringing new
subjects under the influence of its method,
regenerating the ideals of mankind, and
making truth the supreme object of quest
and devotion, it is, of course, impossible for
the pulpit to remain unaffected by the gen-
eral movement. The highest victory of
evolution will be to transform the biased
preacher into the unbiased teacher. The
pulpit, as we have inherited it, is becoming
more and more anomalous in these times.
It is the place that has been sacredly pro-
tected from the competitions of inquiry.
Everywhere else error goes merely for what
it is worth, and must take its chances in the
open conflicts of discussion, but in the pul-
pit error is consecrated. It is the bulwark
of tradition. Beliefs that are outgrown and
abandoned everywhere else find refuge in
the pulpit. The preacher is the expositor
of ancient creeds, the leader of a sect, a
rhetorical homilist, anything except an in-
dependent seeker after truth. The virtue of
the pulpit is submissive faith, its crime free-
thinking. This characterization, of course,
applies more to the past than to the pres-
ent, but it is still too extensively true.
There is, however, a silent, insidious, but
inevitable change going on in a great num-
ber of pulpits that is loosening ancient
prejudices, undermining past bigotries, soft-
ening theological asperities, and tending to
a larger liberality in all religious matters.
The position of the clergyman in a time of
transition like the present is difficult, and,
if he be a deeply conscientious as well as
a clear-sighted man, is often painful. But
many of them are learning how to meet the
emergency, to yield gracefully that which
must go, and to accept cordially that which
must unavoidably come. Some pulpits, in-
deed, and their number is increasing, are
already free. Their occupants are content
to be simply teachers, and have liberated
themselves from all trammels that tend to

LITERARY NOTICES.

417

hinder the promulgation of truth. The
doctrine of evolution will certainly sweep
away a large amount of old belief that has
hitherto been venerated by its religious asso-
ciations, but in various qualified forms the
essential truth of that doctrine is already
acknowledged in many pulpits where it is
sure, as time goes on, to yield its liberal-
izing fruits.

Unity pulpit, in Boston, occupied by the
Rev. Minot J. Savage, has long been eman-
cipated from those restraints of dogma
which hinder the acceptance of the great
truths established by science. Mr. Savage
has met the new questions of the time with-
out hesitation and with a cordial welcome,
holding that neither will a sound morality be
weakened nor pure religion suffer through
the extensions of science and the enlarge-
ment of the domain of truth. lie maintains !
rather that a more authoritative ethics and
more ennobling religious conceptions must
be the inevitable result of that progress of
thought which now finds its highest expres-
sion in the evolution philosophy. Unity
pulpit at any rate is free, and its occupant
is unable to perceive why in his sphere of
inquiry he should not have exactly the same
liberty of investigation that is exercised by
every member of the National Academy of
Sciences. His last sermon, now before us, is
devoted to Herbert Spencer, and to an esti-
mate of his influence on religion and moral-
ity. It certainly can not be said that the
pulpit has hitherto sinned in the way of
neglecting this representative thinker ; but
the utterance of Mr. Savage differs so
widely from what we have been accustomed
to hear from the lips of clergymen, that we
have pleasure in quoting its opening pas-
sages :

A quiet, modest unassuming gentleman, with
no assumption of greatness, with no air of pre-
tense, with not the slightest approach to an ap-
pearance of patronage toward those who may he
considered as less noted or great than himself,
has been for the last two or three months seeking
rest and refreshment here in America. Heard in
public but once, seen in private only by a few,
the country has still felt that a great man was
here, a man like those to whom Emerson refers
when he says, " A great man is himself an occa-
sion." We have all felt this presence, and noted
some indication of it now and then. For, when
he has chosen to utter himself concerning the
impressions that have been made upon him in
this country, the whole nation has listened as

vol. xxii. — 27

though something were being said that was
worthy of attention. The newspapers have
caught it up ; and all the leading organs for the
expression of public opinion have commented
on it, recognizing the (act that here at least was
something not to be passed by in silence.

This man, to whom we have been so ready
to listen, has during the last quarter of a century
wrought a work that, I think I may say, without
exaggeration, has no parallel in the history of
human thought, lie has so wrought himself
into the very fiber, the warp and woof of this
modern world, that I can say of him, what can
be said of no other man living, and what has
never been said of any man who has ever lived :
he has made himself so vital a part of science,
of philosophy, of education, of the science of
government, of sociology, of ethics, of religion
—he has so mastered and entered into the pos-
session of all these great realms of human
thought and human life, which in their totality
almost make up what is meant by life itself, that
to-day no serious and intelligent thinker can
discuss any importaut question pertaining to
any one of these departments without being
compelled to reckon with Herbert Spencer. You
can not discuss science, you can not discuss
philosophy, you can not discuss education, poli-
tics, society, and the laws that underlie them,
you can not discuss ethics, you can not touch
the subject of religion, without either agreeing
with or differing from this quiet scholar. And
to have wrought himself so intimately and so
essentially into the very life of the world— this, I
say, is an achievement unparalleled in the history
of human thought. I care not in which depart-
ment you pick up a book to-day, you will find
that the writer, if he comprehends his theme,
is either working along the lines which Herbert
Spencer has laid out, or else he is telling the
world why he does not do so. He does not ig-
nore him — he can not ignore him. About a
week ago, it was my privilege and pleasure to
join one or two hundred gentlemen in giving
Mr. Spencer a public dinner in New York, on
the eve of his departure. It was something
striking and wonderful to sec there the leading
men of the nation in all departments of thought
and culture, sitting at his feet and acknowledg-
ing his supremacy.

A Practical Treatise on Hernia. By
Joseph H. Warren, M. D. Second and
revised edition. With Illustrations.
Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. Pp.
428. Price, $5.

The author of this book is widely known
as a successful practitioner and writer on
hernia and kindred affections, and his aim
has been to make this a trustworthy work
of reference on the subject. The first edi-
tion was received in the most favorable
manner by the profession ; the present
new edition has been improved with all
the advantages that further studies and

418

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

continued experience in practice could en-
able the author to add. A new introduc-
tion has been written, and six new and care-
fully prepared chapters have been added,
while a part of the old work, considered
less essential, has been omitted. The vol-
ume contains a condensation of whatever
seems most worth preserving from the
world's literature on the subject, and much
that is original with the author, embody-
ing the results of his own studies for many
years, and having never before been given
to the public in a printed form. The trea-
tise begins with a discussion of the causa-
tion of hernia, in fetal and infantile life
and in adults, to which are added some re-
marks on its effects. Next are considered
its kinds and frequency; its anatomy, de-
scriptive and surgical, and strangulation.
The essential purpose of the work is devel-
oped in the fifth chapter, in which the op-
erations for hernia are considered generally ;
and the sixth, in which the author's own
method is described and explained. Under
the former head full justice is done to pre-
vious operators, all of whose methods that
seem to have merit are candidly and im-
partially described and estimated ; and ac-
knowledgment is given for what the author
has derived from them, particularly from
Ileaton's method, of which Dr. Warren's
is a modification and improvement. The
principle of Warren's method is the in-
jection of an astringent solution to induce
closure of the rings and canals, to produce
what is commonly called a radical cure.
This principle was suggested by Dr. Pan-
coast, of Philadelphia, extended and ap-
plied with much success by Dr. Heaton,
and was brought to a higher degree of per-
fection by a more complete adaptation of
the injecting instrument to the conditions
required by the delicate tissues operated
upon, and some modifications in the in-
jected fluid, by Dr. Warren. All of the
operations, from that of Chauliac to that
of Wood, are declared to be " severe, and
likely to be attended with great danger to
life, if not absolute loss of it." No such
arguments, Dr. Warren adds, "can be used
against the operation that I recommend, as
no fatal results have ever occurred in any
of the operations performed by the various
.surgeons who have undertaken them " ; and

the only losses likely to occur, he intimates,
are from blunders and awkwardness. He
is particularly at pains to demonstrate that
no danger of peritonitis, so much feared by
physicians, is incurred in it. A great deal,
however, is acknowledged to depend on the
proper selection of cases to be operated
upon. Beaton's great success may be
largely ascribed to the disci imination he ex-
ercised in this matter, and we arc told that
" when speaking of his invariable success,
he was in the habit of giving me a peculiar
wise and knowing look of the eye, and he
would say that he cured all, or about all,
that he would operate on." The general
health of the patient has, of course, much
to do with the success of the operation, and
something depends on the kind of hernia.
The succeeding chapters to those on opera-
tions are devoted to the treatment of stran-
gulated hernia, kelotomy, or herniotomy,
"Artificial Anus and Wounds of the Intes-
tines," hydrocele and varicocele, some ob-
servations on trusses which might be made
of general application, copious accounts of
cases, an extensive bibliography, and a list
of operators. The work is presented by the
publishers in excellent shape, with the best
of paper and print, and an abundance of
clearly delineated illustrations.

Proceedings of the Biological Society of
Washington. Vol. I. Washington :
Printed for the Society. (G. Brown
Goode, Secretary.) Pp. 110.

This volume contains the constitution of
the society, the list of honorary, correspond-
ing, and active members, and the proceed-
ings from the first meeting, for organization,
November 19, 1880, to May 26,' 1882. In
addition are given in full the addresses de-
livered on the occasion of the Darwin Me-
morial Meeting, May 12, 1SS2, comprising
" The Doctrine of Darwin," by Theodore
Gill ; a " Biographical Sketch," by William
H. Dall ; " Darwin's Work in Entomology,"
by Dr. Riley ; " Darwin as a Botanist," by
Lester P. Ward ; " Darwin on the Expres-
sion of the Emotions," by Frank Baker, M.
D. ; and " A Darwinian Bibliography," by
Frederick W. True. President Gill's inau-
gural address of 1881, on "The Proper Use
of the Term Biology," is also published in
full.

LITER AR Y NO TICES.

419

A Guide to Modern English History. By
William Cory. Part II, 1830 to 1835.
New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 567.
Price, $3.50.

The first part of this work related to the
first fifteen years of the great peace. The
expansion of the present volume, which in-
cludes only about a third as much time, is
justified by the author, on the ground of the
" excessive value of the work done for the
British Commonwealth in the years now
surveyed." These years, the author adds,
" are full of the virtue and wisdom which
make modern England supremely worthy of
a student's contemplation ; it seems not too
much to say that they form a period of
paramount importance in the history of
legislation and government." The work is
the composition of a sharp observer, and is
marked by vigorous thought and forcible
expression, and a bold, captivating style
that engages the reader and holds him. Mr.
Samuel R. Gardiner, who may be regarded
as an expert in the specialty of English his-
tory, characterizes it as " one not very well
calculated to guide those who do not know
a good deal of the way already, but admira-
bly fitted to enable those who do to test
those opinions which they have sometimes
too hastily formed."

Address delivered by Edward Atkinson
at the Opening of the Second Annu-
al Fair of the New England Manu-
facturers' and Mechanics' Institute
in Boston, September, 6, 1882. Pp. 32.

The end to be subserved by such indus-
trial exhibitions, Mr. Atkinson tells us, is to
make less arduous the daily work whereby
the larger part of the community earn their
daily bread. The author is not one who
takes a pessimist's view of life, and, al-
though he shows that the measure of com-
fort that each man, woman, and child can
yet enjoy, even in our prosperous land, does
not exceed on an average fifty or sixty cents
per day, he does not think or believe that
increase of wealth is of necessity comple-
mented by increase of poverty. Still the
small minority of people who can become
possessors of capital in any large measure
must justify the leisure which they or their
fathers have earned, by the use which they
make of the time and means at their dispos-
al. After showing how it is possible for our

railroad kings to put money in our pockets
while amassing fortunes themselves, he com-
pares our happy lot with the unfortunate
condition, from an economic point of view,
of those countries that are burdened by
huge standing armies, and where the cpian-
tity produced, although relatively less, must
be divided among a greater number. The
advantages of developing the hand and
brain together are then referred to. The
last man or woman whom you desire to dis.
charge from the works which you control,
when the times are hard, is the one earning
the most for himself or herself ; the first to be
discharged is the unfortunate one whose hand
and brain have not been developed together,
and who can, in hard times, no loncer reo-
der you a service, even if paid a sum barely
sufficient to support life. " Owing to the
great natural, social, and political advan-
tages that we enjoy, the wages of labor and
the remuneration of capital must be greater
in proportion to the effort used than in any
other section of the world's surface ; and
these facts prove that the cost of produc-
tion is less in ratio to product than it can
be anywhere else."

Although intended for delivery before a
limited audience on a particular occasion,
the address is of such general interest as to
deserve a wide circulation.

Contributions to Mineralogy. By F. A.
Genth. Read before the American Phil-
osophical Society, August 18, 1882.
This pamphlet of twenty -four finely-
printed pages represents a large amount of
actual labor, and contains several important
contributions to science, in the form of
analyses and observations on altered min-
erals. That one mineral should be grad-
ually changed, particle by particle, mole-
cule by molecule, into a different mineral
having other chemical and physical proper-
ties, is a curious and interesting phenome-
non, worthy the study of such a chemist a3
Professor Genth. The first case described
is the alteration of corundum, in Madison
County, North Carolina ; it is found partially
altered to a massive greenish-black spinel ;
in Towns County, Georgia, a pink corundum
is found surrounded by greenish-white, cleav-
able zoisite ; an interesting occurrence of the
alteration of corundum into a feldspar is
near Media, Pennsylvania, at the " Black-

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Horse" tavern; Haywood County, North
Carolina, has furnished specimens of co-
rundum altered into feldspar, as well as
mica ; examples of corundum altered into
margarite (calcium mica), cases of the alter-
ation of corundum into fibrolite and cyanite
are also mentioned. The altered minerals
were more or less water-worn and rounded,
while the corundum which they inclose is
sharp and angular, which proves that since
the great gravel deposits were formed no
alteration of the corundum has taken place
in these deposits.

The other interesting alterations de-
scribed by Professor Genth are the altera-
tion of orthoclase into albite, and talc into
anthophyllite, and pseudomorphs of talc
after magnetite. Several other investiga-
tions of mineral species follow, among them
gahnite, rutile and zircon, sphalerite and
prehnite, pyrophyllite, beryl, niccolite, and
artificial alisonite. The author also de-
scribes the accidental formation of artificial
crystals of rutile during fusion with potas-
sium hydrogen sulphate ; two crystals of
octahedrite were likewise produced at the
same time, and had a decided blue color.

On the Age of the Tejon Rocks op Cali-
fornia, and the Occurrence of Am-
monitic Remains in Tertiary Deposits.
By Angelo Heilprin. From " Proceed-
ings of the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia," July, 1882.

The author undertakes to settle the
point in dispute between Conrad and Gabb,
as to the age of the Tejon rocks, referred by
the former to the Eocene series, and by the
latter to the Cretaceous. A list of one
hundred and twelve species is given, repre-
senting the fauna of the Tejon group with
the various localities of occurrence, as
claimed by Gabb, and evidence presented to
show that Gabb was in error in many cases,
and hence that the tables do not afford a
safe criterion for the solution of the prob-
lem. The author then goes on to show that,
of the seventy-seven genera represented in
the Tejon group, at the very least twenty-two
are more or less distinctively Tertiary, and
out of these eleven are not positively known
to have appeared before that geological
epoch. Also that, with the exception of six
or seven fragments of Ammonitidm, there is
not a single distinctively Cretaceous generic

type in the entire number. He therefore
concludes that the rocks of the Tejon group,
despite their comprising in their contained
faunas a limited number of forms from the
subjacent (cretaceous) deposits, and a few
undoubted representatives of the Ammoni-
lidce, are of Tertiary (Eocene) age.

The Eocene age of the Tejon rocks is
likewise maintained by Professor Jules Mar-
con, who made a personal examination of
the region.

Proceedings of the Davenport Academy
of Natural Sciences. Vol. Ill, Part II.
Davenport, Iowa : Published by the
Academy. Pp. 192, with Four Plates.

The present number contains the pro-
ceedings of the Academy during 18*79 and
1880, with the president's addresses of Mrs.
M. L. D. Putnam and Mr. W. H. Pratt. The
numerous papers testify to the great activity
of the members of the Academy in the lead-
ing departments of investigation, predomi-
nantly in archaeology, to the study of which
the location of the society offers excellent
facilities. A very interesting paper is that
of Professor G. Seyffarth on the inscrip-
tions of the Davenport Tablets, the con-
clusions of which are startling for their
boldness.

How to Succeed : A Series of Essays by
Various Authors. Edited by the Rev.
Lyman Adbott, D. D. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 131. Price, 50
cents.

This is a republication of a series of
papers which appeared last winter in the
" Christian Union," on the general subject
and its applications, headed with articles by
Senators Bayard and Edmunds on " Success
in Public Life," and continued with other ar-
ticles, by men who have attained eminence in
their various professions or arts, on the ele-
ments of success in their respective callings.

Cerebral Hyperemia : Does it exist ? A
Consideration of some Views of Dr.
William A. Hammond. By C. F. Buck-
ley, B. A., M. D., formerly Superintend-
ent of Haydock Lodge Asylum, Eng-
land. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp. 129.

The author opposes the theory which
Dr. Hammond has published concerning the
effects of excess or deficiency of blood in

LITERARY NOTICES.

421

the brain with an earnestness which it is
safe to call extreme. lie assails with con-
troversial ardor the logic of Dr. Hammond's
views, and endeavors to show that they are
inconsistent with themselves, and are not
supported by the facts whence they are
drawn, or by the authors from whose works
Dr. Hammond has endeavored to substan-
tiate particular points of his theory.

The Solution of the Pyramid Problem,
or Pyramid Discoveries, with a New
Theory as to their Ancient Use. By
Robert Ballard, of Queensland. New
York: John Wiley & Sons. 1882. Pp.
109.

Mr. Ballard is not the first who has ad-
vanced a theory as to the purpose for which
the pyramids were built, nor even the first
to conjecture that they were of use in resur-
veying the land after the annual inundations
of the Nile. "Built by scientific men, well
versed in geometry, these great stone monu-
ments are so suited in shape for the pur-
poses of land-surveying, that the practical
engineer or surveyor must, after considera-
tion, admit that they may have been built
mainly for this purpose." The author also
thinks that he has discovered the unit of
measure used in their construction, and to
which he gives the name of Royal Babylonian
cubit. This cubit he makes equal to 20-22
British inches, and as there are 77,Y60,OOD
royal Babylonian cubits to the polar circum-
ference of the earth, the cubit represents the
-(/a of a second. This he claims is the most
perfect ancient measure yet discovered. It
is a perfect, natural, and convenient measure
which fits the plan of the pyramids and fits
the circumference of the earth. The author
also states that the pyramid of Cheops is
situated on one acute angle of a right-angled
triangle, and the pyramid called Mycerinus
is on the other acute angle, the other two
sides of which run respectively east and
south from these pyramids. The sides of
this triangle are respectively 3, 4, and 5.
The pyramids of Cheops and Cephren are
situated on the acute angles of a still more
remarkable triangle, the sides of which are
to each other as 20, 21, and 29. Many other
curious facts are mentioned regarding the
dimensions, position, and slope of the pyra-
mids, and a description of the method in
which the author supposes them to have

been used as the " theodolites of the Egyp-
tians." Many of the obelisks, he thinks, were
probably marks on pyramid lines of survey,
and the pyramid may have been a develop-
ment of the obelisk for this purpose.

A Guide to Collodio-Etching. By Ben-
jamin Hartley. Illustrated by the au-
thor. New York : The Industrial Pub-
lication Company. Pp. 48, with Six
Plates.

This little work is for the benefit of
amateurs, who feel the need of some simple
and inexpensive method of duplicating their
sketches and studies for the benefit of their
friends. The various methods by lithog-
raphy, photography, and the photo-engrav-
ing of pen-and-ink drawings which have
been suggested by different persons, have
been found by the author to be inconven-
ient, expensive, and troublesome. He de-
scribes, as more nearly realizing than any
other one the conditions required by the
amateur, a process for drawing the sketch
with a needle upon the glass plate, as pre-
pared by the photographer for the camera,
and printing from the etching as an ordi-
nary photograph is printed. He undertakes
to give all the practical information neces-
sary on the subject, so that persons who
know nothing about photography may be
able to carry into effect all the details of
his system.

United States Commission of Fish and
Fisheries. Report of the Commission-
er for 1879. Washington: Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 846.

The report embraces an inquiry into the
history and statistics of food-fishes, and a
summary of what has been accomplished in
the matter of their propagation in the
waters of the United States. Among the
collateral subjects of attention by the com-
mission have been an investigation into
the chemical composition of fish under the
varying circumstances of age, sex, and the
condition of the reproductive apparatus ; re-
searches into the temperature of fishes, ex-
periments in the production of cold for the
preservation of fish, and the preparation
of a series of casts in plaster and papier-
mache of the larger species. The pole-
flounder, which was discovered off the coast
of New England in 1877, proves to be one

422

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the most abundant of the flat-fish family,
and promises to be an important addition
to the food resources of the country. A
second species of fish, known as the tile-
fish, and constituting a genus and species
entirely new to science, was discovered dur-
ing the summer of 1S79. The most im-
portant item of the year in the work of
propagation was the beginning of the dis-
tribution of young carp to various points
in the United States. The demand for the
fish was very great, even with a relatively
small supply, and the calls increased so
rapidly that it became doubtful whether,
even with a much larger production, all the
requirements could be met. Good progress
is reported in the propagation and distri-
bution of salmon and trout of the vari-
ous species, shad, codfish, and striped bass.
Among the valuable papers with which the
report proper is supplemented are one by
Professor W. G. Farlow, on the "Marine
Algae of New England," containing tech-
nical descriptions of all the known species ;
an account of the cephalopods of the north-
eastern coast of America, by A. E. Verrill ;
and articles on the propagation of the eel,
the food of marine animals, the Iceland
herring fisheries, the periodicity of the great
herring-fisheries, the herring's mode of life,
the fisheries of the west coast of South
America, the scientific examination of the
German seas, the effects of sawdust and the
pollution of waters by factory refuse on
fishes; and articles and reports bearing
upon more special features of fish propa-
gation.

The Gulf Stream. Additional Data from
the Investigations of the Coast and Geo-
detic Steamer Blake. By Commander
J. R. Bartlett. Pp. 16.

This publication embodies the substance
of a paper which was read by the author
before the American Geographical Society,
and is supplementary to a previous paper.
The author states that he is " not hampered
with any theories," and merely gives his
deductions from the actual facts obtained
by the Blake's party, which may serve to
correct a few popular errors, even if they
do not throw much new light on the subject.
His principal conclusions have already been
noticed in " The Popular Science Monthly."

Proceedings of the Department of Super-
intendence of the National Educa-
tional Association, March 21 to 23,
1882. Washington: Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. 112.

Value is added to the report of the ordi-
nary discussions of this body by the papers
of Drs. Billings and Charles Smart relating
to " Ventilation " ; of the Hon. H. S. Jones
on " Obstacles in the Way of a Better
Primary Education " ; of Professor G. Stan-
ley Hall on " Chairs of Pedagogy in our
Higher Institutions of Learning "; of Drs. A.
D. Mayo and J. L. M. Curry on " National Aid
to Education " ; of Dr. Sheldon Jackson on
" Education (or the Want of it) in Alaska " ;
of Dr. John M. Gregory on the " Common-
School Studies. "

Putnam's Art Hand-Books. Edited by
Susan N. Carter. Drawing in Black-
and - White. — Sketching in Water-
Colors. New York : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 55 and 69. Price, 50 cents
each.

The first manual, by the editor, is an
effort to show beginners ''why they had
best choose one material in black-and-white,
or another ; and to tell them, by a few plain
directions, how they can best manage their
charcoals, crayons, pen-and-ink, or lead-
pencils." The directions are clear, and are
complemented by typical illustrations, from
masters, in each of the styles ; but it would
be better, perhaps, if the directions and
illustrations were more conformed to each
other. The second book is by Thomas
Ilatton, and is intended for the use of such
students " as arc accustomed to copy water-
color drawings, and find no difficulty in
sketching natural objects in black-and-
white," yet need the instructions it under-
takes to give them, to enable them to re-
produce Nature expressively in her own
colors.

A Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Edited by George Grove, D. C. L. Parts
XV and XVI (Double Part). London
and New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp.
272. Price, $2.

We have already called attention to the
fullness and the other merits of this excel-
lent work. The present double number
contains the articles under the titles from
" Schoberlechner " to " Sketches."

LITERARY NOTICES.

423

The " Hoffman Cover and Binder " is a
very useful aid for the convenient handling
and preservation of magazines and pam-
phlets while in use and afterward. It is a
well-finished book-cover, so arranged that a
magazine can be placed and fastened within
it in a moment, so as to form a substantial
bound book; then, when the next number
arrives, can be taken out and replaced by
the new one ; or it can be left in Und de-
posited as a single volume in the library.
The magazine is thus kept in perfect order,
whether it is intended to be bound with its
fellow-numbers or filed singly. Six sizes
arc kept in stock, to accommodate the
variously shaped publications from "The
Popular Science Monthly r' to " Harper's
Weekly " or the " Illustrated London News,"
and other sizes will be furnished to order,
by Joseph A. Hoffman, 208 Montgomery
Street, San Francisco. "

" The American Journal of Physiology "
is a new monthly periodical, each number
of which will consist of sixteen pages, edited
and published by D. II. Fernandes, M. D.,
Indianapolis, Indiana. It is intended to sup-
ply what the editor believes to be a lack in
American scientific literature, and is prom-
ised communications from several promi-
nent specialists.

" The Modern Stenographic Journal " is
a new Phonographic Magazine, published
at Buffalo, New York, by George H. Thorn-
ton, editor, and Emory P. Close, associate
editor. It will keep its readers in the cur-
rent of what is going on in the stenographic
world ; will contain a department of in-
struction, with serial lessons, and a depart-
ment devoted to the type-writer and calli-
graph ; and will endeavor to popularize " a
simple and rapid system of writing "

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Address before Section B (Physics') or the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science, at the Montreal Meeting:. By T. C.
Mendenhall. Salem, Mass., 1882. Pp. 14.

Test of Building Material, made at Watertown
Arsenal, Mass., August, 1882. Philadelphia, 1882.
Pp. 33.

Aberrations of Audibility of Fog-Sitrnals. By
Arnold B. Johnson. Washington : Jndd & Det-
weiler, Printers. 1882. Pp. 14, with Two Maps.

The Longfellow Calendar for 1883, with Se-
lections for Every Bay iii the Year. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin' & Co.

Statement of Work done at the Harvard Col-
lege Observatory during the Years 18i"7-1832.
Pp.23: and, A Plan for securing Ouservatious
of the Variable Stars. Pp. 15. By Edward C.
Pickering. Cambridge: John Whson & Son,
188a.

The Worship of the eciprocal Principles of
Nat lire among the Ancient Hebrews. By J. P.
MacLean. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 1S82.
Pp. -a. 25 cents.

Seventh Annual Report of Johns nopkins
University. Baltimore, Md. 1882. Pp. 122.

'• Paleontological Bulletin," No. 35. By Pro-
fessor E. D. Cope. Philadelphia : A. E. Foote.
1882. Pp.44.

Northern Transcontinental Survey. First An-
nual Report of Rapnae! Puinpelly, Director.
NewYorii: Wells backelt & i.ankin, Printers.
1882. Pp. 16.

Some Observations on Ostriches and Ostrich-
Farming. Pp. 11.

Some Indications of an Early Race of Men in
New England. By Henry W. Haynes. From
the " Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natu-
ral History." lp. 9.

On the Determination of the Flashing Point
of Petroleum. By John T. Stoddard. Pp. 4.

Radiant Heat an Exception to the Second
Law of Thermo-Dynamics. By H. T. Eddy,
Ph. D. 1882. Pp. 10.

The Sense of Dizziness in Deaf-Mutes. By
William James, M. D. Cambridge, 1882. Pp.16.
Transactions of the Anthropological Society
of Washington. From February, 18ri9, to Janu-
ary, 1882. Vol. I. Washington. 1882. Pp. 142.
Food Adulterations. By Professor Albert B.
Prescott, M. D. Reprint from "Annual Report
of Michigan State Board of Health for 1882."
Pp. 6.

The Tides. By John Nader, Civil Engineer.
1879. Pp. 31.

Sketch of Lewis H. Morgan. By F. W. Put-
nam. From the " Proceedings of (he American
Academy of Arts and Sciences," May, 1882. Pp. 8.
Facts and Phases of Animal Life. By Vernon
S. Morwood. Illustrated. Netv York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp.286. Price, $150.

Winners in Life's Race ; or. The Great Back-
boned Family. Bv Arabella B. Bucklev. Illus-
trated. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp.367.
Price, $1.50.

Lectures on Art, delivered in Support of the
Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
Bv Reginald Stuart Poole and others. London :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 232. Price, $1.50.

Anatomical Technology as applied to the Do-
mestic Cat. An Introduction to Human. Verte-
brate, and Comparative Anatomy. By Burt G.
Wilder and Simon H. Gage. New York and
Chicago: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 575. Price,
$4.50.'

The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, with a Se-
lection from his Correspondence and Occasional
Writings, and a Sketch of his Contributions to
Science. By Lewis Campbell and William Gar-
nett. London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 662. Price,
$6.

New Method of Learning the French Lan-
guage. By F. Berber. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. Pp\ 138. Price. $1.

A Study, with Notes, of "The Princess"
(Tennyson's poemV By S. E. Dawson. Mon-
treal: "Dawson Brothers. Pp. 120.

American Hero-Myths : A Study in the Na-
tive Religions of the Western Continent. By
Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. Philadelphia: H. C.
Watts & Co. Pp. 251. Price. $1.75.

Traits of Representative Men. By George
W. Bungav. Illustrated. New York : Fowler
& Wells. "Pp. 286. Price, $1.50.

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Charles Darwin. Memorial Notices, reprint-
ed from "' Nature." London : Macinillau & Co.
Pp. 82. Price, 75 cents.

A Whimsical Wooing. By Anton Giulio Ba-
rili. From the Italian hy Clara Bell. New iork:
Y\ illiain S. Gottsberger. Pp. 88.

Experimental Physiology. Its Benefits to
Mankind. By Richard Owen, C. B, M. D.,
P. JR. S., etc. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Pp. 216. Price, live shilling;;.

Youth: Its Care and Culture. By J. Mortimer
Granville. New York: M. A. lio'jbiook & Co.
Pp. 107.

The Scieniific and Technical Reader. Lon-
don: T Nelson & Sous. Pp. 400. Price, 2s. 6U.

The Factors of Civilization, Real and As-
sumed. Considered m I heir Relation to Vice,
Misery, Happiness, Unhappiuess, and Progress.
Vol. II. Atlanta, Georgia; James P. Harrison
<& Co. Pp. 359.

Text-Book of Geology. By Archibald Geikie.
London: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 971. Price, $7.50.

The Coties Check-List of North American
Birds. Second edition. Boston: Estes & Lau-
riat. Pp. 165.

The Diseases of the Liver, with and without
Jaundice. Hy George Harley. M.D. Philadel-
phia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 751. Price, $5.

Novissimum Organon : The Certainties,
Guesses, and Observations of John Thinking-
machine. By James Ferdinand Mallinckrodt.
St. Louis : Hugh R. Hildreth Printing Co. Pp.
116.

Quintus Claudius : A Romance of Imperial
Rome. By Ernst Eckstein. From the German
by Clara Bell In two vols. New York : Will-
iam S. Gottsbercer. Pp. 61G. Price, $1.75.

Dress and Care of the Feet. By L'r. P. Kah-
ler. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 39.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Mortality in Town and Conntry.— Pro-
fessor Finkelnburg attempted to show, in a
paper read at the recent Sanitary Congress
in Cologne, that cities are not of necessity
less healthy than country districts, and that,
where they appear to be so, the fact can
generally be attributed to local influences
affecting the hygienic or economical condi-
tion of the population. The analysis and
comparison of adult male and female mor-
tality and infant mortality bring out many
interesting facts. The male population of
the cities is described as being less healthy
than the female population, and liable to
consumption and affections of the heart,
brain, and kidneys. In Cologne, the mor-
tality among women over thirty years of
nge is not only less than among men, but is
less than the death-rate among women of
the same ages in other parts of the Cologne
district. Similar results are shown at Bonn.
The deaths of men from consumption show
a marked predominance in the centers of
the textile and metal industries. The fact

that a similar result appears in country dis-
tricts where labor of a similar character is
carried on is presumptive evidence that the
mortality is associated with the industrial
activity of the towns. Epidemic diseases
seem to show an excessive urban mortality
only in the case of young children. Infant
mortality appears to reach its highest point
where the population is most dense, and the
proportion of female labor in the factories
is most considerable. A more favorable
condition, however, seems to prevail in those
districts where domestic labor is general.
It is proved with a certain amount of clear-
ness that infant mortality varies according
to the dwelling accommodation in towns and
the amount of parental care which circum-
stances permit. This result is not a sure
guide as to all diseases, for which diarrhoea
and similar disorders contribute a notable
proportion to urban mortality in general ;
deaths from diphtheria and whooping-cough
in the Rhine provinces are more numerous
in the country than in the towns. Professor
Finkelnburg also notices that the mortality
in cities increases in the summer and fall,
while the increase in the country takes
place during the winter and spring.

Indians of the Undson Bay Territory.

— Dr. John Rae has furnished the Society
of Arts with some information about the
native tribes of the Hudson Cay Compa-
ny's Territories, which is all the more val-
uable because it is thirty years or more
old ; for it brings us nearer to the original
condition of the tribes before they were af-
fected as much as they are now by inter-^
course with the white men. Dr. Rae divides
the native tribes of the Territory into the
Innuits, or Esquimaux, of the Arctic sea-
board down to Labrador; the Dene Dind-
jie, eleven tribes east of the Rocky Mount-
ains and south of the Esquimaux; the
Algonquins, twelve tribes ; and the IIu-
rons-Iroquois, of Lake Huron, the Ottawa
River, and the Province of Quebec. The
Wood Crees, one of the principal tribes on
Hudson Bay, are a fine, docile race, with
comparatively few faults, and these inju-
rious only to themselves. They are very
fond of strong drinks, and have a great dis-
like to agricultural labor on their own ac-
count, although they work very well for

P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY.

425

others when paid for it. They make their
living by hunting wild fowl and animals, of
which the most valuable to them appears to
be the rabbit. Their clothing was chiefly
made of rabbit and reindeer-skins before
they came in contact with the white men.
Rabbit-skins sewed together make the warm-
est of blankets, even though the fingers may
be pushed through them anywhere, and an
Indian child dressed up in them, like " baby
bunting," is a funny-looking but very cozy
creature. The Indian babies seem never to
cry, never to squall, as more civilized babies
are in the habit of doing, and are never
chastised. " It would be thought very un-
natural and cruel in a mother to flog or
strike her child." All the Indians treat with
much ceremony and respect the body of any
bear they may have killed. He is placed
in a sitting posture against a tree, and long
speeches are made of apology and regret
for having been under the disagreeable
necessity of killing him. Then, as the bear
may come to life again even after he has
been disemboweled, a stick is put into his
mouth to keep it wide open, and a profuse
and humble apology is made to him for the
additional indignity. The supposed neces-
sity for this precaution is believed to have
arisen from the fact that a bear, thought to
be dead, came to life again while being car-
ried home, and took a mouthful out of one
of his Indian bearers. With a small tribe
called the Dog-ribs, or slaves, the custom
prevails of wrestling for the right to a wife,
" the lady sitting by, an appai-ently careless
and indifferent spectator of the struggle for
possession. No other ceremony is required
than that the victor, whether her former
husband or not, claims his wife." Another
custom, and an unfortunate one, is that on
the death of a near relative these Indians
must destroy every article of property of
value that they possess, excepting perhaps
an old deer-skin robe and a few other arti-
cles. They, moreover, can not hunt during
the season in which the loss occurs, and are
thus exposed to great poverty. With nearly
all the Indians, a certain favorite piece of
deer or bird is tabooed to the women, and
they dare not taste it, or even come near
where it is cooking, under a severe penalty.
With the Chippewas it is the moose-nose,
with the Wood Crees some part of the wild-

goose, and with the Dog-ribs the reindeer
head. A peculiarity of the Hudson Bay
Company's tariff, which has been considera-
bly misrepresented, is that far higher prices,
in proportion to their value, are paid to the
Indians for inferior furs than for the finer
ones. The object of this regulation is sim-
ply to prevent the undue hunting of the
more expensive . furs. " I fear," says Dr.
Rae, " that little can be done for these
northern Indians, unless they can be rea-
soned out of their prejudices and supersti-
tions, which, with their imprudences and
wastefulness, are the cause of their being
so poor."

Ass's Milk for Infants. — M. Parrot, phy-
sician at the Hospital for Assisted Children
in Paris, has recently made a report of the
success which has attended the efforts he
has made to introduce an improved system
of alimentation into the nursery of that in-
stitution. His conclusions, confirmed as
they are by the observations of his colleague,
M. Tarnier, who had the charge of an im-
portant class of young nurses, deserve the
particular attention of hospital and munici-
pal administrations. Good nurses are very
scarce, and it is hard to keep a strict watch
upon the children consigned by the public
charities to their care. On the other hand,
a goodly number of these poor little ones
come into the world afflicted with diseases
which forbid their being committed to a
nurse, because they would be in danger of
infecting her. At the Children's Hospital,
where the proportion of these wretched in-
fants is always considerable, it has been
found necessary to feed them from the bot-
tle in the halls of the infirmary. Notwith-
standing the most intelligent care, this means
has not been efficient to restore the strength
of the infants, who were, in fact, nearly
moribund with disease contracted in their
mother's womb. M. Parrot had a single
chance to save them and tried it ; it was
to nurse them directly at the teat of an
animal. The nursery which has been es-
tablished in the gardens of the Hospital
for Assisted Children has been in operation
for about a year, and the results of the ex-
periments have been so satisfactory that no
reason exists for waiting for a longer trial
before making them known. In the face

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Ass's Milk Nursery at the Hospital for Assisted Children, Paris.

of the preliminary difficulties in personal
instruction and the insufficient number of
animals at the disposal of the hospital, the
rate of mortality has been greatly reduced.
The infants were at first fed with goat's
milk, but it was soon found that ass's milk
was better for them ; and they are now all
fed with milk which they draw directly from
the teat of the animal. One, two, and some-
times three children are presented to the ass
at the same time, being held at the teat in
the arms of the nurse, and the operation is
performed with wonderful ease. Numbers
speak most eloquently of the success of the
method. During six months, eighty-six
children afflicted with congenital and con-
tagious diseases were fed at the nursery.
The first six were fed, by stress of par-
ticular circumstances, with cow's milk from
the bottle ; only one of them recovered.
Forty-two were nursed at the teat of the
goat ; eight recovered, thirty-four died.
Thirty-eight were nursed at the teat of the
ass ; twenty-eight recovered, ten died. In
the face of such results there can be hardly
any hesitation in declaring that in hospitals,

at least, the best method of feeding new-
born children, who can not, for any rea-
son, be confided to a nurse, is to put them
to suck directly from the teat of an ass.
The virtues of ass's milk have not waited
for recognition till this late day. Paris and
other large cities have, for many years, en-
joyed the visits of troops of asses which
have been brought in to supply the restora-
tive liquid to the sick and feeble. If we
may credit the legend, the use of this milk
was introduced into France during the reign
of Francis I. That brave monarch had
fallen into a state of extreme exhaustion, in
consequence of his over-exertion in military
and other exercises. His physicians not
being able to produce any change in his con-
dition, a Jew was brought from Constanti-
nople, who prescribed simply a beverage of
ass's milk ; he took it, according to the
chronicle, and became better. Ass's milk
owes the advantages which it possesses over
that of goats to its chemical composition,
the distinguishing feature of which is that
it contains less plastic substance and butter
than goat's milk. Like mother's milk, it

P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY.

427

forms a precipitate of little isolated flakes
easily soluble in an excess of gastric juice.
It does not load the stomach of the sickly
and puny infants, who ought to be spared
all possible difficulty in digestion. Mare's
milk would be, if it were easy to get, a still
better substitute for mother's milk. It has
nearly the same composition, and M. Ber-
ling, a Russian physician who has tried it,
has found in it all the qualities necessary
to sustain new-born children.

Aborigines of the Isthmus. — Mr. E. G.

Barney has given in the " American Anti-
quarian " an account of the history and
present condition of the native races of the
United States of Colombia. The territory
of that republic, now divided into nine
States and six Territories, was inhabited at
the time of the discovery and conquest,
from 1498 to 1545, by a dense population,
which was variously estimated at from eight
million to twenty million souls. The inhab-
itants of the State of Panama were in vari-
ous stages of advancement, " from dwellers
in the tree-tops to a degree of civilization
very much superior to that of Britain at the
time of the Roman conquest, or indeed at
the time the Saxons ruled the island." Co-
lumbus in one of his letters speaks of his
brother having seen a house devoted to the
dead, and containing many well-embalmed
bodies, over which were wooden slabs en-
graved with the figures of various animals,
and one bearing a good portrait of the de-
ceased. During a journey in the interior,
this brother found a dense population, en-
tirely agricultural, and passed at one place
eighteen miles through continued fields of
corn. The inhabitants of the coasts and
islands wore little clothing, but valuable or-
naments of gold, and these appear to have
been imported from other states, being
bought for gold-dust, dried fish, and prod-
ucts of the soil. Balboa and his forces
were entertained in the spacious house of a
cacique, in one of the rooms of which were
kept the embalmed ancestors of the chief
for many generations, and which was sur-
rounded by large grounds with towering
palm-trees and gardens and orchards. These
people, who appear to have compared favor-
ably with most European nations before the
invention of gunpowder, are believed to

have been of the same race with the North
American Indians, but agricultural in their
habits. Their weapons of Avar were bows
and arrows, darts, lances, war-clubs, etc.
Their implements of husbandry were stone
axes and sharpened sticks hardened in the
fire, and their mills were smooth stones,
rubbed together with the hand. Their nets
for fishing were made of the fibers of the
Agave Americana, and their hooks were
made from turtle-shells. On the head-wa-
ters of some of the tributaries of the Atrato
" were found one tribe of very skillful arti-
sans in golden ornaments ; another equally
skillful in spinning and weaving cotton
cloths, nets, hammocks, etc., the former be-
ing very tastefully colored ; and another
tribe adjacent were agriculturists, but
showed unusual taste in adorning the sur-
roundings of their homes with gardens,
fruit-orchards, etc. One tomb is mentioned
as having been artistically constructed, from
which the sum of forty thousand dollars
was taken by Cesar and his party. . . .
These tribes are said to have had adorato-
rios, and a system of religious belief too
variously stated to enable me to form any
opinion of its character." In the upper
valley of the Cauca, on the slopes and val-
leys of two immense mountain-ranges, dwelt
many tribes, either wholly agriculturists or
partly agriculturists and partly fishermen,
or manufacturers of salt, golden ornaments,
or cotton cloth, etc. Many of the tribes in
this valley were considerably advanced in
culture ; some had the streets of their
towns wide and regular ; some were manu-
facturers of cotton goods ; one manufact-
ured golden ornaments, and two made salt
by boiling down saline waters. It cost much
Castilian blood to subdue these people, but,
finding that they could not contend against
the superior weapons of the Europeans, they
generally refused to plant, and in two years
the Spaniards were compelled to begin to
introduce negroes to till the ground so lately
occupied by a happy and contented people.
" Along the eastern side of the Gulf of Da-
rien and along the northern slopes of the
Abibe, the descendants of the independent
tribes, whose poisoned arrows defeated
nearly every attempt to penetrate their
country, still hold their native land as free
from the intruder as when the European

428

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

invader first attempted its conquest. . . .
An infinity" of mounds was found in one
locality, and twenty-four human figures in
wood in one of the temples, and golden
bells outside, " which gave out sweet chimes
in ever-varying tones." Some of the
mounds contained ornaments, in imitation
of every form of life, from the ant to a hu-
man being, and of every value from $10 to
$30,000.

Waste of the World's Forests.— When
the forests of such a country as Cyprus were
destroyed, said Mr. Thistelton Dyer in a dis-
cussion in the British Society of Arts, it was
like a burned cinder. Many of the West
Indian Islands are in much the same condi-
tion, and the rate with which the destruction
takes place when once commenced is almost
incredible. In the Island of Mauritius, in
1S35, about three fourths of the soil was in
the condition of primeval forest, viz., 300,000
acres ; in 1879, the acreage of woods was
reduced to 'ZO/lOO ; and in the next year,
when an exact survey was made by an In-
dian forest officer, he stated that the only
forest worth speaking about was 35,000
acres. Sir William Gregory says that in
Ceylon, the eye, looking from the top of a
mountain in the center of the island, ranged
in every direction over an unbroken extent
of forest. Six years later the whole forest
had disappeared. The denudation of the
forests is accompanied by a deterioration in
the soil ; and the Rev. R. Abbay, who went
to Ceylon on the eclipse expedition, calcu-
lated, from the percentage of solid matter in
a stream, that one third of an inch per an-
num was being washed away from the culti-
vated surface of the island. In some colo-
nics the timber was being destroyed at such
a rate as would soon lead to economic diffi-
culties. In Jamaica, nearly all the timber
required for building purposes has already
to be imported. In New Brunswick, the
hemlock-spruce is rapidly disappearing, one
manufacturer in Boiestown using the bark
of one hundred thousand trees every year
for tanning. In Demerara, one of the most
important and valuable trees, the green-
heart, is in a fair way of being exterminat-
ed. They actually cut down small saplings
to make rollers on which to roll the large
trunks. In New Zealand, Captain Walker

says he fears that the present generation will
see the extermination of the Kauri pine, one
of the most important trees. All these facts
show that this is a most urgent question,
which at no distant date will have to be
vigorously dealt with.

Professor Hoggius on Comets.— Profess-
or Iluggins endeavored, in a recent lecture
on comets, to distinguish as clearly as pos-
sible between what we know about those
bodies, and what is only speculation. Some
comets have become permanent members
of our system, while others probably visit
us once only, never to return. It de-
pends upon a comet's velocity whether its
orbit shall take the shape of a returning
curve or not. If the velocity, at the earth's
distance from the sun, exceeds twenty-six
miles a second, the comet will go off into
space, never to come back to us. The small
portion of the comet's life during which we
are able to study it — when it is in a condi-
tion of extreme excitement, in consequence
of its nearness to the sun — is quite unlike
its ordinary humdrum existence, when it has
only a nucleus and no tail. Spectroscopic
observations of comets show that they shine
with an original light, the bands of which
indicate a composition of carbon combined
with hydrogen, and also with a reflected
light, the lines of which indicate the pres-
ence of a nitrogen compound of carbon.
Moreover, "certain minor modifications of
the common type of spectrum are often
present, and show, as was to be expected,
that the conditions prevailing in different
comets, and, indeed, in any one comet from
day to day, are not rigidly uniform." The
study of meteorites, Mr. Iluggins suggests,
may throw some light on the constitution of
the nuclei of comets, which are probably
similar to them, and therefore solid. The
tails have been supposed to be gaseous mat-
ter sent off by the sun's repulsive action.
The gases are probably not products of de-
composition, but matter that has been oc-
cluded. Experiments so far throw little
light on the question whether cyanogen is
present in combination or otherwise within
the comet, or whether it is found at the
time by the interaction of carbonaceous and
nitrogenous matter. In the latter case we
should have to admit a high temperature,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

429

which would be in favor of the view of an
electric origin of the comet's light. The
curved forms of the tails of comets, and
their greater densit}' on the convex side,
admit of explanation on the supposition
that they are matter repelled from the sun.
On this hypothesis, also, a comet would
suffer, of course, a large waste of material
at each return to perihelion, since the nu-
cleus would be unable to gather up again to
itself the scattered matter of the tail ; and
this view is in accordance with the fact that
no comet of short period has a tail of any
considerable magnitude. There seems to
be a rapidly growing feeling among physi-
cists that both the self-light of comets and
the phenomena of their tails belong to the
order of electrical manifestations.

The Snnken Southern Continent again.

— The French Academy of Sciences recently
had before it the question of the former
existence of the hypothetical Southern Con-
tinent. M. Emile Blanchard presented the
condition of living faunas and floras as
affording evidence of the former existence
of such a continent. Additional proof was
suggested by the examination of the charts
of the sea-depths, which show that the whole
region where the lands that may be regarded
as the remains of a continent are located is
one of comparatively shallow water ; beyond
this space, the seas are very deep. The
large accumulations of remains of moas that
are observed in small districts indicate that
an enormous number of those gigantic birds
must have existed in New Zealand at no
very remote period. It is hard to believe
that their extinction can have been brought
about by the Maories, never very numerous.
Physical events must probably have been
the primary cause of their destruction.
While they were scattered over an extensive
territory, their existence was easy ; as the
land sunk from under them, they had to take
refuge in the spaces that remained above
water. Under the new conditions the moas
would have perished by hundreds wherever
they became crowded together in too great
numbers. Thus the extinction of these
birds lends further probability to the hy-
pothesis of the sinking of a southern con-
tinent. We are still without sufficient in-
formation respecting the floras, especially

do we lack precise knowledge of the ento-
mological fauna of the little islands which
are suspected of being the remains of a
continent. M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards re-
marked that it seemed hard to believe that
the Mascarene Islands, small as they are, and
apparently so little favorable to the vigor of
their respective faunas, can each have been
the cradle of species so well characterized
and so different from those that exist else-
where. More probably each of the volcanic
cones constituting the nucleus of those isl-
ands existed before the lands were sunk to
a considerable extent, and served as the
last refuge for the now extinct zoological
population of the neighboring region. This
fauna has such points of resemblance with
those of New Zealand and other parts of
the Antarctic region, that we can not hesi-
tate to class it with the Austral faunas. It
may, thus, possibly have extended farther
south. We are thus brought to the idea of
a great land formerly existing in the part
of the Atlantic Ocean now occupied by the
immense masses of marine plants commonly
known as kelp. The absence of mammalia
from any region does not particularly indi-
cate that the land was unfitted for them,
but that it was separated from the rest of
the globe before mammalia appeared.

The Decline of Life-insurance. — The

English life-insurance agents arc remarking
upon the fact that a pause has come in the
expansion of their business. This may be
partly owing to a change in the general dis-
position to insure, in consequence of the
growth of the idea that the same end may
be reached by saving ; partly by the increas-
ing age at which the insuring classes marry ;
and partly by the vigorous and successful
competition of American offices, which seem
to be offering better security and better
terms. The " Spectator " thinks that these
causes are relatively insignificant, and that
the main reason for the decline of insurance
" is a desire on the part of the public
for less trouble, more security, and better
terms." It suggests that the companies re-
gard themselves too much in the light of
benefactors of the human species, and not
as much as they ought in the light of trades.
men anxious for custom. " At present
the insurer is treated as a swindler, to be

43°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

guarded against, and cross-questioned, and
watched ; and, as he seldom insures in com-
plete free-will, but is compelled by his rela-
tives, or his wife's relatives, or his creditors,
he is unusually and unduly affected by his
treatment." The minuteness of the medi-
cal inquiry required as a preliminary to in-
surance operates as a deterrent. The can-
didate does not like to have symptoms
discovered by an over-zealous examiner
which arc invisible to laymen, and even to
himself ; " to have all his weak places found
out ; to stand a cross-examination from a
man he did not select, and regards, for the
moment, as an enemy, as to his habits of
life ; or to run the risk of the shock involved
in a rejection, for reasons left unexplained."
Insurance is a business in which a much
slighter annoyance than this will turn a
waverer, and induce him to resolve that he
will save his money to himself. The value
of the inquiry is, moreover, vastly overrated.
The physician may be able to decide upon
the candidate's bodily condition at the mo-
ment, but he can not decide what it will be
three months hence, nor estimate " that
quality of vitality which, and not health, is
the question for the insurance-office." Per-
sons who seem almost at the point of death
frequently live for years ; while those who
appear most vigorous are as subject as any
to quick death from fever. Persons also
hesitate to insure because they can never
understand the financial condition of the
company, or satisfy themselves that they
can get back the money they pay in premi-
ums. More clear statements of accounts
would commend the offices to a degree of
confidence they do not now enjoy ; and a
provision by which the loss of premiums al-
ready paid in, in case of default, would be
obviated, would go far toward strengthen-
ing the courage of the weak, and toward
meeting the secret apprehension of the in-
tending insurer that he might not be able
to keep up his insurance.

Coeval Grades of Civilization. — A writer
in " Blackwood's Magazine " has found, in
the Island of Coll, of the Hebrides, evidence
of the co-existence of widely removed de-
grees of civilization at an extremely remote
antiquity. The storm of December, 1S79,
which caused the destruction of the Tay

Bridge, also effected the removal of a few
inches of sand from the bottom of a deep
sand-valley near the castle, and exposed a
number of old dwellings and human remains.
Among the remains were kitchen-middens
like those of Denmark, composed of littoral
shells ; bones and teeth of wild and domes-
tic animals, split up for the sake of their
marrow ; chips of flint, all unpolished or
paleolithic ; and many fragments of rude,
unglazed pottery. Along with these, in one
of the heaps, were two curious bronze im-
plements or ornaments, one of them a rich
penannular brooch, of considerable beauty
and finish, jeweled in twelve holes, and
bearing distinct traces of having been gilt.
The other ornament was a bronze pin, which
had apparently been molded. Here, then,
" at the most remote point of the prehistoric
life of Coll to which we can reach, we find
man, if a savage, still a person of taste, who
could appreciate high art, and knew how to
supply the wants of the dandy." These
people carried on a commerce, for they had
flints, which are not found in Coll, or any-
where near it, and were acquainted with the
art of sailing, for their flints must have
been brought from the south of England.
The antiquity of the remains is estimated
from their geological situation. They lie
in the bottom of a shifting-sand valley,
with large masses of sand around them, in a
situation where no man would have ventured
to settle if the sand had then been in the
neighborhood to anything like the extent
it is now. The sand is the result of the
disintegration of the shells of snails which
live on the island, and must, the most of
it, have accumulated since the village was
occupied. A palaeolithic age and a con-
siderable degree of civilization were coeval
then in the Hebrides, and they are coeval
there now. At Tiree, which is separated
from Coll by a channel only two miles wide,
craggans and other articles of pottery, ex-
actly similar to these paleolithic ones of
Coll, are manufactured and used at this day.
" The old woman of Tiree, in this very year,
takes the brown, stiff clay at her cabin-
door, picks the pebbles out of it, pounds it
down and softens it with a rude wooden
mallet, molds it into shape with her rough,
horny hands, and, without the aid of a pot-
ter's wheel, ornaments it, after a time-hon-

NOTES.

431

ored fashion, with a little stick or her
thumb-nails ; places the rude vessel thus
formed — a kind of bowl or cup — in the
strong heat of the sun, or before the blaze
of the peat-fire, and so produces a rough,
unglazcd craggan, out of which she drinks
her milk, and in which she infuses her tea.
And all the while — let it be noted with all
the emphasis at our command — several of
her neighbors, with whom she is in daily
intercourse, and with whom her teacher has
been in daily intercourse, possess and use
some of the finest ware that Leek or Burs-
1cm can produce. All round here, even in
Tiree, are products of advanced art ; but
this native artist goes on her way unheed-
ing all change and all advance, and turn-
ing out her unglazed ware as her ancestors
had done — though probably in a superior
style of art and workmanship — for per-
haps thousands of years." Another fact
to be noticed about these prehistoric re-
mains is " that, of existing ' Celtic ' brooches
and penannular rings exhumed from great
depths, the most highly finished, both in
form and ornamentation, design and work-
manship, are certainly the oldest," all show-
ing that there has " at least been a relapse
in a particular art."

Birds in Cold Weather.— M. F. Lescu-
yer has published some interesting observa-
tions concerning the power that was shown
by the birds of his district of the valley of
the Marne, France, for resisting the severe
cold of the winter of 1879-80. The spar-
rows, finding shelter and food around the
houses, passed the season fairly well, but
some of them perished in the roads and gar-
dens ; they became more scarce toward the
end of the winter, and lost all their liveli-
ness. The partridges gave way under sixty-
one days of cold and hunger, and those that
survived fell an easy prey to the hawks. A
private watchman caught more than thirty
with his hands, warmed them up, and let
them loose again. The owls in the lofts
and steeples could not resist the cold, and
fell dead to the ground, or took refuge in
the houses, where they were captured. The
stomachs of all these birds were empty or
nearly empty. The crows, which range over
a larger extent of land than the former birds,
which may be called sedentary birds, came
nearer to the houses when the cold was at

its worst, and considerable numbers of them
were seen during the whole winter in the
barn-yards and fields. Some of them came
into the court-yards to eat with the pigeons,
but many were frozen to death on the limbs
where they roosted. The few birds of pas-
sage that staid in the country to winter
showed very unequal powers of resistance.
The bullfinches and grossbeaks did not seem
to suffer, but the larks, yellow-hammers,
greenfinches, robin - redbreasts, magpies,
blackbirds, and jays were decimated. Never
were so few birds seen in the woods at that
season as in the following spring. Birds of
passage, coming from the north to seek a
milder climate in France, were disappointed.
Domestic birds would have suffered greatly
but for the shelter and feeding they en-
joyed ; fowls were worse affected than web-
footed birds. The winter to which these
observations relate was one of the severest
ever experienced in France, and was very
much like one of our Northern winters.

NOTES.

Dr. D. E. Salmon has pursued parallel
investigations with those of M. Pasteur, of
the microbe of hen cholera, and has conclu-
sively satisfied himself of the accuracy of
the results announced by the latter. lie
regards his researches as demonstrating that
the virulent liquids of the fowl's body con-
tain micrococci, that these can be cultivated,
and that liquids in which bacteria are cul-
tivated produce the disease by inoculation.
His experiments indicate that the activity of
the virus is destroved at a temperature of
182° Fahr.

George II. K. Thwaites, Director of the
Royal Botanic Garden at Peradcniga, Cey-
lon, died September 1 1th. He was appointed
to the position in 1849, and in connection
with it published in 185S-'64 an enumera-
tion of the plants of Ceylon (" Enumeratio
plantarum Zeylanice"). He was active in
introducing to the island the cultivation of
cinchona, tea, cocoa, Liberian coffee, and the
India-rubber tree.

According to Mr. G. Macloskie, the elm-
leaf beetle hibernates in cellars and attics
in countless numbers. Three broods are
brought forth in a season. This destructive
insect is found only in the Eastern States
and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Poison is the most complete remedy for it
— one pound of London purple to one hun-
dred gallons of water, squirted up into the
tree.

432

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Louis Palmieri, Professor of Physics
in the University of Naples and Director of
the Seismological Observatory on Mount Ve-
suvius, has recently died, at the age of sev-
enty-five years. He was appointed to the
two posts in connection with which he has
gained scientiiic renown in 1854, and has
since pursued the study of earthquakes and
the phenomena associated with them, with a
real devotion. lie was the inventor of an
electro-magnetic seismograph, by which the
most delicate indications of subterranean
action could be detected.

M. Potel has recently submitted to the
French Society of Encouragement a new
substance, which he has named, after him-
self, " poteline," and which appears to be
susceptible of numerous applications. It is
a mixture of gelatine, glycerine, and tannin,
and is, according to the inventor, absolutely
impermeable to the air. When warmed, it
becomes liquid, or nearly so, and takes all
the contours of an object. M. Potel has
made corks of it, which form an economical
substitute for metallic capsules, and secure
an hermetic closing. lie has used it as a
coating to preserve meat. At a temperature
of 112°, it envelops the meat, kills the
genus of putrefaction, and prevents any
new germ passing in. According to M.
Potel, meat thus treated will retain all its
freshness for two months.

According to the experiments of M.
Demarcay, the metals which are generally
regarded as fixed, even iron, give out real
vapors at relatively low temperatures. Cad-
mium, for example, volatilizes at 25*7° and
zinc at 302°. Magnesia had already been
found to be volatile below a red heat, when
acted upon by water and chloride of silicon.

With the aid of M. Lippman's electrom-
eter, M. Trousseau has succeeded in meas-
uring the electrical conductibility of the
poorer conductors, particularly of glass.
Common glass is very perceptibly conduct-
ive, Bohemian glass is less so, while cut-
glass has no sensible conducting powers.
M. Dumas regards this classification as re-
peating from the electrical point of view the
one which he has established as dependent
on the presence of alkaline salts in the
vitreous mass ; of which cut-glass has none,
Bohemian glass very little, and common glass
a considerable quantity.

Admiral Count Feodor Petrovitch
Lutke, founder of the Russian Geograph-
ical Society and President of the St. Peters-
burg Academy of Sciences, died in August
last. His name is identified to a considerable
extent with the history of Russian polar and
exploring expeditions, and with the discov-
ery of some island groups in the Pacific.
He had published narratives of his Arctic
expeditions and of a voyage round the world.

The fact that an aniline black can be
formed with vanadium has provoked inves-
tigation into the feasibility of the produc-
tion of that metal for commerce. MM.
Osmond and G. AVitz have found a consid-
erable source of supply in the foundrj--sco-
rias of Creuzot, France, which contain two
per cent of vanadic acid. The scorias have
only to be treated with hydrochloric acid to
obtain from them a green liquor which can
be used directly in dyeing.

It has been urged against the theoretical
importance of the agency of insects in fer-
tilizing flowers, that the insects relied upon
are rare upon mountain-heights, where the
flowers that should be fertilized by them
are still abundant. The observations of
M. Ch. Musset, of Grenoble, France, which
range up to 10,000 feet in height, tend
greatly to break the force of this objection.
He finds that all the orders of insects are
represented to the height of T,400 feet, and
that the number of nectar-seeking insects is
proportionate to the number of flowers. The
hours of wakefulness and of sleep of the
nyctitropic flowers — the number of which is
greater than is supposed — and those of the
insects are synchronous. The apparent num-
ber of nectar-seeking insects, also, is related
to the number of their favorite flowers.

JoriANNES Theodor Eeinhart, Professor
of Zoology at the University of Copenhagen,
and Inspector of theNatural History Museum
of that city, died October 23d, aged sixty-six.
He was eminent in ornithology, and was au-
thor of a memoir on the birds of the Cam-
pos of Brazil, and of numerous papers in the
scientific periodicals of Copenhagen.

M. Bergeron has produced imitations of
the forms of lunar craters, by turning a
current of gas into a melted metallic mass
at the moment when solidification is about
to begin. He obtained exact representations
of the different varieties of hollows shown
upon the moon by using different metallic
mixtures.

Professor Sollas, of Bristol, has pro-
posed to the British Association a scheme
for securing a complete record of published
scientific work, the essential feature of which
is, that each nation furnish a record of its
own work and of that only, and exchange
with all other nations for their records.
National committees are to attend to the
preparation of the records, the transmission
of exchanges, the translating and the com-
position of the records into a single work,
and an International Congress is to take care
of the uniformity and the successful work-
ing out of the scheme.

TnE death is announced, at forty-three
years of age, of M. Georges Leclanche, the
inventor of the oxide of manganese constant
elements.

IIENRI MILNE-EDWARDS.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1883.

THE AFKICAN IN THE UNITED STATES.

By Professor E. W. GILLIAM.

THE future of the African in the United States is, in the judg-
ment of many, the gravest question of the day. It must, from
its nature, swell in volume and thrust itself forward more and more ;
and though the evils as depicted in these pages he in their worst forms
comparatively remote, yet, if there he real grounds for them, the time
for action in seeking and applying a remedy lies in the present. The
far-reaching and critical character of the subject demands that it
should be approached without political bias, and treated solely from
the point of view of the national welfare.

In this spirit the reader is referred to the tabulated figures on a
succeeding page, derived from an analysis of the census of the United
States, and of several of the Southern States, for each decade from
1830 to 1880 inclusive, and showing the rate per cent of increase or
decrease of the white and the black population for the basis of the
following discussion.

The very high rate of increase for the whites in the United States,
in the first, second, and third decades, is due to a copious immigration
adding itself to a lesser population. As the population of a country
swells, and tbe immigration remains about the same, the rate per cent
of increase falls.

The enormous rate of increase in several of the States, in the early
decades, notably Arkansas and Mississippi, is altogether abnormal, and
readily accounted for. These were then new regions, just opening to
settlers, and the older slave States poured into their rich bosoms an
overwhelming tide. Multitudes of whites, with and without slaves,.
like bees from a hive, swarmed forth from tbe older States, to settle
in these cheap and productive parts. Hence it is that South Carolina,,
vol. xxii. — 23

434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for an example, shows, from 1830 to 1840, an increase of only one
half per cent for the whites, and three per cent for the blacks, while for
Arkansas the corresponding figures are two hundred and six per cent,
and three hundred and thirty-two per cent. Only when States have
been fairly settled, and peculiar causes affecting population removed,
does an enumeration reveal the natural increase of a people ; and this,
as a wide and accurate observation in the United States has shown,
can not be, under the most favorable circumstances, above thirty-five
per cent — at least for the white race.

Thoughtful minds awaited with special interest the results of the
census for 1880. It closed the first decade of freedom for the blacks ;
and whether this race, under its new conditions, was an increasing or
decreasing one — whether it was increasing more rapidly than the
whites, or otherwise — these were questions of critical and far-reaching
importance.

It is seen that over the United States the gain for the whites has
been twenty-nine per cent, that for the blacks thirty-four per cent, and
that the latter is by much the highest figure reached by the blacks in
the several decades. Referring to the figures of the last decade, be-
longing to the States, it is further seen that, while the gain in all
these States, both for white and black, is remarkably high, the gain in
several instances — as in the case of Arkansas^ South Carolina, and
Mississippi (for the blacks) — is too high to be credible, transcending as
it does the natural procreative power of the most prolific race. (The
reader will remember that from 1870 to 1880 the population of these
States received little or no accession from immigration.) The gain in
population, immediately succeeding a continued and desolating Mar,
must be more or less abnormally large. It is readily accounted for
by the separation of husbands and wives, the procrastination of mar-
riage on the part of the young, and the prevailing destitution, at least
comparative destitution, accompanying a state of war. But, with
every allowance on these grounds, the rate of increase in the States
just mentioned remains incredible, and either the census for 1870, or
that for 1880, must be in error.

The error is doubtless in the former. The census for 1870 was
made under the old law of 1850, a law which those well qualified to
judge deem, in some important particulars, grossly defective. Again,
the enumerators were, for the most part, negroes, often ignorant and
inefficient ; and it is on evidence that the enumeration of coixnties (at
least as regards South Carolina) was not unfrequently made at court
sessions and on muster-grounds, and not by a house-to-house canvass.
The exceedingly high rate of increase in South Carolina as a State,
and particularly in certain districts thereof, induced the Census Super-
intendent for 1880 to send thither a special agent, for the purpose of
ascertaining the facts. Not all the State was canvassed, but enough
to substantially verify the census for 1880 ; and this, with the further

THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 435

consideration that the census for 1880 was made under a new and
improved law, and by enumerators who, as a body, were thoroughly
qualified, ought to be considered as settling the matter, and placing
the error at the door of the preceding census. It is to be observed, in
passing, that if the error, as practically it does, bears equally against
white and black alike, however the figures for the two races, taken ab-
solutely, may vary from the truth, yet are they still a proximate guide,
considered relatively, to the comparative rate of increase of the races.

(1.)

United States.

(2.)
Alabama.

White.

Black.

White.

Black.

1830 to 1840.

. . .34 percent.

. 23 pe

r cent.

1830 to 1840. .

.76 per cent.

114 percent.

1840 to 1850.

QQ U

.23

u

1840 to 1850. .

.21 "

35

1850 to 1860.

...38 "

.22

u

1850 to 1860. .

.21 "

. 27 "

1860 to 1870.

...24 "

. 9

<<

1860 to 1870..

. 1 " loss.

8 "

1870 to 1880.

...29 "

.34

u

1870 to 1880. . .

.27 "

. 26

(3.)
Arkansas.

(4.)
South Carolina.

White.

Black.

White.

Black.

1830 to 1810.

. . .206 percent.

.332 per cent.

1830 to 1840. .

. \ per cent

. 3 per cent.

1840 to 1850.

...Ill " .

.133

u

1840 to 1850. .

. 6 "

.17 "

1850 to 1860.

...98 " .

.133

«

1850 to I860..

. 6 "

. 5

1860 to 1S70.

...11 " .

. 9

<<

1860 to 1870..

. \ "loss.

. 1 "loss

1870 to 1S80.

...63 " .

. 72

11

1870 to 1880. .

.35 "

.45 "

(5.)
North Carolina.

(6.)

Mississippi.

White.

Black.

White.

Black.

1830 to 1840.

... 2 per cent .

. 1 per cent.

1830 to 1840. . .

.155 percent.

. 197 per cent.

1840 to 1850.

...14 "

.17

a

1840 to 1850. .

.64 " .

. 57 "

1850 to 1S60.

...14 "

.14

it

1850 to 1860. ..

.19 " .

. 40 "

1860 to 1S70.

...7 " .

. 8

<(

1860 to 1870. .

. 8 " .

• H "

1S70 to 18S0.

. . .28 "

(7.)
Louisiana.

.36

M

1870 to 1880. .

.25 " .

(8.)
Georgia.

. 47 "

White.

Black.

White.

Black.

1S30 to 1840.

. . .77 per cent.

. 53 per cent.

1830 to 1840...

.37 per cent.

.28 per cent.

1840 to 1850.

...61 "

.35

K

1840 to 1850. . .

.27 "

.35 "

1850 to 1860.

...39

.33

a

1850 to 1860...

.13

.20 "

1860 to 1870.

. .. 1 "

. 4

((

1860 to 1870. . .

. 8 " .

.17 "

1870 to 1880

.33

«

1870 to 1S80

97 "

.32 "

It is estimated that five per cent from the rate of gain for the
entire Southern blacks, as by census for 1880, is a fair allowance for
this error, making their real gain about thirty per cent. Yet, as an
obvious consideration points to the conclusion that the blacks will for
the future develop in the South under conditions more and more
favorable, it is not unreasonable to think that, in subsequent decades,
this five per cent will be regained.

That consideration is the more complete adjustment of the black
man to his new surroundings. His comparative helplessness imme-

436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

diately after emancipation was a condition adverse to his increase. The
absence of thrift, energy, and management, many think, marks negro
character at its best. It is certain that the contraries to these quali-
ties had, under a long condition of servitude, been abnormally devel-
oped. Emancipation found the negro without the master's care (and,
as a body, slaveholders, at least from motives of self-interest, were
humane), without the customary oversight and medical attention, de-
pendent, not self-reliant. No wonder that many of the negroes have
been worse off than under their former bondage ; that the burden of
life has been so often excessive ; that infanticide has been so often
resorted to, to lessen it ; and that death from want and exposure has
been so exceptionally frequent. A body of four million slaves, igno-
rant, uncivilized, and trained in habits of dependence, suddenly set
free, then invested with the ballot, and intoxicated with political
power, then checked, and in many instances violently checked, by
the necessary and wholesome self-assertion of the white race, that
they should have increased as they have done is astonishing, and can
be accounted for only by the remarkable fecundity of the African.
For the future the adverse influence to population, arising from this
cause, will become less and less potent. The negro, adjusted to his
surroundings, will work with more ease and effect. He is ascending
from the lowest round. Education must give him increased power to
accumulate, experience must improve his thrift, and, life passing under
better conditions, it is reasonable to think that in subsequent decades
he will add five per cent of increase to that of the past. We put this
rate at thirty -five per cent.

The gain for the whites in the last decade is very nearly thirty per
cent. This is to be docked in the Southern States to the extent of
five per cent for the error in the census of 1870. Since, however, this
error appertains only to the twelve million Southern whites, and the
census in regard to the thirty million Northern whites is accepted as
correct, the rate of increase for the total white population is a frac-
tion under twenty-nine per cent. Of this at least nine per cent should
be attributed to immigration. Immigration is now, and for a year or
two past has been, largely in excess of this figure, but probably not
for the past decade ; and the resultant is a gain of twenty per cent
for the entire native white population.

There is a wide, and, at first view, startling difference between the
twenty per cent for the whites and the thirty-five per cent for the
blacks. The solution is found in the superior fecundity of the latter.
This superiority, while it belongs to the blacks as a race, is strength-
ened for them — 1. As being the laboring class ; 2. As laboring under
favorable climatic conditions ; that is to say, living in a semi-tropical
region.

The laboring class is naturally the more fruitful class. In the
case of a laboring woman the child-bearing period is greater by a

THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 437

number of years than in one more delicately reared. Again, in esti-
mating fecundity, the pain and danger attendant upon parturition are
factors, and its comparative ease to the laboring woman, contrasted
with the profound and long-continued prostration it brings to the lady
of tender palms and jeweled fingers, is well known.

Again, the African on climatic grounds finds in the Southern coun-
try a more congenial home. In many districts there, and these by far
the most fertile, the white man is unable to take the field and have
health. It is otherwise with the African, who, the child of the sun,
gathers strength and multiplies in these low, hot, feverish regions.

The wide advantage, therefore, in the rate of increase on the side
of the African finds its solution in a superior natural fecundity, exert-
ing itself under these favoring conditions.

Now mark the following: The white population, increasing at
the rate of twenty per cent in ten years, or two per cent per annum,
doubles itself every thirty-five years. The black, increasing at the
rate of thirty-five per cent in ten years, or three and a half per cent
per annum, doubles itself in twenty years. Hence we find :

«

Whites in United States in 1880 (in round numbers) 42.000,000

« " 1915 " " 84,000,000

" " 1950 " " 168,000,000

" " 19S5 " " 336,000,000

Northern whites in 1880 30,000,000

" " 1915 60,000,000

" " 1950 120,000,000

" " 1985 240,000,000

Southern whites in 1880 12,000,000

" " 1915 24,000,000

" " 1950 48,000,000

" " 19S5 96,000,000

Blacks in Southern States in 1880 6,000,000

" " " 1900 12,000,000

" " " 1920 24,000,000

" " " 1940 48,000,000

" " " 1960 96,000,000

" " " 1980 192,000,000

Our interest is in the progress of population in the Southern States,
where the blacks almost altogether now are, and where they will con-
tinued to be massed more and more ; and above stand the significant
figures. These will be modified more or less by disturbing causes, the
most prominent being immigration. But even should immigration
ever take a pronounced Southern direction, yet immigration must
slacken, and before many years practically cease, while the black
growth must be perpetually augmenting, perpetually advancing its
volume ; and, every allowance being made, it is morally certain that,
in seventy or eighty years (as things now go) the blacks in every
Southern State will overwhelmingly preponderate.

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The second factor in our argument is the impossibility of fusion
between whites and blacks. The latter have been, and must continue
to be, a distinct and alien race. The fusion of races is the resultant
from social equality and intermarriage, and the barrier to this here is
insurmountable. The human species presents three grand varieties,
marked off by color — white, yellow, and black. One at the first, in
origin and color, the race multiplied and spread, and separate sections,
settled in different latitudes, took on under climatic conditions acting
with abnormal force in that early and impressionable period of the
race's age — took on (we say) different hues, which, as the race grew
and hardened, crystallized into permanent characteristics. Social affin-
ity exists among the families of these three groups. The groups
themselves stand rigidly apart. The Irish, German, French, etc., who
come to these shores, readily intermarry among themselves and with
the native population. Within a generation or two the sharpness of
national feature disappears, and the issue is the American whose mixed
blood is the country's foremost hope. It can not be — a fusion like
this between whites and blacks. Account for it as we may, the antip-
athy is a palpable fact which no one fails to recognize — an antipathy
not less strong amontj the Northern than amonsr the Southern wdiites.
However the former may, on the score of matters political, profess
themselves special friends to the blacks, the question of intermarriage
and social equality, when brought to practical test, they will not touch
with the end of the little finger. Whether it be that the blacks, be-
cause of their former condition of servitude, are regarded as a perma-
nently degraded class ; whether it be that the whites, from their his-
toric eminence, are possessed with a consciousness of superiority which
spurns alliance — the fact that fusion is impossible no one in his senses
can deny.

These, then, are the factors in our argument, and the source of the
inferences to follow : 1. That the black population is gaining on the
whites ; 2. That the former is, and must continue to be, a distinct and
alien people.

Two inferences follow — the first of a social character ; the second,
political :

1. The status of the black population, as a distinct and alien race,
condemns the race to remain, in perpetuum, the laboring class. If its
blood can not commingle with that of the whites, social advancement
ceases at an early stage ; the higher social planes are incapable of at-
tainment ; whereby is broken a fundamental social law that allows to
the individual full freedom to rise or fall in the social scale, without
hindrance from race prejudice or prestige.

That is the healthiest society which is the freest, which gives the
fullest play to individual intelligence and energy ; and in such a social
state we note a tendency on the part of the rich upper class to sink,
and the poor laboring class to rise ; we observe therein a social cycle

THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 439

at whose completion the rich and the poor, the upper and the lower
orders, are found, as a whole, to have changed places. It is a law of
slow action, but sure.

The causes are apparent. The sons of the rich eat daintily, exer-
cise daintily, keep late hours for resting and rising, are self-indulgent
and extravagant. There are, of course, exceptions. Undoubtedly,
however, the surroundings of the sons of wealth create tendencies this
way, toward effeminacy of body and uneconomical habits of mind.
These are downward tendencies, and, pressing through a cycle of
years, bring the descendants of the rich, as a class, to the social
bottom.

The poor, on the other hand, are compelled, by their condition of
life, to strength-giving exercise, and careful, saving methods in the
management of means. Robust bodies and thrifty ways give upward
tendencies, which, acting through the social cycle, lift the descendants
of these poor to the higher planes. Taking men in the mass, tenden-
cies and results are this way.

Now, as regards the blacks, this fundamental law is broken, and
the issue, in a state of society theoretically free, is approaching dis-
order.

• The blacks are an improving race, and the throb of aspiration is
quickening. Progress with the pure African is, indeed, slow. How
could it be otherwise ? A long dark night of barbarous ignorance in
his native land, succeeded on these shores by nearly a century of servi-
tude, wherein letters were denied him, and improvident, unthrifty
habits necessarily engendered, could rapid progress for the race, under
these circumstances, be rationally expected ? Advancement in mental
training and in economic science must needs be slow — but there is
advancement.

That portion of the colored population known as mulattoes show,
in mind and manners, a marked superiority, drawn from the side of
their white parentage. This element, though increasing among them-
selves, is not increasing (appreciably) from admixture of bloods ; be-
cause the white man can not now cohabit with negresses with the
impunity belonging to days of slavery. With all its gradations it
still, however, forms a very large class. They mingle freely with the
pure African on terms of perfect equality, have the African instinct,
and make a great factor in determining the average progress of the
race.

This laboring class, working upward along the social cycle, meets,
almost on the threshold of development, an impassable barrier. With
growing aspirations incapable of being realized, they are doomed to
remain where they have been, and be hewers of wood and drawers of
water. Individuals here and there, by force of peculiar talent and
fortunate circumstances, break through the opposing obstacle, and at-
tain high positions ; or such positions may be conferred in the interest

440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of some political party. The heart knows, however, that the incum-
bents are recognized with an involuntary wince. They are tolerated
by reason of their fewness. The mass of the blacks are held back in
their state of toil. It is the mandate of American instinct.

We say American instinct — which is, that America is for Ameri-
cans, not for German, Irish, or African, as such. The German here
rises and rules, not as a German ; nor the Irishman as an Irishman.
When the German gets out his naturalization papers, he theoretically
gets out of his German skin. Practically, he gets out of it in a gen- ,
eration or two, through intermarriage and association ; mingles freely
and equally with the mass of population ; and, in the attainment of the
highest social or political privilege or distinction, is limited solely by
the worth of his individuality. The rise and rule of the African must
be, according to American spirit, after the same method. Disappear-
ing in the mass of population, he must lose the African cast, and trans-
form himself, by intermarriage and social association, into an actual
American ; for he could be no American, however the letter of the
law might read, who, after the lapse of a century, should retain the
exclusive hue and affinity of a stranger race. But this transformation
is impossible, seeing the blacks stand apart from the whites, and make
a distinct and alien people. Any advancement of the blacks is an ad-
vancement of the African, as such ; and the advancement of individ-
uals, here and there, above the laboring level, is the vanguard of the
race's advancement.

The advancement of the blacks, therefore, becomes a menace to the
whites. No two free races, remaining distinctly apart, can advance
side by side, without a struggle for supremacy. The thing is impos-
sible. The world has never witnessed it, and a priori grounds are all
against it. Hence, the whites instinctively oppose the black invasion
(as it were), and seek to keep this people below the labor-line ; and a
large superiority, at present, in numbers, and a vastly larger superior-
ity in intelligence and wealth, make them easily, and perhaps without
conscious effort, successful.

But a fundamental social law is thus broken — a law, under whose
operation, in a free social state, the poor, lower, laboring class natu-
rally rise, while the rich upper class descend ; and no law, whatever
the sphere to which it belongs, can be broken with impunity. To the
discontent arising from this source may be traced the periodic exodus
movement among the negroes. Politicians, for party ends, have as-
signed other causes, and declared that " exodus " means bull-dozing,
Ku-kluxing, imposition, oppression, enforced pauperism, etc. These are
all wide of the mark. Since the Southern States have been under the
rule of its intelligent population, the blacks, as a whole, and in the
main, have been free in the exercise of political rights ; and, moreover,
they have prospered as never before. The underlying cause of the
exodus fever, stimulated to some extent by railroad men and other side

THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 441

agencies, is the broken social law obstructing the upward tendency of
the laboring class. Naturally they are uneasy and restless at the pros-
pect of being held perpetually in one place, and made the bottom caste
under a social status professedly free. Hence, these periodical up-
heavals and outflowings toward Kansas, Indiana, etc., in expectation
of relief hoped for in vain ; for there, too, they are no less a distinct
and alien race, and the same broken social law bears its issues.

But what will the upshot be, when the black population, advanc-
ing on the white, finally outnumbers it? The outlook is most serious.
It is a repetition of the Israelites in Egypt, a lower and laboring class
gaining in population on the upper, and, as a distinct and alien race,
causing apprehensions to the Egyptians. There is a point at which
mere numbers must prevail over wealth, intelligence, and prestige
combined. Unless relief comes, when that point approaches, woes
await the land. This dark, swelling, muttering mass along the social
horizon, gathering strength with education, and ambitious to rise, will
grow increasingly restless and sullen under repression, until at length
conscious, through numbers, of superior power, it will assert that
power destructively, and, bursting forth like an angry, furious cloud,
avenge, in tumult and disorder, the social law broken against it.

2. Treatment of the political aspect of our subject follows a simi-
lar line of .thought, and must needs be brief.

We take it for a certainty that a distinct and alien race like the
blacks will always, in the main, vote together. Why they all are now
Republicans is readily seen. But should present political parties
break up, and others be formed on new issues, the blacks would still
naturally go as a body. The circumstances under which they live
here, compelling them to stand together socially, will also morally
compel them to stand together politically. Confined injuriously by
a social barrier, they may be expected to develop abnormally the
natural race-instinct, and, under a powerful esprit de corps, cast a
solid ballot.

It is here to be said that we regard it as a mistake, both for the
country and for the interests of the Republican party (and this we
say with complete freedom' from political bias), that the enfranchise-
ment of the blacks followed immediately upon emancipation. The
glittering sentence in the inaugural of the late lamented President
Garfield, that there is no middle ground between citizenship and the
ballot, will scarcely bear examination. The ballot is not a natural
right, but a trust, to be granted or withheld for cause. The free
blacks, in the early part of the present century, were (if we mistake
not) a voting body. Experience, however, showing that the ballot in
their hands became a wide-spread source of corruption, and therefore
an evil, the privilege was withdrawn. It was a mistake, we conceive,
to have given this privilege to a people just freed from the bonds of
slavery, and still characterized, as a whole, by profound ignorance ;

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and, that no greater harm has resulted is, because white intelligence
has been able to exert a controlling influence and shape legislation.
Certainly, while the whites were disfranchised, and the blacks polit-
ically supreme, the state of the South was intolerable. Had the Re-
publican party, devoting its entire energies to the moral and intellect-
ual elevation of the blacks, deferred their enfranchisement to a more
reasonable day, when the race, in the mass, would be less unworthy of
the ballot, the power of that party throughout the South would have
been otherwise than it is to-day. The issue of the war had practically
settled and silenced the old Democratic State-rights doctrine. Not-
withstanding the war-engendered bitterness, a large white minority, if
not a majority, at the South — partly the remnants of the old-line
Whigs who antagonized the political tenets connected with the war's
beginning, partly converts to results which force had imposed, partly
recruits from moribund Democracy — these were ready, in good faith,
to accept the new order of affairs, and act with Republicanism ; and if
the Republican party, rejecting the mistaken policy of seeking a foot-
hold in the South through negro suffrage, had fostered the friendly
white element, it could easily have developed this element, aided by
executive patronage extending through a series of terms, into over-
whelming Republican strength. Under the course pursued the almost
extinct Democratic }3arty at once revived, from a pressing sense among
the whites of self-preservation. The negroes voting as a body on one
side, the whites necessarily became politically massed on the other. It
made little difference under what name they rallied. The term " Dem-
ocrat " had been opposed to Republican in days gone by, and was
now adopted. Yet thousands, banded under this party title, had no
sympathy with leading and distinctive Democratic doctrines, such as
those regarding the tariff, finance, or State rights. They were against
negro political supremacy, as meaning disaster to the land. It had
prevailed for a short period (just after the war), and left desolation in
its course. The ignorance and inexperience of this unlettered mass,
fresh from slavery, were immensely unequal to the science of enlight-
ened governing. For the whites it was a matter of life or death.
They became a " solid South," as any other people, similarly circum-
stanced, would have become. "Wealth and intelligence gave them the
victory, as it ever will, where numbers approach an equality — a vic-
tory that does not mean injury to the blacks, but which is the pledge
for good government and order — the proof whereof is the present
peaceful and prosperous condition of the Southern States, for the
blacks no less than for the whites, compared with their state of wretch-
edness, under negro political rule, in the days following immediately
upon the close of the war.

We must again ask the question, What, from this standpoint, will
the upshot be when the blacks numerically will so far exceed the
whites as to overcome the vantage that the superior wealth and in-

THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 443

telligence of the latter now give thern ? The outlook here is no less
serious. Whatever civic capability the blacks may have, it is now in
germ ; whatever governing aptitude the race may possess, it is at
present dormant. In the history of nations it has nowhere, as yet,
been exhibited. If this race in the United States is improving, its
improvement, as was to have been expected, is slow ; and in every
political virtue it will still be vastly below the whites, when in voting
strength its fecundity will have put it vastly beyond them— so far
beyond as to overcome every counter-influence, and give the political
reins entirely into its hands.

Who can doubt that, when this day comes, the blacks will obey a
race-instinct which all their surroundings will have powerfully tended
to develop, and vote blacks alone into office ? Thus have they done
wherever the power existed. Kept, as they are, a distinct and alien
race, no other issue is reasonably conceivable. And who can doubt
that, under this state of affairs — an inferior and incompetent race
completely dominating, by mere numbers, a superior one — the worse
disorders would ensue ? The whites would not submit, and a violent
and disastrous conflict of races must follow. The whites would hold
(1) that, while America is a nation governed by majorities, yet by
those who framed the Constitution it was never intended that a race
brought here as slaves, an inferior race, one kept distinct by this very
inferiority, should, merely through a superior fecundity, become polit-
ically supreme, and lord it over the land. They would hold (2) that
this political lordship would be ruinous to every interest ; that for a
short period subsequent to the close of the war it had partially pre-
vailed, and with the unhappiest results ; and that, should this lordship
become distinctively fastened upon a large section of the Union, the
incompetency of the negro to provide, legislatively, for the manifold
and complex interests of an advanced civilization, would arrest its
activities, paralyze its trade, and spread a decline throughout the en-
tire country.

These are real and gigantic evils gradually looming up, and they
merit the immediate and best attention of American statesmen.

Colonization, we conceive, is the remedy — a scheme which the far-
seeing Henry Clay so warmly advocated, though it cost him the presi-
dency. President Mr. Clay doubtless would have been had his oppo-
nents not raised against him the cry of being an abolitionist. But he
was no abolitionist. He was a colonizationist. In the negro element,
even in the relatively small pi-oportions it bore in his day, his political
sagacity saw an increasing danger. It was not only that the negro,
while in bondage, made a breach between the free and the slave States
(whereof the civil war was the issue), but his clear-sightedness saw
evil in the presence of the negro as a negro, whether bound or free.
The negro, he perceived, could not unite with any branch of the

444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whites, and in the mass of population lose race distinctiveness. He
was compelled to stand off by himself, a separate and alien people.
Like food incapable of digestion, and which lies in the stomach only
stimulative of disease, he remained in the body politic a foreign ele-
ment, without opportunity or power of assimilation, and a perpetual
source of alarm. Hence, Mr. Clay advocated colonization ; and happy
would it have been for the country if his views had prevailed, and the
slaves been bought up by the Government at an appraised rate, and
transported either to their native land or to some section provided for
them exclusively.

We have an impression that a move was made in Congress last
winter by some Senator, looking to the accprisition of territory in
Central America as a home for the blacks. Though nothing came of
it, it is matter for rejoicing that Congressmen are turning their eyes
this way. The sole ground whereon Ave favored ex-President Grant's
project to buy San Domingo was that it would afford a home for our
black population. Some home for them outside of this country must
be provided at an early day, or ultimately their presence here will lead
to complications and disorders of appalling character. The current
news from the South, amid much that is cheering, strengthens our
forebodings. There are a present peace and prosperity ; but, to an
attentive ear, mutterings of this storm are already beginning to be
heard.

The republic is so rich and so prosperous, and its future, from
some stand-points, so fair, that it seems invidious, perhaps, to mar the
picture and reveal a frightful evil slowly developing in its bosom.
Some would fain deem the danger imaginary ; and, even when fully
realized, the trouble, in its ultimate and worst forms, is comparatively
so remote that there is a tendency to forget it, or at least to transfer its
consideration to another day and generation. The remoteness of an
evil, however, does not carry with it remoteness in applying the rem-
edy. Let American statesmen of the present day be looking in the
direction we have indicated. A subject so vast and so momentous it
is the part of wisdom to regard before immediate threatenings compel
consideration. Assuredly, the question will more and more thrust
itself forward for solution. The black man is still the " irrepressible
conflict." Great difficulties, under any circumstances, must attend its
solution. Let it be solved while a peaceful adjustment is yet prac-
ticable, for there is a point beyond which the attempt to solve it
would involve the rupture of the republic.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY. 445

A PKEHISTORIC CEMETEEY.

By JOSEPH F. JAMES,

CUSTODIAN CINCINNATI SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

ABOUT ten miles from Cincinnati, along the Little Miami River,
is a locality which has long been known to the country people
as the " Potteiy-Field." The ground was strewed with fragments of
pottery, bones, arrow-points, and other remains of like character, and
the place was generally considered to be the site of an ancient work-
shop. The primitive forest still occupies the locality, and is made up
of oak, beech, elm, maple, Avalnut, etc. All around are found numer-
ous mounds or tumuli, most of them small. A few of these were
opened by Mr. Florian Gianque, in 1876, and some interesting things
found. But, in 1878, Dr. Charles Metz and other gentlemen interested
in archajology commenced a systematic exploration of the country
thereabout, and so much has been found that we are enabled to form
some idea of the habits, and get a glimpse into the life, of the people
who once lived in the immediate vicinity of the city of Cincinnati.

During the four years that the excavations have been carried on,
between six hundred and fifty and seven hundred skeletons have been
brought to light. Many of them are in an advanced state of decay,
and crumble to pieces on the slightest touch, while others, again, are
in a very good state of preservation. It can, therefore, hardly be in-
ferred that, because some of the skeletons are much decayed, they
are necessarily very old ; for, though we have well-preserved remains
of bones from Babylon, Nineveh, and Egypt, which are certainly
twenty-five hundred or three thousand years old, still the cases are
exceptional in which they are found in good condition after the lapse
of many years. Different kinds of soil and differences in climate
have much to do with the matter : for, in a dry and equable climate,
bones may resist for a long time the influences which would cause
their decay, while, in a moist climate, and with sudden and extreme
changes of temperature, such as we have here, any boue, unless buried
in peat, or subject constantly to heavy pressure, so as to become par-
tially fossilized, is liable to soon decay.

An examination of the skulls found in the cemetery, as it is called,
as well as the other parts of the skeleton shows some interesting facts.
In a paper by Dr. F. "YY. Langdon * is given a table of measurements
of the crania which shows that the brachycephalous skulls (those
with an index of breadth of "800 and over) f are largely in the major-
ity, there being fifty-two out of seventy-two of this character. None
of them, however, exhibit any signs of the flattening of the frontal

* " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural LTistory," vol. iv, pp. 237, cl seq.
\ The long diameter being taken as 100.

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bone, which is such a characteristic feature of the Natchez and. other
' Southern races of Indians. The Caribs of the West Indies and the Chi-
nooks of Oregon both flattened the heads of their children in infancy ;
and the skulls of the ancient Peruvians and the figures on the monu-
ments at Palenque show a remarkable flattening of the frontal. This
is generally considered to have been the natural form of the skull, to
have been the type of beauty cultivated by the Peruvians, Central
Americans, Toltecs, etc., and not to have been produced altogether by
compression. The peculiar form of skull became hereditary, and chil-
dren were born with this (to us) deformity.

Various forms of diseased bones are found among the human re-
mains. One of these is a peculiar anchylosis of the spinous and articu-
lar processes of some of the vertebra?, the bodies remaining free.*
It is supposed to have been the vertebral column of a female dwarf,
the skeleton of which presented several other points of interest.
Among the crania are several which have been fractured by some
blunt implement, and the fracture has been partially or completely
healed. Two other very interesting specimens are among the human
bones. One is the eleventh dorsal vertebra, in which is imbedded for
a quarter of an inch one of the small flint-points called war-arrows.
The other specimen is a sacrum in which there is imbedded a similar
point. This last was found in a pit with twenty-two skeletons,! and
doubtless belonged to an individual killed with the others in a battle,
all of the killed having been buried together. These specimens show
with what force the people could send their arrows. Both had entered
from the front of the body, passed through it, and were only stopped
by the vertebral column. Some of the long bones exhibit various
excrescences which have been referred to syphilitic diseases, and which
show that the people here buried were afflicted with that fearful
scourge which, as some one has expressed it, " turned Europe into a
charnel-house."

But the bones of an extinct race of men, interesting though they
may be, can tell us but little of their domestic habits, and it is to the
implements found here that we turn with greatest interest. These are
so abundant, and often of such a peculiar character, that we have much
to speculate upon. First of all is the remarkable circumstance of find-
ing so many implements of bone ; the abundance of which has gener-
ally been thought to be a proof of a low grade of civilization. But
probably their abundance or their rarity has been regulated also by
the age of the deposit, for, the older the deposit, the less likely it is
that the bone relics have resisted the action of time.

Many of the remains are of a peculiar character, unlike anything
found elsewhere, and speculations in regard to their origin and use are

* For a figure of this and various other diseased bones, see article in " Journal of the
Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iv, pp. 241-257.
f Ibid., vol. iv, p. 253.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY.

447

rife. Still other relics are strikingly like some found elsewhere, not
particularly in this country, but in Europe, as will be shown further
on. Among the most curious and anomalous of all are certain pecul-
iarly grooved bones, as represented in Fig. 1.* They are usually made

Fig. i.

of the leg-bones of the deer or elk. But few of the specimens are per-
fect, the majority having been broken by use and wearing away of the
bone. The groove is often highly polished, though scratches running
the long way are visible. These scratches were made in the manu-
facture or use of the instrument or tool, but what its use was no one
has been able satisfactorily to determine. Archaeologists are puzzled,
and pronounce them to be unique. It has been supposed by nearly
every one that they were used in dress-
ing skins, but no such scratches as are
observed could be made in that opera-
tion. Some have suggested that perhaps
they were made to serve some purpose
of ornamentation, but neither is this ex-
planation probable. It seems to me that
the groove has been the result of rub-
bing, for the purpose of polishing certain
other relics found here. There have been
found numbers of peculiar cylindrical
pieces of bone and horn, like Fig. 2, as
unlike anything found elsewhere as the
grooved bones ; and it seems probable
that these cylinders of bone have been
rubbed and polished in the grooved
bones. We find that the different-sized
cylinders fit well into the different-sized grooves, and certainly constant
rubbing would both round off and polish the cylinders, and leave
scratches in the groove. It has been a matter of speculation, also,
to determine the use of these cylinders. Some have said that they
were used in playing a game ; but it is more likely that they were
made into a belt for the waist, or a necklace, thongs being woven be-

* Copied from " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iii., plate 1.
Most of the figures herein given are made from specimens in the collection of the Cincin-
nati Society of Natural History.

Fig.

443

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tween them, first round one, then the next, and so on. None of them
show any signs or attempts at boring from end to end.*

Deer and elk horns enter largely into the manufacture of many of
the relics. Among others are what are known as bone arrow or spear

Fig. 3.

points, shown in Figs. 3 and 4. They are invariably made from the
sharp points of horn, the piece being first cut off, and then a hole
drilled into the blunt end with a flint. Marks made by the drill are
still distinctly seen in the holes. The points were fastened to wooden
shafts inserted in the holes. Now, strange though it may seem, relics

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

of an exactly similar make and of exactly the same sort of material
are found thousands of miles away. Dr. F. Keller, in his elaborate
book on the " Lake-Dwellers of Europe," gives figures f of these imple-
ments found in the Swiss lake-dwellings, and Fig. 5 is taken from his
book. It is immediately seen that the relics from the two localities
are identical, with the exception of the small hole drilled into the side.
In Fig. 5 one of the arrow-points has a portion of the shaft still fast-
ened in the hole.

Large pieces of deer and elk-horn, with the prongs polished by
constant use, have probably been employed as digging implements.
Smaller pieces of the flat part of the horn, with two or three prongs,

* Since this was written, Dr. Phene, of England, suggests that they were used as cur-
rency, and it is very possible that this was the case.

f See plates 45, G2, 89, and 91 for these figures. The ones here given are copied from
Figs. 25 and 28 on plate 62, and Fig. 6 on plate 91.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY.

44-9

like Fig. 6, have circular holes drilled into them, and were probably
used for loosening the ground in agricultural labors. Here also we have
similar pieces found in Switzerland, and Fig. 7 is copied from Dr. Kel-

Fig. 6.

ler's book, before mentioned.* The same idea has evidently actuated
the makers of both these articles. Still other implements o.f horn are
known as skin-dressers. These are made of the broad bases of deer-
horn, sometimes six or eight inches long and four inches wide. They

Fiq. 7.

are polished at the broad end by constant use, so that they look like
ivory. Occasionally one is found with a hole bored in it, but such
are exceptional, and were perhaps used for another purpose. Here,
again, we find relics of a similar character in Switzerland, as figured by
Dr. Keller, f *

Bone beads are also found with the other relics. These vary in
length from one to three inches, and are often very highly polished.

* See plate 13, Fig. 2. f See plate 13, Fig. 14.

TOL. XXII. — 29

45°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 8 is a large one, and has some peculiar zigzag markings on it, the
significance of which is not known. Bone fish-hooks, as represented

Fig. 8.

in Fig. 9, show the race to have lived by the product of the Little
Miami River as well as by the chase. Bone harpoons, similar in make

to those still in use by the Esquimaux,* show
further that they derived sustenance from the
river, while Fig. 10 shows a needle made of a
fish-spine (c) with a large hole in one end, a deer-
bone (b), used perhaps as an awl, and a turkey-
bone (a), also used as an awl.

Besides the useful articles of bone that have
been mentioned, there are others used more for
ornament. The beads have already been referred
to. A peculiarly-shaped piece of elk-horn, with
five teeth and a perforated handle, has been
found, and has been called a comb. Fig. 11 f
represents it, and a striking resemblance between it and one from
the Swiss lake-dwellings (Fig. 12 J) maybe noticed. Another piece,
the use of which is not known, but which is supposed to have been

Fig. 9.

Fig. 10.

perhaps some sort of flute or whistle, is shown in Fig. 13. It is a
hollow piece of bone, with six holes of different sizes made in one side,

* Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," p. 504, Fig. 219.

f Copied from the " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iii,
p. 132.

\ Keller, " Lake-Dwellings," plate 28, Fig. 8.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY.

45»

and marks of another where the relic has been broken. How much
longer it was we can not tell. In Fig. 14 we have still another tube,

Fig. 11.

with only three holes, placed farther apart than in the preceding, and
oblong instead of round; and in Keller* there is figured almost an

Fig. 13.

exact counterpart, except that the center hole is placed a little below
the level of the other two. This last is called a weaver's shuttle, and,
if our relic may be similarly named, we have evidence that weaving

Fig. 13.

was another occupation of this people. And other facts are at hand
to show that they did weave. Among the stone relics is one of those
peculiar oblong pieces of polished slate which have sometimes gone by

Fig. 14.

the name of " gorgets." These pieces have one to three holes drilled
through them, supposed to have been made to carry the object by.
Still another and more probable purpose, however, is for weaving, the

* Lac. cit., plate 41, Fig. 9.

452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

holes being used to regulate the size of the thread. But all doubt
vanishes when it is found that some " ash-pits," in which most of the
relics have been found, contain pieces of coarse matting. This has
been carbonized, so that it can not now be ascertained of what mate-
rial it was made. Enough, however, remains to show that the fibers
running one way are secured by twisted cords running across, and
woven in and out between and around them.

As is very well known, the copper-mines of Lake Superior were
extensively worked at an early day, and articles made of the copper
are found all through the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
The present cemetery is no exception, for fragments of copper are
quite common. The pieces are mostly small, however, and do not
seem to have been in very general use. In all probability the metal
was highly prized, and used simply for personal adornment. The
most of the pieces are simply coiled or rolled, and Fig. 15 represents

Fig. 15.

common shapes. These two pieces still have the remains of a leather
thong in them, showing that they had been used like beads. Another
piece is a sort of copper bell, made of a single piece of metal, with a
hole in the side, a handle, and a small piece of copper inside, which
rattles when the bell is shaken. Still another large piece is like a
cross with two arms, the use or purpose of it being entirely unknown.
Objects like it have occasionally been found elsewhere. Squier and
Davis* have figured a similar piece, but of silver, which they refer to
the French Jesuits ; and Professor Putnam figures another, f which
differs in having only one arm. He considers it an ornament, " made
in its present form simply because it is an easy design to execute, and
one of natural conception." We must beg leave to differ from him
in this latter point, for, if the design is one of natural conception, why
do we make a point when it is found ? Why are the forms like it not
more numerous, and why does not the ornamented pottery have in-
numerable examples of it in the ornamentation ?

Beads made of pieces of fresh-water and marine shells are found
among the other remains. Sometimes pieces are cut from the mussel-
shell, rubbed round, and then a hole bored. Sometimes specimens of
Melania or Pahidinahad holes bored near the aperture, and were then
used as beads. The beads made of marine shells show that some sys-
tem of barter or commerce existed with the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf.

* "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," p. 208.

f " Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of Archseology and Ethnology,"
p. 307.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY.

453

Quantities of shells, of species of the genus ZTriio, " fresh-water oys-
ters," are found. They go to show that shell-fish formed an article of
diet of the race. And not only did they eat the animal, but they
made good use of many of the shells. Many of them have been ground
off at the edge, and were used as spoons or ladles, while others have
holes punched in the valves, and were probably used for hoes in their
agricultural operations. An examination of many of these shells
shows no difference between them and individuals of the same species
now found in the river. Still, a change could hardly be expected in
the inhabitants of any locality, without a change in the conditions of
life, and there is no evidence of a change in conditions since the shells
were taken from the river.

The flint pieces, of various shapes, are quite numerous, and many
of them beautifully worked. In Fig. 16 are shown some of the war
arrow-points, and they are so abundant
that one is almost inclined to believe the
people who made them were not so peace-
able as has been supposed. In Fig. 17 is
shown one of the " leaf - shaped " flints,
some of which are beautifully worked ;
while, in Fig. 18 are some of the drills
used in boring holes in bones or shells.
There is one thing to be noticed among
the flint pieces. It is said that, in war,
arrows like those in Fig. 16 were exclu-
sively used, while, in hunting, points which
were notched at the broad or lower end were used. Now, the pecul-
iarity noticed is the scarcity of points of the latter character. For,
out of 316 worked flints, selected from some thousands, there are but
four which are notched at the lower ends. One of two things is to be
inferred. Either that the race was more warlike than agricultural,

Fig. 16.

Fig. 18.

454

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and used horn arrows in hunting instead of the notched ones ; or else
they were manufacturers of war-points for other tribes, and lived
peaceably by hunting, fishing, and agricultural labors. All that we
know could be interpreted more in favor of the first view than of the
second, for, while we are sure they were agricultural to a certain extent,
this fact would not be opposed to an argument for their warlike char-
acter. The Southern Indians, within the historic j)eriod, were at war
all the time, and still raised quantities of maize.*

The fact of the race of people here buried raising maize is estab-
lished by finding, in some pits, quantities of it completely carbonized.
Corn seems to have often been placed in pots and buried with the
bodies, to serve, perhaps, as food for the journey to the spirit-land.
Another of their agricultural labors was that of raising tobacco ; for,
in common with nearly all the other North American races, they were
smokers. Numbers of pipes, of various styles and materials, are found
here. Some of them are of the red clay known as Catlinite, others of
ordinary limestone. In Fig. 19 is shown a pipe carved out of hard

Fig. 19.

limestone. It is very highly polished, and considerable skill is exhibit-
ed in the carving of the head. It is evidently meant for a wolf, and
the teeth, though interlocking in a peculiar way, are still tolerably true
to nature in having the long canines. f

* Jones, " Antiquity of the Southern Indians," p. 7. " When, in 1730, the whites in-
terposed their good offices to bring about a pacification between the Tuscaroras and the
Cherokees, the latter responded : ' We can not live without war; should we make peace
with the Tuscaroras, with whom we are at war, we must immediately look out for some
other with whom we can be engaged in our beloved occupation.' " For notice of agri-
cultural labors, see Jones, pp. 296 to 320.

f Many other forms of pipes from this locality are given in the "Journal of the Cin.
cinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iii, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY.

455

The stone implements are much the same as those found in various
parts of the country. There seems, however, to be a remarkable pau-
city of grooved axes, there having been but two found so far. There
are numbers of the ungrooved " celts," as well as of sling-stones,
blunt at each end, but with a groove in the middle by which to fasten
the handle. Some of these stones were also probably used as sinkers
for nets in fishing, and are very similar to those found in Swiss lakes,
as noticed by Dr. Keller. Rubbing-stones for polishing celts, ham-
mers, anvils, pestles, and corn-pounders, are also abundant. Some
pieces of a coarse, gritty sandstone have shallow grooves worn into
them, which are supposed to have been used in rubbing down some of
the bone or flint implements. ■ Other pieces, with similar grooves, but
made of close-grained sandstone, were probably used to straighten the
shafts of the arrows. The shaft, at first wet and green, was rubbed
up and down in the groove, and all the bends or twists thus taken out.
Stones like these have been used by the Indians of the historic period.

Reference was made in the early part of this article to the name of
the " Pottery-Field," given to the burying-ground. It may be in-
ferred from the name that pieces of pottery were abundant, and the
number of vessels taken out fully confirms the appropriateness of the
name. These are all of one general shape and character. The mate-
rial is a clay mixed with finely-powdered shells, and was baked in the
sun. Nearly all the vessels are furnished with four handles, and are
generally devoid of any ornamentation. Some have salamander-shaped
handles, and the few that are ornamented have simply cross-lines and
stripes with lines running round the vessel
near the top, and perhaps a few dots.
Though some of them are very well
formed, they do not show any great ad-
vance in art.

Among the most interesting remains of
any race of people, are the rude beginnings
of art they have left behind them ; and,
though the people under consideration did
not have, as far as we know, any written
language, they have left a few memorials
of their artistic feelings in the shape of
some carvings on bone, and a few in-
scribed stones. The most interesting of
these are here figured. Fig. 20 represents,
on a piece of limestone, the head and fore-
legs of some curious animal. What is
meant is hard to imagine. The teeth are
marvelous, but still, in their arrangement,
are like the teeth of the wolf -pipe in Fig. 19. Fig. 21 is a portion of
a bone having peculiar marks cut on it. The marks are the same on

Fig. 20.

456

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

both sides, but the meaning intended to be conveyed is beyond the
interpreting powers of the writer, nor does he know of any explanation
having been attempted.

From the remains here described, and from others found in the
cemetery, for such the locality undoubtedly was, we can form some

iiilP'l ''"g I'tllplJIIIill

jpiiii

Fig 31.

idea of the habits of the people. They were warlike, yet agricultural,
hunters as well as fishermen. They killed the bear, deer, elk, beaver,
raccoon, and other animals of the forest, for the remains of all are quite
abundant. They ate the shell-fish of the Little Miami River, and
caught fish with hooks and nets. They raised corn, as well as tobacco,
in quantities. They wove matting, made fish-nets, and perhaps blank-
ets. They ornamented themselves with necklaces of bone and shell
beads, bear and beaver teeth. They dressed in skins, prepared with
horn and stone implements. They painted their bodies, as cakes of
paint testify. They had commercial intercourse, or some system of
barter, with Lake Superior and the Gulf, or the Atlantic. They were
frequently embroiled in wars with neighboring tribes. They could
hardly have been far advanced in civilization, if bone implements in-
stead of stone is any indication. They had no written language, but
yet left some record of their existence in the shape of carved bones
and inscribed stones. Finally, if the burial of vessels containing food
for the dead be any indication, they had some idea of a future life.
Much further than this in their history we can not go.

The attention of the reader has been repeatedly called to the simi-
larity between the implements found in this " Cincinnati " cemetery
and those found in the Swiss lakes. No one could claim that, because
of this similarity and almost identity of forms, the two races of people
ever had intercourse with each other. But the fact is interesting as
showing how, in two countries, thousands of miles apart, and separated
by a period of hundreds of years in time, there were made, with the
same materials, the same forms of weapons and implements. The re-
semblance is no argument for a common origin, but simply shows that
nearly the same grade of civilization may be developed spontaneously
in two widely separated countries.

It now becomes an interesting matter of speculation to discover
the age of the cemetery. It has been referred to the age of the
mound-builders, but, if so, it is a most remarkable fact, unless we con-

A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY. 457

sider the modern Indians as the lineal descendants of the mound-
builders, which is quite probable. Heretofore but three or four au-
thentic skulls of the mound-builders have been found in any sort of
preservation, while here we have a great many taken from a small
area. Further, if we are to refer the cemetery to the mound-build-
ing race, we must admit that the race disappeared within a very re-
cent period. On a level bank near the Little Miami River is a circular
excavation about forty feet in diameter and seven feet deep. " An
old settler relates that fifty years ago remains of stakes or palisades
could be seen surrounding this excavation." * These have since disap-
peared, but their being there shows within how recent a period the
ground was abandoned. Then the age of the forest-trees growing on
the ground argues against any very great antiquity. The largest trees
measured are a walnut fifteen and a half feet in circumference, an oak
twelve feet, an oak and a maple each nine and a half feet in circum-
ference, f equal to about five, four, and three feet in diameter respect-
ively. Now, the average growth of fourteen different species of trees
is about "12 of an inch a year, or one foot radius (two feet diameter)
in ninety-eight years. \ Taking this average, a tree five feet in diame-
ter would be two hundred and forty-five years old ; one four feet in
diameter, one hundred and ninety-six years old ; and one three feet in
diameter, one hundred and forty-seven years old ; or, in round num-
bers, two hundred and fifty, two hundred, and one hundred and fifty
years respectively.

There is no evidence to show that there was any growth of forest
on this ground, after its abandonment by the former residents, previ-
ous to the one now covering it. The roots of living trees having
trunks two and three feet in diameter have been found penetrating
the crania of skeletons found here, a tolerably sure indication of a first
growth. Notwithstanding the assertions of many people to the con-
trary, the process of covering land with dense forest is by no means a
slow one. A field allowed to go without being cultivated becomes in
a few years covered with a new growth of saplings. Mr. Robert
Ridgway, in a late paper, after referring to the cutting off of timber,
and also to its encroachment on prairie-land in Illinois, says : " The
growth of this new forest is so rapid that extensive woods near Mount
Carmel [Illinois], consisting chiefly of oaks and hickories (averaging
more than eighty feet high, one to nearly two feet in diameter), were
open prairie within the memory of some of the present owners of the
land." * Taking this fact into consideration, and remembering that

* " Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley," by Dr. Charles Metz,
"Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. i, p. 123.

f Ibid., vol. iii, p. 44.

\ See table, by Dr. A. Lapham, of age of trees in Wisconsin, given in Foster's "Pre-
historic Races of the United States," p. 374.

* " Notes on the Native Trees of the Lower Wabash and White River Valleys in

458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the largest tree found on the ground was not over two hundred and
fifty years old, the time of the abandonment of the cemetery can not
be more than three hundred years ago. This would take it back to
less than one hundred years after the discovery of America by Colum-
bus. The present State of Ohio was then probably occupied by a
tribe of Indians known as the Eries, who were totally exterminated
in 1656,* and it is possible we have in this cemetery one of the burial-
places of this tribe of Indians.

Catlinite pipes were unknown to the mound-builders, yet some
made of this material are found in this cemetery. Hogs rooting in
the ground find sufficient nutriment in the bones to eat them greedily,
and probably there would be fewer bone implements found if they
had not been buried in ash-pits. f Everything, therefore, tends to
show the comparatively recent date of this cemetery, and I would
state, as a reasonable conclusion, that the remains are those of a tribe
of Indians, perhaps the Eries, and were deposited not more than three
hundred and perhaps only two hundred and fifty years ago.

-*♦♦-

THE UNIVEKSITY IDEAL.}

By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D.

/~^ EISTTLEMEN" : By your flattering estimate of my services, I have
VJ~ been unexpectedly summoned from retirement to assume the
honors and the duties of the purple, and to occupy the most histor-
ically important office in the universities of Europe.

The present demands upon the rectorship somewhat resemble what
we are told of the Homeric chief, who, in company with his council
or senate, the Boule, and the popular assembly, or- Agora, made up
the political constitution of the tribe. The functions of the chief, it
is said, were to supply wise reason to the Boule (as we might call our
court), and unctuous eloquence to the Agora. The second of these
requirements is what weighs upon me at the present moment.

Whatever may have been the practice of my predecessors, gener-
ally strangers to you, it would be altogether unbecoming in me to
travel out of our university life for the materials of an address. My
remarks, then, will principally bear on the Univebsity Ideal.

Illinois and Indiana," printed in " Proceedings of the United States National Museum,"
1882, p. 54.

* " Some Early Notices of the Indians of Ohio," by M. F. Force, published by K.
Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 18*79, pp. 1-11.

f For an account of these pits, see " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural His
tory," vol. iii.

X Rectorial Address to the Students of Aberdeen University, Wednesday, November
15, 1882.

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 459

To the Greeks we are indebted for the earliest germ of the univer-
sity. It was with them chiefly that education took that great leap,
the greatest ever made, from the traditional teaching of the home,
the shop, the social surroundings, to schoolmaster teaching properly
so called. Nowadays, we schoolmasters think so much of ourselves,
that we do not make full allowance for that other teaching which
was, for unknown ages, the only teaching of mankind. The Greeks
were the first to introduce, not perhaps the primary schoolmaster for
the R's, but certainly the secondary or higher schoolmaster, known as
rhetorician or sophist, who taught the higher professions ; while their
philosophers or wise men introduced a kind of knowledge that gave
scope to the intellectual faculties, with or without professional appli-
cations ; the very idea of our Faculty of Arts.

So self-asserting were these new-born teachers of the sophist class,
that Plato thought it necessary to recall attention to the good old per-
ennial source of instruction — the home, the trade, and the society.
He pointed out that the pretenders to teach virtue by moral lecturing
were as yet completely outrivaled by the influence of the family and
the social pressure of the community. In like manner the arts of life
were all originally handed down by apprenticeship and imitation.
The greatest statesmen and generals of early times had simply the
education of the actual work. Philip of Macedon could have had no
other teaching ; his greater son was the first of the line to receive
what we may call a liberal or a general education, under the educator
of all Europe.

I must skip eight centuries to introduce the man that linked the
ancient and the modern world, and was almost the sole luminary in
the West during the dark ages, namely, Boethius, minister of the Gothic
Emperor Theodoric. As much of Aristotle as was known between
the sixth and the eleventh centuries was handed down by him. Dur-
ing that time only the logical treatises existed among the Latins ; and
of these the best parts were neglected. Historical importance attaches
to a small circle of them known as the Old Logic {vetus logica), which
were the pabulum of abstract thought for five dreary centuries. These
consisted of the two treatises or chapters of Aristotle called the " Cate-
gories," and the " De Interpretation e," or the theory of propositions ;
and of a book of Porphyry, the neo-Platonist, entitled " Introduc-
tion " (Isagoge), and treating of the so-called Five Predicables. A
hundred average pages would include them all ; and three weeks
would suffice to master them.

Boethius, however, did much more than hand on these works to
the mediaeval students ; he translated the whole of Aristotle's logical
writings (the " Organon "), but the others were seldom taken up. It
was he too that handled the question of universals in his first Dia-
logue on Porphyry, and sowed the seed that was not to germinate till
four centuries afterward, but which, when the time came, was to bear

460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fruit in no measured amount. And Boethius is the name associated
with the scheme of higher education that preceded the university
teaching, called the quaclrivium, or quadruple group of subjects,
namely, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This, together
with the trivium, or preparatory group of three subjects — grammar,
rhetoric, and logic — constituted what was known as the seven liberal
arts • but, in the darkest ages, the quadrivium was almost lost sight
of, and few went beyond the trivium.

In the seventh century, the era of deepest intellectual gloom, phi-
losophy was at an entire stand-still. Light arises with the eighth,
when we are introduced to the cathedral and cloister schools of Char-
lemagne ; and the ninth saw these schools fully established, and an
educational reform completed that was to be productive of lasting
good results. But the range of instruction was still narrow, scarcely
proceeding beyond the Old Logic, and the teachers wTere, as formerly,
the monks. The eleventh century is really the period of dawn. The
East was now opened up through the Crusades, and there was frequent
intercourse with the learned Saracens of Spain ; and thus there were
brought into the West the whole of Aristotle's works, with Arabic
commentaries, chiefly in Latin translations. The effervescence was
prodigious and alarming. The schools were re-enforced by a higher
class of teachers, lay as well as clerical ; a marked advance was made
in Logic and Dialectic ; and the great controversy of realism versus
nominalism, which had found its birth in the previous century, raged
with extraordinary vigor. We are now on the eve of the founding
of the universities ; Bologna, indeed, being already in existence.

The university proper, however, can hardly be dated earlier than
the twelfth century ; and the important particulars in its first consti-
tution are these :

First, the separation of philosophy from theology. To expound
this, would be to give a chapter of mediaeval history. Suffice it to
say that Aristotle and the awakening intellect of the eleventh century
were the main causes of it. Two classes of minds at this time divided
the Church — the pious, devout believers (such as St. Bernard), who
needed no reasons for their faith, and the polemic speculative divines
(such as Abelard), who wished to make theology rational. It was. an
age, too, of stirring political events ; the crusading spirit was abroad,
and found a certain gratification even in the war of words. The
nature of univei'sals was eagerly debated ; but, when this controversy
came into collision with such leading theological doctrines as the
Trinity and predestination, it was no longer possible for philosophy
and theology to remain conjoined.

A separation was effected, and determined the leading feature of
the university system. The foundation was philosophy, and the fun-
damental faculty the Faculty of Arts. Bologna, indeed, was eminent
for law or jurisprudence, and this celebrity it retained for ages ; but

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 46i

the University of Paris, which is the prototype of our Scottish univer-
sities, as of so many others, taught nothing but philosophy — in other
words, had no faculty but arts — for many years. Neither theology,
mediciue, nor law had existence there till the thirteenth century.

Second, the system of conferring degrees, after appropriate trials.
These were at first simply a license to teach. They acquired their
commanding importance through the action of Pope Nicholas I, who
gave to the graduates of the University of Paris the power of teach-
ing everywhere, a power that our own countrymen were the foremost
to turn to account.

Third, the organization of the primitive university. Europe was
unsettled ; even in the capitals, the civil power was often unhinged.
Wherever multitudes came together, there was manifested a spirit of
turbulence. The universities often exemplified this fact ; and it was
found necessary to establish a government within themselves. The
basis was popular ; but, while in Paris only the teaching body was
incorporated, in Bologna the students had a voice. They elected the
rector, and his jurisdiction was very great indeed, and much more im-
portant than speechifying to his constituents. His court had the
power of internal regulation, with both a civil and criminal jurisdic-
tion. The Scotch universities, on this point, followed Bologna ; and
that fact is the remote cause of this day's meeting.

So started the university. The idea took ; and, in thi*ee centuries,
many of the leading towns in Italy, France, the German Empire, had
their universities ; in England arose Oxford and Cambridge ; the
model was Paris or Bologna.

Scotland did not at first enter the race of university founding, but
worked on the plan of the cuckoo, by laying its eggs in the nests of
others. For two centuries, Scotchmen were almost shut out of Eng-
land ; and so could not make for themselves a career in Oxford and
Cambridge, as in later times. They had, however, at home, good gram-
mar-schools, where they were grounded in Latin. They perambulated
Europe, and were familiar figures in the great university towns, and
especially Paris. From their disputatious and metaphysical attitude
they worked their upward way :

" And gladly would they learn and gladly teach."

At length, the nation did take up the work in good earnest. In
1411 was founded the first of the St. Andrews' Colleges ; 1451 is the
date of Glasgow ; 1494, King's College, Aberdeen. These are the pre-
Reformation colleges ; but for the Reformation, we might not have
had any other. Their founders were ecclesiastics ; their constitution
and ceremonial were ecclesiastical. They were intended, no doubt,
to keep the Scotch students at home. They were also expected to
serve as bulwarks to the Church against the rising heretics of the
times. In this they were disappointed ; the first-begotten of them
became the cradle of the Reformation.

462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In these our three eldest foundations we are to seek the primitive
constitution and the teaching system of our universities. In essen-
tials, they were the same ; only between the dates of Glasgow and
Old Aberdeen occurred two great events. One was the taking of Con-
stantinople, which spread the Greek scholars with their treasures over
Europe. The other was the progress of printing. In 1451, when Glas-
gow commenced, there was no printed text-book. In 1494, when King's
College began, the ancient classics had been largely printed ; the early
editions of Aristotle in our library show the date of 1486.

Our universities have three well-marked periods ; the first anterior
to the Reformation ; the second, from the Reformation to the begin-
ning of last century ; the third, the last and present centuries. Con-
fining ourselves still to the Faculty of Arts, the features of the pre-
Reformation university were these :

First, as regards the teaching body. The quadrennial arts' course
was conducted by so-called regents, who each carried the same stu-
dents through all the four years, thus taking upon himself the burden
of all the sciences — a walking encyclopaedia. The system was in full
force, in spite of attempts to change it, during both the first and the
second pei'iods. You, the students of arts, at the present day, encount-
ering, in your four years, seven faces, seven voices, seven repositories
of knowledge, need an effort to understand how your predecessors
could be cheerful and happy, confined all through to one personality ;
sometimes juvenile, sometimes senile, often feeble at his best.

Next, as regards the subjects taught. To know these you have
simply to know what are the writings of Aristotle. The little work
on him by Sir Alexander Grant supplies the needful information. The
records of the Glasgow University furnish the curriculum of Arts soon
after its foundation. The subjects are laid out in two heads — Logic
and Philosophy. The Logic comprised first the three Treatises of the
Old Logic ; to these were now added the whole of the works making
up Aristotle's " Organon." This brought in the Syllogism and allied
matters. There was, also, a selection from the work known as the
" Topics," not now included in logical teaching, yet one of the most
remarkable and distinctive of Aristotle's writings. It is a highly-
labored account of the whole art of disputation, laid out under his
scheme of the Predicables. The selection fell chiefly on two books —
the second, comprising what Aristotle had to say on Induction, and
the sixth, on Definition ; together with the " Logical Captions," or
Fallacies. Disputation was one of the products of the Greek mind ;
and Aristotle was its prophet.

Now for Philosophy. This comprised nearly the whole of Aris-
totle's Physical treatises — his very worst side — together with his Met-
aphysics, some parts of which are hardly distinguishable from the
Physics. Next was the very difficult treatise — " De Anima," on the
Mind, or Soul — and some allied psychological treatises, as that on

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 463

Memory. Such was the ordinary and sufficing curriculum. It was
allowed to be varied with a part of the Ethics ; but in this age we do
not find the Politics ; and the Rhetoric is never mentioned. So, also,
the really valuable biological works of Aristotle, including his book
on Animals, appear to have been neglected.

Certain portions of Mathematics always found a place in the cur-
riculum. Likewise, some work on Astronomy, wThich was one of the
quadrivium subjects.

All this was given in Latin. Greek was not then known (it was
introduced into Scotland in 1534). No classical Latin author is given ;
the education in Latin was finished at the Grammar School.

Such was the Arts' Faculty of the fifteenth century : a dreary,
single-manned, Aristotelian quadriennium. The position is not com-
pletely before us till we understand further the manner of working.

The pupils could not, as a rule, possess the text of Aristotle. The
teacher read and expounded the text for them ; but a very large por-
tion of the time was always occupied in dictating, or " diting," notes,
which the pupils were examined upon, viva voce; their best plan
usually being to get them by heart, as any one might ask them to
repeat passages literally, while perhaps few could examine well upon
the meaning. The notes would be selections and abridgments from
Aristotle, with the comments of modern writers. The " diting " sys-
tem was often complained of as a waste of time, but was not discon-
tinued till the third, or present, university dynasty, and not entirely
then, as many of us know.

The teaching was thus exclusively text teaching. The teacher had
little or nothing to say for himself (at least in the earliest period).
He was even restricted in the remarks he might make by way of com-
mentary. He was as nearly as possible a machine.

But, lastly, to complete the view of the first period, we must add
the practice of disputation, of which we shall have a better idea from
the records of the next period. This practice was coeval with the
universities ; it was the single mode of stimulating the thought of the
individual student ; the chief antidote to the mechanical teaching by
text-books and dictation.

The pre-Reforraation period of Aberdeen University was little
more than sixty years. For a portion of those years it attained celeb-
rity. In 1541 the town was honored by a visit from James V, and
the university contributed to his entertainment. The somewhat penny-
a-lining account is, that there were exercises and disputations in Greek,
Latin, and other languages ! The official records, however, show that
the college at that very time had sunk into a convent and conventual
school.

The Reformation introduced the second period, and made impor-
tant changes. First of all, in the great convulsion of European thought,
the ascendencv of Aristotle was shaken. It is enough to mention two

464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

incidents in the downfall of the mighty Stagyrite. One was the attack
on him by the renowned Peter Ramus, in the University of Paris.
Our countryman, Andrew Melville, attended Ramus's Lectures, and
became the means of introducing his system into Scotland. The other
incident is still more notable. The Reformers had to consider their
attitude toward Aristotle. At first their opinion was condemnatory.
Luther regarded him as a very devil ; he was " a godless bulwark of
the papists." Melanchthon was also hostile ; but he soon perceived
that Theology would crumble into fanatical dissolution without the
co-operation of some philosophy. As yet there was nothing to fall
back upon except the pagan systems. Of these, Melanchthon was
obliged to confess that Aristotle was the least objectionable, and was,
moreover, in possession. The plan, therefore, was to accept him as a
basis, and fence him round with orthodox emendations. This done,
Aristotle, no longer despotic, but as a limited constitutional monarch,
had his reign prolonged a century and a half.

The first thing, after the Reformation in Scotland, was to purge the
universities of the inflexible adherents of the old faith. Then came
the question of amending the curriculum, not simply with a view to
Protestantism, but for the sake of an enlightened teaching. The right
man appeared at the right moment. In 1574 Andrew Melville, then
in Geneva, received pressing invitations to come home and take part
in the needed reforms. He was immediately made Principal of Glas-
gow University, at that time in a state of utter collapse and ruin. He
had matured his plans, after consultation with George Buchanan, and
they were worthy of a great reformer. He sketched a curriculum,
substantially the curriculum of the second university period. The
modifications upon the almost exclusive Aristotelianism of the first
period were significant. The Greek language was introduced, and
Greek classical authors read. The reading in the Roman classics was
extended. A text-book on rhetoric accompanied the classical readings.
The dialectics of Ramus made the prelude to Logic, instead of the
three treatises of the Old Logic. The mathematics included Euclid.
Geography and Cosmography were taken up. Then came a course of
Moral Philosophy on an enlarged basis. With the Ethics and Politics
of Aristotle were combined Cicero's ethical works and certain Dia-
logues of Plato. Finally, in the physics, Melville still used Aristotle,
but along with a more modern treatise. He also gave a view of uni-
versal history and chronology.

This curriculum, which Melville took upon himself to teach, in
order to train future teachers, was the point of departure of the
courses in all the universities during the second period. With varia-
tions of time and place, the Arts' course may be described as made
up of the Greek and Latin classics, with rhetoric, logic, and dialectics,
moral philosophy or ethics, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. The
little text-book of rhetoric, by Talon or Talseus, was made up of notes

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 465

from the Lectures of Peter Ramus, and used in all our colleges till
superseded by the better compilation of the Dutch scholar, Gerard
John Voss.

Melville had to contend with many opponents, among them the
sticklers for the infallibility of the Stagyrite. Like the German Re-
formers, he had accepted Aristotelianism as a basis, with a similar
process of reconciliation. So it was that Aristotle and Calvin were
brought to kiss each other.

Melville's next proposal was all too revolutionary. It consisted
in restricting the regents each to a special group of subjects ; in
fact, anticipating our modern professoriate. He actually set up this
jflan in Glasgow : one regent took Greek and Latin ; another, his
nephew, James Melville, took mathematics, logic, and moral philos-
ophy ; a third, physics and astronomy. The system went on, in ap-
pearance, at least, for fifty years ; it is only in 1642 that we find the
regents given without a specific designation. Why it should have
gone on so long, and been then dropped, we are not informed. Mel-
ville's influence started it in the other universities, but it was defeated
in every one from the very outset. After six years at Glasgow, he
went to St. Andrews as Principal and Professor of Divinity, and tried
there the same reforms, but the resistance was too great. In spite of
a public enactment, the division of labor among the regents was never
carried out. Yet, such was Melville's authority, that the same enact-
ment was extended to King's College, in a scheme having a remark-
able history — the so-called New Foundation of Aberdeen University,
promulgated in a royal charter of about the year 1581. The Earl
Marischal was a chief promoter of the plan of reform comprised in
this charter. The division of labor among the regents was most ex-
pressly enjoined. The plan fell through ; and there was a legal dis-
pute fifty years afterward as to whether it had ever any legal validity.
Charles I was made to express indignation at the idea of reducing the
university to a school !

We now approach the foundation of Marischal College. The Earl
Marischal may have been actuated by the failure of his attempt to re-
form King's College. At all events, his mind was made up to follow
Melville in assigning separate subjects to his regents. The charter is
explicit on this head. Yet, in spite of the charter and in spite of his
own presence, the intention was thwarted ; the old regenting lasted
one hundred and sixty years.

Still the curriculum reform was gained. There was, indeed, one
great miss. The year before Marischal College was founded, Galileo
had published his work on mechanics, which, taken with what had
been accomplished by Archimedes and others, laid the foundations of
our modern physics. Copernicus had already published his work on
the heavens. It was now time that the Aristotelian Physics should be
clean swept away. In this whole department, Aristotle had made a

VOL. XXII. — 30

466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reign of confusion ; he had thrown the subject back, being himself off
the rails from first to last. Had there been in Scotland an adviser in
this department, like Melville in general literature, or like Napier of
Merchiston in pure mathematics, one fourth of the college teaching
might have been reclaimed from utter waste, and a healthy tone of
thinking diffused through the remainder.

A curious fascination always attached to the study of astronomy,
even when there was not much to be said, apart from the unsatisfac-
tory disquisition of Aristotle. A little book, entitled " Sacrobosco on
the Sphere," containing little more than what we should now teach to
boys and girls, along with the globes, was a university text-book
throughout Europe for centuries. I was informed by a late King's
College professor that the use of the globes was, within his memory,
taught in the Magistrand Class. This would be simply what is termed
a " survival."

Now, as to the mode of instruction. There were viva-voce exami-
nations upon the notes, such as we can imagine. But the stress was
laid on disputations and declamations in various forms. Besides dis-
puting and declaiming on the regular class-work before the regent, we
find that, in Edinburgh, and I suppose elsewhere, the classes were
divided into companies, who met apart, and conferred and debated
among themselves daily. The students were occupied, altogether, six
hours a day. Then the higher classes were frequently pitched against
each other. This was a favorite occupation on Saturdays. The doc-
trines espoused by the leading students became their nicknames. The
pass for graduation consisted in the propugning or impugning of ques-
tions by each candidate in turn. An elaborate thesis was drawn up
by the regent, giving the heads of his philosophy course ; this was
accepted by the candidates, signed by them, and printed at their ex-
pense. Then on the day of trial, at a long sitting, each candidate
stood up and propugned or impugned a portion of the thesis ; all were
heard in turn ; and on the result the degree was conferred. A good
many of these theses are preserved in our library ; some of them are
very long — a hundred pages of close type ; they are our best clew to
the teaching of the period. We can see how far Aristotle was quali-
fied by modern views.

I said there might have been times when the students never had
the relief of a second face all the four years. The exceptions are of
importance. First, as regards Marischal College. Within a few years
of the foundation, Dr. Duncan Liddell founded the Mathematical
chair, and thus withdrew from the regents the subject that most of
all needed a specialist ; a succession of very able mathematicians sat
in this chair. King's College had not the same good fortune. From
its foundation it possessed a separate functionary, the Humanist or
Grammarian ; but he had also, till 1753, to act as Rector of the Gram-
mar School. Edinburgh obtained from an early date a Mathematical

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 467

chair, occupied by men of celebrity. There was no other innovation
till near the end of the seventeenth century, when Greek was isolated
both in Edinburgh and in Marischal College ; but the end of regenting
was then near.

The old system, however, had some curious writhings. Durino-
the troubled seventeenth century, university reform could not com-
mand persistent attention. But, after the 1688 Revolution, opinions
were strongly expressed in favor of the Melville system. The obvious
argument was urged that, by division of labor, each man would be
able to master a special subject, and do it justice in teaching. Yet, it
was replied that, by the continued intercourse, the masters knew better
the humors, inclinations, and talents of their scholars. To which the
answer was — the humors and inclinations of scholars are not so deeply
hid but that in a few weeks they appear. Moreover, it was said, the
students are more respectful to a master while he is new to them.

The final division of subjects took place in Edinburgh in 1708 ; in
Glasgow, in 1727 ; in St. Andrews, in 1747. In Marischal College,
the change was made by a minute of January 11, 1753 ; but, whether
from ignorance, or from want of grace, the Senatus did not record its
satisfaction at having, after a lapse of five generations, fulfilled the
wishes of the pious founder. In King's College the old system lasted
till 1798.

This closes the second age of the universities, and introduces the
third age, the age of the professoriate, of lecturing instead of text-
books, the end of disputation, and the use of the English language. It
was now, and not till now, that the Scottish universities stood forth,
in several leading departments of knowledge, as the teachers of the
world.

The second age of the universities was Scotland's most trying
time. In a hundred and thirty years, the country had passed through
four revolutions and counter-revolutions ; every one of which told
upon the universities. The victorious party imposed its test upon the
university teachers, and drove out recusants. You must all know
something of the purging of the university and the ministry of Aber-
deen by the Covenanting General Assembly of 1640. These deposed
Aberdeen doctors may have had too strong leanings to episcopacy in
the church and to absolutism in the state, but they were not Vicars of
Bray. The first half of the century was adorned by a band of schol-
ars, who have gained renown by their cultivation of Latin poetry ; a
little oasis in the desert of Aristotelian dialectics. It would be needless
and ungracious to inquire whether this was the best thing that could
have been done for the generation of Bishop Patrick Forbes.

Your reading in the history of Scotland will thus bring you face
to face with the great powers that contended for the mastery from
1560 : the monarchy, always striving to be absolute ; the Church,
whose position made it the advocate of popular freedom ; the univer-

468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sities, fluctuating as regards political liberty, but standing up for in-
tellectual liberty. In tbe seventeenth century the Church ruled the
universities ; in the eighteenth, it may be said that the universities
returned the comjfliment.

Enough for the past. A word or two on the present. What is
now the need for a university system, and what must the system
be to answer that need ? Many things are altered since the twelfth
century.

First, then, universities, as I understand them, are not absolutely
essential to the teaching of professions. Let me make an extreme
supposition. A great naval commander, like Nelson, is sent on board
ship, at eleven or twelve ; his previous knowledge, or general training,
is what you may suppose for that age. It is in the course of actual
service, and in no other way, that he acquires his professional fitness for
commanding fleets. Is this right or is it wrong ? Perhaps it is wrong,
but it has gone on so for a long time. Well, why may not a preacher
be formed on the same plan ? John Wesley was not a greater man in
preaching than Nelson in seamanship. Take, then, a youth of thir-
teen from the school. Apprentice hiru to the minister of the parish.
Let him make at once preparations for clerical work. Let him store
his memory with sermons, let him make abstracts of divinity systems ;
master the best exegetical commentators. Then, in a year or two, he
would begin to catechise the young, to give addresses in the way of
exposition, exhortation, encouragement, and rebuke. Practice would
bring facility. Might not, I say, seven years of the actual work, in
the susceptible period of life, make a preacher of no mean power, with-
out the grammar-school, without the Arts classes, without the Divinity
Hall?

What, then, do we gain by taking such a roundabout approach to
our professional work? The answer is twofold :

First, as regards tbe profession itself. Naarly every skilled occu-
pation, in our time, involves principles and facts that have been inves-
tigated, and are taught, outside the profession ; to the medical man
are given courses of chemistry, physiology, and so on. Hence, to be
completely equipped for your professional work, you must repair to
the teachers of those tributary departments of knowledge. The re-
quirement, however, is not absolute ; it admits of being evaded. Your
professional teachers ought to master these outside subjects, and give
you just so much of them as you need, and no more ; which would be
an obvious economy of your valuable time.

Thus, I apprehend, the strictly professional uses of general knowl-
edge fail to justify the grammar-school and the Arts' curriculum.
Something, indeed, may still be said for the higher grades of profes-
sional excellence, and for introducing improved methods into the prac-
tice of the several crafts, for which wider outside studies lend their
aid. This, however, is not enough ; inventors are the exception. In

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 469

fact, the ground must be widened, and include, secondly, the life be-
yond the profession. We are citizens of a self -governed country ;
members of various smaller societies ; heads or members of families.
We have, moreover, to carve out recreation and enjoyment as the
alternative and the reward of our professional toil. Now, the entire
tone and character of this life outside the profession are profoundly
dependent on the compass of our early studies. He that leaves the
school for the shop at thirteen is on one platform. He that spends
the years from thirteen to twenty in acquiring general knowledge is
on a totally different platform ; he is, in the best sense, an aristocrat.
Those that begin work at thirteen, and those that are born not to work
at all, are alike his inferiors. He should be able to spread light all
around. He it is that may stand forth before the world as the model
man.

All this supposes that you realize the position ; that you fill up the
measure of the opportunities ; that you keep in view at once the pro-
fessional life, the citizen life, and the life of intellectual tastes. The
mere professional man, however prosperous, can not be a power in
society, as the Arts' graduate may become. His leisure occupations
are all of a lower stamp. He does not participate in the march of
knowledge. He must be aware of his incompetence to judge for him-
self in the greater questions of our destiny ; his part is to be a follower,
and not a leader.

It is not, then, the name of graduate that will do all this. It is
not a scrape pass ; it is not decent mediocrity with a languid interest.
It is a fair and even attention throughout, supplemented by auxiliaries
to the class-work. It is such a hold of the leading subjects, such a
mastery of the various alphabets, as will make future references intel-
ligible, and a continuation of the study possible.

Our curriculum is one of the completest in the country, or perhaps
anywhere. By the happy thought of the Senatus of Marischal Col-
lege, in 1753, you have a fundamental class not existing in the other
colleges. You have a fair representation of the three great lines of
science — the abstract, the experimental, and the classifying. When
it is a general education that you are thinking of, every scheme of
option is imperfect that doe3 not provide for such three-sided cultiva-
tion of our reasoning powers. A larger quantity of one will no more
serve for the absence of the rest than a double covering of one part of
the body will enable another part to be left bare.

Your time in the Arts' curriculum is not entirely used up by the
classes. You can make up for deficiencies in the course when once
you have formed your ideal of completeness. For a year or two after
graduating, while still rejoicing in youthful freshness, you can be
widening your foundations. The thing, then, is to possess a good
scheme and to abide by it. Now, making every allowance for the
variation of tastes and of circumstances, and looking solely to what is

47Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

desirable for a citizen and a man, it is impossible to refuse the claims
of the department of Historical and Social study. One or two good
representative historical periods might be thoroughly mastered, in
conjunction with the best theoretical compends of Social Phi-
losophy.

Further, the ideal graduate, who is to guide and not follow opinion,
should be well versed in all the bearings of the Spiritual Philosophy
of the time. The subject branches out into wide regions, but not
wider than you should be capable of following it. This is not a pro-
fessional study merely ; it is the study of a well-instructed man.

Once more. A share of attention should be bestowed early on the
higher literature of the imagination. As, in after-life, j)oetry and
elegant composition are to be counted on as a pleasure and solace, they
should be taken up at first as a study. The critical examination of
styles, and of authors, which forms an admirable basis of a student's
society, should be a work of study and research. The advantages will
be many and lasting. To conceive the exact scope and functions of
the imagination in art, in science, in religion, and everywhere, will
repay the trouble.

Ever since I remember, I have been accustomed to hear of the
superiority of the Arts' graduate, in various crafts, more especially as
a teacher. Many of you in these days pass into another vocation —
letters, or the jn-ess. Here, too, almost everything you learn will
pay you professionally. Still, I am careful not to rest the case for
general education on professional grounds alone. I might show you
that the highest work of all — original inquiry — needs a broad basis of
liberal study ; or, at all events, is vastly aided by that. Genius will
work on even a narrow basis, but imperfect preparatory study leaves
marks of imperfection in the product.

The same considerations that determine your voluntary studies
determine also the university ideal. A university, in my view, stands
or falls with its Arts' faculty. Without debating the details, we may
say that this faculty should always be representative of the needs of
our intelligence, both for the professional and for the extra-professional
life ; it should not be of the shop, shoppy. The university exists
because the professions would stagnate without it ; and, still more,
because it may be a means of enlarging knowledge at all points. Its
watchword is progress. We have, at last, the division of labor in
teaching ; outside the university, teachers too much resemble the
regent of old — having too many subjects, and too much time spent in
grinding. Our teachers are exactly the reverse.

Yet, there can not be progress without a sincere and single eye to
the truth. The fatal sterility of the middle ages, and of our first and
second university periods, had to do with the mistake of gagging men's
mouths, and dictating all their conclusions. Things came to be so
arranged that contradictory views ran side by side, like opposing elec-

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 4?1

trie currents ; the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology arresting
the destructive discharge. There was, indeed, an elaborate and pre-
tentious logic, supplied by Aristotle, and amended by Bacon ; what
was still wanted was a taste of the logic of freedom.

-+*+-

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION.

Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.
II.

DURING the reign of Philip II of Spain, the Government spies in
the province of Malaga made a curious discovery. In the highest
valleys of the Alpujarras, and surrounded by a population of recently
converted Moors, they found a tribe of mountaineers whose vernacular
was as different from the Arabian as from the Spanish language, and
whose neighbors believed them to be descendants of the ancient Ibe-
rians. The Ghabirs, as the Moors called them, were a most primitive
and harmless race, their food consisted of the vegetable products of
their peaceful valley, their only religious function in sacrificing milk
and fruits to the spirit of the mountains. A few weeks after the dis-
coverer had made his report to the Holy Office, a detachment of troop-
ers and monks invaded the Alpujarras, the Ghabirs were dragged to
Velez Malaga, and burned by order of the Grand Inquisitor. Their
crime could not be condoned : they had disregarded the proclamation
of 1562, and evaded tithes and baptism for seven years. In vain they
pleaded their poverty, their ancient customs, and their ignorance of
the Spanish language ; " they were all invested with the sanbenito"
says the chronicler, " and broiled to death with the proper ceremonies."
The shrieks of the victims were heard at Loja, and for three days the
harbor of Velez was filled with the stench of burned human flesh. It
was a most edifying auto dafe — "an act of faith." The same faith
had filled the Netherlands with blood and horror, had raged like the
Black Death among the helpless aborigines of the New World, and
had orthodoxed Spain by the systematic suppression of freedom, com-
mon sense, manhood, industry, and science.

And yet that monstrous superstition had undoubtedly supporters
who honestly mistook it for the purest and most beneficent of all pos-
sible creeds. But we may be equally sure that mere ignorance would
never have produced such delusions. The worst delusions are not the
primitive ones, not the crude superstitions of a primitive people. The
dogmas of an Ashantee rain-maker are harmless compared with those
of a Spanish Inquisitor. "We find priests and ignorance both in Ash-
antee and in Spain, but with this difference, that in Ashantee igno-

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ranee produces the priests, while in Spain the priests produce igno-
rance.

Henry Thomas Buckle holds that religions are influenced hy the
climate and topography of each country, and by the character of the
inhabitants. " Barbarous creeds," says he, " are the result rather than
the cause of a primitive stage of intellectual development. Supersti-
tion is merely the concomitant of the evils it seems to produce." The
fallacy of the conclusion arises from the deficient specification of the
premises ; the logician overlooks the important difference between nat-
ural and factitious creeds ; between local superstitions, produced by a
process of natural development, like the customs and the language of a
nation, and epidemic superstitions, engendered in the brain of a crazed
visionary, and propagated by force and fanaticism. The former bear
the marks of various national characteristics, the latter impress their
own characteristics on each conquered nation. Natural superstitions re-
flected the poetical genius of the ancient Greeks and the warlike spirit
of the Spanish Celts, but the national spirit of both Greece and Spain
was crushed out by the dogmas of anti-naturalism. There are local
superstitions that can not be exported ; the myths of Brahmanism can
not be separated from the physical geography of their East Indian
habitat, while the sagas of the frost-giants and fur-clad hunter-gods
could originate only in a frigid latitude. The Hindoo sticks to his
rice, the Icelander to his whale-blubber. But poisons are more cosmo-
politan : whisky and pessimism find votaries in every clime. The
oldest creeds are the most harmless ones, for the superstitions of a
primitive people are founded on natural impressions, which are not apt
to mislead us to any dangerous degree. "What harm could there be in
the fancy of the Arcadian shepherd who heard a spirit-voice in the
answering echo of his mountains, and ascribed the sudden stampede of
his flock to the trick of a frolicsome faun ? Bread-and-honey offer-
ings to the fairies did not bankrupt the Hibernian peasant. Nearly
all children of nature recognized the benevolent purpose in the gifts
of the great All-Mother ; the gods of antiquity Avere mostly helpful
and beautiful spirits, while the nature-hating creed of the middle
ages peopled the world with legions of hideous demons. The first
May-night, when Hertha awakens the slumbering wood-spirits, became
the Walpurgis Nacht, with its hellish revival-meetings. The satyrs
became mountain-devils ; St. Irenseus intimates that Jupiter Olympius
was the disguised arch-fiend in person, the chief of evil spirits — nay,
Ritter Tannhauser does not hesitate to denounce the Goddess of Beauty
to her face : "Frau Venus, schone Gattin mein, Ihr seid eine Teufel-
inne " (" My lady, ye are a female devil"). The pantheon of the Medi-
terranean nations became a pandemonium, and in all Christian coun-
tries of mediaeval Europe this devil-mania raged with a uniformity of
violence and persistence that completely refutes Buckle's theory. From
the fourth to the end of the fifteenth century fanaticism was clearly

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 473

not the result but the cause of ignorance. The dogma of unnatural-
ism raged like a pandemic disease, and the changes it suffered in its
progress from Asia to Spain are altogether trifling compared with
those it produced. Its influence leveled all national distinctions ; it
emasculated the valiant Visigoth and completed the degradation of
the degenerate Byzantine ; it increased the superstitions of Abyssinia
and perverted the learning of Western Europe.

The works of Bodin, Sprenger, and Robert Burton furnish astound-
ing proofs of what an amount of learning is compatible with the most
extravagant superstitions. They were all three earnest lovers of Truth
for her own sake — had accumulated stores of erudition that would
break the intellectual backbone of a modern scholar ; they were logi-
cians of inexorable exactitude, but the very profoundness of their con-
clusions only reveals the bottomless absurdity of their premises.

Dr. Sprenger does not condescend to examine the reality of dia-
bolical apparitions and infernal liaisons — it would be mere waste of
time, he says, to discuss such well-proved facts — but applies the power
of his logic to such questions as the following : If the offspring of a
male devil and a human female can, by a proper course of penance,
efface the stigma of his birth, can he be intrusted with the responsi-
bilities of a municipal or subaltern clerical office ? And, in case he
should succeed in concealing his parentage and obtain ecclesiastical
preferment, should not a conscientious diffidence at least inspire him
to plead a noli episcoparif And if, by any chance, his — progenitor
should appear to him, is he bound to treat the old gentleman with
anything like filial respect ? would he be obliged to exorcise his own
father ? or how could he compromise the difficulty ? And what if he
should find that he has inherited the paternal talent for magic arts,
and can not rid himself of the fatal bequest — does the welfare of his
soul require that he should denounce himself to the proper authori-
ties ? Persistent good luck, success in vaticination, etc., might be re-
garded as mere presumptive evidence, but if a Christian finds that he
can fly, it would be a very suspicious circumstance ; would he be justi-
fied in exercising his gift for worthy purposes — take a flit to Loretto,
for instance, or should he fly straight to the king's attorney, and thus
prove both his guilt and his contrition ? Or if. by prayer and fasting,
he should hope to disqualify himself for such exploits, would it be
right to give himself the benefit of the doubt ? An orthodox Catholic
had better strictly abstain from volitation, but if such scruples were to
seize him in mid-air, would it be advisable for him to let himself drop ?
The gift of prescience would also embarrass a man in that predicament
— would it be right to conceal his foreknowledge if, by a timely hint,
he could avert a public calamity ? Reticence would, on the whole, be
the safest plan. But should a man abstain from marriage, lest his
wife might be less discreet ? Persons troubled with a burdensome
secret are apt to talk in their sleep.

474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Jean Bodine quotes St. Augustine to the effect that a certain Pra3-
stantius confided to him an adventure of his father's, who, having been
drugged by a witch, was transformed into a horse, and had to carry a
load of corn ("De Civitate Dei" xviii, 18). Such transformations, says
Bodine, are still of daily occurrence, and only a false modesty prevents
the victims from achieving the glory of exposing the enchanter.

Witches, it is well known, can change only the body, but not the
soul, of a fellow-creature ; the corn-carrying contemporary of St. Au-
gustine was doubtless conscious of his degradation, and no horse of
proper principles should hesitate, under such circumstances, to gallop
away and state his case to the next exorcist. In Northern Germany,
metamorphoses of that kind are especially frequent, the object of the
wizards being to secure a mount on their way to the Blocksberg, and,
though individuals have no jurisdiction in such matters, Monsieur Bo-
dine would advise the anthropohippos to watch his opportunity and dis-
able his rider by a well-aimed kick. Two gamekeepers of the Duke of
Brunswick, both men of unimpeachable veracity, once saw a whole cav-
alcade of Walpurgis-riders, but hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting a
hack instead of a hag. In the same duchy a witch in tormentis once
revealed a sentence that would horsify a man in a minute, but Mon-
sieur Bodine is happy to state that he has forgotten the formula. To re-
member such things is highly dangerous. One judge of the Criminal
Court of Lorraine had cross-examined so many witches that he at last
began to suspect himself, and, having dropped a hint to that effect,
was seized and burned with the proper rites.

"With the exception of Ibn Chaldir, who passed nine tenths of his
long life in a public library, Robert Burton, the vicar of Segrave, was
probably the best-read man who ever lived. He had studied philology,
philosophy, theology, law, and medicine ; he was a first-class mathema-
tician, a zealous astronomer, and " calculator of nativities "; he had read
nearly every volume in the Bodleian collection and in the library of
Christ-Church College. He was well versed in the philosophical spec-
ulations of the mediasval school-men. He had mastered the inductive
system of his great contemporary. All this learning did not prevent
him from perpetrating the following dicta :

" The air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of in-
visible devils. . . . Fiery devils are such as commonly work by blaz-
ing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui (which lead men often in fiumina
aut prazcijoitia), whom, if travelers wish to keep off, they must pro-
nounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their
faces in contact with the ground. . . . Aerial devils are such as keep
quarters in the air, cause tempests, thunder and lightning, make it rain
stones, wool, frogs, etc. . . . Subterranean devils are as common as
the rest, and do as much harm. The last are conversant about the
center of the earth, to torture the souls of damned men to the day of
judgment ; their egress and regress some suppose to be about Etna,

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 475

Lipari, Terra del Fuego (!), etc., because many shrieks and fearful
cries are continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of
dead men, ghosts, and goblins. . . . The devil being a slender and in-
comprehensible spirit, can easily insinuate himself into human bodies.
A nun did eat lettuce without grace, or signing it with the sign of the
cross, and was instantly possessed. ... A young maid called Kathe-
rine Gaiter, a cooper's daughter, had such strange passions and convul-
sions that three men could sometimes not hold her ; she purged a live
eel, which suddenly vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of
strange stuff of all colors, twice a day for fourteen days, and after that
she voided great balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon's dung, parch-
ment, goose-dung, coals, and large stones. They could do no good on
her with physic, and left her to the clergy. . . . The arts of witches
are almost as infinite as the devil's, who is still ready to grant their
desires, to oblige them the more unto him. They can cause tempests
and storms, which is familiarly practiced by witches in Norway and
Iceland, as I have proved (!). They can make friends enemies, and
enemies friends by philters, turpes amores conciliare, enforce love, tell
any man where his friends are, about what employed, though in the
most remote places, and, if they will, bring their sweethearts to them
by night, upon a goat's back flying in the air."— (" Anatomy of Mel-
ancholy," Part I, section 2, subject i-iii.)

Neither learning nor logic afforded a safeguard against the mono-
mania of the middle ages, and Northern Europe owed its final deliv-
erance to the love of freedom rather than the love of science. The
delusion of the fourteen hundred years' interregnum of reason was to
all purposes a contagious mental disease ; and who shall say if the
prophylactics of our present civilization afford a guarantee against the
recurrence of such epidemics ? In the mind of a mental pathologist
the progress of spiritualism, with its revived thirst for miracles, might
awaken unpleasant recollections of the second century — the eve of the
era when St. Gregory Thaumaturgus carried the day against the pro-
tests of the Roman Huxleys and Carpenters. The trouble is, that the
creed of science has thus far been always agnostic, and its negative
propaganda could not maintain the field against the enthusiasm of a
positive superstition. Faith strikes deeper roots than skepticism, and
the dogmas that could crush out the logic of Aristotle found their
match in some of the silliest myths of paganism. Several myths of
this sort proved so wholly ineradicable that the new creed could assert
its supremacy only by a kind of grafting process, a mythical metastasis
that enabled the new dogma to draw its nourishment from the root
of an old superstition. The period of many Catholic festivals coin-
cides with the season of ancient Roman and Druidical mysteries.
Sacred fanes became miraculous shrines ; Ceres, Bacchus, Venus,
Pan, and Priapus still collect their old perquisites in the name of
new saints.

476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Even popular traditions have thus been metamorphosed. In the
mystic recluse of the Barbarossa legend, Professor Grimm recognized
the All-father Wodan, whose attributes had been transferred to the
person of Charlemagne, and afterward to Frederick Barbarossa. When
the oaks of the sacred groves were felled for church-timber, the old
Saxon god retired to the mountains, the usual refuge of exiled deities,
and finally went to sleep in a mountain-cave, the Untersberg, near
Salzburg, and the Kyfhauser in Northern Germany, where he awaits
the return of better times, the resurrection of the buried nature-wor-
ship and the departure of the black crows, the clerical birds of ill-omen
that fly croaking around his rocky retreat. The prototypes of these
croakers did not relish the legend, and managed to substitute a secular
hero, and in another case even a spook. The Wild Huntsman was
originally a Welt-jager, a world-hunter, the old sport-loving wrood-god,
with his hounds and falcons and train of merry companions. In West-
ern Pomerania the leader of the nocturnal chase appears under the
semi-incognito of a Junker Hakelberg, the "cowl-bearer" — another
cognomen of the mist-shrouded Odin.

Sir William Jones's researches into the sacred writings of Brahman-
ism revealed a still stranger metempsychosis of myths — the transfer of
the primeval Krishna legend to the personal history of Buddha Sakya-
Muni, and its subsequent exportation to a far Western colony of Bud-
dhism. According to Maurice's translation of the Bhagavat Purana,
Krishna (like Buddha) was a Parthenogenitus, a virgin-son. The birth
of both Krishna and Buddha was foretold by a heavenly messenger.
Both were of royal descent. The delivery of the virgin-mothers was
attended by the same prodigies, the rising of a new star and the ap-
pearance of a company of heavenly choristers. Three Eastern monarchs
visited the new-born infant. Cansa, the ruler of Krishna's birth-land,
ordered a massacre of young children in order to prevent the fulfill-
ment of an ominous prophecy. Both Krishna and Buddha passed
several years in exile before they entered upon their mission of reform.
Krishna, like Buddha, had twelve favorite converts, who accompanied
him on his missionary travels. Ccetera, qui nescitP

Our very hobgoblins are of Eastern origin ; nearly all international
fairy-stories and popular traditions have their roots in the fruitful
myth-garden of Hindostan. The stories of Cinderella, of Tamerlane,
and Jack the Giant-killer, amused the children of Sind before Nimrod
built his great adobe palace ; William Tell learned his trade in the
archer brigade of a Nepaulese tyrant ; and the fair Melusina used to
bathe in the Ganges before she built her swimming-hall in the castle
of Poitiers.

Of the Melusina legend a modern French evolutionist (M. de Les-
cure) gives the following curious exegesis : " The discovery of the
Marquis of Poitiers, which resulted in the dissolution of his connubial
tie, may yet lead to other divorces if the allies of the orthodox cos-

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 477

mogony should take a peep through a certain key-hole. The allegory
reveals the great arcanum of nature, the secret, namely, that the
human shape divine has been evolved from the form of a fish."

[To be concluded .]

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTEONOMY*

By M. JULES C. JANSSEN.

IT has become an almost consecrated custom for the President of
this Association, instead of relating the progress which has been
made in all the sciences that are the objects of your investigations, to
treat more particularly of a single one of them, and to present a sum-
mary of the progress it has made. This custom appeal's an excellent
one to me. By it we gain in precision and authority what we lose
in extensiveness ; and we owe to it many masterly efforts, the impres-
sion of which has not yet been effaced from our minds, and which
cause in me a just apprehension that I may fall far short of their
standard.

I shall endeavor to present to you a picture, sketched in broad
outline, of the progress and influence of a branch of research which
has played a considerable part in contemporary scientific movements,
and the discoveries of which have not only revolutionized our astro-
nomical knowledge, but have also opened new and unexpected hori-
zons to philosophy — I mean physical astronomy.

Physical astronomy is a wholly modern — yes, as to its best parts,
contemporary — science ; and it can be regarded as old only as concern-
ing its object. From the earliest times, in fact, that men began to
look toward the sky, and the first reflections on nature were born of
these fii-st observations, man has asked what is that sun whose im-
mense and beneficent function caused it to be designated at that early
period as the soul of nature. He has asked himself what is the cause
which lends to the moon the sweet and mysterious light that gives to
the nights so poetical a charm ; and afterward questions arose con-
cerning those brilliant points with which the celestial vault is strewed.
All these problems appertain to our science, but how little was man
then in a condition to deal with them ! Long ages of observations
and labor were necessary before even the corner of the veil could be
raised.

This was because physical astronomy presupposes a very clear
knowledge of the properties of light, both as to itself and as to its
relations with bodies, and great perfection in the mechanical arts to

* President's address at the French Association for the Advancement of Science,
La Rochelle, August, 18S2.

478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

permit the construction of the apparatus, at once extensive and deli-
cate, which it employs.

Astronomy as a description of motions, on the contrary, only re-
quired the eyes and very simple instruments. Therefore the first
astronomers began with that branch. At a later period, the science,
ceasing to be purely descriptive, became geometric, and at last took a
sublime flight ; and by the application of the higher calculus we had
the celestial mechanics.

During this long period, the physical branch of the science, to
speak correctly, did not exist. Reduced to hypotheses that could not
be verified, the theories of celestial physics had even fallen into dis-
credit. It should be said that the beauty and importance of the dis-
coveries with which the geometricians endowed the elder sister of our
branch contributed no little to this result. Three great discoveries
have, however, completely changed the situation, by giving to the
physical branch arms which permit it at last to enter gloriously into
the competition. I refer to the telescope, spectrum analysis, and pho-
tography.

The foundations of physical astronomy were laid in the invention
of the telescope. Every one has heard of the emotion which filled
Europe at the announcement of the discovery of an instrument which
had the power of making distant objects appear as if they were near.
It was at that time that Galileo, having only learned that such an
instrument existed, discovered its arrangement, constructed one,
turned it toward the sky, and, with this aid, fertilized by his genius,
made a series of magisterial discoveries. These discoveries belong
pre-eminently to physical astronomy, and form its first courses. If we
except the sun and moon, which have a very sensible diameter, and
admit of some observations without the aid of the telescope, all the
stars appear to the eye only as brilliant points, and admit of no studies
except of their motions. Therefore, an astronomy without the tele-
scope would never have permitted us otherwise than as a matter of
probability to consider the planets as like the earth in form, constitu-
tion, and office. But when it was seen that these brilliant and almost
blazing points were resolved under the telescope into well-defined
disks, showing indications of continents, clouds, and atmospheres ;
when satellites were perceived around those globes playing the same
part to them as the moon plays to the earth — then probabilities gave
place to a clear certainty. Telescopes, then, are the instruments by
means of which the constitution of the solar system has been defini-
tively unveiled, and the earth has been assigned its part and its rank
in the system of the planets. The discovery of the spots on the sun
and of its rotation completed the conception of the solar system and
prepared for the theory of its formation. Here is marked a well-de-
termined phase in the history of human ideas respecting the universe,
and it is characterized by the great name of Galileo.

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 479

Was it possible at once to go beyond this ? Was it possible to
question the stars in their turn, and inquire if, like the sun, they had
a sensible disk, spots, a rotation, and planets revolving around them ;
was it possible, in short, to extend to the stellar universe the notions
we had already acquired concerning the solar system ? The methods
in use did not yet permit this.

The most delicate measurement of parallaxes has proved that the
star nearest to us is two hundred thousand times as far off as we are
from the sun. We should, then, need a telescope magnifying more
than two hundred thousand times to show us, under the most favor-
able circumstances, a star's diameter equal to that which the sun pre-
sents to the naked eye. Such a power is a hundred times greater than
the strongest powers that can be used. We are, therefore, obliged to
stay within the limits of our system, and proceed by analogy when we
desire to go out of it. The analogies, it is true, were very powerful
means even with Copernicus and Galileo, but with Kirchhoff and
Huggins they were destined to acquire very shortly an irresistible
force. Nature habitually reserves for the assiduous and sagacious
observer sui'prises that exceed his hopes. So, while the study of the
stars, considered as individual worlds, still remained beyond our reach,
a great observer discovered facts of a very general bearing.

This leads us to a second phase of the period of telescopes — a phase
that was characterized by the observations of the great Herschel.
Herschel changed the form of the instrument, and adopted one that
was more adaptable to the realization of the great powers he sought
to obtain. Then, by his magnificent studies of the nebulae, and by his
discovery of multiple stars revolving around one another, he laid the
foundations of the theory of worlds with multiple centers. This was
a new conception, which did not proceed from that of the solar sys-
tem, but was much more general. The problem was thus resolved in its
extreme terms ; but between these extremes yawned an immense gap.

The gap has not yet been filled. We can not directly study those
worlds which each star forms with the planets of its suite, but a new
method of investigation has come forward to shed unexpected light
on the unanswered questions.

The first period of physical astronomy was opened with the modest
telescope of Galileo, and closed with the large telescopes of Herschel.
As early as the beginning of this century, when the astronomer of
Slough had finished his review of the sky, it was felt that the tele-
scopic harvest was nearly gathered, and another instrument of prog-
ress was looked for. Arago thought he had found it in the discovery
of Malus, to which he made brilliant additions, and earnestly endeav-
ored to found a new branch of physical astronomy on polarization.
He was not successful. His discoveries ceased after a few beautiful
applications of his method. At this time the polariscope process is
only employed to determine whether light is reflected or emitted.

480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Quite different was it with a method the origin of which, we be-
lieve, goes back to the very birth of optics. This method is likewise
founded on the actions of bodies on light, but, so rich and profound
are the modifications with which it has to deal, that it has been able
to pass over that in the matter which concerns only its general prop-
erties, and look into its peculiar individuality, its specific chemical
quality. The principle which is the basis of the new method of spec-
trum analysis is as simple as general, and may be stated by saying
that the elementary rays emitted by every kind of radiating gasiform
matter depend upon and characterize the chemical species to which
that matter belongs. Hence it follows that the spectral image result-
ing from the analysis of the beam of rays emitted by any body will
vary according to the chemical nature of that body. Spectum analy-
sis is founded upon the examination of spectra.

It must be added that the chemical nature of a body is not the
exclusive element in the constitution of its spectrum, but that that
may vary with the physical circumstances of the phenomenon, the
temperature, the cause generating the radiation, etc. ; but these are
subordinate effects, which only add to the richness of the method,
without detracting from its certainty and its value.

We have been able to leap over the enormous distance which sepa-
rates the conception of the body, viewed as to its general properties,
from the notion of it as individualized in such a manner as to consti-
tute a chemical species by regarding light not only as a whole, but
also in its elementary parts ; by not only studying the whole beam and
the general modifications that affect it, but by extending the examina-
tion to the elementary rays of which it is composed. The little mass
of matter forming the chemical molecule, when it can vibrate freely,
as in the gaseous state, emits a peculiar system of waves, a system
which varies principally with the chemical species of the molecule, but
which varies also, though rather secondarily, with the distance apart
of the molecules and the nature and intensity of the forces that induce
a vibratory movement in it. We might illustrate the nature of the
system of luminous rays emitted by such a molecule by comparing it
to the system of sounds given off by a vibrating cord, which is de-
pendent for the principal characteristic on the length of the cord, and
for the secondary phenomena of volume, tone, etc., on other circum-
stances accompanying the vibration.

It is proper to remark at this point that, when we analyze light in
this way to examine it in its elements, we perform an operation entirely
parallel to that of the chemist who separates the simple elements of a
compound body. The elementary ray is a chemical species in light.
It has all the characteristics of a species. It is incapable of decom-
position, it has an individuality of its own, characterized by its wave-
length, by the physiological effects it induces, whether acting alone or
in association with other rays, and by the phenomena which it exhibits

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 481

in its relations with bodies. We then bring the two sciences together
by performing on light an operation parallel to the one that has been
made on matter. Chemical analysis by light was performed in posse
on the day when its rays were regarded in the light of chemical spe-
cies.

This great idea of the specific character of luminous rays is due to
Newton. It was introduced into science when that great genius gave
his explanation of the action of the prism on white light. The founda-
tions of spectrum analysis were laid at that time, and the study of it
might have been begun then at once ; but the human mind does not
proceed with so penetrating and absolute a logic as that. The succes-
sive and often fortuitous acquisition of revealing facts had to be left
to time. It must, however, be said that, when the facts were presented,
their real significance would have been overlooked, notwithstanding
the genius of the experimenters, had not the grand idea of Newton
illuminated them with its brilliant light. The conception of the indi-
viduality of the rays made its way so slowly into our minds that it
bore its fruits, as it were, unknown to us. But history, whose vision
goes back to the beginnings, will have to assign their respective parts
to the causes which have been influential toward the end. The allot-
ment will in no degree diminish the admiration which is due to the
creators of the marvelous instrument. They have given a body of life
to what was slumbering in posse / they have thus shown themselves
worthy continuers of the work of Newton.

You know that this spectrum analysis made its appearance very
suddenly in science. You may recollect the emotion that affected us
all when it was announced that the solar atmosphere had been chem-
ically analyzed, and a list of the metals it contained was published.
You are, however, too well acquainted with the history of science to
suppose that a method as complete as the one that was thus announced
had no antecedents. The antecedents in fact existed, and they were
even numerous. With the labors which contributed to the constitu-
tion of the definitive method were associated the names of Sir John
Herschel, Talbot, Miller, Wheatstone, Swan, Masson, Foucault, etc. ;
but Kirchhoff and Bunsen were able to make a synthesis of all these
efforts, and they gave the method its general and practical form.
When spectrum analysis presented itself to the scientific world, it held
in one hand cresium and rubidium and in the other hand a list of the
metals recognized in a star ninety-three million miles away. Why,
then, should we be surprised at the enthusiastic reception that was
given it ?

At first it was believed that the incandescence of gases was one of
the conditions of elective absorption by them. A French physicist,
judging that the phenomenon related rather to the gaseous condition
than to the temperature, was led to believe that the earth's atmos-
phere, as well as the atmosphere which was supposed to exist around

VOL. XXII. — 31

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the sun, might exercise such an action ; and he showed that the solar
spectrum contained a whole system of dark and fine lines, comparable
to the lines of solar origin, but which were due to the action of our
atmosphere. Brewster had already discovered that the solar spectrum
was enriched with dark bands at sunrise and sunset, but that in his
instrument they wholly disappeared during the day. Both Brewster
and Gladstone, his eminent co-laborer, declared in their last memoir
on this subject, in 1860, that they could not determine the cause of the
phenomenon.

The absorbing action of our atmosphere was still more plainly
demonstrated by an experiment on the Lake of Geneva, in which the
absorption rays were obtained with the light of a fire passing over
Lake Leman, from a distance of fourteen miles. It was also shown in
an experiment made at Villette, with a tube filled with vapor at seven
atmospheres of pressure and one hundred and twenty feet long, that
the vapor of water has a complete absorption spectrum, and that the
largest proportion of the absorption phenomena of our atmosphere
should be attributed to it.

These observations and experiments doubled the field of investiga-
tion opened to spectrum analysis. Not only could the incandescent
atmospheres of the sun and the stai-s now be made to reveal their
nature and their composition to us, but our researches might also be
extended to objects having a still greater interest for us. We could
at once take our own atmosphere for an object, investigating high and
inaccessible regions, and making analyses in them which could not be
attempted by any other means. Then, going away from the earth, we
could interrogate the planetary atmospheres, and seek in them the
vapor of water, and with it one of the first conditions of the develop-
ment of terrestrial life. We could also, comparing the composition
of the planetary atmospheres with the astronomical facts which per-
mit us to judge of the geological conditions of the surfaces of the
planets, follow in them the atmospheric evolutions which on the earth
belong to the domain of the past or of the future. Finally, the same
study of the planetary atmospheres, when it shall have become more
complete, will show us whether our atmosphere is a type reproduced
everywhere, the composition of which appears from that fact indis-
pensable to the existence of living beings, or whether, discovering
atmospheres of varied compositions, we shall be led to suppose that
life may appear and be developed in media essentially different. The
planetary stars are not, however, the only ones that lend themselves
to these applications. There are also fixed stars the spectra of which
reveal the characteristics of the vapor of water. Now, we know that
the atmosphere of a star must be considerably cooled to permit the
gases of which water is constituted to combine and generate a vapor.
Our sun is still very far from this critical condition. It is also remark-
able that the stars presenting these characteristics are generally red or

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 483

yellow ones. In this manner the spectroscope may help us to esti-
mate in some degree the age of a sun, and measure the length of the
career which it has already accomplished.

While studies of this kind were going on in France, spectrum
analysis was receiving magnificent developments in England, more in
the line which its authors had indicated. Messrs. Miller and Huggins
entered upon the study of the stars, and found in all of them which
they examined the solar elements in various combinations. This dis-
covery had an immense philosophical bearing, for it proved that the
matter forming the solar and the stellar world is obtained from the
same elements. It was a demonstration of the material unity of the
universe. The study was prosecuted still further. There are stars
which we regard as situated on the confines of the visible universe,
the light of which is so weakened by the immense journey it has to
make to reach us that they appear only as feeble glows. Mr. Hug-
gins succeeded in analyzing some of them, and showed that there
exists a whole class of nebulae which are really unresolvable into stars,
and are formed of incandescent gases, among which hydrogen, which
thus seems to be the principal element in the composition of the uni-
verse, is the most prominent.

So the whole visible universe — not only our central star and the
planets of our family, but those stars, too, which are so far off that
our most powerful telescopes can not give them a sensible diameter,
and those nebulae which only make a weak glow in our instruments —
is reached by our chemistry, seized by our analysis, and made to fur-
nish the proof that all matter is one, and that these stars are made of
the same stuff as we. More, still, than this : at those great distances,
and in the presence of the vague and indefinite forms of the nebulae,
it would not be possible to study precise movements and discover
whether the great law of gravitation reigns in such remote regions.
Chemistry here comes to the aid of mechanics, and we may say boldly
that that matter, which is identical with ours, is subject, like it, to
the laws of gravitation. Certainly, when Newton decomposed a
beam of white light, and laid the first basis of the theory of the spec-
trum, he had not the slightest suspicion that his law of gravitation
would, at a later period, find in it wings to carry it into regions where
all measurement ceases and all calculation is powerless.

Spectrum analysis, after having in this manner, in a few years,
gone through the universe and reaped the magnificent harvest I have
just described, now returns to the sun, the point whence it departed,
to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by eclipses. These
phenomena, it is well known, exhibit a collection of magnificent spec-
tacles of an extraordinary character, which had heretofore remained
unexplained. Those rosy-colored protuberances of strange forms which
surround the dark limb of the moon, that magnificent luminous corona,
those radiances in the form of a glory and extending to enormous dis-

484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tances — all constituted so many riddles for astronomers till 1868. In
that year one of the great eclipses of the sun took place. We might
say that, at the very moment when the heavens had just suffered their
most precious secrets to be revealed, the star of day had deigned to
invite us to the study of his admirable structure.

The eclipse was observed, and the result surpassed even the general
expectation. The nature of the protuberances was immediately recog-
nized, and a method was discovered that permitted the study of these
phenomena every day, without having to wait for the rare occasions
of eclipses. This method led in a short time to the discovery of the
chromospheric atmosphere, and this completed and explained the phe-
nomena of the protuberances. The first results of the spectroscopic
investigations may be stated thus :

The sun of Herschel and Arago, formed of a central nucleus and
a luminous envelope, the photosphere, has an additional stratum formed
chiefly of incandescent hydrogen. This stratum, in immediate contact
with the photosphere, is very thin, being only from eight to ten sec-
onds thick ; it is the seat of small eruptions of metallic vapors rising
from the photosphere, in which sodium, magnesium, and calcium pre-
dominate. Frequently, however, principally at the time when the
sun-spots become abundant, there rise from the solar globe formidable
eruptions of hydrogen, which pass through this same envelope and rise
to a height of sixty thousand or ninety thousand miles. These erup-
tions are the protuberances of the total eclipses, the nature of which is
thus revealed and the forms explained.

The corona and the phenomena exterior to it were the objects of
study in the next eclipses. In 1874 French observations showed that
the corona constituted a new solar atmosphere, a very rare one and
enormously extended, in which hydrogen still dominated, while it pre-
sented spectral conditions as yet unexplained. This atmosphere seemed
to borrow a part of the appearances of the protuberance-eruptions
which penetrate it and are extinguished in it. It also seemed prob-
able, and that opinion was expressed by the author of these observa-
tions, that the figure of the corona would vary with the condition
of external activity of the sun. At the times of the maximum of
spots, when the protuberance-eruptions were in the highest activity,
the coronal atmosphere would be intersected by numerous and rich jets
which would increase its extent and density, and change its aspect.
This opinion was confirmed by one of the observers of the last eclipse
in Egypt.

I shall conclude this brief review of the methods of physical astron-
omy with a word upon an art which has recently brought a really
wonderful aid to all our scientific studies — I mean photography. Con-
sidered in its old and primary object, the aim of photography is to fix
the images of the camera-obscura. Its aim, however, and its means
have been singularly extended. We have to consider here only

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 485

the aid and the applications which physical astronomy can expect
from it.

The first application which was made of photography to the study
of the sky was in France, whatever may be said about it. The first
image of a fixed star upon the daguerrean plate was that of the sun,
and it was taken by the authors of the admirable processes for meas-
uring upon the earth the velocity of light — MM. Fizeau and Fou-
cault. Shortly afterward, images of the moon were obtained in the
United States. These labors were followed by others, of which the
sun and the moon were also the objects. Beautiful proofs of lunar
photographs have been taken by Mr. Warren de La Rue and Mr.
Rutherfurd. Photographs of the sun are taken regularly in many
observatories, as aids in the study of the spots and faculae of that star.
More recently, Mr. Rutherfurd and Mr. Gould have begun to make
celestial maps, and photographs of the nebula in Orion have been ob-
tained in New York (by Mr. Draper) and at Meudon.

These works are all very important ; they bear upon the primary
object of astronomical photography, that of obtaining durable and
trustworthy images of the stars and the phenomena produced upon
them, available for further studies and measurements. Hitherto, ob-
servers had only memory, a written description, or a drawing, to de-
pend upon for the preservation of the recollection of a phenomenon.
Photography substitutes for this the material image of the phenom-
enon itself. It is an admirable artifice, which in a certain manner
prevents the extinction of the phenomenon and its passage to among
the things that were, and keeps it always with us for examination or
study. Important as these results may be, the latest labors of which
photography has been the object, especially in what concerns the sun,
have demonstrated that the method may be employed as a means of
making discoveries in astronomy.

The large solar images which have been obtained in the latest
years at Meudon have revealed phenomena of the surface of the sun
which our largest observatory instruments could not have shown, and
which open a new field of studies. By their aid we can at last dis-
tinguish the real form of those elements of the photosphere, respecting
which so many different and contradictory assertions have been made.
The elements in question are composed of a fluid substance readily
obedient to the action of external forces. At points of relative calm,
the matter of the photosphere assumes forms more or less approaching
the spherical, and its aspect is that of a general granulation. Where-
ever, on the other hand, currents and more violent movements of the
matter prevail, the granular elements are more or less drawn out, and
present aspects suggesting the forms of grains of rice, willow-leaves,
or veritable threads. The regions, however, where the photosphere is
more agitated, are limited spots, and the granular form is generally
observed in the intervals between them. The result of this peculiar

486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

constitution is, that the surface of the sun presents the aspect of a net-
work, the web of which is formed of strings of more or less regular
grains, with here and there elongated bodies drawn out in all direc-
tions. An attentive study of these curious phenomena leads us to a
very simple explanation of them.

The stratum of luminous matter to which the sun owes its power
of radiation is, as we know, very thin. If this sti'atum was in a state
of perfect equilibrium, the fluid matter of which it is constituted would
form a continuous envelope around the nucleus of the sun ; and the
granular elements being confounded together, the solar surface would
have everywhere a uniform brightness. But the ascending currents,
of which the eruptions of metallic vapors and the hydrogen -protuber-
ances are evidences, rupture the fluid stratum which is tending to form
at a great number of points. It is then broken up and divided into
more or less considerable fragments. Wherever the perturbing forces
leave the elements of the photosphere in a state of relative repose,
they take a more or less pronounced globular form. At those points,
on the other hand, which are the seats of ascending currents, these
elements give evidence in their aspect of the violence of the actions to
which they are subjected. Hence the variable forms of the elements
of the photosphere, concerning which there has been so much discus-
sion. Hence, also, the explanation of that net-work-like structure of
the solar surface which has been revealed by photography.

These images also show the enormous difference between the lumi-
nous power of the elements of the photosphere and that of the medium
in which they float, which seems quite dark by the side of them. A
result of this constitution is, that the radiating power of the sun will
be affected according to the number and brightness of these elements.
The spots, then, can no longer be regarded as the principal element in
the variations of the solar radiation ; a new factor, the action of which
may be preponderant, must hereafter be added to them.

These photographs permit another study, which promises results
of extreme importance — the study of the motions which the granular
elements take on under the action of the forces that rumple the photo-
sphere. For the study of these motions, successive images of the
same point on the surface of the sun are taken at very brief intervals
with the photographic revolver. A comparison of the images demon-
strates that the matter of the photosphere is animated by movements
of the violence of which our terrestrial phenomena can convey only a
very feeble idea.

Following the example of spectrum analysis, photography is mak-
ing a circuit of the heavens. The year 1881 witnessed the first tak-
ing of the photograph of a comet, with a considerable portion of its
tail. This picture has revealed some curious particulars of structure
and has permitted a number of photometric measurements, the most
notable of which is one showing that the tail, notwithstanding the

METHODS IN MODERN PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 487

brightness with which it appears to shine, is, at only a few decrees
from the nucleus, two or three hundred times less luminous than the
moon. There will doubtless be room enough to perfect these first
efforts, for it will be of the highest importance to obtain by photogra-
phy incontestable documents for the history of these stars, the nature
of which still presents so many enigmas.

Equally interesting efforts have been made with respect to the
nebula?. Mr. Draper, in America, and the observatory at Meudon,
have obtained photographs of the nebulas in Orion. The nebula? are
of great importance in their bearing on the theory of the formation
of stellar systems and the genesis of worlds. It would be immensely
interesting to establish clearly the existence and the nature of changes
going on in their structure, and good photographs of them would be
valuable for this. They are, however, difficult subjects, on account of
the extreme weakness of their light, the uncertainty of their outlines,
and the variations of brightness in their different parts. Consequent-
ly, we are liable to have images of the same nebula?, in no way com-
parable with each other, but varying according to the length of the
exposure, the clearness of the sky, and the sensitiveness of the plate ;
and it becomes imperiously necessary to define the conditions under
which the images are obtained.

The images of any object impressed by light upon the eye are fu-
gacious, and can be of only a limited intensity. The images fixed
upon the photographic plate are permanent, and can be made of an
intensity that becomes cumulative with the duration of the exposure.
The photographic retina may be expected, when the art has been per-
fected in the highest degree, to give us images corresponding with an
extremely expanded range in the duration of the exposure. We now
obtain photographic impressions of the sun in the one hundred thou-
sandth part of a second, and can not yet guess what the final limit will
be in the direction of brevity. On the other hand, the images of the
comet required an hour, and that of the nebula? in Orion more than
three hours of luminous action. Thus the luminous action was more
than five hundred million times as long in the last case as in the first.
What phenomena can have wide enough ranges in brightness or ob-
scurity to escape so admirable an elasticity ?

The photographic plates, moreover, which are prepared now, are
not only sensitive to all the elementary rays which excite the retina,
but the power also extends into those ultra-violet regions and the op-
posite regions of dark heat in which the eye has no power.

The priceless advantages which photography offers for the prose-
cution of our experiments are, in short, the preservation of the im-
ages, the extension of sensibility, and the faculty of seizing phenom-
ena of the most different degrees of illumination, including the ex-
tremely strong and the extremely weak.

The above is a very incomplete picture of what has been accom-

488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plished by physical astronomy. Is it not enough, however, to show
that our branch of the science has already attained the height of its
elder sister ? Are not the two worthy of each other, and will they
not be able to march hereafter at an equal pace to the conquest of the
heavens ? On one side we behold the calculus — that marvelous intel-
lectual lever, putting the data of observation to work, and drawing
from them magnificent and unexpected consequences. On the other
side, that wonderful apparatus which analyzes light as if it were mat-
ter, which forces it to give images of near and distant objects alike,
and, seizing the fugitive images, makes them fixed and durable.

Behold on one side, again, the mathematical genius that has cre-
ated the analysis of the infinite, a genius of exactness and thorough-
ness, which is able to enter into all the elements of a question and
disengage from the complication of data the ultimate consequences
signified by them. On the other side, the genius of observation,
which now watches phenomena with the innate and superior sense
that enables it to discover their intimate relations, now questions Nat-
ure and carries on its experiments as the geometrician carries on his
analysis when he wishes to prove or discover something, and now,
illuminated by a sudden inspiration, makes at a stroke one of those
approaches that open immense horizons.

On one side behold, finally, the heavens measured, the solar world
placed in the balance, and its movements so well linked together by
the law that governs them that soon, perhaps, past, present, and fut-
ure will no longer exist for astronomy. On the other side, wonders
still more astonishing : stars revealing to us their forms and the most
minute details of their structure, as if they had left the depths of
space to offer themselves submissively to our study ; worlds intrust-
ing the secrets of the matter that engenders them to the rays which
they send us ; and the history of the sky written by the sky itself.
Finally, by the united efforts of the two, the entire universe, in its
majesty and its grandeur, become the intellectual domain of man.

-«•♦♦-

EVOLUTION OF THE STETHOSCOPE.

By SAMUEL WELKS, M. D., F. E. S.,

PIIYSICIAN AND LECTURER ON MEDICINE, GL'T's HOSPITAL.

INSTEAD of placing on the table every imaginary form of stetho-
scope manufactured out of every possible material gathered from
the shops of the instrument-makers, I will carry you back to the
origin of the stethoscope, and you will see how, on the principle of
selection and the survival of the fittest, the primitive instruments have
departed from the scene and are now only to be found among the

EVOLUTION OF THE STETHOSCOPE.

489

fossilized curiosities, the relics of former ages, on the antiquated
shelves of some very old medical practitioner. The stethoscope, as
you know, was invented by Laennec. He relates how in the year
1816 he happened to recollect a well-known fact in acoustics of solid
bodies conveying sound, and he goes on to say : " Immediately on
this suggestion I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and
applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my
ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could
thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear
than by the application of the ear. . . . The first instrument which I
used was a cylinder of paper formed of three quires completely rolled
together and kept in shape by paste." Laennec then goes on to de-
scribe how he copied this roll of paper in wood, metals, glass, and
other substances, and finally he says : " In consequence of these vari-
ous experiments I now employ a cylinder of wood an inch and a half
in diameter and a foot long, perforated longitudinally by a bore three
lines wide and hollowed out into a funnel-shape to the depth of an
inch and a half at one of its extremities. It is divided into two por-
tions, partly for the convenience of carriage and partly to permit its
being used of half the usual length. The instrument in this form —
that is, with the funnel-shaped extremity — is used in exploring the
respiration and rattle ; when applied to the exploration of the heart
and the voice, it is converted into a simple tube with thick sides, by
inserting into its excavated extremity a stopper or plug traversed by
a small aperture and accurately adjusted to the excavation. This in-
strument I have denominated the stethoscope?

Fig. 1 represents Laennec's roll of paper, and Figs. 2 and 3 the
copy of this in wood as he describes. The latter figure is drawn from
an instrument kindly given me by Dr. Galton, of Norwood, being the
stethoscope long used by his father. It does not separate into two

Fig. 3.

pieces, but contains the plug which can be removed so as to leave the
end hollow. Fig. 4 is the same instrument with the sides cut out to
make it lighter and more elegant, the ear-piece being the same as
before, and the mouth also hollowed out. This was the stethoscope
used and recommended by the late Dr. Hughes. By making the in-

49Q

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strument still more elegant and slender we have the modern stetho-
scope in endless variety, as in Fig. 5. It is thus very evident how the
modern instrument has been framed out of the original block of wood
which was made the counterpart of Laennec's roll of paper.

I know not who invented the instruments with flexible tubes, but
I have no doubt that a search into medical history could tell us. I
remember, however, that the first flexible stethoscope which I ever
saw was the one depicted in Fig. 6, and used by Dr. Golding Bird
when he saw out-patients in the year 1843. Being much crippled with
rheumatism, and therefore not wishing to rise from his chair, he found

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.

Fig. 8.

this instrument very convenient ; he also was enabled to pass the ear-
piece to gentlemen standing near him, while he held the cup on the
part to be examined. I always thought it was his own invention.
But, whether so or not, I do not think any great effort of genius was
required to frame a flexible instrument, and then adapt it for the use
of one or two ears. This being done, the next step would be to make
two mouth-pieces to apply to the chest at different spots. Various
modifications of these instruments have been made of late years, but
the first notice of them I have any knowledge of in my reading is to
be found in a letter to the " Lancet " of August 29, 1829, by Mr.
Comins, of Edinburgh, headed "A Flexible Stethoscope." This was-
only twelve years after Laennec's invention. It is difficult from his
description to picture the instrument, but it seems to have been com-
posed of jointed tubes, and made for two ears as well as one. Mr.
Comins expresses his surprise that the discoverer of mediate ausculta-
tion did not suggest a flexible instrument, as he says " it can be used
in the highest ranks of society without offending fastidious delicacy."
A very interesting fact was first pointed out to me by Dr. Andrew
Clark, with respect to a pecidiarity of the binaural in the objective
appreciation of sounds ; that if each ear-piece be separately used, and

SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN LIFE. 491

any sound be made near the mouth-piece, it is heard in the ear itself,
but, if the two pieces are employed together, the sound is heard at the
spot where it is produced. The fact is very interesting in a physio-
logical point of view, and further corroborates the theory as to the
value of a double set of senses, or, in a word, of the body being made
up of two halves, for just as the two hands feeling different parts of
an object gain an idea of extension, and the two eyes by obtaining
different views of any substance get a knowledge of its solidity, so in
the same way the two ears listening to the same sound more thoroughly
appreciate its objectivity.

If you look at this series of drawings you may perceive but little
resemblance between the first figure and the last, but take them one
by one and you will see that the figures are really progressive. My
story of development is not imaginary, but historical. — Lancet.

SOCIAL FOECES IN AMERICAN LIFE*

By HEKBERT SPENCER.

A FEW words may fitly be added respecting the causes of this
over-activity in American life — causes which may be identified
as having in recent times partially operated among ourselves, and as
having wrought kindred, though less marked, effects. It is the more
worth while to trace the genesis of this undue absorption of the ener-
gies in work, since it well serves to illustrate the general truth which
should be ever present to all legislators and politicians, that the indi-
rect and unforeseen results of any cause affecting a society are fre-
quently, if not habitually, greater and more important than the direct
and foreseen results.

This high pressure under which Americans exist, and which is most
intense in places like Chicago, where the prosperity and rate of growth
are greatest, is seen by many intelligent Americans themselves to be
an indirect result of their free institutions and the absence of those
class-distinctions and restraints existing in older communities. A so-
ciety in which the man who dies a millionaire is so often one who
commenced life in poverty, and in which (to paraphrase a French say-
ing concerning the soldier) every news-boy carries a president's seal in
his bag, is, by consequence, a society in which all are subject to a stress
of competition for wealth and honor, greater than can exist in a society
whose members are nearly all prevented from rising out of the ranks
in which they were born, and have but remote possibilities of acquir-
ing fortunes. In those European societies which have in great meas-

* Remarks appended to Spencer's address at the New York banquet, reprinted in the
" Contemporary Review."

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ure preserved their old types of structure (as in our own society up to
the time when the great development of industrialism began to open
ever-multiplying careers for the producing and distributing classes)
there is so little chance of overcoming the obstacles to any great rise
in position or possession, that nearly all have to be content with their
places : entertaining little or no thought of bettering themselves. A
manifest concomitant is that, fulfilling, with such efficiency as a mod-
erate competition requires, the daily tasks of their respective situ-
ations, the majority become habituated to making the best of such
pleasures as their lot affords, during whatever leisure they get. But
it is otherwise where an immense growth of trade multiplies greatly
the chances of success to the enterprising ; and still more is it other-
wise where class-restrictions are partially removed or wholly absent.
Not only are more energy and thought put into the time daily occu-
pied in work, but the leisure comes to be trenched upon, either liter-
ally by abridgment, or else by anxieties concerning business. Clearly,
the larger the number who, under such conditions, acquire property,
or achieve higher positions, or both, the sharper is the spur to the rest.
A raised standard of activity establishes itself and goes on rising.
Public applause given to the successful, becoming in communities thus
circumstanced the most familiar kind of public applause, increases
continually the stimulus to action. The struggle grows more and
more strenuous, and there comes an increasing dread of failui'e — a
dread of being " left," as the Americans say : a significant word, since
it is suggestive of a race in which, the harder any one runs, the harder
others have to run to keep up with him — a word suggestive of that
breathless haste with which each passes from a success gained to the
pursuit of a further success. And, on contrasting the English of to-
day with the English of a century ago, we may see how, in a consid-
erable measure, the like causes have entailed here kindred results.

Even those who are not directly spurred on by this intensified
struggle for wealth and honor are indirectly spurred on by it. For
one of its effects is to raise the standard of living, and eventually to
increase the average rate of expenditure for all. Partly for personal
enjoyment, but much more for the display which brings admiration,
those who acquire fortunes distinguish themselves by luxurious habits.
The more numerous they become, the keener becomes the competition
for that kind of public attention given to those who make themselves
conspicuous by great expenditure. The competition spreads down-
ward step by step, until, to be " respectable," those having relatively
small means feel obliged to spend more on houses, furniture, dress, and
food, and are obliged to work the harder to get the requisite larger
income. This process of causation is manifest enough among our-
selves ; and it is still more manifest in America, where the extrava-
gance in style of living is greater than here.

Thus, though it seems beyond doubt that the removal of all polit-

SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN LIFE. 493

ical and social barriers, and the giving to each man an unimpeded
career, must be purely beneficial, yet there is, at first, a considerable
set-off from the benefits. Among those who, in older communities,
have by laborious lives gained distinction, some may be heard privately
to confess that " the game is not worth the candle," and, when they
hear of others who wish to tread in their steps, shake their heads and
say, " If they only knew ! " Without accepting in full so pessimistic
an estimate of success, we must still say that very generally the cost
of the candle deducts largely from the gain of the game. That which
in these exceptional cases holds among ourselves holds more generally
in America. An intensified life, which may be summed up as great
labor, great profit, great expenditure, has for its concomitant a wear
and tear which considerably diminishes in one direction the good
gained in another. Added together, the daily strain through many
hours and the anxieties occupying many other hours — the occupation
of consciousness by feelings that are either indifferent or painful,
leaving relatively little time for occupation of it by pleasurable feel-
ings— tends to lower its level more than its level is raised by the grati-
fications of achievement and the accompanying benefits. So that it
may, and in many cases does, result that diminished happiness goes
along with increased prosperity. Unquestionably, as long as order is
fairly maintained, that absence of political and social restraints which
gives free scope to the struggles for profit and honor conduces greatly
to material advance of the society — develops the industrial arts, ex-
tends and improves the business organizations, augments the wealth ;
but that it raises the value of individual life, as measured by the
average state of its feeling, by no means follows. That it will do so
eventually, is certain ; but, that it does so now, seems, to say the least,
very doubtful.

The truth is, that a society and its members act and react in such
wise that while, on the one hand, the nature of the society is deter-
mined by the natures of its members, on the other hand, the activities
of its members (and presently their natures) are re-determined by the
needs of the society, as these alter : change in either entails change in
the other. It is an obvious implication that, to a great extent, the life
of a society so sways the wills of its members as to turn them to its
ends. That which is manifest during the militant stage, when the so-
cial aggregate coerces its units into co-operation for defense, and sacri-
fices many of their lives for its corporate preservation, holds under
another form during the industrial stage, as we at present know it.
Though the co-operation of citizens is now voluntary instead of com-
pulsory, yet the social forces impel them to achieve social ends while
apparently achieving only their own ends. The man who, carrying
out an invention, thinks only of private welfare to be thereby secured,
is in far larger measure working for public welfare ; instance the con-
trast between the fortune made by Watt and the wealth which the

494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

steam-engine has given to mankind. He who utilizes a new material,
improves a method of production, or introduces a better way of carry-
ing on business, and does this for the purpose of distancing competi-
toi's, gains for himself little compared with that which he gains for the
community by facilitating the lives of all. Either unknowingly or in
spite of themselves, Nature leads men by purely personal motives to
fulfill her ends : Nature being one of our expressions for the Ultimate
Cause of things, and the end, remote when not proximate, being the
highest form of human life.

Hence no argument, however cogent, can be expected to produce
much effect : only here and there one may be influenced. As in an
actively militant stage of society it is impossible to make many
believe that there is any glory preferable to that of killing enemies ;
so, where rapid material growth is going on, and affords unlimited
scope for the energies of all, little can be done by insisting that life
has higher uses than work and accumulation. While among the most
powerful of feelings continue to be the desire for public applause and
dread of public censure — while the anxiety to achieve distinction, now
by conquering enemies, now by beating competitors, continues pre-
dominant— while the fear of public reprobation affects men more than
the fear of divine vengeance (as witness the long survival of dueling
in Christian societies) — this excess of work which ambition prompts
seems likely to continue with but small qualification. The eagerness
for the honor accorded to success, first in war and then in commerce,
has been indispensable as a means to peopling the earth with the
higher types of man, and the subjugation of its surface and its forces
to human use. Ambition may fitly come to bear a smaller ratio to
other motives, when the working out of these needs is approaching
completeness ; and when also, by consequence, the scope for satisfying
ambition is diminishing. Those who draw the obvious corollaries
from the doctine of evolution — those who believe that the process of
modification upon modification which has brought life to its present
height must raise it still higher, will anticipate that " the iast infirmity
of noble minds " will in the distant future slowly decrease. As the
sphere for achievement becomes smaller, the desire for applause will
lose that predominance which it now has. A better ideal of life may
simultaneously come to prevail. When there is fully recognized the
truth that moral beauty is higher than intellectual power — when the
wish to be admired is in large measure replaced by the wish to be
loved — that strife for distinction which the present phase of civili-
zation shows us will be greatly moderated. Along with other benefits
may then come a rational proportioning of work and relaxation ; and
the relative claims of to-day and to-morrow may be properly balanced.

THE FORMATION OF LUNAR CRATERS. 495

THE FORMATION OF LUNAR CRATERS.

M JULES BERGERON says, in a paper communicated to the
. French Academy of Sciences, and republished in "La Na-
ture " : "I have noticed that when gases or vapors pass through a
mass having the consistency of paste, they leave behind them funnel-
shaped holes. Struck by the analogy which these holes present with the
craters of the moon, I have endeavored to reproduce the phenomena
on a larger scale. To simplify my experiments as much as possible, I
used alloys, melting at relatively low temperatures, taking first Wood's
alloy, of seven parts of bismuth, two of cadmium, two of tin, and two
of lead, which melts at about 158° Fahr. Having introduced into the
mass, melted in the salt-water bath, a current of warm air by means
of a tin pipe, I allowed it to cool slowly while the inflation of warm
air was still continued. The ebullition which took place reached all
the parts — which were beginning to solidify and form a pellicle — over
a considerable surface; and there was formed before me a large circle,
around which the edges gradually rose under the continued inflation,
till it began to assume the appearance of a crater. At the same time,
the metallic mass becoming thicker as the cooling went on, while it
was still blown out by the air, could no longer drive the solid particles
away from itself, and rose above the crater in such a way as to form
a cone, which grew visibly more prominent. The crater also became
more hollow, with its inner walls more inclined than the outer walls,
and I had before me a formation strikingly analogous to the craters
of the moon. The same phenomena were observed, whatever alloy I
employed.

" Similar processes have possibly taken place on the moon. In-
stead of gas, the reliefs may have been produced by the vapors, which
rose freely from the body while it was in a fluid state ; but the super-
ficial part of the planet being cooled much more rapidly than the
interior, the lattei', still fluid, continued to emit vapors after the sur-
face had become quite thick. The vapors found their way along the
superficial envelope, and came out only at particular points, where,
doubtless, the process of solidification was least nearly accomplished.
The vapors may subsequently have been condensed, or absorbed, by
the substances constituting the rock of the moon.

" As my first experiments were made in a capsule, the objection
might be made that the circular form of the crater was produced
under the influence of the shape of the walls of the vessel. To ob-
viate such criticism, I employed a rectangular basin, in which I melted
an alloy of four parts of lead, four of tin, and one of bismuth. The
phenomena were produced as in the former case ; but I found that
the aspect of the mass after the formation of the crater varied accord-

496

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing to what metal was used. With Wood's alloy, which is very fusi-
ble, the projections that fell on the edge of the crater flowed away,
and left no trace of their passage. With the second alloy the pro-

Fig. 1.— Artificial Crater oetained with an Allot.

jections all continued visible, and gave a rent aspect to the crater.
Moreover, since the warm air was not hot enough to melt the metal,
the projections might eventually overhang the bottom, as appears in
Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.— Action of a Current of Air on a Melted Allot.

"The second experiment was marked by a very interesting inci-
dent. Two concentric circular areas were noticed, the one nearer to
the center being the higher. This was due to an interruption to the

SCIENCE IN THE SICK-ROOM. 497

passage of the air during the formation of the crater. The edges of
Copernicus, Archimedes, and several other lunar craters are marked by

analogous features.

" A formation like a dike appears to rise in the center of a con-
siderable number of craters on the moon. I have been able to pro-
duce something analogous to this also, a representation of which is
visible in Fig. 2. After I had ceased blowing in air, a last bubble was
formed, which uplifted the mass, but could not project it above the
edge of the crater. The lunar dikes are very probably formed in
this way, by the action of the gas, at the end of the active period of
the craters."

SCIENCE m THE SICK-ROOM.

Br CLARA S. WEEKS.

THERE is no subject of so much general interest as this, concerning
which there is, at the same time, such a widely prevalent igno-
rance. There are few, especially among women, upon whom will not
devolve, at some time in their lives, the care of the sick ; fewer still
who will not at some time become dependent upon such care ; and it
migbt naturally be supposed that matters of such primary and univer-
sal importance as sanitary conditions and the practical application in
the sick-room of scientific jDrinciples would be too familiar to every
one to need to be further enlarged upon. But the fact is, it too fre-
quently happens that all the scientific knowledge which ever enters
the sick-room comes in with the doctor and goes out again with him.

Tbis state of things requires to be improved. Knowledge, and
tbat correct knowledge we call science, is just as indispensable to the
nurse as to anybody else. It is a great mistake to suppose that all
women — even all good women — make good nurses. Tbe best inten-
tions and the tenderest heart may coexist with an utter lack of execu-
tive ability, and be more than counterbalanced by ignorance and preju-
dice. Native aptitude gives advantage, but it can not be relied upon
alone. Even those who possess in the highest degree the natural gift
of ministration which renders them so acceptable to the invalid would
find their power of usefulness very largely increased by a familiarity
with what may be properly called the science of the sick-room. Phy-
sicians are recognizing more and more tbe importance of hygienic
agencies in the treatment of disease, and with this there has come an
increasingly urgent call for the scientific instruction and practical
training of those who are to take charge of invalids. Science explains
the conditions upon which the art of the nurse depends, and lays down
principles which can not be violated without injury ; but it is not at
all necessary to make a parade of technical language in stating its re-

TOL. XXII. — 32

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quirements. It is the object of the present article to furnish a few
simple directions for the care of the sick that have the warrant of
practical experience.

The first thing to be considered is the room itself. And the proper
time to consider it is when you build your house. But, as most of us
are forced to be content with houses already built, and built with no
reference in the mind of the architect to the probability of illness
among its inhabitants, it is only left for us to see how we may best
avail ourselves of such conveniences — or inconveniences — as we may
chance to have. There is always, at least, a choice of evils.

The sick-room should be on the sunny side of the house, and have
plenty of windows. Only in exceptional cases, such as inflammation
of the eye or brain, is it necessary to have the room darkened, and
even then a south room, with the light carefully moderated by blinds
and curtains, is to be preferred to a darker one on the north side. In
the majority of cases, light, and not only light, but direct sunshine, is
to be desired, not only for the additional cheerfulness which it gives,
but because of its actual physical effects. Sunlight is a powerful
remedial agent. You put the drooping plants which you wish to re-
store to vigor in the brightest, sunniest spot in your house — do the
same with the feeble and sickly human being for whose improvement
you arc so anxiously looking, and you will derive similar beneficial
results.

The sick-room should be, as far as possible, remote from the noises
of the house and of the street. If, as is sometimes the case, this desid-
eratum is quite incompatible with the last-named, still, except where
there is great nervous irritability, give the preference to the sunny side,
even at some loss of quiet.

Noise which is understood and inevitable is far less annoying than
would be a much slighter noise, unexplained or unnecessary. Inter-
mittent is more hurtful than continuous noise. Sudden, sharp, and
jarring sounds are especially to be avoided. Manage, if possible, to
have the room over your patient unoccupied. Modern houses are so
slightly built, and their vibrations so trying, that, unless you can so
arrange, you will often find it better to put your patient at the top of
the house, in spite of the fatigue of the stairs.

Many slight and apparently unimportant noises, which are never-
theless peculiarly annoying to the sensitive nerves of the sick, may
easily, with a little care and forethought, be entirely done away with.
If you have coal to put on the fire, bring it in wrapped in a paper,
and lay it on paper and all. Oil the hinges of creaking doors. Fix
wedges in rattling windows. Keep rocking-chairs out of the room.
Avoid wearing clothes that rustle or shoes that squeak. Do not
whisper, either in your patient's room, or just outside his door. A
low, distinct tone, when conversation is necessary, will seldom annoy.
Whispering always will, as will any sound which creates strained at-

SCIENCE IN THE SICK-ROOM. 499

tention or a sense of expectation. If you have anything to say which
you do not wish your patient to hear, say it somewhere else than in
his presence.

The first and greatest requisite in a sick-room is purity of air.
This is only to be attained by constant and thorough ventilation.
Ventilation is the displacement of impure by pure air. To secure
this, there should be two apertures to the room, one for the egress of
the foul air, and one for the admission of fresh air. The best possible
arrangement is that of an open window and an open fire-place. If you
do not wish a constant fire, keep a lamp burning at the mouth of the
chimney to create a draught. Arrange a blind or screen so that the
air will not blow directly upon your patient, and you may keep the
window open day and night without danger of chilling him. Do not
make the common mistake of confounding cold air with pure air. You
may keep the room at any desired temperature, and still have the
atmosphere perfectly fresh ; or you may lower the temperature to
any extent without removing a particle of the poisonous impurities
with which the air is laden. Keep your patient as wai-rn by means-
of external appliances as his comfort demands, but never shut out
the fresh air. Fresh air can only come from outside the house.
Opening a door into a passage or an adjoining room, itself imper-
fectly aired, is not ventilation. Fresh air, may, however, be admitted
to the sick-room through an adjoining apartment, first thoroughly
ventilated. This is sometimes the best method of procedure. It re-
quires, of course, more care to keep a small room well aired without
objectionable draughts than a large one.

Stationary basins should never be used in the sick-room. The per-
fect system of house-drainage has yet to be invented, and the danger
from leaky and defective traps is so great that the only safe way is to
avoid them altogether. If you have such arrangements in the room
which you propose to devote to your invalid, cork up the overflow-
holes — or, better, stop them with plaster-of -Paris — and fill the basin
with water, which must be changed from time to time, or cover it en-
tirely with a board. The increased healthfulness of the atmosphere
will more than compensate for the extra trouble which will be occa-
sioned by adherence to this precautionary measure.

No cooking should ever be done in the sick-room. Neither should
damp towels or articles of clothing be aired and dried there. All ex-
creta should be promptly removed. Upon attention to these details
depends that which should be the first care of every person in charge
of the sick — that the air they breathe should be as pure as that outside.

The room, then, which we select for our invalid should be sunny,
quiet, the one which affords the best facilities for ventilation and
warmth, and without sewerage.

In the arrangement of the room, the same regard for the comfort
and welfare of its occupant should be maintained.

500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Ibed should be in the lightest part of the room, far enough re-
moved from the wall to allow a free circulation of air around it, and
to be easily accessible from both sides. It should be so situated that
the patient can see out of the window. If you can give him a view
from two windows, so much the better. Few people who have not
experienced it can realize the weariness of mind which arises from
long confinement to one set of surroundings. You have but to spend
a few days in one room to become painfully familiar with every petty
detail of its furnishing, and such variety as may be obtained from a
glimpse out-of-doors will often afford an infinite relief.

It is frequently recommended that all superfluous and merely orna-
mental articles be removed from the sick-room, as useless incumbrances,
only affording so many additional lodging-places for dust ; but, unless
you are dealing with contagious disease, you will find it better to spend
a little more time in the removal of dust than to leave the sufferer
with only the bare walls to gaze at, and nothing visible to vary the
monotony of his thoughts. That a carpet or wall-paper of set pattern,
or anything else presenting regularly recurrent figures, is objection-
able, does not need to be suggested to any one who has ever been
beset by the counting and classifying fiend who so often takes posses-
sion of the invalid left with no occupation for his vacant mind beyond
such as is suggested by the objects within his limited field of vision.

Let the room be as cheerful as possible in its aspect. Flowers are
quite permissible. Growing plants are better than cut flowers. The
latter must be removed as soon as they cease to be perfectly fresh.

There should be no medicine-bottles or medical appurtenances of
any kind in sight. They belong in the closet, and should be kept
there, except when in actual use.

A thermometer is indispensable. Never permit yourself to judge
the temperature of the room by your own sensations or by those of
your patient. Hang the thermometer as nearly as possible in the cen-
ter of the room — at all events, neither against a chimney in use or the
outer wall. The one will be hotter and the other colder than the
mean temperature, which is what you wish to have registered. This
should be, unless you have contrary orders from the physician, about
G8° Fahr.

The necessity for absolute cleanliness can not be too strenuously
insisted upon. Dusting can only be efficiently done with a damp
cloth. The ordinary methods in vogue simply serve to transfer the
dust from one spot to another. Removal, not distribution, should be
the object in view. The room can only be thoroughly swept and
cleaned when the patient can be moved out of it for a time ; but the
dust may be removed from the carpet quite effectively and noiselessly
by means of a damp cloth wrapped around a broom.

Not only for the sake of appearances, but from more directly hy-
gienic considerations, are cleanliness and order to be regarded.

SCIENCE IN THE SICK-ROOM. 5oi

Upon the proper arrangement and care of the bed will largely
depend your patient's comfort. This should be low and narrow
enough for you easily to reach him from either side. The bedstead
should be of iron or brass, with springs of woven wire, permeable by
the air in every part. This is the only kind which you can be sure of
keeping thoroughly clean. On this should be a hair mattress, never a
feather bed. Make the under sheet as tight and smooth as possible,
and take especial pains to keep it thoroughly dry and free from wrin-
kles, crumbs, and other inequalities. Neglect in this particular will
give rise always to much discomfort and sometimes to serious troubles
in the form of pressure-sores — which are extremely difficult to cure,
but nearly always preventable by care. Very heavy or very much
emaciated patients, and those suffering from affections of the brain,
are particularly liable to these. It is often advisable, especially where
a bed is prepared for long occupancy, to put next to the under sheet
one of rubber, covered with a second folded sheet, or draw-sheet. This
can be easily and frequently changed with but very slight disturbance
to the patient. The bed-coverings should be such as are warm with-
out being heavy, as their weight is often found oppressive. In some
cases even slight pressure is unendurable. The weight of the clothes
may then be supported by a wooden frame-work underneath.

All bedding should be frequently renewed, and always well aired
and warmed before being used. If you have a patient entirely con-
fined to bed, it will add greatly to his comfort if you can give him
two beds, each provided with its own complement of sheets, blankets,
etc. Let him occupy one during the day, and be transferred to the
other for the night. If they are of equal height, this can be easily
done, and the smooth, fresh condition of the unused bed will do more
than any narcotic toward securing for him a good night's rest.

To prop a patient up with pillows, begin by slipping one as far
down as possible against the small of the back. Put the next and
succeeding ones each behind the last ; this will prevent them from
slipping. Aim to raise the head, and support the shoulders without
throwing them forward so as to interfere with the free play of the
lungs. Two or three small pillows, which can be moved from place
to place as occasion requires, will be found of great service.

About the person of your patient, no less than about his room,
labor to secure the most scrupulous cleanliness. Neglect of this too
often arises from a fear that the patient will take cold ; but it entails
a greater risk than this to leave him in clothing saturated with morbid
effluvia, and with the pores of his skin clogged by the noxious products
of disease. No patient is ever too ill to be kept clean. If proper
precautions are used and unnecessary exposure avoided, no danger
need be apprehended.

The proper administration of food is often the great problem of
the sick-room. There must be due regard to the kind, quality, and

502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quantity, and to the time and manner of giving it. The kind of food
to be given is usually prescribed by the physician. If it is left to your
own discretion, consult, as far as possible, the tastes of your patient,
try to secure a judicious variety, and do not let him know until you
bring it what he is going to have next. Milk is the only article of
diet which contains in itself all the essential elements of nutrition. It
is, therefore, the only thing upon which you may allow your patient
entirely to subsist for any length of time. The most concentrated
forms of food are to be preferred, such as convey the greatest amount
of nourishment in the smallest bulk.

Whatever you give, be sure that it is the best of its kind — milk
perfectly sweet, eggs above suspicion. Remember that you have
more than the ordinary fastidiousness to contend with, and never offer
a sick person anything which you have not, pr-jviously tasted yourself,
and so feel absolutely sure of. This does not mean that you are to
taste it in his presence. Bring only so much as can be taken at once.
A large amount looks so discouraging that it destroys the appetite for
even a little. Take away promptly what is not eaten. It is worse
than useless to leave it in sight in the hope that it will soon be wanted.
Give only a small quantity of food at a time, but give it at short and
regular intervals. A capful every two hours is more easily managed
by weak digestive organs than would be a large meal three times a
day. When a table-spoonful can not be taken hourly without distress,
you may give successfully a tea-spoonful every quarter of an hour.
The idiosyncrasies of each individual case must be considered. Regu-
larity is, however, always important. When you do not feed your
patient again until morning, it is well to give him some light and
easily assimilated nourishment the last thing at night.

If you have a helpless patient to feed, do it slowly, and avoid un-
manageable quantities. It requires attention and care to do this well
without making an external application of it. Fluid food is most
easily given, and with the least exertion on the part of the patient,
through a bent glass tube.

Serve the food in as attractive a form as possible. If it pleases the
eye, it has a much better chance of proving acceptable to a delicate
appetite. You can at least have the dishes spotlessly clean, and dry
on the outside. Have hot things hot, and cold ones very cold. To
successfully cater to the capricious appetite of an invalid requires the
faculty of observation, judgment, and no little ingenuity ; but it is
worth the exercise of them all, for in most cases the question of nour-
ishment is more important than that of medicine.

Give medicine or stimulant ordered always on time, and measure
it accurately. Acquire the habit of always reading the label before
you open a bottle. Pour the contents from the unlabeled side. Cork
tightly after using, as many drugs lose their virtue upon exposure to
the air. Use no remedies, however beneficial you may fancy they

THE DECREASE OF GOLD. 503

would be, without the approval of the physician in attendance. You
may otherwise most disastrously conflict with his plan of treatment.

The patient himself should have no responsibility about the taking
of medicine, the preparation of food, or anything else which can be
spared him. In all small matters, relieve him entirely of the onus of
decision. If there is any doubt in your own mind as to the expedi-
ency of this or that measure, do not let him share it. Let him feel
that you know, and can be relied upon to do, what is best for him,
without any necessity for thought on his part.

Perfect freedom from anxiety and cheerful surroundings are as
essential for his mental, as are free ventilation, absolute cleanliness,
and nourishing food for his physical, well-being. These are the ele-
ments of good nursing, and surely they are within the reach of all. Se-
cure these, and you will have given the sick person under your care
the best possible chance for recovery ; at least you will ameliorate
his sufferings, and relieve him from many an unnecessary aggravation.

THE DECREASE OF GOLD.

By F. von BKIESEN.

WHEN, in the beginning of 1850, California and Australia sent
annually about one hundred and eighty million dollars of gold
into the world, national economists became frightened, and Michel
Chevalier and Cobden expressed the fear that the world would be com-
pletely inundated with a flood of gold. But when, after the year 1867,
this production decreased with alarming rapidity, the opposite fears
were expressed. As early as 1869, the London " Economist," when
reviewing the year past, said that it would be a great blessing if new
sources of gold could be discovered, since the production of thirty
thousand pounds sterling per year was barely sufficient to cover the
necessities of a flourishing commerce, more especially since America
consumed a great part of the gold for itself, thus withdrawing it from
the European market. Notable statesmen saw in it the cause of the
periodically recurring commercial crises ; and Professor Suss, of Vi-
enna, demonstrated in his pamphlet, "The Future of Gold," that the
present sources of gold are being exhausted, and that the territory
in which new deposits might be found is gradually diminishing in
extent.

It is not our purpose, however, to dissuss the national, economical
side of the question, but merely to consider it in its scientific bearing.

Gold and silver are the so-called precious metals, for the simple
reason that they are rare. But, if we ask why gold is so scarce,
Dr. Siiss answers that its scarcity is caused by its specific gravity.

504 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

We possess three metals distinguished for their great density — iridi-
um, platinum, and gold. If we assume the weight of water as unity,
the gravity of these metals is — iridium, 22*23 ; platinum, 21 -50 ; gold,
19-25. With the exception of iridium, rare as well as remarkable,
gold and platinum weigh more than any other metal : for instance,
lead has a specific gravity of 11*35 ; silver, 10*47 ; copper, 8*80 ; and
iron, only 7*84. The question occurs next, whether the scarcity of
gold stands in any connection with its gravity.

Since the earth originally passed from a gaseous into a fluid state,
the heaviest components must, in its fluid condition, have tended
toward the center. If it he true that our entire planetary system
developed from an immense nebula, it follows that the planets nearest
to the center must be the heaviest.

" Their great specific gravity," says Professor Petzholt, speaking
of metals, " is the reason that they can so rarely be seen on the surface
of the earth; the largest masses are to be found within the interior,
in a molten condition, and are there protected against the cupidity of
man."

Further observations have confirmed the truth of this view. Be-
cause spectral analysis reveals no gold in the sun, we must accept the
fact that it lies hidden in its interior, and that it is covered by lighter
bodies, which, in a gaseous state, form the photosphere of the sun.
Hydrogen, the lightest of all gases, constitutes the chief component of
this photosphere. Now, the planets are divided into two groups, ac-
cording to their weight : the heavy, which lie within, and the light,
which lie beyond, the circle of the asteroids. Mercury, the nearest to
the sun, is seven times as heavy as water ; Venus, the Earth, and Mars
are five times as heavy ; while Jupiter barely attains the weight of wa-
ter. The specific weight of Saturn is 0*73 ; of Uranus, 0*84 ; conse-
quently, they are lighter than water. The density of Neptune, not
yet exactly determined, is at any rate very small. We therefore find
in our planetary system that the densest bodies are nearest to the cen-
ter, and this leads us to the presumption that the same law governs
on each individual planet, and that, therefore, the heavy gold must
be found nearest to the center.

This leads to the question, Whence the gold and platinum to be
found upon the surface of the earth ? These two heavy metals are
only found in places where volcanic rocks have penetrated through
earlier formations, and the granite has split up. Platinum, only found
in excess in the Ural Mountains, is obtained from rocks that have come
up from below ; gold is found only in quartz-veins. These veins have
been formed in the following manner : As a natural consequence of
the contraction of the earth's crust, internal revolutions, and volcanic
eruptions, crevices opened, which were partly filled by hot springs,
partly by eruptions with quartz. Rich deposits are often found in
these crevices, called by the American miners " pockets," or " bonan-

THE DECREASE OF GOLD. 505

zas " ; but, besides these bonanzas, crevices contain no gold, and only
the hope of encountering them leads to their being worked.

The places in which gold is found may be divided into the follow-
ing three classes — auriferous ore, auriferous veins, and auriferous allu-
vium :

The first group contains ore, rich in magnesium, interspersed with
gold. It is frequently found in the Ural Mountains. As a transi-
tion to the second class may be regarded the auriferous minerals, in
rock of volcanic origin, as it occurs on the west coast of South Amer-
ica atid in many parts of Brazil. The granite of the Erz Gebirge, in
Bohemia, which contains tin, is a similar formation. Interesting as
this class is, considered from a geological stand-point, it is of little
practical value to the gold miner.

The next class consists of the auriferous veins, which are fissures
filled by hot springs, geysers, or volcanic eruptions. The gold is found
here together with silver, as in the case of the Comstock lode, in
Nevada, the gold deposits in Queensland and New Zealand, as well as
the mines near Kremnitz, in the Carpathian range, in Hungary. The
gold is sometimes found in them pure, sometimes mixed with silver,
copper, or sulphur. In the older volcanic veins the gold is not mixed
with silver, and bonanzas are never found in them. In many of these
veins, also, granite veins are encountered, and, although remote from
volcanic regions, it is presumed that the gold was carried up by the
granite. The celebrated " Mother lode " of California is a sample of
this kind.

The third class is the gold-bearing alluvium. This alluvium (earth
washed down by rivers upon lower lands) has been produced by the
decomposition of auriferous rock, and the gold is found in grains and
lumps to the size of a hen's egg. It is a peculiar fact that the gold
found in these deposits is purer than that contained in the veins from
which it originated, nor is the formation of lumps and grains satisfac-
torily explained. The deposits of California, Australia, and Siberia
pertain to this group, which may again be subdivided into — a. Depos-
its on the earth's surface, from which the gold is obtained by simple
washing ; b. Deposits which have been covered by subsequent inunda-
tions, and from which the gold has to be mined only by difficult work
and great expense. These old deposits in California are frequently
covered with basalt or lava, and are called " deep leads." They are
worked by the hydraulic system : the water is conducted through pipes,
and directed with full force against the soil, which is hereby converted
into a fluid mud, and passes in this condition through a long line of
sluices, set in zigzag, in which the particles of gold are deposited.

The most remarkable deposits of this kind are to be found at Bal-
larat, Australia, where they are covered with four hundred feet of
ground and four layers of lava, which have come from a neighboring
volcano. These deposits are the banks and bars of former streams,

5o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which have subsequently been filled up. The greatest part of the gold
comes from these sources. Dr. Suss estimates that, of all tbe gold
which has been mined between the years 1848 and 1875, the work-
ing of the ore has yielded 12'02, while that of the former deposits fur-
nished 87'98 per cent.

Since these deposits are exhausted, attention has for the past few
years been directed to the working of the ore. As soon as gold-mines
are exhausted, new ones must be found. While the mining of silver
is sometimes continued in the same regions for centuries, that of gold
is always of short duration, wherefore gold-mines are only to be found
in the extreme limits of civilization. Herodotus remarked, when speak-
ing of the quantity of gold-dust paid as a ti'ibute to Darius by the
inhabitants of India, that the greatest treasures always come from
the most remote places of the earth. The old countries have entirely
ceased to be productive, and search must be instituted in the yet
unexplored regions in order to discover new fields.

Gold was in excess in ancient times, and mostly taken from the
rivers in Asia. The fables of Pactolus, of the golden fleece of the
Argonauts, of the gold from Ophir, the history of King Midas, etc.,
all point to an Eastern origin of this metal. According to Pliny, Cyrus
returned with 34,000 Roman pounds of gold (about $10,000,000). The
treasures exacted from Persia by Alexander the Great amounted to
351,000 talents, or $400,000,000. Gold also came from Arabia, and
upon the Nile from the interior of Africa. Pliny calls Asturias the
country in which the most gold is found. A tablet bearing the fol-
lowing inscription was found in Idanha Velha, Portugal : " Claudius
Rufus returns his thanks to Jupiter for having permitted him to find
one hundred and thirty pounds of gold."

These sources of wealth have ceased to flow, and the endeavor of
several Englishmen to reopen them have been unsuccessful. Bohemia,
Mahren, Silesia, and Tyrol, all have produced gold, and the reced-
ing of the glaciers has caused old mines to be uncovered, while upon
the Italian side, at Monte Rosa, Yal Sesina, and Val Ansaca, gold-
mines are still worked to-day, although with indifferent success. The
only works of any note are those of Kremnitz, Hungary. It may,
therefore, be safely asserted that Europe is completely exhausted in
this respect.

After America was discovered, the Antilles, especially Hispaniola,
and the western coast of Mexico, furnished incredible quantities of
gold. That used by Alexander VI to gild Saint Mary Maggiore came
from Hispaniola, as is seen by the following inscription : "Quod primo
Catholici reges ex India receperant." But the production of these
mines did not last loner.

We find several peculiar statements, with regard to the mining of
gold, in an old Dutch book, printed in Amsterdam in the year 1590.
It says : " Gold comes from different countries, from the mountains in

THE DECREASE OF GOLD. 507

Bohemia, and the rivers in Sweden. More than twenty thousand
pounds came formerly from Spain, but these mines are exhausted. It
came next from the Sj^anish Indies, first from San Domingo, then from
other parts, but that also has stopped. It comes at present from Peru,
formerly three millions annually, at present five, six, and eight millions,
but it will not be long until these mines also will be exhausted and
abandoned." The prophecy of the old book has been fulfilled.

Humboldt entertained great hopes of New Granada and Colombia,
where precious metals are found, but, in spite of English capital and
highly-improved machinery, the mines do not produce beyond two
millions annually.

The Indians of Chili, Peru, and the entire western coast of South
America, formerly dug much gold from the alluvium ; they obtained
plenty of silver afterward, but little gold, while at the present time
they produce ten or twelve times less than at the time of Humboldt's
visit. The total production of South America, except Brazil, from
1500 to 1875, was about thirteen hundred million dollars. We can
nowhere follow the history of mining better than in Brazil. Toward
the end of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of Sao Paulo were
struck with the gold trinkets worn by the savages, and they began
washing. In the year 1697 Bartholomeo Bueno found rich gold
deposits in the province of Minas Geraes, in consequence of which
many adventurers went there, and a war broke out between the Paul-
ists and the Portuguese. The governor finally succeeded in restoring
peace, and gold-washing was prosecuted according to a fixed system,
whereby the mines became very productive. Towns were built — for
instance, Villa Rica — and people flocked from all regions. The prov-
ince of Matto Grosso, after the year 1720, ceased to produce gold, and
in the eighteenth century Brazil occupied the place of California in
the nineteenth. Minas Geraes alone, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, produced seven, and Brazil ten, million dollars per year, but
the deposits were soon exhausted, and toward 1820 the entire produc-
tion of Brazil had dwindled to five hundred thousand dollars. The
leads were next commenced to be worked, but without success, in spite
of the vast sums expended upon them by large capitalists. Brazil,
which a hundred years ago excelled any other country in the produc-
tion of gold, has in this respect become fully impoverished within the
last fifty years. Its total production, from the end of the sixteenth
century up to to-day, amounts to one hundred and sixty million dol-
lars.

In ancient times, and in the beginning of the middle ages, Africa
was known as the gold country. Herodotus speaks of the Carthagini-
ans, who gathered gold on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules ;
the Arabian geographer El Edrisi (1154) speaks of gold in Wangara,
the source of the Niger, and the same mention is made by the Moor,
Leo Africanus, who was baptized by Pope Leo X ; he had explored

5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Africa and the countries of Wangara and Timbuctoo. The Moors of
Spain and Northern Africa obtained their precious metals from these
countries. The French of Senegal lately took possession of them.
They still found gold, but no longer in paying quantities, and the once
famous Gold Coast at present furnishes not half a million dollars per
year. The auriferous sand is washed by the negroes during leisure
hours, and they are content with a yield which would ruin a European
enterprise.

The Egyptians obtained their gold from the upper Nile and Ethi-
opia, attested by inscriptions dating from the year 1600 before Christ.
Herodotus mentions a king of Ethiopia who was attacked by Cam-
byses, but not conquered, who shackled his prisoners with golden
chains, since gold was more common than bronze. According to
Edrisi, there was so much gold in Sofala that a copper trinket was
worth more than one of gold. The celebrated explorer Mauch, in
1867, found the remains of ancient gold-mines, but the gold of Africa
belongs to the past. The celebrated necklace of the Queen Aalie
Topeh, said to be three thousand six hundred years old, and still to be
seen in Boolak ; the gold chains worn by the Afghan prisoners at the
time of Cambyses ; the treasures brought by the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon's Temple ; the masses of gold with which the throne of the
King of Ghana was adorned — all these, no matter whether they be
fables or not, indubitably point to the former immense gold wealth
of Africa, while to-day it produces barely a million dollars. Entire
Northern Africa, as far as the Sahara and the Falls of the Nile, con-
sists of sedimentary ground, which never can have furnished metals ;
but in the interior we find old rock — granite, gneiss, and hornblende —
and there the auriferous alluvial soil had been formed ; but it appears
that it has been thoroughly exhausted in antiquity and the middle
ages. According to Ab. Jevones, the natives have been the first to
discover auriferous sand. It is, therefore, possible that the interior
country still contains deposits, and even bonanzas, but large ones may
no longer be expected, since its gold would long ago have reached the
coast.

Neither China nor Japan produces sufficient gold for home con-
sumption.

The three chief sources are at present Siberia, the United States,
and Australia, while the last two are becoming exhausted. An im-
mense alluvial territory exists in Siberia, covering the entire space
from the Ural to the river Amoor, but the climate prevents washing
during the greater part of the year. Here, similar to California, gold
is found wherever granite fills the fissures. Although the yield of
the washings is gradually decreasing, it is really increased by daily
discoveries of new fields, and amounts at present to about $28,000,000
annually. The greatest quantity of gold has of late years been mined
in America, partly due to its natural wealth, partly to the energy

THE DECREASE OF GOLD. 509

brought to bear for obtaining it. Volcanic forces have brought gold
as well as silver to the surface in the Rocky Mountains, but its exhaus-
tion is approaching rapidly. Montana, in 1860, produced $18,000,000,
while to-day its yield is $2,500,000 ; Idaho, from 18G4 to 1871, yielded
from $5,000,000 to $7,000,000, which in the year 1880 has decreased
to $1,510,546 ; Oregon and Washington yielded, in the year 1868,
$4,000,000 ; in 1879, not more than $1,275,000 ; Dakota has increased
a little, and produced $2,420,000 in 1879 ; Colorado has an average
yield of $3,000,000 ; California has passed through the several stages
of a gold-producing country ; the washing of the river-sands, after
1848, produced immense wealth, while at present only the Chinese
are engaged in it, and earn a bare living. The gold on the surface is
exhausted, and only the deep deposits and the veins remain to be
worked.

It has been estimated that $1,200,000,000 of gold and silver have
been mined in the West of the United States within the last thirty
years ; and that, in spite of the recklessness and extravagance which
characterized the two decades from 1849 to 1869, a net profit of $30,-
000,000 per year was realized. Since 1850, the money invested and
the labor expended in mining in the West for precious metals are esti-
mated at $710,000,000. What may fairly be called the mining terri-
tory of the United States embraces an area of 1,190,000 square miles,
with a population of barely 1,500,000.

The entire ridge of the Sierra Nevada consists of granite ; but on
the western slope limestone is found mixed with it. Where these two
rocks come together, a belt from eight to nine miles wide, and running
from north to south, is found,, which contains all the gold leads of the
district. The " Mother lode " commences at Mariposa, passes through
the northern boundary of the State, and is covered by the lava of the
large (not yet extinguished) volcanoes Pilot Peak and Lossan Peak
farther north. This lava also covers an old alluvial bottom with
overlying layers of basalt from fifty to two hundred feet thick, and
these form the so-called " Table Mountains." We find the same for-
mation south of the Sierra Nevada, near the " Big Trees," where the
sedimentary deposits, lying upon granite, are covered with basalt.
From here the auriferous sand was washed away by mountain-streams,
and appeared on the surface. These deep deposits, in connection with
the offshoots of the Mother lode, still sustain the gold production of
California at from fifteen to seventeen million dollars.

In Nevada was discovered the Comstock lode, for a long time held
to be inexhaustible, and this is also covered with later volcanic for-
mation. The largest of these bonanzas is the Gold Hill mine, which
lies 700 feet deep, and several companies have commenced to work
this rich vein. The most important, the Virginia Consolidated, has
sunk a shaft 1,600 feet deep, and driven a tunnel of 20,000 feet in
length through the side of the mountain, projected by Engineer Sutro,

5o8 THE FOUL All SCIEXCE MOXTHLY.

Africa and the count is of Wangara and Timbuctoo. Tl
.Spain and Northern .^rica obtained their precious me
countr . The Frent of 5 _al lately took ]
They still found gold, ut no longer in paying juantith
famous Gold < ' :;t>resent furni>hes not half a million
year. The auriferou-sand is washed by the negroes dui
hours, and they are eotent with a yield which would ruin
enterprise.

The Egyptia:. ned their gold from the upper Nil

opia, attested by ins : from tbe year 1G00 In

Herodotus mentions king of >pia who was atta<

-. but not conqdred, \ :kled h:- ith

chains, since gold v i 'inmon than bronz-

Edrisi, there was so inch gold in Sofala that a copper trii
worth more than onlof gold. The eel I expl<

7, found the rema ; of anc: 'Id-mines, but the Lr"M o

belongs to the | 1 necklace of tl

Topeh, said to be thi - hundred years ol 1. an :

seen in Boolak ; the Afghan

time of Cambyses ; rought by the G.

Solomon's Temple ; gold with which tl

King of Ghana was med — all these, no matter whetl
faldes or not, indul point to the former immen-

of Africa, while to-' barely a million <]

Northern Africa, as ra and the Fall> of tl

a of sedimentary never can have fu:

but in the interior w ck — granite, gneiss, and h

and there the aurifer s alluvial soil had been formed : bti
that it has been th< Highly exhausted in antiquity and tin
ages. According to Vb. J the na^^^have been tin

discover auriferous ;nd. ierefoM ■Lie that the

country still contain : i even 1 ^B but lar

no longer be expectC' since its g>ld wot^ ^B° have

coast.

Neither China n<- Japan produced at

sumption.

The three chief rorces ar<
and Australia, while he last two
mense alluvial terrifrv in

from the Ural to tb river An
during the greater pat of
is found wherever
the washings is gr
discoveries of no
annually. The
in America, part] ., partly t i tin

5^3

-

-•-._. f- ,,." ..»: - rr.ooo.oou.

r*pm «nd

■ - •
a little, *»d |»«fcBB4 *-

184

are bkt- -

-

been rr~~

■ ■

decades irm. MB
000.000 per year -ro realued. %mm

-■ .• -

igeof the *

hm; aa
•gether. a belt from eigh
n to south, is foundt v
district. The "Mother lo-i
the northern bound:. viatt.

large (not yet ertinguishe
farther north. Thb lava
overlying layers of basalt from
these form the so-cali
mation south of the Sierra Nevada, mi
sedimentary deposits, lying upon
From here the auriferous sand was w^:
and appeared on the n
the o

■ ■::-'

plation such as

ly to trace in

ht, as well as

te traditional

e us through

the different

illness would
the ground
I must con-
[works, with
in 1845 by
eation," an
t. But the
opularized
ppeared in
lence as to
[" in 1871.
on the
to widen
3W of life
cut the
ig, and
kturalism
by minds
Lll. The
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kl

vp

5i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

entire "Creed of Christendom." But, perhaps, Matthew Arnold's
" Empedocles on Etna," which appeared in 1853, best enables us to
appreciate the religious state of the younger generation. The soul of
man hangs like a mirror, blown upon by every wind, and —

"A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole."

Man is the sport of the gods, man —

"Who knows not what to helieve,
Since he sees nothing clear,
And dare stamp nothing false where he finds nothing sure."

The gospel of the writer is that of Stoicism :

" Once read thy own breast right,
And thou hast done with fears ;
Man gets no other light,
Search he a thousand years."

He repudiates all compromises such as that which had been offered by

" In Memoriam " :

" Born into life! — who lists,
May what is false hold dear,
And for himself make mists
Through which to see less clear ;
The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.

" Streams will not curb their pride,
The just man not to entomb,
Nor lightnings go aside
To give his virtues room ;
Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge.

• •••■••••

"Fools! That in man's brief term
He can not all things view,
Affords no ground to affirm
That there are gods who do ;
Nor does being weary prove that he has where to rest."

The impression one gets from such a poem is one of despair ; the
agnostic tone is quite as pronounced as that of any writer at the
present day ; but there is much less hope, no outlook into the future,
no talk of the future destiny of humanity, which, however vague and
dreamy, is better than the dead level of an agnostic introspection.
And yet this poem was written by one whose contemporary writings
are quite free from this despairing tone, who has faith in a tendency
not ourselves, and believes that we can learn something of it from the
Bible and the best literature of all ages. This change in tone, which
is not peculiar to Matthew Arnold, I attribute to a great extent to the
new vistas opened up by the school of evolutionists, and by the writers

''NATURAL RELIGIONS

513

who have drawn attention off mere umbilicular contemplation such as
Morris, Rossetti, and Swinburne. We have accordingly to trace in
the succeeding years the rise of new schools of thought, as well as
the several attempts of religious writers to accommodate traditional
religion to the new light thrown upon it. This will take us through
twenty years, up to the memorable years 1873-74, when the different
schools came into open antagonism.

To trace out the different lines of thought with any fullness would
require a separate study ; as I am simply passing over the ground
with the view of setting a single book in a clearer light, I must con-
tent myself with mentioning the names of a few leading works, with
their dates. The rise of the evolution school was heralded in 1845 by
Robert Chambers's " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," an
expansion of the Lamarckian theories of natural development. But the
writings by which what we now mean by evolution were popularized
fall within the present period. " The Origin of Species " appeared in
1859, Spencer's "First Principles" in 1862, Huxley's "Evidence as to
Man's Place in Nature" in 18G3, and "The Descent of Man" in 1871.
With this school also we may class Max Midler's " Lectures on the
Science of Language," which appeared in 1861, as tending to widen
the conception of evolution. Of the effects of this new view of life
upon religious thought it is not too much to say that, if it cut the
ground from under the intuitionalist theory of right and wrong, and
of the origin of conscience, to the skeptic in regard to supernaturalism
it gave a prospect and a future glorious with hope. To many minds
the ascent of man serves a more glorious conception than his fall. The
door was opened for a pantheistic view of the universe, and this tend-
ency was enhanced by the influence of Ruskin, who was already writ-
ing in 1850. George Eliot, who has exercised a distinct influence upon
the age by popularizing the ethical side of positivism, and showing
men that it gives a work-a-day theory of life, began to publish in the
year 1858.

What has been called the fleshly, and more recently the aesthetic
school of poetry, is best represented by the names of Swinburne, Will-
iam Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne's works are too nu-
merous to mention, but his " Chastelard " appeared in 1865, his " Poems
and Ballads," of unhappy notoriety, in the following year ; Morris's
" Defense of Guinevere," his first work, appeared in 1858, his " Earthly
Paradise" in 1868; Rossetti's first celebrated volume of "Poems"
appeared in 1870. Of this school it may be said that, without being
brought into actual contact with supernaturalism, the tendency of
their writings was to take men's thoughts into a different field, to con-
secrate the passions and sentiment, to revive with a difference the old
Greek modes of looking at man and his destiny in the world. With
this school we must rank the important name of Walt Whitman, whose
first series of "Leaves of Grass" came in 1855. Of course his influ
tol. xx:i. — 33

5 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ence was more catholic than that of the fleshly school, properly so
called, his aim being the apotheosis of man as man. Three lines from
" One's Self I Sing " reveal to us clearly his point of view :

" Of physiology from top to toe I sing ;

Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse — I say the
form complete is worthier far ;
The female equally with the male I sing."

Of what may be called skeptical writers, i. e., writers who treated
different branches of study in a manner hostile to Christianity, and
with their eyes distinctly turned upon it, it will be sufficient to men-
tion Buckle, whose "History of Civilization" appeared in 1857 ; Dra-
per, whose " Intellectual Development of Europe " was published in
1861; and Lecky, whose "Rationalism" appeared in 1865, and his
work on " European Morals " in 1869. Dr. Jowett's " Plato " appeared
in 1871, the introductions to the separate dialogues of which were a
distinct contribution to contemporary thought, while they are valuable
as a fair index to the results of moderate liberalism of the time in
different fields. Thus, in his introduction to the " Republic," he de-
fines the modern notion of God as an " intelligent principle of law and
order in the universe, embracing equally man and nature." Spencer's
" Study of Sociology " appeared in 1872, and the " Fortnightly Re-
view " was started in 1865. In tracing the line of thought taken by
writers more immediately concerned with the book before us, we come
first to " Essays and Reviews " in 1860. Archdeacon Pratt had pub-
lished, in 1856, an attempt to prove that Scripture and science were
not at variance. The publication of the volume of " Essays and Re-
views " may be taken as a symptom that intellectual Churchmen felt
that the old stand was no longer possible ; that concessions must be
made to modern science, modern investigations, and modern thought ;
that the proper way to judge of an ancient work was to interpret it
by the light of its own day. These views were to some extent popu-
larized by the first series of Stanley's " Lectures on the History of the
Jewish Church," appearing in 1863, the year following the publication
of Bishop Colenso's work on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua.
Stanley's preface tells us that it is his intention " to present the main
characters and events of sacred narrative in a form as nearly historical
as the facts of the case will admit" ; to set the characters and institu-
tions of the time in a clearer light ; " to recognize in sacred subjects
their identity with our own flesh and blood,'''' at the same time not
" wishing to efface the distinction which good taste, no less than rever-
ence, will always endeavor to preserve between the Jewish and other
histories." " Ecce Homo " appeared in 1865. It was an attempt to
base religion upon the enthusiasm of humanity as preached by the
man Christ, and was succinctly characterized at the time by a pious
nobleman as " vomited from the jaws of hell." The author, now uni-

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 5!5

versally recognized as Professor Seeley, promised a supplementary
volume of applications of his theory. This has never appeared, and
we may look upon the present work as the fulfillment of his promise.
The wide difference between them must be ascribed to the progress
since made by liberal thought. Still, "Ecce Homo" was regarded
with fear and disgust in its day by the orthodox, among all sections
of Christianity, and at once provoked an eloquent and, from Professor
Seeley's point of view, unanswerable rejoinder in Dr. Liddon's Bamp-
ton Lectures " On the Divinity of Christ," delivered at Oxford in the
following year.

We now come to the two celebrated years 1873 and 187-4 — years
of open utterance on all sides, and which we may look upon as the
crisis of the revolution of thought. In these years appeared the first
two volumes of " Supernatural Religion," an elaborate investigation
from two points of view into the foundations of Christianity, and Mat-
thew Arnold's " Literature and Dogma," an attempt to rehabilitate
Christianity, while openly recognizing the futility of all attempts to
base it upon miracles or the supernatural. Christianity was to remain
in force, but without a personal God. At such a moment, Leslie
Stephen's direct question, "Are we Christians?" came home to us
with full force. It was anticipated, by one year, by the amusing bro-
chure entitled "Modern Christianity, a Civilized Heathenism." In
the same year Max Midler carried the critical spirit of science into
religion itself in his " Introduction to the Science of Religion." Mean-
wmile, there appeared a beautif id volume, carefully printed upon ex-
quisite paper, containing " Studies in the History of the Renaissance,"
which their author, Mr. Pater, concluded with the following words :
" We are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says, ' Les liomm.es sont tous
condamnes d morte avec des siirsis indefines'' ; we have an interval,
and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in
listlessness, some in high passions, the wdsest in art and song. For
our one chance is in expanding that interval, in getting as many pul-
sations as possible into the given time. High passions give one this
quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, political or relig-
ious enthusiasms, or the ' enthusiasm of humanity.' Only, be sure it
is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied
consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty,
the love of art for art's sake, has most ; for art comes to you profess-
ing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments
as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."

In 1874 appeared Green's " Short History of the English People,"
of the importance of which I shall speak presently ; Mill's " Autobi-
ography," revealing the blameless life of a true humanitarian who
had lived without a God, in the ordinary acceptation of the term ; and
George Eliot's " Jubal, and other Poems." In this volume the relig-
ious aspirations of the new faith were thus given poetical expression :

5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" 0 may I join the choir invisible,
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity.
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self;
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And, with their mild persistence, urge men's search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven.'''

*

In this year, too, at Belfast, Professor Tyndall delivered, before
the British Association, his celebrated address, in which, " abandoning
all disguise," he says that " the confession that I feel bound to make
before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and discern, in that matter which we, in
our ignorance and notwithstanding our professed revei'ence for its
Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and po-
tency of every form and quality of life."* The discovery, if it may
be called so, was not exactly a new one. The same avowal had been
made, more than twenty years before, by W. B. Carpenter, but the
rise of the evolution school in the interim caused an importance to
attach to Professor Tyndall's utterances that has not attended upon
Dr. Carpenter's. f The address at once took rank as the high-water
mark of materialism. Lastly, in the same year, we come to Greg's
" "Warnings of Cassandra," and to a work which, together with this, is
symptomatic of the feelings of the next f ew years — Hartmann's " Phi-
losophy of the Unknowable." \

The prevailing tone, after the battle had been fought, was one of
despair and pessimism. Science had won the victory, but thoughtful
minds, even on that side, saw that it might be possible to push it too
far. Hence came attempts at compromise, the cry for which went up,
in 1874, from John Morley, the editor of the " Fortnightly Review,"
the chief Positivist organ. Still, for the present, the general tone was
disheartening in the extreme, and its influence is traceable in many
ways. Poetry has been distinctly deteriorated by it. In politics it
led to a temporary reaction in favor of conservatism. Life appeared
to be, as Pope had said, a mighty maze, but the plan was lost. In-
stead of the authoritative tone of the Church, the voices of different

* Quoted from the original, as reprinted iu "Nature." The passage is reworded in
the published address. The variations between the two arc curious, and well worthy of
study.

f For Dr. Carpenter's words, see his article upon " Life," in Todd's " Cyclopaedia of
Anatomy and Physiology," vol. iii, p. 150. This work appeared in 1847. He refers, in
a foot-note, to an earlier essay, on the laws regulating vital and physical phenomena, in
the " Edinburgh Philosophical Journal," April, 1838.

% I may here remark that I have confined my review to works in the English lan-
guage. Many foreign names, such as Strauss and Haeckel, will occur to every one. To
have extended my review to these would have required a separate essay.

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 5i7

schools were heard bidding against one another for adherents. This
condition of affairs was cleverly brought home to readers by " The
New Republic," Mr. Mallock's first work, appearing in 1878. To
minds distracted by the hubbub of opinion, and despairing of cer-
tainty elsewhere, the only sure refuge again appeared to lie in the
Church of Rome, and this, as the only alternative for the gospel of
Positivism, was offered in the book entitled " Is Life worth Living ? "
which was published in 1879. " The Romance of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury " appeared two years afterward. Such a temporary depression
of tone was a natural result of the conflict through which the age had
been passing.

But other and more important results followed. It is unequivo-
cally recognized, by most writers of eminence, that Christianity can
no longer look to its supernatural elements for support — nay, more,
that the excellence of some parts of its morality can not even receive
credence for their inferential elements ; at least they have to be defi-
nitely discarded as a necessary part of faith, if Christianity intends to
bid for the allegiance of the intellectual portion of mankind. It is
therefore ridiculously wide of the truth to boast, as the clerical mind
is inclined to do, that Christianity has weathered the storm, that she
will pass into the twentieth century unaltered in essentials. This is
fully recognized by the author of " Natural Religion." " The Church,"
he writes, " has now entered upon that phase when minds of the
higher order are seldom found to receive its ancient dogmas with
complete conviction, when they do not altogether belong to it, even
when they most admire it, and most appreciate the service it has ren-
dered to mankind. It has reached this rather advanced stage of de-
cline, and has left quite behind it the first stage when individual dis-
believers were indeed numerous enough, but still minds disposed to
religion, even when they were minds of the highest order, were troubled
with no skepticism that they could not overcome." The fact is, that
the Church does not pretend to be the interpreter of human society, to
open to us the vista of the future, or to give us guidance upon matters
of contemporary importance. " We know," writes our author, " that
for the most part it is occupied with quite other topics. To most of
its utterances the world listens in half -contemptuous silence, feeling
that it is useless to controvert the propositions laid down, and that no
results would follow from admitting them. The propositions are
archaic ; they show that the Church once understood its function,
and discharged it efficiently."

The natural result has been, that its authority has been quietly dis-
regarded by all branches of investigation. Before 1873 and 1874, hos-
tility to orthodox Christianity was more or less openly shown by the
chief writers of science, history, art, morals, etc., but since these years
this tone has been generally abandoned for one of supreme indiffer-
ence, or of perfect fairness. The tone of the " Fortnightly Review,"

5i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which had led the van in the attack on the Church, has visibly
changed, and has thrown aside the unfairness and Positivist provin-
cialism, which was its note ten years ago. Thus, again, instead of
covertly sneering at the marvels of the Bible and Christianity, as
Grote and Buckle loved to do, Mr. Green finds no difficulty, in his "His-
tory," in fully acknowledging all that the Church had done for the
civilization of England. But this does not close his eyes to the facts
of the case, or prevent his recognizing, in the Bible literature, a het-
erogeneous collection of "legends and annals, war-song and psalm,
state-rolls and biographies, etc." It should be remembered that Mr.
Green's history was intended for the student ; that it was written by
a clergyman, and one who had been an earnest worker in the purlieus
of eastern London ; and, lastly, that this free tone in regard to matters
of religion, a tone that recognized with equal impartiality Protestant
and Catholic, has never been objected to as unfitting the book for gen-
eral use. Thus we may say that history has been emancipated. The
revision testifies to the emancipation of scholarship.

Another important result of the battle of opinion was the perfect
freedom with which different writers now expressed themselves, as
well as in the toleration that they mutually extended to one another.
As it were to mark this era, a new review was started in March, 1877,
as a perfectly free medium for all shades of honest opinion. A poem
was contributed by the poet-laureate as a preface, which we quote as
distinctive of the " Nineteenth Century " :

"Those that of late had fleeted far and fast
To touch all shores, now leaving to the skill
Of others their old craft seaworthy still,
Have chartered this ; where, mindful of the past,
Our true co-mates regather round the mast,
Of diverse tongue, but with a common will
Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil
And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast;
For some, descending from the sacred peak
Of hoar, high-templed Faith, have leagued again
Their lot with ours to rove the world about ;
And some are wilder comrades, sworn to seek
If any golden harbor be for men
In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt."

But on two sides something more is observable. Art and science
not only claim to be completely free from the power of Church dicta-
tion ; they have set up, so to speak, an opposition Church. Science
was emancipated in 1874, it has since turned its attention to the con-
struction of a scientific morality. The " Data of Ethics " appeared
in 1879, but long before this science had shown itself capable of ris-
ing to the enthusiasm of a religion, and we have to thank the author
of "The New Paul and Virginia " for laboriously collecting the utter-

"NATURAL RELIGION:'

5*9

ances of men of science upon this point in the notes appended to that
work. It is true that all men of science do not associate their worship
with the name of God, but we are fully in agreement with our author
when he writes : "By what names they call the object of their contem-
plation 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 appearances infinite 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."

The claims of art to an independent position, to a right to the
undivided attention of its votaries, are no less unequivocal. When
W. Morris published his " Earthly Paradise " in 1868, he prefaced it
with an " Apology," in which he acknowledged the littleness of his
undertaking, almost lamenting that he could not rise to higher work :

" Of heaven or hell I have no power to sing,
I can not ease the burden of your fears,

Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,

Or hope again for aught that I can say,

The idle singer of an empty day."

He only professes to tell

"... a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay."

I have quoted Mr. Pater's claim for art put forth in 1878. Listen,
lastly, to the terms in which the newest singer bids his soul abandon
the secular world :

" . . . O come out of it,
Come out of it, my soul, thou art not fit
For this vile traffic-house, where day by day
Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,
And the rude people rage with ignorant cries
Against an heritage of centuries.

It mars my calm : wherefore in dreams of Art
And loftiest culture I would stand apart,
Neither for God, nor for his enemies."

To sum up the intellectual and religious revolution of the last few
years : Matthew Arnold's poetry aptly represents the tone of mind of
advanced religious thinkers during the fifties. Looked at from the
orthodox stand-point, his poems are intended, like the reasonings of the
devils in hell upon theological problems, to —

"... arm the ohdured breast
"With stubborn patience as with triple steel."

520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Matthew Arnold aptly expresses his own point of view when he speaks
of himself as

" Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
"With nowhere yet to rest my head."

or, again

"... The sea of faith
"Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled,
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Ketreating to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."

Meanwhile, as the old faith began to lose power, art, science, and
the religion of humanity stepped forward into prominence, at first in
antagonism to Christianity. The struggle became critical during the
years 1873-74, and left a feeling of despair and pessimism for a time
on men's minds. But with time this feeling has begun to wear off,
and we see that the allegiance formerly claimed for the old theology
is claimed now by its rivals. The interval of pessimism, the period of
dormant anarchy, was marked by many gropings in different direc-
tions. Scholars drew attention to the great rivals of Christianity, to
Judaism, to Mohammedanism, to Buddhism. To this we owe in part
such books as " Daniel Deronda " (1876) and " The Light of Asia "
(1879). The theories of great philosophers of the past began to be
studied with fresh attention, especially the writings of Plato and Aris-
totle, of Berkeley, Spinoza, and Kant. Even spiritualism and the doc-
trine of metempsychosis were found to give the support needed to un-
scientific souls who lacked the courage to stand by the old orthodoxy
which the Zeit-geist had condemned.

The need of some reconstruction was felt even by philosophy's of
the new school. Spencer propounded an evolution theory of morals in
his " Data of Ethics " (1879) ; and George Eliot, as a reconstructive
radical, in her " Theophrastus Such " (1879), drew attention to the
fact that " ideas acquired long ago reappear as the sequence of an
awakened interest or a line of inquiry which is really new to us." As
stable elements of the religion of the future, she pointed to the love of
ideals, and specially to the constantly renewed ideal self ; to the value
of external nature, as exercising a soothing influence, of family life,
and of national sentiments. We are thus led to the work before us.
Its importance is due to its recognition of the facts which this short
review of the religious thought of the last thirty years has brought
into prominence, and it takes up and makes a part of its system the
ideas on culture and civilization, which Matthew Arnold has reiterated
at intervals, ever since his publication in 18G9 of " Culture and An-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 521

archy." I have called it a system, and herein lies its weakness as well
as its strength. " Theophrastus Such " was a distinct contribution to
the thought of the time, hut, through not aiming at the completeness
of a system, it failed to secure the attention which would have re-
vealed its short-comings. Many parts of "Natural Religion" are
doubtless of great value, but what a writer does not seem to have
great faith in personally is not likely to be warmly welcomed by out-
siders.

\To be continued.]

-*♦♦-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY.

By M. ALFEED F0U1LLEE.

II.

WE have examined, subjecting them to their just measure, the in-
conveniences which philanthropy produces when it takes as its
rule the vague sentiment of love instead of the precise and scientific
ideas of justice and general interest ; it is proper for us to show the
advantages which can, in a certain measure, compensate for these in-
conveniences. This is a point of view on which the Darwinians have
not sufficiently insisted.

The first advantage of philanthropic institutions, when they are
well conceived and subordinated to the rules of science, is, that they
tend to diminish excessive inequality, whether economical, political, or
intellectual, among men. The necessity of restoring some degree of
equality in mankind arises from the laws of natural selection them-
selves. It is a remarkable fact that these laws, after having at first ap-
peared favorable to aristocracies and aristocratic institutions, are now
invoked in favor of social equality. According to Dr. Jacoby, polit-
ical and economical inequality, even by virtue of the laws of natural
selection, produce " ignorance and misery below, crime and sterility
above. . . . From the mass of mankind emerge individuals, families,
and races, who tend to rise above the common level ; they toilsomely
scale the rugged heights, attain the summit of power, of wealth, and
of intelligence, and, when once they have got there, they are cast
down and disappear in the depths of folly and degeneracy." Death
is the great leveler ; by destroying everything that rises, it democra-
tizes mankind. " Men thus appear to have been organized," according
to Dr. Jacoby, " with a view to equality." Every too abrupt distinc-
tion into classes, political, economical, or intellectual, and all selection,
which is the logical and natural consequence of such distinctions, are
equally disastrous to mankind, to the elect as well as to the rest of
men ; " they produce with the latter deficiency, with the former ex-

5 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cess of the element which is the principle of the distinction of classes."
Whenever any part of mankind has too much of anything, whether it
be of material goods or intellectual qualities, the rest of the race im-
mediately finds itself having too little, and both parties suffer equally
from the excess and from the lack. But Nature seems to desire to
avenge herself for such violations of her laws, and cruelly afflicts the
elect and fortunate ones, chastising them " to the fourth and seventh
generation."

The laws of Nature are immutable, and woe to the man who violates
them ! " Every privilege a man accords himself is a step toward de-
generacy, mental decline, and the death of his race." By abasing
whoever tries to raise himself above the common level of mankind, by
chastising the haughty, by exacting satisfaction for excess of pleasure,
Nature appoints the privileged ones themselves the scourges of their
race. " Too much fortune offends and irritates the gods," the ancients
thought, and the medical study of the consequences of all intellectual
or moral distinction, and of all selection, leads us to the same conclu-
sion. " Humana imprudentia impares esse voluit quos Deus cequave-
raV ("Human folly desires to make unequal those whom God has
made equal "), said Pope Clement IV, but, if this is the case, can the
Darwinians complain that philanthropy is trying to diminish in some
degree the inequalities that are born of the social regime? Does it
not, in this case, act in the same direction with Nature, and according
to its design ?

We should, besides, be less pessimist than Mr. Jacoby in respect
to distinctions and selections of every kind. The theory which Mr.
Jacoby has deduced from Darwinism, if pushed to the extreme with-
out making necessary distinctions and restrictions, would go to the
extent of destroying even the principles from wThich it is drawn, and
would overthrow the laws postulated by Darwin ; in effect, all superi-
ority, requiring an expenditure of force, might, by that fact itself,
become in the struggle for existence a germ of degeneracy instead of
a germ of improvement. There would be nothing really durable ex-
cept what did not rise above the common level, and living beings
would resemble those corals, the madrepores, which grow to form the
basis of continents as long as they do not pass the level of the sea,
and are not brought to die above the level of its surface. It is nec-
essary to distinguish here between useful and injurious inequalities,
between natural and acquired ones ; among the last, also, must be dis-
tinguished those which are in accord with Nature, and those which
are opposed to her. These distinctions, too much neglected by Mr.
Jacoby, are the very ones, in our opinion, which scientific philanthropy
ought always to have in view. Its aim should be to re-establish, so
far as possible, a degree of equality at those points where social ar-
rangements have created artificial inequalities, injurious and contrary
to Nature. To spread and equalize general instruction, the moral sen-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 523

tiinents, labor, the first and essential instruments of labor, to raise
what is down, to bring up to the common light what is in darkness,
to restore to life and health what on account of want was threatened
with sickness or death, is to do real reparative justice, and at the same
time to re-establish some equality among men in the great competition
of life ; it is by this very fact to suppress factitious inequalities in order
to give free play to natural superiorities, in essence beneficent and no
longer malign. It is, we see, the theory of natural selection itself
coming to the support of the philanthropic sentiments against which
it had furnished objections.

May not this preservation of the weak, which the partisans of
Darwin condemn, while it may sometimes become dangerous to tbe
physical health of the race, also save from death useful or even su-
perior minds who, without the cares given by tbe family or the aid
rendered by strangers, might not have been able to live and develop
themselves ? Do we have to lament that a Pascal and a Spinoza were
rescued from the death with which their feeble constitutions threat-
ened them from their youth ? How many poor children have there
been who, by means of the aid tbey have received, have afterward
become great men of science or great artists ! Here, then, is a second
advantage of philanthropy. After correcting injurious inequalities,
it favors useful superiorities. Furthermore, the preservation of organ-
isms which want would otherwise have destroyed, induces, by virtue
of the competition of life, an increasing elevation of intelligence which
becomes continually more necessary : all those who can not count on
the vigor of their limbs are obliged in the struggle for existence to
appeal to their mental faculties. Other men have had to employ con-
siderable intelligence to save them from death, and they are them-
selves obliged to employ it in their turn to preserve themselves, to
support themselves, to secure for themselves a place in the light of the
sun. Hence arises a progressive elevation of the intellectual level in
the whole mass of the nation. This movement is, in many points,
nothing but that of civilization itself, to which philanthropy is cor-
relative.

We meet here a new objection : it is represented that talent, and
still more genius, are advantages of individuals which are paid for
at the expense of the race. We hear it repeated, with Plato, that a
soul which is mistress of itself will knock in vain at the doors of
poetry ; with Aristotle, that there is no great genius without a mixture
of folly ; and with Seneca, that nothing great or superior to what is
vulgar can be manifested without some trouble of mind ; more than
this, the objectors would extend to the race of the great man the
trouble and the morbid germ which, working itself out in some form
or another, will make the children pay dearly for the fame of their fa-
thers. " Every man of genius or talent," says M. Renan, " is a capital
accumulated from several generations." " This capital, accumulated

524

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and personified in a man," says M. Jacoby, " does not return again to
the commonwealth, but is lost from it, at least in a physical point of
view ; it is withdrawn from circulation, and the only trace it leaves is
folly, wretchedness, and degeneracy in posterity." Nothing is made
out of nothing, and all production supposes some consumption. Sci-
ence, art, and ideas, to be born and develop themselves, consume
generations and peoples. Individuals and nations exhaust themselves
by production, like lands not manured, because the products are not
returned to the common ground, and are materially lost to it. M. de
Candolle also shows that civilized man, by the very fact of his mental
superiority, is generally inferior to the savage in physical force and
health. With the savage, in fact, the chief conditions of selection
are a piercing sight, a fine hearing, muscular strength, and the faculty
of resisting cold, heat, moisture, and hunger. The civilized man has
not these qualities in the same degree ; what he gains on one side he
loses on the other, and the law of equivalence of forces is verified here
as elsewhere. The brain grows only at the expense of the muscles ;
the man who thinks is in a sense a depraved animal. Such are the
inconveniences of the intellectual development which modern philan-
thropy tends to favor at the expense of physical force. We are far
from desiring to deny these inconveniences, but conclusions which go
further than the premises need not be drawn from them. Social sci-
ence is doubtless right in saying it is dangei-ous for individuals and
peoples to break entirely the natural equilibrium of physical and men-
tal functions : mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound
body) ; if a nation becomes physically enfeebled too rapidly, it will
have neither time nor means to fortify itself mentally, for intelligence
can not make real progress in decaying organisms ; all will end in a
simultaneous dwindling of mind and body. But it is necessary, on
the other side, to look out that the natural movement of civilization
be not trammeled. Now, this movement is characterized by the in-
creasing predominance of thought and feeling among modern nations.
This predominance favors the development of philanthropy, and is in its
turn favored by that through an inevitable reaction. The question of
philanthropy, then, when generalized, ultimately becomes confounded
with that of civilization itself. Now, it would not do to repeat to-day
Rousseau's dissertation against inequality and the arts ; we could not
take man back to the savage state under the pretext that civilization
exhausts his physical forces and the best of his vigor in the intellectual
blossoming. The whole of society, in profiting by the discoveries of
science or art, profits by the sacrifice of individuals or of their imme-
diate posterity, if there is a sacrifice, and the profit exceeds the loss.

This loss even might be avoided by a better understanding of
hygiene and a better system of education ; and precisely these ought
to be the principal aims of philanthropy. Hitherto the economy of
nature, in order to repair the loss incurred by intellectual culture, has

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 525

been obliged to proceed by a kind of fallowings, by suffering a vege-
tation too luxuriant and too concentrated at one point to be succeeded
by a provisory rest and sterility ; but a superior system, which has
prevailed in the cultivation of the land, will without doubt be applied
some day to the cultivation of the mind : it is the system of allotments
and improvements, and it should be made the basis of general educa-
tion. We can, furthermore, avoid at this point, also, the excessive
evils of repartition, the antinomies of intellectual luxury and intellect-
ual want, by the diffusion of knowledge through the mass of the na-
tion ; and this is one of the essential objects and one of the beneficent
results of scientific philanthropy. Without that, mankind, divided
into a class of intelligent men and a class of ignorant ones, would re-
semble the twins of Presburg, who were united by the after part of
the thorax. One of them was bright and gentle, while the other was
stupid and ill-natured, and constantly struggling against her sister,
notwithstanding both their bodies were united into one ; and her
violent conduct did harm to both.

In addition to the material and intellectual advantages we have
just demonstrated, philanthropy brings precious moral advantage to
the whole race. It develops, in the individuals and the people who
exercise it, the qualities of heart most important for social life. Dar-
win and his partisans early recognized how essential to society is the
development of altruistic inclinations ; even justice is impossible with-
out those inclinations, for they alone can restrain egoism. A soci-
ety without pity is always careless of the right. Natural selection,
which is exercised now to the advantage of the most intelligent peo-
ples, will also in the future, we hope, be exercised to the advantage of
the best and most just, when the understanding of the truth shall be
complete enough to win over the will of the best. Selection always
gives the day to those who adapt themselves most perfectly to the
new medium ; and the human medium of the future will without
doubt be the reign of fraternity and justice. Those nations only will
survive then which shall be best adapted to the altruistic type ; that is,
which shall be able to live best and to propagate themselves in a me-
dium chiefly intellectual and moral, in which knowledge and sympathy
shall have the first rank.

This adaptation of actual societies to the ideal society by the simul-
taneous advance of science and sympathy, will probably bring about a
transformation of the type of the species, a greater development of
the brain than of the other organs, a substitution of mental and moral
strength for physical force. The actual brain is already an immensely
enlarged vertebra ; the brain of future races will perhaps be not only
in volume but in organization, also and especially, as different from
the brain of existing races as that is from simple vertebra?. The nerv-
ous system of civilized man is already thirty per cent greater than
that of the savage. Now, cerebral development seems to have a re-

526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strictivc influence on fecundity ; it should tend, then, to re-establish
that equilibrium between the increase of population and the increase
of subsistence which scientific philanthropy seeks to realize, and which
it reproaches sentimental charity with destroying. The point is worthy
of examination.

What are the laws of the multiplication of species, neglect of
which, according to Malthus, Darwin, and Mr. Spencer, is as preju-
dicial to the philanthropist as to the naturalist, in the connected prob-
lems of population, selection, civilization, and benevolence ? The first
of these laws, as formulated by Messrs. Howorth, Doubleday, and
Spencer, is that a greater development of individuality brings on a
diminished fecundity for the species : if animals of one species, the
human species, for instance, have a more intense individual life than
those of another species, the progress in the volume of the brain, in
physical or moral development, and in the complexity and activity of
the functions, is compensated for as to that species by a lessened gen-
erative aptitude. Man is the living species in which individuality and
its functions are carried to the highest point ; and it is also the least
prolific of the species. The reason of this law, according to Mr. Spencer
and M. de Candolle, is that the intensity of the individual life implies
a taking possession of materials which can no longer serve for other
organisms ; generation, on the contrary, is a disintegration which sub-
tracts from the organism a part of its substance. In short, individu-
ality is an acquisition ; generation is a loss. Now, that which com-
pletes individuality, which is what we might call its highest expansion,
is the life of the intellect and affections. Consequently, the animal
species, or the human races that live most by thought and feeling, are
those which have the least generative power. To the objection that,
in fact, civilized races are more numerous than others, Mr. Spencer
answers that civilization, by diminishing a host of destructive forces,
augments the means of subsistence, and thus maintains population at
a superior figure ; but the height of this figure is dependent on indi-
viduals having a greater faculty of conserving themselves, not on the
species having a greater generative power.

The second law that regulates the multiplication of beings is, that
richness of nutrition augments fecundity, while the expenditure pro-
duced by the exercise of the functions of relation, and chiefly the
intellectual expenditure, diminishes it. Poor and badly-fed races are
naturally the least prolific. The Irish seem to form an exception ; but
the increase in number among them is dependent on their marrying
early (whence is derived a faster succession of generations), and on
their improvidence in imposing no restraint upon themselves ; in short,
upon quite other causes than the generative force proper. Recipro-
cally, the increase of the vital expenditure, especially of the intellect-
ual expenditure, tends to lower the degree of fecundity. This law
still proceeds from the same principle : that what the individual ac-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 527

quires or expends on his own account and for the exercise of his own
personal functions he can not transmit again by generation to other
individuals.

It is certainly not proper to push the preceding biological induc-
tions, the truth of which is only general, to extremes. Mr. Spencer
himself has not always kept the measure or avoided inexact intepreta-
tions of the laws in question. Practically, and in the actual condition
of affairs, the superior races and the individuals belonging to those
races, do not lose their generative power except when they give them-
selves up to what we might call intellectual debauchery. But sterility
rarely comes from this cause. Man can nearly always, even when he
abandons himself to mental labors, maintain a procreative power fully
equivalent to that of the woman with whom he is mated, and it is un-
reasonable to demand more of him. It is, then, the woman that must
be considered, looking at the question from this point. Mr. Spencer
remarks, in support of his thesis, that the women among the higher
classes, in whom mental labor is carried to excess, are relatively infer-
tile ; but there are also several elements to be distinguished here. The
women of Paris have, for instance, a weight of brain which, accord-
ing to the anthropologists, raises them but little above negresses : they
should, then, by the theory we are considering, be very fertile, like
the negresses ; but the contrary is the case. The real reason of this
is, that while the brain of a Parisian woman is definitively but little
overstocked with ideas, her whole body is still less developed than her
brain ; but it is not so with the strong-limbed negresses. Why has the
body of the Parisian woman been arrested in its development ? Do
not lay it to her intelligence, but to her want of intelligence, to cos-
tumes and fashion, to bad hygienic conditions, to parties, vigils, balls,
and theatres ; to the activity, at the same time feverish and frivolous,
of a wholly worldly life in an air more or less vitiated. In the same
way, if the daughters of aristocratic families are relatively infertile,
there is nothing to prove that their infertility arises from mental labor.
In short, whenever mental labor is really a cause of diminished fer-
tility, it is so by being excessive, and not by its Well-regulated exer-
cise. The same is the case with every excess of labor, even physical ;
the common workman or laborer may exhaust himself as much as the
thinker. Mr. Spencer has not sufficiently distinguished here between
the normal and the exaggerated exercise of the brain. A normal ex-
ercise, in which the functional expenditure is not above the nutrition
of the organs, but below it, does not appear to us to diminish fecun-
dity, or, at least, does not diminish it enough to trammel the develop-
ment of the species. In the normal individual, intellectual produc-
tivity and sexual productivity march in line ; they are, as it were, the
two poles at which the excess of nutrition is expended after a right
fashion ; but, in case one of the poles draws all to itself, it is evident
that the other pole will lose correspondingly. The almost exclusive

5 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

direction of an energetic nutrition toward a particular function results
in the exaltation of that function and the depreciation of all the
others ; it might even create a kind of physiological monstrosity.

It is, then, the excessive and abnormal application of the brain
that diminishes by compensation the generative vigor ; and, still more,
the bad hygienic conditions under which thinkers live, and, perhaps,
the pressure of necessity, causing them to overwork themselves.
Among the people who lead the march of civilization, the minorities
who work excessively for the advancement of that civilization quickly
exhaust themselves, and have to be replaced by new generations. This
is the cause of the relative sterility of cities as compared wTith the
fecundity of country places. The centers of intellectual life, the great
cities, are, to M. Jacoby, the Minotaurs of civilization ; but this is
not only, as M. Jacoby seems to believe, because they think too
much in the great cities, but because they think badly and live con-
trary to all the rules of hygiene. The biological law accepted by Mr.
Spencer is true only in its most general principles, not in the extreme
consequences which he has drawn from them, while special circum-
stances may intrude many a perturbation among the effects of the
law.

In every case a time must come when equilibrium will at last be
established. The nervous system will finally become capable of meet-
ing, without being overcome, the difficulties of existence, and of sup-
plying all usual demands. It will then cease to develop at the expense
of the organism. By this very fact, fecundity will be normal, neither
too great nor too little ; and there will be harmony between the popu-
lation and the conditions of existence. There is, then, truth in this
final conclusion at which Mr. Spencer arrives : that the excess of fe-
cundity has rendered the march of civilization inevitable (let us add
the march of philanthropy), and the march of civilization should inevi-
tably restore fecundity to its normal conditions. In this manner, per-
haps, will be resolved the problem which troubled Malthus so much.
In this way, also, we see that scientific philanthropy, by diffusing in-
struction along with well-being, and by raising the intellectual level of
the needy classes, tends to establish among them the equilibrium of
fecundity and of the intellectual functions, and consequently to dimin-
ish that blind and sometimes excessive proliferation which gives econ-
omists anxiety concerning the future, if not about the present. At
this point, again, the advantages of philanthropy compensate, and
more, for evils which involve nothing essential.

If it is important to establish in principle, as we have tried to do,
the legitimacy and utility of philanthropy, it is not less necessary to
fix the rules and limits of its application. An enlightened philanthropy
should not bestow its benevolence at hazard and without conditions ;
it should be reparative and preventive justice together, instead of re-
maining that ancient " Christian charity " which, like love, too often

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 529

has a bandage over its eyes. Now, reparative justice should endeavor
to re-establish the normal conditions of human association, of the " so-
cial contract." These normal conditions require that the contracting
parties or associates be really free and major. Society, then, ought to
see that all minority, all servitude, all excess of inequality that may be
produced by the fatal effect of the laws of nature or of the social laws,
is suppressed or alleviated as much as possible. That is the general
rule which should first be laid down. We pass now to its principal
applications.

In the first place, what are the best means which philanthropy, or
rather justice, has at its disposal in regard to the disinherited of life ?
In our view, they are education and work, not the traditional alms.
Education can not be anything but useful ; it tends to the develop-
ment of intelligence, and is an aid that raises up, not an aid that de-
presses. By education, instead of favoring the propagation of imbe-
ciles, we prepare more and more intelligent and capable generations.
The bearing of education extends to all kinds of servitude and want,
but principally to intellectual servitude and want, which are the origin
of all the other kinds. Ignorance of the things most essential to social
life, and even to private life, is the worst state of minority. It exists
by nature in all children ; it is kept up by the lack of instruction
among poor children, and persists in the grown-up man. The effort of
the state should be brought to bear especially upon this point, for it
is the point at which all kinds of justice, defensive, preservative, and
reparative, as well as real fraternity or philanthropy, converge and
agree. Instruction is a matter of duty and right as of all toward all,
and from all points of view ; but, to speak only of the duty of repa-
ration, in what way can it be exercised to better advantage, more
pacifically, more conformably to the true interests and real rights of all
classes, than by distributing knowledge widely among all ? Instruction
is the universal instrument of labor, useful for all professions, adapting
itself flexibly to the most varied employments, an instrument which in
virtue of this very fact helps us to find new resources when the usual
ones fail. This general instrument of labor ought to be gratuitous ;
it ought to constitute a kind of moral capital distributed by all to
every one. Furthermore, instruction is the only public assistance, or,
if that is better, the only indemnity, the only public reparation, in ap-
plying which we do not risk sacrificing the interest and health of future
generations to those of existing ones. The second means at the serv-
ice of an enlightened philanthropy is work, which of itself can not be
anything but useful : labor elevates the character as instruction ele-
vates the mind ; by compelling those to work who are capable, by giv-
ing to the less well-endowed tasks proportioned to their capacity, we
may be doing something to raise the moral level.

To whom ought the benefactions of philanthropy to be addressed,
and within what limits ought they to be restricted ? In the first place,

YOL. XXII. 34

53o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the child abandoned by its parents finds itself in one of those situa-
tions of major force and fatal servitude in which a member of society-
is incapable, unless he is assisted, of participating in the social life.
In lifting up the orphan, society does not perform a work of mere
charity, as those believe who speak of children brought up by charity ;
it simply performs a work of justice, not reparative only, but con-
tractual justice. Shall we maintain that society has a right to let the
foundling die, under the pretext that the support of children is the
duty of the parents, and the parents are unknown ? The most that
can be said of such a conception is that it would be worthy of China
and Japan. A society in the midst of which abandoned children may
still be found is engaged toward such children by what the legists
call a " quasi-contract " ; it owes them food, with general and pro-
fessional instruction, and in giving these to them it does nothing more
than pay a general debt of reparative justice.* The same observation
is applicable to the case of infirm old men, and, in general, of all per-
sons who, being reduced to an absolute incapacity to work, have no
parents who can support them ; they also find themselves in a con-
dition of minority and servitude which renders them incapable of
taking care of themselves. A real moral right to assistance exists in
these cases ; in default of relatives, the duty of assistance falls upon
the city ; in default of the city, it falls upon the state ; here is a point
which legists, economists, and naturalists misconceive who see in
public measures of relief an attempt on the liberty of individuals
committed under the pretext of a charity that should be left free.
Absolute liberty of charity is a religious and moral prejudice born of
a defective analysis of rights.

Does society owe assistance only to those who are incapable of
working, or does it owe it also to those who are capable but are ex-
ceptionally out of work, and thereby reduced to a condition of extreme
misery — to a kind of temporary servitude and minority ? The ques-
tion is big with difficulties ; it is one which has engendered too strong
prepossessions to receive a scientific solution at the first view ; and,
between the contradictory exaggerations of the socialists and econo-
mists and the Darwinians, it still remains theoretically pending. "We
remark, in the beginning, that all countries, England, Germany, Sweden,
etc., have recognized, whether right or wrong, a public duty to assist
working-men. But they have not always taken the pains to limit the
duty and give it a rational interpretation. The existence of the pub-
lic duty of assistance can not confer upon the individual the right to
demand work, either by force or by legal process. The state can not

* As raueh may be said of children " morally abandoned " and reduced to vagabond-
age. The public relief of the Seine, instead of shutting them up in a house of correction,
from which they will come out corrupted, has, since 1881, placed them as apprentices in
the departments. This measure needs to be completed by the passage of the bill for the
protection of infancy, which was presented to the Senate on December 8, 1881.

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 531

engage itself, in a general and vague way, to give places or work to
all who demand them, neither to the physician without patients, the
advocate without causes, nor the poet without readers. It can no
more make itself an ironmonger, a dealer in dress-goods, a furniture-
manufacturer, or a house-decorator. In short, it can not substitute
itself for the individual, artificially create work for him, nor artificially
continue the production of any article, whenever a suspension reveals
the fact that production has been excessive, and ought to be arrested.
The merely moral right of the indigent engenders, in respect to this mat-
ter, only a moral duty on the part of society, a combined duty of re-
parative justice and fraternity. Since, moreover, the demands of every
duty should be fulfilled, so far as is possible, society ought progress-
ively to secure the satisfaction of them by the means which it shall
judge best. But it can not grant its assistance to healthy individuals
except under determined conditions and by a reciprocal convention.
It is a case of a contract imposing mutual obligations, all the clauses
of which ought to be settled with care. Here, more than anywhere
else, the right to assistance is limited in a thousand ways, not only by
the rights of personal property, but also by the real resources of the
states, by practical impossibilities, and finally by the consequences that
would follow if we should erect it into an absolute and positive right.
It would in that case not stop short of self- destruction. We should
recollect that, in the question of reciprocal rights and duties, we have
to consider the future as well as the present. In this point of view,
we can say in truth with the Malthusians and the Darwinians that the
increase of sustenance would not follow the increase of population.
As Malthus shows, an absurd consequence is implied in acknowledging
an indefinite and unlimited right to assistance and to work ; it is, that
the funds destined to support labor can be made to grow at will, and
that an order of government or a tax, like Elizabeth's tax, is all that
is needed to bring this about. It would not be more unreasonable to
order that two ears of corn shall grow where the earth has heretofore
produced but one. Canute did not arrogate a greater power over the
laws of nature when he prohibited the waves from touching his royal
feet. To say that we ought to furnish work to all who only ask to work,
is really to say, in other words, that the forces dedicated to labor, in
any country, are infinite, that they are not subject to any variation,
and that the ability to give work and good wages to the working
classes ought to remain absolutely the same, without regard to whether
the resources of the country are rapidly or slowly progressive, station-
ary, or retrograde.

This assertion, therefore, Malthus concludes, with reason, contra-
dicts the most simple and most evident principles of the tender and
the demand, and includes by implication the absurd proposition that
a limited territory can feed an unlimited population. The question
of assistance is inseparable from that of subsistence and population ;

53z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is what we might call a bilateral question. The right to place chil-
dren in the world is not a right merely individual and personal ; there
is in it an act that concerns not the parents alone, hut all society as
well. When the idle and careless call new beings into life, the task
of feeding them falls back unjustly upon industrious and thrifty men.
One does not have to take his children to the dispensary to put them in
charge of society ; the man who fills his house with children he can not
support changes his house itself into a hospital, and that by his OAvn
authority, without consulting the convenience or considering the re-
sources of any other one. The act involves an evident violation of
stipulative justice. The state might, in such a case, say to the la-
borer : " You demand a promise of me, but are you disposed to give
another one in exchange for it '? My duty is correlative with your
duty, and your right is not unconditional, but is subordinate to indis-
pensable conditions. Will you give up the right of propagation ? If
you will, assistance is possible ; if not, it is not, for you can not re-
quire those who have labored, produced, and saved, before you, to
abstain from the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor till they have
assured the support of all the beings whom it may be convenient for
you or your descendants to call into existence." The procreation of
children is not an act of individual whim, it is of the nature of a social
act and of a contract. It is proper to have paternal and maternal du-
ties determined by law. The false principle that every one has the
right to procreate according to his fancy, without showing any more
foresight than a brute, will eventually be rejected, says Stuart Mill,
the same as the right of a merchant to buy and sell without keeping
accounts is already rejected. To place children in the world without
being able to support them will be regarded as a new kind of failure ;
it is, in fact, frequently more than a failure ; it is a homicide by im-
prudence, because the children are destined to a certain misery and an
almost certain death. All liberty involves responsibility.

Stuart Mill undoubtedly attaches too much importance to the legal
regulation of population for the present time. In some countries, as
in France, the population is now tending to diminish, rather than to
increase too much. Furthermore, the bringing of American and Aus-
tralian lands under cultivation assures subsistence to mankind for a
long time, even if the population should increase rapidly. It never-
theless remains true that the relief given by the state can not be un-
limited, and that assistance can not be erected into a right on which
the individual can found a claim. Experience has shown us what kind
of work we may look for out of the shops opened by public jmilan-
thropy. " When we do not give wages for work that we need," says
Stuart Mill, " but give out work so as to furnish wages to those who
need them, we may be sure that the work will not be worth what it
costs." When we shall have no longer the power of dismissing the
workmen, we shall not be able to get work except by the lash. Assist-

SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 533

ance to working-men is, then, still only a moral and general duty of the
state.

We can not enter here into the detail of the economical or political
reforms which would render the giving of assistance more sure and
more effective by removing the inconveniences (moral and physical)
of what is properly called charity ; we have only desired to show forth
an ideal, and to give an apprehension of the difficulty no less than of
the necessity of progressively attaining realization of it. The particu-
lar means by which the ideal is to be realized lie within the domain of
applied sociology and politics. We merely indicate as among them
the most perfect laws respecting property, the more equitable reparti-
tion of imposts, which should not be allowed to aggravate the proleta-
riat by falling most heavily on the proletaries themselves ; a better
application of the imposts ; the encouragement of institutions of credit,
and of other means of credit less onerous than the mons-de-piete ;
the establishment of intelligence-offices for workmen seeking work ;
the extension of the system of mutual assurance on the initiative of
the state and the communes, to a vast scale, in order to avert the most
frequent and most grave material disasters ; colonies, removal to which
should be the natural destination of every healthy citizen who has no
trade or profession, and who, by begging, or a vagabond life, puts him-
self under suspicion ; and, lastly, the encouragement and increase of
particular associations within the grand association of the state. Real
benevolence is that which encourages, not idleness, improvidence, and
the degeneration of the race, but labor, economy, and the moral and
physical progress of generations.

" The state," says a writer who will be little suspected of social-
ism, M. Thiers, " ought to undertake to contrive means of preparation
for panics. It may not be able to do all that could be asked of it, but
with foresight it might do something, and even much, for the state
has forts, machines, vessels, cordage, guns, cannons, wagons, harness,
shoes, dresses, hats, cloth, linen, palaces, and churches to be made ;
and a competent administration, which would reserve these works, so
varied, for the times of panic, which should have for some articles,
such as machines, arms, wagons, and cloths, establishments capable of
being extended or contracted at will ; which should have designs for
the strong places or the palaces it has to build prepared and kept ready
for the seasons when the labors of private industry are suffering from
interruption ; which should thus gather up upon the general market
the unemployed arms as speculators buy depreciated public securities,
which should add financial foresight to an administrative foresight of
this kind, and should keep its floating debt free and disengaged, so
that it could find money when no one had any — an administration
which should take upon itself all of these difficult but not impossible
cases, would succeed in greatly reducing distress without, however,
suppressing it entirely. ... Do not assert, then, that we must let the

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

man without work die of hunger, for I contend that we can support
him without giving him either wages equal to those of prosperous
times, or wages that will allow him to become a mischief-maker or a
soldier of the civil war."

The state concerns itself with the general interests of agriculture
and commerce ; with public works, the fine arts, posts, telegraphs, etc. ;
different ministries have been constituted for these ends ; we believe
there ought also to be a ministry of philanthropic institutions, charged
with the duty of taking the initiative and creating foundations of this
kind, with encouraging and aiding those that already exist, and with
centralizing the efforts, gifts, and loans of individuals for philanthropic
establishments. New organs should be provided, in the great body of
the state, to answer to new needs. We now witness in this matter,
especially in France, an absolute dispersion of forces, an anarchy, and
faults in initiative and organization that impede all reform ; if a special
ministry existed for such questions, which seem not less important than
those of the posts, commerce, and agriculture, the impulse would be
quickly given. Loans, gifts, and legacies would permit the state to
institute experiments under scientific methods or to aid those which
might be made. Individuals do not, as a rule, care to bequeath their
property to the state in general, for a general and neutral use; but how
many persons would be glad to make gifts or legacies to philanthropic
institutions ! Religious congregations have a wonderful art of find-
ing money for their works of benevolence ; the state ought not to fold
its arms and be indifferent as if it had no precise obligation in the mat-
ter. Foresight, public benevolence, and " fraternity," in our modern
societies regulated by laws of increasing complexity, ought not to
remain a kind of moral luxury wholly abandoned to the chances of
individual inspiration. Charity is a general duty of justice, a work of
science and not of mere sentiment, in which social economy and nat-
ural history ought to co-operate. In reality, the idea inspired by the
labors of the Darwinian school on heredity and selection is, upon a
final analysis, that of solidarity ; and that is the very foundation of
moral fraternity. Solidarity, doubtless, causes the miseries of one to
fall upon the other members of the society, but it also extends the
good fortune of each one to all and that of the mass to each one. By
this very fact, it obliges society to find a remedy for every evil that
afflicts the individual, because every such evil tends to become social.
Solidarity limits our modern societies to the alternative of progress or
dissolution. In the perfected machines which modern industry uses to
weave linen, cotton, or wool, when a single thread breaks, the loom
stops of itself, as if the whole had been informed of the accident that
had befallen one of its parts, and could not continue its work till the
breach is repaired. This is a type of the solidarity which is destined
to reign more and more extensively in human society. In that social
web in which all individual destinies intercross, it must come to pass

THE SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE. 535

that not a thread can be broken, not an individual can suffer, without
the general mechanism being informed of the accident, affected by it,
and forced to repair the damage as much as possible. This is the ideal
which philanthropy is pursuing, and which it will approach more close-
ly as it becomes more scientific in its method, without ceasing to be
also generous in its inspirations. — Translated from the Revue des Deux
Mondes.

[Concluded.]

-♦♦♦-

THE SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE.

Br E. 0. BEAED, M. D.

"^VTOTIIING is so popular as prejudice, and no prejudice so popular
-LN as that resting upon a supposed scientific basis, or backed by
reputed scientific authority. Always obstructive to the spirit of prog-
ress, it is peculiarly so when related to a subject so closely concerning
the interest of the people as the study and treatment of disease. In
these physically degenerate days the avoidance or remedy of the
thousand " ills which flesh is heir to " is a question of well-nigh uni-
versal import. The urgency of this common need offers a partial rea-
son for the adoption and perpetuation, by the public mind, of the
differences which are supposed to exist between the two great schools
of medicine ; while, at the same time, it measures the greatness of the
misfortune of the fact.

Rooted in the professional ignorance and bigotry of almost a cent-
ury ago, fostered by the bitter rivalries and exclusivism of opposing
theorists, these differences have been taken up and fed by popular
opinion, until they seriously embarrass the progress of medical knowl-
edge, and tend to destroy all faith in the science and art of healing.

The medical fraternity at large, and of both schools alike, is re-
sponsible for this unfortunate condition of affairs. When professional
men, who, supposably, represent the best phases of liberal thought
and scientific culture, lend their names to the partisanship of mere
theory, and array themselves under sectarian titles which signify their
adherence to an exclusive dogma, it is small wonder that the laity
should follow in their footsteps, and cast their views into the yet nar-
rower mold of unreasoning prejudice.

And, as professional hands have sown this seed of error, it is they
who must gather its barren harvest, and uproot the tares of false opin-
ion from the popular mind.

The recent agitation within the ranks of the one school of medi-
cine, of the question of establishing consulting relations with duly
qualified members of the other, presents a good opportunity of offer-

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing to the general reader a few facts which may serve to illumine ex-
isting error, and prepare the way for the appreciation of some gener-
ally unrecognized truths.

It may be safely asserted that the chief obstacle which the pro-
fession has to encounter, in the attempt to harmonize the hitherto con-
flicting systems of medicine, is the existence of so violent a prejudice
among the people in favor of one school or the other that the doctor's
income is liable to suffer as an effect of any concession to his liberal
convictions.

When an imknown physician appears in any community, and so-
licits a share of public patronage, what does the inquiring public first
demand to know concerning him ? Does society take the measure of
his social standing, or estimate the quality of his moral character and
training ? Do his prospective patients seek evidence of his profes-
sional ability, his special acquirements, or his general scientific cult-
ure ? No. They submit him to no such crucial tests as these. They
content themselves with asking the one grave question, " Is he allo-
path or homoeopath ? " and, having reply, assign him, according to
their prejudices, to an immediate place in their mental register, as
possibly useful or probably imbecile. What important principle, then,
lies back of this oft-repeated query to account for its unfailing repe-
tition ? What significance is attached to these opposing terms, and
whence is it derived ?

In the first place, the words " homoeopathy " and " allopathy " have
a common authorship. The great founder and apostle of the homoeo-
pathic school, Dr. Hahnemann, was responsible for their coinage and
introduction to the public. With the one, he proposed to christen the
creed which embodied his own peculiar tenets ; by the other, to throw
into sharp contrast the system of the older and established school.

It is worthy of remark that his followers have, until recently, ac-
cepted, with singular uniformity, their leader's distinctive term, while
his opponents have always, and with few exceptions, repudiated the
name thus contemptuously bestowed upon them, and which has fast-
ened itself to them through the influence of popular usage. The
definition of these terms is somewhat obscure. Homoeopathy does not
now possess, in toto, its original significance. In its earlier day it rep-
resented a group of dogmas, which most of its younger disciples dis-
own. Infinitesimal dosage, increased potency by means of dynami-
zation, the unification of disease, etc., have ceased to be essential
planks in the homoeopathic platform. According to more recent in-
terpretation, it may be defined as a system of medicine based upon
the one theory, " similia similibus •curantur" or the doctrine of a
similarity existing between the physiological and the curative action
of drugs.

Allopathy, on the other hand, may be said to mean — in so far as it
means anything — the application of medicine upon the principle " con-

THE SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE. 537

traria contrariis curantur," or a system founded upon the belief in a
certain antagonism discoverable between drug-action and disease.

Upon the face of these definitions, seemingly irreconcilable differ-
ences exist between the two leading schools of medicine ; differences
which, if borne out by the facts of to-day, furnish ample excuse for
this persistently anxious query of the public. That the present status,
however, of medical science affords no adequate support to this popu-
lar idea of a hopeless variance is clearly susceptible of proof.

When Hahnemann promulgated his new and remai'kable dogmas,
they certainly came into direct collision with the then accepted opin-
ions and practice of the medical world. They were conceived and
brought forth in an age of heroic measures in medicine ; an age, too,
in which the sthenic types of disease were largely predominant, and
when the lancet and its auxiliary depletives were accounted the un-
failing panaceas of all human ills in which failure was not a foreor-
dained fact.

The homoeopathic tenets rushed to the other extreme of theory,
and, in practice, won the faint praise of doing at least no injury to
human life. But, starting thus from widely separated points, the two
schools have steadily traveled forward along paths set in inevitably
convergent lines. The unbridged space which lay between them a
century ago has been narrowed imperceptibly in their onward march,
until men discover with surprise that to-day, across the intervening
chasm, they can safely join their hands ; and that, by mutual ap-
proaches, they may soon walk side by side, in common effort for the
relief of humanity, and yet keep steadily " abreast of truth." Uncon-
sciously receiving the impress of its opponent's teachings, the older
school has learned, first, to lessen, and then to minimize its doses ; to
improve the preparation of its drugs, and to seek for better forms and
methods in their administration. If it can boast the direct salvation
of no greater number of lives, in consequence, it is at least responsible
for fewer deaths. Its distinguishing characteristics have ever been an
active spirit of investigation, and the consequent widening of the lim-
its of its medical faith.

The homoeopathy of to-day has also shaken from its feet the dust
of more than one worthless theory. Although within its ranks are
still numbered some so-called " high dilutionists," its leaders have long
ceased to insist upon infinitesimal dosage as an essential principle of
treatment. Not a few of its representative men administer many of
their drugs in crude form, as the rule rather than the exception of
practice. If it still clings to its central dogma, its principal adher-
ents no longer claim for it the respect or merit of a universal law.
That it serves as a good indication for the use of certain drugs, in the
treatment of many conditions of disease, few careful students of ma-
teria medica and therapeutics will deny. Witness, as instances, the
physiological as related to the curative action, in some particulars, of

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

arsenic, ipecacuanha, turpentine, mix vomica and its alkaloid, strych-
nia, and camphor. Explain the action in any way we choose — as sub-
stitutive, as the primary differing from the secondary effects of the
drug, etc. — the relationship of similarity, however problematical its
value, still remains.

Not seldom has the reproach been cast upon homoeopathy that it
possesses no literature worthy of the name ; that its followers can
boast no valuable discoveries or original research. In the main, the
criticism is just. But, in this one department of medical science, the
profession has received at its hands an incalculable benefit. It claims,
and for the most part rightly, the credit of advancing, directly or
indirectly, the study of the physiological action of drugs, as related to
the alleviation and cure of disease. The careful experiments thus set
on foot have thrown a light upon the selection and intelligent use of
remedies which has largely revised the old system of therapeutics.
Homceopathy has, undoubtedly, given to the world the revelation of
more than one valuable truth, and the profession and people alike owe
to it, in the persons of its advanced thinkers, the gratitude of respect
and recognition. In short, as " every student is a debtor to his whole
profession," so the schools of medicine are mutually beholden to each
other. The same influences which have modified the one sect have
served to liberalize both. The practical result, as already manifest, is
of greater interest to the public than are the steps by which it has
been reached. A careful study of the course of treatment commonly
pursued by leading practitioners, and recommended by the highest au-
thorities in the two schools, reveals the fact that, in eighty selected
forms of disease, representing maladies of every type and every stage,
six tenths of the remedies employed by these supposedly rival schools
are identically the same in kind, and differ only in respect of dose.
The variance is no greater than probably exists between the respective
methods of practice of any two physicians of either school. Were
disease an entity, and its types invariable, we might look for the es-
tablishment of a universal law of therapeutics ; but, considering all
the varying conditions of age, sex, temperament, habit, hereditary
tendency, personal idiosyncrasy, climate, and general surroundings, it
is, in the nature of things, impossible. Between homoeopathic and
" regular " physicians there is but one legitimate ground of quarrel —
and herein the latter have sufficient cause of complaint — namely, the
continuance, by their old-time opponents, of name and title suggestive
of a rigid exclusivism, indicative of their supposed arrival at the
ultima TJiule of medical research, and their adherence to a universal
dogma, to which, as such, they can no longer honestly adhere. Why
should it not be possible for a guild of men, interested in so grand an
object as the relief of suffering and the conservation of human life, to
join cordial hands with their fellow-laborers in a common cause, and
content themselves with the unequivocal name of physician, and the

BRAIN-POWER IN EDUCATION. 539

honored and honorable title of Doctors in Medicine? Let this once be
unfait accompli, and we may rest assured that the good sense and mutual
interests of the two great schools will speedily draw them together, in
a process of mutual absorption, which will give a new impetus to the
growth of medical science, and contribute immeasurably to a more suc-
cessful, because more rational, treatment of disease.

The New York State Medical Society, representing the head and
front of the profession in this country, has recently taken an ini-
tiatory step in this direction, by striking out and changing certain
clauses of its ethical code which prohibited consultation with duly
qualified homoeopathic practitioners. Despite the unfortunate ac-
tion of the American Association, in setting the stamp of their use-
less disapprobation upon this timely step, a thinking public must needs
declare itself in approval of the New York Society. It has but con-
stituted itself the vanguard of a movement which will soon be fol-
lowed by all liberal men in the profession, and must ere long sweep
away those petty obstacles to the progress of medicine, which, causing
the disunion of its disciples, have limited its usefulness, weakened its
experimental conclusions, and brought upon it the popular reproach of
disagreement.

Many, it may be, of the older generation of physicians — minds
which have crystallized unchangeably to the form of early ideas —
must " pass away before these things are fulfilled," but they who are
stepping forward to take their places in the great struggle with dis-
ease and death, will have their hands strengthened by a more conscious
unity of work and purpose with their fellows, to which the profession
of medicine has long been a stranger.

The principal barrier, let me repeat, to the attainment of this de-
sired end lies, not within professional lines, but in the existence of this
unfortunate prejudice among the people. "When patients demand to
be assured that a medical practitioner is — not an " allopath " or a
" homoeopath," but — a reputable and well-educated physician, then will
the folly of " exclusivism " be made manifest, not alone to the mind,
but to the pocket of the profession ; and then will Medicine, unembar-
rassed by the strife of schools, rise to her possible place as a successful
and a more exact science.

-<y++~

BKAIN-POWER IN EDUCATION.

WE are supposed to live in an age when brute-force has ceased to
rule, and when brain-power alone is the governing agent. In
the good old days, the heavy, strong-armed knight, protected by his
impenetrable armor, and skilled in the use of his sword, was almost
invincible. A little nearer our own day, the skilled swordsman or

54o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dead-shot whose ultimatum was the duel, ruled to a certain extent the
society in which he moved. To test which was the most powerful
knight was an easy matter ; for a combat between the rivals was
easily arranged, and the result was seldom questionable ; or, if it were
uncertain, the relative powers were supposed to be equal.

In the present day, however, the question of brain-power is a far
more difficult problem. We can not weigh brains as we can tea or
sugar ; we can not determine their mental capacity as we could the
physical powers of knights of old, by setting two of them opposite
each other and leaving them to fight it out. "We have, however, ar-
ranged various tests which we suppose give us a correct estimate of
the brain-power of various individuals. These tests may be better
than none at all, yet they are far from being perfect ; consequently,
we too often by such means select men to do work for which they are
quite unsuited, and to fill offices for which they have no capacity.

The present is an age of competitive examinations, yet these afford
but an imperfect test of brain-power ; for, after a time, competitive
examinations become less and less efficient as true tests of intelligence,
and sink into a sort of official routine. As examples, we will take the
following cases : Brown is the son of an Indian officer who died when
his boy was ten years old, and left his widow badly off. Young
Brown is intended for the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich ; but
his mother's means do not enable her to send him to a first-class
" crammer's," so he has to sit beneath the average schoolmaster. He
works hard and thinks a great deal, and gains a fair knowledge of the
subjects he is required to learn. He goes up to the competitive exam-
ination at Woolwich, and finds each question so complicated that he
is utterly puzzled ; and, when the results of the examination are made
known, Brown is nearly last on the list.

On the other hand, Smith is the son of a wealthy tradesman who
wishes his son to enter as a cadet at Woolwich. Young Smith is sent
early in life to a successful " crammer's," to be fattened with knowl-
edge as turkeys are crammed for Christmas. The crammer does not
confine his attention to teaching his pupils ; but he watches the exam-
ination papers set at Woolwich, and he finds that the examiners have
each a peculiar " fad," and set their questions in a sort of rotation.
He looks carefully over these, and he forms a kind of estimate of the
questions which are likely to be set at any particular examination.
He therefore trains his pupils for these questions, and is often so suc-
cessful in his predictions that at least half the questions have been
worked out by these pupils a week before the examination ; and this
result is obtained without any collusion between the crammer and the
examiner. On one occasion that we know of, seven questions out of a
paper of thirteen were predicted as " due " ; and the pupils conse-
quently of this crammer were most successful at this " competitive."
Young Smith is thus trained, and passes say fifth out of a long list,

BRAIN-POWER IN EDUCATION. 541

and is considered, as far as this test is concerned, to possess brain-
power far beyond that of the unfortunate Brown, who was nearly last
in this same examination.

Twenty years elapse, and Smith and Brown meet. Smith has
jogged on in the usual routine ; he may have never either said or done
a foolish thing. Brown, on the other hand, is a man of wide reputa-
tion, has written clever books, and done many clever things ; yet peo-
ple who know his early history say how strange it was that he was
so stupid when he was young, for he was ignominiously "spun" at

Woolwich !

Those who thus speak imagine that the examination at which
Smith succeeded and Brown failed was a test of their brain-power.
It was in reality nothing of the kind ; it was merely a test of the rela-
tive experience of those who trained Smith and Brown.

Even thus far it will be evident that our present supposed tests are
not infallible ; but we will go even further, and will examine the act-
ual work itself which is supposed to be the great test of mental capac-
ity, and we can divide this work into two classes— namely, acquired
knowledge, and the power to reason. In nearly every case, the train-
ing which enables a youth to pass a competitive examination belongs
to the first class— acquired knowledge. It consists of a knowledge of
mathematical rules and formula, classics, modern languages, history,
and geography. Mathematics, if properly taught,. and especially ge-
ometry, tends to strengthen the mind and fit it to reason ; but it too
often happens that a youth is crammed with mathematics for a particu-
lar examination, and he has not mentally digested what he has thus
been crammed with ; and consequently, instead of his mind having
been strengthened by this process, it has in reality become weakened ;
and ten or fifteen years after the examination, the man — then in his
maturity — derives no advantage from his formerly acquired knowl-
edge, because he has forgotten it. He merely suffers from the mental
repletion of his younger days, and dislikes mathematics ; just as a
pastry-cook's boy is said to abhor tarts and buns, because he was
crammed with them when he first was placed among such temptations.
A knowledge of modern languages is useful to those who travel, or
who wish to become acquainted with the literature of other countries ;
but, as a test of brain-power, the acquisition of any language fails.
There is no language in use which is based on anything but arbitrary
rules ; reason has no influence on languages. The selection in French,
for example, of masculines and feminines, is most unreasonable. Why
should a chair in French be given petticoats, and a stool placed in
breeches? Why should the sun be considered masculine, and the
moon feminine ? In German, the same arbitrary rules exist — the mas-
culines, feminines, and neuters have no reason to guide them. Take a
child of five yeai's old, and a clever man of twenty-five — let each use
only the same exertion to acquire a knowledge of any spoken language,

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the child will easily excel the man. This is because ear, and the
memory derived from ear, are the means by which languages are ac-
quired. Reason enables us to predict what is probable, when we know
that which has previously occurred. If, then, we informed a reason-
ing individual that a chair, an article made of wood, with four legs,
was feminine in French, and then called his attention to a stool, an
article made of wood, with four legs, and inquired to what gender he
considered the stool belonged, he would naturally conclude that it also
was feminine ; but a stool {tabouret) is masculine in French.

Then, again, the pronunciation of words is purely arbitrary. Take
our own language, for example, and such words as plough, enough,
cough, dough, bough, rough, etc. Where does reason enter into the
pronunciation of such words ? What power of intellect would enable
us to pronounce "cough" correctly, even though we knew how
" bough " was spoken ? Yet, in spite of these unreasonable laws,
classics and modern languages are not unusually referred to, not as
stored knowledge, but as tests of mental power. As a rule, it is not
the reasoner, or person gifted with great brain-power, who the most
quickly learns a language, but the superficial thinker, gifted with ear ;
and these superficial people are the first to quiz any error made when
a speaker attempts to converse in a foreign language.

We may fairly divide the subjects employed in modern mental
training into those which store and those which strengthen the mind.
Languages ; a knowledge of history and geography ; the facts con-
nected with various sciences, such as chemistry, electricity, astronomy,
etc., are stores ; but not one of these does more than store the mind.
Men's minds were stored with a certain number of astronomical facts
when Galileo attempted to revive the olden belief that the earth ro-
tated ; but their minds had not been strengthened, as it was the lead-
ing astronomers who most offered opposition to him. Several men
with stored minds were the great opponents of Stephenson when he
talked about traveling twenty miles an hour on a railroad. So that it
appears that, no matter how well a mind may be stored, if it is inca-
pable of judging correctly on a novelty, it can not be called a strong
mind.

Our competitive examinations tend almost entirely to bring to the
front those whose minds are the best stored, and many persons there-
fore have come to the conclusion that by such a course we have ob-
tained for our various services what are termed " the cleverest youths."
It does not, however, follow that this result has been obtained. The
greatest brain-power may actually be low down in the list of a com-
petitive examination in which stored knowledge alone has been requi-
site. There is a certain advantage to be gained by storing the mind
with facts, and some people imagine that a knowledge of these facts
indicates an educated and strong mind. It, however, merely proves
that the mind has been stored ; it does not prove it to have been

BRAIN-POWER IN EDUCATION. 543

strengthened. We may know what Caesar did under certain condi-
tions ; how Alfred the Great organized his police so that he could
hang bracelets of value on sign-posts without fearing that highwaymen
would steal them ; and a multitude of other similar facts may have
been stored in our minds ; but any quantity of such stores would not
enable an individual to solve the present Irish difficulty, unless he
could find in the past an exactly similar case which had been treated
successfully by some particular system.

It is even now considered that by making a boy pass through a
long course of mathematics or classics, and then testing his acquired
knowledge by an examination, we adopt the best method of obtaining
the greatest brain-power. We may derive an advantage, supposing
mathematics or classics are requisite in the future career of the boy ;
but, as a test of brain-power and perseverance, we would much sooner
select the boy who could the most rapidly and most certainly solve a
three-move chess problem. And, if mathematics are not required in
the future career of a boy, it would be equally as unreasonable to de-
vote three years to the solution of chess problems as it is to devote a
like period to the solution of the higher branches of mathematics. In
both instances, the mental exercise is supposed to be for the purpose
of strengthening the mind, and the chess problems are certainly as
efficient as the mathematical. It is not unusual to find a profound
mathematician who is particularly dull in all other subjects, and who
fails to comprehend any simple truth which can not be presented to
him in a mathematical form ; and, as there are a multitude of truths
which can not be treated mathematically, a mere mathematician has
but a limited orbit.

A chess-player, again, or a solver of chess problems, has always to
deal with pieces of a constant value ; thus, the knight, bishop, pawn,
etc., are of constant values, so that his combinations are not so very
varied. A whist-player, however, has in each hand not only cards
which vary in value according to what is trump, but, during the play
of the hand, the cards themselves vary in value ; thus, a ten may,
after one round of a suit, become the best card in that suit. Brain-
power independent of stored knowledge is therefore more called into
action by a game of whist than it is by mathematics, chess, or classics ;
consequently, while mathematicians and classical scholars may be
found in multitudes, a really first-class whist-player is a rarity ; and,
if we required an accurate test of relative brain-power, we should be
far more likely to obtain correct results by an examination in whist
than we should by an examination in mathematics. In the latter,
cramming might supply the place of intelligence ; in the former, no
amount of cramming could guard against one tenth of the conditions.
A first-rate mathematician may on other subjects be stupid ; a first-
class whist-player is rarely if ever stupid on original matters requiring
judgment.

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A very large amount of the elements of success consists in the
advantages with which an individual may start in life, and over which
he himself may have no control. The case of Smith and Brown al-
ready referred to may serve to illustrate this fact. When conclusions
are arrived at relative to hereditary genius, these advantages may he
considered. The son of a judge becomes a judge, and we may claim
hereditary genius as the cause. We should, however, be scarcely jus-
tified in assuming hereditary genius because the son of a general officer
became this general's aide-de-camp. A general officer with five thou-
sand efficient troops gains a complete victory over fifteen thousand in-
differently armed savages, and he is looked upon as a hero. Another
general with a like number of men is defeated by an army of ten
thousand well-armed but unsoldier-like-looking men, and he is regarded
as a failure ; and yet, of the two, the defeated army may have pos-
sessed the better general. In order, therefore, to judge of the relative
powers of two individuals, we must take into consideration all the ad-
vantages or difficulties with which each starts in life, or in any under-
taking. The relative success is by no means the only criterion from
which to judge of capacity, any more than it would be correct to judge
of the capacity of two whist-players, when one held four by honors
and six trumps and his adversary beld a necessarily poor hand.

In the great battle of life these conditions are perpetually interfer-
ing with the results to be derived from the relative value of brain-
power, and are so numerous as to have an extensive influence. For
example, a man possessing great brain-power has succeeded in attain-
ing an official position of eminence. He selects a nephew or particular
friend to be his assistant. We have competed with this assistant in
various things, and there is no doubt as to his inferiority. Time goes
on, and this assistant succeeds to the post of his relative merely from
what may be called departmental claims, and he is ex-officio supposed
to be possessed of the talents and knowledge which appertain to his
post. Our opinion, if opposed to that of the official, will by the su-
perficial outsiders be considered valueless ; yet ours may be correct,
and that of our opponent erroneous. It is by such means that very
feeble men often occupy official scientific positions to which they are
by no means entitled in consequence of their intelligence.

When such an event occurs, an immense amount of damage is done
to the caflse of truth and real science, because the individual thus
raised by personal interest to the position of a scientific judge or ref-
eree, too often fails to judge of a question on its merits, and condemns
it if it be not in accordance with routine. A question thus disposed
of is very difficult to again bring into notice without prejudice. There
is no doubt that even among the so-termed educated people, the ma-
jority possess only stored minds, and are incapable, consequently, of
reasoning on any problem, other than by bringing to bear on it their
stock of knowledge which, probably, granting the problem is original,

SKETCH OF HENRI MILNE-EDWARDS.

?45

will not apply. No educated person doubts that the earth is a sphere ;
but few of these can prove that it is so by means of facts with which
they are acquainted, though a simple law of geometry is able to prove
the fact.

The average occupations of young men require nothing more than
stored minds and powers of observation ; consequently, our competi-
tive examinations serve to some extent to bring to the front such
qualifications. But it is not among such that we obtain our discover-
ers, inventors, great statesmen, or good generals. The mere routine
man will almost invariably bring about a disaster when he has novel
conditions to deal with ; and as a rule the routine youth comes out
best at an examination.

At the present time we have apparently no accurate test by which
to measure the relative brain-power of individuals. Competitive ex-
aminations can not do so, for the reasons that we have stated. Success
in life is, again, dependent on so many influences quite outside of the
individual that this success is no test. The accumulation of money —
that is " getting rich " — is too often but the results of selfishness and
cruel bargains, and can not be invariably accepted as a proof of brain-
power.

Considering these facts, therefore, it appears that just as intellect
is invisible, so the relative power of intellect is immeasurable ; and
instead of forming hasty conclusions as to the relative powers of two
men, from the results of examinations, we may perceive that by such
means we may be selecting those only who, under certain conditions,
have succeeded in storing their minds with the facts required for that
examination. — Chambers's Journal.

-♦*♦-

SKETCH OF HENRI MILNE-EDWAKDS.

ON the 3d of April, 1881, a medal, bought with the subscriptions
of the scientific men and friends of science of various nations,
was presented to M. Henri Milne-Edwards by a committee of repre-
sentative French men of science, in honor of the completion of his
great work on " Comparative Physiology and Anatomy." This mag-
nificent treatise — of which M. Blanchard, in making one of the pres-
entation speeches, said : " Many authors have, with more or less of
success, published treatises for those who were studying ; M. Milne-
Edwards alone has made one for masters " — was the fitting consum-
mation to which nearly sixty years of scientific labor had consistently
led.

M. Milne-Edwards was born on the 23d of October, 1800, at
Bruges, Belgium, of English parentage, his family having come from
vol. xxii. — 35

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Jamaica. After the invasion of Belgium, in 1814, the family removed
to Paris, and established themselves there. M. Milne-Edwards studied
medicine under the direction of his brother, William Edwards, author
of a work on the influence of physical agents upon life, and afterward
a member of the Institute, and was graduated as Bachelor in Letters in
1821, and Doctor of Medicine, at Paris, in 1823. In the latter year
he presented several memoirs to the Academy of Sciences, among
which was one on " The Influence of the Nervous System upon Diges-
tion," which he prepared in conjunction with Breschet. In 1825 he
published, in connection with Vavaseur, a " Manual of Materia Medi-
ca," of which a second edition appeared in 1828, and translations were
made into English and German. His attention was afterward concen-
trated upon the zoological branches of science ; and from this time on
the history of his life is a record of his researches and his publications
in those branches, the briefest satisfactory account of which would
fill the space of an article.

In 1826 he began, with V. Audouin, a long series of researches on
the anatomy, physiology, and zoology of the marine animals of the
French coasts, for the purposes of which he, either alone, or with his
co-laborers, made several sojourns at different points on the sea-shore.
Between 1826 and 1830 he thus explored in succession the coasts of
Granville, of the Chaussey Islands, of St. Malo, Noirmontiers, and col-
lected the materials for his work on "The Littoral of France," in two
volumes, one of which is devoted to the history of the Annelids, and
wTas the subject of a long report by Cuvier. In the beginning of 1827
he presented to the Academy a memoir which he had prepared, in con-
nection with M. Audouin, on the circulation of the blood in the Crus-
tacea, which received the prize in Experimental Physiology. His
"Manual of Surgical Anatomy," published in the same year, was
translated into Dutch and English. During a few years following he
was engaged much of his time in chemical investigations in the lab-
oratory of M. Dumas, whose pleasure it was, in making one of the
speeches on the presentation of the medal, to speak of himself as the
oldest of his friends and the closest witness of the labors by wdiich
his life was made illustrious.

In 1832 he was appointed Professor of Natural History in the Col-
lege Henri IV, and Professor of Public Hygiene and Natural History
in the Central School of Arts and Manufactures. In the next year he
prepared the zoological part of an elementary work on natural history,
by himself and Achille Comte. In 1834 he published his " Elements
of Zoology," an elementary book on zoology for lyceums, which is in-
cluded, with a " Botany " by Jussieu and a " Mineralogy " by Beudant,
in the "Elementary Course of Natural History," and a general work
on the Crustacea, in three large volumes and an atlas, the last volume
of which appeared in 1836. It was while he was engaged upon this
work — " which has become classic, and has been the point of depart-

SKETCH OF HENRI MILNE-ED WARDS. 547

ure for all the studies in that grand division of the animal kingdom"
— that M. Blanchard became acquainted with him, and it was of this
period of his career that that friend said, in his presentation speech :
" At that time much was said of your discoveries on the organization
of marine animals, and of your researches on the littoral of France.
. . . Generally, naturalists have studied marine animals in the cabi-
net ; you were of the opinion that it would be better to observe them
on their domain, in the actions of their life. The learned world ap-
plauded."

In 1834 he made a journey to Algeria, and on his return presented
to the Academy several memoirs on the marine ajiimals of the African
coast, and also one on the changes in the color of the chameleon. His
researches on the Polyps, the results of which were published in 1838,
were begun at this time, and continued with the co-operation of M. J.
Haime.

In 1839 he published a work on the Ascidians, prepared after
investigations at St. Vaast la Hogue and Nice, and passed several
months at Roscoff in making observations on the blood-circulation of
the Annelids. In 1841 he published a special work on the Acalephs,
Spermatophores, Cephalopods, and Eolidians. In 1844 he went to
Sicily with MM. de Quatrefages and E. Blanchard, on a mission the
scientific results of which were embodied in a work in three volumes,
the first of which contained the account of his studies on the circulation
of the mollusks. On his return from this journey, he was appointed a
professor in the Faculty of Sciences in Paris, in place of M. E. Geof-
f roy Saint-Hilaire, in a position to which he had already been inducted
as a substitute in 1838, while he had also been appointed Professor of
Natural History in the Museum, in place of V. Audouin, in 1841. It
is of this period that M. Blanchard said in his eulogy : " You became
professor in the Museum, and found me assistant naturalist to the chair
to which all the votes designated you. I have forgotten nothing of
that time from which nearly forty years now separate us. One thought
ruled you, dear master, that of giving a strong impetus to our science.
You excited to research by your example ; by your counsel, you indi-
cated to young naturalists the ways they should pursue. Desiring to
make explorations in the warm parts of the Mediterranean littoral, you
took M. de Quatrefages and myself to Sicily. We returned from there
with a harvest. You brought a new light to science : you showed
for the first time how certain vital functions are performed when the
organic apparatus are still in a condition of relative imperfection.
You were able in a short time* to furnish a thousand proofs that the
sign of the highest perfection of organisms is given by the division of
physiological labor. You were still young, Monsieur Milne-Edwards,
but you were already saluted as a master and recognized as a chief.
Witnesses of that epoch, now becoming a little rare among us, recol-
lect how, everywhere that science was in honor, interest was taken in

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the investigations on the organization of marine and inferior animals
that were going on in our country. We had among us, in the course
of a few years, the greater portion of the zoologists, anatomists, and
physiologists of the world. The first door at which they knocked was
yours. At that fortunate period for science, your health was consid-
ered quite delicate. It has since appeared to all that your love for sci-
ence gave you the strength which nature had refused you."

To these investigations succeeded his studies on the structure and
classification of recent and fossil Polyps, and his monograph on Brit-
ish fossil corals, both 'prepared in connection with J. Haime (1848 to
1852), and in 1851 a,series of memoirs on the morphology and classifi-
cation of the Crustaceans (since collected in a volume of " Carcino-
logical Miscellanies "). His " General Tendencies of Nature," which
appeared in the same year, was on a subject which had occupied him
for a long time ; for his first publications on the vitality of the differ-
ent parts of the aniAal organism, and on the law of the perfection-
ment of animated beings by the division of physiological labor, date
from 1826, and were published in the " Classical Dictionary of Nat-
ural History." A monograph on the fossil Polyps of the Palaeozoic
formations, published also in 1851 in co-operation with M. J. Haime,,
forms nearly the whole of the fifth volume of the " Archives of the
Museum." Between 1857 and 1860 he published his " Natural His-
tory of the Corals Proper," and in 1858 a large volume on the " Recent
Progress of. Zoology in France."

The crowning work of his life, the " Lessons on the Comparative
Anatomy and Physiology of Man and Animals," was begun in 1857,
and was completed on the publication of the fourteenth volume, of
five hundred pages, in 1880. This work includes all the lectures which
were delivered by the author at the Museum of Natural History dur-
ing the twenty-three years that it was in preparation. Professor
Michael Foster said of this work, the " beautiful legacy," as Bernard
has called it, of the venerable author, reviewing the ninth volume in
1870, in " Nature " : "At a time when a ' differentiation ' of study is
carried to such an extent that many physiologists know very little
about other animals than frogs, rabbits, dogs, and men, and many
zoologists have a very meager acquaintance with the results of experi-
mental physiology, such a work as this, which skillfully weaves to-
gether all the main facts of animal biology, is most wholesome read-
ing."

M. Milne-Edwards was nominated an officer of the Lesrion of
Honor in 1847, and a commander in the same order in 1861. He re-
ceived the Copley medal of the British Royal Society in 1856, and the
Boerhaave medal of the Scientific Society of the Netherlands in 1880,
being the first person upon whom that medal had been conferred.

M. de Quatrefages, addressing the subject of this sketch on the
occasion of the presentation of the medal to him in 1881, said : " We

SKETCH OF HENRI MILNE-EDWARDS. 549

present this medal to you in the name of the scientifie men of the
world. . . . All of us here recognize your merits ; we all know why
our appeal for homage to be given to you has been so widely answered.
The first memoir you read to the Academy was in 1823. Since that
time you have unceasingly continued to enlarge the field of science by
your personal researches, and to teach, by speech or the pen, your rivals
first, then the generations which grew up at your side. These labors,
this teaching, then, have continued for nearly sixty years. And, to
crown your work, you have collected into a single book the immense
treasures of knowledge amassed by this long and noble labor. Your
'Lessons' present a complete picture of the past and present of the
anatomical and physiological sciences, with their infinite details me-
bracing and co-ordinating general ideas, always as j)recise as elevated.
The book marks a real epoch in the history of these sciences. It is
from this time for us, it will be for our posterity, what the writings of
Haller were for his contemporaries and for posterity. This is what
even mere strangers to your habitual studies comprehend ; and this is
why we are authorized to present this medal to you in the name of the
whole world."

M. Dumas said: "The Academy beholds in you the guardian of
the noble traditions of the learned and the most authorized represent-
ative of French science. With passion for the truth, the boldness of
a strong mind, and the prudence of a wise one, you have drawn a com-
plete picture of life in all its aspects, as a consummate anatomist, as a
sharp-sighted physiologist, as a physician, and as a skilled chemist.
With you, physiology, in its highest and widest acceptation, has en-
tered permanently into the study of the classification of beings. You
have had the rare happiness, my dear friend, to begin young, to pur-
sue in your maturity, and to terminate in the fullness of your vigor, a
work which will remain a monument."

The list of his works, said M. Gaston Tissandier, in his notice of
them in "La Nature," in May, 1881, "has not closed, for the eminent
naturalist, in spite of his years, preserves all the ardor and activity of
youth ; without allowing himself rest, he consecrates all his efforts to
scientific progress, offering one of the finest examples it is possible to
cite of a magnificent career incessantly fertilized by labor and genius."

His son, M. A. Milne-Edwards, is pursuing the same course of re-
search with the father, and displays in it the same characteristic activ-
ity and thoroughness.

53°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE BICYCLE CONTROVERSY IN STOCK-
BRIDGE.
Messrs. Editors :

ALTHOUGH the writer belongs to those
inhabitants of the village of Stock-
bridge who are editorially stigmatized in
the December number of your magazine as
destitute of " moral backbone," as " openly
immoral," and "barbarians," yet cowards
and criminals have their rights at the bar of
editorial as of other justice, and he asks you
to permit him to file a plea to your indict-
ment— in other words, to publish this an-
swer to your strictures.

Sound criticism, quite as much as sound
philosophy, you will agree, depends on a
correct and complete statement of the facts.
The following version of the bicycle con-
troversy can be maintained by many wit-
nesses. The writer asserts it to be in every
material part substantially true.

The professor, whom you justly call dis-
tinguished, fresh from a victory in the Cen-
tral Park of this city over the ladies, in-
valids, and children who had been accus-
tomed to be pushed about the skating-rink
on the sliding-chairs, which doubtless in-
terfered with his essays in skating, and
perhaps on abstruser matters, came to his
country retreat in Stockbridge naturally
confident of equal success in clearing out
all bicycles from his path. He was accus-
tomed to walk with his eyes downcast, me-
dians nescio quid nugarum pliilosophicamm
totus in Wis, and the necessity of keep-
ing wide awake with his bodily eyes was
annoying. There was no Park Commis-
sioner and no " Century " or other social
club where officials can be button-holed, and
petitions granted inter pocuta ; but there
were three selectmen, chosen to guard the
interests of the town in the old fashioned
New England way. He drew a petition,
procured eighteen signatures, and presented
it to them. Taking it as a fair indication
of the sentiment of the town, the selectmen
were on the point of granting it, when the
application chanced to become known to
one or two inhabitants who took a different
view. A remonstrance was drawn, based
on the facts that accidents more commonly
occurred from bicycles frightening horses
in the roadway than from permitting them
on sidewalks; on the hardship of practi-
cally depriving children of all use of the
bicycles ; on the impolicy and injustice of
subjecting summer fugitives from the cities
to the same kind of restrictions they had
fled from ; and denying the existence or

seriousness of the so-called accidents alleged
in the petition. This remonstrance was
signed by thirty-six persons. The signers
were generally heads of families, and up to
the moment of this act of turpitude were
(with the exception of the present writer)
persons of recognized standing and charac-
ter. In consequence of this remonstrance,
the selectmen decided to ignore the petition.
The shrewd professor, then perceiving that
though, by dint of that persistent persua-
siveness in which he is unexcelled, he might
collect signatures, yet that all the names
remaining in the town could not outweigh
the remonstrance, called on the person who
prepared that paper and urged his assent to
a second petition, which had already been
signed by a considerable number of visitors
and residents. This was a remarkable docu-
ment. It began by renewing the prayer of
the original petition ; but the various sign-
ers had been permitted to incorporate in it
their different views and prejudices, which
gave it so motley an aspect that it was hard
to determine what was the net application.
It asked in one place that all bicycles be
excluded from the sidewalks ; in another,
that they be so excluded excepting chil-
dren's ; in another, that bicycles exceeding
thirty-six inches in diameter be so excluded ;
in another, that bells be required to be at-
tached to all bicycles ; and, in another, that
no bicycle be allowed to go anywhere in the
village faster than five miles an hour. The
person of whom the request was made,
though reiterating his opinion that the real
and only serious danger of accidents in the
village was from the frightening of horses
in the road, yet being fond of peace, some-
thing of a " moral coward," and willing to
see how a compromise would work, yielded
to the professor's strenuous demand, and
reluctantly signed a memorandum to the
effect that he considered that the chief ob-
jection to an order excluding bicycles from
the sidewalks would be removed by per-
mitting children to ride them there. The
multiform document, thus re-enforced, was
thereupon taken to the other signers of the
remonstrance, who, seeing the memorandum
of their representative, signed also.

The wheels of the opposition being thus
scotched, other signatures were then ob-
tained, to the number no doubt correctly
stated by your informant as a hundred and
sixty-eight. Meantime, a moment's cool re-
flection out of the range of the professor's
battery having convinced the first compro-
miser that he had made a mistake, he sent

CORRESP ONDENCE.

55i

a note to the professor, requesting that his
name might be removed. When the note
was received at the professor's house, he
was out, busily engaged in getting signa-
tures. The next day he called on the re-
pentant signer and informed him that, be-
fore the note was received, the document
had been already presented to the select-
men.

These selectmen, though I maintain just
and well selected, were puzzled. After dis-
cussing in open session the question whether
a thirty-eight-inch bicycle ridden by a small
boy should be compelled to take to the road,
while big boys on thirty-six-inch bicycles
were allowed to patrol the sidewalks, and
the difficulties of enforcing regulations de-
pending on the exact size of the bicycle,
they decided, as the wisest practical course,
to exclude all bicycles, in accordance with
the original, principal, and most definite
purpose of the petition. This decision, we
believe, was a perfectly honest one. There
was, at any rate, enough to justify it as
such, and the burden is on those who charge
dishonesty to prove it. It is true, as al-
leged, that this order necessarily " caused
irritation." Why ? Because it was unjust,
or appeared so to the village. Yet this in-
discriminate exclusion was the real object
at which the professor aimed, and which he
partly gave up only in order to make sure
of as much restriction as he could get.

But the order was not generally satis-
factory, and a counter-petition (which your
informant seems to have forgotten) was
drawn up and at once signed by about two
hundred of those who favored the cause of
the bicycles. The list included a great ma-
jority of the substantial names of the vil-
lage, and was handed in long before any-
thing like a complete canvass could be made,
because the chairman of the Board of Se-
lectmen was to leave town the next morn-
ing for a considerable absence, and imme-
diate action was necessary. The selectmen
held another session. Horses were fright-
ened daily under the eyes of all by bicycles
oa the road. No accidents known to the
community at large had resulted from the bi-
cycles on the sidewalks. The decision of
the magistrates was a responsible one in a
pecuniary sense, as they might entail on the
town heavy damages as the result of forcing
the bicycles into the road, to the distress
and dismay of the riding and driving public,
Still, prompted by the desire which they
throughout showed to act cautiously and fair-
ly on a controverted point with which they
professed no personal acquaintance, they
made, in accordance with the general senti-
ment, a modified and, as the event seemed
to prove, a judicious order. They excluded
the bicycles within certain designated limits
from the central and business part of the
village, where alone they thought accidents

likely to occur, but permitted them elsewhere
on the sidewalk. From extreme caution
they proceeded tentatively, however. The
order was made about the middle of August,
to remain in force till the 1st of September.
This was for the purpose of testing its prac-
tical operation before establishing a rule at
the expiration of the time limited. No ac-
cident happened. Nothing happened which
the lenses of the learned professor could
magnify into an " accident " ; and on the
1st of September the order was indefinitely
continued, with the like beneficent result.

Now, the selectmen are charged with
"playing into the hands of an active party
in favor of the boys." We will not stop to
inquire who was this active part}7 which
overawed the selectmen and commanded a
majority of the votes. But is not it hard
on the selectmen, who did what they con-
ceived their duty in the manner described
above, to charge them with knavery, with-
out, so far as appears, other grounds than
that the order they finally made, in view of
all the facts, was unsatisfactory to the pro-
fessor? This is not Spencerian doctrine.
If it is what the editor of this magazine
calls a " vigorous canon of scientific meth-
od," it is rather too vigorous.

In the article in the " Springfield Repub-
lican," the accusations (according to the
writer's recollection) are more bitter, and
one of the magistrates is attacked by name.
We shall come presently to the charge of
Stockbridge special amenableness to Mr.
Spencer's indictment against the American
people. But here we may inquire whether
there is no other fault found by him with
our people, to which those are amenable
who publish accusations against official per-
sons for which there is no scintilla of proof.
Mr. Spencer's ethics prohibit slander and
personalities.

Now let us glance at the more general
facts :

It will be admitted that bicyclists, like
other domestic animals, have some rights
which, once defined, are as much entitled to
protection as the wider liberty allowed pe-
destrians. The question to decide is, at
what point the exercise of these rights be-
gins to turn into a trespass. It will hardly
be denied that in the open country bicyclists
may leave the rough road for the more
traversable path which runs by it, and when
the road and the path lead into a small,
straggling village, where pedestrians are
rare, the practice is still clearly permissible.
When the road and path lead into a larger
village, the road becomes paved or macad-
amized, and the path becomes a sidewalk,
the question changes its aspect. In villages
like Stockbridge, where there is plenty of
space, and the broad, graveled sidewalks are
never crowded, it is not a simple one. A
good bicyclist can guide his machine almost

552

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

around a blade of grass, and the great pre-
ponderance of accidents have resulted from
bicycles encountering horses in the road.
In large towns with thronged sidewalks, it
is obvious that, whether bicycles are to be
allowed in the road or not, they are in the
way on the sidewalk, and ought not to be
permitted there. A rule adapted to the
compact English villages is not necessarily
the best guide for ours. But it is not true
that bicycles are not permitted on their
sidewalks by any such general rule as the
professor states. There, as here, the rule
depends on the size of the village, and on
the question whether such permission would
or not be practically inconvenient. When
the controversy in Stockbridge was going
on, and rival posters were daily going up,
considerable evidence was collected to this
effect. In some villages, as in " Henley-
on-Thames," the postmen travel altogeth-
er on bicycles, going freely on the side-
walks. In Massachusetts towns of about
the size of Stockbridge, such as the neigh-
boring villages of Lee and Barrington
(which, by-thc-way, are considerably larger
than Stockbridge), and where there are no
college professors, or, if there are, they re-
serve their perambulatory meditations for
their return to their Poccile, bicycles are gen-
erally permitted on the sidewalks. In much
more populous towns, like Pittsfield and
Springfield, they arc doubtless excluded.
Now, who is to decide when the permission
to go on the sidewalk becomes a nuisance ?
Certainly, in this country, the people them-
selves, through their authorities. In New
England these are the selectmen. New
England almost if not quite alone retains
the system of town self-government which
for so many centuries preserved liberty and
fostered civilization in Europe. The select-
men of a Berkshire village, charged with the
supervision of the lives and property of the
inhabitants, certainly have better means of
judging and a stronger motive to judge
rightly in what parts and places bicycles
should be permitted within their jurisdic-
tion, than a newspaper in Hampden County,
or a magazine in New York City, acting on
the ex parte statements of even a distin-
guished individual, who, having undertaken
to have the question settled to suit himself,
is indignant because the selectmen, in ac-
cordance with the expressed wish of a ma-
jority of those interested, have decided
differently.

The writer is one of the professor's
many admirers, and would be the last to im-
pugn his good faith ; but, once enlisted in
a campaign, whether in behalf of science,
charity, or some idiosyncrasy, he goes on
with a persistency which is always indomi-
table and sometimes headlong; and he is
apt to assume that his cause has but one
side, which, in cases coming under the third

of the above categories, at least, is not in-
variably true. In this instance, he threw
aside the sketch-book with which it had
been his wont to exercise his charming ar-
tistic talent during his vacation, and de-
voted his time to scouring and ransacking
the by-ways and corners of the village for
rumors and reports of accidents from bi-
cycles, the existence of which, before they
were seen or heard of by any one else, he
was as satisfied of as Leverrier was of the ex-
istence of the planet Neptune before he saw
it. He posted up from day to day notices
of incidents more or less founded on fact,
which he apotheosized into catastrophes.
He went back over a period of four years,
to the first introduction of the bicycle into
the neighborhood, and the only genuine
" accident " worth mentioning, it is believed,
if his collection were dispassionately inter-
preted, was the result of the fall, on a baby-
carriage, of a bicycle unskillfully mount-
ed by a learner at this early day. People
saw with wonder lists of tragedies posted in
front of the post-office which no one had
heard of, and which were the more mysteri-
ous as they were generally without date,
and the sufferers were commonly designated
as Mr., Mrs., or Miss Blank, or the infant
child of Mr. and Mrs. Blank. Why had no
one heard of these terrible things? Why
were not half of us in mourning or in tears ?
What right had we to walk erect on un-
broken legs while so many were mangled ?
It seemed as if a wholesale slaughter had
been going on in the midst of us without
our knowledge. Fortunately, a little inquiry
into the facts soon dissipated our apprehen-
sions.

Let me illustrate: the writer, while look-
ing at the list of casualties with feelings
fortunately for him not quite akin to those
with which we used to devour the returns
from the Chickahominy, read somewhat
as follows (the number and the precise
words are not remembered, but the sub-
stance of the bulletins is correctly given) :
"No. 16. The infant child of Mrs. Blank
run over and badly injured by a bicycle.
For particulars refer to J. 0. R., Esq."
Looking further the writer read as follows :
"No. 21, J. 0. R., Esq., run into and hurt
by a bicycle." (J. 0. R. was the same per-
son referred to in No. 16.) It so happened
that the writer observed at the moment in
the post-office J. 0. R., Esq., himself, and
improved this opportunity by inquiring of
him the particulars of the two calamities,
calling his attention to the alarming record
before us. " Well," said he at last, " that
isn't exactly right. I didn't see anything
happen to any child, and I haven't been run
into myself, but I understood that old Mr.
J. G. had been run into and hurt." Soon
after this conversation, the writer chanced
to meet the wife of the old gentleman in

EDITOR'S TABLE.

553

question, and said to her he was very sorry
to hear that her husband had been run into
by a bicycle, and hoped it was nothing seri-
ous. " Why, no," said she, "he was not
actually run into, but you know he is quite
infirm, and a bicycle came very near him
and he was a good deal alarmed lest it
might hit him." This was the residuum
from the analysis of the two accidents. A
list of burlesque " escapes " was posted from
day to day by the side of that of the so-
called " accidents" and about equal credence
was given to each. Both were worthy of
" Patience," or the " Belle ffilene." To the
annoyance of both parties, the selectmen at
last impartially took down both sets of no-
tices, not because of any improper motives
as charged, but because of the crowd which
gathered daily in front of the post-office so
thickly as to become a nuisance. The pro-
fessor was laughed out of court; and we
villagers, while all conceding his excellence
and genius, think him daft on the bicycle
question. The real bullying was all done
by him, though unconsciously ; and the real
" cowards " were those who, like the writer,
under the glare of those wonderful eyes, had
not dared to refuse to sign his pieced and
patched compromise petition.

In sooth, this particular charge of moral
cowardice in the Stockbridge people is un-
founded and ridiculous. Not only were
there no accidents deserving the name, but
none were likely to occur on the sidewalk,
which might not be avoided by that reason-
able circumspection which the law expects
from every one, and the want of which
would precipitate a misfortune from a post
or a wheelbarrow equally with a bicycle.
The names attached to the bicycle-petition
were signed because of the deliberate con-
viction that the danger from frightened
horses was greater than from bicycles on
the sidewalks. .Horses in the country do
not all get accustomed to these Centaur-like
appearances, as those in the city do to cor-
responding monsters, such as the elevated
trains, because different horses come into
the village daily from the surrounding re-
gion. These animals standing on their hind
legs, or rushing and shying, were frequent
occurrences, whereas an unskilled bicycle-
rider on the sidewalk can be avoided, and a
skilled one can always avoid the pedestrian.

It is now, we hope, made apparent that
Stockbridge barbarism has been premature-
ly assumed on ex parte testimony. Until a
law should be passed to the contrary, the
wide sidewalks away from the crowded part
of the town were rightfully free to baby-
carriages, children's wagons, wheelbarrows,
and bicycles, and in the present state of the
population there seem to have been good
reasons why there should be no such law.
At least, enough has been said to show that
"the community" does not "acknowledge
the outrage," and that the reason why the
gentleman in question was " not supported
but was condemned for his action" was,
that it was reasonably regarded as an un-
wise and unnecessary attempt to curtail
those rural privileges which citizens com-
morant in the country as well as the villa-
gers themselves regard as a great charm of
their summer.

Inaccurate "data" and the proposal of
unnecessary legislation come strangely from
the disciples of Herbert Spencer. Strange,
too, would it be if they were nearer the
" barbarism " of their master's code than
the orderly lovers of freedom whom they
denounce. "Infinite presumption is dis-
cernible in this attempt at regulating the
doings of men by law. . . . The desire
to command is essentially a barbarous de-
sire" (Spencer's "Social Statics," pp. 321,
80). .

The length of this communication may
seem monstrous. But the writer has been
long-suffering. As a lover of peace, he had
allowed the printed circular distributed
throughout the village, which contained the
same one-sided version of facts on which
your article is based, as well as the imperti-
nent and libelous attack iu the " Springfield
Republican," to go unanswered. For the
good fame of Stockbridge, at which the pro-
fessor, while leaving it for some years, it is
understood, as a residence, aims through
the editor of " The Popular Science Month-
ly " this Parthian shot, I could hardly say
less. But, unless some astonishing twisting
or suppression of material facts compel a
further statement, I shall not again ask
permission to trespass on your interesting
columns.

Vermicclus Obtritus.
New \~ork, December 22, 18S2.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

machine education:

TTTE hear much of the bad effects

VV of machine politics, but it is

questionable if the evils of machine

education are not far worse. By ma-

chine education, we mean the rigid,
mechanical, law-established routine ap-
plied to great multitudes of children of
all conceivable sorts who are got to-
gether in large establishments and sub-

554

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

mitted to operations that go under the
name of mental cultivation. Machine
education is of the very lowest sort,
and the best that can he said of it is,
that it is barely better than nothing at
all. The worst difficulty is, that it is
not capable of improvement. The
method itself is radically false, so that
the improvements of it but make it
worse. At the same time it borrows
influence from its enormous extension
and the authority by which it is en-
forced. The education-factories run in
series, each has a complex grading, and
the different institutions are intimately
belted with each other, and all driven
by the motive power of legislation. As
might be expected, the whole system is
run with a view to popular effect, which
is necessarily fatal to the best results.

If the reader will refresh his memory
in regard to the first principles of men-
tal cultivation by reading the article,
found elsewhere in our pages, entitled
"Brain-Power in Education," he will
get a clear idea of what must be the
necessary outcome of educational me-
chanics. In the work of the school
there are two modes of dealing with
the brain ; it can be stored with infor-
mation, or strengthened in its functional
operations. True education consists in
the development of brain-power in ac-
cordance with the laws of its activity,
and is simply and always a discipline in
spontaneous self-exertion. In the at-
tainment of this object the engineer of
the educational machine has very little
to do. The office of the teacher is im-
portant, but it consists in encouraging,
inciting, and arousing the pupil to put
forth his own efforts, and when this is
most effectually done the result is not
of that conspicuous kind that is suit-
able to make a showy impression at a
public parade. No method has yet
been devised for exhibiting such results
that is not full of rank injustice and
that does not put a premium upon in-
ferior work.

But it is wholly different when the

object is simply to store the brain. This
is an easy process, depending upon
external appliances and mechanical ar-
rangements, and is capable of being so
organized and driven that a shallow and
vicious system shall win the highest
public applause. As the article re-
ferred to explains, it is impossible to get
indexes of the hardest brain-work that
are fitted to astonish gaping outsiders ;
but, when it is a question of merely
stuffing with acquisitions, nothing is
easier than to invent methods by which
the results may be strikingly displayed.
Hence the marking system which pro-
fesses to indicate degrees of proficiency
and educational results, and which gives
so much business to teachers, examin-
ers, inspectors, and superintendents, and
enables them to report to boards of
control, to parents, and to the public
the wonderful success of the institution.
This is machine education in its per-
fection, and the worst of it is, that it
excludes the possibility of rational edu-
cation. The two things are incom-
patible, for that which can be shown
with effect is sure to take precedence
of that wldch can not be exhibited, and
brain-storing will proceed at the ex-
pense of the self-activity by which men-
tal power is alone acquired. The sub-
jects, moreover, that are most favorable
to storing will take the lead and come
to be fundamental in machine educa-
tion. The whole mechanism of the
public-school system is now impelled
by law in this bad direction. The
higher schools react upon the lower, to
stimulate the method. Competition for
promotion fires the vanity of the pu-
pils, and parental influence conspires to
heighten the result.

A new confirmation of this bad state
of things has been recently elicited by the
New York "Mail and Express," which
has started a little inquest of its own
into the working of the public schools.
A reporter was sent to question the
different teachers and officials on va-
rious points, and the information he

EDITOR'S TABLE.

555

obtained is useful as illustrating tlie
vigorous action of our educational ma-
chinery upon one hundred and twenty-
five thousand pupils. The Superintend-
ent of the Schools of New York said to
the reporter:

"My assistants are instructed to
visit the schools, and in their examina-
tions to find out what the children
know and how well they know it. They
examine in nothing but the branches pre-
scribed by law to be taught, and in each
grade only in the work allotted by law
to that grade." Again he says: " In
my last annual report you will find that,
out of twenty-six hundred and ninety
classes examined, eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven were marked 'Excellent,'
and eight hundred and nineteen ' Good,'
and only forty-four as 'Not commend-
able.' " This is of course the kind of
result that officials are interested in
making, as it naturally brings public
commendation, more ample appropri-
ations, and larger salaries. By the very
nature of the case, therefore, they will
be disposed to favor all those injurious
agencies whicb co-operate to heighten
the effect. To illustrate how despotic-
ally this bad system works, and how
completely all who act under it are but
parts of it, listen again to the New York
Superintendent : " It is my business to
stand between teacher and examiner,
principal and teacher, teacher and schol-
ar, parent and teacher, and protect all
in their rights. But as to permitting
teachers or principals to dictate what
questions shall be asked or how they
shall be asked, and what marks shall
be given — that would be equivalent to
resigning my office and handing over
the direction of the schools to them,
something which I do not propose to
do." Thus in machine education the
dictation is of course official — those
who are in closest relation with indi-
vidual requirements being allowed no
discretion.

President Hunter, of the Normal Col-
lege, applauds the subjects and courses

of study which lend themselves to the
smooth wrorking of the machinery by
numerical percentage scales of profi-
ciency, on which pupils are promoted
from grade to grade, and from lower
to higher institutions ; but he does not
deny that the marking system has some
faults ; he says : " That some of the pu-
pils of the higher grammar-grades are
overworked in preparing for the col-
lege, is undeniable ; but the fault lies
not in the course of study which the
board has prescribed, nor in the meth-
ods pursued in working out that course,
but in the ambition of parents to have
their children rapidly advanced, and in
the desire of the pupils themselves to
obtain high marks."

But where, by the working of the
great machine itself, the pupils are set
to racing for the Normal College, and
to racing for the College of the City ot
New York, what else can be expected ?
The honors are but a premium for over-
driving in the direction of such acqui-
sitions as make the best show in ex-
amination, and win the highest per-
centage of marks.

President Hunter al-=o naively ob-
serves: "Many of the evils complained
of in the present system would be rem-
edied by allowing each teacher half an
hour a day to show the pupils how to
study." Verily, verily, the machine
must be in perfection where this is im-
possible.

Mr. Commissioner Crawford admits
that the New York schools were once
quite imperfect, but that "now there
are, generally speaking, no poor schools.
There is a general uniformity of excel-
lence. There is a greater unity, greater
harmony, a higher level in teaching
power. Then supervision was not so
minute as at present. Now we have,
perhaps, too much supervision, but the
committee have endeavored in this re-
port, and the superintendent is all the
while trying, to ease up the machine."
The ideal of education here implied,
that of unity, uniformity, and harmony

556

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the external working of the system,
shows how completely the State ma-
chine has superseded the older method
by which the teachers had some liberty
to adapt themselves to the fundamental
though ever-varying requirements of
individual pupils. It is the character-
istic of machine education that in its
working the individual disappears.

No doubt we are talking treason
against the State, and blasphemy
against a popular idol; nevertheless,
there are many who hold that in edu-
cation, as in politics, the sooner the
machine is "smashed" the better. If
practice in chess and whist would give
a better education than the machine, it
is time to protest. Our most thought-
ful educators are revolting against the
predominant method, which, having
been adopted by the State as best suit-
ed for official management, is extend-
ing throughout the nation. But many,
as we said, are striking out, and de-
manding a good deal more liberty in
school management. They condemn
the pernicious mechanics of the schools
just in proportion to its perfection.
Colonel Parker, for example, is one of
those who demand more freedom in the
play of educational agencies, and more
attention to the kind of work that is
least available for display. lie is re-
cently represented as saying that " uni-
formity in schools is death " ; he does
not believe in " per cents," he would not
have them in schools under any circum-
stances : " Here is a child who is not so
quick mentally as another ; he studies
as hard and labors as faithfully as the
others, but, not being able to advance
so rapidly, he is marked fifty per cent,
while others walk off waving their
ninety-five per cent in triumph. It is
discouraging to the moderately dull
child, and wrong. If a child is exam-
ined and asked the name of a river,
and can not answer, off goes five per
cent."

The difficulty of machine education
is, that under it pupils are not taught

to think for themselves. It can not edu-
cate the judgment, or prepare the mind
to meet emergencies through the prac-
tice of self-reliance. As remarked by a
teacher, "The public-school scholars
are excellent in the line of their drill,
but, take them one inch outside of it,
and they are lost."

BICYCLES AND CIVILIZATION.

We give space to a long communi-
cation on the bicycle controversy at
Stockbridge, replying to our article
upon the subject two months ago. The
writer makes many explanations, and
indulges freely in sarcastic personali-
ties ; but the reader who cares to com-
pare his letter with what we said will
probably observe that the facts of the
case remain substantially as we stated
them, while everybody can judge as
to the correctness of the conclusions
drawn from them. To the local par-
ticulars of the Stockbridge war we can
give no more attention, but will say a
few further words on the general aspect
of the subject.

We assumed in our former article
that large bicycles run upon the side-
walks are objectionable. The sidewalks
are a portion of the highway reserved
for pedestrians, made smooth and hard
to facilitate walking, and protected from
exposure to accidents by street vehicles.
A new wheeled vehicle is introduced
of a peculiar character, but which be-
longs, if anywhere, to that part of the
street which is usually devoted to vehi-
cles. Thus far these new vehicles are
only in a very small degree subservient
to any use or necessity, public or private,
but are run mainly for the pleasure of
their riders. These are mostly boys
seeking their amusement, and, as the
machine is somewhat expensive, only a
comparatively few boys are able to pos-
sess them. Probably there were not
more than half a dozen boys with large
bicycles in Stockbridge. They take to
the sidewalk because they are ob-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

557

jected to in the street, and because the
wheeling is nicer. They run swiftly,
and when under high motion can not
be quickly stopped. That their move-
ments are disagreeable to pedestrians
is inevitable. They are sources of con-
stant anxiety and apprehension to them.
Accidents have occurred with them, and
they are continually liable to occur. The
sidewalk belongs to the community, and
is indispensable to the daily uses and ne-
cessities of all classes of people. Every-
body has the right to walk there with-
out molestation or the apprehension of
molestation. Nothing should be per-
mitted there which will awaken the
dread of danger and compel the pedes-
trian to be constantly on the lookout
to protect himself. Our correspondent
says that they can be easily avoided, but
how can a bicycle coming noiselessly
from behind be avoided? They have
India-rubber tires, and people have no
eyes in the backs of their heads. But it
is by no means a question what people
with their senses about them can do if
they give all their attention to personal
security. The instinct of self-preser-
vation does, of course, save the mass of
people from being run down by bicyc-
les when exposed to them. But is it
right to introduce an extra exposure of
this kind on a public sidewalk that will
keep the sense of personal solicitude
against danger constantly uppermost
in consciousness ? Besides, all people
are not vigilant in such matters ; many
are heedless and stupid, and others ab-
stracted or absent-minded. Then, again,
there are the children, the aged and
infirm, the invalids, the deaf, the crip-
ples, the blind, and the half-blind, and
these constitute a very large proportion
of those who use the sidewalks, and
have a right to use them without an-
noyance. To all these people the large
bicycles ridden by sporting boys are a
constant source of fear and dread, a pest
of the pathway, and an undoubted nui-
sance.

We are here speaking of the rights

of pedestrians on a common-sense
view of the case. But our correspond-
ent says, "It will be admitted that
bicyclists, like other domestic animals,
have some rights, which, once defined,
are as much entitled to protection as
the wider liberty allowed pedestrians."
Admitted, of course, the only question
being on the definition. We have con-
tended negatively that the riders of
large bicycles have no right upon the
sidewalks, any more than equestrians,
but this is not a denial of all rights.
What, then, do the bicyclists themselves
maintain ? They assert that the bi-
cycle is a wheeled carriage, and its
rights simply the common rights of
carriages upon the street. The repre-
sentatives of the bicycle associations in
New York claim that their right is to
the use of the highway, and they ex-
plicitly disclaim any right to the use of
the sidewalk.

W. R. Pitman, captain of the Ixion
Bicycle Club, on being asked his opin-
ion as to the propriety of bicycles being
ridden on the sidewalks of small vil-
lages, said emphatically that " bicycles
had no business on sidewalks anywhere ;
that the sidewalks were meant for foot-
passengers and not for carriages, which
the bicyclers claim their machines to
be."

Dr. N. M. Beckwith, captain of the
Citizens' Bicycle Club, said that in his
opinion bicyclers had no right to side-
walks at all, and remarked that the bi-
cyclers wished to have their machines
regarded as carriages, and claimed all
the rights and privileges given to car-
riages, and in so doing they certainly
could not also wish to be looked upon
as foot-passengers.

Charles A. Reed, captain of the Co-
lumbia College Bicycle Club, said that
he thought bicycles had no right on
sidewalks or foot-paths except when
the road was utterly impassable to
them, and that a bicycle could certainly
be ridden wherever a light buggy could
be driven.

558

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Extensive dealers have expressed
themselves to similar effect. The Bi-
cycle Union of Great Britain, in its rec-
ommendations regarding road - riding,
said, " It is desirable that a rider should
at all times keep to the left-hand side
of the road, even if no vehicle be in
sight, and riding on the footway should
never be resorted to." (Pope's "Man-
ual," p. 128.)

The circumstances in which it is ad-
missible for bicycles to deviate into
the foot-path are thus stated in " The
American Bicycle," p. 122: "As to
riding on foot-paths and sidewalks, it
may be said that bicyclers, like travel-
ers generally, have not only a right to
travel in the highway, but they have
a right to a passage along the high-
way, notwithstanding obstructions; and,
if the middle of the road be impass-
able for their . carriage, the side may
be taken ; and, if the whole roadway —
including foot-paths — be impassable,
they even have a right to turn out upon
the abutting close, and pass over pri-
vate land around the obstruction, pro-
vided they can do so without commit-
ting irreparable or very incommensurate
damage. So that if, in suburban streets
or country roads, the carriage-track is
in so bad a condition as to be difficult
or impossible of passage by a bicycle,
and the foot-path can be taken without
imminent risk to foot-passers at the
time, it is justifiable for the bicycler to
take it." The bicycle authorities are
thus in full agreement with common
sense.

And now about the impeachment
of " the good name of Stockbridge."
That lovely village, through its consti-
tuted authorities, and after due deliber-
ation, decreed that such a nuisance as
bicycles upon the sidewalks shall be tol-
erated. Is it not fair to take this fact
as a measure of its moral status, and its
grade in the scale of social progress ?
We were taught many years ago, in
" Woodbridge's Geography," that com-
munities of men are ranked as savage,

barbarous, half-civilized, civilized, and
enlightened. Any such classification is
misleading which implies a stratifica-
tion or a definite gradation of socie-
ties, so that one shall belong altogether
at the bottom, and another at the top.
The thing is much more mixed. There
are savage streaks running through civ-
ilization, and enlightenment often co-
exists with barbarism. Society does
not improve in all things alike. Every
advanced community retains vestiges
of its primitive lower condition. We
gave Stockbridge credit for a large
complement of virtues and excellences,
but Stockbridge has proved herself to
be no exception to the common law
which gives rise to social anomalies.
It has plenty of culture, intelligence,
refinement, and religion ; but, in com-
mon with many other highly cultivated
communities, it betrays elements which
are characteristic of the inferior grades
of society. The ideal virtue of any com-
munity, its highest attainment, is justice.
There is knowledge enough. People
know well enough what is right, but in
the undeveloped character conscience
does not rule the actions. That is to
he a matter of future evolution ; and,
meantime, we are concerned with the
relative attainments of different socie-
ties in this respect. The sense of jus-
tice is so dull in Stockbridge that it is
measured by the selfishness of a small
group of boys. What those boys want
for their personal gratification must be
conceded, no matter what inconvenience
to others stands in the way. What the
standard of justice is among boys is pret-
ty generally understood. The moral
sentiments are the last to ripen in the
growth of character, and the immature
man has about him a good deal of the
barbarian. Boys are thoughtless, self-
ish, uncompassionate, and often cruel.
They delight to worry the cats, to
stone the dogs, to plague their sisters,
and fight each other. College practices
and outbreaks often indicate the imma-
turity of youthful moral sense. The boys

EDITOR'S TABLE.

559

taught the forms of civility, and that it
is good manners to defer to others, hut
unless morally precocious they are not
gentle men. That they should be indif-
ferent at annoying and distressing peo-
ple on the sidewalk with their bicycles
is but natural. But as boys they are
more than inconsiderate, and, if they
did not run down old women, would
enjoy scaring them. "We, however, find
little fault with the Stockbridge boys.
But they need discipline in the recogni-
tion of mutual rights as well as indulg-
ence for their pastimes, and the com-
munity which allows them to pursue
their gratifications at the expense of
the comfort of their neighbors is in
that respect and to that degree — well
— not in the highest degree civilized.

BAIN ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.

The brief history of the higher edu-
cation contained in the Eectoral Ad-
dress of Dr. Bain at Aberdeen on " The
University Ideal," which is herewith
printed, will interest all thoughtful
readers. It will prove chiefly interest-
ing as a compact review of changing
university methods daring the rise of
modern knowledge, and a statement of
the present status of the university in
the exigencies of modern life. As re-
gards modes of teaching, the type of
the university which has grown up
within the last hundred years is based
upon the principle of the division of
labor by which men specially qualified
for the work are especially intrusted
with the subjects they have mastered.
Obvious as this principle is to us, and
difficult as it is for us to conceive how
the higher education could stand upon
any other principle, yet the present
method is but the product of centuries
of struggle before this policy could be
established. It is undoubtedly a result
of that general progress of science

which can not be said to have got its
initiation in the older university meth-
ods. With the division of labor in
teaching comes the new aim of the
higher schools of learning. " Its watch-
word is progress, and there can not be
progress without a sincere and single
eye to the truth. The fatal sterility of
the middle ages, and of our first and
second university periods, had to do
with the mistake of gagging men's
mouths and dictating all their conclu-
sions. Things came to be so arranged
that contradictory views ran side by
side like opposing electric currents,
the thick wrappage of ingenious phra-
seology arresting the destructive dis-
charge. There was, indeed, an elabo-
rate and pretentious logic supplied by
Aristotle and emended Bacon ; what
was still wanted was a taste of the logic
of freedom."

Dr. Bain insists that the bearing of
modern science upon the higher educa-
tion creates the demand for three fun-
damental elements in any adequate
university curriculum, and he main-
tains that Aberdeen Universitv holds
the leading place in having recognized
these elements for the past hundred
years. He says: '"Our curriculum is one
of the completest in the country, or per-
haps anywhere. By the happy thought
of the Senatus of Marischal College, in
1753, you have a fundamental class not
existing in the other colleges. You
have a fair representation of the three
great lines of science — the abstract,
the experimental, and the classifying.
"When it is a general education that you
are thinking of, every scheme of option
is imperfect that does not provide for
such three-sided cultivation of our rea-
soning powers. A larger quantity of
one will no more serve for the absence
of the rest than a double covering of
one part of the body will enable an-
other part to be left bare."

560

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Ragnarok : The Age of Fire and Gravel.
By Ignatius Donnelly, author of '• At-
lantis : the Antediluvian World." Illus-
trated. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 452.
Price, $2.

This must rank, we suppose, as a book
of science, though it is of a quite peculiar
kind. It is something like what one of
Jules Yerne's books would be if that author
should stoutly protest that the story was all
true. The author put forth a work not long
since, entitled " Atlantis : the Antediluvian
World," in which he maintained that there
is a good deal more truth than poetry about
the old story of the fabled island. The
book was readable and popular ; and, en-
couraged by its success, he has now struck
out more boldly, and given us in " Ragna-
rok" perhaps the most stunning and stu-
pendous romance of science that has ever
been perpetrated.

Opinions will be divided as to whether
the author is practicing upon public credu-
lity by an enormous joke, or whether he
does not really himself half believe half
that he says. He is probably a lawyer, and
at all events a politician ; and it would,
therefore, not be fair to him to raise any
question of the sincerity of his views. Nor
is it at all important how this point is re-
garded by the reader, for this is just the
peculiar kind of science that escapes all
perplexing and stupid inquiry about its
truth.

The work is geological, astronomic, and
religious, because it falls back upon these
three subjects for the materials of the au-
thor's theory. This theory has two aspects,
a negative and critical, and a positive and
constructive aspect. It first maintains that
the loose materials of the earth's surface —
gravel, pebbles, stones, sand, clay, bowlders,
and the miscellaneous mineral stuff which
makes up the drift or diluvial deposits upon
the earth's surface — are not derived from
the rocks that make up the earth's crust, as
taught by geology. The author has read
over all the geological treatises and spec-
ulations on the origin of these superficial
formations, and devotes his first eight chap-
ters to a very ingenious presentation of the
insufficiency of all existing theories upon

the subject. Evidently knowing little about
it himself, in the real sense of knowing
(that is, as a first-hand observer of facts),
and addressing an audience in a quite sim-
ilar state of mind, he has no difficulty in
making out a wonderfully plausible case.
If the experts in " evidence" can often con-
vict innocent men and get scoundrels ac-
quitted in the very teeth of opposing repre-
sentations, it is easy to get up a telling case
where there are many gaps and discrepan-
cies in our knowledge of a new, extensive,
and very complex subject.

Having thus impeached the geologists,
our author has a clear field. If the loose
mineral materials under our feet are not
from the rocks, then pray where do they
come from ? The human intellect can not
stand still, as if struck with paralysis, and
wait forever for the geologists to settle
their disputes ; we must have an answer,
and be at peace. Mr. Donnelly then pro-
ceeds to supply the answer. He here strikes
off into astronomy, and maintains that this
mineral debris is of meteoric origin. Stones
are known to fall from the heavens, and
spectrum analysis proves that the celestial
bodies are composed of the same mineral
constituents that are found upon the earth.
There being, as old Kepler says, more com-
ets in the heavens than fishes in the sea,
and their movements being so apparently
capricious and irregular that they dash about
through the solar system with the greatest
liability of striking its steady-going mem-
bers, it is maintained that the earthly drift
has been dropped upon this globe by one of
these incontinent wanderers, as, perhaps, the
earth went through its tail.

The author propounds this idea as an
hypothesis, insufficient it may be at first
blush, but admissible when all others have
broken down. But he does not by any
means leave the question in this specula-
tive condition ; he proceeds to summon the
proofs that his hypothesis must take rank
among great scientific truths. For this pur-
pose he enters the vast field of legendary
lore, and shows by the myths, traditions,
fables, allegories, and obscure imaginative
inventions of all peoples and nations, that
something prodigious once happened to this
globe, which he claims was nothing else
than the deposit of the .drift formation

LITERARY NOTICES.

561

which the geologists are so much troubled |
about. The Greek, Roman, Egyptian, In- '
dian, Arabian, and Aztec theogonies are
learnedly ransacked for the evidence they
afford to the truth of the new theory.
Thirty-nine pages are given to sifting the
testimony of Job, who seems to have had a
very luminous forecast of Mr. Donnelly's
great discovery, and wrote as if he were
happy in the idea that he might be per-
mitted to contribute something to it. Then
we have twenty-four pages of instructive
exegesis, entitled " Genesis read by the
Light of the Comet," and at the close of
this chapter the author invites attention to
the full accordance of the Biblical, Druid-
ical, Hindoo, and Scandinavian legends in
confirming " the great unwritten theory that
underlies all our religion." The fundamental
ideas which underlie the underlying theory
of our religion are thus enumerated: "1.
The golden age ; the paradise. 2. The
universal moral degeneracy of mankind;
the age of crime and violence. 3. God's
vengeance. 4. The serpent ; the fire from
heaven. 5. The cave-life and the darkness.
6. The cold ; the struggle to live. 1. The
'fall of man,' from virtue to vice; from
plenty to poverty ; from civilization to bar-
barism ; from the tertiary to the drift ; from
Eden to the gravel. 8. Reconstruction and
regeneration."

All the religions of the world being thus
levied upon for proofs of the author's the-
ory, and our own being found so eminent-
ly tributary to it, we are entitled to say that
this is not only a peculiarly scientific book,
but also a peculiarly religious book. He
certainly makes a good deal of " matter," but
he lets us know that he is no " materialist."
Be assured, says he, "be assured of one
thing — this world tends now to a deification
of matter." But we can not heartily com-
mend that combination of waggishness and
piety which is but too obvious in a passage
like this from his farewell chapter :

Do not count too much, Dives, on your lands
and houses and parchments; your guns and
cannon and laws; your insurance companies
and your governments. There may be even
now one coming from beyond Arctums or Alde-
baran, or Coma Berenices, with glowing coun-
tenance and horrid hair and millions of tons of
debris, to overwhelm you and your possessions,
and your corporations and all the ant-like de-
vices of man, in one common ruin.
vol. xxii. — 36

Again :

Build a little broader, Dives. Establish spir-
itual relations. Matter is not everything. You
do not deal in certainties. You are but a vital-
ized speck, rilled with a fraction of God's dele-
gated intelligence, crawling over an egg-shell
filled with fire, whirling madly through infinite
space, a target for the bombs of the universe.

It is to be hoped that Dives will heed
these appalling admonitions.

On the whole, " Ragnarck " is too ab-
surd to do much mischief, and contains
much that is readable, and that may in a
certain way prove instructive ; that is, it
may serve to kindle an interest in some
minds upon subjects to which they would
not be attracted by ordinary didactic trea-
tises.

Zoological Sketches. A Contribution to
the Out-door Study of Natural History.
By Felix L. Oswald, author of " Sum-
merland Sketches of Mexico and Central
America." Philadelphia : J. B. Lippin-
cott & Co. Pp. 266, with 36 Illustra-
tions. Price, $2.

It is unnecessary to commend to the
readers of " The Popular Science Monthly "
the writings of Dr. Oswald, but we must
keep them informed of what he is doing.
His last volume of " Zoological Sketches "
is undoubtedly the most entertaining of his
publications. We know of no delineator of
animal traits who has so entered into the
spirit of that lowlier order of beings that
have hitherto been so contemned, misunder-
stood, and outraged. For perhaps in noth-
ing has the brutality of man been so ex-
emplified as in his treatment of what he
calls the " brutes." No doubt, a kinder
feeling is beginning to grow up as his kin-
ship with those below him is better under-
stood ; and as men are beginning through
the rise of an intelligent sympathy to op-
press and abuse each other less, their hum-
ble and more defenseless relatives are cer-
tain to share some of the results of this
human amelioration. Such works as this
of Dr. Oswald will do much to strengthen
these kindlier sentiments toward the animal
creation. There is an exquisite good hu-
mor, a lively wit, and a joyous exuberance
of feeling in Dr. Oswald's descriptions of
the life of our inferior relatives in which
nature has not yet been perverted.

The learning of this author in the field

562

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of natural history is extensive. We refer
not so much to the scientific knowledge of
the animal kingdom, its relationships and
classifications, as to the knowledge of the
ways, habits, instincts, and curious perform-
ances of the higher grades of the animate
tribes. And this knowledge is by no means
of the second-hand order so characteristic
of popular books on natural history. Dr.
Oswald has been an indefatigable observer
of animal habits, of widely extended oppor-
tunity in various countries, and with a pas-
sion for what we may call companionship
with inferior creatures. There is more of
novelty, freshness, and out-of-the-way in-
cident connected with the author's experi-
ence in this volume than in any other we
have lately seen. The admirable woodcuts,
no doubt, give effect to many of the curious
situations, but the writer's text is pictorial,
and vividly images what the limner can not
represent. We have undertaken to make
some selections, but choice is difficult where
you can find nothing better than all the rest.
The chapters on " Our Four-handed Eela-
tives," " Sacred Baboons," " Animal Rene-
gades," " Pets," " Secretiveness," " Traps,"
and "Four-footed I'rize-fighters," are es-
pecially rich, but the others are hardly less
interesting. The book is to be commended
not only for its instructiveness as a higher
study of natural history, but for its human-
izing spirit, its sympathetic insight into ani-
mal characteristics, and its vivid and pleas-
ing style.

There is a very considerable unity in
Dr. Oswald's various writings. They are
animated by a common feeling, and per-
vaded by the same fundamental ideas. Dr.
Oswald is a passionate lover of nature. In
his interesting book upon Mexico, the
brightness and fervor of his pictures of
natural scenery betray the poetical tend-
encies of his mind, which rejoices in com-
munion with all that is beautiful, pictur-
esque, wild, and sublime in mountains, pla-
teaus, and valleys that have not yet been
desecrated and desolated by the hand of
man. He holds that "the children of Nat-
ure have not lost their earthly paradise " ;
it is only those that have turned away from
her that have fallen. In his book on
" Physical Education," there is an earnest
pleading for a return to Nature on the part

of those who have wandered away into mis-
leading courses under the guidance of false
ideas. There is something of sadness in
the impatient denunciation and stinging
invective of Dr. Oswald's writing, when he
speaks of the anti-natural apostasy which
has entailed so many evils on mankind.
Even in the preface to the present volume,
he returns to this subject as giving a clew
to the spirit in which it has been written,
and the presentation is so characteristic that
our readers will thank us for giving the
extract entire :

The tendencies of our realistic civilization
make it evident that the study of natural science
is destined to supersede the mystic scholasti-
cism of the middle ages, and I believe that the
standards of entertaining literature will undergo
a corresponding change. The Spirit of Natural-
ism has awakened from its long slumber.

A year after the birth of the Emperor Tibe-
rius, says Plutarch, a Grecian trading-vessel
sailed along the coast of MtoYia. in the Gulf of
Patras, and when the sun went down the crew
assembled at the helm to while away the night
with songs and stories. The night was calm,
and some of the sailors had already fallen asleep,
when they heard from the coast a loud voice
calling the name of their steersman, Thamus.
They were all struck dumb with amazement,
but, at the third call, Thamus manned himself,
and answered with a loud mariner's shout.

"O Thamus," the voice called again, '■ when
you reach the heights of Palodes announce that
the great Pan is dead 1 "

Four hours later, when the moonlit hills of
Palodes hove in sight, Thamus complied with
the strange request, and, a minute after, the
coast resounded with indescribable shrieks and
lamentations that continued for a long time, tiil
they finally died away in the heights of the
Acarnanian Mountains.

The tradition bears the mark of that sug-
gestiveness which distinguishes a philosophical
allegory from a priest legend. Pan was the
God of Nature. Can Plutarch have divined the
significance of the impending change? What-
ever is natural is wrong, was the keystone dogma
of the mediaeval school-men. The naturalism of
antiquity was crushed by supernatural and anti-
natural dogmas. The worship of joy yielded to
a worship of sorrow, the study of living nature
to the study of dead languages and barren soph-
isms. Literature became a farrago of ghost-
stories, monks' legends, witchcraft and mira-
cle traditions, and astrological vagaries. The
poison of anti-naturalism tainted every science
and every art, and perverted the very instincts
of the human mind. Painters vied in the rep-
resentation of revolting tortures. The exiles of
Mount Parnassus assembled on Mount Golgotha.
The moralists that had suppressed the Olympic
festivals compensated the public with autos-da-

LITERARY NOTICES.

563

/(?'. The whole history of the middle ages is,
indeed, the history of a loug war against Nature.

But Nature has at last prevailed. Delusions
are clouds, and the storm of the Thirty Years'
War has cleared our sky. The real secret of the
astoundiug success of modern science and in-
dustry is a general renaissance of naturalism,
and the same revival hegins to manifest its in-
fluence in the tendencies of modern literature.
Ghost-stories are going out of fashion. Like
scrofula and other bequests of the middle ages,
the sickly pessimism of the sentimental school
is yielding to the influence of a revived taste
for the pleasures of out-door life. Books of
travel, of sports and adventure, historical, zo-
ological, and even biological and cosmologica]
studies, are fast superseding the historical
romances of the last generation. Even the
pariahs of our reading-rooms have advanced
from ghost-hunts to scalp hunts, from impossi-
bilities to improbabilities. And, moreover, the
progress of natural science tends to supersede
fiction by making it superfluous — even for ro-
mantic purposes. There is more romance in
the travels of Humboldt, more magic in the
idyls of Thoreau and the revelations of Darwin
and Haeckel, than in all the fancies of the me-
diaeval miracle-mongers. The wonders of nature
begin to eclipse the wonders of supernaturalism.
A Zoological Garden attracts more eight-seers
than the best Passion-play. Pan has revived.

The plan of the present volume is modest
enough: its theories are mere suggestions ; its
limits have often obliged me to reduce a chapter
of zoological adventures to a page of zoological
anecdotes. But, in offering it as a contribu-
tion to the entertaining literature of the Eng-
lish language, my diffidence arises from a dis-
trust in my own abilities rather than from
the deficient interest of the subject itself, for
the history of that literature has repeatedly
proved that natural science can be made more
attractive than the products of fiction or mys-
ticism—by just as much as the resources of
Nature exceed the resources of her rivals.

The Codes Check List op North Ameri-
can Birds. Second edition, revised to
date. With a Dictionary of the Ety-
mology, Orthography, and Orthoepy of
the Scientific Names. Boston : Estes
& Lauriat. Pp. 165.

The first edition of the "Check List"
was published in 1874, and was a bare cata-
logue of the scientific and vernacular names.
It contained seven hundred and seventy-
eight names of species and sub-species, and
was prepared with a degree of accuracy that
is exhibited by the fact that it has been
found necessary in the revision to remove
only ten names of duplicates or extra-limital
species, while a hundred and twenty names
have been added. The large majority of
the additions are bona fide species, and

actual acquisitions to the North American
list — birds discovered since 1873 in Texas,
Arizona, and Alaska, together with several
long known to inhabit Greenland. Except
in Mr. Ridgway's National Museum cata-
logue, which was published after Mr. Coues's
list was written, the full list of Greenland
birds has never before been incorporated
with the North American list. The field of
North American fauna is generally bounded
by the northern boundary of Mexico. The ob-
jection is made that this is a political rather
than a scientific limit ; and Mr. Coues sug-
gests that it would be more exact to extend
the limit, along the highlands at least, to
about the Tropic of Cancer. In revising
the list, particular attention has been paid
to the matter of nomenclature, not only as
a part of scientific classification, but also as
an affair of writing and speaking the name3
of birds correctly; and the work includes,
besides the list of the names, a full and
scholarly treatise on the etymology, orthog-
raphy, and orthoepy of all the scientific and
many of the vernacular words employed in
the nomenclature, the work in great part
of Mrs. S. Olivia Weston-Aiken.

New Check-List of North American
Moths. By August R. Grote, President
of the New York Entomological Club.
Pp. 75. Price, $1.

This list contains about four thousand
names of species, synonyms, and varieties
of the North American Sphingida?, Bom-
bycidse, iEgeriada?, Thyridae, Noctuida?, Ge-
ometridaj, Pyralidse and Tortricidse. It
will be welcome and useful to the student
and collector of the interesting insects
which it enumerates. The list embraces
all recent discoveries and replaces the for-
mer catalogues of the author, as it takes in
all the species. It also contains some of
the results of a partial re-examination of
the British Museum collections made by
Mr. Grote last winter, and it includes the
Tortricidae published by Lord Walsingham,
and Professor Fernald's recent arrange-
ment of that family. It is well printed, on
good paper, uniform in style, with " Pa-
pilio," the journal of the New York Ento-
mological Club, and it may be had of the
secretary of the club, Mr. Ilenry Edwards,
No. 185 East One Hundred and Sixteenth
Street.

564

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

House-Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing.
Providence : E. L. Freeman & Co. — An-

LAGEN VON HaUSENTWASSERUNGEN NACH

Studien Americanischer Verhaltnisse.
(Plans for House-Drainage, after Studies
of American Arrangements.) Berlin. —
Diagram ior Sewer Calculations. All
by William Paul Gerhard, Civil and
Sanitary Engineer. Newport, Rhode Isl-
and. Pp. 105, 38, and 7. With Plates.
The first of these publications is a re-
print of a paper which was contributed to
the fourth annual report of the State Board
of Health of Rhode Island, and is an excel-
lent practical treatise on the subject con-
sidered. It asserts the possibility of secur-
ing an efficient and healthful drainage of
houses, whether upon open ground or into
a sewer or cess-pool, by methods which are
without mystery or secrecy, and involve
" nothing more than the proper application
of well-known laws of nature"; and ex-
plains specifically and with intelligible illus-
trations the best systems of drains, pipes,
traps, basins, bath-tubs, water-closets, and
6'inks, at the same time pointing out the
errors and defects of many of the systems
in use. The second work is intended to
give to German engineers a description of
house-drainage as it is practiced in England
and the United States. The third pamphlet
is a description of a diagram on sewer cal-
culations constructed by the author, and is
of technical value. The first of these pub-
lications, revised by the author, is now pub-
lished by D. Van Nostrand as No. 63 of his
" Science Series." Pp. 205. Price, 50 cents.

New Method of Learning the French
Language. By F. Berger. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 138. Price, $1.

The author a few years ago published a
" Method " for French pupils learning Eng-
lish, which has been used in France satis-
factorily, and with a success that is repre-
sented by the exhaustion of fourteen edi-
tions of it and a fourfold increase of the
number of French students of English in
five years. He now applies the features
that characterize that system to the study
of the French language by English pupils.
The features are a simple and careful indi-
cation of the pronunciation/and a conver-
sational method, in which are given — 1. The
French text, with the pronunciation and a
literal translation ; 2. A review of words ;

and, 3. The French text again, with the
English opposite, translated closely, so as
to enable the pupil to translate alternately
into French and into English. Besides tlie
lessons on this plan are given conversational
phrases, paradigms of the verbs Sire and
avoir, conversational phrases, a version of
Miss Edgeworth's play of " Old Poz," and a
collection of words, sentences, phrases, and
idioms.

Chapters on Evolution. By Andrew Wil-
son, Ph. D., F. R. S. E., etc. With 259 Il-
lustrations. New York : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 383. Price, $2.50.

We have no hesitation in cordially rec-
ognizing this volume as a timely contribu-
tion to a subject that is now attracting wide
and serious attention. It meets an undoubt-
ed want, and is certain to prove helpful to
all general students of the subject of or-
ganic development.

Yet, the title of the book may be ob-
jected to as somewhat misleading. It is
not devoted to evolution in the full meaning
now given to that term, but is restricted to
one division of it, which ought to have been
designated in the title. It is more properly
confined to that phase or section of evolution
which has come to be represented by the
term " Darwinism," and is a book that should
be ranked with Professor Gray's " Darwini-
ana " and Oscar Schmidt's German volume
on " Descent and Darwinism." There should
be no confusion here, for Darwinism is not
evolution, and is but a part of it. Dr.
Wilson virtually concedes this by employing
in his text the term " Darwinian evolution,"
thus recognizing that it is but one sort of
something of a larger kind ; and also when
he speaks of " development " as a strong
pillar of the theory of evolution.

With the reservation here made, Dr.
Wilson's work, as we have said, may be
heartily commended. It is a very full and
popular treatise on the important and in-
teresting questions of organic development,
and abounds in the biological information
that has now been accumulated in illustration
of the law of descent with variation. The
principle of natural selection is, of course,
assumed and interpreted as a great contri-
bution to organic progress, and the various
questions that have arisen in connection

LITERARY NOTICES.

565

with the development of the organic king-
dom are considered with fullness, and by
a naturalist competent to deal with them.
In his preface the author observes : "A con-
siderable experience as a biological teacher
has long since convinced me that the hesi-
tancy with which evolution is accepted and
the doubt with which even cultured persons
are occasionally apt to view this conception
of nature arise chiefly from lack of knowl-
edge concerning the overwhelming evidences
of its existence which natural history pre-
sents. Doubtless, a training in botany and
zoology is required before the case for evolu-
tion can be fully mastered, but there need be
no difficulty in the way of any intelligent per-
son forming a just estimate of evolution upon
even an elementary acquaintance with the
facts of biology. I have accordingly sought
to bring such facts prominently before the
notice of my readers, and I would fain hope
that even the complex topic of ' develop-
ment ' itself, a strong pillar of the theory of
evolution, is susceptible of easy appreciation
when the facts and inferences to be drawn
therefrom are plainly stated."

Youth : Its Care and Culture. An Out-
line of Principles for Parents and Guard-
ians. By J. Mortimer-Granville. New
York : M. L. Holbrook & Co. Pp. 167.

The author is known as a thoughtful
and vigorous writer on subjects of practical
hygiene and discipline. The aim of his
present work is to expose " certain fallacies "
which prevail on the subject of child man-
agement and education, ar_d to indicate, " in
suggestive outline," the principles which
should guide parents in the care and culture
of youth. He considers the physical and
moral training of boys and girls, advocating
the allowance of the freest scope for phys-
ical growth in both sexes, with a "hardy"
treatment and no coddling, and a particu-
larity in moral culture which is as strange
to the general society of the day as it is
much needed.

Dress and Care of the Feet. By Dr. P.
Kahler. New York : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 37.

Dr. Kahler believes that chiropody
should be recognized as a profession, and
that those who intend to practice it should
be scientifically qualified for their vocation.

lie enforces the importance of caring for
the feet, a healthy condition of which is
considered very closely connected with hap-
piness and the soundness of the whole body,
and particularly of the brain and nervous
system. His manual consists chiefly of
practical suggestions respecting the treat-
ment of diseases and aches of the feet, con-
cerning the care of the feet that will pre-
vent their acquiring diseases and aches, and
on the proper construction and form of
shoes.

Report of T. B. Ferguson, a Commissioner
of Fisheries of Maryland. Hagers-
town, Maryland. Pp. 152, with Plates.

The report describes the work done in
the western part of the State during 1880.
This work, which includes also the distribu-
tion of 1,500,000 shad and 090 carp in wa-
ters wholly within the eastern section of the
State, under the direction of the Western
Commissioner, is regarded as very impor-
tant, both on account of the success attained
in the attempted propagation of several va-
rieties of valuable fish by artificial means,
and because of the accumulated proofs
which the year afforded of the happy re-
sults of the effort fully to restock the wa-
ters of the State with shad. A valuable
account of experiments and observations in
oyster-culture, by John A. Ryder, is added.

Sixth Annual Report of the State Board
of Health of Wisconsin. 1881. Madi-
son, Wisconsin. (J. T. Reeve, Appleton,
Secretary.) Pp. 14G.

The health of the State was generally
good during the year, notwithstanding the
unusually large number of deaths from dis-
eases of the respiratory organs among old
people, caused by the severe winter of 1880-
'81. The history of the various contagious
diseases which appeared is reviewed Es-
pecial attention is given to the condition of
the schools and school-houses, in respect to
which the board trust that the beginning of
a change for the better may be seen, the
end of which shall be that the improve-
ments which are demanded shall receive the
consideration due to them, and " the child
shall be recognized as a being of higher
value than the grade, rather than as subor-
dinate thereto."

566

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

First Annual Report of the Boakd of
Health of Detroit. 1882. Detroit,
Michigan : 0. W. Wight, Health-Officer.

The report appears in the form of a
" frank, earnest discourse to citizens on sub-
jects of sanitary importance at home," rath-
er than of a scientific discussion of hygi-
enic concerns. Among the subjects consid-
ered are the board's system of dealing with
contagious and infectious diseases ; the pre-
ventive management of small-pox ; the sew-
erage and house-drainage system of Detroit ;
the question of slaughtering in the city ;
the administrative method in the case of the
abatement of nuisances ; the purity of the
ice-supply; the milk-supply; the "smoke
nuisance " ; and the water-supply. Other
equally important subjects are reserved for
future reports.

Van Nostrand's Science Series, Nos. 59,
60, and Gl. Railroad Economics, by
S. W. Robinson, C. E. ; Strength of
Wrought-Iron Bridges, same author ;
Potable Water and the Relative Ef-
ficiency of Different Methods of de-
tecting Impurities, by Charles Wat-
son Folkard. New York : D. Van Nos-
trand. Pp. 131, 175, 138. Price, 50
cents each.

Mr. Robinson's " Railroad Economics "
is the fruit of an official tour of inspection
under the direction of the State Commis-
sioner of Railways, over the railroads of
Ohio, and is intended to bring out such
facts observed, and call attention to such
features of practice, as shall assist in the
attainment by railroads of a uniform stand-
ard of excellence. The second work, which
has also been prepared in connection with
the State railway inspection service of
Ohio, furnishes practical formulas for
beams, struts, columns, and semi-columns,
as calculated by the author in the perform-
ance of his work of examining bridges for
strength and trustworthiness. The formu-
las are not otherwise generally accessible in
published form. Mr Folkard's " Potable
Water " is the substance of an essay origi-
nally presented to the British Institution
of Civil Engineers, and considers the vari-
ous ways in which water becomes contam-
inated ; the methods employed to detect
and determine the extent of contamination,
and their value ; the bearing of the results
of biological and microscopical research on

the question, and the adequacy or inade-
quacy of proposed remedial measures.

Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club. Trans-
actions No. 3. Ottawa, Canada. (W.
Hague Harrington, Secretary-Treasurer.)
Pp. 66, with Two Plates.

The record is for the year ending March
21, 1882. The club has one hundred and
fifteen members. Four excursions were
held during the summer ; a conversazione
was given on the 6th of January, and a
lecture on the " Capabilities of the Prairie
Lands of the Northwest, as shown by their
Flora and Fauna," was delivered by Pro-
fessor Macoun, on the 7th of April. Re-
ports of the geological, botanical, entomo-
logical, ornithological and oological, and con-
chological branches are included among the
Transactions, with papers on the " Geology
of the Ottawa Palaeozoic Basin," " Pine
Life," "The Utica Slate," and other sub-
jects.

Report of the Board of Commissioners of
the Ninth Cincinnati Industrial Ex-
position, 1881. (J. R. Murdoch, Secre-
tary, Cincinnati.)

The Ninth Exposition is believed to have
far exceeded in completeness and novelty all
that preceded it. The departments of Art,
Horticulture, and Natural History, were full
of interest and attractiveness, and the ex-
pert tests of machinery, a new feature,
added greatly to the attractions of that de-
partment.

The American Citizen's Manual. Part I.

Edited by Worthington C. Ford. New

York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 146.

Price, SI.

This is the fifth of Messrs. Putnam's
series of hand-books on " Questions of the
Day." It gives plain statements for the in-
formation and guidance of citizens, on the
nature, distribution, and functions of our
governments, national, State, and local, the
electoral system, and the regulations sur-
rounding the exercise of the franchise and
the verification of the results, and the char-
acter of our civil-service administration.
The present condition of civil-service abuse
and the need of reform are clearly shown
under the last head. A succeeding volume
will more fully consider the functions of
government.

LITERARY NOTICES.

567

Practical Life and the Study of Man.

By J. Wilson, Ph. D. Newark, New

York : J. Wilson and Son, Publishers.

Vp. 390. Price, $1.50.

A volume of sober essays on topics re-
lating to one or the other of the subjects
mentioned in the title, expressed in plain
language and pleasant style. The author's
object is simply to interest and instruct
those who are seeking improvement, by
bringing to notice, on the subjects consid-
dered, the best thoughts in the language,
in his own words, when they have seemed
fitting, in the words of others, where they
expressed them best. The work has been
done not to make a book, but because the
author, as he remarks, " feels that he knows
much that ought to be written," and with
assurance, " because he has studied what
he says, and has confidence in his state-
ments."

Schilling's Transcendental Idealism. A
Critical Exposition. By Professor John
Watson, LL. D., of Queen's University,

i Kingston, Canada. Chicago : S. C.
Griggs & Co. Pp. 250. Price, $1.25.

This is the second of the series of " Ger-
man Philosophical Classics," which Messrs.
Griggs & Co. are publishing, under the
general editorial supervision of Professor
George S. Morris, of the University of
Michigan. In the present volume the ed-
itor has endeavored to exhibit the phases
of Schelling's philosophical development as
they are registered in the various treatises
which form their vehicle, supplying all the
elements for an independent judgment, to-
gether with some hints of weak points of
the system.

Speech and its Defects, considered Path-
ologically, Historically, and Beme-
dially. By Samuel 0. L. Potter, M. A.,
M. D. Philadelphia : P. Blakiston & Co.
Pp. 117. Price, $1.

The first prize was accorded to this
work as a thesis by the unanimous vote of
the faculty, at the fifty-seventh annual com-
mencement of the Jefferson Medical Col-
lege, Philadelphia. The author selected the
subjeet for his prize thesis, because it was
one on which from his own sufferings and
experiments he felt " somewhat qualified to
write," and could contribute to knowledge ;
for he had made, in his own person, prac-

tical trial of several of the recognized meth-
ods of cure, and had examined all the at-
tainable literature on the subject. We give
a note of warning from the author to those
who have cases of stammering to deal with :
" The ignorance of this subject which pre-
vails among those having the care of chil-
dren, is productive of much distress and
serious results . to the innocent sufferers.
The child who manifests a disposition to
stutter is usually abused in more ways than
one. The affection is intensified by any
cause which disturbs the equipoise of the
nervous system ; and the most frequent
and potent cases of this kind are derived
from the reception which his infirmity re-
ceives from those who are endowed with
perfect speech themselves. Mockery on the
part of companions, and threats, even blows
from parents and teachers, have made more
confirmed stutterers than any other exten-
sive influence, besides making the life of
the patient cne of unutterable wrctched-

)i

ness.

The Magazine of Art. London, Paris, and
New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin &
Co. December, 1882. Monthly. $3.50
a year.

We have received Messrs. Cassell, Pet-
ter, Galpin & Co.'s " Magazine of Art," as
it has appeared in monthly numbers through
the year, with much satisfaction, and are
pleased to commend it as a good represent-
ative of what is true and meritorious in
art. In its letterpress it teaches what it is
well to teach in art, in a manner that ap-
peals to the popular understanding and is
likely to elicit popular interest. Its illus-
trations are selected with discrimination
from worthy and agreeable subjects, and
are well executed, while the typography is
nearly perfect. Its articles arc varied in
subject and method, and its news and other
departments are acceptably sustained ; and
a fair degree of attention is given to Ameri-
can art. In the December number some of
the American pictures at the Salon of 1882
are candidly criticised ; articles are given
on Japanese book illustration ; a subject of
prehistoric art ; a department of ceramics ;
the works of an Italian artist ; and Mr.
Hamerton's " Graphic Arts," all of which are
appropriately illustrated.

568

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The " Revue Scientifique," of Paris, lias
won a high rank among journals of its
class, by the prominent space it gives to
the original papers of leaders of scientific
thought, and by the international catholici-
ty which it has shown in enrolling among
its contributors writers from different coun-
tries in Europe and America, including such
men as Pasteur, Berthelot, Wurtz, Milne-
Edwards, Tyndall, Huxley, Bu Bois-Rey-
mond, Virchow, and some of our own men
of science. It is edited by Charles Richet,
a physiologist eminent particularly in the
investigation of nervous disorders. It is
published by Germer-Bailliere & Co., 108
Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The next number of the " International
Scientific Series " will be on a subject of un-
usual popular interest, and of extreme im-
portance. It will be on " The Science of
Politics," and is contributed to the series
by Br. Sheldon Amos, author of " The
Science of Law." The science of politics
is a subdivision or branch of social science,
the next great subject in the order of sci-
entific progress. The science of politics is
therefore in the early stage of its develop-
ment, and, as its principles are as yet but
imperfectly elucidated, no treatise upon it
can have completeness, or the authority of
perfected elucidation. Nevertheless, the be-
ginning must be made, and already enough
is known, both of the data of the inquiry
and the method to be employed, to give
great interest and value to a well-elaborated
popular treatise.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of
Harvard College. Vol. XIII, Part I. Micrometric
Measurements. By Joseph Winlock and Ed-
ward C. Pickering. Cambridge, Massachusetts :
John Wilson & Son. Pp. 203.

Transactions of the Linngean Society of New
York. Vol. I. New York : L. S. Foster. Pp.
108.

" The Decorator and Furnisher." December,
1882. 75 Fulton Street, New York : E. W. Bul-
linger. Pp. 32. Price, 35 cents.

The Manufacture of Iron and Steel direct
from the Ore. "Bull's Process." By Mr.
Vaugban W. Jones. Liverpool, England: An-
drew Russell. Pp. 15.

Spirits in Prison. A Discourse delivered on
a Special Occasion. By George R. Elis. Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts: John Wilson & Son.
Pp. 27.

Proceedings of the American Society of Mi-
croscopists. Fifth Annual Meeting. August, 1882.
Buffalo : Bigelow Brothers. Pp. 300.

Yellows in Peach-Trees. By D. P. Penhal-
low. Boston: Kockwell & Churchill. Pp.8.

Physics, and Occult Qualities. An Address
before the Philosophical Society of Washing-
ton. By William B. Taylor. Washington : Judd
& Detweiler. Pp. 50.

" The Modern Age," January. 1683. Buffalo/:
Modern Age Publishing lo. Pp. 60. Price, 15
cents.

Contributions to the Anatomy of Birds. By
R. W. Shufeldt, M.D. Author's edition. Wash-
ington, D. C. Pp. 216, including Plates.

Meteorological Researches, United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey. Part III. Wash-
ington ; Government Printing-Oflice. Pp. 48.

Signal-Service Tables of Rain-fall and Tem-
perature compared with Crop Production. By
H. H. C. Dun woody. Washington: Govern-
ment Printing-Offlce. Pp. 15.

Observations on Fat-Cells and Connective-
Tissue Corpuscles of Necturus (Menobranchus).
By Simon H. Gage. Buffalo : Bigelow Broth-
ers.

" The American Journal of Forestry." Edited
by Franklin B. Hough. October, November,
and December, 1882. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke
& Co. Pp. 48 each. Price, $3 a year.

Some Thoughts on Phthisis. By M. F.
Coomes, M. D. Louisville, Kentucky. Pp. 7.
Menstrual Amblyopia. Same author. Pp. 4.

Footprints found at the Carson State-Prison
(Nevada). By II. W. Darkness, M. D. Pp.7, with
Plates.

Electric Lighting in Mills. By C. J. H. Wood-
bury. Pp. 7.

W. II. Cory's Artificial Fuel, and Press for
Use in its Manufacture. Philadelphia. Pp. 20.

Standard Time, for the United States. Can-
ada, and Mexico. By E. R. Knorr. Washing-
ton : Judd & Detweiler. Pp. 16.

Optical Illusions of Motion. By II. P. Bow-
ditch and G. Stanley Hall. Pp. 10, with Plates.

How to use Florence Knitting Silk, No. 4.
Nonotuck Silk Co. Pp. 62.

The Responsibility of Criminal Lunatics.
By S. S. Herrick, M. D., Secretary of the Stale
Board of Health, Louisiana. New Orleans. Pp.
7.

Comparative Vital Movement of the White
and Colored Races in the United States. By
S. S. Herrick, M.D., Louisiana. Cambridge : Riv-
erside Press. Pp. 6.

Miscellaneous Literary, Scientific, and His-
torical Notes, Queries, and Answers. N. B.
Webster, Editor, Norfolk, Virginia. Manches-
ter, New Hampshire: S. C. & L. M. Gould.
Double number, December and January. Pp.
32. Price, 20 cents.

Sunlight and Skylicht at High Altitudes. By
Professor S. P. Langley. Pp. 398.

The Structure of the Muscles of the Lobster.
By M. L. Holbrook, M. D. New York City.
Pp.8.

The Disposal of the Dead. By W. n. Curtis,
M. D.. Chicago, Illinois. Cambridge : River-
side Press. Pp. 22.

How Congress and the Public deal with a
Great Revenue and Industrial Problem. By
David A. Wells. Pp. 16.

The Termination of the Nerves in the Liver.
By M. L. Holbrook, M. D. New York City.
Pp.6.

Fifteenth Annual Report of the Trustees of
the Peabody Museum of American Arehoeoloiry
and Ethnology. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Pp.
148.

"Babvland." Holiday number. Boston : D.
Lotbrop "& Co. 1682. Monthly, 50 cents a year.
Illustrated.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

569

Carnivorous Plants. By W. K. Higley. First
Series. Pp. t>0.

" Wide Awake." Boston : D. Lothrop & Co.
December, 1882. Monthly, $2.50 a year.

House Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing. By
William Paul Gerhard. New York : D. Van
Nostrand. Pp. 205. Price, 50 cents.

Poems by Minot J. Savage. Boston : George
II. Ellis. 1882. Pp. 247. .

Annual Report of the Chief-Engineer of .lie
Water Department of the City ot Philadelphia,
for the Year 1S31. Philadelphia: J. Spencer
Smith, printer. 1882.

Tables for the Use of Students and Beginners
in Vegetable Histoid. By D. P. Peuhanow,
B. S. Boston: S E. Cassino. 1882. Pp. d J.

The Builder's Guide and Estimator's Price-
Book. Bv Fred T.Hodgson. New \ork: In- |
dustrial Publication Co. 1832. Pp. 331.

The Elements of Forestry. By Franklin B.
Hough, Ph. D. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke &
Co. 1882. Pp.381. $2.

Ra<*narok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. Py
Ignatius Donnelly. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. 1882. Pp.452. $2.

First Annual Report of the Bureau of Eth-
nology. 1879-80. By J. W. Powell, Director.
Washington: Government Priutiug-Ofnce. 1S81.
Pp. 603. Illustrated.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Observations of tic Recent Transit cf
Venns. — Professor C. A. Young has pub-
lished in the " New York Times " a sum-
mary of the results, so far as they can be
estimated so soon, that have attended the
observations of the transit of Venus of
December 6th in this and other countries.
On the whole, he says, the observations
were successful beyond expectation. Al-
though in the United States there was more
or less cloudiness, there were very few sta-
tions that did not succeed in accomplishing
the most essential portions of their intended
work. The first contact, although it is the
most difficult part of the phenomenon of
which to get an accurate observation, and
although it was not seen by more than half
as many observers as the other three con-
tacts, was noted by some of the observers
at twenty out of the thirty-nine stations on
the continent where it might have been vis-
ible. An unusually satisfactory observation
was obtained at Princeton. The other con-
tacts were observed with more general suc-
cess, the second at twenty-nine, the third at
thirty-two, and the fourth at thirty stations.
As far as can be judged from the present
incomplete calculations, " it would appear
that the planet was about 20" to 25" behind
time in her orbit, and that her diameter as-

sumed in the computations was at least 1",
and probably 1"5", too large. The duration
of the transit appears, also, to have been
about 25" longer than computed, which
might indicate either of two things or a
little of both — that the planet was 1" or 2"
of an ai-c north of its computed position, or
that the diameter of the sun is a trifle larger
than was assumed. The agreement, how-
ever, was remarkably close." Heliometer
observations were made by German parties
at Hartford, Connecticut, and Aiken, South
Carolina, and by Professor Waldo, at Yale
College. Measurements of the sun's diam-
eter by similar or somewhat different in-
struments were also made by the French
at St. Augustine, the Belgians at San An-
tonio, and — with a wonderfully simple but
accurate apparatus — at Cambridge and New
Ilaven. Photographs were taken by differ-
ent methods at a number of places, and with
unexpected success, except at Washington.
" At Fort Selden and at the Lick Observa-
tory the day was perfect, and the photog-
raphy went on without a hitch." Micro-
metric observations for the diameter of
Venus were made at fifteen or sixteen sta-
tions on this continent, and perhaps at near-
ly as many more foreign stations. The re-
sults are not yet reduced, but the indications
correspond with the conclusion, which was
drawn from the contacts, that the planet's
diameter is really considerably smaller than
has hitherto been assumed. The photo-
metric observations showed that Venus was
distinctly darker than the sky just outside
of the sun's limb. The results of the spec-
troscopic observations at Cambridge, South
Iladley, Princeton, and Alleghany were
" purely and surprisingly negative," and
showed for the most part no conspicuous
evidence of selective absorption by the
planet's atmosphere. The Princeton ob-
servers, however, were so fortunate as to
find distinct indications of water-vapor, thus
confirming certain old observations of Hug-
gins. Professor Langlcy, at Alleghany, ob-
served a spot of abnormal brightness in a
part of the atmosphere of the planet where
such an appearance would be least expected,
which may denote auroral and magnetic
phenomena. Professor Harrington, at Ann
Arbor, made out spots and markings on the
planet's disk, but no one else has spoken of

57°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

them. In Europe the weather was generally
bad. Good observations were made, how-
ever, at Potsdam, Prussia. The reports so
far received from the southern hemisphere
are most gratifying ; and, whatever it may
be with the stations yet to be heard from
(chiefly near the Straits of Magellan),
'' enough is already secure to make it cer-
tain that we have observations sufficient in
number and character to test the full value
of the transit as a means of determinimr
the solar parallax." It must be several
years, however, before the observations can
be fully reduced and published, and the
exact results ascertained.

Work cf the Dearborn Observatory. —

The great equatorial of the Dearborn Ob-
servatory, Chicago, was employed during
1SS1, under the direction of Professor G.
W. Hough, chiefly in the observation of the
great comet of the year, the planet Jupiter,
the satellites of Uranus, and difficult double
stars. A drawing of the nucleus and en-
velope of the comet, showing the peculiar
formation of the head and surrounding en-
velopes, was made on the 23d of June by
Professor Colbert, who also first announced
the distance of the comet from the earth.
In attempting to reconcile the various phe-
nomena alleged to have been seen on the
disk of Jupiter, the greatest difficulty is
found to exist in determining what is real
and what is imaginary. Contemporaneous
sketches by different persons, or even two
by the same observer, show such marked
discrepancies that they are of but little use
in ascertaining suspected changes. The
observations made here during the past
three years confirm the statement that the
changes on the disk of the planet are slow
and gradual. The attempted observations
on the inner satellites of Uranus were im-
peded by unfavorable night weather. About
two hundred and fifty micrometer measure-
ments of double stars were made, including
nine measurements of the companions of
Sirius. Sixty difficult double stars, not
found in the catalogues, were discovered,
including two quadruple systems and one
naked-eye star, with a very minute com-
panion. Mr. S. W. Burnham is preparing
for publication a catalogue of one hundred
and fifty-one double stars discovered at the

observatory during the past three years ;
also, a compilation of all the star observa-
tions made by him during the same period,
comprising about twenty-five hundred meas-
urements. The observatory is open to mem-
bers of the Chicago Astronomical Society on
Thursday evenings ; and classes from the
city high-schools and elsewhere are occa-
sionally admitted.

The Poles of Extreme Cold. — There ap-
pear to be two districts on the northern hemi-
sphere, widely separated from each other, in
which the coldest places on the earth are
to be found. One is in Northeastern Sibe-
ria, the other in the American Arctic Archi-
pelago. The particular points within these
regions, that have the property of being
colder than all surrounding points, may be
called the poles of extreme cold. Their
geographical situation is not precisely ascer-
tained, because a sufficient number of ob-
servations have not been made, but enough
is known to make it safe to conclude that
the Asiatic pole is north of Yakutsk, and
the American pole northwest of the Parry
Islands, toward Eastern Siberia. The
Asiatic pole is upon the mainland, the
American pole in a sea studded with isl-
ands ; and from this the two regions derive
distinct climatic characters. Near the Si-
berian pole, which lies in the comparatively
low latitude of from 60° to 70°, the conti-
nental climate is exhibited in an extremely
cold winter and a warm summer, while the
more maritime climate of the American
pole, which lies between 65° and 68° of lati-
tude, is expressed in a relatively milder
winter and cooler summer. Yakutsk has
hitherto been considered the coldest place
on the earth, it having a mean temperature
in January of — 45°. Colder places have
since been found that have a mean temper-
ature for January as low as — 55°. They
are situated in about latitude 67£° north,
near Werkojansk, in Siberia. The cold-pole
is located here from November till March ;
it then moves in April and May toward the
northwest into the Arctic Ocean, between
the mouth of the Obi and Nova Zembla, and
afterward returns to Werkojansk. Werko-
jansk is the only place that lies within the
isotherm of — 403 during November, De-
cember, January, and February, or for four

P OP ULAB MIS CELL ANY.

57i

months ; Yakutsk suffers this mean tem-
perature during December and January ;
Ustjansk, at the mouth of the Yana, only
during January ; while Tolstoi Noos, at the
mouth of the Yenisei, lies entirely outside
of the isotherm of — 40°. The mean an-
nual temperature of the Siberian cold-pole
may be estimated at 2°. A still colder place
appears to have been found by M. Klut-
schak, of Lieutenant Sehwatka's expedition,
at the Adelaide Peninsula, in Cockburn Bay,
latitude 66° to 68°, where the temperature
in January, 1880, reached — 72° ; in Decem-
ber, 1879, and February, 1880, - 68° ; and
in September, October, and November, 1S79,
5°, — 3S°, and — 49" respectively. The
mean temperature from December to Feb-
ruary, — 48°, varies but little from that of
"Werkojansk, and is from 18° to 21° lower
than had been previously noticed in the
American cold region. — Die Natur.

Do House-Flies convey Infection ? — Dr.

Thomas Taylor, of Washington, has pub-
lished an account of some examinations he
has made into the capacity of the common
house-fly to transmit disease by carrying the
germs from place to place. The question is
really one of exceeding importance, for,
" considering the habits and habitat of the
house-fly, it will appear evident that, should
it prove to be a carrier of poisonous bodies,
its power to distribute them in human habi-
tations is greater than that of any other
known insect. Under our system of public
travel, the common house-fly may be trans-
ported from one end of the continent to the
other. It may feast to-day in the markets
of Washington, and to-morrow in those of
New York, and in a like manner it may be
transported from a hospital for contagious
or infectious diseases to homes in the vicin-
ity, or even in remote localities. It may
also be taken from one hospital to another,
or from one ward to another within the
same hospital, and may plant the germs of
disease in exposed wounds, or deposit them
in food, or liberate them in the atmosphere
breathed by patients afflicted by diseases of
a different class." Millions of the minute
germs of putrefaction could be carried to a
distant city by a single fly. These consid-
erations justify and should prompt inquiry.
Dr. Taylor's attention was called to the sub-

ject by his witnessing the sufferings of a
fly afflicted with anguilulce. In the direct
experiments which were suggested to him
by this observation, the larvae of flies con-
fined in a receiver with rust-spores ate the
germs. When spores were sprinkled on
sugar, the insects themselves consumed both
spores and sugar ; but some of the spores
became fastened on the legs of the flies,
and were only the more closely attached by
the efforts made to get rid of them. They
might, however, be brushed off by objects
with which they were brought in contact,
while their germinating powers would long
outlast the life of the insect itself. Dr. Tay-
lor regards it as evident from his experi-
ments that flies are capable of conveying
spores to plants and other bodies, but con-
siders that the fact that the greater part
of the spores were consumed by the flics or
their larva? shows that the insect may de-
stroy microscopic germs as well as dissemi-
nate them, and indicates that in some cases
its agency in keeping down their number
may more than counterbalance its action in
contributing to their dissemination.

American Stature. — Mr. George W. Peck-
ham, teacher of biology in the Milwaukee
High School, has been making investigations
under the auspices of the Wisconsin State
Board of Health into the growth of children.
From examinations and measurements made
chiefly in the schools of Milwaukee he has
deduced the conclusion that the relative rate
of growth of the sexes is such that the boys
are taller till the twelfth year and heavier
till the thirteenth, after which, between thir-
teen and fifteen the girls are both taller and
heavier. After the age of fifteen, however,
the boys exceed the girls both in weight and
stature. Girls cease to grow when about
seventeen years of age. Children of pure
American descent are taller than children
of foreign-born parents, but are generally
lighter in weight than children of German
parents. The children of Irish parents are
also taller than those of German parents.
Comparing his results with those of similar
observations made in Boston, he concludes
that school-children in Milwaukee are taller
than those in Boston, and the boys weigh
more, but the girls of Boston are slightly
heavier than those of Milwaukee. The su-

572

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

periority in height of the Milwaukee chil-
dren is ascribed to the inferior density of
population and the existence of fewer urban
disadvantages in that city than in Boston ;
and the general hypothesis is drawn, from
Mr. Peckham's tables, that the height of
American-born men is more modified by the
conditions accompanying density than by all
other influences, race excepted, urban life
as compared with rural life tending toward
a decrease of stature. The rate of growth
of Germans appears to be considerably modi-
fied by residence in this country through one
generation; and, in intermarriage between
Americans and Germans, the offspring seem
to take the height of the taller parent.

Use of the Gummy Secretions of Plants.

— Inquiry has often been made respecting
the functions of the secretory apparatus of
plants, or that which stores up special juices,
such as the resins, gums, caoutchouc, milky
juic83, and the waxes. Sachs, even in the
last edition of his botany, places these sub-
stances among those the office of which in
the economy of the plant is wholly unknown.
Because the secretions in question have
been observed to be poor in oxygen and
generally unassimilable, they have com-
monly been regarded as waste matter, use-
less to the organism. M. de Vries is of
a different opinion, and regards these sub-
stances as a kind of protective salve, and
considers them helpful in the healing of
wounds. Of the resin of conifers, he re-
marks that, if it were simply a product of
secretion, the accumulation of it would not
cause the tree to suffer. The extraction of
resin, however, weakens pines very consid-
erably, and diminishes the growth of wood
by about one third. Accidental wounds,
moreover, and even normal wounds pro-
duced by the fall of limbs or by splitting of
the bark, are very numerous in conifers.
Whenever a wound is produced, it is forth-
with covered over with a viscous and thick
mass of resin, which gradually hardens in
the air. Among non-resinous plants wounds
become isolated by means of a pad of heal-
ing tissue which sometimes covers the wound
completely over, but often too late to effect
the purpose. From this point of view, M.
de Vrics suggests, the conifers are superior
in organization to common angiospermous

trees. The organism in coniferous trees
seems in a manner to have foreseen possi-
ble wounds, and a system of canals designed
solely to furnish a covering for wounds
seems to have been differentiated in them.
In a second part of his work, M. de Vries
treats of the function of the juices analo-
gous to the resins whieh are found in other
plants, and seeks to assimilate to the resins,
from different points of view, the latex, some
ef the gums, caoutchouc, and waxy matters,
lie shows that these substances also exude
for the occlusion of wounds, even in herba-
ceous plants like the northern chicories
and spurges, and cites some recent experi-
ments by M. Moll in favor of his view. It
would, however, be a narrow judgment to
conclude with him, from these experiments,
that the sole object of the secretions is the
healing of wounds. M. Raumhoff, criticis-
ing the work of M. de Vries, has shown
that the considerations on which his theory
rests do not furnish an adequate demonstra-
tion of it. It is evident, for instance, that
the purpose of the lactiferous tissues can
not be 6olely the healing of wounds, for
these tissues in the spurges contain starch,
a substance that does not assist in that of-
fice, and which is not a product of secretion.
The studies of M. Treub on the tropical
spurges furnish evidence that one of the
probable offices of their lactiferous tissues
is the conveyance of starch.

Tlie Possible Annnal Yield of a Forest.

— The basis on which all sound forest man-
agement depends, says Colonel G. F. Pear-
son, is the revenue which any forest can be
made to pay — that is to say, the income
which it will produce in proportion to the
volume of the standing trees, or, in other
words, its capitalized value. To this end a
forest should be considered as so much cap-
ital, represented by so many cubic feet of
wood ; while the amount of wood produced
each year, by its growth, represents the in-
terest thereon, and, in fact, is the revenue
of the forest. It is evident that it is possi-
ble to cut and remove every year a quantity
of timber equal to this annual increase of
wood, without diminishing the volume of
the standard crop. The possible annual
yield of a forest may be estimated on the
basis of a calculation that a tree, ten feet in

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

573

girth, which makes a ring of wood of only
one eighth of an inch in thickness, adds to
its bulk at the rate of rather more than one
cubic foot of timber annually for every ten
feet of the length of its stem ; or, in other
words, such a tree, if its stem be thirty feet
in height, will, in thirty years, have increased
in bulk by at least one hundred feet 01 solid
timber. At the same time, during these
thirty years, the young trees which are
springing up will have become perfectly
hardy, and capable of supporting the whole
force of the summer heat and winter frost.

Marriage Cnstoms of the Kae heen. — Mr.

R. Gordon, who has been exploring among
the sources of the Irrawaddy River, has given
to the Royal Geographical Society some ad-
ditional facts concerning the marriage cus-
toms of the Kacheen, the curious Burmese
tribe who were described by Lieutenant
Kreitler in the July number of " The Popu-
lar Science Monthly " : " When a man and
woman set up house, the man has to give
to the parents of the woman cattle, pigs,
gongs, muskets, das, slaves, clothes, spears,
and money ; and for his wife's use he has
to give coral beads, tameings, jackets,
broadcloths, etc., according to his circum-
stances. After the gifts the woman is
brought to the man's house, and the man
has to feast the bringers of the woman with
rice, and curry, and spirits, and liquors.
To the elders, also, he has to give blue
waist-cloths, turbans, das, or spears, accord-
ing to their degree. The man then shows
the woman all the work to be done in the
house, and bids her do the work. After
having lived together for a long period, if
the man dies, the woman can not marry
any one ; but the elder or younger brother
has to set up house with her. If there be
no brother, the deceased man's father (the
woman's father-in-law) takes possession of
her, and makes her his wife. If an elder
brother dies, the younger brother takes
over his wife. If the father dies, the son
takes over his father's wives, and makes
them his own, except his own mother. If
a wife dies, the husband goes to her parents
and asks for another wife, and they have to
give him her elder or younger sister — a
woman who is unmarried. If there be no
sister to give, they have to give a female

relative. Husbands and wives must not be
at enmity with each other. Divorce is un-
known as a custom. However bad hus-
band or wife may be, they can not separate,
unless, in the case of the husband, he gives
double the amount of what he originally
gave her, and, in the case of the wife, un-
less she gives quadruple the amount she
originally received. If the man sets aside
his wife and takes another, the head wife
has the right to take possession of all the
property of the younger wife, as well as to
sell her. The young unmarried men and
women, so long as they are not brothers
and sisters, act as they please inside the
apartments of the house." The Kacheen
women wear waist-cloths dyed black and
blue, five hands long and not very wide.
The jackets are close-fitting, and over them
they have a looser one set off with cowries.
This is probably full dress. Round their
waists they have perforated cowries on three
or four hoops of rattan. From their knees
down to their calves they wear hoops of
rattan. Some women, the wives of the
principal men, tattoo their legs from the
knee to the ankle.

European Technical Schools. — Mr. Ed-
ward C. Robins has presented to the British
Society of Arts the results of the inquiries
he has made into the causes of the differ-
ences in the degree in which different coun-
tries have profited from technical education.
The clew is not found in differences in pri-
mary education ; but, when the provisions
made in foreign colleges for higher educa-
tion are examined, something will be found
in them so superior to anything in England
as to afford a lesson of value. The intel-
lectual and social condition of the industrial
population, he premises, and the character
of the education it should receive to fit the
national mind to cope with the national
progress, can not be met by an extension of
scholastic institutions, based on the require-
ments of the middle ages. Yet this is the
principle which has dominated the universi-
ties, " and, until very lately, no concessions
have been made to the reasonable demands
of progressive civilization." Secondary and
primary education are left in no better con-
dition with reference to this point. The
improvement in the technical education of

5 74

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the masses, however, which has begun in
the board schools, and is destined to widen,
will necessitate a like improvement in all
the grades above them. The English are
nevertheless gaining in artistic development,
and the freedom of choice and the individu-
ality of the English artist arc beginning to
tell abroad, and English taste in architect-
ure and ornamental design is rapidly sup-
planting Continental. It is to England that
Germans come for Christmas-cards, original
ornamental pottery, patterns for embroid-
ery, etc. ; " and, in Vienna lately, I could
scarcely buy a souvenir that was not adorned
with cuttings from Kate Greenaway's charm-
ing crudities." The Royal Commissioners
on Technical Education show in their re-
ports that, among the French, it is not in
the technical education of the ordinary
working-classes that the differences 6ought
are to be found; and the reports of the
French commissioners reveal a state similar
to that prevailing in England, so far as
their ordinary workmen are concerned.
Schools of arts and trades have been estab-
lished, but their pupils expect to be fore-
men, not workmen. Apprenticeship schools
have also been started, with more prom-
ising results. The best and most successful
technical schools are in Switzerland and
Germany, and conform, as a rule, to Pro-
fessor Ayrtoun's definition, that they are
not a school where the manipulation or rou-
tine of a trade is taught, but one where a
lad receives general instruction in the prin-
ciples of applied science, and special in-
struction in the application of those princi-
ples to the particular trade he is following,
or which he is about to follow. In them
everything is taught that can be gained at
the universities, except the dead languages,
while modern languages and the applica-
tions of modern science to art and industry
are added, with such thoroughness that
nearly all the leading men of England have
found it desirable to spend some years in
Germany. In the Pohjtcehnikum at Zurich,
Professor Meyer teaches chemistry in a pure-
ly scientific direction, irrespective of any
practical application ; then Professor Lunge
treats the chapters which refer to practical
applications, at greater length, and enters
into a number of details relating to various
chemical industries, placing the technical

side foremost, but laying the principal stress
on explaining the scientific principles un-
derlying the applications. Models of every
kind of mechanical action and of every kind
of machine are found, but manual labor is
excluded ; while the student in architecture,
for instance, has to work out the strains of
every floor or roof or specialty in construc-
tion, and to delineate the same in skeleton
diagrams attached to every plan he draws ;
and the mechanical draughtsman is not
given a subject to copy, but only the parts
of a machine, which he has himself to piece
together, thus thoughtfully working out in
practical draughtsmanship the theory he
has been taught to apply constructively.
The highly educated young men from these
polyteclinilcums finally become masters when
they can, but are not ashamed, till then, to
act as foremen of manufactories, etc.

M. RespigM on the Light of Comets. —

M. Kespighi, admitting the fact that a part
of the light of comets is due to the reflec-
tion of solar light, is of the opinion that it
is yet too soon to decide that any part of it
is a proper light due to the comet's own
incandescence. He believes that the dis-
continuity of the comet's spectrum, and the
bright lines or bands, may proceed from
light modified by passing through the masses
of vapors or gases, of which the cometary
bodies are composed. It is certain, he ob-
serves, that a large part of the cometary
light comes from the interior of the bodies,
and passes through extensive strata of va-
pors, in which it is subjected to a select-
ive absorption that causes it to give lines
different from the Fiaunhofer lines of the
sun. So we may have both the weak but
complete spectrum produced by the light
reflected from the outer strata in which the
absorption has been insensible, and another
spectrum coming from the deeper parts,
with which the absorption has been greater.
This view is confirmed by M. Rcspighi's
spectroscopic observations of comet h, 1SS1.
The phenomenon, he observes, is of a simi-
lar nature to that of the dark bands of the
spectrum of the sun in the horizon, but is
greatly exaggerated in the case of the comets
by the enormous volume of the vapors, the
richness of their chemical composition, and
the feebleness of the light they reflect.

NOTES.

575

IVcrvc-Vibration as a Remedy. — Dr. J.

Mortimer-Granville writes in the " Lancet "
that enlarged experience in nerve-vibration,
as a means or method of treating disease,
has confirmed his belief in its value, and
he has no longer any hesitation in recom-
mending its adoption by the profession. He
has employed it in a very considerable
number of cases, differing widely in their
nature and characteristics, and, although he
has had many failures — mainly, as he be-
lieves, from errors in diagnosis, and mis
management in the application of the treat-
ment— " the net result has been such as to
place beyond reasonable question the fact
that, in precisely applied mechanical vibra-
tion of nerves and nerve-centers, we have
a means of eliciting function and stimulat-
ing nutrition which surpasses for directness
and rapidity of action any other system or
method extant." Regarding the principles
of the practice, Dr. Mortimer-Granville be-
lieves that, in the treatment of neuralgia,
percussion acts simply by interrupting a
morbid series of vibrations and substituting
for it another series which is not morbid.
Its success is by no means certain ; but it
deserves a trial, and particularly in cases
which would otherwise be treated by nerve-
stretching. The method is believed to be
of the highest possible value for the rous-
ing of torpid nerve-centers and eliciting
function from the several organs of the
body. Every organ " may, in the absence
of disabling organic disease, be made to
perform its proper function by exciting the
nerve which supplies it with energy by
mechanical vibration. In this way I have
seen the liver unloaded, and what seemed
to be inveterate torpidity of the intestines
remedied in a few successive vibrations. I
have now under treatment the case of a child
who was six weeks ago to all appeai-ance
an idiot, but who has already devel-
oped so much cerebral activity and growing
intelligence, under the influence of specific
center and nerve-vibration, that I entertain
the strongest hope of his ultimate awakening,
and a fair approach to the normal state.
A surprising amount of success has attended
percussion in cases of obstinate and what
was supposed to be irremediable deafness.
... In neurasthenia, neurasthenia, and
even commencing sclerosis of the spinal

cord with loss of tendon reflex, the most
remarkable effects are produced by apply-
ing the percuteur over the spinous processes
of the appropriate vertebra?."

OMtaary. — Science, in California, lost
by the death of the Hon. Benjamin B. Red-
ding, State Fish Commissioner, in August
last, one of its most active promoters. Mr.
Redding was a Regent of the University of
California, and President of the Board of
Trustees of the California Academy of Sci-
ences. He took great interest in all scien-
tific work, especially in the paleontology of
the Pacific coast, and was an indefatigable
collector of prehistoric and aboriginal relics.
He was also a member of the Geographical
Society of the Pacific, and read before it in
April last a paper describing a visit to the
Galapagos Islands, made in 1850. A list
of his contributions to current literature
since October, 1877, contains the titles of
more than eighty papers, nearly all of which
had a scientific bearing. No record is pre-
served of his previous contributions. His
papers have been described as always full
of original facts, clearly and simply ex-
pressed. Mr. Redding was fifty-eight years
old.

NOTES.

A powerful magnetic storm prevailed,
both in the United Slates and England,
shortly after the middle of November,
reaching its intensity in both countries on
the 17th. It was described by American
electricians as unlike any disturbance here-
tofore known, and as acting upon the wires
in strong waves, which produced constant
changes in the polarity of the current. In
England, Mr. Preece pronounced it the
most terrific storm he had ever witnessed,
after thirty years of observation, aud de-
scribed it as characterized, like the Amer-
ican storm, by alternate waves of great
strength. The storm was accompanied, in
both countries, by brilliant auroras on the
night of the 17th. French accounts repre-
sent the storm as equally remarkable on
the Continent.

The death is announced of Dr. Franz
Ritter von Kobell, Professor of Mineralogy,
and keeper of the mineralogicnl state col-
lections at Munich, Bavaria. He was sev-
enty-nine years old, and was well known
through his numerous mineralogical publi-
cations.

576

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

M. Melsens, a Belgian physicist, has sug-
gested that objects which it is most impor-
tant to protect from lightning, like powder-
magazines, should, besides being furnished
with lightning-rods, be wholly surrounded
with a metallic net-work. He rests upon the
fact that animals in such inclosures never
experience any mischievous effects from dis-
charges which must, under ordinary condi-
tions, have stunned them. A correspondent
of the French Academy of Sciences asserts
that trees that have been struck by light-
ning have, for many years afterward, the
same effect upon the compass that magnet-
ized bodies have. The statement needs veri-
fication.

M. G. Le Bon has called attention to
two new and very effective antiseptics, the
glyceroborate of calcium and the glycerobo-
1 ate of sodium. They are both very soluble,
odorless, and unpoisonous, and deliquesce
rapidly when exposed to the air. They are
powerful antiseptic agents, even in very di-
lute solutions. The calcic salt appears to be
the more effective of the two, in a therapeu-
tic point of view, and may be applied, even
in strong solution, and to so delicate an or-
gan as the eye, without bad results. These
halts have been proved to be excellent pre-
servers of meat during a South American
voyage.

Tt is not Professor Louis Palmieri, as
slated in our last number, who is dead, but
his nephew, Marino Palmieri, Professor of
Physics in the University of Naples, and also
well known for his seismological researches.
Wc referred the death to the older Pal-
mieri through an error in the balancing cf
probabilities. The English journal, "Nat-
ure," contained a notice of the death of the
younger Palmieri, at the early age of thirty-
two years ; the French journal, " La Nat-
ure," of about the same date, gave the
obituary as of Luigi, the septenarian. Con-
sidering both publications entitled to an
equal degree of respect, we regarded the
probabilities as in favor of the death of the
elder one, who had passed the ago of three-
score and ten.

The new volume in the French edition
of the " International Scientific Series " is
on the " Origin of Cultivated Plants," by M.
de Candolle. It appears from this author's
researches that, out of about 40,000 known
species of plants, mankind make use cf
only about three hundred.

The Marquis of Nadaillac, author of a
famous work on " The First Men," has just
completed a work on " Prehistoric Ameri-
ca," published by G. Masson, Paris, which,
according to " La Nature," is the first com-
plete work on America prior to the Spanish
Conquest that has been placed within the
reach of the French reading public.

In " The Popular Science Monthly," vol.
v, page 198, mention is made of an im-
mense Japanese spider-crab in the cabinet
of Rutgers College, New Jersey, which
measures eleven feet six inches when ex
tended. It is the Macroclieira Vamperi. It
was for many years the largest specimen
known in any collection. Since then one
ten feet long was taken to Edinburgh. A
specimen is now advertised for sale in Lon-
don, which measures over fifteen feet in
length ! The strange thing is, its owner
appears to be ignorant of its name.

The international scries of stations, for
the examination of the polar regions and
phenomena, have been completed, and the
designated posts have all been occupied by
the parties representing tne several states
to which they were assigned. The United
States is represented at Point Barrow and
Lady Franklin Bay, by parties under Lieu-
tenant Bay and Lieutenant Greeley ; Great
Britain and Canada, at Fort Bae ; Germany,
at Cumberland Gulf and the South Georgian
Islands ; Russia, in Nova Zcmbla and at
the mouth of the Lena; Austria, at Jan
Mayen ; France, at Cape Horn ; and Den-
mark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the
Netherlands, at other points in the Arctic
regions.

On the 25th of July, 1881, the British
Indian Survey observed an extraordinary
outburst of solar spots, covering 630,000,-
000 square miles. The phenomena were all
observed within a period of thirty-seven
minutes. Says " Nature," " It is rare that
so grand an outburst is so closely located in
time."

The citizens of Montreal have begrm
their preparations to receive the British
Association in 18S4, by sending out circulars
to inform their invited visitors that the city
can take care of them, and that they will
find their visit a pleasant one. Among the
inducements held forth are easy excursions
to Quebec and Ottawa, and longer and
pleasant ones to Toronto, Niagara Falls,
Boston, New York, and New Haven, or
whatever Eastern city the American Asso-
ciation may meet in. The Government of
the Dominion is expected to make liberal
grants of money to defray the expenses of
British members, the railroads and steam-
boats will provide excursions to the Great
Lakes and Chicago, and to the provinces of
the Northwest as far as the Rocky Mount-
ains ; and the Association is promised its
usual revenue from the meeting.

The extreme western boundary of the
United States is in the Island of Attoo, as
far beyond San Francisco as that city is
from Maine. San Francisco is thus only
the half-way station in the journey across
our country.

SIR CHARLES WYVLLLE THOMSON.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MAKCH, 1883.

THE GKOWTH AND EFFECT OF EAILWAY CONSOLI-
DATION.

By GEEEIT L. LANSING.

IT is charged by the politician, it is spread by the press, and it is
believed by the people, that railroads, being operated in the in-
terest of the corporations themselves, are operated against the interest
of the communities ; that by consolidations and combinations all com-
petition is removed, and monopolies are formed which levy extortion-
ate tolls, with no regard to the rights or interests of their patrons.
And so dangerous, it is believed, has this arbitrary exercise of power
become, that the people of the whole country are invited to bind them-
selves together into an " anti-monopoly " league, to be able to strike
for their liberties, and punish the destroying avarice of these giant
corporations.

There is an increasing number of inquiring minds who have come
to look with distrust upon the statements of politicians, the opinions
of the press, and that popular judgment which is based upon the mis-
information furnished by these. It is the purpose of this paper to
inquire into these charges and beliefs and endeavor to disclose what
truth or error they may contain.

The word monopoly is associated in the mind with the legal and
artificial monopolies of the last three centuries. Such, for instance,
as the Dutch East India Company, which, having the entire product
of the Spice Islands, would destroy a portion of the crop rather than
lower the price by bringing the whole to market. The workings of
all these old monopolies were opposed to the public good, as they
were operated in the maintenance of high prices. In England, under
the successors of Henry VIII, they had become so numerous and
grievous, that by an act of James I, all monopolies were abolished
vol. xxii. — 37

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

excepting the right of patents.* To this has since been added, in
England and America, the government monopoly of the postal service.

Yet, all railroads are monopolies in a certain sense and to a certain
extent ; that is to say, they are without practical competition be-
tween certain points. The use of the word monopoly, however, as
applied to railroads, should be qualified by the word natural. Natural
monopolies are such because, under the free and equal operation of the
laws of nature and of the nation, they monopolize the business by doing
it more satisfactorily, more economically, and more expeditiously, than
it can be done by any other means. Insomuch as they fail in this,
they are not monopolies. There should not, then, be associated with
the idea of natural monopolies the old and well-grounded hatred that
existed against legal monopolies. The latter, under the operation of
special laws, were operated for the benefit of the few ; the former,
under the operation of general laws, are operated for the greatest good
of the greatest number. There seems no better illustration of the
change which has taken place in the meaning of this term in the popu-
lar mind than its present application to free competing corporations ;
and that one, among the prominent measures of reform proposed by
the " anti-monopolists," is the absolute destruction of all competition
through the operation of the entire railroad system of the country by
a great government monopoly.

Combination and consolidation being the spirit of monopoly, are
supposed, in the public mind, to be opposed to the common good.
But they contain the actual substance of natural monopoly, which is
such from its merits and benefits, and not from privilege.

Consolidations produce responsibility and uniformity in their serv-
ice, economy in their operations, and tariffs at minimum rates. These
are the essential requirements of the public good, and these the public
constantly receive from the great corporations. By the consolidation
of several branch lines under a central management, an economy is
effected in all those expenses of general supervision, and of junction
and terminal stations, which, under the individual operation of the
roads, each has to stand by itself. This is, in fact, a reduction of the
ratio of expenses to the amount of business done, as it reduces to a
minimum those fixed expenses which have little relation to the increase
or decrease of traffic ; and, as the consolidated company has a much
larger traffic over which to distribute these fixed expenses than the
short line, it becomes possible for the former to make lower rates and
still have the same profit earned by the latter on higher rates.

Again, consolidations are continually being effected between short
lines and roads without any through connections. On these the high-
est rates have always prevailed, because their traffic has been always
limited. By a combination with other lines having a common interest,
and perhaps by building a short line to connect them, they become

* Blackstone, book iv, p. 159.

BAIL WAY CONSOLIDATION. 579

part of a through route ; and the addition of the through to the for-
mer local traffic reduces still further the ratio of the cost of service.

This reduction in the ratio of the cost to the amount of traffic,
which results more or less from all consolidations, secures an increase
of profits even with no change in the rates or traffic. Thus far there
is an injury to no one, and a benefit to the stockholder. But the ad-
vantages of the consolidation do not stop here. It has made possible
lower rates with the same profit that formerly was earned with higher
rates. Without risk of injury the new company is now able to make
greater reductions in the rates on those local products of nature and
of man, which will allow them to reach more distant markets, or will
stimulate their development by enabling them to sell in their former
markets with greater profit. By this means, more than by any other,
is the railroad enabled to secure an increase of traffic ; and, as an in-
crease of traffic can be carried with only a fraction of the relative
increase of cost, the decrease of rates increases the net income.

The extension of the same policy leads to the highest development,
both of the resources of the country and the earning power of the cor-
poration. To effect the increase of traffic is the constant study and
aim of the railroad manager ; and it is a self-evident fact that the in-
crease of traffic can only be secured by furthering the interests of the
shippers. It is true that all railroads, both great and small, have the
same necessary interest in the prosperity and development of the ter-
ritory served by them, and they all alike endeavor to increase their
traffic. But the large corporation, supported by the traffic of the va-
rious products of many districts, is in a better condition to experiment
in the development of new districts and industries. It frequently af-
fords thus a rate or service beyond the point warranted by the present
traffic, and is able to operate portions of its system at a temporary
loss, in the hope of a future gain. With a small road, on the other
hand, depending upon the present traffic of a limited area, its rates
must be immediately remunerative, and to meet the current expenses
there is frequently required the practice of every temporary economy,
even at the expense of the future value of the property. The small
roads, unless the circumstances are exceptional, maintain the highest
rates, and afford the poorest service. The interest of the great com-
panies in the development of the districts from which they derive
their revenue is in proportion to their size ; while their more eco-
nomical management and extended resources free them from the
bonds that confine the small local corporations.

That the advantages accruing from consolidation lead toward the
adoption of that policy throughout the world is a conspicuous feature
of railroad development ; and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate
that the results as constantly lead to a reduction of the tariffs.

The Massachusetts Railroad Commissioners, in their report for
1873 (page 80), draw the following conclusions, after an examination

580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the experience of Great Britain upon this subject, which may fairly
be taken as an illustration of the general law : "The evidence," they
tell us, " published at great length in the ' blue-books,' seems to be
almost conclusive that positive benefit rather than injury has there
resulted from amalgamation, so far as it has gone. Not only have
the evils anticipated not resulted, but it would seem that the public
has invariably been better and more economically served by the con-
solidated than by the independent companies. The larger companies
employ abler officers, and seem to be managed more on the system of
great departments of commerce, and less on that of lines of stage-
coaches ; the time and attention of the officers are not mainly absorbed
in questions of corporate hostility, and the money of the companies is
wasted in a somewhat less degree in warfare with each other ; there
is, in fact, far less of friction in the work of transportation, and far
more of system. Finally, as regards the community at large, it is
found that large companies can be held to a closer responsibility than
small ones. Their prominence enables public opinion to concentrate
upon them — they are more closely watched and held to a stricter
account."

In 1872 a committee was appointed by the Parliament of Great
Britain to investigate and report upon the supposed evil of railroad
amalgamation. From their report Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in
his valuable and interesting work upon " The Railroad Problem," makes
the following quotation : " The Northeastern Railway was composed
of thirty-seven once independent lines, several of which had formerly
competed with each other. Prior to their consolidation these lines
had, generally speaking, charged high rates, and they had been able to
pay but small dividends. Now, the Northeastern is the most com-
plete monopoly in the United Kingdom ; from the Tyne to the Hum-
ber it holds the whole country to itself, and it charges the lowest rates
and pays the highest dividends of all the great English companies.
It was not vexed by litigation ; and while numerous complaints were
heard from Lancashire and Yorkshire, where railroad competition
exists, no one has appeared before the committee to prefer any com-
plaint against the Northeastern."

Mr. Adams, in his comments upon the views and statements of this
and other parliamentary committees appointed for similar purposes,
concludes as follows : " The clearer political observers have come to
realize at last that concentration brings with it an increased sense of
responsibility. The larger the railroad corporation, the more cautious
is its policy. As a result, therefore, of forty years of experiment and
agitation, Great Britain has on this head come back very nearly to
its point of commencement. It has settled down on the doctrine of
laissezfaire" (page 94).

If the facts were noticed, the American public could not long re-
sist the same conclusion upon this subject that has been reached in

BAIL WAY CONSOLIDATION-. 58i

England. In commenting upon the favorable result of railway con-
solidation in Great Britain, the chief of the Bureau of Statistics, in
his report upon the "Internal Commerce of the United States for
1881 " (page 35), says : " A similar result has followed railroad con-
solidations in the United States. It has heretofore been shown that
the average of all the rates charged on fifteen leading railroads of the
country, including those of the great East and West trunk-lines, and
the principal railroads west of the Alleghany Mountains, engaged in
traffic betAveen the Western and Northwestern States and the Atlantic
sea-board, has decreased 39*45 per cent since 1870, this reduction in
railroad freight charges having been more than three times as great
as the average reduction during the same period in the prices of
twenty-two of the leading articles of commerce."

This refers to those great trunk-lines against which there is the
most frequent charge of monopoly, and upon which, singularly enough,
there are the lowest average rates charged by any railroad on the earth.

Yet the objection to using these lines as an illustration of low rates
voluntarily made by the companies with the object of increasing their
traffic may be made with some appearance of fairness, as they are
largely employed in moving the enormous products of the Western
States to the sea-board, and the rates upon this portion of their traffic
are controlled by the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal, and in part also,
perhaps, by competition with one another. We may find an illustra-
tion, to which no objection of this kind can be raised, in the great
California corporation.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company owns, or controls, with a
few exceptions, all the railroads in California, and the western termini
of three transcontinental lines. In an address to the people, by the
National Anti-Monopoly League (page 15), the condition of railroad
competition is stated here as follows : " Monopoly is growing in all
the States. It has completely subjugated only one. In California it
has ripened its fruit. There, Monopoly is king. There, a few men
control steam-transportation. They have annihilated competition."
This language has certainly the merit of being vigorous, and is well
calculated to influence its hearers by its sound. " Subjugated," " king,"
and " monopoly," are words which in themselves excite a feeling of
rebellion in the breast of a freeman ; but, like many other sounding
things, they are empty. This great system of roads, having crossed
the trackless wastes and pierced the mountain-ranges, has brought a
thriving population to thousands of square miles of land which there-
tofore were uninhabitable and without benefit to humanity. Since the
first mile of track was operated by the owners of this company, the
surplus earnings have been reinvested in extending its lines, and so
increasing its benefits to the community.

Now let us see the effect of this absence of competition by other
roads. Let us see if, as the consolidations and extensions have pro-

58z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gressed, the rates have been raised, so that "there is not a producer
that does not pay heavier tribute than conquered people ever paid their
conquerors."* This is the common expectation and belief. I think
there are many who will be disappointed to find that it is not true.

The Central Pacific charged, on its freight traffic in 1872, the av-
erage rate of 2-96 cents ; f in 1881 this had been reduced to 2*16 cents ; J
an average decrease in the past ten years of eight tenths of a cent on
each ton hauled one mile. This is a reduction upon that local traffic
which is commonly supposed to be beyond the control of any compe-
tition, as well as upon through traffic. This is shown by the fact that
the increase of local tonnage for the period was 216 per cent, while
the increase of receipts from the same source was but 162 per cent.* Had
the average rate of 1872 been maintained by the company on its freight
traffic for 1881, the receipts would have been $5,866,287 || more in the
latter year than they actually were. During this period of ten years,
in which there has been a continuous reduction of rates, the compe-
tition by water has remained without change, and competition by rail
has not existed ; yet, under the control of the natural laws of trade
there has been such a reduction in the rates on frieght that it now
amounts to the annual sum of over five and three quarter million dol-
lars. This additional amount of earnings would have enabled the rail-
road company to pay a dividend, in 1881, of sixteen per cent, instead
of the six per cent which was paid.

It should be observed, also, that the miles of road operated during
the period under consideration have been increased from 1,158 in
1872 to 2,707 in 1881, A a greater portion of which increase has been
upon roads built through places almost entirely without inhabitants,
and which, as a consequence, for the first few years could furnish but
a limited traffic. It will at once be seen that the rates necessary, under
such conditions, to pay the cost of service, must have been much higher
than in districts where a population and trade already existed. The
traffic on these newer portions of the road having been carried at rates
which were justly, because necessarily, higher than over the older
portion of the line, has had the effect of making the average rate of
the whole, in 1881, much higher than it would have been had no new
roads been built.

A fair consideration of these facts must, it seems to me, lead to the
conclusion that there has been as great a reduction in the rates of this
Western system of roads as has taken place in the same time upon any
of the Eastern lines.

It is difficult to make any comparison between the operations of

* "Anti-Monopoly Address," p. 15.

f " Central Pacific Railroad Annual Report," 1872.
% Poor's "Manual," 1882, p. 868.

* Computed from Annual Reports of the Company for 18*72 and 1881.

1 Poor's " Manual," 1882, p. 868. A "Annual Report," 1881, p. 16.

RAIL WA Y CONS OLID A TION

583

two systems having so few items of resemblance as the California com-
pany and the Eastern lines. Yet, if such comparisons are made, with
the aim only of discovering the truth, and both systems are placed
upon terms as nearly equal as circumstances will admit, there will ap-
pear as a result no contrast between the lines where there is the most
complete competition and those which are popularly supposed to be
controlled only by their own will.

The rates charged by the Pacific coast roads are, on the average,
considerably higher than those of the great trunk-lines on the older
and more thickly populated side of the continent. This statement
presents a natural condition, for the circumstances are necessarily so
different in regard to the volume of traffic that almost as great a dif-
ference is necessary in rates. The necessity of the difference compels
the acknowledgment of its justice. It is obvious that, where a stated
traffic will pay the expenses of operating the road and a fair rate of
interest on the property, half of the amount of traffic must pay nearly
twice the rates in order to produce the same result. Yet, if the popu-
lar belief is echoed by the press of California, the rates charged by the
Central Pacific system are considered unreasonably high, because they
are higher than the charges of the Eastern trunk-lines. The inequality
and injustice of this basis of comparison are demonstrated by its appli-
cation.

The lowest average rate in the United States has been reached upon
those lines running between New York and Philadelphia and the West.
The charges by these lines average less than one cent upon each ton of
freight hauled one mile. Poor's " Manual " for 1881 (pp. 41-47) gives
tables of the rates and cost of service of the New York Central, the Erie,
the Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Rail-
roads, from which I have made the following comparative statement :

Comparative Statement of Freight Earnings, Expenses, and Traffic for the

Year 1880.

New York

Central,
1,01S miles.

Erie,
1,010 miles.

Pennsylvania,
1,120 miles.

Pittsburg.
Fort Wayne,
and Chicago,

463 miles.

Central

Pacific,

2,467 miles.2

Freight earn'gs, gross
Freight expenses ....

$22,199,966
13,670,884

$8,529,082
8,378

$14,391,115
9,188,297

$5,202,818
5,151

$20,234,046
10,892,368

$7,359,452
4,069,097

$13,252,730!
5,976,448'

Freight earnings, net.

Freight earnings, per

mile of road, net. .

$9,341,678
8,340

$3,290,355
7,122

$7,276,282'
2,949

Tons freight carried .
Tons carried 1 mile. .
Tons carried over
each mile of road.
Average rate, cents..

10,533,038
2,525,139,145

2,480,490

.aa.

1 11 11

8,715,892
1,721,112,095

1,704,070

-81.

1 nil

15,364,788
2,298,317,323

2,052,070

.'.' 8 -
1 00

3,865,675
806,257,399

1,722,722

.91.
1 00

2,140,8793
565,063,7683

229,050

0.3 i- 3

•^1 0|)

1 Report of the Central Pacific Railroad to the State Board of Railroad Commissioners,
California, 1880 (unpublished).

2 " Central Pacific Railroad Annual Report," 1881, p. 14.

3 Poor's "Manual," 1881, p. 800.

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The most conspicuous difference here shown is that between the
tonnage of the Central Pacific and the Eastern roads. This must be
considered in noticing the rates charged ; for the revenue depends not
so much upon what rate is charged as what it is charged upon. The
average rate of these Eastern roads is -£fo of a cent, while the Central
Pacific charge is 2^- cents. But, on the other hand, the Eastern lines
hauled upon an average, to each mile of road, 1,989,851 tons ; which
is a rather strong contrast to the 229,050 tons hauled by the Central
Pacific. While the average rate of the Western company is two and
a half times greater, the tonnage is eight and a half times less than on
the Eastern lines. The difference in the rates thus seems to be more
than counterbalanced by the great disparity shown in the traffic.

Among other inequalities which command consideration in any
comparison of the rates of different roads is, in addition to the amount
of traffic, the miles of road on which the traffic is carried. There must
clearly be a great difference between the expenses of two lines, the one
having 100 miles of road with a traffic of 10,000,000 tons, the other
having 1,000 miles of road with the same amount of tonnage — sup-
posing, of course, that the average distance each ton is hauled to be
the same in either case. Many of the expenses, in connection with
stations, etc., are nearly ten times as great in the latter as in the
former case, while all the expenses of maintenance and operation are
much greater with the longer than with the shorter line.

There is, of course, added to this, the consideration of the value
of the property. A line, for instance, of 100 miles, representing
$5,000,000 of value, would make, other things being equal, ten times
the profit of a road of 1,000 miles, representing $50,000,000 of value.
An equal amount of traffic upon roads between which such disparity
exists places the shorter road at a great advantage in any comparison
— it would make a larger net profit, though having a smaller capital.

Any approximation to an equality of conditions must thus recog-
nize, in addition to the amount of traffic, the miles of road operated.
Taking this into consideration, we find further that the average net
earnings per mile of road operated, from the freight traffic on the
above Eastern lines, is $7,285 ; and upon the Central Pacific it is but
$2,949. We should consider, on the other hand, that, although the
Central Pacific system of roads twice crosses the Sierra Nevadas, has
many expensive tunnels and snow galleries that cost $40,000 a mile,
yet the Eastern lines represent more value, as a portion of each road
has double tracks, and the New York Central, for a distance of 286
miles, has even four parallel tracks.* Fully considering these differ-
ences, however, there still appears no such difference in the values as
exists in the net earnings. The conclusion, therefore, seems fully
justified, that, although the rates on the Central Pacific are greater,
the net receipts are less, than on the Eastern lines ; and the difference

* " Report of the New York Central Railroad to State Engineer," 1880, p. 9.

RAILWAY CONSOLIDATION. 585

in rates is a necessary and natural result of the difference in the length
of lines and the amount of traffic.

The differences, which appear in the above figures, between the
lines mentioned, in the net earnings per mile of road operated, and in
the tons of freight carried over each mile of road, will be more clearly
realized with the aid of the following graphic method of comparative
lines, which has been so well employed by Mr. Edward Atkinson :

Net Earnings from Freight, per Mile of Road.

N. Y. Cent.. $8,378 .

Pennsylvania 8,340 — —

P.,F.W.&C. 7,122 ■

Erie 5,154

Cent. Pacific. 2,949

Tons of Freight carried over each 3Iile of Road.

N. Y. Cent. . 2,480,490

Penn 2,052,070

P.,F.W.&C. 1,722,772

Erie 1,704,070

Cent. Pacific. 229,050

It would be easy to continue the comparison further, and show
that the rates charged on the Eastern lines — whether fair or not upon
them — would be unfair if applied to the Central Pacific ; for, applied
to the traffic of the latter, they would fall far short of paying the
necessary expense of the service, while on the former roads they pay
not only the expenses, but afford also a profit. But the foregoing
facts, it seems to me, sufficiently show that there can be no satisfac-
tory nor fair comparison between the rates on different roads, unless
the amount of traffic and the length of line have in each case some
approximation. Perhaps the most equitable test, by any comparison
which it is possible to furnish of the charge of high rates made against
the Central Pacific Company, is supplied by the railroads of Massa-
chusetts.

Here, from the first railroad built in the United States, in 1826, to
the present time, there has been a continuous extension of lines by
various companies in all directions, till now, according to Mr. Atkin-
son, the Commonwealth has more miles of railroad in proportion to its
territory than exists in any other State or country in the world. These
roads represent sixty-four independent corporations.* Here, then, is
the greatest contrast to be found between any two systems in regard
to consolidation and that competition of parallel roads which is sup-
posed to be the chief regulator of rates. There ought, therefore, ac-
cording to the popular belief in these matters, to be a contrast equally
as great between the rates of the different systems. Here, again, we
shall find the popular belief to be in error.

The following table shows the freight earnings, traffic, and rates,
* "Massachusetts Pieport," 1879, p. 2.

586

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and also the miles of road operated, by the Central Pacific system, com-
pared with the Massachusetts roads :

Central Pacific.

YEAES.

Miles.

Earnings.

Tons one mile.

Kate.

Cents.

1878

2,119

$10,802,276

392,949,592

2-751

1879

2,319

10,934,574

449,580,783

2 432

1880

2,467

13,245,857

565,063,768

2-343

1SS1

2,707

15,842,139

733,285,889

2 164

Average . . .

2,403

12,706,211

535,220,080

2-371

Massachusetts.

TEAKS.

Miles.

Earnings.

Tons one mile.

Kate.

Cents.

1873

2,365

$16,927,594

615,769,300

2-755

1874

2,418

15,771,689

597,085,805

2-645

1875

2,459

14,225,535

579,868,983

2-456

1876

2,479

13,644,278

628,577,176

2 17"

Average . . .

2,430

15,142,274

605,325,316

2-501

1 Poor's "Manual," 1879, p. 932.

2 "Central Pacific Annual Report,'' 1879, pp. 20, 30. I find, upon examination and
inquiry, that Poor's " Manual " for this year repeats the tonnage and rates of the pre-
vious vear, in error.

3 Poor's "Manual," 1881, p. 800.

4 Poor's "Manual," 1882, p. 868. Poor states the rate for 1881 at 2-14 cents, which
appears to be the result of an error in calculation. I take 2'16 cents, as calculated from
data given.

5 "Report of the Massachusetts Railroad Commissioners," 1875, pp. 126, 127.

6 Ibid., 1877, pp. 188, 189.

. 7 The rate given in each case is the average per ton per mile for all freights. (See
" Massachusetts Report," 1S77, p. 101.)

To arrive at the latest results the figures taken are for the last four
years of the Central Pacific, but, in order to make an equitable com-
parison in the volume of the tonnage, it is necessary to take the Mas-
sachusetts roads for a few years previously. In any corresponding
year the Massachusetts roads have a considerably larger tonnage than
the Central Pacific ; thus, as has been shown, making any fair compari-
son impossible. Even in the years given they have an annual average
of thirteen per cent more tonnage than the Central Pacific, placing the
latter system to that amount of disadvantage in the comparison.

On the other hand, however, is the consideration that the prices of
material and labor necessary in the operation of railroads have been
considerably reduced during the periods shown in the above table,
but, in California, they have always been much higher than in the At-
lantic States, and were probably higher in the former State in 1881
than they were in Massachusetts in 1876. The relative conditions
seem, upon the whole, as fair as it is possible to make them between
any two systems.

As a result, the following more important comparisons may be
noticed : The average mileage of road operated is about the same in

RAILWAY CONSOLIDATION.

537

each case. While, on the Massachusetts roads, the average annual ton-
nage is thirteen per cent more, the earnings are nineteen per cent more,
and the average difference in rates is Ty„ of a cent more than on the
Central Pacific system.

This brings us to the unexpected conclusion that, had the rates
charged by the Central Pacific prevailed with the Massachusetts roads,
it would have effected an annual saving to that State of $786,923, and
this, notwithstanding the fact that the through, freight, upon which
the lowest rates always prevail, was fifty-eight per cent of the whole
traffic in Massachusetts,* while upon the Central Pacific f it was but
thirty-nine per cent.

It may be of interest to bring the affairs of this great corporation
home to its own State, and see how it compares there with other roads
which are independent of it.

In California, in 1878 \ (the last year for which statistics have
been published), there were 1,170 miles of road, of which 844 miles
were controlled by the Central Pacific, and 326 miles were of small
roads, none of which were of sufficient magnitude to create envy or
gain the appellation of monopoly. The average rates of eleven of
these shorter roads, representing 248 miles, are stated by the State
Commissioner of Transportation, from whose report I take the follow-
ing figures :

Table of Rates on Railroads not controlled by the Central Pacific Rail-
road Company, reported by the Commissioner of Transportation
of Calif ornia, for the Year 1878.

Miles of

road
operated.

Table II.

6-

26

50

5

33

106

24

29

4

22

64

10

67

21

16

9

7

33

247-87

NAME OF KOAD.

Black Diamond Coal Company

California Northern

Pittsburg

San Francisco and Northern Pacific

Vaca Valley and Clear Lake

Mendocino

Nevada County Narrow-Gauge

San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria Valley.

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz and Felton

Visalia

AVERAGE BATE.

Freight,
per ton.

Per

passenger.

Table XV.

Cents.

Total miles.

Average rates

33
5
9

7
7
16
15
9
8

33

86

87
89

19

12-46

Cents.

8

7

3
8

S
8
7

10

33

50
91

14
50

G-82

1 For the Visalia Railroad, the average rate for freight stated in the report of
the commissioner is li cent. This, upon examination, proves to be an error. In the
same report, p. 183, the highest rate is stated at 68/,- cents, the lowest at 2 cents, and
the average li cent. This is, of course, impossible. In the report of the previous

* " Massachusetts Reports." f " Central Pacific Railroad Annual Reports."

\ Report of Commissioner of Transportation, Table II.

588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

commissioners, for June 30, 1876, p. 132, the highest rate is stated at 68 ft- cents, and
the lowest at 6-ft- cent. I have, therefore, omitted the rate given of If cent from the
above table.

As these short lines are supported entirely by local traffic, a
proper comparison of their rates with those of the Central Pacific
should consider only the local rates of the latter. The commissioner,
in the same table, furnishes us with these, so that we are enabled to
make the following comparison :

The average charge per passenger per mile was, on the short lines,
^ttht cents ; on the Central Pacific (for local only), 2T8^- cents. The
average charge per ton of freight per mile was, on the short lines
i^roV cents ; a*d on the Central Pacific — for local only — 3^^- cents.

Here, again, the facts show that this great California corporation,
which is charged by the Anti-Monopoly League with constant and
destroying extortion, has much lower average rates than these smaller
companies which are not conspicuous enough in size or wealth to draw
the attention of the press or the attacks of politicians.

The tendency of railroad ownership and management has from the
beginning been toward amalgamation. This is apparent to all, and
is popularly termed the growth of monopoly. The facts that have
herein been presented all tend to illustrate the truth that this amalga-
mation has been accompanied by as constant a reduction of rates.
The so-called " monopoly " is thus shown to be exactly the opposite
of those privileged corporations which, in the past centuries, have
given the word its evil significance : for, without any special or ex-
clusive privilege, the railroad is in itself an institution which naturally
secures whatever monopoly it has of the business of transportation
by the superior advantages and cheapness which it affords. With the
reduction of rates, therefore, the " monopoly " must increase ; for the
reduction of rates means an increase of traffic.

The reduction of rates, however much it may be influenced by the
competition of parallel lines, is absolutely controlled by the operation
of those great natural laws which govern all commercial transactions.
These laws are summed up in the statement, made some years since by
the President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, that " the in-
terests of the railroad and the community are identical." The pros-
perity of the former is absolutely dependent upon the prosperity of
the latter ; and the development of the industries and the increase of
the products of the communities depend upon cheap transportation,
perhaps more than upon any single thing. It becomes, therefore,
not only the interest of the railroads to furnish cheap transportation,
but they are led also to the same action in their efforts to increase
their net income. As the ratio of expenses decreases with the increase
of traffic, a reduction of rates which secures an increase of traffic thus
produces an increase of net profit. Consolidations, by reducing the
ratio of expenses, make possible the greater reduction of rates ; and

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 589

great corporations, having their interest connected with wider and
more extended territory, have broader views in their management,
and are guided by policies which tend more to the healthful and per-
manent development of their properties and the territories which they
•depend upon for their revenue. The facts, in America as well as in
Europe, fully confirm the statement of the Parliamentary Committee
of Great Britain, that amalgamations result in furnishing better serv-
ice, lower rates, and higher dividends — a benefit to all alike.

In the popular mind, the solution of the railroad problem is based
upon the fundamental misconception that the so-called railroad " mo-
nopolies " raise the tariffs at their pleasure, are controlled only by their
own wills, and so, influenced alone by selfish interests, they maintain
unreasonably high or extortionate rates. Yet, it will always be found
that, in seeking to advance their own interests, they are absolutely
controlled by those general economic laws through the operation of
which every one is seeking his own good, under terms as nearly equal
as is allowed by nature itself ; and their interests can only be advanced
by advancing also the interests of their patrons. Freight will only be
shipped when its transportation results in a profit to the shipper. The
greater this profit, or the more it is extended to all articles of trade,
the greater is the traffic ; and the greater the traffic of the railroads,
the greater is their profit. Under the operation of natural laws, each,
in seeking its own interests, must advance also the interests of the
other ; this result can only be changed when the laws of nature are
suspended by the legislation of man.

The railroad, heretofore generally untrammeled by restrictive legis-
lation, has been productive of more beneficent results to the country
at large than the most sanguine enthusiast of a generation ago would
have dreamed. As it is a human institution, it has contained also the
faults common to humanity. These, experience and interest will in
time reduce to a minimum ; and, guided by the same laws which in
the past have produced so favorable results, its future operations must
constantly work toward the greatest good of the greatest number.

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE*

Bt FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

OUR nearest relatives in the large family of the animal kingdom
are undoubtedly the frugivorous four-handers, with some of their
nocturnal congeners, but it would be difficult to classify the quadru-

* This article is made up from the text of Oswald's " Zoological Sketches " (noticed
in our pages last month), by permission of the publishers of the volume, Messrs. J. B.
Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, to whose courtesy we are also indebted for the accom-
panying illustrations. — Eds. P. S. M.

59°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mana after the degree of that relationship : no naturalist could name
the most man-like ape. It is a reticulated rather than a graduated
system of affinity, as Carl Vogt expresses it ; the type of the human
form is a center from which the connecting lines diverge in various
directions. To every supposed characteristic of our physical structure
some genus or other of the multiform family has been found to exhibit
a parallel ; only the combination of these attributes distinguishes man
from all monkeys.

The Latin word simia is derived from simus (fiat-nosed), and -/Elian
considered the prominence of the human nose as a prerogative of our
species ; but Sir Stamford Raffles discovered a nose-ape, the Bornean
representative of the genus Semnopithecus, a big, long-tailed brute,
with a truly Roman proboscis and the narrow nostrils of the Cauca-
sian race. In proportion to his size, the white-handed capuchin-monk-
ey of Western Guiana has a higher forehead than the two-legged in-
habitants of his native woods ; and the anatomist Camper demonstrated
that, with respect to the length of the tail-bones, immortal man forms
the connecting link between the lower apes and the orangs. The Arabs,
who question the human pedigree of the beardless Ethiopian, would
have to hail the wonderoo as a man and a brother ; and the male
orang-outang, too, can boast of a chin-tuft that would do credit to a
modern senator.

It would, indeed, be a mistake to suppose that all monkeys are nat-
urally mischievous. The little Tamarin {Midas rosalia) handles its
playthings more carefully than most children, and the females, espe-
cially, seem almost afraid to stir without their keeper's permission.
Gratuitous destructiveness is rather a distinctive trait of the African
quadrumana, and their representative in this respect is, perhaps, the
Cercopithecus maurus, the Moor-monkey, or monasso, as they call him
in Spain, a fellow who seems to consecrate his temporal existence to
mischief with an undivided and disinterested devotion. This maurus
and his cousin, the rock-baboon, are the terror of the Algerian farmer ;
but the baboon contents himself with filling his belly, while the other
tears off twenty ears of corn for one he eats, and often enters a fig-
garden for the exclusive purpose of stripping the trees of their leaves
and unripe fruit. In captivity he can not be trusted even with a
leather jacket, and, finding nothing else to spoil, does not hesitate to
exercise his talent upon his younger relatives, to the detriment of .their
woolly fur. Still, his intelligence and restless activity make him a prime
favorite of the fun-loving Spanish sailors, and in the Andalusian sea-
ports every larger household has a monasso or two — mo?ios de cadena,
"chain-monkeys," as the dealers call them, a Moor-monkey and a
cadena being as necessary concomitants in civilized regions as a king
and a constitution. A rupture of the concatenation creates an alarm,
as if the chained beast of the Apocalypse had broken loose, and, if an
unchained monasso gets a five minutes' chance at a kitchen or a parlor,

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

59i

he can be relied upon to commit all the havoc a creature of his strength
could possibly execute in five times sixty seconds ; an instinct border-
ing on inspiration seems to tell him at the first glance where and how
to perpetrate the greatest amount of actual damage in the shortest pos-
sible time. In a harbor-hotel of Cartagena I saw a mono whose terpsi-
chorean talents had made him a more than local celebrity. He could
dance the Moorish zameca, besides the bolero and fandango, and was
sometimes released at the request of his admirers, who pitied his con-
stant collisions with the lock of his drag-chain ; but on such occasions
the landlady used to charge a real extra, for even her presence did not
prevent the mono from indulging his ruling passion. Under pretext
of returning the caresses of his visitors, he managed to abstract their
buttons, upset a flower-pot or two, or interrupted his performances to
make a grab at a litter of poodle puppies on the veranda. His scar-
covered skull proved that the lot of the transgressor is hard ; but the

1 M(
■I M

Fig. 1. — Total Depravity.

depilated condition of his neck was owing to a peculiar trick of his,
as the posadera explained it. He would hug a post near his couch
under the veranda, and, stretching his head back and his tongue out,
would twist his neck to and fro, as if in the agonies of strangulation.

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

During a temporary absence of their mother he once succeeded in de-
ceiving the children by these symptoms of distress ; they loosened his
chain-strap an inch or two, but happily took the precaution to shut the
house-door and the cellar-gate. But they had forgotten the poultry-
house ; and when the lady returned in the evening her sixteen hens
had been converted into Platonic homunculi — " bipeds without feathers
and without the power of volitation." On another occasion he came
near setting the house on fire by drenching the cat with the contents
of a large kitchen-lamp. Still, after trying sundry other four-handers,
the lady declined to part with her monasso, though she lamented his
utter want of principle, like the Devin du Village :

" H61as ! que les plus coupables
Toujours sont les plus aimables! "

The anthropoid apes are a somewhat taciturn race, but a chim-
panzee's murmur of affection is very expressive, and quite different
from his grunt of discontent. A sick orang-outang sheds tears, moans
piteously, or cries like a pettish child ; but such symptoms are rather
deceptive, for the orang, as well as the chimpanzee, is a great mimic,
not of men only, but of passions and pathological conditions. Two
years ago I took temporary charge of a young chimpanzee who was
awaiting shipment to the Pacific coast. His former landlord seemed
to have indulged him in a penchant for rummaging boxes and coffers,
for whenever I attempted to circumscribe the limits of that pastime
my boarder tried to bring down the house, metaphorically and liter-
ally, by throwing himself upon the floor and tugging violently at the
curtains and bell-ropes. If that failed to soften my heart, Pansy be-
came sick. With groans and sobs he would lie down in a corner, pre-
paring to shed the mortal coil, and adjusting the pathos of the closing
scene to the degree of my obstinacy. One day he had set his heart
upon exploring the letter department of my chest of drawers, and, after
driving him off several times, I locked the door and pocketed the key.
Pansy did not suspect the full meaning of my act till he had pulled at
the knobs and squinted through the key-hole, but, when he realized
the truth, life ceased to be worth living : he collapsed at once, and
had hardly strength enough left to drag himself to the stove. There
he lay, bemoaning his untimely fate, and stretching his legs as if the
rigor mortis had already overcome his lower extremities. Ten min-
utes later his supper was brought in, and I directed the boy to leave
the basket behind the stove, in full sight of my guest. But Pansy's
eyes assumed a fai'-off expression ; earth had lost its charm ; the in-
humanity of man to man had made him sick of this vale of tears.
Meaning to try him, I accompanied the boy to the staircase, and the
victim of my cruelty gave me a parting look of intense reproach as I
left the room. But, stealing back on tiptoe, we managed to come
upon him unawares, and Pansy looked rather sheepish when we caught
him in the act of enjoying an excellent meal.

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

593

In Hindostan monkeys enjoy all the privileges of a Mohammedan
lunatic, being permitted to rob the orchards with impunity, decimate
the rice-crop, and rob all the birds'-nests they want ; but, not content
with levying out-door contributions, they pillage the cottages of the
natives while the proprieters are at work in the fields ; nay, they often
manage to despoil the larder of the foreign residents, or black-mail
their children if they leave the bungalow with a lunch-basket or a
pocketful of nuts.

The Rev. George Thielmann, of the Moravian mission, who passed
several years in the Eastern Punjaub, describes the despair of his Ger-
man cook at the impudence of the light-fingered gentry. " I do not
see how the natives can stand it," said she; "if they take those
baboons for Christians, they ought to have a penitentiary in every vil-
lage." If she went to the door to answer a bell, the macaques entered
the kitchen through the rear window ; going to look after her sun-
dried peaches, she found that the Bhunder apes had been beforehand
with her ; and if she left her bedroom-window open she was awakened

.--''

r:?s.

■BHKPE

Fig. 2.— Misplaced Confidence.

by a committee of Honumans taking an inventory of her wardrobe.
One day she left the gardener's dinner under a tree where he used to
take his siesta, but, returning with a dessert of German doughnuts, she
was just in time to see a troop of Rhesus baboons running off with
the dishes and bottles.

From the moment that a young monkey is weaned he has to steal,
vol. xxii. — 38

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for Dr. Brehm's observation applies strictly and literally to every
species of quadrumana ; the mother-monkey robs her own child, and
forces it to eat its food by stealth. The proprietor of the " Zoolog-
ical Coffee-Garden," in Savannah, Georgia, has been very successful in
rearing young monkeys, and the visitors of his happy-family depart-
ment can witness the same scene thrice a day — a number of half-grown
capuchin babies fleeing from the wrath of their own parents. As soon
as the dinner-bucket is brought in, the youngsters hide in the corner
and wTatch their opportunity, for while their seniors are feeding there
is no hope of a crumb or a drop of milk ; but sooner or later the old
ones are sure to fall out, and during a general scrimmage for a tidbit
the children sometimes get a chance at the bucket, and take care to
make the best of it. But woe unto them if their progenitors catch
them in flagranti! Sires, mothers, and aunts combine to avenge the
sacrilege, and the noise of the punishment often sets the whole men-
agerie agog. I have seen a she-macaque jamming her bantling up
against the wall and extracting from its cheek-pouches the gifts of a
charitable visitor, together with all the crumbs and scraps the little
one had gleaned from the floor, and then adding outrage to injury by
cuffing the victim's ears.

The English word stalwart is derived from stael-wortJi — i. e., worth
stealing • and the same criterion seems to be a monkey's standard for
the value of earthly things in general. Any novel, movable, and
portable object at once excites his interest. If the digestible quali-
ties of the novelty seem doubtful, he appeai-s to act on the principle
that in the mean while it can do no harm to appropriate it. North of
the Rio Grande most capuchin-monkeys are martyrs to rheumatism, and
three poor cripples of the Cebidse species had been assigned winter-
quarters in the kitchen of a New Orleans boarding-house. They could
be trusted, as their complex ailments disqualified them from running
and climbing, their only mode of progression being a sidelong wrig-
gling on their haunches and elbows. But one day the landlady heard
a frightful caterwauling, and, entering the kitchen in haste, was sur-
prised to see one of her patients on top of the chimney-ladder, while
another was rolling about in a fit of fantastic contortions. The cook
had left on the floor a bucketful of Pontchartrain crabs, and during
her momentary absence the monkeys had fallen victims to the cause
of free inquiry. Somehow or other the cook's manoeuvres had drawn
their attention to the bucket, and, having managed to upset it, their
ring-tails had got entangled with the not less prehensile crustaceans.

The tardo (black sloth) has a peculiar talent for making himself
invisible. Even a medium-sized tree, without an excessive supplement
of tangle-vines, has to be inspected thoroughly and from different
points of view before a slight movement in the upper branches attracts
your attention to a fluffy-looking clump, not easy to distinguish from

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

595

the dark-colored clusters of the feather-mistletoe ( Viscum rubrum)
which frequents the tree-tops of this mountain-region. Closely re-
sembling clusters of feathery leaves and feathery hair are often seen
side by side on the same bi'anch. Which of them is the animated one ?
A load of buckshot may fail to settle the point. I have seen a troop of

m

kMWf- ■ **

Pig. 3.— Martyrs to Free Inquiry.

idle soldiers bombarding a sloth-tree for half an hour with the heaviest
available missiles without being able to force the stronghold of the
occupant, who only tightened his grip when a well-aimed stone crushed
his head visibly and audibly. But with a good rifle you may dislodge
the most tenacious tardo by hitting his branch somewhere below his
foot-hold, for a fractured caucho-stick will snap like a cabbage-stalk.
Thus displanted, the falling sloth clutches at the empty air or snaps off
twig after twig in his headlong descent, but generally manages to fetch
up on one of the stout lower branches, and at once hugs it with all the
energy of his prehensile organs ; and there he hangs, within easy reach
of your arm, perhaps, but without betraying the slightest concern at
your approach. The human voice has no terrors for the stoic tardi-
grade ; menacing gestures fail to impress him. A blank cartridge ex-
ploded under his nose will hardly make him wink, unless the powder

596

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

should singe his eyelids. He permits you to lift his claw, but drops
it as soon as you withdraw your hand. If you prod him, he breaks
forth in a moan that seems to express a lament over the painfulness
of earthly affairs in general rather than resentment of your particular
act. By-and-by his love of caloric may lure him back to the sunny
side of the tree, but no incentives a tergo will accelerate his move-
ments. His claws are a quarter of a foot long and rigidly tenacious,
and, once unhooked, he forthwith transfers his attachment to your
own person. After spreading his talons fan-shape, he clasps your arm
with an intimacy that seems intended to reassure you of his peaceful
intentions, but will gradually draw himself well up, as if unwilling to
interfere with your locomotive facilities.

But, as Stanislaus Augustus said from sad experience, " Innocence
is no excuse before the tribunal of war," and, in the tropics at least, a
state of nature is a state of incessant warfare. In spite, therefore, of
all his precautions and his monopoly of an almost unlimited food-
supply, the sloth is found nowhere in great numbers ; his enemies are
too many for a creature that can neither fight nor fly. The harpy-

2^

Fie. 4.— A New Departure.

eagle skims the tree-tops of the tierra caliente, or falls upon him like
a flash from the clouds ; the lynx lurks in the twilight of the shade-
trees ; the sneaking ocelot explores the inmost penetralia of the liana-
maze ; if he meets him, he meets his death. Carnivora have to com-
bine caution with sudden swiftness to catch a monkey in day-time, but
sloth-hunting is a search rather than a chase ; small palm-cats or slug-

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 597

gish bears may take a morning ramble through the branches of his
chosen tree, and, if they espy the poor leaf-eater, his capture follows
as a matter of course ; they need not pursue him, they can collar him
at their leisure ; a hungry bear collects a family of sloths as he would
gather a bnnch of grapes.

Still, Fate has granted the much-bereft edentate one compensation
— a cheap one, indeed, but still an offset to many defects — a most
contented disposition. On the morning of an unusually cold April
day I was summoned to a neighboring town, and took a look at my
tool-house menagerie before I left. Finding that the female sloth had
monopolized the family couch, I carried her mate up to an empty gar-
ret, and attached his claws to a mantel-piece, where he could warm
himself by putting his back against a flue of a hot-air chamber. An
unexpected delay prevented my return that night, and Avhen I got
home the next morning I entered the garret with sore misgivings
about the survival of my tardo. But, no ; there he hung, on the very
same spot and in the same attitude, imbibing caloric at every pore,
and pun-ing to himself in dreamy beatitude — a tardo temporarily satis-
fied that life was worth living.

•»•

A striking contrast to the sluggishness of the sloth is presented by
Dr. Oswald's description, in another part of the book, of the Honuman
monkey at play.

Without wings, agility could hardly go farther ; from the stand-
point of a practical anatomist, it is almost inconceivable how muscles
and sinews, apparently so very similar to our own, can execute such
movements. Without the least visible effort, the marvelous half-bird
darts through the air in a wide zigzag, merely touching a branch here
and there ; upward suddenly with a series of mighty swings, regard-
less and apparently forgetful of obstacles; down with a gradationed
spring that looks like a single leap ; up again with a flying rebound
through a tangle-work of branches, yet at the same time watching his
comrades, aiming and parrying slaps or dodging a shower of missiles ;
then, wdth a sudden grab, a quick contraction of the hind-legs, and the
acrobat sits motionless on a projecting branch, watching a movement
in the grass that has not escaped his eye during his headlong evolu-
tions.

A bat is a living anachronism ; there is something obsolete and
paradoxical in every part of its organization. Skin wings were quite
in vogue in the days of the Devonian monster -period, but have gone
out of fashion among the representative creatures of our latter-day
world ; and it is a curious fact that all winged mammals have become
nocturnal, as if they could not compete with the talents of their day-
light contemporaries. The winged lemur (Galeopithecus volans), the
flying-fox, and the flying-squirrel, are all moonshiners, and dread sun-

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

light as miracle-mongers dread the light of science ; but they all have
the exaggerated optics of an owl, evening-eyes, that catch every ray
of the fading twilight, while the eyes of the bat proper are as rudi-
mentary as those of a mole, or of the strange fishes that were dis-
charged from the subterranean tarns of Mount Cotopaxi.

As the Euclidean punctum is defined as a point without extension,
the voice of a bat might be called a sound without vibrations — a
shrill, sudden squeak, unlike any other sound in nature or art. Though
piercing enough to be heard from afar, it is too abrupt to guide the
ear in any special direction ; you can put a wood-bat in a narrow
box, and the box on the table, and bet large odds that the incessant
shrieks of the captive will not betray its hiding-place ; to nine per-
sons out of ten the sound will seem to come from all parts of the room
at once.

Many of their habits, too, distinguish the cheiropters from all
other creatures of our planet. Aristotle classed them with the birds ;
and in one respect they might even be considered the representatives
of the class, being par excellence creatures of the air. All winged
insects can run or hop ; the sea-gull runs, swims, and dives ; but, with
the sole exception of the Javanese roussette, bats are completely " at
sea" in the water, and almost helpless on terra firma ; they eat, drink,
and court their mates on the wing, and the Nycteris Thebalca even
carries her young on her nightly excursions. Nay, bats may be said
to sleep in the air, for they build neither day-nests nor winter-quarters,
but hang by the thumb-nail, touching their support only with the
point of a sharp hook. But this hand-hook connects with muscles of
amazing tenacity. In cold climates, where bats have to club together
for mutual warmth, fifty or sixty of them have been found in one
bundle, representing an aggregate weight of about fifteen pounds, all
supported by one thumb-nail! The "head-centers" must sleep as
warm as a child in a feather-bed ; but it is hard to understand how
the outsiders can survive the cold season, for, in spite of its voracity,
the bat accumulates no fat, and the flying-membrane is a poor pro-
tection against a North American winter. The only explanation is that
their winter torpor is a trance, a protracted catalepsy, rather than a
sleep ; hibernating bears and dormice get wide awake at a minute's
notice, but I have handled bats that might have been skinned without
betraying a sign of life, and needed more than the warmth of my
hands to revive them, for their wings were quite brittle with rigid
frost. Bats prefer a cave with tortuous ramifications that shelter
them against direct draughts, but still with a wide though not too
visible opening, as they do not like to squeeze themselves through
narrow clefts. A dormitory combining these requisites is sure to
attract lodgers from far and near ; the northern entrance of the tunnel-
grotto of Posilippo and the Biels-Hohle in the Hartz are tenanted
by hundreds of thousands of bats that avoid all the neighboring cav-

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE,

599

eras ; and our Mammoth Cave, with its countless grottoes, has only
two bat-uolcs, whose occupants have never been known to change
their quarters.

„,.-! '<

Fig. 5.— Children of Erebus.

Nearly all the South Asiatic vegetarians treat mischievous ani-
mals with a more than Christian forbearance ; but the worshipers of
Brahma have, besides, been taught to regard certain species of the
brute Creation as half divine, and consequently altogether inviolate,
and entitled to the active charity of every true believer — the most
privileged of the zoological demi-gods being the bhunder-baboon
{Papio Rhesus), the Honuman (Semnopithecus entellus), the Brahmin
cow, the pigeon, and the common crocodile. In Hindostan the public
spirit of wealthy philanthropists rarely rises above the orthodox con-
servatism of the national mind ; bequests are not devoted to public
improvements, but rather to the maintenance in statu quo of incor-

6oo

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

porated societies and multitudes of secular and clerical mendicants ;
and Sir Emerson Tennent estimates that the produce of fully ten per
cent of all the stipends of a most charitable population of one hundred
and sixty millions is consecrated to the support of lazy or mischievous
brutes.

Like Italian lazzaroni, city baboons live in cliques — clannish com-
munities, very exclusive in times of scarcity, and always rather dis-

Fig. 6. — Four-handed Lazzaroni.

inclined to enlarge their membership except by natural increase and
advantageous alliances, as with fat house-baboons with a roving dis-
position. Four-handed vagrants are promptly stopped and cross-
examined : no mercy for the homeless stranger suspected of specu-
lating upon a share of their scanty sportules, while the household

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 601

pet with his brass collar and sleek pouch is merely scrutinized with
silent envy. The half-grown bhunder-monkeys are so pretty that they
are often domesticated, but their relatives dislike to part with them —
from motives that have nothing to do with " philoprogenitiveness."

The holy children are their mediators, their apple and bread win-
ners. The entreaties of the little beggars are not easy to resist : they
will climb you after the manner of pet squirrels, embrace you with
one arm and beg with the other, accompanying their gestures with a
deprecatory mumble that becomes strangely expressive, as if they
were pleading extenuating circumstances, if you offer to strike them.
Even the idol-hating Mussulman is thus often beguiled into a liber-
ality which his conscience may be far from approving. If the little
spongers have struck a bonanza, they swallow in situ all they can find
room for, well knowing that upon their return the contents of their
cheek-pouches will be claimed by their relatives, for even a mother-
monkey has no hesitation in plundering her own child in that way.
To avoid coercive measures, the poor kids surrender their savings vol-
untarily and with great dispatch at the approach of the ruthless parent.
Like our artist-mendicants who keep a beggar-boy ad captandum, old
baboons sometimes kidnap a baby of another tribe, keep a strict watch
on its movements, but urge it with slaps and grunts to work the pass-
ers-by. Crippled baboons, too, are a most welcome acquisition to any
clique. These twice-worthy objects of charity have their regular head-
quarters, where they can be found at any time of the day surrounded
by eupeptic relatives who hope to participate in the largess of the
pious. The poorest huckster will stop his cart in a gate-way to hand
his tribute to a decrepit bhunder-monkey who supplicates him with
outstretched hands. No true believer must stint his gifts upon such
occasions ; and so well does the hairy mendicant know the stringency
of that duty that he flies out into a paroxysm of virtuous wrath if any
passer-by should dare to disregard his appeal. The relatives promptly
yield their aid, and fruit-carts are in danger of being monkey-mobbed
if the driver hesitates to propitiate their resentment by a liberal con-
tribution.

In a sparsely settled but tolerably fertile country animal refugees
soon accustom themselves to the vicissitudes of their wild life. The
ten months' drought of 1877, which almost exterminated the do-
mestic cattle of Southern Brazil, was braved by the pampa cows,
whom experience had taught to derive their water-supply from bul-
bous roots, cactus-leaves, and excavations in the moist river-sand.
Solid food is only a secondary requirement ; with a good supply of
drinking-water many animals would beat Dr. Tanner's time. But
how the Syrian Khamr dogs manage to make out a living only the
gods of the desert know. They rough it in regions where no human
hunter would discover a trace of game, and where water is as scarce

602

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as in the eternal abode of Dives ; nay, they multiply, for the Khamr
bitch, like other poor mothers, is generally overblessed with progeny ;
six youngsters a year is said to be the minimum. A sausage-maker
would probably decline to invest in Khamr dogs ; the word leanness
does not begin to describe their physical condition ; strappedness
would be more to the purpose, if an Arkansas adjective admits of

Fig. 7.— Wild Dogs.

that suffix — skin and sinews tightly strapped over a frame-work of
bones. I saw their relatives in Dalmatia, and often wondered that
they did not rattle when they ran ; but Dalmatia is still a country of
vineyards and sand-rabbits, while the Syrian desert has ceased to pro-
duce thorn-berries. Without moisture not even a curse can bear fruit.
Where food is plenty, wind and weather seem to modify the phy-
sique of a tramp animal. Most wild dogs are bushy-tailed, gaunt, and
fox-headed, and for some occult reason almost invariably black-muz-
zled. It is their clan-mark : judging from the snout alone, few natu-
ralists would be able to distinguish a tramp-dog from the pampa cur,
the Khamr hound, the dog-wolf {Canis anthus), or the Abu Hossein
( Cants lupaster). It does not improve their appearance ; in connec-
tion with their wolfish eyes, it reminds one too much of a hyena-head.

The question whether there are any untamable animals requires a
nearer definition of the somewhat ambiguous adjective. Untamable,
in the sense of undomesticable, I believe there are none. AVith the
proviso of a guarantee against socage-duty or a change of their natural
habits, few animals would decline the hospitality of the homo sapiens,

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 603

especially in countries where the sapient one has become the monopo-
list of all the good things of this earth. Let any one sweep the snow
from his balcony, scatter the cleared space with crumbs, and put the
balcony-key where the children can not find it, and see how soon his
place will become the resort of feathered guests — not of town-spar-
rows only, but of linnets, titmice, and other birds that are rarely seen
out of the woods. A little discretion will soon encourage them to
enter the window and fetch their lunch from the breakfast-table — by-
and-by even in the presence of their host — for the fear of men is a fac-
titious instinct, unsupported by the elder intuition that teaches animals
to distinguish a frugivorous creature from a beast of prey. With so
simple a contrivance as a wooden box with a round hole, starlings,
blackbirds, martins, crows, jays, and even owls, can be induced to rear
their young under the roof of a human habitation ; squirrels, hedge-
hogs, and raccoons soon find out a place where they can get an occa-
sional snack without having to pay with their hides. Hamman, the
famous German skeptic, used to feed a swarm of sea-gulls, often the
only visitors to his lonely cottage on the shore of the Baltic. The
neighbors suspected him of necromantic tricks, but he assured them
that his whole secret consisted in never interfering with his guests —
keeping a free lunch on hand, and letting them take their own time and
way about eating it.

The same magic had probably bewitched the pets of Miss Meirin-
ger, the daughter of a German colonist of New Freyburg, Brazil.
Her father was a self-taught naturalist, and his collections have been
described by several South American travelers ; but in the ojDinion of
the natives his curiosity-shop was eclipsed by the menagerie of his
daughter, who had tamed some of the wildest denizens of the forest,
though evidently on the suaviter in modo plan, since most of her pets
boarded themselves, or only took an occasional breakfast at the fazenda.
Among her more regular guests were a couple of red coaties, or nose-
bears, several bush-snakes, and one large boa, a formidable-looking
monster with the disposition of a lap-dog, for at a signal from his
benefactress he would try to curl himself up in her apron, with a
supernumerary coil or two around her knees.

There is hardly any doubt that animals must possess some means
of communicating their ideas. Arsenic has no perceptible taste or odor,
and an ounce of it mixed with a bushel of corn-meal will destroy a
cart-load of sewer-rats in a single day ; but all professional vermin-
killers agree that such receipts lose their efficacy in a very short time.
Somehow or other the survivors manage to trace the mischief to its
cause ; and old rats have been observed in the act of driving their
young from a dish of poisoned hash. When the British first effected
a settlement in Singapore, the traffic in monkeys soon became a regu-
lar branch of industry. The ubiquitous Chinamen used to go on trap-

604

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 8.— Strange Messmates.

ping expeditions to the hills, at a time of the year when the mountain
macaques were rather hard up for provisions and could be baited with
" fuddle - cakes " — i. e., rice-bread soaked in a mixture of sugar-and-
rum. The trapper used to hide behind a tree, and let the monkey as-
semblage enjoy his bounty till their antics suggested that it was time
for him to rush in, like Cyrus into the banquet-hall of Belshazzar.
Experience, however, soon taught the little mountaineers to change their
tactics. Instead of devouring the fuddle-cakes on the spot, they learned
to gather them up and defer the feast till they reached a retreat where
they could hope to be left alone in their glory. But the trappers, too,
have since changed their plan. They manufacture a sort of narrow-
necked jars, about the size of sarsaparilla bottles, and, after filling them
with a melange of sirup and alcohol, they tie them firmly to the root
of a tree and withdraw out of sight. The monkeys come down and
sip the nectar, a little at a time, till many a mickle has muddled their
perceptives to the degree which the founder of Buddhism would have
called the first stage of Nirvana — indifference to earthly concernments
in general. The trapper then approaches and collects his guests, whose

QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

605

exalted feelings often manifest themselves in a peculiar way. Some
receive their captor with open arms, some hug their bottles with ap-

Fig. 9 —The Wages op Sin.

probative grunts, while others lie on the ground, contemplating the
sky in ecstatic silence.

Practical naturalists are generally the most successful trappers, for
Lord Bacon is probably right, that observation is quite as prolific a
mother of inventions as necessity. Only observation could have re-
vealed the fact that little song-birds can be attracted by the sight of a
bird of prey. A common chicken-hawk will serve that purpose. Fasten
a tame hawk to a bush, and before the end of an hour all the finches
and thrushes in the township will find it out and meet in general
convention — an indignation-meeting, perhaps — though it is hard to
understand what they can hope to accomplish against an enemy who
could kill a score of them in ten minutes. But the experiment never
fails : a hawk, an eagle, but especially a ferocious-looking old horn-
owl, will allure birds at a time when they would disdain to neglect
their domestic business for the sake of any tidbit. An owl-riot they
seem to consider as a sort of public duty which must take precedence

6o6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of all other affairs, for even migratory birds will stoop from their
flight through air and light to screech around an old night-spectre.
In Northern Italy, where game is scarce, every farmer has a tame buba

: , :- '

Fig. 10.— Decoy Owls.

and a potful of bird-lime, and thousands of northern songsters, hasten-
ing fondly home from their winter-quarters on the Mediterranean, fall
a victim to their ruling passion and perish in exile — " butchered to
make a Roman holiday."

"NATURAL RELIGION."

A STUDY IN THE GROWTH OP SCIENTIFIC MORALITY.

By R. W. BOODLE.

II.

k now
Its writer
is clearly himself a believer in supernaturalism, if not as very tangi-
ble, yet as an underlying possibility. He begins by stating the prob-

TIIE preliminary discussion of last month enables us to speak
more directly of the work on " Natural Religion."

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 607

lem before us: "Two opposite theories of the universe are in con-
flict. On the one side is the greatest of all affirmations, on the
other the most fatal of all negations. There never yet was a con-
troversy which was not trivial in comparison with this. It is cruel
trifling to speak of compromise, it is waste of time to draw verbal
distinctions." And then, after two hundred pages of verbal distinc-
tions, many of which are really no better, a compromise is effected
upon the basis of natural religion, which is also natural Christian-
ity without its supernaturalism. But the writer has no wish to de-
ceive either himself or his readers, and concludes, " Who will not
say that a supernatural religion, supplementing a natural one, may
be precious, nay, perhaps indispensable?" And indispensable he
shows it to be, from his own point of view : " When the supernatural
does not come in to overwhelm the natural and turn life upside down,
when it is admitted that religion deals in the first instance with the
known and the natural, then we may well begin to doubt whether the
known and the natural can suffice for human life. No sooner do we
try to think so, than pessimism raises its head. ... A moral paralysis
creeps upon us. . . . Supernatural Religion met this want by connect-
ing Love and Righteousness with eternity. If it is shaken, how shall
its place be supplied ? And what would Natural Religion avail then ? "
We have, then, to remember that this attempt to establish a harmony
between orthodoxy and the votaries of art and science, upon the mini-
mum basis of a faith without a personal God and without miracles, is
a compromise honestly offered by one who himself apparently still
cherishes these beliefs. It is a fair attempt to arrive at some under-
standing by sinking out of sight the points upon which people differ,
and by bringing into prominence their points of agreement.

As I suppose that most of my readers have either read this book
or intend to do so, anything like a full account of its contents here
will be unnecessary. It will not, however, be out of place to attempt
a slight sketch of its general argument and conclusions. Our author
begins by pointing to the divinity of nature as the common ground
between Clmstianity and science. The real issue is not between the-
ism and atheism, for science is in a veiy real sense a theology, and
believers in nature have many of the feelings of Christians for their
deity. Thus, we have a natural theology ; it will widen into a nat-
ural religion, when the science of the relation of the universe to hu-
man ideals has grown up ; and this science, upon a purely natural
basis, is fast constructing itself. Defining worship as " habitual and
permanent admiration," he sees nothing to fear in the gospels of art
and humanity. Just as the gospel of science is an allotropic form of
mediaeval theology, so is the gospel of art the revival of Greek pagan-
ism under altered conditions, and the gospel of humanity that of Chris-
tianity. Each is, to some individuals, a faith in itself, because it lifts
them above mere materialism, above conventionalism, above the ordi-

608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nary run of men ; in short, above what our author calls, boldly, athe-
ism. "An atheist, in the proper sense of the word," he writes, " is not
a man who disbelieves in the goodness of God, or in His distinctness
from Nature, or in His personality. These disbeliefs may be as seri-
ous in their way as atheism, but they are different. Atheism is a dis-
belief in the existence of God — that is, a disbelief in any regularity in
the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties."
The religion of the future must combine all three worships. In the
individual the results will be practically equivalent to culture, in the
aggregate to civilization. The ideal of antiquity was one of separate
nationalities, with separate religions ; the ideal of the middle ages was
an imperial state and a catholic church. The two ideals will be com-
bined in the church and state of the future. The writer points out
very clearly the connection between the spirit of nationality and the
spirit of religion. The church of the future will be missionary, carry-
ing its faith into uncivilized Asia and Africa ; it will be undogmatic,
it may even be without a temple, but it will not be without worship,
for we have objects for this in nature on its various sides. He thus
takes occasion to correct a very common misconcejition with regard to
nature :

" It is often said that, when you substitute Nature for God, you
take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness. Un-
doubtedly much less of love and goodness can be discovered in Nature
than Christians see in God. But when it is said that there are no
such qualities in Nature, that Nature consists of relentless and ruth-
less laws, that Nature knows nothing of forgiveness, and inexorably
exacts the utmost penalty for every transgression, a confusion is
made between two different meanings which may be given to the
word Nature. We are concerned here with Nature as opposed 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 such laws as are inferred from
experiences so exceptional and isolated as to be difficult of verifica-
tion. 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 piti-
less, 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 courts in which the claims of
individuals are weighed with careful skill. There are laws under
which churches and philanthropical societies are formed, under which
misery is sought out and relieved, and every evil that can be discov-
ered in the world is redressed. Nature, in the sense in which we are
now using the word, includes humanity, and therefore, so far from be-
ing pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole human fam-

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 609

ily, and all the pity that they have accumulated and, as it were, capi-
talized in institutions, political, social, and ecclesiastical, through count-
less generations" (pp. 65, 06).

The writer thus looks upon natural theology as the " true deduc-
tion of the laws that govern the universe," as the " science of the rela-
tion of the universe to human ideals," and the following are some of
\ the questions that it has to answer : " Is there a reward for virtue '?
Is there a condensation for undeserved misery ? Is there a sure retri-
bution for crime ? ... In one word, is life worth having, and the Uni-
verse a habitable place for one in whom the sense of duty has been
awakened?" (p. 61). On the other hand, natural religion is "worship
of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship," it "is
no mere dull morality, for in the first place it is far wider than any
morality, being as wide as modern culture, and in the second place, so
far as it is moral and bears fruit in morality, even here it is no mere
morality, but an historic religion of humanity" (p. 172). It is "the
principle by which alone life is redeemed from secularity and animal-
ism." " Thus, instead of saying that the substance of religion is mo-
rality, and the effect of it moral goodness, we lay it down that the
substance of religion is culture, and the fruit of it the higher life " (p.
138).

The strong point of such a system as this lies in its fully recog-
nizing the facts of spiritual development that the review of the past
thirty years reveals, viz. : that the religion of the churches is but one
among other religions of the present day ; that the work, heretofore
done by religion, in raising the general tone of life, is now really being
accomplished by the separate influences that are summed up in what
we call modern civilization. But along with religion in the old sense
went something more. Part of its charm lay in the light it threw on
the darkness which encompassed men's lives. "So seems the life of
man," said one of the early English converts to Christianity, "as a
sparrow's flight through the hall when you are sitting at meat in
winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the icy rain-
storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a mo-
ment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying forth
from the other vanishes into the wintry dai-kness whence it came. So
tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before
it, what after it, we know not. If this new teaching tells us aught
certainly of these, let us follow it." Thus religion acquired part of
its hold on the minds of men by ministering to their growing desire
for knowledge. But the completion of knowledge only leads to the
realization of our own ignorance, and the gospel of science with re-
gard to the Unknowable is but the echo of the words of Hooker, that
" oitr soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed
he is, neither can know him, and our safest eloquence concerning him
is our silence."

vol. xxii. — 39

6io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The chief objection that any naturalistic scheme of religion has to
encounter comes from those who, applying the language of jurispru-
dence to every-day life, urge that the three terms, command, duty,
and sanction, are inseparably connected ; that command and duty are
correlative terms ; that, wherever a duty lies, a command has been sig-
nified. Such arguers refuse to recognize in a religion without some
supreme will constraining a religion at all. Thus Canon Liddon *
calls religion " essentially a relation to a person. . . . Religion con-
sists fundamentally in the practical recognition of a constraining bond
between the inward life of man and an unseen Person ; ... the main-
tenance of a real relation with the personal God, or with a Divine
Person really incarnate in Jesus Christ." The same objection appears
in a slightly altered form in pages of the London " Spectator," in the
course of a discussion upon natural religion, suggested by the work
before us :

" We do not differ from this able writer in thinking that there is
such a thing as 'natural religion,' but we do differ from him when
he asserts there is such a thing for one who declines, or is unable, to
discover in the universe traces of a superphysical, we would rather
say, than a supernatural, Power — that is, traces of a power to mold
and modify that in nature which is physical, in the direction and for
the purposes of that in nature which is not physical, but mental and
moral. There is no end of ' natural religion ' in the mere discovery of
human free-will, for that is the discovery that the adamantine chain
of physical necessity has been and is interrupted by the will of man
itself — a discovery utterly inconsistent with the favorite scientific
view. There is no end of ' natural religion ' in the discovery of con-
science, that there is a moral obligation on us to do this rather than
that — an obligation from which it is simply impossible to escape, with-
out bringing on ourselves an unappeasable remorse, and a sense of
conscious unworthiness from which it is impossible to dissociate the
conviction of invisible condemnation and displeasure. There is no end
of natural Christianity in the discovery that Christ is an ideal infinite-
ly and hopelessly above and beyond us, and yet full of power to draw
us upward, if we will, toward himself. But there is, to our minds,
nothing worthy of the name of natural religion or natural Christian-
ity at all that does not promise us guidance and excite in us trust. . . .
The author of ' Ecce Homo ' seems to us content to find a natural
religion in that which is neither natural nor religious — not natural,
because, in spite of the paradox, it is in the highest sense natural to
man to lean on something beyond Nature ; not religious, because re-
ligion means something which is binding, something which we can
not in our hearts defy, and we can in our hearts defy any power which
only threatens us with extinction, and does not threaten us with inex-
tinguishable remorse."

* " Some Elements of Religion."

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 611

We may pass over the first objection to natural religion, viz., that
it is not natural, because the argument appears a mere play upon
words. Natural religion is called so because it differs from super-
natural religion ; because it is the religion that is deducible solely
from the course of Nature, from the observance of the laws that gov-
ern the world in which we live. But it is also objected that the relig-
ion inculcated by civilization without supernaturalism is one that is
not binding, one which ice can in our hearts defy.

But are virtue, truth, and love less realities in life because we have
dissociated from them the mythology in which they were originally
bodied forth to the primitive mind — the clothes which were originally
wrapped around them ? Listen to the eloquent words of a recent
writer : " We must suffer with Christ whether we believe in Him or not.
We must suffer for the sin of others as for our own, and in this suffer-
ing we find a healing and purifying power and element. This is what
gives to Christianity, in its simplest and most unlettered form, its
force and life. Sin and suffering for sin ; a sacrifice, itself mysterious,
offered mysteriously to the Divine Nemesis, or Law of Sin — dread,
undefined, unknown, yet sure and irresistible, with the iron necessity
of law. . . . Virtue, truth, love, are not mere names ; they stand for
actual qualities which are well known and recognized among men.
These qualities are the elements of an ideal life, of that absolute and
perfect life of which our highest culture can catch but a glimpse. As
Mr. Hobbes has traced the individual man up to the perfect state, or
Civitas, let us work still lower, and trace the individual man from small
origins to the position he at present fills. We shall find that he has
attained any position of vantage he may occupy by following the laws
which our instinct and conscience tell us are Divine." *

Yes ! these laws are divine — not because we can see the legislator,
not because they were supported in the past by supernaturalism ; but
because they rest upon our subjective consciousness, supported by sci-
ence, by poetry, and the history of the life of man upon the earth ;
because they are vouched for by voices, of the wise in all ages, and
because they have become part of ourselves. And we have to obey
these laws, not because we fear punishment in another woi-ld, but be-
cause the violation of them is followed by remorse and disaster in
this ; we have to do right, because it is right, because we can only
attain the full perfection of our natures by doing so, because human-
ity will have it so. Mr. Mallock pointed out that, while science has
reduced the earth to insignificance, has robbed it of its glory as the
center of the universe, and man of his boasted eminence as the special
pet of the Creator, still an intense self-consciousness has been devel-
oped in the modern world. " During the last few generations man
has been curiously changing. Much of his old spontaneity of action
has gone from him. He has become a creature looking before and

* " John Inglesant," chapters xxiii, xxxix.

612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

after, and his native hue of resolution has heen sicklied over by
thought." True, and with this increase of self-consciousness have in-
creased the binding force of the subjective feelings upon which right
and wrong depend ; we expect more of ourselves, and we expect more
of our fellow-men. " Three hundred years before " (I am quoting
again from Mr. Shorthouse), " in the child-like unconsciousness of
spiritual conflict which the unquestioned rule of Rome for so long
produced, it had been possible, in the days of Boccaccio, for cultivated
and refined society to shut itself up in some earthly paradise, and, sur-
rounded by horrors and by death, to spend its days in light wit and
anecdote, undisturbed in mind, and kept in bodily health by cheerful
enjoyment ; but the time for such possibilities as these had long gone
by." And if this was true of life in the seventeenth century, as com-
pared with the fourteenth, with how much greater force does it apply
to life in the nineteenth century !

I will approach the same subject from another point of view. It
is possible to allow — in fact, it is impossible to deny — that conscience
has not lost its force, notwithstanding the apparent weakening of the
supernaturalism to which it has been usual to ascribe its origin and
binding force. But the necessity of recognizing some supreme per-
sonal will is often urged as a mental necessity, at least as a convenient
theory. If the Supreme Being did not exist, it would be necessary
to invent him. We can often see our own fallacies in a clearer light
by comparing them with modes of thought in the past, now recognized
to be no longer sound. And this struck me very forcibly the other
day when I was reading Dante's pleading for the maintenance of the
supreme power of the emperor in the middle ages. These arguments,
I thought, in the " Be Monarchia," are exactly the arguments we hear
urged every day in favor of the existence of a personal will in the
government of the universe. Yet it may be possible that, as society
has managed to exist and to improve without the existence of the
former, so our moral and religious life will continue practically unal-
tered without the conscious recognition of the latter. I will illustrate
by extracts.

Dante points out what may be called the physical necessity for a
single monarch : " Since the whole heaven is regulated with one mo-
tion, to wit, that of the primum mobile, and by one mover, who is
God, in all its parts, movements, and movers (and this human reason
readily seizes from science) ; therefore, if our argument be correct,
the human race is at its best state when, both in its movements and in
regard to those who move it, it is regulated by a single Prince, as by
the single movement of heaven, and by one law, as by a single motion.
Therefore, it is evidently necessary for the welfare of the world for
there to be a Monarchy, a single Princedom, which men call the Em-
pire." *

* (i

De Monarchia," Book I, chap. ix.

"NATURAL RELIGIONS 613

In the same manner he shows that justice and order depend upon
the stability of the imperial power : " Justice is strongest in the
world when it is in one who is most willing and most powerful ; only
the Monarch is this ; therefore, only when Justice is in the Monarch is
it strongest in the world. ... All concord depends on unity which is
in wills ; the human race, when it is at its best, is a kind of concord ;
for as one man at his best is a kind of concord, and as the like is true
of the family, the city, and the kingdom ; so is it of the whole human
race. Therefore, the human race at its best depends on the unity
which is in will. But this can not be unless there be one will to be
the single mistress and regulating influence of all the rest. And this
can not be unless there is one prince over all, whose will shall be the
mistress and regulating influence of all the others. But if all these
conclusions be true, as they are, it is necessary for the highest welfare
of the human race that there should be a Monarch in the world ; and,
therefore, Monarchy is necessary for the good of the world." *

It is curious to remark that for a moment Dante seems to have
caught sight of the modern point of view in regard to supreme power
in the political and religious world. He is arguing against the medi-
aeval symbolism which saw in the sun and moon the types of the two
great powers on earth : "Seeing that these two kinds of power are, in
a sense, accidents of men, God woidd tints appear to have used a per-
verted order, by producing the accidents before the essence to which they
belong existed.'''' In the same way we should argue, extending the
terms, that before the essential point of government in the political
and religious world, viz., order and morality, became distinctly con-
scious in the minds of men, their accidents, the divine state and the
divine Church, came into being. This view, however, he summarily
rejects : " It is ridiculous to say this of God. For the two great
lights were created on the fourth day, while man was not created till
the sixth day, as is evident in the text of Scripture." f

The real secret of the persistence of the supernatural in an age of
science is the tacit allowance that "what can not be demonstrated by
observation not to exist may be taken as existing for purposes of edi-
fication." I For many years to come we shall probably continue to
meet in the same communities with what would at first appear to be
strange inconsistencies. Thus, at the end of August, Montreal was
welcoming with open arms the high-priests of the new faith, the lead-
ers of the American scientific world. Little more than a fortnight
afterward, they were expressing their devout gratitude to the Giver of
all good for enabling British soldiers to crush the wretched Egyptian,
and add to the luster and renown of British arms.* And to those who

* " De Monarchia," Book I, chaps, xi-xv. f Ibid., Book III, chap. iv.
X Leslie Stephen.

* On September 16th a resolution was passed by a public meeting of the citizens of
Montreal, expressing " devoted loyalty to her Majesty's crown and Government," and

6i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have faith in the future of humanity, in the eventual evolution of a
verifiable and complete science of life, such a mixture of the strands
of religious consciousness will cause no uneasiness. For just as the ear-
liest scientific psychology cheerfully recognized the two sides of the
human mind — the rational and the irrational — as equally necessary,
equally human, so in an altered sense we may say that the religion of
humanity, as it springs from the human heart, must not only take cog-
nizance of its justifiable aspirations, but of those hopes and fears also
which in a strict sense of the word we might be tempted to call irra-
tional, as in no sense founded on reason, if not in direct antagonism
with it. Yet, we are not, for all that, obliged to postulate an essence
above and beyond human reason, as the cause of these emotions and
sentiments. Rather, they are the gropings of the human spirit in its
efforts — efforts ever to be renewed and ever baffled — to comprehend
the Unknowable. " Poor men, most admirable, most pitiable," cries
" A Voice from the Nile " —

"... man

Has fear and hope and fantasy and awe

And wistful yearnings and unsated loves

That strain beyond the limits of his life,

And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell ;

This Man, the admirable, the pitiable."'

And therefore, we may add, recognizing the fact as fully as the ad-
herents of the old faith, therefore does man differ from the other ani-
mals. But none the less are we bound to recognize also that in this
special sphere, in religion, whose function it was to raise men above
themselves by raising their thoughts to something higher than them-
selves, the center of gravity, so to speak, has changed. To the ancient
mind, the highest truth lay in the region of idea ; to the modern mind,
in the world of fact. The religion of men in the middle ages was
their poetry, their science, their consolation for the ills of life ; it made
mankind better, but did not consciously aim at making the world a
better place to dwell in ; their eyes were turned to a resting-place
above, for which life on earth was at best a school of discipline. The
supposition upon which these beliefs rested, "that our living nature
will continue after death,"* we can rest upon with confidence no
longer— it is at best but an aspiration ; and our religion is nothing if it
does not aim at the improvement of the world in which we live, if it
does not ground itself upon a basis of fact. Yet, even so, the best
advice is probably that of the great master of human wisdom, who,

resolving that " we express our devout gratitude to Almighty God, the Giver of all good,
for the brilliant successes granted to the British arms in Egypt ; that we rejoice that our
forces have by their courage and devotion added to the luster and renown which British
valor has achieved in all quarters of the globe." The resolutions "were all carried
unanimously, amid enthusiastic cheering."
* Butler' l; " Analogy," conclusion to Part I.

VIVISECTION AND PRACTICAL MEDICINE. 615

living long years ago before the hubbub of Christian and anti-Christian
controversy, exhorted us not to follow the advice of those who bid us
tame down our aspirations to our mortal condition, but as far as possi-
ble to think the thoughts of immortals, and to live in our every act up
to the noblest part within us.*

■++*--

VIVISECTION AND PEACTICAL MEDICINE.

By G. F. YEO, F. E. C. S.,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN KING'S COLLEGE.

OVER and over again we have been challenged by the opponents
of science to give " one conclusive example where experiment
has been of direct use to practical medicine." To any one familiar
with the history of scientific medicine there can be no difficulty in
finding numerous such instances, and, as a matter of fact, many exam-
ples have from time to time been given by various writers ; but to
make these cases satisfactory and conclusive to persons who know but
little, and do not care to know more, of the true bearings of the ques-
tion, is a very difficult matter. Such a test is totally wrong and mis-
leading when applied to the utility of experiment on the lower ani-
mals. The matter must be viewed from a wider stand-point than that
embracing only single instances of direct benefits accruing from spe-
cific experiments.

The primary object of experimental research is to advance physi-
ology— the science which teaches us the uses of the various organs
and textures of the body in the normal state, and how the working of
the animal economy is carried on in health. The value of physiology
depends on the knowledge it gives us of the normal operations of the
body, and not on the few cases in which certain experiments happen
to aid us in understanding disease, and thus directly promote the
practice of the healing art. Our argument is rather this : Physiology
is the foundation of both pathology and therapeutics, which together
make up medicine ; and therefore rational medicine depends directly
upon physiology for its strong growth and genuine progress.

Now, physiology can not advance without vivisection ; experiment
on living animals is as essential to its progress (though far less general
in application) as is dissection for the study of anatomy. Therefore,
experimental research, including that carried out on living animals, is
as necessary for the progress of the practice of medicine as is experi-
mental research in any other science for its advancement and appli-
cation to daily life. The immediate object of physiological experi-
ment is, then, not to make out new practical methods of treating dis-

* Aristotle's " Nic. Ethics," Book X, chap, vii, § 8.

616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ease, but rather to attain to a more complete and sound understanding
of those general laws which govern the actions of the living body in
health — laws which must ever form the only firm basis of the knowledge
of disease, and the only sure guide to judicious modes of treatment.

The rational practice of physic, as it is carried on in the present
day, is in a great measure the outgrowth of a slowly growing physio-
logical science, upon which it depends, and from which it can not be
separated. There is hardly a thought that can strike a practitioner
that does not in some way depend upon physiological facts which have
been elicited by experimental research. I do not mean to state that
the accurate and painstaking observation of clinical facts and post-
mortem appearances has not done much — probably more than any-
thing else — to bring our medical knowledge to its present stand-point ;
but I contend that clinical observation and post-mortem experience
without physiological research would never have been able to advance
medicine to the position it holds in modern times ; and, on the other
hand, I believe that physiological study, even unaided, could arrive at
a rational system of treatment. No doubt both clinical study and
pathological observation have not only helped practical medicine on-
ward, but they have also greatly contributed to the progress of physi-
ology itself. In fact, I find it impossible to separate exact clinical
and pathological work from scientific research of a purely physiological
nature. Is not all treatment more or less experiment ? And is not
this particularly true of purely empirical treatment? Nowadays,
where is the pathological laboratory in which a mere record of post-
mortem changes in the human subject is not aided by experimental
inquiry into pathological changes in the lower animals ?

In assigning to each department of medical study its due meed of
credit, their relative ages must be borne in mind. It has been asserted
that all the improvements brought about by experimental research
would have been introduced with equal certainty had experiment on
living animals never been attempted. Observation, experience, and
thought would have attained all the results we now enjoy. Possibly
so ; but when ? Clinical observation can be traced back some three
or four thousand years, and even then it started with a rich legacy of
traditional knowledge. Experimental physiology as a science was
only born about a hundred years ago. If we compare the progress
made by medicine during the last hundred years with that of the pre-
vious thousand years, we shall be able to judge of the relative rates
of progress of the two systems of working. The difference seems to
me to lie in the fact that unaided clinical observation — that is, prac-
tically the empiric method — goes the wrong way about arriving at a
conclusion. It says, Try this or that or the other remedy, and note
which is successful. This is like a boy who will not systematically
work out his sum in long division, but prefers to arrive at the quotient
by guessing probable numbers one after the other, and multiplies them

VIVISECTION AND PRACTICAL MEDICINE. 617

to see which is the right one ; he may, after much trouble, by chance
hit upon the correct answer, but he more commonly fails : and most
probably the boy who works out his sum in the straightforward way
will far sooner arrive at the desired result. Physiology moves onward
by means of accumulating and arranging facts which have borne the
test of experiment. Empiricism accumulates observations which,
without further test, are used to formulate theories that, as likely as
not, are unfounded, and are as apt to mislead as to advance medical
knowledge. When asked to give an example of the utility of experi-
mental physiology in the treatment of disease, I feel inclined to an-
swer with another question : Is there one reliable system of diagnosis
or one mode of treatment now in use which has not been modified or
improved, if not directly suggested, by physiological knowledge ?
And I must certainly confess that I know none. Before attempting
to bring forward single cases, as instances where certain experiments
have been of direct use to medical and sui'gical practice, I shall ex-
amine the question from the opposite stand-point, by taking some simple
case of every-day occurrence, and glancing at its routine examination
and treatment. We can then see to what extent vivisection influences
the practitioner in the details of his daily work. We may safely take
a case at random ; one not associated very closely in our minds with
any brilliant experimentation will, perhaps, be the best. The follow-
ing case, which I happen to have seen recently, will do as well as any
other :

Not long since I found a policeman examining a poor woman who
was said to have had a " stroke." She lay speechless and motionless
on a door-step ; she showed no signs of convulsions, no stertorous
breathing, no frothing at the mouth. So the policeman hesitated to
make a diagnosis — thinking, no doubt, that other causes besides a
" stroke " might give rise to such a want of muscular irritability.
Gently shaking her had no effect, but on his applying some form of
stimulus to the finger she showed signs of returning consciousness, and
the left leg and arm moved slightly. The right eye remained partly
open, the other was closed ; when the eyelid was raised, so as to ex-
pose the pupil to the sunshine, some movement of the muscles of
expression was observable, but only on the left half of the face, to
which side the mouth was slightly drawn. This became more obvious
when some drops of cold water were thrown at her. The pulsation
of the temporal artery was visible. Putting my ear to the top of her
chest I found the heart beating violently, and heard a prolonged blow-
ing noise instead of the sharp, clear tone of the second heart-sound.
Without much effort my thoughts had passed from the pulsating tem-
poral artery to the heart, and from the imperfect aortic valves to the
middle cerebral artery, where I fancied an embolus must be impacted.
I told the policeman the woman had better be taken to a hospital,
which was done accordingly.

618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

How was it that I was able confidently to advise the policeman
about this poor woman, though he was no doubt very experienced in
this sort of cases? What aid did experimental inquiry give me in
arriving at my conclusion ?

Well, in the first place, I knew that the paralysis was restricted to
voluntary movements, without the motions belonging to organic life
being in the least interfered with. Vivisections of the earliest times
informed me that this was quite possible as a result of some injury of
the nerve-centers, and experiments of more recent date enabled me to
exclude a large part of these centers from being the seat of the lesion.
That there was no local injury of the spinal cord in the dorsal region
I knew, both from the loss of consciousness and from the fact that the
I'eflex action of the lower limbs was not intensified, and vivisections in-
formed me they would have become so had this been the case. I could
see by the movement of the left leg that only one side of the body
was paralyzed ; and then the look of the face distinctly showed that
part of the seventh cranial nerve, which Charles Bell's vivisections
taught me to know to be motor in function, was paralyzed. This fact,
together with the ready reflex action of the eyes and the sound side of
the face, which I knew by vivisection required unimpaired sensory
nerves, showed me that it could not be a case of profound toxaemia
such as the policeman supposed to be possible. I knew by vivisec-
tions performed by many English physicians and physiologists, some
of whom are still among us, that the second heart-sound depended on
a certain action of the aortic valves. Not hearing the familiar sound,
I concluded that the aortic valves must be diseased. Experiments on
living animals concerning coagulation of the blood within the vessels
informed me that when the lining coat of a blood-vessel, or the heart,
is diseased, little clots are often formed at the diseased or injured part.
I knew, further, from Virchow's classical experiments on living ani-
mals, that emboli introduced into the arterial blood-current often be-
come impacted in the middle cerebral artery, and that the embolic
blocking of a brain-artery, by shutting off the blood from the area it
supplied, caused a sudden arrest of function of the part. Although the
nerves going to the various paralyzed muscles arose from very differ-
ent regions of the cord and brain, I know by vivisections that there is
a part of the cortex of the brain the injury of which would cause them
all to be powerless. Clinical observation and pathological anatomy
would have informed me that it was probably a brain-lesion ; but, had
it not been for the light thrown by vivisection on the few facts I was
able thus hurriedly to observe, I should not have been much wiser than
any other by-stander, and could only have agreed with them that it was
a " stroke " of paralysis.

Now let us consider a surgical case. The other day I mentioned
some of the old methods of operation, when buttons of vitriol, caus-
tics, steel compresses, boiling oil, hot irons, a copious receptacle for

VIVISECTION AND PRACTICAL MEDICINE. 619

catching the blood, and elaborate machines, such as those on the
table, were among the apparatus the surgeon had to prepare for opera-
tion.

Let us now turn to a modern operation, and let us consider whether
our present modus operandi is influenced by the light which experi-
mental inquiry has shed on physiology during the last century. I
shall not attempt to recount any one of the numerous cases which the
surgeon now approaches with perfect confidence of undoubted success,
although a comparatively short time back they would have been
looked upon as completely beyond his reach. Many such cases, which
formerly would have led either to certain death, enduring misery, or
life-long inconvenience, must occur to the minds of all here. Let us
take a case of disease or injury requiring the amputation of a portion
of an extremity. In the first place the patient is made quite insen-
sible to pain by the administration of chloroform, or some such drug ;
not only is he insensible to pain, but also unconscious to all that he
formerly would have been obliged to see and hear, by no means the
least painful part of the operation. With regard to the use of anaes-
thetics, I shall not delay, for vivisection can not claim to be the sole
means of introducing this great boon to modern surgery, although ex-
periment on living animals played a most prominent part both in their
discovery and their introduction into common use in this country, as
has been frequently pointed out.

The next step in the operation is to make the part bloodless. This
can be done in the following way : By holding up the limb for some
time to facilitate the flow of blood from the veins, and thus to reduce
the blood-pressure within these vessels, by which means the local vaso-
motor mechanisms are brought into play with considerable force, so as
to reduce the quantity of blood in the limb, allowing only a limited
flow to continue. Then Esmarch's elastic bandage may be applied to
further empty the minute blood-vessels. By this means the textures
to be cut into may be made to remain, during the active part of the
operation, as bloodless as those of a corpse. The advantage of having
no dread of hemorrhage to induce haste, no blood to impede the view,
or render the instruments difficult to handle, can hardly be overesti-
mated. So that, even apart from the all-important point of prevent-
ing the weakly patient losing blood, this bloodless surgery must be
regarded as one of the most important improvements in modern meth-
ods. And how far may it be traced to vivisection ? We know that
the contractility of the blood-vessels, and the high pressure of the
blood in the arteries, as well as the motions of the heart and the
course of the blood, were demonstrated by this means ; and is not this
the key of the whole matter ? But, further, were we not familiar by
vivisections, and by the removal of tissues from the bodies of recently
killed animals, with the fact that the textures can retain their life and
function for a considerable period after their normal circulation has

62o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceased, who would have dared to suggest that the entire limb of a liv-
ing man should be deprived of its blood during the time occupied by
a tedious operation ?

Then, with regard to the means of permanently arresting the es-
cape of blood from the wounded vessels. We have no longer a recep-
tacle for blood ; indeed, the handful of sawdust on the floor that was
fashionable when I began medicine is no longer used. John Bell,
after giving a graphic and fearful account of the terrors of haemor-
rhage, says: "Is not this fear of haemorrhagy always uppermost in the
mind of the young surgeon ? Were this one danger removed, would
he not go forward in his profession almost without fear ? " I do not
think this fear ever crosses the mind of the young surgeon now, so
rare are deaths from external haemorrhage. I have never seen one
death from such loss of blood in the twenty years that have passed
since I first commenced to study medicine. Why has the dread of
bleeding ceased to chill the heart of the surgeon when entering on an
operation? Vivisection has not done all, but it has done much to
help us to attain to this degree of excellence in our present methods.

The use of the ligature can be traced so far back in the history of
medicine that it is impossible to say whether it was first used upon
man or animals. Very definite accounts of it occur in the writings of
the Arabians of the tenth or twelfth century. Although its value, or
rather its great convenience, in military surgery was recognized and
extolled by Ambroise Pare, the inestimable value of the ligature re-
mained unknown in general pi'actice for nearly a hundred years after
his time. This was, no doubt, partly on account of the fact that ex-
periment was not used to test its efficacy and mode of action until
comparatively recently. By vivisections the chief errors in its appli-
cation were by slow degrees removed, and now we rest almost exclu-
sively on the improved method of tying arteries as the means of
arresting the flow of blood from a recent wound. First of all, the
nerves used to be included in the ligature. Vivisection showed the
folly of thus attempting to confine the animal spirits, or nervous fluid,
and practice proved that thus tying the nerves always caused excru-
ciating agony, and often gave rise to fatal spasms (tetanus), which
made ligature to be dreaded even by its warmest advocates. In the
second place, the wide ligatures which were made of soft material
and lightly tied over corks, etc., often failed to check the bleeding.
Dr. John Thomson, of Edinburgh, was among the first who made ex-
periments on this subject, and I believe much of the credit given to
Jones really belongs to him. Following the precepts taught by
Thomson, Jones also made numerous experiments on animals. He
found that a hard, thin ligature, applied so as to cut the elastic inner
coats and leave the tough outer wall of the vessel uninjured, was
much more surely followed by a deposit of " coagulable lymph," and
by more satisfactory occlusion of the vessel, than when one or several

VIVISECTION AND PRACTICAL MEDICINE. 621

soft bands were tied lightly on it. This fact hardly gained the uni-
versal and complete confidence of surgeons until further vivisections
performed by Lister, Briicke, and others, showed that the smooth lin-
ing of the vessel was the chief factor in preventing coagulation, and
that intravascular clots are formed most readily when the lining of
the vessel was injured and the blood ceased to move. Instead of
timidly tying a loose knot for fear of injuring the vessel, the surgeon
now ties a firm ligature so as to rupture its lining coat, or at least to
apply sufficient pressure to cut off its nutrition and thus cause its death
in order to make a starting-point for the coagulation which must occur
to secure its permanent closure.

Another great objection to the old ligatures was the delay they
caused in coming away. This wearied the surgeon and exhausted the
patient. The ligature was sometimes pulled away before its time, and
this often gave rise to the much-dreaded secondary haemorrhage. In
counseling that the ligature be left alone, Petit adds the remark, as a
kind of consolation, that he finds them generally to come away of
themselves in about two or three months. Of this sort of annoyance
we hear nothing now. Experiment on the lower animals has taught
us the existence of the lymphatics and their absorbing power. Ex-
periments upon living animals has shown us that this power of absorb-
ing extends to such things as catgut, a material readily made into
strong cords. Properly prepared catgut is, therefore, almost univer-
sally used as a ligature, the ends are cut off short, and the knot is left
to be absorbed, and never once thought of again.

And, lastly, the edges of the wound are brought together with
stitches of silver wire, silk, catgut, horse-hair, according to whether
much or little traction or more or less coaptation is demanded. Un-
due tension, compression, gaping, and irregularity of the wounded
part, are all avoided ; a means of exit for serous oozing, etc., is pro-
vided by non-irritating drainage-tubes. The antiseptic dressings are
applied carefully and exactly. Large tents, dossils of lint, rude com-
presses are not thought of. The aseptic wound heals without swell-
ing or inflammation. No throb disturbs the patient's rest. No drop
of pus comes from the cut surface. Fever, tetanus, pyaemia, second
haemorahage, as well as the old dread of the bleeding during the oper-
ation, are all nearly forgotten.

To the minds of the surgeons of the last century such a method of
operation and such a mode of healing would probably suggest the
longed-for magic remedies by means of which many hoped to replace
the cauteries, caustics, compresses, and filthy dressings with which they
strove to heal the open wTounds of their exhausted and cachectic
patients. — Lancet.

622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EVOLUTION OF THE CAMP-MEETING.

By JOSEPH PAEEISH, M. D.

HALF a century ago, camp-meetings were chiefly the outgrowth
of Methodist zeal and enthusiasm. They were a sort of re-
ligious holiday, when good men and women who were loyal to their
convictions, and earnest to disseminate the truth as they understood
and believed it, came from far and near, in sparsely settled regions of
country, to kindle afresh in the hearts of each other the fervor and
inspiration of their peculiar dogmas and methods.

Ox-teams and hay-wagons, the old-fashioned chaise and chair, the
side-saddle and cart, were among the means employed to reach the
place of meeting. Many also went on foot, making a long and weary
pilgrimage. Congregations joined each other, employed their own
means of transportation, carrying their own society tent and commis-
sariat ; and thus thousands came together with but one single object
in view, which was, in the language of their distinguished founder,
" to spread holiness throughout these lands." Their greatest preach-
ers were called to join and help them ; and, with characteristic fidelity,
and sacrifice of personal ease, ecclesiastics of highest renown joined
in the simplest and rudest methods of tent-life, and labored with power
and efficiency to bring the thoughtless and wandering to a better and
a higher life.

The preaching was simple, direct, and powerful, and the result was,
large accessions to the church. A camp-meeting was a sort of relig-
ious harvest-home, an in-gathering of fruit from seed that had been
sown during the year, in local churches, as well as from the direct
influence of the special services. In addition to this, old fellowships
were renewed and fraternal interests and greetings were revived, and,
at its close, thousands of the faithful scattered to their homes again,
with renewed assurances that camp-meeting work was a blessing to
themselves and to others. Such was the old-time line of thought and
expression. But now, times have changed. Population has increased
rapidly, facilities for travel have multiplied, the desert and wilderness
have been penetrated by railroads, and the adventurous frontiersman
is not without numerous companionshrps.

Towns and churches have grown up, as the migrating crowds have
moved on in one continuous caravan, until the mountains, and the
Pacific slope beyond them, are already occupied ; and we find pros-
perous settlements of miners, farmers, and adventurers of all kinds
and grades, dwelling in the midst of each other. The fathers in the
olden time would have looked to the West, with its moving multi-
tudes, and planted their tents to capture them ; but modern Method-
ism plants the churches as the people settle, and, to preserve the

EVOLUTION OF THE CAMP-MEETING. 623

camp-meeting feature of the denomination, they seek fields already-
populated and locate themselves in more profitable places. Where
are these places ? The answer to this question discloses a phenomenal
fact, that, could it be announced to them, would bring the scarlet to
the cheek of Wesley, and bow the heads of Asbury and Whitefield
with confusion of face.

The camp-meeting of to-day is a very different affair. It is not an
extemporaneous festival in which the membership of one or more
churches take the lead, select a place of meeting, and invite neighbor-
ing churches to participate in a common service, each bearing its
share of the burden, and then scatter to their homes, to disband and
be as if they had not been. No, it is a very different thing. It is the
fruit of a chartered association, with corporate rights and franchises,
of the same nature as those which belong to banking and railroad
associations. Of course, the corporators are religious men, and the
controlling influence is secured to the ministry. A copy of such a
charter is now before me. It gives the institution its corporate name,
and states its object to be " the establishment and maintenance of a
sea-side resort, founded upon Christian principles, and affording relig-
ious privileges as well as healthful recreation."

Provision is made for the transfer and redemption of stock, for
voting by shares and by proxy, as is usual in other money-making com-
panies. It defines the number of directors, one third of whom shall be
ministers, and one other third shall be ministers and members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Its president " shall be a regularly or-
dained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, having control of
the conventions, assemblies, and other meetings that may, from time
to time, be held on the premises ; and the secretary and treasurer
must give bonds for the faithful performance of their duty — in one
instance, as high as thirty thousand dollars. Is not this an anomaly ?
The camp-meeting feature, if indeed it is prominent enough to be a
feature, is merely incidental to the main object, viz., the establishment
of a sea-side resort. To do this, land must be purchased, stock must
be sold to pay for it, and the pastor-president is to be the executive
officer through whom these conveyances are to be made, and by whom
all the real-estate transactions are to be ratified. The entire time, out
of the three hundred working days of the year, that is to be set aside for
camp-meeting services, is ten days or a fortnight, and the remainder
is occupied with the secular business of the concern. We are largely
indebted to these associations for the grand development they have
made, on the New Jersey coast especially. Witness Ocean Grove,
Ocean City, and Atlantic Highlands. They have taken up coast-lands,
some of which were comparatively worthless, and made them into
fruitful towns, with prosperous and happy peoples. They are to be
credited also with the testimony they have borne to sobriety and good
morals, by preventing the sale of intoxicating liquors within their

624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

boundaries ; but it is a question for them to consider, "whether the
cause of Christianity has been actually benefited by their policy. It
is a question whether the sample preaching of the present camp-meet-
ing style is as effectual as were the direct and incisive appeals of those
whose voices are now hushed in the grave. Is it not more after the
manner of " trial-efforts " '? Which can do the best ? Who can make
the best impression ? It may be ornate, picturesque, and beautiful. It
may captivate the senses and satisfy the taste of the hearers ; but does
it meet the needs of the multitudes who come to hear ?

Again, are immense crowds of people wholesome ? Are there al-
ways vigor and force and efficiency in numbers, unless there is exact
unity ?

In such promiscuous multitudes as crowd the cottages and the
strand, and as go in and out of tents and barracks, coming as they do
from all parts, and representing as they do various grades of social
life, there must be forces and influences that are constantly at work,
and whether their influence is toward the better or worse side of
human nature it is hard to say. They are not all Christian professors,
and they are all human. They are loosed from the restraints of home,
and are on a vacation for pleasure. They are crowded together, and,
in order to be physically healthy and morally pure, their environment
must do much to assist them. In this regard their relation to space
and surroundings should be, if possible, essentially promotive of such
conditions. How is it ? In the number of cottages and tents, espe-
cially those appropriated to cheap boarding, we venture to say that
there are more people lodged and fed than can be found in any equal
number of dwellings in any other city or community of an equal
population of well-to-do people. This is of itself demoralizing. It
is out of harmony with the spirit of the age, which demands freedom
and space, in proportion to population, in a ratio that is overlooked or
disregarded at such sea-side resorts. There is, however, one conserva-
tive and redeeming fact in connection with this practice of promiscu-
ous crowding, and that is, that the season is short and the people live
most of the time out-of-doors. The time is at hand, however, when
there will be a change. It will not be tolerated by a sanitary-wise
people that there shall continue an unwholesome contact of dwellings,
with cess-pools and water- wells within stepping-distance of each other
and from the kitchen-doors. Nor should buildings continue to be so
contiguous that one may walk from roof to roof, under which people
live in contracted apartments, separated by thin board partitions,
which, even for purposes of common privacy and projDriety, are
scarcely sufficient. It is true, and justice demands its utterance, that
later improvements have, to a good extent, avoided these evils, and
that the class of private homes and boarding-houses now being built
are more in accord with a civilization that, at a Christian resort espe-
cially, should be conspicuous.

SEWAGE AT THE SEA-SIDE. 625

The great end of these corporations is to establish and maintain
sea-side resorts ; that is to say, to sell and lease lots and to build houses.
To provide a market and secure competition, conventions of various
kinds meet at these ample grounds, occupy the commodious buildings,
and transact their legitimate business. It is all done in the name of
religion, and may or may not be in fact and in spirit harmonious with
the most exalted standard of Christian methods, according to the out-
look from which the subject is viewed. If we take Ocean Grove as
the type of such places, it is not, after all, so great a marvel that it
has grown from a desolate sand-bank to a beautiful city within the
last twelve years, when we consider the whole case. With missionary
conventions, Sunday-school anniversaries, temperance assemblies, and
camp-meetings, drawing upon an immense constituency in all parts of
the country, and bringing thousands of visitors to the spot, with fair
opportunities for investing money with a good hope of speedy return,
it is not surprising that investments were made. Then, every laud-
able thing was done to rekindle and keep alive denominational pride
and loyalty. The lakes that bound the Grove on the north and south
are named for Wesley and Fletcher, while the avenues and parks are
known by the names of departed worthies, whose memory is revered
by the Church ; and then, to complete the programme of attractions,
the annual camp-meeting, occurring in the height of the holiday season,
is made the central, the pivotal figure around which all the others are
grouped. It has been a success as a venture to establish a sea-side
resort ; whether it has been a success as a means of intensifying and
purifying the religious life of the people is as yet a problem without
a solution. The time is past when even the common mind measures
the depth of human character, and gives it credit or not for truth and
righteousness, by the amount of religious fervor or the degree of re-
ligious profession it may exhibit. To be acceptable to common sense,
and appreciated by right-minded people, the manhood must show
itself moved to all good activities by a force from within that is in-
vincible— a force, in itself silent and unobserved, but in its effect on
character demonstrative in a life of goodness.

-*»♦-

SEWAGE AT THE SEA-SIDE.

By ALICE HYNEMAN EHINE.

A MONG the thousands who go to the sea-side for health and
~L\. pleasure, few pay any attention to the hygienic conditions under
which they are to live for three of the most trying months in the year.
The furniture of parlors and size of dancing-rooms and amusement-
halls are taken into consideration, instead of finding out how sewage

VOL. xxii. — 40

626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

is disposed of and what relations cess-pool drains are having with the
wells. Land-owners and hotel-keepers, following the drift of fashion,
furnish what their patrons desire, neither side caring apparently how
close a connection is established between animal excreta and the food
which is eaten, the water which is drunk, and the air which is breathed.

Nor is this carelessness confined to places merely fashionable. In
Ocean Grove, a religious resort, no attempt has yet been made to
remove fecal accumulations by means of sewerage, or to substitute
cleanly earth-closets for the disgusting cess-pool and privy. Hence
the wells are polluted by human excreta, and the air smells vilely, par-
ticularly during the period of the great open-air camp-meetings.

At these gatherings over twenty thousand people assemble, who
congregate together in a comparatively small space. The greater part
of this multitude dwell in long lines of camp-tents, closely huddled
together, and pay but little regard to hygienic methods. The execu-
tive committee of the association owning the place is equally neglect-
ful, as they have made totally inadequate provision for carrying away
the excreted material of so many people.

For the purpose of insuring better sanitary conditions than those
prevailing elsewhere on the Jersey coast, Asbury Park was sewered,
during the winter and spring of 1882, with eleven miles of clay pipes.
Unfortunately for the traveling public, this sewerage system was a
failure. Constructed in the slap-dash manner that prevails over the
country generally, its working illustrated the fact that an imperfect
sewer for sewage is worse than no sewer at all.

Why this system should not work well is easily understood by
looking at the flat dead level of the Atlantic coast at this point, and
learning that, to assist the discharge of sewage-matter into the ocean,
the sewers have scarcely a fall of one inch in many hundred feet.
Their outlets are built but little above low-water mark ; consequently,
when they get clogged by the tide, which they do except at low
water, their gaseous contents are turned back over the land, to deal out
disease and death in as many ways as Panurge had of making money.

Again, the principal outlet of the sewers empties immediately in
front of and at the foot of the main street ; effluvia from this, during
the months of July and August, were emitted in morbific quantities ;
and, although natural causes prevented any outbreak of virulent
types of disease, physicians were kept busy attending cases of fever,
cramps, and dysentery. While it is admitted that this sewage-stench
per se might not have been the cause of these disorders, yet there is
strong probability of it, when it is considered that the sewage of
Glasgow, although conveyed in barges over twenty-five miles, to a
deep and wide loch out in the country, engendered new types of dis-
ease, and converted one of the healthiest sea-side resorts into a pesti-
lential fever-center.

Some attempt at remedying this condition in Asbury was made by

SEWAGE AT THE SEA-SIDE. 627

erecting ventilators, consisting of vertical wooden pipes, about twelve
feet in height. These chimneys, placed upon sites chosen apparently
without any attention to vertical or horizontal curves in the system,
gave forth such fearful smells that at times the beach in their vicinity
was unendurable. One near the principal promenade was abolished
upon the insistance of hotel proprietors.

This failure added one more to the list of futile experiments which
have been made with tall chimneys, having for their purpose the crea-
tion of a strong draught from the sewer. Tried in England, they are
said never to have worked satisfactorily.

The placing such ventilators, as well as sewers, in a sandy soil, is
always a hazardous experiment. If the principal streets are unpaved,
surface-sand is liable to fill the sewer and choke it. And paving will
not prevent silting up where there is an insufficient fall to allow hy-
drostatic pressure to force out incoming waves and tides. When
egress of sewer-contents is thus checked, " cela va sans dire" the air
is filled with a most dissrustinof stench.

Unhealthy as this contaminated air is, sea-side visitors incur a more
common danger in the pollution of water by sewage. This poisoning
is done in many ways — by close proximity of wells to sewer-drains,
and by flood-water from rain-storms, which, instead of being utilized,
is allowed to flow off along the gutters, sidewalks, and roadways.
Across level lands, down through porous sand, this water sinks un-
checked into the soil, carrying with it all the filth washed from streets
teeming with human life during the hottest months of the year.

Civilization's barbarism makes this the more dangerous through
the custom of crowding pig-sties, cow and stable yards, cess-pools,
and all dirt-receptacles close to springs, wells, and other sources of
drinking-water.

Little or no attention is paid to this dirty practice, on account of
the popular belief that filtration through the sand purifies water of
the poisonous principles contained in sewage-matter. This idea has
been disproved by experiments of the United States Geological Survey
in 1881. Results were then ascertained which showed very clearly
that sand interposes absolutely no barrier between wells and the bac-
terial infection from cess-pools and privies lying even at great dis-
tances in the lower wet stratum of sand. Professor R. Pumpelly, who
conducted the survey, says that filtration of sewage-water, through a
great many feet even of sand as well as gravel, fails to free it of its
organic impurities and the germs of disease.

In consequence of general ignorance of this fact, even when water
is sufficiently impregnated with impurities to have acquired a foul
taste, the mass of people will drink it without observation ; or only
notice it so far as to remark that " good water is never found at the
sea-side." The majority drank without hesitation at Long Branch, or
simply adulterated the water with wine or brandy, even after inves-

628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tigation had shown that the feeding-springs from which the water sup-
ply was drawn were contaminated hy soakage from hog-pens and other
animal refuse which had been allowed to percolate the soil unchecked.

The careless drinking of water so poisoned was the cause of an out-
break of typhoid fever during the past season at Seabright, a village
adjacent to Long Branch, and supplied with water from the same
source. Red Bank and Atlantic City were simultaneously afflicted
with zymotic and malarial fevers through a similar cause ; while
Newport, heretofore considered a healthy sea-side resort, had a case
of Asiatic cholera, and diarrhoea was almost epidemic. These condi-
tions resulted from imj^erfect sewer-traps, by which almost every well
and cellar in Newport was contaminated, unclean streets, filthy with
the dirt of numerous horses, and sewers in a state the worst that
could possibly be imagined.

From such causes as these an unusual amount of sickness prevailed
during the past season along the whole line of the Atlantic sea-coast.

In these sporadic cases Nature sounded that key-note of warning
with which she always precedes an epidemic. If unheeded, another
season may witness the usual calamitous results that have invariably
occurred before man has been taught that saddest and most difficult
of hygienic lessons — how to protect life from filth-diseases.

This problem has been solved in great measure for the hamlet by
almost all large cities. Wherever men have congregated in great
numbers, plagues have occurred until they have learned to be careful
of the disposition of their sewage. Memphis, which is one of the
latest instances, after being terribly scourged by yellow fever in 1878,
and again in 1879, took the precaution to immediately institute sani-
tary reforms, which have been followed by the best practical results.
The leading features in these improvements were : the cleansing of the
city of all objectionable accumulations, the abolition of all privy-vaults,
cess-pools, and improperly constructed underground and surface drains,
and the substitution of a complete system of sewers and subsoil drainage-
pipes. The water-supply was improved, and the streets properly paved.

What has been accomplished by these measures for the proper sani-
tation of Memphis and other business centers is what remains to be
done for the health and comfort of sea-side towns and villages along
the Atlantic coast.

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTE ATLANTIC.

By Captain J. W. SHACKFOED.

DURING the season of 1882 the ice and fog in the track of steam-
ers running between Europe and North America appear to have
attracted much more attention than heretofore, not only in consequence
of the unusual quantities of field-ice and bergs reported, but also be-

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 629

cause of the increase in the traffic, and in the number of passengers
transported.

Every one who has sailed for any number of passages on the west-
ern route via 43° latitude and 50° longitude — the track usually fol-
lowed in ice-months — must have often experienced the sudden change
from a dense fog to fine, clear weather, and sometimes to an almost
cloudless sky. This change occurs most frequently to the westward
of the Grand Bank, and with the wind to the south of west ; the
clearing which follows a northerly wind taking place more slowly.
This sudden lifting of the fog is nearly always due to a change in
the temperature of the surface-water. In sailing from the 43d to the
41st parallel, between the Grand Bank and George's, 1 have occasion-
ally known the fog to clear and shut down again many times during
the twenty-four hours ; and almost invariably, upon trying the sur-
face-water, found that while the weather continued clear the surface-
temperature rose to between 55° and 65° Fahr., and, upon the tem-
perature of the water falling below 55° Fahr., the fog again closed in ;
to be again followed by clearer weather as the ship sailed into warmer
water — thus alternating from a dense fog to a clear sky and pleasant
weather for hundreds of miles.

In the summer of 1875, during which great quantities of ice were
encountered, I began to experiment on running south to clear the fog.
Probably the idea originated from my knowledge of the courses taken
by the old New York and Liverpool packets, nearly all of which, on
leaving Sandy Hook, in the spring and summer months, steered east
by south true until they were to the eastward of 70° longitude, and
crossed the 50th meridian very rarely to the northward of 43° lati-
tude, and generally in 42° or south of that parallel. In the course of
one or two seasons, on comparing our logs of previous years and
those of other steamers leaving about the same dates, with our logs on
the southerly route, the conviction became irresistible that crossing
50° west to the southward of 41° latitude was the safest course east-
ward bound. I am fully aware of the many arguments that may be
used against this southern route for both east and west bound steam-
ers ; among others, the Gulf Stream, the longer distance, the discom-
fdvt to passengers in a crowded ship, the excessive heat in the fire-
room, and probably many others ; but, after much attention to the
subject, I am convinced that these objections are more than counter-
balanced by almost certain immunity from fog and ice, or the assurance
that, if the latter is encountered, it will be in clear weather. I have
therefore continued crossing the meridians of 50° and 45° farther to the
southward every year during the ice-months, until in the present year
(1882), after having made ten passages east and west, from March to
August inclusive, only one hour and thirty-one minutes of fog has
been encountered between Cape Henlopen and Cape Clear on the
eastern passages, and that was experienced in 65° west in the month

630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of March ; and, on the western passages, nine hours and forty-three
minutes in May, to the westward of 70° longitude, and six hours and
thirty-six minutes in August, between the 23d and 33d meridians ;
while not a particle of ice has been seen during the entire season.
Bergs have no doubt been reported to the southward of these tracks
this year, but very rarely, and so few of them reach this latitude that
the chances of seeing any are very small.

What this immunity from fog and ice means may be appreciated
by any one, landsman or sailor, who will take the trouble to look over
the files of the " New York Herald " for the " reports " of arrivals of
steamers, or those of the New York " Maritime Register," where their
logs are published. Here are a few, selected at random :

" Steamer ' Emberiza ' (Br.), Dundee, February 12th, via Halifax : February
25th, 8 p. m., while running before a strong easterly wind with a heavy sea, got
into immense quantities of field-ice ; hauled ship to southeast and east to clear
it ; steamed slow all night, and received some damage to bows while clearing
the ice, ship making a little water in fore compartment ; 28th, 8 a. m., after
three days' slow steaming, during which time the ship was at times completely
blocked, passed a small iceberg and the last of the ice." — New York Herald,
March 7th.

"Steamer 'Nevada' (Br.), Liverpool: April 12th, passed several large ice-
bergs, and great quantities of field-ice." — Ibid., April 2Jfth.

" Halifax, April 26th : The steamer ' Mark Lane ' left Dundee, . . . thirty-
six days ago. Three weeks ago the ice was sighted and every effort was made
to keep away from it, but without success, and the steamer was soon in the
midst of a vast field, with a very slight prospect of an early escape. From then
until last Monday, although clear water would sometimes be reached for a short
time, ice was never lost sight of. . . . Shortly after getting into the ice the coal
on board gave out. . . . All the wood available was then obtained and burned,
and at last the shipping (shifting?) boards had to be cut away, and even the top-
mast broken up for fire-wood." — IMS,., about April 27th.

" Steamer ' Daniel Stienmann ' (Belg.), Antwerp, April 12th : Had strong
southwest winds to longitude 40°; thence variable winds, foggy and misty
weather. April 25th, passed a large iceberg; 28th, saw a large iceberg, and sub-
sequently passed fifteen others, also an ice-field ten miles long ; steered one hun-
dred miles southwest by west one half west (south 37° west true?), when the
last iceberg was passed." — Ibid., May 2d.

"Boston, May 1st: The British steamer 'Glamorgan,' of the Warren line,
arrived here this morning from Liverpool. . . . About four o'clock on the morn-
ing of the 26th (April), while going eleven knots an hour, she ran into a field of
pack-ice and icebergs ; . . . a run of twenty miles was made to the southeast,
when the ship was put on her course again. She steamed one hundred and
sixty miles on the southern edge of the field-ice, and during that time passed
fully one hundred large icebergs. . . . The course of the vessel was changed, as
the presence of the ice made it necessary, and a long passage was the result." —
Ibid., May 2d.

" Steamer ' Jason ' (Dutch), Amsterdam, April 20th : May 1st, fell in with
ice, and remained in it three days ; passed numerous very large icebergs ; had a
hole stove in fore-peak." — Ibid., May 12th.

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 631

" Steamer ' India ' (Ger.) : May 24th, passed two icebergs during a dense fog"
Slowed engines until next morning, when fog lifted and found vessel surrounded
by icebergs ; counted thirty-five of them. The fog shut down again, and was
obliged to stop vessel several times. At 10 a. m. struck an iceberg and stove
two holes in starboard bow. The last ice was seen in latitude 42° 35', longitude
52°, when three bergs were passed."— Ibid., May 31st.

" Steamer ' America ' (Ger.), . . . was detained on the Banks and vicinity
many hours by fog. June 10th, latitude 42° 30', longitude 50° 3G', passed
through a regular fleet of icebergs, one of them at least three hundred feet
high; . . . weather thick and foggy, and was obliged' to proceed slowly." —
Ibid., June 14th.

" Steamer ' State of Nebraska ' (Br.) was detained thirty hours on the Banks
by dense fog."

"Steamer ' Devonia ' (Br.) was detained eighteen hours by dense fog." —
Ibid., July 19th.

"Steamer 'Polaria' (Ger.) had strong westerly gales and high head-seas
with dense fog nearly all the passage." — Ibid., July 20th.

"Steamer ' Devon *' (Br.) sighted a large iceberg on the eastern edge of the
banks ; thence light winds and fog." — Ibid., July 23d.

" ' Abyssinia ' left Liverpool June 3d : June 11th, light wind and dense fog,
passed several icebergs, engines slowed and stopped ; 12th, light winds and dense
fog, passed several icebergs ; 13th, light southeast winds and fog, passed several
icebergs, engines slowed." — New York Maritime Register, June 21st.

The above are only a few of the many instances of steamers en-
countering fog and ice during the last season, and sustaining more or
less damage. It is difficult which to most admire, the skill and sea-
manship exercised in extricating some of these vessels from difficult
and dangerous situations, or the pertinacity with which they continued,
month after month, to follow the same track in the face of the reports
published day after day in the " Herald " and " Maritime Register,"
with hardly any intermission, from March to August. It may be re-
plied that the last spring and summer have been exceptional ones for
ice, which is doubtless true ; but, since 18T5, including that year eight
seasons, we have had, for the first year, ice down very early ; field-ice
and bergs were seen in February, and continued into September and
October. For 1876, bergs and field-ice seen in the early part of the
year, February ; and in August, September, and October an immense
number of bergs on the Banks and to the northward of them. During
the three following years, very few seen ; only occasional bergs, includ-
ing the one seen by the Arizona in November, 1879. In the season
of 1880 there was a constant stream of icebergs along the eastern edge
of the Grand Bank from March until July, some of them having been
seen as far south as 40° latitude. In 1881, occasional bergs ; and the
ice and fog of the last season are too recent to have been as yet for-
gotten. Here we have, out of eight seasons, four in which ice was
almost certain to be encountered from two to six months in each
spring and summer. In those seasons during wdiich very little ice

632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was reported, Low was it to be known at what moment it might not
have been fallen in with ? As we have seen above, in some years the
ice comes down in February ; perhaps the next year not until Sep-
tember. Can any one doubt that, the longer we continue to run with-
out seeing ice, the more emboldened we become to continue running
through the region where it is liable to be met with, in all kinds of
weather, trusting partly to our escape from accident in the past for
security in the future ? If this is not so, the nature of shipmasters
must be different from ordinary human nature ; and that the observa-
tion is a true one is, I think, proved by the experience of the past
season, when so many steamers continued to round the south end of
the Grand Bank, voyage after voyage, in a latitude where ice was
almost as certain to be encountered as the sun was sure to rise in the
morning ; and when it was also as certain that, by crossing the me-
ridian of 50° a hundred miles farther to the southward, the ice could
have been avoided altogether.

The facts appended are the result of careful observations, taken
from June, 1875, to August of last year. The instruments were com-
pared frequently with standards, the temperature of the water taken
at least every hour, and, when changes were anticipated, sometimes
every ten minutes, between Henlopen and Cape Clear, and the hours
and minutes of fog noted when the whistle was blowing or when
we could not see far enough to clear a vessel without difficulty. I
presume it will be conceded that many more hours of hazy or misty
weather would be encountered on the northern than on the southern
route ; the vicinity of the colder water naturally bringing with it
more hours when a vigilant lookout would have to be kept, but when
it would not be necessary for the steam-whistle to be sounded. The
observations comprise thirty-two eastern and twenty-seven western
passages, from March to August inclusive, on routes one to five, and
five western passages in August, via Cape Race, on the middle of
the Bank. The eastern passages, from 1875 to 1879, were sailed on
track No. 3, wThich crosses the 50th meridian in about 41° latitude,
and hauls sharp to the northward, on the Great Circle for the Fast-
net. For 1880-81 track No. 4 was followed, wTith the exception
of the March passage in 1881, when 50° longitude was crossed in 42°
latitude, thereby reducing slightly the average distance for the season.
During the season of 1882, track No. 5 was taken from April to
August.

On the western passages, track No. 1, the route generally taken
in these months, was followed as closely as possible from 1875 up to
and including the June trip of 1880. The July passage of that year
was made on track No. 4. For the year 1881 the earliest trip, April,
was made on track No. 1 ; the subsequent passages on No. 4. During
the present year, with the exception of the March trip, the passages
have been made entirely on the extreme southern track, No. 5.

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 633

In following track No. 4, on eastern passages 5G and 63, six hours
and forty minutes of fog was encountered between 40° and 60° longi-
tude, and on the western passages 56, 63, and 64, nine hours and fifty-
one minutes between the same meridians. This fog, on these five pas-
sages, was found always very near the 48th meridian ; the mean tem-
perature of the surface-water, while the weather continued foggy, be-
ing 53° Fahr. in the early part of July, and 65° in the latter part of
the same month ; falling in a few moments from, and rising as rapidly
to, 89° in the former and 78° in the latter instance. This belt of cold
water, and of fog, which was entirely avoided on route No. 5 in 1882,
is described in Maury's " Physical Geography of the Sea." In writ-
ing of the Gulf Stream and climates of the ocean, he says : " Navi-
gators have often been struck with the great and sudden changes in
temperature of the waters hereabout ; . . . this ' bend ' is the great
receptacle of the icebergs which drift down from the north ; cover-
ing frequently an area of hundreds of miles in extent, its waters differ
as much as 20°, 25°, and in rare cases as much as 30° in temperature
from those about it. Its shape and place are variable. Sometimes it
is like a peninsula, or tongue of cold water, projected far down into
the waters of the Gulf Stream." In May, 1881, on track No. 4, the
width of this " tongue " was about fifty miles, and on the following pas-
sage in June less than thirty miles. On the latter passage I was en-
abled to predict its position with such certainty that I struck it inside of
half an hour of the time expected. All the fog experienced on track
No. 4 between the 40th and 60th meridians has been met with in this
immediate vicinity. With the limited number of observations, taken
only on one ship, it would no doubt be premature to give an opinion
as to the fixed locality of this tongue of the Arctic current ; but I can
nevertheless confidently affirm that between 40° and 60° longitude, the
tables below, with the observations of the temperature of the surface-
water, show, beyond dispute, that by an additional hundred miles of
distance, the chances of meeting fog in the spring and summer months
are almost, if not entirely, avoided. Whether it is worth the loss, from
the additional distance, to escape fog and very nearly all the ice, is a
question for each to decide for himself.

The following table shows the hours of fog and distance sailed on
the voyages described above :

Teack No. 1.-43° latitude, 50° longitude, to Fastnet on the Great Circle.

]STo. 2.-42° latitude, 50° longitude, to Fastnet on the Great Circle.

No. 3. — 41° latitude, 50° longitude, to Fastnet on the Great Circle.

No. 4.-41° latitude, 50° longitude, to 42° latitude, 45° longitude, thence to
Fastnet on Great Circle.

No. 5, East. — 40° 30" latitude, 50° longitude, to 41° latitude, 47° longitude,
thence to Fastnet on Great Circle.

No. 5, "West.— Fastnet to 41° latitude, 47° longitude, thence to 40° latitude,
50° longitude, thence to Cape llenlopen.

634

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

EASTERN PASSAGES.

13.
14.

20.
21.
22.
23.

45.

46.

47.
48.

VOYAGE.

2 passages
Average . .

4 passages

53.
54.
55.
56.
57.

62.

63.
64.

65.

66.

Average

3 passages
Average . .

4 passages
Average . .

June.

July and August.

March and April.

May

June

July and August.

April
May

June.
July .

4 passages
Average . .

March

April

May

June and July.
August

5 passages
Average . .

March

April and May.
May and June .

July

August

5 passages
Average . .

Hours of Fog.

Total.

Between
40° and Co° W.

Distance sailed.

Hours. Min.

Hours. Min.

Miles.

1875.

0 0

0 0

2,995

0 0

0 0

2,979

0 0

0 0

5,974

0 0

0 0

2,987

1876.

0 0

0 0

2,995

0 0

0 0

2,988

23 15

20 45

2,978

8 0

8 0

2,955

31 15

28 45

11,916

7 49

7 11

2,979

1877.

0 0

0 0

2,982

8 0

0 0

2,975

0 0

0 0

2,944

8 0

0 0

8,901

2 40

0 0

2,967

1878.

0 0

0 0

2,987

10 45

0 0

2,990

17 45

17 45

2,989

13 39

0 0

2,950

42 9

17 45

11,916

10 32

4 26

2,979

1879.

0 0

0 0

2,962

5 52

3 50

2,9S8

4 15

4 15

2,974

8 43

0 0

2,9S8

8 50

8 5

11,892

4 42

2 1

2,973

1880.

0 0

0 0

2,995

0 0

0 0

2,997

8 0

0 0

2,999

7 0

3 0

3,005

0 0

0 0

2,991

15 0

3 0

14,987

3 0

0 36

2,997

1881.

2 35

2 35

2,959

3 40

3 40

2,984

8 58

0 0

3,025

2 54

0 0

3,018

0 0

0 0

2,971

18 7

6 15

14,957

3 37

1 15

2,991

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 635

eastern passages — (continued).

VOYAGE.

71.
72.
73.
74.
75.

Month.

March

April

May

June and July. . .
July and August.

5 passages
Average . .

HOTTKS

OP

Fog.

Total.

Between

Distance sailed.

41

° and 00° W.

Hours. Min.

Hours

Min.

Miles.

1882.

1 31*

0

0

3,005

0 0

0

0

3,016

0 0

0

0

3,026

0 0

0

0

3,025

0 0

0

0

3,025

1 31

0

0

15,097

0 18

0

0

3,019

WESTERN PASSAGES.

Month.

Hours

w Foo.

VOYAGE.

Total.

Between
40° and 00° W.

Distance sailed.

13

July

Hours. Min.

1875.
18 5

Hours. Min.

0 0

Maes.
2,945

1 passage . . .

18 5

0 0

2,945

20

April

1876.
15 15
44 55
53 33

113 43

37 54

9 35

16 45

5 20

2,950

21

May and June

2,935

22

July

2,902

3 passages

31 40
10 33

8,787

Averasre

2,929

28

March

1877.
16 0

4 0
39 0

0 0

4 0

26 0

2,913

29

May

2,915

30

July

2,908

59 0

19 40

30 0
10 0

8,736

2,912

36

March and April. .

1878.
23 30
36 13
10 19

17 0

24 28

0 0

2,920

37

May

2,925

38

June and July

2,918

70 2
23 21

41 28
13 49

8,763

Average

2,921

All these passages on track No. 1, via 43° latitude, 50° lon-
gitude.

* In longitude 65 ° west, between tracks No. 2 and No. 3.

626

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WESTERH PASSAGES.

44.
45.
46.
47.

71.
72.
73.
74.
75.

VOYAGE.

4 passages
Average . .

4 passages
Average . .

4 passages
Average . .

5 passages
Average . .

Month.

March ,

April

May and June.
July

March and April

May

June ,

J«iy

August ,

HoTJBS

3F Fog.

Total.

Between
40° and 60° W.

Distance sailed.

Hours. Min.

1879.

Hours. Min.

Miles.

5 16
4 35

0 0
0 0

2,917
2,913

17 30

12 0

2,919

10 50

0 30

2,912

38 11

12 30

11,661

9 33

3 7

2,915

1880.

2 30

2 30

2,912

22 25

11 15

2,915

0 0
8 0

0 0
8 0

2,917
3,019

32 55

21 45

11,763

8 14

5 26

2,941

1881.

12 20
3 5

12 20
1 15

2,907
3,023

3 41

0 36

3,020

0 50

0 0

3,011

19 56

14 11

11,961

4 59

3 33

2,990

1882.

0 0

0 0

3,016

9 43*

0 0

3,024

0 0

0 0

3,026

0 0

0 0

3,026

6 36+

16 19

0 0

3,026

0 0

15,118

3 16

0 0

3,024

CAPE RACE PASSAGES.

Year.

Month.

Hours of Fog.

VOYAGE.

Total.

Between
40° and 60° W.

Distaneo
sailed.

14

1875

1876

August

Hours. Min.

26 5
5 30
5 30

23 51
0 30

Hours. Min.

10 50
5 30
2 30
1 15
0 0

Miles.

2,861

23

August

2,862

31

1877. .

August

2,853

39

1878

August. .

2,857
2 856

48

1 879

5 passage
Average .

61 26
12 17

20 5
4 1

14,289

2,858

The comparisons for the cliff erent years, omitting the Cape Race
passages, are as follows :

* West of 70° longitude.

\ Between 23° and 33° west.

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 637

EASTERN PASSAGES.

Number

TEAR.

of

passages.

1875

2

1876

4

1877

3

1878

4

1879

4

1880..

5

1881

5

1882

5

Houks op Fog.

Total.

Hours. Min.

0 0
31 15

8 0
42 9
IS 50
15 0

18 7

1 31

Average,

per passage.

Hours.

Min.

0

0

7 49

2

40

10

32

4

42

3

0

3

37

0

18

40° to 60° W.

Hours.

Min.

0

0

28

45

0

0

17 45

8

5

3

0

G

15

0

0

Average,

per passage.

Hours.

Min.

0

0

7

11

0

0

. 4

26

o

1

0

36

1

15

0

0

Average distance

sailed,

per passage.

Miles.

2,987
2,979
2,967
2,979
2,973
2,997
2,991
3,019

WESTERN PASSAGES.

Number

of
passages.

Hotms op Foe.

Average distance

TEAR.

Total.

Average,
per passage.

40° to 60° W.

Average,
per passage.

sailed,
per passage.

187,5

1876 , , .

1877

1878

1879

1880*
1881f , . . .
1882$

1
3
3
3
4
4
4
5

Hours. Min.

18 5
113 43

59 0
70 2
38 11
32 55

19 56
16 19

Hours. Min.

18 5
37 54

19 40
23 21

9 33
8 14
4 59
3 16

Hours. Min.

0 0
31 40
30 0
41 28
12 30
21 45
14 11

0 0

Hours. Min.

0 0

10 33

10 0

13 49

3 7

5 26

3 33

0 0

Miles.

2,945
2,929
2,912
2,921
2,915
2,941
2,990
3,024

By the above tables the average hours of fog for each passage
show a decrease in the eastern passages from seven hours forty-nine
minutes in 1876 and ten hours thirty-two minutes in 1878, to three
hours, and three hours and thirty-seven minutes in 1880 and 1881, and
eighteen minutes in 1882 ; and between the sixtieth and fortieth me-
ridians, the ice-region, from an average of seven hours eleven minutes
in 1876 to one hour fifteen minutes in 1881, and an entire immunity
from fog in 1882 ; for the western passages a decrease from an aver-
age of thirty-seven hours fifty-four minutes of each passage in 1876
to four hours fifty-nine minutes in 1881, and three hours sixteen min-
utes in 1882 ; while in crossing the ice-region the average is reduced
from ten hours thirty-three minutes in 1876 to three hours thirty-three
minutes in 1881, and an entire absence of fog in 1882.

Comparing the western passages via 43° latitude, 50° longitude
(route No. 1), with the extreme southern passages (routes 4 and 5),
the result is as follows :

* One passage, southern route (track No. 4).
f Two passages, southern route (track No. 4).
\ One passage, southern route (track No. 4).
(track No. 5).

Four passages, southern route

638

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WESTERN PASSAGES,
via 43° latitude, 50° longitude. (Route Ko. 1.)

VOYAGE.

13

20
21
22
28
29
30
36
37
38
44
45
46
47
53
54
55
62

Month.

July

April

May and June . . .

July

March

May

July

March and April.

May

June and July. . .

March ,

April

May and June. . .

July

March ,

May

June ,

April

18 passages.
Average . .

HorEs

of Fog.

Distance

Total.

40° to G0° W.

6ailed.

Hoars. Min.

Hours. Min.

Miles.

18 5

0 0

2,945

15 15

9 35

2,950

44 55

16 45

2,935

53 33

5 20

2,902

16 0

0 0

2,913

4 0

4 0

2,915

39 0

26 0

2,908

23 30

17 0

2,920

36 13

24 28

2,925

10 19

0 0

2,918

5 16

0 0

2,917

4 35

0 0

2,913

17 30

12 0

2,919

10 60

0 30

2,912

2 30

2 30

2,912

22 25

11 15

2,915

0 0

0 0

2,917

12 20

12 20

2,907

336 16

141 43

52,543

18 41

7 52

2,919

WESTERN PASSAGES,
via Southern Route. (Nos. 4 and 5.)

VOYAGE.

56
63
64

65
71
72
73

74
75

Month.

July

May

June

July and August.
March and April .

May

June

July.

August ,

9 passages.
Average .

Houbs

of Fog.

Distance

Total.

40° to 60° W.

sailed.

Hours. Min.

8 0

Hours. Min.

8 0

Miles.

3,019

3 5

1 15

3,023

3 41

0 50

0 36
0 0

3,020
3,011

0 0

0 0

3,016

*9 43

0 0

0 0
0 0

3,024
3,026

0 0

0 0

3,026

|6 36

0 0

3,026

31 55
3 S3

9 51

1 6

27,191
3,021

and the comparative loss of distance as under

Miles.

Average distance lost each western passage 102

Average distance lost in nine passages 918

To compensate for which loss of distance, we have —

n. m.
Average of fog per passage on the northern route (track No 1) 18 41

* West of longitude 70°.

f Between 23° and 33° west.

ICEBERGS AND FOG IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 639

reduced to —

Average of fog each passage on the southern route 3 33

and —

Average of fog each passage through the ice-region by former

route 7 52

reduced to —

Average of fog each passage through the same by latter route. . 1 G

and, omitting the fifty-eighth voyage, have actually an average of only
fourteen minutes of each passage for eight passages through the whole
region of the Atlantic where ice is liable to be encountered. Another
fact that should not be foi'gotten in the comparison is the maximum
amount of fog liable to be met with (see twrenty-second and thirtieth
passages west) on the northern route (track No. 1).

Cape Race in August. — On this route for this month we have —

MILES.

Average distance sailed each passage 2,858

Average distance sailed each passage by extreme southern route. 3,021

Loss of distance each passage 1G3

Against which loss of distance, we find the average of fog as above,
instead of —

H. M.

Average hours of fog, Cape Race 12 17

Average hours of fog through the ice-region 4 1

and —

Maximum amount of fog on thirty-ninth voyage 23 51

As I have seen ice on three out of five of these August passages
via Cape Race, it is an open question which is the best route for this
month in ordinary years. Where the ice has continued so late as in
the present season, I should certainly prefer the southern route.
Below is the report of the steamer Main (Ger.), via Cape Race, in
July of the present year, arriving in New York on the 20th of that
month : " Passed Cape Race July 18th ; . . . from Sable Island to
Sandy Hook had continuous fog ; July 19th (?) latitude 47° 45', longi-
tude 48° 12', passed an iceberg ; same date, latitude 46° 56', longitude
52° 24', up to Cape Race, for a distance of thirty miles numerous
large and small icebergs ; same date, latitude 40° 11', longitude, 53°
54', two large icebergs."

Currents. — I was much surprised, on comparing the total dis-
tances, by observation and account, for these westerly passages, to
find that the average current was less on the southern than on the
northern route.

The following sIioavs the comparison for the twenty-seven westerly
passages :

640

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CURRENT ON WESTERN PASSAGES,

via latitude £3°, longitude 59°. {Track No. 1.)

VOYAGE.

13
20
21
22

28
29
30
36
3V
38
44
45
46
47
63
54
55
62

Month.

July

April

May and June . . .

July

March

May

July

March and April .

May

June and July . . .

March

April

May and June.

July

March ,

May

June

April

18 passages.
Difference . .

Average per passage.

Distance.

Observed.

Miles.
2,945
2,950
2,935

2,902
2,913
2,915
2,908
2,920
2,925
2,918
2917
2,913
2,919
2,912
2,912
2,915
2,917
2,907

52,543

Account.

Miles.
3,071

2,942
3,010
2,948
2,901
2,867
. 2,948
2,920
2,848
2,935
2,939
2,925
2,909
2,967
2,879
2,904
3,015
2,977

52,905
362

20

CURRENT.

East.

126

75
46

40

17
22

12

55

98
70

561
easterly

"West.

12
48

10

33
11

199

VOYAGE.

56
63
64
65

71
72
73

74

75

CURRENT ON WESTERN PASSAGES,
via Southern Route. ( Tracks JVos. Jj. and 5.)

Month.

July

May

June

July and August.
March and April.

May

June

July.

August ,

9 passages.
Difference.

Average for passage.

Distance.

Observed.

Miles.

3,019
3,023
3,020
3,011
3,016
3,024
3,026
3,026
3,026

27,191

Account.

Miles.

3,015
2,973
3,068
3,046
3,028
3,009
3,056
3,056
3,027

27,27S
87

10

Current.

East.

48
35
12

30
30

1

156
easterly.

West.

4
50

15

69

As long as our navigation laws of the last century continue unre-
pealed, probably the facts contained in the above tables will be of little
interest to steamship-owners in the United States ; but underwriters
and shippers are certainly concerned, as to the proportion of steamers
in the North Atlantic trade that escape from or meet with detention,

REMEDIAL VALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA. 641

accident, or loss. The immense proportions that the traffic between
Europe and the United States is bound to assume within the next fifty
years appear to make it almost a necessity that the ocean between the
two countries should be as well known as the country between New
York and San Francisco, or between Liverpool and London. That this
subject has been almost a matter of indifference to the governments in-
terested, until very recently, can not be better illustrated than by the
fact, almost incredible, but nevei'theless true, that a shoal on the east-
ern edge of the Grand Bank, directly in the track of steamers running
between the two countries for the greater portion of the year, marked
" Ryder Rock, twenty-one feet, position doubtful," was laid down on
the charts published by the British Admiralty and United States Hy-
drographic Offices, until 1879, in which year the bank was resurveyed,
and the shoal found to have had no existence. The United States and
British Governments have recently spent thousands of dollars in Arctic
explorations and relief expeditions, one of the results of which has
been to show how gallantly death can be encountered. Surely, a few
thousands would be well expended in the survey of this ocean highway
on which thousands of lives are constantly afloat ; and certainly gov-
ernment ships might be worse employed than in an attempt to give
greater security to life and property on its treacherous surface.

If the publication of these two articles * should be the means of
causing one ship-master to try the southern route, or deter one steamer
from ramming into an ice-field on the eastern edge of the Grand
Bank, in the spring of the year, the writer will be amply repaid for
any time and trouble they may have cost him.

-<>—*-

REMEDIAL YALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA.

By GEOEGE E. WALTON, M. D.,

MEMBKE DE LA SOCIETE FEANgAISE d' HYGIENE, PARIS, ETC.

" Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
"Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ? "

WHEN one approaches this land, from the northward, in the win-
ter season, having left the hills and valleys about his home
covered with the cold, white mantle of winter, he is pleased and
cheered by the green foliage. The breezes which touch him possess a
delicious softness and a fragrant, spicy aroma. When, at the shores
of the St. John's River, he looks over miles of clear and unruffled

* See the first article, in "Harper's Magazine" for August, 1882.

VOL. XXII. 41

642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

water, many miles in width, like an inland lake, and reaching far away,
hundreds of miles to the south, fringed hy green inlet and headland,
bearing the tropical foliage of cypress and orange, palmetto and palm;
when the mild sunshine, falling so softly upon forest, bank, and river,
has penetrated him till he feels a gentle warmth flowing through his
veins ; when a delicious languor has possessed him, and it would seem
perfect happiness to rest in the genial sunshine forever — then he knows
he has found the sweet do-nothing land of America.

Warmth is life, cold is death, and the medical study of climate is
only an analysis of those conditions of heat which will best secure an
abounding vitality in the healthy human organism, or restore a shat-
tered organism to its normal physical relations.

Men, like children, continually cry for the unattainable. We
would like a land in which a perfect June always prevails.

What are the factors in the climate of Florida ? Heat, water, and
light — warmth, moisture, and sunshine.

The health resort of Florida is the peninsular portion, averaging
one hundred miles in width and projecting southward over three hun-
dred miles, amid the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

It is a flat land, composed almost entirely of sand. So much does
it resemble a jetty of sand, such as we see formed at the confluence
of streams, that it may appropriately be termed an ocean sand-bar,
with everglades, marshes, and lagoons in the southern portion, testify-
ing how recently, geologically speaking, it has emerged from the depths
of the sea. Around this sickle-shaped peninsula the Gulf Stream,
with an average temperature of 86° Fahr., sweeps from the south-
ernmost point along the eastern shore at a distance of ten to one hun-
dred miles from the coast. Across it the salt-laden breezes of the
ocean continually play, by day and by night. Upon it the warm rays
of a semi-tropical sun almost continually shine.

What are the results of these physical conditions, stated in the
exact terms of meteorological science ? For this purpose it is not
necessary to array long tables of average temperature, mean monthly
range, rain-fall, barometric pressure, relative humidity, etc.

It is sufficient to know that the average temperature of Jackson-
ville, for the month of November, is 61° Fahr.; December, 54° Fahr.;
January, 55° Fahr. ; February, 57° Fahr. ; March, 62° Fahr. The rain-
fall in November is 3£ inches ; December, 3 inches ; January, 3 inches ;
February, 2| inches ; March, 4^ inches. St. Augustine, Palatka, and
Gainesville average 2° or 3° warmer than Jacksonville. At St. Augus-
tine the rain-fall is less than at Jacksonville, being, November, 1*2
inch; December, 2 inches; January, 2 inches; February, l-6 inch;
March, 2'3 inches. The mean monthly range of temperature for these
places during the winter months is between 20° and 30° Fahr.

These figures indicate a mild, equable, and sunshiny climate during
winter for all that portion of Florida frequented by invalids, embrac-

REMEDIAL VALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA. 643

ing a region on the east side of the State, from Jacksonville as far
south as Palatka. For a country lying on a parallel with the Canaries,
off the coast of Africa, they indicate a climate which in temperature
approaches that of Malaga, Malta, and Algiers, but does not nearly
equal them in evenness and unchangeableness, though, in point of
clear, sunshiny weather, far superior.

However, from the facts given, we are unable to fix accurately the
position of the Florida climate. We neither know the atmospheric
humidity nor the electrical potential ; and, as yet, the phenomena of
nature have not been interrogated for an answer.

A cardinal question is whether the climate be moist or dry, brac-
ing or relaxing.

It may not be amiss to note here an error committed by a profes-
sional gentleman of Jacksonville.* In a pamphlet on the climatology
of Florida, he gives tables of the mean relative humidity of Jackson-
ville and other stations in Florida, and attempts to prove therefrom,
by comparison with similar observations in Northern States, that the
atmosphere of Florida is dry, much drier than that of Minnesota, Mount
Washington (New Hampshire), Alpina (Michigan), Omaha (Nebraska),
and other Northern localities. It should be remembered, however, that
there is a wide difference between relative humidity and absolute hu-
midity, and their relation is frequently diametrically opposite. Relative
humidity does not indicate the amount of vapor present in the air per
cubic foot, but only the tendency to deposit it in a wet state on a sur-
face but little lower in temperature than the surrounding atmosphere.
Absolute humidity, on the contrary, is the actual amount of vapor
present in each cubic foot of air. To illustrate, suppose the cubic foot
of air to be a hollow cubic vessel of tin. Absolute humidity is the
actual amount of watery vapor contained in that tin vessel. Relative
humidity is the tendency of that vapor, be it great or small in quan-
tity, to leak out of the vessel and show itself on the outside in the
form of mist or dew. Sir John Herschel says, " As a general meteor-
ological fact, there is not merely a want of accordance, but an actual
opposition between both the diurnal and annual progress of the ' de-
gree of humidity ' or ' relative humidity ' of the air and the ' tension
of vapor ' as indicated by hygrometric observation, a seeming para-
dox, but one very easily explained." f He then shows how the rela-
tive humidity is greatest just before sunrise of each day, and the
vapor tension or absolute humidity is least; that as the day advances
the relative humidity diminishes and the absolute humidity increases,
till the maximum temperature of the day is reached, when absolute
humidity is greatest and relative humidity is least. It is also well to
know, in considering this question, that air at a temperature of 60
Fahr. is capable of containing double the quantity of vapor by weight

* Dr. J. C. Kenworthy.

\ " Meteorology," by Sir John F. W. Herschel, Edinburgh, 1861, p. 193.

644

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

that it is at a temperature of 40° Fahr., and this ratio continues
throughout the thermometric scale. Whether air at an average hio-h
temperature, like that in Florida, will contain this excess of moisture,
depends only on the proximity of water whence the vapor may he
obtained.

The figures of relative humidity recorded by the Signal Service at
Jacksonville only indicate the ratio in per cent which the humidity of
the air at the time bears to saturated air at the same temperature.
But the weight of vapor in saturated air at that temperature is not
given, therefore the absolute value of this percentage, so far as the
records are concerned, is unknown. The basis for the calculation is,
however, easily obtainable — the weight of vapor in troy grains, con-
tained in saturated air at different temperatures (Glaisher's Table) —
and will be found to increase in an ascending scale from zero. The
following record of the Signal Service in Cincinnati, Ohio (Sergeant
R. B. Watkins, U. S. A., observer), well illustrates the subject :

TEMPERATURE AND HUMIDITY.

January 1, 1881 :

Thermometer, degrees Fahr. . . .
Relative humidity, per cent. . . .
Actual humidity, grains

June 1, 1881 :

Thermometer, degrees Fahr.. . .
Relative humidity, per cent. . . .
Actual humidity, grains

1080

2-30

10-80

7 A.M.

A. M.

2 p.m.

P.M.

9 p.m.

P.M.

4

12

27-5

29-5

30

28

74

61

76

73

68

77

0-44

0-59

1-35

1-35

1-35

1-41

73

78

79

80

70

69

72

61

54

51

80

85

6-36

6-46

5-95

5-76

6-41

6-57

Average.

21-8
71-5
1-08

74-8
67-1
6-25

From the above table we see that on a day of high temperature
and low relative humidity there was nearly six times more vapor in
the air than on a day of low temperature and high relative humidity.

By way of comparison we here insert a table showing the mean
annual and winter temperature, also the relative humidity and abso-
lute humidity, of three winter stations. It shows the average quantity
of vapor in the air at Jacksonville, throughout the year, to be twice
as great as at St. Paul, Minnesota, and four times more during the
winter season :

STATIONS.*

Altitude.

Annuals.

Winter months :

November, December, January,

February, March.

i .

p.t.

S3

Relative
humidity,
per cent.

Absolute

humidity,

per cubic

foot.

Relative
humidity,
per cent.

Absolute

humidity,

per cubic

foot.

Jacksonville, Florida . .
San Antonio, Texas . . .
St. Paul, Minnesota. . . .

i Feet.
20
600 ;

800 !

Deg. F.
68-98
69-6
42-32

71-0
68-1
68-4

Grains.
5-48
5-36
212

Deg. F.
5817
56-63
20-17

70-6
68-6
70-9

Grains.
3-81
351
0-92

* The temperature of these places is from the " Smithsonian Temperature Tables."
The relative humidity is calculated from data of five years — 1877-1881 inclusive — sup-
plied the writer by the Chief Signal-Officer, General W. B. llazen, Washington, D. C.

REMEDIAL VALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA. 645

In consideration of these facts, we are compelled to cast aside tables
of " relative humidity " as valueless when taken alone, for the purpose
of determining the humidity of climates. The physical properties of
vapor in the air — the absolute humidity — are essential elements which
can not be ignored, and are of exceeding significance in the treatment
of disease.

We have given prominence to this topic, inasmuch as the pamphlet
of Dr. Kenworthy is widely circulated by the Bureau of Immigration
of the State of Florida, and is quoted in a pamphlet on Florida issued
by the United States Department of Agriculture, and also in the well-
known work on Florida by G. H. Barbour, as establishing conclusively
the dryness of the climate. It well shows how figures, correct in them-
selves, may, by misapprehension of their import, become the source of
mischievous error.

Given — a peninsular land subjected to the burning rays of a semi-
tropical sun and surrounded by an ocean of warm water, the average
temperature of which is 77° Fahr.* — then it is not necessary to ask
the Signal Service whether the climate be moist or dry. If they sup-
plied us with tables of absolute humidity, they could only add to our
information accurate knowledge of the excess of moisture. Every
breeze that blows touches the face with the softness of a moist May
morning at the North. The atmosphere is delicious, balmy.

In addition to physical sensation and deductions drawn from geo-
graphical position, there ai*e other reasons for deciding that the climate
is moist. The necessity of frequently emptying closets during the
summer season, and drying clothing-apparel ; the impossibility of using
cellars, because of the quickness with which mold destroys goods there
stored ; the thick formation of vert-cle-gris on articles of brass ; the
rapid decay of structures made of wood, as compared with Northern
localities ; the presence almost everywhere of the Southern moss (Til-
landsia), swaying in festoons from the trees — these facts tell of exces-
sive atmospheric moisture.

Sunshine, which is so cheering to the invalid, and the absence of
which is so depressing even to the well, is abundant in Florida. There
it glitters continually on leaf and flower. Five years' observation at
Jacksonville shows an average of only seven cloudy days for each
winter month, the other twenty-three being arched by a soft Italian-
like sky.

What relation electrical potential may have to climate as regards

The absolute humidity is calculated f rom " Table X '' of " Smithsonian Meteorological
Tables," by Guyot, giving weight of vapor in grains troy, contained in a cubic foot of
saturated air between 0° and 105° Fahr.

* The temperature of the surface-water of the Gulf of Mexico, off Key West, in May,
was Y7i° Fahr., as determined by the United States Coast Survey, 1857, p. 102.

The average temperature of the St. John's River, at Jacksonville, to the depth of
eighteen feet, determined by daily observations by Sergeant J. W. Smith, United States
Signal Service, from September, 1881, to March, 1882, is 70° Fahr.

646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its so-called elasticity or bracing properties is yet undetermined. That
it is continually fluctuating, and that it varies considerably at different
places, is known. When instruments shall have been devised by which
this element can be accurately recorded, we may then discover that
those climates which are termed bracing possess special peculiarities
as to electrical distribution.

We then estimate the climate of Eastern Florida to be mild in
winter temperature, moist, sunshiny, relaxing, and for an American
climate equable, though not to be compared in this respect with the
Genoese Riviera.

What is the value of this climate in the treatment of disease ?

We will first consider that scourge of overcrowded populations —
consumption — a disease which is limited to no zone, and for which the
benefit of change of climate is most frequently sought. The discov-
eries of Koch, of Berlin, in his researches on the cause of this disease,
may, if they are satisfactorily confirmed, enable us in the future to in-
terpose barriers to its invasion. They may also enable us to eliminate
"taking cold" as one of the causes of consumption. But they will
not change the nature of the bacillus tuberculosis, the habits of which,
although itself unknown, have been familiar to the world for many
centuries. Persons of feeble constitution, whether hereditary or ac-
quired, will still be the subjects of its incursion, and the disease en-
gendered by its presence will require the same treatment as heretofore,
unless happily we find a remedy which will destroy these morbific
germs in situ, and thus, by relieving the patient of the exciting cause,
lead to immediate recovery.

It is not necessary to cite authorities to show that the prime need
of a consumptive is that he shall be a great deal out-of-doors, that he
shall breathe pure air, that he shall exercise, that his entire physical
organization shall be invigorated. Is the climate of Florida fitted to
do this ? I answer, No ! The climate is simply and delightfully
soothing. Being so — being moist and relaxing — it will cause tubercu-
lous deposits to disintegrate rapidly. Expectoration will be increased,
and there will be no rally of the system to oppose this new call upon
the strength. Instead of exercising freely and expanding his lungs as
he should, the consumptive invalid will sit listlessly on the piazzas of
the hotels, awaiting his fate. Hundreds are seen, wherever you go, so
doing. Seldom do you see one attempting to exercise, and, if one is
seen, he is moving in that sluggish and apathetic manner so character-
istic of every one living there.

It is unfortunate that, of the thousands of consumptives who go to
Florida, we can get no reliable statistics of the result. The people of
Florida, the owners of the soil, the railroad and steamboat owners and
agents, the hotel-keepers, the physicians residing there, are all so much
interested personally in the prosperity of the State, which, since the
close of the war, has been opened up like a newly-discovered country,

REMEDIAL VALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA. 647

that it is well-nigh impossible for them to give unprejudiced state-
ments concerning the healthf ulness of the State, its adaptation to the
cure of disease, or any other subject, which even remotely touches
their personal interest. A prism is placed before your eyes, and you
are caused to see everything covered with the colors of the rainbow.

However, I snatched one fragment from the page of fact. During
the last six months of 1881 there were thirteen deaths in Jacksonville
(population 8,000 *) from consumption, these deaths being of residents
only, and excluding all non-residents or visiting invalids. This is a
mortality of 1*62 per 1,000, being a greater mortality than occurred in
Cincinnati during the same time, which was 4*24 in a population of
280,000, or 1*51 per 1,000. These figures do not establish the rate of
mortality, from this disease, in the city of Jacksonville, for in so small
a place a series extending over a number of years would be necessary.
But, when facts are so difficult to find, we must content ourselves even
with a straw. It is much more satisfactory to thus have an indication
from a populous center, than the rate from sparsely populated country
districts, which, as is well known, are comparatively immune every-
where. It may be stated, in this connection, that natives of Florida
taken with consumption frequently seek other places and climates as a
means of cure.

In endeavoring to show the unfitness of Florida for consumptives,
I have spoken of the disease en bloc, and made no reference to the dif-
ferent types, as I believe it better to convey the impression that Florida
is not suitable for any type of the disease. Possibly in the rare inflam-
matory kind, with dry and heated bronchial tubes and beginning
laryngeal symptoms, the soothing and relaxing air of Florida may be
of temporary advantage. But the forecast of such cases is seen ab
initio, and we do not look for a cure, such as may frequently occur in
cases of the more chronic sort, when proper medicinal treatment is
given and a proper climate is selected.

We do not mean to say that cases of consumption never improve in
Florida. Undoubtedly there are cases which get well in Florida, just
as there are in every locality, and even at home.

Turning from consumption, we will look on the opposite side of
the picture. Are there no diseases of the lungs in which this delight-
ful climate is beneficial ? Undoubtedly ; and it is the efficacy of the
climate in this other group of diseases — the bronchial, often wrongly
diagnosed as consumption — that has given reputation to the climate.
The "taking of cold" in Florida is a comparatively infrequent event.
Even when one does take cold it is only manifested by slight sneezing,
and that is the end of it. There is no tendency to acute inflammation
of the Schneiderian membranes, the extension by continuity to the
fauces, larynx, trachea, and bronchial tubes; in fine, to that compound

* The population of Jacksonville, including suburbs, is considerably above this, but
the mortality statistics are limited to a district the population of which is as stated.

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of malaise, difficult breathing, soreness of the chest, and cough, termed
a " severe cold," which is so excessively frequent in this latitude, and
which, often repeated in certain constitutions, leads to chronic inflam-
mation and diminution of the caliber of the bronchial tubes, to dila-
tation of air-cells, to bronchorrhcea, and all those attendant evils
which are little less baneful than consumption itself. For those in
whom frequent colds have induced the condition of chronic bronchitis,
I believe there is no better climate than Eastern Florida, and those in
comparatively good health who suffer from repeated colds without
other ill effects will find in that climate freedom from tthe inconven-
ience. That other condition termed winter cough, frequent among
people advanced in years and which is little other than chronic bron-
chitis with a quiescent period during the summer months, will also be
entirely relieved in that land. Indeed, if the person removes there
for life he will soon become unconscious that he ever had such an
affliction.

Chronic laryngitis, and pharyngitis granulosa, or clergyman's sore-
throat, will also be decidedly benefited by winter sojourn or perma-
nent residence in Florida.

In the spasmodic constriction of the bronchial tubes — asthma — it
can only be said that many cases will be entirely relieved in Florida,
while with some it will fail, and, if one is to be exiled in the interest
of health, there is probably no pleasanter place for enduring semi-
expatriation.

A climate of this kind is also favorable to the prolongation of the
life of those afflicted with chronic JBrighfs disease of the kidneys —
chronic parenchymatous nephritis. The person will be little exposed
to chilling of the surface of the body, which arrests cutaneous perspi-
ration, congests the blood-vessels of the internal organs, and forces ex-
cessive work on the already damaged cortical net- work of the kidneys.

Sufferers from muscular and chronic rheumatism find the genial
warmth of this region softens the unpliable and painful muscles, and
loosens the rigid tendons, while the increased secerning activity of the
skin removes the morbid humor, whatever that may be.

For none do I know a land more delightful, than for him who, by
long and severe mental activity, has exhausted the vital battery of
nerve-force and disturbed the harmonious balance between the varied
complex nerve-circuits. The person who suffers from this condition,
sometimes called nervous prostration, and which often passes under
other cognomens, will there find a panacea. The soothing softness of
the climate invites to continuous repose, and for him perfect rest is a
prelude to restoration ; repair of tissue gains upon waste, the nerve-
currents gradually resume their normal course and vigor, and a return
of health results.

Old age crawls shivering along our cheerless streets, the frigid
northern blasts fluttering the garments about his attenuated limbs,

REMEDIAL VALUE OF THE CLIMATE OF FLORIDA. 649

chilling the blood till stasis occurs in some vital organ, and inflamma-
tion and death result. There, the old man pursues out-door life fearless
of frost or intense heat, and, in a prolonged and painless existence, for-
gets that his summer is gone, and the snows of winter are upon his head.

In closing this paper, some reference to places in Florida most suit-
able for invalids may be of intei'est.

Leaving Jacksonville in the afternoon of any day, by one of the
beautiful side-wheel steamers, the passenger, sitting on the forward
guard, sees unrolled before him a semi-tropical scene. The vessel
makes its way in the midst of a broad stream of placid stillness,
whose shoaling shores are curved and fretted by inlet and headland,
bearing above them the rich luxuriance of evergreen foliage, like a
broad mirror festooned with myrtle and vine. Often, so far away
from the course of the boat are the distant shores that one may with
difficulty descry the towns and houses which are indicated in the dis-
tance. For seventy-five miles and more to the southward the river
retains this similitude to a broad and extended lake. Indeed, it seems
but a long arm of the sea, the rise and fall of the tide being percep-
tible even at that distance. Night closes on the journey. During the
time you pass through an expanse of the river twelve miles wide and
eighteen miles long (Lake George), and when you awake you find the
boat in a narrow stream, running beneath the shade- of overhanging
vines and palmettos, the waters bearing upon their surface a strange,
floating, bright-green vegetation, well described by the popular name
water-lettuce. Along the shore acres of broad-leaved water-lilies
rise and fall with the rapidly-running waves, which surge along the
course of the steamer. Here the stream is exceedingly tortuous, and
the greatest care is needed on the part of tbe pilot lest, in turning the
acute agles of low-lying land which project to the right and left like
alternating narrow blades, his boat will shoot forward beyond his con-
trol and fasten itself amid the tangled boughs of a partially submerged
forest. This is the paradise of the sportsman, the home of wild ducks
and turkeys, and pelicans, and pink curlews.

At a distance of one hundred and ninety miles from Jacksonville
another broad expanse of water is entered — Lake Monroe — five miles
wide and twelve miles long. On the shore of this lake the boat lands
at Sanford, Orange County, which is the head of navigation for large
steamers. Beyond this lake the river again diminishes in depth, and
is navigable only for very light-draught boats. The origin of the
river is in Lake Washington, amid the marshes of the Everglades, two
hundred and fourteen miles farther to the south.

There are but few places on the course of the river that are desir-
able for invalids, on account of the proximity of swamps and danger
from malaria. At Sanford I was somewhat amused to see the proprie-
tor of a prominent hotel, which solicits the patronage of invalids,
taken with a severe chill while at the desk receiving his guests.

65o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The best places on the river are Magnolia and Green Cove Spring,
twenty-eight and thirty miles south of Jacksonville, and Palatka,
seventy-five miles from there, each of which possesses superior hotel
accommodations, and is subject but little, if at all, to malaria during
the winter season.

Gainesville, some forty miles west of Palatka on the line of the
Transit Railway, is one of the best locations in the State. It is situ-
ated on comparatively high land for Florida, is surrounded by pine-
woods, and free from malaria — but, other than as a health resort, has
no attractions.

Jacksonville, the center of trade activity, eighteen miles from the
mouth of the St. John's, is a city of considerable enterprise. The com-
forts and conveniences of a Northern city can be obtained there in
greater degree than anywhere else in the State. It has, however,
in addition, some of the injurious influences which pertain to large
cities. There is more danger of typho-malarial diseases and intestinal
troubles.

St. Augustine — twenty-five miles south of the mouth of the St.
John's, on the coast — that old Spanish town which rests so tranquilly
by the sea, looking out over the broad waves of the Atlantic, which
roll across from the mother-land, is a most interesting place to the
voyager. Its quaint houses, built in the Spanish fashion, from the
coquina or imperfectly-formed limestone which is quarried on the
beach ; its narrow and winding streets, which one may almost cross
with a single stride ; its old fort, dating from 169G, when Spanish power
still ruled a large portion of the world, and Florida was one of the
least of its possessions — these, and the many legends which linger
around the only moss-covered ruins in America, are the attractions of
the place. Long before Jacksonville or any settlement on the St.
John's River existed, St. Augustine was noted for its salubrious cli-
mate. It is now known, however, that its exposed position on the
coast, subjecting it to the whims of every wild northeaster, make it
unfitted for very sensitive invalids, though still a favorite resort for
several wealthy New York gentlemen of yachting proclivities, who
have villas there— and also for those of youthful fervor who cling
to romance and sentiment.

-<*>*~

A SOUTH AFRICAN ARCADIA*

By C. G. BUTTNEE.

THE traveler, coming fresh from Europe into Damaraland, is struck
by the complete communistic freedom with which every man ap-
propriates the land and its natural products. Roads have been worn

* Translated for "The Popular Science Monthly " from " Das Ausland."

A SOUTH AFRICAN ARCADIA. 651

through the thickets by foot-men and the heavy ox-wagons, and the
chief villages are connected by a kind of highway, but no one is
obliged to keep the roads if he does not want to. They are of no more
significance than the zebra or rhinoceros tracks which led to the drink-
ing-places before man appeared in the country ; and there is no reason
why the traveler should not make a new road at pleasure. The past-
urage is free for the teamster's hungry cattle, the wood for the fire
needed to cook his supper. If a stray spark sets the grass on fire, no
one thinks of complaining ; if a hunter commits devastation among
the game, the native may grumble at the waste, but he will not imag-
ine that his rights are trespassed upon, or venture to interfere with
the proceedings. The game is as much the strange hunter's as his.
If one sees a spot that pleases him, he is at liberty to settle upon it, and
build himself a house there. If any objection is made to the stranger,
nothing worse happens than that something unreasonable is demanded
of him, in the same way that people in other parts of the world are
not ashamed to overreach strangers : this is not so easily done, how-
ever, if the intruder is a native or a member of the same tribe ; and
even a stranger, if he does not allow himself to be scared away, is at
last permitted to remain undisturbed. Whoever settles in any partic-
ular spot must, however, expect that other persons, finding it well sup-
plied with water and pasturage, will bring their herds there too ; and
it is the practice of the Herero, when they wish to get rid of an un-
welcome neighbor, notwithstanding their communism, to bring up so
many herds and establish so many cattle-ranges about his house that
he becomes disgusted with the frequent intrusions, and is obliged to go
away from the exhausted tract. Some of the Herero chiefs have
recently begun to drive single settlers away by force, but they are
actuated by ulterior jjolitical views. The people are not disposed to
grudge a stranger the particular spot of land he occupies, but they
wish to drive foreigners out of the country altogether. An incident
from Damara history will help to illustrate the extent to which this
sense of communism goes. When the Hereros had succeeded, after
nine years of warfare, in shaking off the domination of the Namaquas,
to whom they had previously been subjected, the Namaqua chief, Jan
Afrikaner, asked the missionaries to help him make a peace with them.
The missionaries proposed that the two parties should fix a boundary
between themselves, which they would both respect. Both refused to
do this. They were ready to make a peace, they said, and keep it, but
they would have the land, over which they had fought so hard, in
common. The Herero chief, Kamaherero, declared repeatedly that
Jan might live in any part of the land he chose after the peace, and
that he should expect a fair proportion of his own people to be allowed
to live in Jan's land. The peace contracted on these terms lasted
fully ten years.

The custom is the same with regard to that which the earth con-

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceals : every one takes of its treasures wherever he finds them. All,
from all directions, fetch iron and copper ores from those parts of the
land where the mines have been known to exist from time imme-
morial ; and the people who ordinarily live near the mines have never
on that account thought of assuming any right of proprietorship over
them. There are but few salt-licks in the land ; and, as soon after the
rainy season as the ground becomes passable, the herders from all
quarters drive their cattle across the pasture-lands indifferently to the
springs. The dwellers around these places look on quietly, while the
cattle and the sheep, flocking up by thousands from all the regions
around, tread down and destroy the grass of their pastures. They
may complain to themselves about the destruction, but it never occurs
to them to drive the strangers away. It would be decidedly foreign
to the Damara mind for any one to undertake, as Europeans are accus-
tomed to do, to monopolize the salt-springs and charge a higher price
for the use of them as they become more indispensable to others.

The Hereros will even resist, in every way, any one conceding, by
sale, a particular right to any person to hold any piece of land. The
Roman Catholic missionaries, who recently sought to gain a footing
in Damaraland, made themselves suspected more than in any other way
by representing to the people that they would do better by them than
the Protestant missionaries had done, for they would buy land for their
churches, schools, and dwellings, while the Protestant missionaries
were occupying land for those purposes free. They ruined their cause,
and prompted the heathen chief to try every device to get them away.
In a similar manner, the chiefs told us German missionaries, whenever
the subject came up, " You may live in our country as long as you
wish, and no one shall molest you so long as the land belongs to us,
but we will not sell a bit of it to any man."

There are not even any real boundaries between the different tribes.
Some of the chiefs have, indeed, set up exclusive claims to particular
tracts, but have never assumed to enforce them ; and other tribes have
never been required to leave the land. The natural result of this com-
munism is, that no one has a personal care for the land, but gets all he
can out of it, and then leaves it waste to go to a new spot. Hence
the language of the Hereros has no terms for home, fatherland, or
boundary-lines.

This communism extends to all the productions of the earth that
have not been separated from it. Whatever a man has put his hand
upon, that becomes his private property. Whoever takes from a man
anything that he has appropriated to his own use, is a thief. Game,
free in the fields, belongs to whoever can kill it ; but to take it away
from a hunter who has bagged it is a theft, or robbery. In Damara
law even game which has only been hit, and has afterward been killed
by some one else, belongs to the hunter who first hit it, although he is
expected to give a share of it to the other one. This feeling is so

A SOUTH AFRICAN ARCADIA. 653

strong that, when shooting-parties are made up, the right to the first
shot passes from one to another by turns, so that it may be possible
for each one to get a piece of game. The hunter who has to make the
first shot is in that case the real hunter, and the others are only his
helpers ; but, if he misses, the right passes over to the next one.

Any one can cut down a tree who wishes to, but another is not
allowed to appropriate the wood after it has been taken possession of.
Any one may dig a well for his cattle wherever there is hope of find-
ing water, but no one can drink out of the well which another has dug
without the permission of the owner. The lord of the well, when he
is asked for water, will generally order his people to wait upon the
one making the request, so that he does not get paid for the water,
but for the attendance ; and, if he does not choose to permit the well
to be used for another man's cattle, the argument that he did not
create the water has no effect upon him. When any one finds a piece
of land suitable for a garden, he can fence it and till it, and the crop
will belong to him ; and it is generally considered wrong for any one
to enter upon land that has been put under cultivation by another and
till it for himself. But it would be contrary to custom, and provoke
resistance, if any one, leaving the place and abandoning his garden,
should attempt to sell any right in it. The tract again becomes free
for the first comer to occupy.

A kind of property in personal goods is theoretically recognized,
but the right is, in practice, one that rather appertains to the family
than to the individual. A general principle seems to prevail that it is
not right to refuse a gift to one who asks it, particularly if he is a
relative or a friend, or is powerful or rich. People of this class have
no hesitation in begging, and the stranger may be sure that the ragged
fellow who asks him for a new shirt in place of his worn-out one is a
person of wealth who thinks he is doing him honor, and is according
him the recognition he would give to his lord or his father. The de-
nial of the first request does not generally give offense ; but, if the
request is granted, the asker will demand more and greater things,
and will expect to get them ; and, if a person gives to one of a number
of beggars, he must give to all the rest, or they will think he is dis-
honoring them.

The people, however, exercise without scruple the right to appro-
priate their relative's goods to their own use, if he is not there to pre-
vent it ; and this state of public opinion leads to some comical scenes.
A wealthy old chief, who had hundreds of dependents, possessed nu-
merous articles of European clothing, without owning a complete
suit ; but, whenever he went out, he had to put his clothes all on,
however hot the weather. He came to me to be photographed one
day, having on a pair of shoes, three pairs of thick moleskin trousers,
a waistcoat over an indefinite number of shirts, a large shawl around
his body, a thick jacket, a shawl around his neck, with a large

654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dressing-gown over the whole ; and on his head a kerchief, a Ca-
labrian cap, and a velvet cap with pearl ornaments ; and all this in
a heat in which his aboriginal nakedness would have been much
more comfortable — because he was afraid, if he left the garments
at home, the members of his household would appropriate them.
This same chief asked one of my friends for a piece of soap, so
that he could wash his clothes himself ; for he was afraid, if he
gave them to any one else to wash, they would not be returned.
If the clothes are locked up in a trunk they will be safe, for it is con-
sidered stealing to take them when they are thus secured ; but, if the
trunk is left open, Damara custom permits the clothes to be lifted care-
fully out and put one side, and the trunk to be carried off. Articles
of personal property may, however, be devoted to special uses, or to
special persons, by a kind of form of consecration, when the right to
them is respected. A custom of this kind has prevailed from antiquity
with reference to cattle and milk-vessels. Frequently, also, the head
of the house has the right to the first use of things ; among the Hot-
tentots they are his so long as they are whole, but as soon as they are
damaged the relatives are at liberty to get them if they can.

New milk must be taken to the master to taste before the rest can
partake of it ; and this imposes no small labor on the lord of a thou-
sand milch-cows. Likewise whatever is killed must be brought to
him first. If he is not at home, the ancestral staff represents him,
and must be dipped into the milk or touch the meat. Particular animals
are sometimes milked for each member of the family, into a vessel set
apart for him, and then it is wrong for any one to touch the dish with-
out the owner's permission. The master's dish is filled even when he
is absent, and must not be used by any one else under penalty of bad
luck ; but, when it is needed for the next milking, the milk already in
it is poured out on the ground. If, however, a visitor comes to the
place, he, as the master's guest, can use his dish and drink his share
of the milk without impropriety. After the owner of the cow and
the vessel is dead, the vessel is still regularly filled and emptied, un-
less some guest comes along to whom the contents can be given.

The principal property of the Herero consists in cattle. As the
lambs and calves and the mother-cows are never slaughtered, and other
animals only on festal occasions, the herds increase very rapidly in the
warm climate of the country, and require constantly larger pasturage
tracts. This leads to frequent interferences, with occasions for con-
tention ; and at intervals the pasturage becomes exhausted, and great
suffering ensues. The Hereros are thus exposed to periodical alterna-
tions of wealth and poverty.

The chiefs have, however, a tolerably secure possession in their
retainers ; and the feudal and patriarchal relation in which the men
stand to each other is in strong contrast with the community of title
to the land and soil. Theoretically, the function of head of the

A SOUTH AFRICAN ARCADIA. 655

family descends to the eldest son ; practically, it is exercised by the
strongest member of the family — who is most likely an uncle of the
heir — around whom the other members group themselves as depend-
ents. The position of the women is not essentially different from
that of the women of the working-classes in Europe. The work is
divided between the two sexes about as it is in Europe, and the women
are not called upon to do men's work, except in case of need, while
the men are willing enough to help in the peculiar women's work
whenever they can make themselves useful and have nothing better to
do, provided no strangers are in sight. Polygamy is freely allowed,
and as many alliances as possible are formed by the head of the fam-
ily, as a means of strengthening his influence and conciliating his
neighbors and rivals. The provisions of matrimonial alliances are
carefully considered and guarded, so that each family may receive all
the honor it is entitled to, and neither shall get the advantage of the
other. Slavery exists in a mild form, but the sale of slaves seldom
occurs. Children are taken into the council of their parents, and are
consulted about important matters from a very early age ; and the
parent will seldom disregard the advice of his child, or exercise con-
straint upon him in any matter except indirectly and in the most gen-
tle way.

The most wealthy cattle-owners number their herds by the thou-
sand head. It is impossible to keep them all in one place, and they
are therefore distributed at different stations under the charge of par-
ticular herdsmen. The herdsman's position is a considerable one, and
brings with it privileges enough to make it desirable. The cattle are
not distinguished by any specific marks, and the owner's only means
of recognizing them is by his personal acquaintance with them. This
requires him to be continually on the wTatch, and to go frequently
the round of the stations to inspect them, else his herdsmen might
make some of them their own. Most owners become extremely skill-
ful in noticing and recognizing the individual peculiarities of their
animals.

The system of inheritance is determined by the circumstances of
the country and its customs, which require that the head of the family
must be strong and wise enough to maintain his rights. By its opera-
tion, when a chief dies and leaves a family of minors, his whole per-
sonal estate goes, not to his widow and children, but to the nearest
man of might in the family. The cattle and servants become his, and
the widow and children become his wife and children, the latter on an
equal footing with his own children, so precisely that the language of
the country has no word for step-father and step-child. One of the re-
sults of the system is that the rich and powerful grow more wealthy
and influential the longer they live, while the children and younger
members of the family receive nothing as of right. It has, however,
become customary for the children to be given particular animals as

656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their own, their right to which, with the increase, is regularly and
formally recognized ; and with these and what additions to their stock
they may acquire in one way or another, they are ahle gradually to
accumulate a considerable property as they grow up.

The wealth of a man who has grown fat in riches may consist in
what he has inherited from his father, or from the chief of his family ;
in what he has received from more distant relatives ; in what he has
gained in fees from his herdsmen ; and in what of the property of
other estates he has received by becoming the head of the family.
The line of descent of all this property, which consists almost wholly
of the pedigrees of the cattle, is carefully preserved, and the accumu-
lations of each kind can be as carefully computed and allotted as is
done in the case of the accounts of European bankers. When the lord
dies, all this property, with its increase, must go where it came from.
The division, or the fact that it is to take place, brings all the connec-
tions of the family from far and wide around the bed of the lord when
he has died or is expected to die, for each claimant must be present in
person to assert his claim, or it will be overlooked or overpowered.
The herdsmen must likewise bring up all the cattle from the various
stations, that they may be identified according to their pedigrees.
The division of all these animals and the adjudication of the claims of
all the pretendants who appear, sometimes consumes months of time,
with discussions which are often carried on in the midst of great ex-
citement. The dying man may himself give directions respecting the
division of his property, which are then implicitly carried out, other-
wise the man who disregards them may be troubled by his ghost.

-*•»*-

PIRATICAL PUBLISHERS.

By LEONAED SCOTT.

THE republishes of foreign books and periodicals at cheap rates
have long and meekly borne the name which heads this article.
I propose to show that they do not also deserve it.

Piracy is robbery in its boldest form, having no warrant but the
strength of the bloody hand that commits it. It is against all law
and all right, human or divine. It has no sanction nor show of sanc-
tion from the practice of others recognized, in all the walks of life, as
respectable and honored citizens.

Will this description apply to the reprinting of foreign books?
Certainly not. What, then, is the crime of which republishers are
guilty ? Their calumniators will answer, " Oh ! they rob the foreign
author of the product of his brain." Let us see if this is true. I
grant that if all the nations of the earth had one common interest and

PIRATICAL PUBLISHERS. 6$7

one common government to support it, so that legislation should always
be for the mutual advantage of all the inhabitants — the same in one
section as in another — then the reprinting of a book by or for any one
but its author would be a violation of right ; but as this Utopia does
not and never will exist, we must deal with men, and governments,
and their selfishness as wTe find them. Nations legislate for what they
believe to be to their own advantage, and without regard to the interests
of their neighbors. Thus, England manufactures goods, and the manu-
facturer claims that he has a natural right freely to offer these goods
as cheaply in one part of the world as in another, save only the cost
of conveyance. But do other countries recognize such right? Does
this country, for instance, acknowledge it when she lays a heavy duty
upon such manufactures ? "When such duty is so great as to prohibit
the importation of a manufactured article that would, if free of duty,
sell largely in the United States, is not the manufacturer as effectually
robbed as the author whose sales are rendered impossible by a reprint
of his book ?

Doubtless I shall be told that the cases are not parallel, inasmuch
as in the one case the Government of the United States commits the
trespass, and in the other its private citizens. I confess I see no differ-
ence. Government represents and legislates for its private citizens.
Its tariff for revenue furnishes the means which would otherwise have
to be taken by direct taxation froni the pockets of the people. Its
tariff for protection gives encouragement to native manufacturers ;
the whole system of levying duties upon foreign merchandise is one
of pure selfishness, and as much a robbery or piracy of the natural
rights of the foreigner as anything yet done by an American repub-
lisher. Suppose there were no such market for English books as the
United States now offers, would English publishers any the less con-
tinue to print them ? These works are produced mainly for the mar-
kets of Great Britain and its English-speaking dependencies. The
withholding of an international copyright law does not take away
from them wdiat they never possessed or had any right to claim. The
American republisher, therefore, in the absence of such a law, buys the
English book at the English price, and thinks he has done all that is
required of him to become its absolute owner, to do with it whatever
the laws of his country do not forbid. Who shall say that among
these rights is not the right to reprint it ? " But," say the advocates
of copyright, " inventors are protected by international patent-right,
and, if the product of the inventor's brain is entitled to protection,
that of the author's is no less so." Here, however, self-interest is
again clearly indicated. There was a time when international patent-
right did not exist between the United States and Great Britain ; but
when it became notorious that the inventions of Americans were more
numerous and more valuable than those of other countries, our Gov-
ernment willingly consented to international patent-right, and I vent-

VOL. XXII. — 42

658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ure to say that, when American books shall be as popular in England
as English books are in the United States, copyright will no longer be
withheld.

It will doubtless be urged that I am placing our government in an
unenviable light ; that selfishness and not right rules its conduct. I
answer that all governments, under like conditions, would pursue a
similar course. Great Britain may arrogate to herself national lib-
erality for having opened her ports, with little or no restriction, to
the commerce of the world ; but the motives which prompted such
liberality were as purely selfish as were those of the United States in
fettering commerce by her high tariff. Great Britain, assured of her
supremacy as the great manufacturer of the world, did not fear the
competition of other manufacturers, whether protected or not ; and
she became, at once, the advocate and the exemplar of free trade,
believing that other nations would reciprocate, and thus give greater
encouragement to the commerce in which, as a nation, her chief in-
terest lies. Disappointed in her expectations that other countries
would follow her example, she is now considering the policy of aban-
doning " free trade " for what she calls " fair trade," self-interest
again prompting this change of attitude toward other nations ; and
yet she is not in reality any more selfish in the one case than in the
other.

Referring again to what is called the moral wrong of using the
product of another's brain without remuneration, I would ask, " Why
this special claim of a foreign author ? " Does not our government
send experts abroad to gain information on subjects of the greatest
importance to our interests at home ? Do not these experts closely
examine the establishments, public and private, of the Old World and
gain all the information possible in regard to them ? Do they not
visit the great manufactories in all their variety ; the workshops, the
docks, war-vessels, arsenals, colleges, schools, prisons, hospitals, and
churches ; and inquire into and observe the modes of foreign life,
social, industrial, political, and religious ? In short, do they not in-
form themselves of everything likely to be of benefit to their own
country, and, although the information given them may have been
the result of centuries of brain-labor, do their countrymen hesitate to
appropriate such information to their own use and without pay ? The
fact is that, the intercommunication of nations gives advantages which
isolation could not afford, and if such advantages include the spread
of knowledge among the people, obtained either in the way I have
here described, or by the cheap reprint of a foreign book, it would be
difficult to show anything criminal in thus acquiring it.

In conclusion, it may be well to remark that, even in England,
brain -property is not treated like that known as personal or real, for,
while the latter has perpetual protection by law, the former has only
pi-otection within prescribed limits, the English copyright extending

A CHAP TUB IN TRANSCENDENTAL PATHOLOGY. 659

only for a certain number of years, and it is well known that many
of the most valuable standard works, both in prose and poetry, are
being continually republished in England without any remuneration
to the authors or their heirs. If authors have an inherent right to
the products of their brains, the lapse of time should be no reason for
taking that right away, and English publishers are as morally guilty
of robbery when they fail to make remuneration to such authors or
their legal representatives, after the law no longer protects them, as
are the American publishers who do the same with English copy-
right books for which there is no American protection. O most con-
scientious Briton ! when thou doest unto others as thou wouldst
that others should do unto thee, then mayst thou, with more con-
sistency, indulge in the abuse of those whom thou delightest to call
"piratical publishers."

A CHAPTER IN TRANSCENDENTAL PATHOLOGY.

IN his address to the Pathological Section of the British Medical
Association, on the occasion of its meeting at Worcester this
year, the distinguished president of the section, Dr. J. Hughlings-
Jackson, threw out the suggestion that inflammation should be re-
garded as a process of dissolution. His meaning will be fully intelli-
gible only to those who have some knowledge of the system of phi-
losophy which Mr. Herbert Spencer has given to the world. It may
be interesting, both to those who are familiar with Mr. Spencer's writ-
ings, and to those who are not, if we somewhat expand Dr. Jackson's
hint, and inquire briefly how far inflammation corresponds to Mr.
Spencer's definition of dissolution. If we find that it is included in
that definition, it may enable us to trace relations between inflamma-
tion and other allied processes — mineral, vegetal, animal, psychological,
and social — which can not but enlarge and make clearer our views of
it and them.

Evolution, our readers will hardly need reminding, is the process
of growth and life ; dissolution, that of decay and death. The defi-
nition of inflammation which is given by one of the most eminent
writers upon the subject starts from the proposition that inflammation
is the result of injury. We should, therefore, a priori, expect that
changes which are the result of injury would have their analogues
rather in the processes of decay and death than in those of life and
growth. The definition of evolution which Mr. Spencer formulates is
as follows : " Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant
dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefi-
nite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and
during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dissolution is the reverse of this. "We have, then, to see if inflamma-
tion corresponds to a definition running thus : Dissolution is a disinte-
gration of matter and concomitant absorption of motion, during which
the matter passes from a definite, coherent heterogeneity to an indefi-
nite, incoherent homogeneity, and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation.

The first thing which our definition asserts is, that inflammation is
a disintegration of matter. This proposition needs little defense. Do
we not find that inflamed parts are always softened, and that when the
process is severe and continued they become liquefied, converted into
pus ? Inflammation clearly is a process which tends to the disintegra-
tion of matter. We learn, next, that the disintegration of matter is
accompanied with concomitant absorption of motion. This, on con-
sideration, will be found equally true, although, perhaps, not so obvi-
ous. In the process of evolution the motion of units (molecular mo-
tion) becomes converted into the motion of aggregates (molar motion) ;
and in dissolution the reverse takes place. The latter we shall find
hold good of inflammation. An inflamed part is not only softened —
which means that its component molecules move more readily upon
one another — but it is swollen. The particles previously integrated
into a solid mass, occupying a small space, have most of them moved
farther away from one another, and now occupy a comparatively great
space. Besides this, it is hotter than natural, and heat is a mode of
motion. There is thus an increase of molecular motion. "With this,
the functional activity of the part which, from our present point of
view, is its motion as an aggregate (for all force is a mode of motion),
is lessened. To take the most literal illustration : an inflamed muscle
can not contract with the force of a healthy one. Seeing, then, that
there is an increase of molecular motion in an inflamed pai't, we might
be content with pointing out that this motion must have been obtained
from somewhere. But we may go further. There is one remedy, the
potency of which, in checking inflammatory change, can not be gain-
said. It can not everywhere be efficiently applied, and it is not always
decidedly for the patient's benefit that inflammation should be too
rudely cut short ; but, when circumstances admit of cold being brought
into play, there is no doubt that it will arrest or suspend inflammatory
change. We find throughout the universe that cold everywhere arrests
molecular motion. It makes fluids into solids, vapors into fluids ;
checks chemical as well as vital change. The inflamed part to which
cold is applied is surrounded by a medium from which it can not ab-
sorb motion ; and, if motion can not be absorbed, inflammation can
not go on. Inflammation, then, is a change attended with the absorp-
tion of motion as well as with the disintegration of matter.

Proceeding with our definition, we find it next informs us that the
matter (in the present case the inflamed part) passes from a definite,
coherent heterogeneity to an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity. It

A CHAPTER IN TRANSCENDENTAL PATHOLOGY. 661

is a general assertion that holds good of inflammation in every part of
the body, that from the first stage to the last it tends to blend and
confuse together, to destroy the distinctive features of the individual
structures of the part affected. In the beginning we have infiltration
with leucocytes, replacing with cells of indefinite type the muscular,
nervous, fibrous, and other naturally well-defined elements of the part
affected. Finally, we have every trace of the latter lost ; the definite-
ness of structure, its coherence and heterogeneity have gone, and we
have in place simply a collection of fluid homogeneous pus. The
progress is clearly from the definite, the coherent, and the heterogene-
ous, to the indefinite, the incoherent, and the homogeneous. The last
part of the definition asserts that the retained motion undergoes a
like transformation. This we have partly touched on already. The
healthy body contains structures which absorb, transform, and give
out force — that is, motion — in different ways. By the intestinal canal,
force stored up by plants and animals is taken into the body. By the
lymphatic and vascular system it is transferred from the place where
it is taken in to the place where it is wanted for use. By the nervous,
muscular, and glandular apparatus it is converted into sensible motion
of the organism as a whole, or into secretions capable of setting up
various changes in the substances with which they come in contact, or
of producing and nourishing a new being. We have, therefore, in
the normal organism, motion given out in many heterogeneous forms,
each form being definite, and each so related to the activity of the
rest that the body forms a whole as coherent in function as it is in
structure. When inflammation affects a part, these features of its
dynamic activity disappear. Natural function is either lost, or per-
formed only in an imperfect way. In place of the exertion of force
in ways heterogeneous, but definite, we have the homogeneous molec-
ular motion manifested by liquefaction, swelling, and warmth. Defi-
niteness of function, as of structure, is lost ; heterogeneity of tissue-
changes, as of the tissues themselves, is altered to homogeneity ; and
in place of the part fulfilling its function to the advantage of every
other part, that is, in a manner coherent with functional activity else-
where, it exercises only a perturbing, injurious effect — its functional
activity has become incoherent instead of coherent.

The subject is a very large one ; and in the space that we are able
to give to it we can not do more than imperfectly indicate the analo-
gies which inflammatory changes bear to those of dissolution gener-
ally. If our remarks should incite others to follow up the subject in
a more exact and comprehensive manner, our object in making them
will have been amply fulfilled. — Medical Times and Gazette.

662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE PEDIGKEE OF WHEAT.

By Peofessoe GRANT ALLEN.

WHEAT ranks by origin as a degenerate and degraded lily. Such
in brief is the proposition which this paper sets out to prove,
and which the whole course of evolutionary botany tends every day
more and more fully to confirm. By thus from the very outset plac-
ing clearly before our eyes the goal of our argument, we shall be able
the better to understand as we go whither each item of the cumulative
evidence is really tending. We must endeavor to start with the sim-
plest forms of the great group of plants to which the cereals and the
other grasses belong, and we must try to see by what steps this primi-
tive type gave birth, first to the brilliantly colored lilies, next to the
degraded rushes and sedges, and then to the still more degenerate
grasses, from one or other of whose richer grains man has finally de-
veloped his wheat, his rice, his millet, and his barley. We shall thus
trace throughout the whole pedigree of wheat from the time when its
ancestors first diverged from the common stock of the lilies and the
water-plantains, to the time when savage man found it growing wild
among the untilled plains of prehistoric Asia, and took it under his
special protection in the little garden-plots around his wattled hut,
whence it has gradually altered under his constant selection into the
golden grain that now covers half the lowland tilth of Europe and
America. There is no page in botanical history more full of genuine
romance than this ; and there is no page in which the evidence is
clearer or more convincing for those who will take the easy trouble to
read it aright.

The fixed point from which we start is the primitive and undiffer-
entiated ancestral flowering plant. Into the previous history of the
line from which the cereals are ultimately descended, I do not propose
here to enter. It must suffice for our present purpose to say dogmat-
ically that the flowering plants as a whole derive their origin from a
still earlier flowerless stock, akin in many points to the ferns and the
club-mosses, but differing from them in the relatively important part
borne in its economy by the mechanism for cross-fertilization. The
earliest flowering plant of the great monocotyledonous division (the
only one with which we shall here have anything to do) started ap-
parently by possessing a very simple and inconspicuous blossom, with
a central row of three ovaries, surrounded by two or more rows of
three stamens each, without any colored petals or other ornamental
adjuncts of any sort. I need hardly explain even to the unbotanical
reader at the present day that the ovaries contain the embryo seeds,
and that they only swell into fertile fruits after they have been duly
impregnated by pollen from the stamens, preferably those of another

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 663

plant, or at least of another blossom on the same stem. Seeds fertil-
ized by pollen from their own flower, as Mr. Darwin has shown, pro-
duce relatively weak and sickly seedlings ; seeds fertilized by pollen
from a sister plant of the same species produce relatively strong and
hearty seedlings. The two cases are exactly analogous to the effects
of breeding in and in or of an infusion of fresh blood among races of
men and animals. Hence it naturally happens that those plants whose
organization in any way favors the ready transference of pollen from
one flower to another gain an advantage in the struggle for existence,
and so tend on the average to thrive and to survive ; while those
plants whose organization renders such transference difficult or impos-
sible stand at a constant disadvantage in the race for life, and are
liable to fall behind in the contest, or at least to survive only in the
most unfavorable and least occupied parts of the vegetal economy.
Familiar as this principle has now become to all scientific biologists,
it is yet so absolutely necessary for the comprehension of the present
question, whose key-note it forms, that I shall make no apology for
thus once more stating it at the outset as the general law which must
guide us through all the intricacies of the development of wheat.

Our primitive ancestral lily, not yet a lily or anything else nam-
able in our existing terms, had thus, to start with, one triple set of
ovaries, and about three triple sets of pollen-bearing stamens ; and to
the very end this triple arrangement may be traced under more or less
difficult disguises in every one of its numerous modern descendants.
No single survivor, however, now represents for us this earliest ideal
stage ; we can only infer its existence from the diverse forms assumed
by its various divergent modifications at the present day, all of which
show many signs of being ultimately derived from some such primor-
dial and simple ancestor. The first step in advance consisted in the
acquisition of petals, which are now possessed in a more or less rudi-
mentary shape by all the tribe of trinary flowers, or at least, if quite
absent, are shown to have been once present by intermediate links or
by abortive rudiments. There are even now flowers of this class
which do not at present possess any observable petals at all ; but these
can be shown (as we shall see hereafter) not to be unaltered descend-
ants of the prime type, but on the contrary to be very degraded and
profoundly modified forms, derived from later petal-bearing ancestors,
and still connected with their petal-bearing allies by all stages of in-
tervening degeneracy. The original petalless lily has long since died
out before the fierce competition of its own more advanced descend-
ants ; and the existing petalless reeds or cuckoo-pints, as well as the
apparently petalless wheats and grasses, are special adaptive forms of
the newer petal-bearing rushes and lilies.

The origin of the colored petals is almost certainly due to the selec-
tive action of primeval insects. The soft pollen, and perhaps, too, the
slight natural exudations around the early flowers, afforded food to

664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the ancestral creatures not then fully developed into anything that we
could distinctively call a bee or a butterfly. But, as the insects flew
about from one head to another in search of such food, they carried
small quantities of pollen with them from flower to flower. This
pollen, brushed from their bodies on to the sensitive surface of the
ovaries, fertilized the embryo seeds, and so gave the fortunate plants
which happened to attract the insects all the benefits of a salutary
cross. Accordingly, the more the flowers succeeded in attracting the
eyes of their winged guests, the better were they likely to succeed in
the struggle for existence. In some cases, the outer row of stamens
appears to have become flattened and petal-like, as still often happens
with plants in the rich soil of our gardens ; and in these flatter sta-
mens the oxidized juices assumed perhaps a livelier yellow than even
the central stamens themselves. If the flowers had fertilized their
own ovaries this change would of course have proved disadvantageous,
by depriving them entirely of the services of one row of stamens ; for
the new flattened and petal-like structures lost at once the habit of
producing pollen. But their value as attractive organs for alluring
the eyes of insects more than counterbalanced this slight apparent dis-
advantage ; and the new petal-bearing blossoms soon outstripped and
utterly lived down all their simpler petalless allies. By devoting one
outer row of stamens to the function of alluring the fertilizing flies,
they have secured the great benefit of perpetual cross-fertilization, and
so have got the better of all their less developed competitors. At the
same time, the exudations at the base of the petals have assumed the
definite form of sweet nectar or honey, a liquid which is mainly com-
posed of sugar, that universal allurer of animal tastes. By this means
the plants save their pollen from depredations, and at the same time
offer the insects a more effectual, because a more palatable, sort of
bribe.

Passing rapidly over these already familiar initial stages, we may
go on to those more special and distinctive facts which peculiarly con-
cern the ancestry of the lilies and cereals. It is probable that the
nearest modern analogue of the earliest petal-bearing trinary flowers
is to be found in the existing alisma tribe, including our own English
arrowheads and flowering rushes. As a rule, indeed, it may be said
that fresh-water plants and animals tend to preserve for us very ancient
types indeed ; and all the alismas are marsh or pond flowers of an ex-
tremely simple character. They have usually three greenish sepals
outside each blossom, inclosing one whorl of three white or pink petals,
two or three whorls of three stamens each, and a number of separate
ovaries, which are not united, as in the more developed true lilies, into
a single capsule, but remain quite distinct, each with its own individ-
ual stigma or sensitive surface. Even within this relatively early and
simple group, however, several gradations of development may yet be
traced. I incline to believe that our English smaller alisma, a not un-

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT.

665

common plant in wet ditches and marshes throughout the whole of
Southern Britain, represents the very earliest petal-bearing type in this
line of development ; indeed, save that its petals are now pinky-white,
while those of the original ancestor were almost certainly yellow, we
might almost say that the marsh-weed in question was really the ear-
liest petal-hearing plant of which we are in search. It closely resem-
bles in appearance, and in the arrangement of its parts, the buttercups,
which are the earliest existing members of the other or quinary divis-
ion of flowering plants ; and in both we seem to get a survival of a
still earlier common ancestor, only that in the one the parts are ar-
ranged in rows of three, while in the other they are arranged in rows
of five ; and concomitantly with this distinction go the two or three
other distinctions which mark off the two main classes from one an-
other—namely, that the one has leaves with parallel veins, only one
seed-leaf to the embryo, and an endogenous stem, while the other has
leaves with netted veins, two seed-leaves to the embryo, and an exog-
enous stem. Nevertheless, in spite of such fundamental differences,
we may say that the alismas and
the buttercups really stand very
close to one another in the order
of development. When the two
main branches of flowering plants
first diverged from one another,
the earliest petal - bearing form
they produced on one divergent
branch was the alisma, or some-
thing very like it ; the earliest
petal-bearing form they produced
on the other divergent branch
was the buttercup, or something
very like it. Hence, whenever we
have to deal with the pedigree of
either great line, the fixed historical point from which we must needs
set out must always be the typical alismas or the typical buttercups.
The accompanying diagram will show at once the relation of parts in
the simplest trinary flowers, and will serve for comparison at a later
stage of our argument with the arrangement of their degraded descend-
ants, the wheats and grasses.

Our own smaller alisma has a number of ovaries loosely scattered
about in its center, as in the buttercups, with two rows of three sta-
mens outside them, and then a single row of three petals, followed by
the calyx or inclosing cup of three green pieces. Its close ally the
water-plantain, however, shows signs of some advance toward the
typical lily form in the arrangement of its ovaries in a single ring,
often loosely divisible into three sets. And in the pretty pink flower-
ing rush (not of course a rush at all in the scientific sense) the advance

/? ' [> tllWdS

,s\

Fig. I.— a. ovaries ; 5, stamens, inner whorl ; c,
stamens, outer whorl; d, petals ; e, calyx-pieces.

666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is still more marked in that the number of ovaries is reduced to six,
that is to say, two whorls of three each, accompanied by nine stamens,
similarly divisible into three rows. In all these very early forms (as
in their analogues the buttercups) the main point to notice is this, that
there is as yet no regular definiteness in the numerical relations of the
parts. They tend to run, it is true, in rows of three ; but often these
rows are so numerous and so confused that nature loses count, so to
speak, and it is only in their higher and more developed members that
we begin to arrive at any distinct symmetry, such as that of the flow-
ering rush. Even here, the symmetry is far from being so perfect as
in the later lilies. There are, however, a few very special members of
the alisma family in which the approach to the true lilies is even
greater. These are well represented in England by our own common
arrowgrasses — inconspicuous little green flowers, with three calyx-
pieces, three petals, six stamens, and either six or three ovaries. Here,
too, the ovaries are at first united into a single pistil (as it is technic-
ally called), though they afterward separate as they ripen into three
or six distinct little capsules. One of our British kinds, the marsh
arrowgrass, has almost reached the lily stage of development ; for it
has three calyx-pieces, three petals, six stamens, and three ovaries, ex-
actly like the true lilies ; but it falls short of their full type in the
fact that its pistil divides when ripe into separate capsules, whereas
the pistil of the lilies always remains united to the very end ; and this
minute difference suffices, in the eyes of systematic botanists, to make
it an alisma rather than a lily. In reality, it ought to be regarded as
a benevolent neutral — a surviving intermediate link between the two
larger classes.

The specialization which makes the true lilies thus depends upon
two points. In the first place, all the parts are regularly symmetrical,
except that there are two rows of stamens to each one of the other
organs : the common formula being three calyx-pieces, three petals,
six stamens, and three ovaries. In the second place, the three ovaries
are completely combined together into a single three-celled pistil.
The advantage which the lilies thus gain is obvious enough. Then-
bright petals, usually larger and more attractive than those of the
alismas, allure a sufficient number of insects to enable them to dispense
with the numerous stamens and ovaries of their primitive ancestors.
Moreover, this diminution in number is accompanied by an increase in
effectiveness and specialization : for the lilies have only three sensi-
tive surfaces to their pistil, combined on a single stalk ; and the honey
is usually so placed at its base that the insect can not fail to brush off
pollen at every visit against all three surfaces at once. Again, while
the number of ovaries has been lessened, the number of seeds in each
has been generally increased, which also marks a step in advance,
since it allows many seeds to be impregnated by a single act of polli-
nation. Tbe result of all these improvements, carried further by

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 667

some lilies than by others, is that the family has absolutely outstripped
all others of the trinary class in the race for the possession of the
earth, and has now occupied all the most favorable positions in every
part of the world. While the alismas and their allies have been so
crowded out that they now linger only in a few ponds, marshes, and
swamps, to which the more recent lily tribe have not yet had time
fully to adapt themselves, the true lilies and their yet more advanced
descendants have taken seizin of every climate and every zone upon
our planet, and are to be found in every possible position, from the
arborescent yuccas and huge agaves of the tropics to the wild hyacinths
of our English woodlands and the graceful asphodels of the Mediter-
ranean hill-sides.

The lilies themselves, again, do not all stand on one plane of ho-
mogeneous evolution. There are different grades of development
still surviving among the class itself. The little yellow gagea which
grows sparingly in sandy English fields may be taken as a very fair
representative of the simplest and earliest true lily type. It bears a
small bunch of little golden flowers, only to be distinguished from the
higher alismas by their united ovaries : for though both calyx and
petals are here brightly colored, that is also the case in the flowering
rushes, and in many others of the alisma group. On the other hand,
though it may be said generally of the lilies that their calyx and pet-
als are colored alike — sometimes so much so as to be practically in-
distinguishable— yet there are many kinds which still retain the green-
ish calyx-pieces, and that even in the more developed genera. But
most of the lilies are far handsomer than gaarea and its allies : even
in England itself we have such very conspicuous and attractive flow-
ers as the purple fritillaries, which every Oxford man has gathered by
handfuls in the spongy meadows about Iffley lock, with their dark
spotted petals converging into a bell, and the nectaries at the base
producing each a large drop of luscious honey. Some, like our wild
hyacinths, have assumed a tubular shape under stress of insect selec-
tion, the better to promote proper fertilization ; and at the same time
have acquired a blue pigment, to allure the eyes of azure-loving bees.
Others have become dappled with spots to act as honey-guides, or
have produced brilliant variegated blossoms to attract the attention of
great tropical insects. Our British lilies alone comprise such various
examples as the lily-of-the-valley, a tubular, white, scented species,
adapted for fertilization by moths ; the very similar Solomon's-seal ;
the butcher's-broom ; the wild tulip ; the star-of-Bethlehem ; the va-
rious squills ; the asparagus ; the grape-hyacinth ; and the meadow-
saffron. Some of them (for example, asparagus and butcher's-broom)
have also developed berries in place of dry capsules ; and these ber-
ries, being eaten by birds which digest the pulp, but not the actual
seeds, aid in the dispersion of the seedlings, and so enable the plant
to reduce the total number of seeds to three only, or one in each

668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ovary. Among familiar exotics of the same family may be mentioned
the hyacinth, tuberose, tulip, asphodel, yucca, and most of the so-called
lilies. In short, no tribe supplies us with a greater number of hand-
some garden flowers, for the most part highly adapted to a very ad-
vanced type of insect fertilization.

Properly to understand the development of our existing wheat
from this brilliant and ornamental family, as well as to realize the
true nature of its relation to allied orders, we must first glance briefly
at the upward evolution of the other branches descended from the
true lilies, and then recur to the downward evolution which finally re-
sulted in the production of the degenerate grasses. In the main line
of progressive development, the lilies gave origin to the amaryllids,
familiarly represented in England by the snow-drops and daffodils, a
family which is technically described as differing from the lilies in
having an inferior instead of a superior ovary — that is to say, with
the pistil apparently placed below instead of above the point where
the petals and calyx-pieces are inserted. From the evolutionary point
of view, however, this difference merely amounts to saying that the
amaryllids are tubular lilies, in which the tube has coalesced with the
walls of the ovary, so that the petals seem to begin at its summit in-
stead of at its base. The change gives still greater certainty of im-
pregnation, and therefore benefits the race accordingly. At the same
time, the amaryllids, being probably a much newer development than
the true lilies, have not yet had leisure to gain quite so firm a footing
in the world ; though on the other hand many of them are far more
minutely adapted for special insect fertilization than their earlier allies.
They include the so-called Guernsey lilies of our gardens, as well as
the huge American aloes which all visitors to the Riviera know so
well on the diy hills around Nice and Cannes. The iris family are a
similar but rather more advanced tribe, with only three stamens instead
of six, their superior organization allowing them readily to dispense
with half their complement, and so to attain the perfect trinary sym-
metry of three sepals, three petals, three stamens, and three ovaries.
Among them, the iris and the crocus are circular in shape, but some
very advanced types, such as the gladiolus, have acqitired a bilateral
form, in correlation with special insect visits. From these, the step is
not great to the orchids, undoubtedly the highest of all the trinary
flowers, with the triple arrangement almost entirely obscured, and
with the most extraordinary varieties of adaptation to fertilization by
bees or even by humming-birds in the most marvelous fashions. Alike
by their inferior ovary, their bilateral shape, their single stamen, their
remarkable forms, their brilliant colors, and their occasional mimicry
of insect-life, the orchids show themselves to be by far the highest of
the trinary flowers, if not, indeed, of the entire vegetable world.

From this brief sketch of the main line of upward evolution from
lilies to orchids, we must now return to the grand junction afforded

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 669

us by the lilies themselves, and travel down the other line of degen-
eracy and degradation which leads us on to the grasses and the cereals,
including at last our own familiar cultivated wheat. Any trinary
flower with three calyx-pieces, three petals, six stamens, and a three-
celled pistil not concealed within an inclosing tube, is said to be a lily,
as long as it possesses brightly colored and delicate petals. There are,
however, a large number of somewhat specialized lilies with very
small and inconspicuous petals, which have been artificially separated
by botanists as the rush family, not because they were really different
in any important point of structure from the acknowledged lilies, but
merely because they had not got such brilliant and handsome blossoms.
These despised and neglected plants, however, supply us with the first
downward step on the path of degeneracy which leads at last to the
grasses, and they may be considered as intermediate stages in the scale
of degradation, fortunately preserved for us by exceptional circum-
stances to the present day. Even among the true lilies, there are
some, like the garlic and onion tribe, which show considerable marks
of degeneration, owing to some decline from the type of insect fer-
tilization to the undesirable habit of fertilizing themselves. Thus,
while our common English rampsons or wild garlic has pretty and
conspicuous white blossoms, some other members of the tribe, such as
the crow allium, have very small greenish flowers, often reduced to
mere shapeless bulbs. Among the true rushes, however, the course of
development has been somewhat different. These water-weeds have
acquired the habit of trusting for fertilization to the wind, which car-
ries the pollen of one blossom to the sensitive surface of another, per-
haps at less trouble and expense to the parent plant than would be
necessary for the allurement of bees or flies by all the bribes of brill-
iant petals and honeyed secretions. To effect this object, their stamens
hang out pensile to the breeze, on long, slender filaments, so lightly
poised that the merest breath of air amply suffices to dislodge the
pollen : while the sensitive surface of the ovaries is prolonged into a
branched and feathery process, seen under the microscope to be studded
with adhesive glandular knobs, which readily catch and retain every
golden grain of the fertilizing powder which may chance to be wafted
toward them on the wings of the wind. Under such circumstances,
the rush kind could only lose by possessing brightly colored and at-
tractive petals, which would induce insects uselessly to plunder their
precious stores : and so all those rushes which showed any tendency
in that direction would soon be weeded out by natural selection ; while
those which produced only dry and inconspicuous petals would become
the parents of future generations, and would hand on their own pecul-
iarities to their descendants after them. Thus the existing: rushes are
all plain little lilies with dry, brownish flowers, specially adapted to
wind-fertilization alone.

Among the rushes themselves, again, there are various levels of

670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

retrogressive development — retrogressive, that is to say, if we regard
the lily family as an absolute standard: for the various alterations un-
dergone by the different flowers are themselves adaptive to their new
condition, though that condition is itself decidedly lower than the one
from which they started. The common rush and its immediate con-
geners resemble the lilies from which they spring in having several
seeds in each of the three cells which compose their pistil. But there
is an interesting group of small grass-like plants, known as wood-rushes,
which combine all the technical characteristics of the true rushes with
a general character extremely like that of the grasses. They have
long, thin, grass-like blades in the place of leaves ; and, what is still
more important, as indicating an approach to the essentially one-seeded
grass tribe, they have only three seeds in the flowei*, one to each cell
of the capsule. These seeds are comparatively large, and are richly
stored with food-stuffs for the supply of the young plantlet. One
such richly supplied embryo is worth many little unsupported grains,
since it stands a much better chance than they do of surviving in the
struggle for existence. The wood-rushes may thus be regarded as
some of the earliest plants among the great trinary class to adopt those
tactics of storing gluten, starch, and other food-stuffs along with the
embryo, which have given the cereals their acknowledged superiority
as producers of human food. They are closely connected with the
rushes, on the one hand, by sundry intermediate species which possess
thin leaves instead of cylindrical, pithy blades ; and they lead on to
the grasses, on the other, by reason of their very grass-like foliage, and
their reduced number of large, well-furnished, starchy seeds.

In another particular, the rush family supplies us with a useful hint
in tracing out the pedigree of the grasses and cereals. Their flowers
are, for the most part, crowded together in large tufts or heads, each
containing a considerable number of minute separate blossoms. Even
among the true lilies we find some cases of such crowding in the hya-
cinths and the squills, or, still better, in the onion and garlic tribe.
But, with the wind-fertilized rushes, the grouping together of the
flowers has important advantages, because it enables the pollen more
easily to fix upon one or other of the sensitive surfaces, as the stalks
sway backward and forward before a gentle breeze. Among yet more
developed or degraded wind-fertilized plants, this crowding of the
blossoms becomes even more conspicuous. A common American rush-
like water-plant, known as eriocaulon, helps us to bridge over the gap
between the' rushes and such compound flowers as the sedges and
grasses. Eriocaulon and its allies have always one seed only in each
cell of the pistil ; and they have also generally a very delicate corolla
and calyx, of from four to six pieces, representing the original three
sepals and three petals of the lilies and rushes. But their minute
blossoms are closely crowded together in globular heads, the stamens
and pistils being here divided in separate flowers, though both kinds

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 671

of flowers are combined in each head. From an ancestral form not
unlike this, but still more like the wood-rushes, we must get both our
sedges and our grasses. And though the sedges themselves do not
stand in the direct line of descent to wheat and the other cereals, they
are yet so valuable as an illustration from their points of analogy and
of difference that we must turn aside for a moment to examine the
gradual course of their evolution.

The simplest and most primitive sedges now surviving, though
very degenerate in type, yet retain some distinct traces of their deri-
vation from earlier rush-like and lily-like ancestors. In the earliest
existing type, known as scirpus, the calyx and petals, which were
brightly colored in the lilies, and which were reduced to six brown
scales in the rushes, have undergone a further degradation to the form
of six small, dry bristles, which now merely remain as rudimentary relics
of a once useful and beautiful structure. In some species of scirpus,
too, the number of these bristles is reduced from six to four or three.
There is still one whorl of three stamens, however ; but the second
whorl has disappeared ; while the pistil now contains only one seed
instead of three ; though it still retains some trace of the original
three cells in the fact that there are three sensitive surfaces, united
together at their base into one stalk or style. Each such diminution
in the number of seeds is always accompanied by an increase in the
effectiveness of those which remain ; the difference is just analogous
to that between the myriad ill-provided eggs of the cod, whose young
fry are for the most part snapped up as soon as hatched, and the two
or three eggs of birds, which watch their brood with such tender care,
or the single young of cows, horses, and elephants, which guard their
calves or foals almost up to the age of full maturity. What the bird
or the animal effects by constant feeding with worms or milk, the plant
effects by storing its seed with assorted food-stuffs for the sprouting
embryo.

In the more advanced or more degenerate sedges we get still fur-
ther differentiation for the special function of wind-fertilization. Take
as an example of these most developed types, on this line of develop-
ment, the common English group of carices. In these the flowers have
absolutely lost all trace of a perianth (that is to say, of the calyx and
petals), for they do not possess even the six diminutive bristles wdiich
form the last relics of those organs in their allies, the scirpus group.
Each flower is either male or female — that is to say, it consists of
stamens or ovaries alone. The male flowers are represented by a single
scale or bract, inclosing three stamens ; and in some species even the
stamens are reduced to a pair, so that all trace of the original trinary
arrangement is absolutely lost. The female flowers are represented
by a single ovary, inclosed in a sort of loose bag, which may perhaps
be the final rudiment of a tubular, bell-shaped corolla like that of the
hyacinth. This ovary contains a single seed, but its shape is often

672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

triangular, and it has usually three stigmas or sensitive surfaces, thus
dimly pointing back to the three distinct cells of its lily-like ancestors,
and the three separate ovaries of its still earlier alisma-like progeni-
tors. In many species, however, even this last souvenir of the trinary
type has been utterly obliterated, the ovary having only two stigmas,
and assuming a flattened, two-sided shape. In all the carices the flow-
ers are loosely arranged in compact spikes and spikelets, with their
mobile stamens hanging out freely to the breeze, and their feathery
stigmas prepared to catch the slightest grain of pollen which may hap-
pen to be wafted their way by any passing breath of air. The varie-
ties in their arrangement, however, are almost as infinite among the
different species as those of the grasses themselves ; sometimes the
male and female flowers are produced on separate plants ; sometimes
they grow in separate spikes on the same plant ; sometimes the same
spike has male flowers at the top and female at the bottom ; sometimes
the various flowers are mixed up with one another at top and bottom,
a regular hotch-potch of higgledy-piggledy confusion. But all the
sedges alike are very grass-like in their aspect, with thin blades hy
way of leaves, and blossoms on tall heads, as in the grasses. In fact,
the two families are never accurately distinguished by any except
technical botanists ; to the ordinary observer, they are all grasses
together, without petty distinctions of genus and species. Like the
grasses, too, the sedges are mostly plants of the open, wind-swept plains
or marshy levels, where the facilities for wind-fertilization are greatest
and most constantly present.*

And now, from this illustrative digression, let us hark back again
to the junction-point of the rushes, whence alike the sedges and the
grasses appear to diverge. In order to understand the nature of the
steps by which the cereals have been developed from rush-like ances-
tors, it will be necessary to look shortly at the actual composition of
the flower in grasses, which is the only part of their organism differ-
ing appreciably from the ordinary lily type. The blossoms of grasses,
in their simplest form, consist of several little green florets, arranged
in small clusters, known as spikelets, along a single common axis. Of
this arrangement, the head of wheat itself offers a familiar and excel-
lent example. If we pull to pieces one of the spikelets composing
such a head, we find it to consist of four or five distinct florets. Omit-
ting special features and unnecessary details, we may say that each
floret is made up of two chaffy scales, known as pales, and represent-
ing the calyx, together with a pair of small white petals known as
lodicules, three stamens, and an ovary with two feathery styles.
Moreover, the two pales or calyx-pieces are not similar and symmet-

* The sedges are not, in all probability, a real natural family, but are a group of
heterogeneous, degraded lilies, containing almost all those kinds in which the reduced
florets are covered by a single conspicuous glume-like bract. It will be seen from the
sequel that these bracts are not truly analogous to the glumes or outer palese of grasses.

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 673

rical, for the outer one is simple and convex, while the inner one is
apparently double, being made up of two pieces rolled into one, and
still possessing two green midribs, which show distinctly like ribs on its
flat outer surface. Here, it will immediately be apparent, the traces
of the original trinary arrangement are very slight indeed.

But when we come to inquire into the rationale and genesis of
these curiously one sided flowers, it is not difficult to see that they
have been ultimately derived from trinary blossoms of the rush-like
type. The first and most marked divergence from that type, for
which the analogy of the sedges has already prepared us, is the reduc-
tion of the ovary to a single one-seeded cell, whose ripe, fruity form is
known as a grain. At one time, we may feel pretty sure, there must
have existed a group of nascent grasses, which only differed from the
wood-rush genus in having a single-celled ovary instead of a three-
celled pistil with one seed in each cell ; and even the ovary of this
primitive grass must have retained one mark of its trinary origin in
its possession of three styles to its one grain, thus pointing back (as
most sedges still do) to its earlier rush-like origin. That hypothetical
form must have had three sepals, three petals, six stamens, and one
three-styled ovary. But the peculiar shape of modern grass-flowers is
clearly due to their very spiky arrangement along the edge of the
axis. In the wood-rushes and the sedges, we see some approach to
this condition ; but in the grasses, the crowding is far more marked,
and the one-sidedness has accordingly become far more conspicuous.
Suppose we begin to crowd a number of wind-fertilized lily-like flowers
alon^ an axis in this manner, taking care that the stamens and the
sensitive feathery styles are always turned outward to catch the breeze
(for otherwise they will die out at once), what sort of result shall we
finally get ?

In the first place, the calyx, consisting of three pieces, will stand
toward the crowded stem or axis in such a fashion that one piece will
be free and exterior, while two pieces will be interior and next the
stem, thus :

O

a a

a

Now, the effect of constant crushing in this direction will be that the
two inner calyx-pieces will be slowly dwarfed, and will tend to coalesce
with one another ; and this is what has actually happened with the
inner pale of wheat and of other ojasses, though the midribs of the
two originally separate pieces still show on the compound pale, like
dark-green lines down its center. Thus, in the fully developed grasses,
in place of a trinary calyx, we get two chaffy scales or pales, the outer
one representing a single sepal, and the inner one, which has been
dwarfed by pressure against the stem, representing two sepals rolled
vol. xxii. — 43

674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

into one, with two midribs still remaining as evidence of their original
distinctness.

Next, in the case of the petals, which alternate with the sepals of
the calyx, the relation to the stem is exactly reversed ; for we have
here two petals free and exterior, with one interior petal crowded
closely against the axis, thus :

O

a

a a

Here, then, the two external petals will be saved, exactly as the one
external sepal was saved in the case of the calyx ; and these two petals
are represented by the very small white lodicules nnder the outer pale
in our existing wheats and grasses. On the other hand, the inner
petal, jammed in between the grain and the inner pale (with the stem
at its back), has been utterly crushed out of existence, partly because
of its very small size, partly because of its functional uselessness, and
partly because it had no other part with which to coalesce, and so to
save itself as the inner sepals had managed to do. Moreover, it must
be remembered that the sepals do still perform a useful service in pro-
tecting the young flower before it opens, and in keeping out noxious
insects during the kerning or swelling of the grain ; whereas the lodi-
cules or rudimentary petals are now apparently quite functionless ; and
so we may congratulate ourselves that they are there at all, to preserve
for us the true ground-plan of the floral architecture in grasses. In-
deed, they have not survived by any means in all grasses ; among the
smaller and more degraded kinds they are often wholly wanting, hav-
ing been quite crushed out between the calyx and the grain. It is
only the larger and more primitive types that still exhibit them in any
great perfection. On the other hand, one group of very large exotic
grasses, the bamboos, has three regular petals, thus clearly showing
the descent of the family as a whole from rush-like ancestors, and also
obviously suggesting that the obsolescence of the inner petal in the
other grasses is due to their small size and their closely packed minute
flowers.

Among the stamens, one-sidedness has not notably established
itself, for in wind-fertilized plants they must necessarily hang out
freely to the breeze, and therefore they do not get much crowded be-
tween the other parts. A few grasses still even retain their double
row of stamens, having six to each floret ; but most of them have only
one whorl of three. In some of the lower and more degraded forms,
however, even the stamens have lost their trinary order, and only two
now survive. This is the case in our own very degenerate little sweet-
vernal-grass, the plant which imparts its delicious fragrance to new-
mown hay. But in the cereals and in most other large species the three
stamens still remain in undiminished effectiveness to the present day.

THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT.

675

Finally, we come to the most important part of all, the ovary.
This part, alternating with the stamens, has the same arrangement of
styles relatively to the axis as in the case of the petals ; and it has
undergone precisely the same sort of abortive distortion. The two
outer styles, hanging freely out of the calyx, have been preserved like
the two outer lodicules ; but the inner one, pressed between the grain
and the inner pale (with the stem behind it), has been simply crushed
out of existence, like its neighbor the inner lodicule.

Thus the final result is that the whole inner portion of the flower
(except as regai'ds stamens) has been distorted or rendered abortive
by close pressure against the stem (due to the crowding of the florets
in the spiky form), while the whole outer portion remains normal and
fully developed. We have an outer pale representing a single normal
sepal, and an inner pale representing two dwarfed and united sepals ;
we have two normal outer lodicules or petals, and a blank where the
inner petal ought to be ; we have three stamens, symmetrically ar-
ranged, among the faithless faithful only found ; and we have finally
two normal outer styles, with a blank in place of the absent inner style.
The accompanying diagram, com-
pared with that already given, will
make this perfectly clear.

Here, a1 represents the outer pale
or normal sepal, while «2 and a2 rep-
resent the inner pale composed of the
two united sepals. Again, bl and b*
stand for the two lodicules or surviv-
ing petals, while bz marks the place
of the lost petal, now found in the
bamboos alone. The stamens are let-
tered c1, c", and c3. The two existing
styles are shown by dl and d-, while
d3 marks the abortive inner style,
now not even present in a rudimentary condition. It will be observed
at once that all the outer side is normal, and all the inner side more or
less abortive through pressure against the axis.

Thus it will be seen that the line of links which connects the grasses
and cereals with the lilies is absolutely unbroken, and that it consists
throughout of one continuous course of degradation. At the same
time, by this one-sided and spiky arrangement, the grasses secured for
themselves an exceptional advantage in the struggle for existence.
Xo other race of small, wind-fertilized plants could compete with them
for the possession of the open, wind-swept plains ; and over all these
they spread far and wide, rapidly differentiating themselves into a vast
number of divergent genera and species, each aclaptively specialized
for some peculiar habitat, soil, or climate. At the present time, the
gi-asses number their kinds by thousands ; they extend over the whole

676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

world, from the poles to the equator ; and they form the general sward
or carpet of greenery over by far the larger portion of the terrestrial
globe. Even in Britain alone, with our poor little insular flora, a mere
fragment of that belonging to the petty European Continent, we num-
ber no less than forty-two genera of grasses, distributed into more
than one hundred species. In fact, what may fairly be called degra-
dation from one point of view may fairly be called adaptation from
another. The organization of the grasses is certainly lower than that
of the lilies, but it fits them better for that station of life to which it
has pleased Nature to assign them.

The various kinds of grasses differ very little from one another in
general plan ; the flower in almost all is constructed strictly on the
lines above mentioned ; and the leaves in almost all are just the same
soft, pensile blades, making them into the proper greensward for open,
unwooded, wind-swept plains. But, like almost all other very domi-
nant families, they have split up into an immense number of kinds,
distinguished from one another by minute differences in the arrange-
ment of the florets and the spikelets ; and these kinds have again sub-
divided into more and more minutely different genera and species.
One great group, with panicles of a loose character, and very de-
graded spikelets, has given origin to many southern grasses, from some
of which the cultivated millets are derived. Another great group,
with usually more spiky inflorescence, has given origin to most of our
northern grasses, from some of which the common cereals are derived.
This second group has again split up into several others, of which the
important one for our present purpose is that of the Hordeinece, or
barley- worts. From one of the numerous genera into which the primi-
tive Hordeinece have once more split up, our cultivated barleys take
their rise ; from another, which here demands further attention, we get
our cultivated wheats.

The nearest form to true wheat now found wild in the British Isles
is the creeping couch-grass, a perennial closely agreeing in all essential
particulars of structure with our cultivated annual wheats. But in the
South European region we find in abundance a large series of common
wild annual grasses, forming the genus uJEgilojys of technical botany,
and exactly resembling true wheat in every point except the size of
the grain. One species of this genus, JEgilops ovata, a small, hard,
wiry annual, is now pretty generally recognized among botanists as
the parent of our cultivated corn. There was a good reason, indeed,
why primitive man, when he first began to select and rudely till a few
seeds for his own use, should have specially affected the grass tribe.
No other family of plants has seeds richer in starches and glutens, as
indeed might naturally be expected from the extreme diminution in
the number of seeds to each flower. On the other hand, the flowers
on each plant are peculiarly numerous ; so that we get the combined
advantages of many seeds, and rich seeds, so seldom to be found else-

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 677

where, except among the pulse family. The experiments conducted
by the Agricultural Society in their College Garden at Cirencester
have also shown that careful selection will produce large and rich
seeds from JEgilops ovata, considerably resembling true wheat, after
only a few years' cultivation.

Primitive man, of course, did not proceed nearly so fast as that.
Of the very earliest attempts at cultivation of JEgilops, all traces are
now lost, but we can gather that its tillage must have continued in
some unknown Western Asiatic region for some time before the neo-
lithic period ; for in that period we find a rude early form of wheat
already considerably developed among the scanty relics of the Swiss
lake-dwellings. The other cultivated plants by which it is there ac-
companied and the nature of the garden-weeds which had followed in
its wake point back to Central or Western Asia as the land in which its
tillage had first begun. From that region the Swiss lake-dwellers
brought it with them to their new home among the Alpine valleys.
It differed much already from the wild JEgilopis in size and stature ;
but at the same time it was far from having attained the stately di-
mensions of our modern corn. The ears found in the lake-dwellings
are shorter and narrower than our own ; the spikelets stand out more
horizontally, and the grains are hardly more than half the size of their
modern descendants. The same thing is true in analogous ways with
all the cultivated fruits or seeds of the stone age ; they are invariably
much smaller and poorer than their representatives in existing fields
or gardens. From that time to this the process of selection and ame-
lioration has been constant and unbroken, until in our own day the
descendants of these little degraded lilies, readapted to new functions
under a fresh regime, have come to cover almost all the cultivable
plains in all civilized countries, and supply by far the largest part of
man's food in Europe, Asia, America, and Australia. — Macmillarfs
Magazine.

-«*•*-*"-

A FEW WOEDS ABOUT EATABLES.

By C. B. KADCLIFFE, M. D.

/CLERIC US. I have had a good breakfast.

^-/ Medicus. So have I.

C. I should not say so. I have emptied the toast-rack, and helped
myself to three or four slices of cold roast-beef ; you have had some
galantine * with brown bread and butter, and not much of them. But
I suppose it is all right. I am going in for a hard day's boating ; you

* Something like hcad-cbeese, but made of white meat.

678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are proposing to spend the clay at home in finishing the diagrams, or
tables, which you are going to use to-morrow at the hospital in your
lecture on eatables, and which are now very much in the way when
I want to see the pictures on the walls, or to take a booh from a
book-case. What you have taken would not enable you to do my
work.

M. I am not so sure of that. At all events I am quite sure of this
— that you are not wise in eating so much lean meat, in picking out
every scrap of fat, and in taking no butter.

C. I want muscular power, and I feed my muscles by eating lean
meat, which is muscle. I am right, so far, I suppose ?

M. The muscle must no doubt be fed to enable it to act, but you are
not at liberty to suppose, as you do, that the amount of urea and other
excrementitious nitrogenous matter in the urine supplies the measure
of the waste of muscle in muscular action which has to be repaired by
food. You must seek this measure, not in the amount of urea elimi-
nated by the kidneys, but in the amount of carbonic acid exhaled in
the process of respiration ; and the facts with which you have to do
go to show that, after all, this food you are taking may not be that
which is most suited to your wants to-day. As is shown in one of the
experiments in which Pettenkofer was assisted by Voit, and as you
may see in one of the tables which hide the pictures and books here —
thus, No. 1 — the difference between a day of rest and a day of hard
work, as regards the elimination of carbonic acid and urea, is marked
not by an increase in the quantity of urea, but by an increase in the
quantity of carbonic acid, the actual quantities being —

Grammes of carbonic acid. Grammes of urea.

On a day of rest 911'5 37'2

Ou a day of hard work 1,184-2 37'

On the day of hard work there is a very marked increase in the quantity
of carbonic acid, and a trifling decrease in the quantity of urea. "What
do you say to this fact ? Again : As is shown in one of the experi-
ments of Lehmann, and as you may see in this table, No. 2, the amount
of urea eliminated by the kidney is, in the main, proportionate to the
amount of nitrogenous matter contained in the food ; the result of
feeding a do<i

On a purely animal diet being 53"2 grammes.

On a mixed diet " 325 "

On a vegetable diet " 22-5 "

On a non-nitrogenous diet, consisting of fat or grape-sugar

or starch 15"4 "

Once more : As is shown by Edward Smith in an experiment upon
himself, and as you may see in this table, No. 3, the amount of carbonic
acid given off every minute is in direct proportion to the amount of
work done in the time, the actual amount being —

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 679

During sleep 4*99 grain:;.

"When lying down and half asleep 5'91 "

When walking at the rate of two miles an hour 18-10 "

When walking at the rate of three miles an hour 25-83 "

When turning the tread-mill at the rate of 28-65 feet in a

minute -13'97 "

Similar facts are supplied in numbers by these experimentalists, and
also by Fick and Winceslaus, and Traube and Parkes, and Pavy, and
other excellent observers in this country and abroad ; but these three,
about the correctness of which there can be no doubt, are sufficient to
show that the amount of urea in the urine does not supply the measure
of this waste of muscular tissue in muscular action, which has to be
repaired by lean meat and other nitrogenous food, and that the food
you really want to repair this waste may be carbonaceous rather than
nitrogenous — simple fuel, rather than plastic material.

C. I shall, I expect, be quite ready for my dinner when I come
back. I may have taken more lean meat than I wanted to keep my
muscles in trim ; I have not taken more than I seem to want. I have
been breakfasting in this way for a long time, and I was never in better
trim for a long pull than now. I may be eating too much, but you
must allow that I am eating the best kind of food.

M. I do not say that you are not eating the best kind of food ; I
only say that lean meat is not the only kind of nitrogenous food which
will serve your purpose. It is impossible to distinguish between the
albuminose or peptone into which fibrine is resolved in the process
of digestion and the albuminose or peptone into which albumen, or
caseine, or gluten, or legumin, is resolved in this process. It is appar-
ently of little or no moment whether these various nitrogenous articles
of food are derived from the world of animal life or from the world
of vegetable life. You must allow that an herbivorous animal is not
less vigorous than a carnivorous animal ; and certainly you would find
it difficult to show that man, who can live and thrive under the most
dissimilar circumstances upon almost any kind of food, is vigorous in
proportion to the amount of meat he contrives to consume.

C. You can hardly wish to depreciate the nutritive value of lean
meat.

31. Certainlv not. All the nitrogenous substances, animal and vesre-
table, are resolvable into albuminose in the process of digestion, but
not with the same facility in every case. Some of them are digested
more easily by some persons than by others ; and, besides, there may
be differences in the albuminose itself which are recognizable by
chemical means. In your own case, lean meat may be more digestible
than any other nitrogenous compound, and the albuminose into which
it is converted may be more easily assimilated. In another case, eggs
or cheese or macaroni may better suit the requirements of the person
taking it. I do not venture to lay down a hard and fast rule for you

680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or any one in this matter ; I only want you to understand distinctly
that a person who can not get a full allowance of lean meat, or who
does not choose to get it, is not necessarily ill fed for that reason, even
though he have to do hard work with his muscles.

C. If a large amount of nitrogenous food is not wanted as food for
muscle or other tissues — for plastic purposes, that is to say — how is the
excess disposed of ?

M. The part of the nitrogenous food which is not wanted for plastic
purposes is, after digestion, resolved by the action of the liver into
urea, and the other excrementitious products which are met with in
the urine, and into a compound containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxy-
gen, without any nitrogen, which compound may he the substance
called amyloid substance or glycogen. This non-nitrogenous com-
pound is destined to serve as fuel for the production of heat and other
forms of force. The portion eliminated as urea, which is simply excre-
mentitious, and the complemental portion, which is destined to serve
as fuel, is as 33°20 to 6G-80 ; and therefore it is easy to see that a large
part of the nitrogenous food — but little less than two thirds, that is to
say — may be devoted to other than plastic purposes, and that a little
more than one third may be simply wasted. Moreover, the compara-
tively small portion of nitrogenous food which is actually wanted for
plastic purposes is, there is reason to believe, eventually disposed of in
the same way as the portion which is not used for plastic purposes, a
little more than one third being wasted as urea, and a little more than
two thirds being utilized as fuel. And if this be so, the question arises
whether the fuel into which a large part of the nitrogenous form of
food is resolved sooner or later is the best form of fuel for your pur-
poses— whether, for example, you were wise in picking out the fat
and in taking dry toast ?

C. I leave you to find the answer to this question.

M. There is, I think, good reason to believe that much of the fuel
without which life can not be maintained may be more easily supplied
by non-nitrogenous substances than by nitrogenous substances. The
fuel in nitrogenous food is not ready-made. This food has to be trans-
formed, first of all, into albuminose or peptone, and then this albumi-
nose or peptone has to be broken up, partly into the excermentitious
portion which passes out of the system by way of the kidneys, and
partly into the residual portion which is destined to act as fuel. An
abundant supply of gastric and pancreatic and intestinal juices is
wanted in order to bring about the proper formation of albuminose ;
without a healthy condition of liver and kidney it is evident that the
albuminose may not be broken up (this breaking-up occurs chiefly in
the liver) into urea and amyloid substance or glycogen, and that the
urea (which passes out of the system by way of the kidneys) may not
be eliminated. Moreover, it seems to be certain that no one can take
a large amount of meat and other highly nitrogenous compounds for

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 681

a long time unless lie also do a large amount of muscular work — unless
he do much more work of this sort than the great majority of human
beings are willing or able to do. Fat and butter and oily matter gen-
erally, on the other hand, require no digestion, in the proper sense of
the word. They are converted into an emulsion — which is no more
than a mechanical mixture like cream, by the action of the pancreatic
and duodenal juices chiefly, and by the action of the bile partly, and
this emulsion passes directly into the general circulation of the blood
through the lacteals directly, without going the round of the portal
circulation and the liver, as albuminose has to do. Fat and butter
and oily matters generally are fuel ready-made, or which only need to
be emulsified in order to be in this case ; and they have this advan-
tage also — that they are burned up in the system, without leaving be-
hind them, so to speak, any ash like urea. And, as force-producing
agents — if the capacity for oxidization may be taken as a measure —
the value of fat and oil is almost double that of fibrine or albumen.

C. I can see that I may have been taking too much lean meat and
too little toast ; I can also see that I may have been especially wrong
in avoiding fat and butter ; but I do not see how to set to work to
reform mv doings.

31. What you have to do, first of all, is to bear in mind that the
daily loss which has to be made good by food, in a man of medium
stature and in moderate work, amounts to 4,800 grains of carbon and
300 grains of nitrogen, and that, in round numbers, lean meat contains
11 per cent of carbon and 3 per cent of nitrogen, and bread 30 per
cent of carbon and 1 per cent of nitrogen.

C. Is it so ?

31. Yes. The daily rate of wasting of the system which I have
mentioned is that which is brought to light by very many observa-
tions, carried on by many persons in various ways, with a view to reg-
ulate the food-rations of soldiers and sailors and pi'isoners, and other
ration-fed people ; and as to the proportion of carbon and nitrogen in
lean meat and in bread the evidence is sufficiently conclusive.

C. Upon these data I can easily calculate how much meat and
bread I really want if I choose to live wholly on meat or bread, and
how the meat and bread ought to be apportioned if I take meat and
bread together.

31. The calculation is ready made for you, and the result shows
very plainly that you must mix your lean meat and bread in certain
proportions if you care to feed without wasting good food. In order
to replace the daily loss of 4,800 grains of carbon by lean meat, the
quantity of meat you must take is 43,637 grains, or rather over 6
pounds — a quantity which contains 1,009 grains of nitrogen in excess
of the 300 grains actually wanted. In order to replace the daily loss
of 300 grains of nitrogen by bread, the quantity of bread you must
take will be 30,000 grains, or about 4 pounds — a quantity which ex-

682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceeds by 25,200 grains the 4,800 grains of carbon which, are actually
wanted.

C. My carnivorous tendencies, then, may not be so very extrava-
gant, after all. I never ate 6 pounds of lean meat, or a third of that
amount. I do not think I have suffered any sort of harm from the
nitrogen which I may have taken in excess ; I am sure I could never
eat 4 pounds of bread, or half that amount, with impunity.

M. There is no occasion for you to eat these monstrous quantities
of meat or bread. You must eat 6 pounds of lean meat every day if
if you take nothing else but lean meat ; you must eat 4 pounds of
bread every clay if you take nothing else but bread ; but you may
get on very well upon a comparatively small allowance of meat and
bread if the two were combined in proper proportions. You want
every day 4,800 grains of carbon and 300 grains of nitrogen ; you
find what you want, as Dr. Pavy shows, in 2 pounds of bread and in
about f pound of lean meat, thus :

Carbon. JTitrogen.

14,000 grains (2 pounds) of bread contain 4,200 grains. 140 grains.

C,500 " (about f pound) of lean meat contain COS " 165 "

Total 4,805 " 305 "

C. I quite shrink from the notion of having to take so much as 2
pounds of bread to make up for the daily waste of my body.

31. You need not take so much, or an}Tthing like so much, if you
will take fat with your meat, or butter with your bread, or any oily
matter in proper quantity. Fat is very rich in carbon, and so are all
fatty and oily matters. You would have the 4,800 grains of carbon
and the 300 grains of nitrogen which you want, if you took f pound
of lean meat and about 2\ ounces of fat. In proportion as you in-
crease the amount of fatty or oily matter, you may diminish the
amount of bread ; and, within certain limits, which you may deter-
mine for yourself, you may probably please yourself as to the relative
proportions of the two. Whether you would get on satisfactorily by
excluding bread altogether, and taking fatty matter in its stead, is
another question. The growing chick within the egg has plenty of
oily matter to feed upon, and nothing of the nature of starch or sugar,
or any other carbo-hydrate to take the place of bread. The sucking
mammal finds a large amount of oily matter in the milk upon which
it feeds, and a somewhat larger amount of lactine, or sugar of milk,
Avhich, as a carbo-hydrate, may more or less take the place of bread.
In the hen's egg, the proportion of fatty matter to albuminous matter
is as 82 grains to 110 grains. In cow's milk the proportion of fatty
matter to lactine is as 351 grains to 468 grains, and of these two sub-
stances in conjunction, together with caseine, as 811 grains to 369
grains. In 2 pounds of bread and f pound of lean meat the propor-
tion of fatty matter to carbo-hydrates is as "944 ounce to 16'320

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 683

ounces, and of both these substances together to nitrogenous matter
as 17*264 ounces to 4*908 ounces. In point of fact, the proportions of
nitrogenous matter, of fatty matter, of carbo-hydrates, and of mineral
matter, in the dry constituents of a hen's egg, of a pint of cow's milk,
and of 2 pounds of bread and £ pound of lean meat, according to Dr.
Pavy, are :

1. In the dry constituents of the contents of a hen's egg :

Nitrogenous matter 110 grains.

Fatty matter 82 "

Mineral matter 11 "

Total 203 «

2. In the dry constituents of a pint of cow's milk :

Nitrogenous matter 3G9 grains. -843 ounces.

Fattymatter 351 " -802 "

Lactine 486 " 1-069 "

Mineral matter 72 " '164 "

Total 1,260 " 2-878 "

3. In the dry constituents of 2 pounds of bread and £ pound of
uncooked lean beef :

Bread. Beef. Total.

Nitrogenous matter 2592 ounces. 2-31 6 ounces. 4-908 ounces.

Fattymatter '512 " '432 " -944

Carbo-hydrates 16-320 " 16-320

Mineral matter -736 " "612 " 1*348 "

C. By thus putting the composition of egg and milk side by side
with that of bread and meat, the conclusion you would have me draw,
I suppose, is, not only that fatty matter is present in large quantity in
the two model forms of food, egg and milk, but also that fatty matter
may be made to take the place of the starch and sugar of bread.

M. By comparing the composition of 2 pounds of bread and £
pound of lean meat with that of eggs, you may also, I think, form
some idea of the amount of fatty or saccharine matter which is neces-
sary to replace the 2 pounds of bread. The nitrogenous matter of 6
pints of milk or thereabout is equivalent to that of 2 pounds of bread
and 3 pounds of lean meat, for in 6 pints of milk there are 4-082
ounces of fatty matter and 6*416 ounces of lactine ; and, therefore,
you may conclude that the 4*082 ounces of fatty matter and 6*016
ounces of lactine which are present in the 6 pints of milk are equiva-
lent, for practical purposes, to the *944 ounce of fatty matter and to
the 16*820 ounces of starch and other carbo-hydrates wdiich are met
with in the 2 pounds of bread and £ pound of lean meat. The nitroge-
nous matter of 20 eggs is about equal to that of 2 pounds of bread
and £ pound of lean meat, for in 20 eggs there are 1,600 grains, or
3*66 ounces of fatty matter, and therefore you may conclude that the

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

1,600 grains, or 3*66 ounces of fatty matter which are present in the
contents of 20 eggs may take the place of its '944 ounce of fatty
matter which are met with in the 2 pounds of bread and in the f
pound of lean meat, and of the 16 "320 ounces of starch and the other
carbo-hydrates which are present in the 2 pounds of bread. For it
may be fairly assumed that the properties of the nitrogenous and non-
nitrogenous compounds are as properly balanced in the egg and milk,
which are the two great typical forms of natural food, as they are in
the artificial combination of bread and meat of which Ave are speaking.
You may draw your own conclusions from the tables on the walls in
which these facts are set forth.

0. I also find in these tables a curious correspondence as to the
amount of mineral matter in the three cases under consideration. The
proportion of mineral matter in the other constituents is as 1 to 18 in
the egg, as 1 to 17 in milk, and as 1 to 17 in the case of meat and
bread.

31. This correspondence may not be quite so close as it seems to
be. In the case of the egg an uncertain amount of lime, probably a
large amount, ought to be added, for the shell becomes thinner and
thinner as the process of incubation goes on, in consequence of the
solvent action of the phosphoric acid which is generated by the oxidi-
zation of the phosphorus in the contents of the egg. In the case of
white bread (white bread was used in this experiment) the greater
part of the mineral matter, which is lodged chiefly in the husks of the
grain, is sifted out in the preparation of the flour from which white
bread is made. The earthy matter of the shell is certainly necessary
to the proper development of the bones of the chick, and in all prob-
ability the bones are not the only tissues which are in this case. A
dog lives long and thrives when it is fed upon brown bread, but not
when it is fed upon white bread. Scurvy also is a speedy consequence
of living upon salt meat, which differs from fresh meat chiefly in the
fact that the salts belonging to it have been transferred to the brine.
If the body is to be properly nourished, the mineral matters which are
contained in the different articles of food can not be excluded, that is
evident. And if these different articles of food are to be properly
digested, the common salt, in the food or taken along with the food,
may have a very important work to do in addition, for without it it is
not easy to see how the gastric juice could acquire that part of its
acidity which depends upon the presence of hydrochloric acid.

C. I have always avoided fat and butter, on the supposition that
they would make me bilious and stout. I also thought that they were
specially indigestible. I knew that they were of great value as heat-
producers, as " elements of respiration," as fuel, and that the inhabit-
ants of cold countries could not get on well without an abundant sup-
ply of them, but it never entered into my head to suppose that they
might take the place of meat and bread.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 685

31. You have only to consider how olive-oil is used in the warm.
parts of Europe where the olive is cultivated, and how ghee is used in
India, in order to satisfy yourself that oily matter may be taken with
facility in hot countries as well as in cold. You hear nothing about
indigestion ; you find that a bad olive-harvest or scant supply of ghee
is a great national calamity. A Hindoo servant of a friend who
kept up his Indian habits of eating here in London has often told me
that in his own case nothing would make up for a deficiency of ghee
or butter, and that his experience in this matter was the common ex-
perience of his countrymen at home or away from home. He looked
upon a sip of ghee in very much the same light as that in which his
fellow-servants looked upon a draught of beer. " Wine is good, but
oil is better," said a peasant to the courier who was with me the other
day in Andalusia, and after gulping down a large mouthful of olive-
oil and smacking his lips more than once, the expression of his coun-
tenance was an apt illustration of the meaning of the Scriptural text
which speaks of oil as making "the face to shine." Indeed, it may be
taken for granted that oil may be used in large quantities throughout
the year in the hot, olive-growing countries of the south of Europe,
not only without making the people bilious or out of order in any way,
but with unmistakable benefit.

C. You have spoken of fat and butter and cream as force-produc-
ing agents. You mean heat-producing, I suppose ?

31. No ; I meant what I said. They are heat-producing agents
without doubt, but heat is only one of several modes of force which
are closely correlated, and there is reason to believe that the molecular
movement which gives rise to heat in one case may, in another case,
give rise to electricity or some other form of physical force. I do not
believe that heat is transformed into muscular force or nerve-force.
I believe that the oxidization of the force-fuel, which gives rise to
heat in one case, may in the case of a muscle and nerve give rise to the
electricity which is peculiar to muscle and nerve ; that this electricity
antagonizes the state of action in both muscle and nerve ; that in mus-
cle it also causes elongation of the fibers during the state of rest, and
that muscular contraction is brought about by the action of the attract-
ive force which is inherent in the physical constituents of the mus-
cular molecules when this force is no longer antagonized by their elec-
tricity. Indeed, all that I want to bring about muscular contraction
is, not a metamorphosis of muscle which issues in the development of
muscular force, nor a transformation of heat into muscular force, but
simply a supply of electricity during the state of muscular inaction
which will counteract the tendency which the muscle always has to
contract as an elastic body. I want, indeed, not a special muscular
force, but merely the common attractive force which is inherent in the
physical constitution of the muscular molecules, and electricity to
counteract the working of their attractive force when necessary.

686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

C. I begin to see that I should have been in equally good trim for
boating upon a very different kind of breakfast — that what I wanted'
was fuel for force-making rather than food for muscle-making ; and
now that I call to mind many facts which have been brought under
my notice in countries where olive-oil is a staple article of food, I can,
after what you have said about the connection of electricity with
muscular action, understand how a man whose food is chiefly polenta
or potato, with a little bread and oil, should have had as much muscu-
lar power at his disposal as ever I could contrive to compass. I once
made the ascent of Etna with two Sicilian guides, who scarcely ever
tasted any animal food except a morsel of fat bacon, and who lived
chiefly on polenta and bread and olive-oil. More than once I thought
I should never get to the top ; they trudged upward with scarcely a
sign of distress, though often having to expend a good deal of strength
in pushing or pulling me up. And yet I was in what I thought to be
an excellent " condition " at the time.

M. Yes.

C. It is, I suppose, right to believe that most of the weaklings
who are benefited in this country by cod-liver oil, in Switzerland by
neat's-foot oil, and in Russia by train-oil, would never have required
these oils as medicine if their food had been sufficiently rich in fatty
and oily articles. Cod-liver oil, I have heard you say again and again,
has no special virtue of its own ; it does good simply because it is oil.
In my parish, where cod-liver oil is now used, suet diffused in milk, by
boiling the two together, was used formerly, and, I am told, with
equal benefit. In the cases where cod-liver oil is wanted the food in
all probability has been lacking in fatty or oily matter. More force-
fuel was wanted, I supjwse.

M. I have a notion that the beneficial action of the fats and oils is
not wholly to be accounted for by regarding them mei-ely as force-
producers. I believe that they actually serve as food for nerve-tissue.
This tissue is in the main made up of a peculiar kind of fat, and I am
convinced that nerve is starved if the food be wanting in a sufficient
quantity of fatty or oily matter. I find that very many persons suf-
fering from various chronic disorders of the nervous system have ab-
stained from the fatty and oily articles of food, and that their state is
almost invariably very much changed for the better when you can get
them to take what they have avoided ; I also find that a great number
of delicate infants who can not take skimmed milk, and who do not
take kindly to unskimmed milk, will take milk without any difficulty
when it is enriched with cream. You may say if you will, "These
facts only show that the fatty and oily matters have done good in
these cases by acting as force-fuel," and I do not care to contradict
you flatly. Indeed, all I can say is that I do not think I am illogical
in supposing that they may do good also in serving as food for nerve-
tissue.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 687

C. I gather from what you Lave said that you would prefer, as
food for invalids, milk enriched with cream or some other fatty mat-
ter, or the yolks of eggs, or something like the bouillon of the French
pot-au-feu, to highly nitrogenous preparations from which the fat has
been carefully skimmed off, such as Brand's essence, or Liebig's
extraction carnis, or ordinary beef -tea.

31. That I certainly do ; lean meat more or less fluidified and its
juices are not the sine qua non in food if what I have said be true.
On the contrary, I am disposed to think that in very many cases foods
of this sort are really unsuitable, if only by calling upon the liver to
do work which this organ is unequal to at the time.

C. You approve, then, of the old-fashioned milk diet rather than
of the meat preparations which are now so much in vogue ?

31. I am quite a believer in the virtue of unskimmed milk as a
most suitable food for invalids of all ages in almost all cases ; and I
think that, in very many cases where this fluid does not agree, this
difficulty will be got over by the addition of cream or some fatty
matter. I can imagine that many mothers who can not feed their
infants in the proper way, or get fresh cow's milk or cream, will have
reason to be glad when they can procure preparations of condensed
or inspissated milk enriched with various quantities of cream or some
fatty matter. I can imagine that preparations more or less similar to
those, which, for the reason I have just hinted at, might properly be
called brain-food or nerve-food, might make cod-liver oil almost super-
fluous as medicine, and be of infinite service to countless myriads of
persons in whom brain-power or nerve-power is lacking. I can imagine
that in many cases it will be difficult to find a food for invalids which
is to be preferred to lightly boiled yolk of egg, or to ordinary egg-
flip. And in the cases where it is expedient to use flesh — meat in one
form or another — -I am sure it will be a great change for the better
when, instead of having recourse to beef-tea, or Brand's essence, or
Liebig's extraction carnis, the thoughts are turned to something like
the bouillon of the French pot-au-feu, or rather to the very thing it-
self.

C. In what respect is this bouillon better than broth or stock ?

31. It is much more pleasant to the taste. It is the outcome of
ages of experience in the people who have a special genius for cookery.
The animal and vegetable ingredients are so blended that the flavor
of no one article is predominant. The bouillon contains all, or almost
all, the soluble portions of those ingredients which are necessary for
tissue-forming or plastic purposes, and for force-production, and, when
taken along with bread, it provides a meal for an invalid which is
most palatable, most digestible, and most restorative. It is the basis
of all good gravies and soups, becoming, for example, excellent pur'ee
or pea-soup when a proper portion of pea-flour is added to it.

C. What about the bouilli which remains behind in the pot when

688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the bouillon is poured out ? This can not be of much use if all, or
almost all, the soluble matters have fouud their way into the bouillon.
Is it much more than mere padding ?

M. The bouilli can not be of any very great value as food ; and I
am very much disposed to think that its place may often be supplied
with advantage by bread or potatoes, or some other form of farinaceous
food. For myself, I should infinitely prefer a basin of bouillon with
bread, or a basin of puree with bread, to a basin of bouillon and a
plate of bouilli after it, without bread ; and I think my instincts do
not mislead me in this matter. I have a small appetite, and no super-
abundance of digestive power ; my inclinations turn toward vegetable
food rather than toward animal food, and I can easily see that fari-
naceous food may be really more suitable to the wants of my system
than anything which is left behind in the bouilli.

C. I have for years been trying to make the poor in my parish
acquainted with the virtues of the bouillon and bouilli of the French
ordinary pot-mi-feu,* but it never entered into my head to suppose
that the bouillon was ever to be preferred to the bouilli, or that bread,
or potatoes, or pea-flour, or polenta might now and then be substituted
for the latter with advantage. I have also been a £ood deal inter-

* For making an ordinary pot-au-fcu, Gouffe, in bis " Livrc de Cuisine " (Paris,
liacbette, 1867), tells us to take of

Fresh meat about If lb.

Leeks

u

a

i "
7 OZ.

Carrots 1

Onions >-

u

5i "

Turnips )

u

1 "

Celerv

K

i "

Salt

M

1 "

1

a very little.
1 imperial pints,

Having placed the meat and bones in the stew-pan, with the bones undermost, the
water is poured in, and the salt added. Then, after putting it upon the fire and allowing
it to remain there until the water boils, and a scum collects upon the surface, the pan is
removed from the fire and tbe scum skimmed off, a little cold water being first added
for some purpose or other which is more intelligible to a cook than to me. Then this
process of boiling, adding a little cold water, removing from the fire, and skimming,
is repeated twice. Then, and not until then, the vegetables are added, and the pan is
placed near enough to the fire to allow the contents to simmer (not to boil) for three or
four hours. Then the bouillon is poured off and the bouilli prepared as a dish in one
way or another. And lastly, when the bouillon is in the soup-tureen, and not until then,
enough caramel is added to it to give it a delicate orange tinge — une ieinte doree. The
lid of the stew-pan is never to be closed down tightly, for if this be done the bouillon is
very likely to spoil by becoming thick and muddy.

The quantity given here is for four or five persons. To try and make less, Gouffe
tells us, is bad economy, likely to issue in bad cookery, and this is intelligible enough,
for the bouillon may be used in various ways, not only on the first day, but on the day
following. The imperial pint, containing twenty ounces, is the pint referred to.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 689

ested in an attempt which is being made by Messrs. Nelson, of War-
wick, to introduce as cheap articles of food the inventions of our late
friend Mr. J. R. Johnson, which are really properly made bouillon,
and puree, and other soups in the form of dry chips. From a package
of one of these preparations, which may be easily carried in a corner
of the waistcoat-pocket, an excellent mess of bouillon or potage may
be got in a few minutes with the help of a little water and fire, and I
can easily see that the invalid and the working-man will both of them
be great gainers in the matter of proper food, as well as in pocket,
when this discovery is taken advantage of.

M. I, too, have been greatly interested in the articles to which you
refer. I have tried the specimens which have been sent to me, and I
highly approve of them. I think, indeed, that their introduction to
the public marks a new epoch in the proper feeding of our country-
men, and that they will be made still more suitable for food when
they are enriched to some extent by some form of fatty matter. I
know how difficult it is to convince the poor of this country that all
food is little more than padding except steaks, and chops, and cuts out
of joints ; and it will be long, I fear, before they can be persuaded to
avail themselves of these preparations, or to learn to make for them-
selves the pot-au-feu of our neighbors across the Channel.

C. What else have you to say in the way of criticism about my
unfortunate breakfast ?

31. Only a word or two about bread and other farinaceous articles
of food, and about the reason which made me prefer my gelatinous
galantine of veal to your cold sirloin of beef. I think that bread may
still be very properly spoken of as " the staff of life," and that other
farinaceous articles of food may very properly be admitted into the
same category with bread. The composition of wheaten-flour — which
is more or less that of all flour prepared from cereal grain (oats, rye,
barley, maize, rice, and the rest), and of leguminose seeds or pulse
(peas, beans, lentils), and also of potatoes and some other tubers and
roots — according to Dr. Letheby, is :

Nitrogenous matter 10-8

Fatty matter 2"0

Carbo-hydrates (starch, sugar, and the rest) ^O^

Mineral matter T7

Water 15-0

The nitrogenous matter consists of vegetable fibrine, albumen, and
gluteine in the rough form of gluten. The fatty matter is in no way
peculiar. The non-nitrogenous carbo-hydrates are starch, dextrine,
sugar, gum, cellulose, and lignine — starch chiefly. The mineral arti-
cles comprise phosphates of lime and magnesia, salts of potash, and
soda, and silica. Leguminose seeds or pulse contain as much as from
twenty-five to thirty per cent of nitrogenous matter, mainly in a form

VOL. XXII. — 44

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of caseine called legumine ; rice and potato contain as little as about
eight per cent of nitrogenous matter, and as much as eighty per cent
of starch, the amount of nitrogenous matter and starch in these arti-
cles of food being in an inverse ratio to each other. Fatty matter is
especially abundant in oats and maize. It is evident, therefore, that
there is much in these vegetable articles of food which may take the
place of the nitrogenous and oily articles which are supplied in ani-
mal food.

There is no essential difference as to chemical composition between
vegetable albumen, and fibrine, and legumine, and oily matters, and
animal albumen, and fibrine, and caseine, and oily matters ; there is
no perceptible difference in the albuminose or peptone into which the
vegetable and animal nitrogenous substances are alike transformed in
the process of digestion ; there is no difference in the way in which
the vegetable and animal oily matters are emulsified, and then taken
up directly into the general circulation of the blood. Nor is it diffi-
cult to see how the starch, and sugar, and other non-nitrogenous mate-
rials which are peculiar to vegetable bodies are disposed of within the
system. The way in which starch is disposed of in the stomach and
bowels is not very well made out, and all that can be affirmed with
certainty is that a great part of it finds its way into the liver through
the portal system of vessels, and is detained there for a time in the
form of amyloid substance or glycogen — a detention which is not al-
together unaccountable, for, as Dr. Pavy points out, this substance
" possesses diametrically opposite physical properties to sugar, being a
colloid, and therefore non-diffusible, instead of a crystalloid and diffu-
sible." There is no sufficient reason to suppose that the action of
digestion, be that what it may, is always to transform the starch into
sugar ; for sugar in quantity could not be formed in the stomach and
bowels without passing directly into the general circulation, and so
out from the blood into the urine by way of the kidneys — without
making, that is to say, the phenomena of diabetes a natural state of
things instead of an unnatural. Nor is there sufficient reason for sup-
posing that the amyloid substance of the liver is transformed into
sugar, for this substance is as readily oxidizable and as fit for force-
fuel as sugar. Nay, it may be questioned whether sugar itself is the
force-fuel which the system is" in need of. There is a very rapid gen-
eration of lactic acid in the stomach and bowels when sugar is taken
as food, and it is not unintelligible that it should be so ; for, with the
help of a ferment of some sort, grape-sugar is readily converted into
lactic acid. Indeed, all that has to be done is for one atom of anhy-
drous grape-sugar to split up into two atoms of lactic acid. Nor is it
unintelligible that a certain part of the starch taken as food should
pass, as it would seem to do, not into amyloid substance or glycogen,
or into sugar, but first into dextrine, then into sugar, and then into
lactic acid : for, as is seen in the list which I show you, there is a close

A FEW WORDS ABOUT EATABLES. 69 1

chemical correspondence between these various substances and those
which are akin to them. Thus :

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen.
Starch ~)

Dextrine |

Cellulose Y 12 10 10

Lignine or woody matters

Gum J

Cane sugar 12 ■ 11 11

Grape-sugar ) 12 12 12

Amyloid substance )

Lactic acid 6 6 6

There is no difficulty, therefore, in understanding, to some extent,
how it is that, under the action of pepsin, or diastase, or some other
ferment, starch, and dextrine, and cellulose, and lignine, and gum, and
cane-sugar, and grape-sugar, and amyloid substance, may be trans-
formed into the lactic acid which forms so important an ingredient in
gastric juice, and that the lactic acid so formed, after having done its
work in digesting nitrogenous substances, may be absorbed into the
circulation directly, and be there disposed of in oxidization as a very
readily inflammable fuel — perhaps as the more readily inflammable of
all the force-fuels. And certainly there is no reason to believe that
amyloid substance or sugar is more inflammable than lactic acid, but
rather the contrary, for lactic acid can not be traced, as amyloid
substance and sugar can be, beyond the limits of the alimentary canal.
In any case I am, I think, at liberty to assume that a good deal of starch
and sugar, and of the articles akin to them, are of great use in supply-
ing lactic acid, and that this lactic acid has to do very important
woi'k, not only in the primary processes of digestion, but also as force-
fuel.

C. If this be so, the effect of taking sour buttermilk, sour milk,
and sour whey — the sourness of which depends upon the presence of
lactic acid — ought to be unequivocally beneficial in many cases.

M. So it is. I have long been in the habit of recommending these
articles in cases where the digestive power is feeble and the circulation
wanting in vigor, and I am quite satisfied that the practice is very
satisfactory in its results. Instead of being " a weight to the stom-
ach," as fresh milk often is said to be in these cases, these drinks are
generally found to facilitate digestion and to keep up the warmth of
the system. Indeed, by using sour buttermilk and sour whey, I have
often found it possible to leave off doses like rum-and-milk, and to do
without alcoholic drinks altogether.

C. I am prepared to believe what you say by what I know of the
experience of those who take sour milk or sour buttermilk habitually,
or who have tried the whey-cure. I have more than once heard an
Irish peasant say that he misses the sour milk he takes along with his
potatoes almost as much as the potatoes themselves, and that "it

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

warms him like whisky and keeps off the rheumatiz." I have again
and again felt myself benefited by taking buttermilk — by returning
to what was a common practice in the district in which I spent my
boyhood. And, certainly, I find it difficult to turn a deaf ear to all
that I have heard in praise of the whey-cure in Switzerland and else-
where by those who have tried it for dyspepsia and rheumatism.

M. I was led to recommend sour buttermilk or sour whey by re-
flecting on the very facts to which you refer.

C. What about the fattening effects of starch and sugar and other
carbo-hydrates ? Are these substances convertible into fat ?

M. Possibly — nay, probably. At the same time I am disposed to
think that in many cases the apparent transformation into fat is to be
accounted for by the storing up in the system of the fatty and oily
materials of the food — that these materials may remain behind by be-
ing, perhaps, less combustible than the lactic acid into which amyla-
ceous and saccharine substances are naturally transformed.

C. You have still a word to say in justification of your preference
for your gelatinous galantine.

M. The nitrogenous alimentary substances are divided into pro-
teine compounds and non-proteine compounds. The former (the al-
buminous group) albumen, fibrine, caseine and their varieties, yield
proteine when treated by heat and an alkali ; the latter (the gelati-
nous group) containing gelatine and chondrine — gelatine prepared from
bone and structures containing fibrous tissue, chondrine prepared from
cartilage — does not yield proteine when so treated. Proteine is looked
upon as the base or radical of the albuminous group ; but it may only
be an occasional chemical product. In any case it does not do to sup-
pose that the non-proteine compounds forming the gelatinous group
are useless as articles of food. The proteine and the non-proteine com-
pounds are all reduced to albuminose.in the process of digestion, and
resolved afterward in the same way into urea and the residual force-
producing compounds which in all probability is amyloid substance or
glycogen. An animal soon dies if it be fed solely on gelatine ; and so
it does also if it be fed solely on albumen, or fibrine, or starch, or
sugar, or oily matter. The different elements of food, animal or vege-
table, must be mixed in certain proportions, which are not yet very
clearly made out, before an omnivorous animal can thrive upon them.
There may be no occasion to take gelatine as food, for gelatine and
chondrine are certainly formed in the system from any kind of albu-
minose ; there can not well be any harm in taking it, for, as I have
said, it is transformed into albuminose like any other form of nitroge-
nous substance ; and there may be great good in taking it, for the
coatings of the cells and fibers of muscle and nerve are made up of a
structure like elastic tissue, which yields gelatine in abundance. In-
deed, the popular notion that there is something specially strengthen-
ing in jelly may not be altogether a fallacy. I can easily believe that

SKETCH OF SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON. 693

the gelatine may be wanted to provide for the proper nourishment of
the coatings of the fibers and cells of nerve and muscle, and that a
lack iu this provision may bring about an abnormal disposition to in-
voluntary action in nerve and muscle. I believe that these coatings
are charged as the walls of a Leyden jar are charged during the state
of rest, and that the degree of this charge and the indisposition to dis-
charge is in proportion to the integrity of these coatings ; in other
words, I believe that the discharge which attends upon and produces
this state of action, voluntary and involuntary, in nerve and muscle
alike, is more likely to happen in the case where these coatings are in-
sufficiently developed than in the case where they are sufficiently de-
veloped ; and, so believing, you will easily understand why I think
that gelatine may really be of high value as an article of food.— The
Practitioner.

-♦♦♦-

SKETCH OF SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON.

THE name of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson is inseparably asso-
ciated with the first explorations of the depths of the ocean, and
with having proved that abundant forms of animal life lived there
where it had been believed that only a few scattering organisms were
able to maintain an isolated and precarious existence. Professor
Thomson was born at Bonsyde, Linlithgowshire, Scotland, March 5,
1830, and died on the 10th of March, 1882. His father was a surgeon
in the service of the East India Company, and spent most of his life
abroad. His grandfather was a distinguished clergyman of Edin-
burgh ; and his great-grandfather was " Principal Clerke of Chancel-
lary " in the time of the Rebellion of 1745. He went to school at Mer-
chiston Castle Academy, which was then conducted by Mr. Charles
Chalmers, a brother of the eminent Rev. Dr. Chalmers, after which he
entered the medical course of the University of Edinburgh, in 1845.
After three years of study here, he began to feel the effects of over-
work, and, as a means of gaining a year's rest, we are told, he took
the lectureship on botany in Queen's College, Aberdeen. In the fol-
lowing year he was appointed to lecture on the same subject in Maris-
chal College and University. In 1853 he was chosen to the professor-
ship of Natural History in the Queen's College, Cork, and a year after
that to the chair of Mineralogy and Geology in the Queen's College,
Belfast. He distinguished himself from the very beginning of his
active career as an investigator among the lower forms of animal life.
His first published paper appears to have been one on the application
of photography to the compound microscope, which was read before
the British Association in 1850. While at Aberdeen he published
several papers on the Polyzoa and Sertularian Zoophytes of Scotland,

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and some speculations on the development of certain medusoid forms,
which attracted notice and were considered too daring by Johnston
and Edward Forbes. During this period, too, he entered upon those
researches of the crinoids of past times and the crinoidal forms of
modern times, of which he took Comatula rosacea as a typical speci-
men, which, with their direct and indirect results, led him up to the
grand work of his life. A British pentacrinus had been discovered and
described by Vaughn Thompson thirty years before, and determined
by him to be but the young stage of the " rosy feather-star," but noth-
ing more bad been learned about it. Professor Thomson undertook to
complete the investigation and fill out the life-history of the animal ;
and the account of his researches was given to the Royal Society in
1862 and published in the volume of the " Philosophical Transactions "
for 1865. This investigation on the pentacrinoid stages of comatula
was but a part of a series of observations on the genus Pentacrinus
itself, and Professor Thomson collected a mass of material with the
object of writing a memoir on the group.

Up to nearly this time, it had not been believed by scientific men
that life did or could exist below a certain depth of the sea. Professor
Forbes had admitted the existence of a zone of deep-sea coral extend-
ing from fifty fathoms below the surface to an unknown depth, a
region in which, he held, " as we descend deeper and deeper, its inhabit-
ants become more and more modified and fewer and fewer, indicating
our approach toward an abyss where life is either extinguished or ex-
hibits but a few sparks to mark its lingering presence." This skepti-
cism, however, was becoming weaker under the testimony of living
specimens that were from time to time brought up from undoubtedly
great depths.

About 1864, Mr. G. O. Sars, of the Norway Fisheries Commission,
dredged up a number of specimens of a strange crinoid from a depth
of seven hundred feet, and, continuing to dredge, found an abundance
of animal life at about the same depth. Professor Thomson was in-
vited by Sars's father, the illustrious Professor Michael Sars, to visit
Christiania and see the specimens. The two, after examining them,
concluded that they were closely related to one of the fossil genera,
allied to the family of the Apiocrinidce. Here, then, they had a living
representative of a group supposed to be extinct, and of a form which
had lived over from the Cretaceous epoch.

In 1868 Dr. Carpenter, being engaged in investigations on a living
crinoid from the West Indies, visited Professor Thomson to discuss
the subject in which they were both interested ; and on this occasion
Thomson told his visitor that the one unexplored field awaiting the
investigation of naturalists was the sea ; that he was convinced that
when explored it would yield immense treasures to science ; and sug-
gested to him to use his influence with the Admiralty to secure the
grant of a vessel, suitably fitted up for deep-sea research. The use of

SKETCH OF SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON. 695

the surveying-ship Lightning was granted, and with it a cruise was
made in the North Atlantic Ocean in August and September, 1878.
Among the results of the exjDedition was the procuring of evidence
that animal life was varied and abundant at depths of between six and
seven hundred fathoms ; that great masses of water at different tem-
peratures were moving about, each in its particular course ; and that
many of the deep-sea forms of life were closely related to fossils of
the Tertiary and Cretaceous periods.

In 1869 the surveying-ship Porcupine was lent for exploration,
and made a survey of the west coast of Ireland, under the scientific
direction of Mr. Gwyn Jeffries, and of the Bay of Biscay and the
track of the Lightning's survey under Professor Thomson. The Por-
cupine was lent again in 1870, but Professor Thomson was prevented
by ill-health from engaging in the surveys, and they were conducted
to Gibraltar by Mr. Gwyn Jeffries, and in the Mediterranean by Dr.
Carpenter. By the time the Porcupine's survey was completed, and
under the promptings of the results obtained in the previous surveys,
an extensive scientific interest in work of this kind was awakened. A
representation was made to the Government by the council of the
Royal Society, urging that an expedition be dispatched to investigate
the great oceans and take an outline survey of their bottoms. The
proposition received general support, and was acceded to by the Gov-
ernment, who granted the Challenger, a main-deck corvette of 2,300
tons, for the use of the expedition.

Captain G. S. Nares, R. N., was called from the survey of the Gulf
of Suez to take charge of the vessel, and the second place in command
was given to Commander J. P. Maclear, R. N., son of the late Astron-
omer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope. Professor Thomson was given
the scientific direction of the expedition, and took as his associates
Mr. J. J. "Wild, of Zurich, private secretary ; Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, of
Edinburgh, chemist ; and Mr. II. A. Moseley, Dr. von Willemoes
Suhm, and Mr. John Murray, naturalists. The vessel was fitted up
with all the appliances which the forethought of the naval experts
and scientific men interested in the preparation for the expedition
could devise for making the delicate and often complicated observa-
tions which were to be undertaken, some of which had hardly been
attempted before on other than an experimental scale. The plans
were prepared by the Admiralty in conjunction with a committee of
the Royal Society, and reasonable liberty of variation from them, when
circumstances might make it expedient, was allowed to the two chiefs.
The personal composition of the expedition was changed during the
voyage by the recall of Captain Nares, to take charge of an Arctic
expedition, and by the death of Dr. Willemoes Suhm. Otherwise
the plan was carried out essentially as arranged in the beginning. The
special object of the expedition was to investigate the physical and
biological condition of the great ocean-basins.

6g6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Challenger left Sheerness December 17, 1872, and crossed the
Atlantic four times, making a course of nearly twenty thousand miles
during 1873 ; in 1874 she went southward from the Cape of Good
Hope, spent nearly a month among the southern ice, dipping into the
Antarctic Circle as far as she could with safety, then traversed the
seas of Australia and New Zealand, made observations in the Malay
Archipelago, and reached Hong-Kong in November, after making a
course of more than seventeen thousand miles ; in 1875 she traversed
the Pacific, making a course of about twenty thousand miles, and in
the early part of 1876 she crossed the Atlantic for the fifth time, to
fill up blanks in her former observations, finally reaching England in
May.

During this course of 68,890 miles, 362 stations were established,
and observations and collections made at them. The magnitude of
the collections is illustrated in a statement made by Professor Alex-
ander Agassiz, that, " if a single individual, having the knowledge of
eighteen or twenty of the specialists into whose hands they were to
be placed, were to work them up, he would most certainly require
from seventy to seventy-five years of hard work to bring out the
results which the careful study of the different departments ought to
yield." They were assigned to various gentlemen recognized as au-
thorities in different departments for description group by group.

The most prominent and remarkable result of the voyage was the
final establishment of the fact that the distribution of living beings
has no depth-limit, but that animals of all the marine invertebrate
classes, and probably others also, exist over the whole of the flora of
the ocean. But, although life is thus universally extended, probably
the number of species, as of individuals, diminishes after a certain
depth is reached.

Professor Thomson had been led by his researches in the Light-
ning to the belief that the chief formation now going on in the bed of
the Atlantic was a chalk, " the chalk of the Cretaceous period." This
belief grew more firm with continued investigations, but was modified
after the Challenger Expedition, when the species deposited were found
to be in very few instances identical with those of the chalk, or even
with those of the modern tertiaries. " But," he added, in his address
on the subject before the British Association, in 1876, " although the
species, as we usually regard species, are not identical, the general
character of the assemblage of animals is much more nearly allied to
the cretaceous than to any recent fauna."

Professor Thomson had been elected in 1870, previous to the dis-
patch of the Challenger Expedition, Professor of Natural History in
the University of Edinburgh, succeeding Dr. Allman. He was only
relieved from duties during the expedition, and held the professorship
until October, 1881, when he resigned it upon a retiring allowance
granted him by the Senatus. Immediately on Professor Thomson's

SKETCH OF SIB C. WYVILLE THOMSON. 697

return, testimonials of appreciation of his services to science began to
come in from various quarters, lie had already been a Fellow of the
Royal Society since 1869. He was now knighted in June, 1876 ; then
he was awarded one of the gold medals of the Royal Society ; was
toasted by Professor Huxley at a scientific banquet given at Edin-
burgh in honor of the expedition ; was created by the King of Sweden
a knight of the Order of the Polar Star at Upsala, where he went with
Professor Balfour, as a representative of the Edinburgh Senatus, to
attend the tercentenary of the ancient university ; was made LL. D.
at Aberdeen, D. C. L. at Dublin, a Doctor of Philosophy at Jena,
D. Sc. and Fellow of various British and foreign societies. In 1877
he was appointed to deliver the Rede Lecture at Cambridge. In 1878
he presided over the Geographical Section of the British Association,
and took as the subject of his address, " The Advances which have
been made in Late Years in the Application of the Physical Sciences
to the Illustration of the General Condition of the Earth." He was
also Vice-President of the Jury on Raw Products at the Paris Exhi-
bition of 1867. He took the lead in organizing the School of Art in
Belfast, under the Science and Art Department, and was the chairman
of the first board of directors. He was a Conservative in politics, and
was a magistrate and Commissioner of Supply for the county of Lin-
lithgow.

His health, never very vigorous, was not improved during his voy-
age on the Challenger. In June of 1879 he was attacked with paraly-
sis, and had to suspend the conduct of his classes in the university,
and lay aside the work of superintending the compilation of the Chal-
lenger's researches. He was never able to work steadily afterward.
He had a second attack about four months before his death, after
which he seemed to be getting along through the winter tolerably
well, till about two weeks before his death, when he got a severe chill
from exposure, from which he never recovered.

Sir Wyville Thomson's principal literary works include "The
Depths of the Sea," containing the accounts of the expeditions of the
Lightning and the Porcupine, in which is given all that is known
as to the records of the existence of deep-sea life up to 1865 ; the
" Voyage of the Challenger. The Atlantic," in two volumes, giving a
preliminary account of the general results of the Challenger Expedi-
tion ; and his part of the work in the formal official report of the ex-
pedition, of which he lived to see only the first three volumes com-
pleted. At the time he was prostrated, he was preparing for the press
a narrative of the voyage, to appear in the official work, based on one
drawn up by Staff-Commander Tizard, the chief commanding officer
of the Challenger. He also delivered several public addresses before
scientific and popular bodies, which were marked by clearness of state-
ment and sustained interest. The departments of zoulogy to which he
devoted most attention were those which included the corals, cri-

698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

noids, and sponges, and upon these his opinion was regarded as of great
weight. He was, says " Nature," speaking of his residence at Belfast,
" something besides an enthusiastic biologist. . . . By interesting him-
self not only in what concerned the college, but even in the welfare of
the town in which it was located, he soon gathered around him a host
of intelligent and warm-hearted friends. In social life, it was but an
accident that would reveal the biologist, and one witnessed only the
general culture and the artistic taste of a well-bred man."

His associate in the Challenger Expedition, Mr. Moseley, has given,
in a notice in the " Academy," a graphic sketch of his personality as it
manifested itself during the observations on board the vessel. " His
enthusiasm," says Mr. Moseley, " with regard to everything connected
with the dredging, sounding, and various physical and chemical opera-
tions carried on in the deep sea during the cruise, knew no bounds. He
spent hours on deck watching them, and waiting for the dredge to
come up, and though, as time wore on, the interest of the seamen and
naval officers in the arrival of the dredge or trawl at the surface failed,
and that even of the remainder of the scientific staff flagged, he was
never known to be absent at the moment it appeared at the ship's side,
whatever the weather, but was to be seen peering down into the water,
eagerly attempting to diagnose the contents of the net when it was
still dipping in and out of the sea-surface as the ship rolled to and fro.
"When once it was on board, he would eagerly grope for treasures,
squeezing each cephalopod between his fingers, always with a lurking
hope to find a belemnite's bone in it, or expecting at last to grasp a
trilobite. These never came, but there was an abundance of other
wonders."

Concluding his sketch, Mr. Moseley says : " Sir Wyville was an ex-
cellent lecturer, a most genial companion, and an excellent host. He
was fond of amusements of all kinds, and was never happier than when
he went on shore from the Challenger in some out-of-the-way island,
with his gun on his shoulder, in pursuit of birds-of -paradise, or other
treasures."

A fund of five hundred guineas has been raised by subscription for
erecting a memorial to Sir "Wyville Thomson ; with respect to which
it has been decided that a bust by Mr. J. T. Hutchinson, R S. A., shall
be placed in the University Hall, Edinburgh, and that what is left of
the fund shall be devoted to putting a stained-glass window in the
church of St. Michael at Linlithgow.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

699

EDITOR'S TABLE.

LAW AGAIXST RIGIIT.

"YTTHATEVER truth there may be
VV in the declaration that "paper
constitutions will not work as they are
intended to work," it is very certain that
written and unwritten constitutions do
not work in the same way, and do affect
the habits of mind of the people very
differently. In England " the Constitu-
tion " is a body of precedents and prac-
tices, which are interpreted and applied
to new cases in accordance with the
historic spirit of the Government ; while
in this country " the Constitution" is a
printed document that may be bought
for a nickel, and learned by heart in a
week. To find out the meaning and
obligations of the English Constitution,
we are referred to the principles of the
national policy ; to find out the require-
ments of our own Constitution, we are
referred to its explicit clauses. These
Constitutions do not work alike ; and
in one important respect they do not
work as we should anticipate. We
should naturally expect that the Eng-
lish Constitution would be so complex
a thing as to be far removed from the
people, and create a multitude of law
interpreters, who would practically have
the whole subject in their own hands.
And at first sight it would seem that
with a written constitution so much is
gained in the way of simplicity, where
everything is made as plain, definite, and
positive as language can make it, that
the people should perfectly understand
the instrument, and there would be
little need of professional commenta-
tors. But, in point of fact, the English
Constitution is by no means withdrawn
from the consideration of the English
people, nor does the simplicity of our
own written charter save us from the
need of a host of lawyers. Yet there
is a divergence in the function of the

lawyers in the two cases, which corre-
sponds to an equal diversity in the men-
tal habits of the people in the respective
countries. Where the supreme law is
unwritten, and has to be sought in the
usages and principles of the govern-
ment, the process of its interpretation
is far more open than in the other case,
more a matter of adaptation and read-
justment. Tendencies and progress and
new circumstances are taken into ac-
count, and each step of the elucidation
becomes a part of the continuous na-
tional process of establishing the Con-
stitution. The people know the funda-
mental principles, the great landmarks
of guidance, which are to control the
course of lawyers and judges, and they
can understand whether the supreme
objects of the Constitution are fulfilled
or defeated. Appeal will naturally be
made to the more rational and liberal
elements of the national policy, and the
task of amending and improving the
Constitution itself will be felt as a per-
manent responsibility. The men of to-
day are, therefore, as much "founders
of the Constitution " as those of former
generations.

But it is very different where the
Constitution is a written document
which was made the supreme law in a
former age. Only the glorified "fa-
thers " are here ranked as founders of
the Constitution. It embodied the ideas
and the wisdom of its time; but all
questions are closed by it, save those of
the verbal significance of its clauses.
It is amendable only through political
spasms, and by an implied impeachment
of the patriots who formed it, and whom
there is an increasing tendency to regard
as infallible. Questions of interpreta-
tion necessarily arising, tend to become
narrow and technical, a matter of rules
and definitions, while the lawyers will

700

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

naturally become expert in all the arts
and artifices of word-manipulation. Un-
der such a system the letter of the law
will tend to take the place of the spirit
and purpose of the law. In these cir-
cumstances there will arise the habit,
both on the part of lawyers and of
citizens, of reverencing the forms of
law more than the principles which lie
behind them. The purposes by which
all legislation should be animated and
determined will come to be habitually
overlooked. Questions of right and
justice will be ruled out as irrelevant,
the highest and only solicitude being as
to the binding phraseology of specific
clauses. In this way the whole appara-
tus of justice may be perverted to the
work of stifling the national conscience,
and the real purposes of government
defeated by its own agencies. There
are various exemplifications of this, to
wdiich it may be well to call attention.
The London "Economist," when
some time ago discussing the privateer-
ing question with reference to England,
Eussia, and America, recognized the
point here made, by stating that the
United States may be expected to fulfill
its treaty stipulations, but that it will
do so from a lawyer's point of view as
to their meaning and obligation. It
says : " The Government of the United
States is not a dishonest Government,
or even a tricky Government, widely as
that impression is diffused. Owing to
circumstances upon which it is unne-
cessary here to enter, it is a Govern-
ment very much in the hands of lawyers,
and of lawyers trained to encounter one
another by means of the quibbles, de-
vices, and ' sharp ' interpretations of law
which a generation ago were so much
in vogue among ourselves. Such men
are very apt to read contracts strictly,
to seek loop-holes when clauses in those
contracts are inconvenient, and to sug-
gest interpretations which give them an
apparent advantage, and this practice
undoubtedly annoys foreign diploma-
tists, who do their little trickeries in a

different and, as they think, a more
gentlemanly way. But the same train-
ing inspires in the American party-
leaders a great respect for law itself,
and especially for written law, great
acuteness in interpreting it, and a great
reluctance to see it neglected, and they
are no more likely to break or evade
unmistakable rules than English judges
are."

The treatment of the slave question
in England and the United States well
illustrates the diverse working of their
constitutions. It was by a recognition
of the predominance of the spirit of the
English Constitution that Chief- Justice
Holt was led, early in the eighteenth cen-
tury, to decide that " as soon as a negro
slave comes into England he is free."
This decision, after being long resisted,
was reaffirmed by Lord Mansfield in
1772 in the celebrated case of Somer-
set. These decisions settled the prin-
ciple that the English Constitution was
adverse to slavery. But of that cele-
brated jurist and eminent legal reform-
er, Lord Mansfield, it has been remarked
that "his eagerness to discourage tech-
nicalities and his preference of the
principles of civil law occasionally led
him to make the law instead of ex-
pounding it." This, however, is the
American view of the American biog-
rapher who forgot the constitution-
making function of the English judge.
Both Holt and Mansfield, in their great
decisions, simply fell back upon the
principles of natural justice, which they
assumed it to be the supreme object of
the English Constitution to secure ; and,
it being established forever that "a
slave can not breathe in England," the
policy of hostility to slavery became
national, and was carried out in the
gradual and pacific emancipation of all
slaves in the British dependencies. The
struggle was long and the progress slow,
but the result was a triumph of the
principles of right over the selfishness
and greed that were legally embodied
in the slave system.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

701

It was far otherwise in tins country.
Slavery created by law was unquestion-
ably recognized and protected by the
American Constitution. Yet there were
provisions in the instrument which, if
liberally and humanely interpreted,
would have destroyed it. The Consti-
tution, however, was construed liter-
ally, verbally, and technically, and no
question was permitted to be raised in
regard to the principles of justice which
should underlie all such charters, and
which were profusely declared in its
preamble to pervade the American
Constitution. The written Constitu-
tion thus, in fact, became the bulwark
of slavery, and was accordingly de-
nounced by the passionate reformers
as " a league with death and a cove-
nant with hell." To go behind the
literal constitutional provisions for the
protection of slavery was denounced as
virtual treason. The question of ab-
stract right and wrong was held to be
irrelevant and impertinent; the slave
system was legal, and therefore not
to be meddled with. Henry Clay laid
down the American formula upon the
subject in the Senate of the United
States in 1838, in the following words:
" What the law declares to be property
is property." This was the lawyer's
view, and it was also the people's view ;
and it was this triumph of law over
right that maintained slavery until,
American civilization proving unequal
to the contest, it was ended at last by
the barbarism of war.

Equally marked has been the con-
trast of the English and American poli-
cies on the question of the rights of
authors to property in their works.
We have referred to this before, but
our people can not be reminded of it
too often. The question is one of no
little perplexity, but very easily be-
fogged, and it is well fitted to test
statesmanship and national character.

It had been long felt in England
that arrangements upon the subject of
copyright, both national and interna-

tional, were imperfect, and there was a
growing demand for their amendment.
The government understood its duty in
the matter, and a few years ago a parlia-
mentary commission was appointed to
sift the whole subject, to report upon
the deficiency of existing legislation,
and what practical measures of im-
provement are demanded. The com-
mission was ably constituted, and made
a deliberate and exhaustive investiga-
tion, summoning before it the weighti-
est men both at home and abroad, and
patiently taking their testimony, what-
ever its bearing or import. The report
recognized the question as one of na-
tional importance, and as involving
grave state obligations. There was no
quibbling or paltering about the rights
of authors. The sophistries of crotchety
witnesses were brushed aside, and it
was broadly affirmed as a matter of
radical justice that when a man pro-
duces a book by his labor he has a right
to property in it which the government
is imperatively bound to protect. The
subject, moreover, was lifted out of the
sordid sphere of mere political expe-
diency, which dominates so widely in
international intercourse. The temp-
tation was sore to reduce it to the
trading basis of reciprocity, but this
temptation was firmly resisted. It was
felt that, whether America will grant
copyright or not, the course of Eng-
land is clear. In the report made by
the commissioners in 1878, they say:
"It has been suggested to us that
this country would be justified in tak-
ing steps of a retaliatory character,
with a view of enforcing, incidentally,
that protection from the United States
which we accord to them. This might
be done by withdrawing from the
Americans the privilege of copyright
on first publication in this country.
We have, however, come to the con-
clusion that it is advisable that our law
should be based on correct principles,
irrespective of the opinions or policy
of other nations. We admit the pro-

■joz

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

priety of protecting copyright, and it
appears to us that the principle of copy-
right, if admitted, is one of universal
application. We, therefore, recommend
that this country should pursue the
policy of recognizing the author's rights,
irrespective of nationality."

Very different was the treatment
of this question under similar circum-
stances by the American Government.
Its attitude in regard to the rights of
authorship has long been the scandal
of the civilized world, and efforts from
time to time have been made to induce
a change in the national policy. A com-
mittee of the United States Senate was
appointed in 1873 to consider the sub-
ject, and report what action it is desir-
able to take. The proceeding that fol-
lowed was nothing less than disgraceful,
evincing, as it did, a contemptuous indif-
ference toward the whole subject. Not
the slightest interest was expressed in
it, either as a question of private right
or public honor. While the English
report opened the whole inquiry on
broad moral grounds, the American re-
port sharply closed it to all considera-
tions of equity, justice, and right. While
the hand of the lawyer was hardly dis-
cernible in the English document, no
other hand was visible in ours. In-
stead of a valuable and instructive state-
ment befitting the magnitude and seri-
ousness of the question, the American
report was but a shabby tract of half a
dozen pages, arguing as usual that the
Constitution is in the way of any change
of existing practices. In the discussion
before the committee, arguments on the
right and wrong of the question were
objected to by the senatorial chairman
as irrelevant, and under his ruling the
debate shrank into a mere pettifogging
wrangle over constitutional clauses, and
a ventilation of the most ridiculous
projects, which were held in the report
to show that the Americau people are
not agreed upon the subject. The com-
mittee declared that they saw nothing
wrong which it is desirable to correct,

and recommend Congress to take no
action in the matter. It was but an-
other exemplification of the way legal
and constitutional forms are used in
this country for the protection of pal-
pable wrongs. Instead of asking first
what is right, and then demanding that
the law shall be made to conform to it,
the people, like the lawyers, ask first
what is the law, and then hold that
this determines the right.

"PIRATICAL publishers;' or a pi-

RA TICAL G O VERXMEZ T.

We print a brief discussion of the
copyright question, by Mr. Leonard
Scott, under the title of " Piratical Pub-
lishers," which, whatever its demerits,
has at least the merit of being thor-
oughly American. Although discuss-
ing the question how a given act should
be morally characterized, his standard
of judgment is but the dictum of Amer-
ican law.

It is not easy to defend a right and
its opposite wrong by the same argu-
ment, as the reasons which favor the
one destroy the other. Hence, in most
discussions upon the subject, it will be
found that those who oppose interna-
tional copyright do it upon grounds that
are equally subversive of domestic copy-
right. All arguments which put the
public advantages of cheap literature
above the rights of authors to property
in their books, tell just as effectually
against the American as the English
author, and logically require the imme-
diate destruction of American copyright
laws. If the taking of Professor Tyn-
dall's book from him without payment,
that the American public may have it
cheaply, is no crime, neither would the
taking of Professor Silliman's book, for
the same purpose, be a crime. Mr.
Scott reasons that, although a right
might be conceded in a Utopian state
of society, where one universal govern-
ment should legislate for the equal ad-
vantage of all, yet, as this is not the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

7°3

case, and dishonesty is the common
policy, the right of the individual may
be properly denied. But what is the
limit to this principle? How does ex-
isting dishonesty make an excuse for
still further dishonesty? If, because
the nations are governed by selfishness,
we may take an Englishman's literary
property without paying him for it, is
there not sufficient rascality, jobbery,
fraud, corruption, plunder, and general
selfishness in the operation of the Amer-
ican Government to justify the con-
sistent fleecing of an American author
also ? Again, Mr. Scott maintains that
because we send experts abroad to col-
lect information about manufacturing
processes, institutions, etc., and do not
pay for it, therefore he sees no " moral
wrong " in taking larger amounts of in-
formation in the shape of books without
paying for them. But do not Western
capitalists send on their experts to the
East to pick up information for West-
ern use in the construction and opera-
tion of manufacturing establishments
for which appropriated knowledge they
never think of paying? Would there,
therefore, be no moral wrong in taking
an American author's book on manu-
factures without compensation ? If the !
logic is good for anything, it cuts up all
copyright, root and branch.

Mr. Scott furthermore says, " The
whole system of laying duties upon
foreign merchandise is one of pure
selfishness, and as much a robbery or
piracy of the natural rights of the for-
eigner as anything yet done by an
American republisher." But because
we shackle our trade, and thus injure
the foreign manufacturer, certainly af-
fords no good reason for robbing a for-
eign author of his property.

But Mr. Scott is most eminently
American in the following statement :
"The withholding of an international
copyright law does not take away from
them [foreign authors] what they never
possessed or had any right to claim.
The American republisher, therefore,

in the absence of such a law, buys the
English book at the English price, and
thinks that he has done all that is re-
quired of him to become its absolute
owner, to do with it whatever the laws
of his country do not forbid. Who
shall say that among these rights is not
the right to reprint it ? "

Must we not conclude that this par-
agraph betrays some perversion of the
moral sense ? The author who creates
the book by his labor, and makes it
valuable property, is denied even the
poor " right to claim " the ownership
of that property ; while the publisher,
who simply buys a single copy, becomes
its " absolute owner," with " the right
to reprint it" and to go on multiplying
it as long as he can make money out of
its market value. This is pretty rank
doctrine, and we do not see how those
who hold it need have much squeam-
ishness about the terms in which it
is characterized. Yet Mr. Scott's arti-
cle is a protest against the calling of
American republishes pirates, as he al-
leges is done by their foreign " calum-
niators."

Now, there are two questions here :
(1 .) Is the term " piracy " properly ap-
plicable to any fcrm of republication in
this country? And (2), if so, who is
chargeable with it ? The taking by one
person of another person's property
without consent or payment is held as
a crime, is called stealing, and he who
takes it is known as a thief. If such
appropriation is accompanied by vio-
lence, it is commonly called robbery.
If the property has that peculiar form
which is termed literary, and is appro-
priated by indirection, as where the
embodiment of it is indefinitely copied,
the taking of it, without permission and
without remuneration, has in it the pe-
culiar meanness which has led to its
being metaphorically branded as "pi-
racy." It is the flagrant wrong of the
transaction that is marked by the
term of reprobation, and those are pi-
rates who are guilty of perpetrating it.

7°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Where American republishes negotiate
with the foreign owners of books, and
pay them for the liberty of reprinting,
there is of course no piracy, and there
has been an increasing tendency in re-
cent years on the part of American re-
publishers to recognize the foreign au-
thor s ownership of his book, and to
pay him for it. But, while this prac-
tice has been growing on the part of
reputable publishers, so as to have be-
come a rule with many of them, another
class has come into the field who scout
all notions of authors' rights, and re-
print everything they can get hold of
and make a profit on. These are not
shop-lifters, or burglars, or highway-
robbers, or horse-thieves, but they are
book-thieves : they steal literary prop-
erty by pirating the works which they
have not paid for and which do not be-
long to them.

But an objection will be raised here
— an American objection — and, if an
American dictionary is consulted, it
will be found that piracy is defined as
an " infringement of the law of copy-
right by publishing the writings of other
men without permission." Therefore,
it will be said, American republishes
break no law, and are, therefore, not
pirates. The escape is but technical;
the moral quality of the transaction re-
mains, and only where the moral sense
has been bedeviled, so that men are in-
sensible to the intrinsic nature of the
act, will any such pretext be urged. The
foreign author has a copyright by law,
and we recognize that copyright by law
is in itself a righteous thing. If he can
not extend the law as far as his books
are demanded, it is no fault of his ; he
has done everything in his power to
protect his own rights. His books are
stolen by our publishers, and they quib-
ble that they are not pirates because
there is no American law against such
literary theft. But this changes nothing
in the essential nature of the transac-
tion ; it only shifts the responsibility.
If our thieving publishers are not pi-

ratical, it is because the Government
gives them a technical relief from the
charge by itself assuming the odium.
If the publishers sneak behind their
Government to shelter themselves from
an opprobrium, then the opprobrium
must be fastened upon the Government.
The wrong is committed in its most
deliberate and aggravated form, and if
we have not "Piratical Publishers" then
we have a piratical Government. There
is no blinking the scandalous fact ; and
the responsibility of it must rest some-
where. When a whole class of men
are engaged in open, systematic, and
extensive stealing — appropriation to
themselves, without payment or con-
sent, of property not their own — if the
state abets them in the practice by re-
fusing to forbid it, the state is entitled
to all the execration demanded by the
crime. The attitude of the American
Government on this question is a re-
flection upon the national character in
the eyes of the civilized world. We
may meet this with brazen-faced assur-
ance, and twaddle about the dissemi-
nation of cheap information among the
people, but we can not divorce cause
from effect in the political any more
than in the physical world, and the con-
sequences of perpetuating a great na-
tional injustice will tell with infallible
certainty in the degeneration and deg-
radation of the national character.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Facts and Phases of Animal Life, inter-
spersed with Amusing and Original An-
ecdotes. By Vernon S. Morwood, Lec-
turer to the Royal Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 286.
With Engravings. Price, $1.50.

The author has endeavored to describe,
especially for the young, in simple lan-
guage, the marvelous organization, the in-
stinct, memory, sagacity, and inventive fac-
ulties of some of the more common animals
and insects. He has also made a prominent
presentation of the fidelity, love, affection,

LITERARY NOTICES.

705

and other pleasing characteristics which all
animals exhibit, more or less, one to an-
other, in order to cultivate in his readers a
higher regard for all animals, and to lessen
the aversion with which some animals are
contemplated. The whole is varied and
illustrated with numerous anecdotes. The
usefulness of animals and the services they
render to man are discussed in a more gen-
eral manner, and the considerations which
should induce a kindly treatment of them
are presented in the final chapters. The
subject-matter of the work, its arrangement,
even to the chapter-titles, the method of
treatment, the anecdotes, the style, and the
author's genial manner, are all adapted to
excite and hold interest, and make the book
an excellent one to put into the hands of
children.

Swift. By Leslie Stephen. Harper &
Brothers. 1882.

This is an interesting example of the in-
fluence of modern knowledge upon our esti-
mate of character. Swift's life, as present-
ed by his earlier biographers, has left the
impression that he was so unlike the rest of
the world that he could not be judged by
ordinary rules ; that the traits of his char-
acter were inharmonious and inexplicable.
He has been set down as a sort of human
monster, as made up of the rarest genius,
the most unusual kindness, and the most
abominable cruelty. But, when we rise from
the perusal of this little volume, we find
that our abhorrence has been changed to
teuder sympathy for the misfortunes of this
extraordinary man.

Mr. Stephen does not think that Swift
was a blameless man. In considering his
conduct toward the women he loved, when
he can no further unravel the threads of the
story and consistently explain events, he
closes with this sensible and kindly remark :
" It is one of the cases in which, if the act-
ors be our contemporaries, we hold that out-
siders arc incompetent to form a judgment,
as none but the principals can really know
the facts."

As an example of Stephen's mode of
treatment, take the following. After giving
na account of the poverty endured by Swift
in his youth, the author remarks: " The mis-
ery of dependence was burned into his soul.
VOL. xxii. — 45

To secure independence became his most
cherished wish ; and the first condition of
independence was a rigid practice of econ-
omy. We shall see hereafter how deeply
this principle became rooted in his mind ;
here I need only notice that it is the lesson
which poverty teaches to none but men of
strong character." This trait is again re-
ferred to in connection with Swift's behav-
ior to Stella and Vanessa. He says : " Swift
had very obvious motives for not marrying.
In the first place, he became almost a mono-
maniac upon the question of money. His
hatred of wasting a penny unnecessarily, be-
gan at Trinity College and is prominent in
all his letters and journals. It colored even
his politics, for a conviction that the nation
was hopelessly ruined is one of his strong-
est prejudices. He kept accounts down to
half-pence and rejoices at every saving of a
shilling.

" The passion was not the vulgar desire
for wealth of the ordinary miser. It sprang
from the conviction stored up in all his
aspirations that money meant independ-
ence. Like all Swift's prejudices, this be-
came a fixed idea which was always gath-
ering strength. He did not love money for
its own sake. He was even magnificent in his
generosity. He scorned to receive money
for his writings ; he abandoned the profit
to his printers in compensation for the risks
they ran, or gave it to his friends. His
charity was splendid, relatively to his means.
In later years he lived on a third of his in-
come, gave away a third, and saved the re-
maining third for his posthumous charity,
and posthumous charity, which involves
present saving, is charity of the most un.
questionable kind. His principle was that,
by reducing his expenditure to the lowest
possible point, he secured his independence,
and could then make a generous use of the
remainder. Until he received his deanery,
however, he could only make both ends meet.
Marriage would, therefore, have meant pov-
erty, probably dependence, and the complete
sacrifice of his ambition. If, under these
circumstances, Swift had become engaged
to Stella, he would have been doing what
was regularly done by fellows of colleges
under the old system. There is, however,
no trace of such an engagement. It would
be in keeping with Swift's character if we

706

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

should suppose he shrank from the bondage
of an engagement."

Egotism and love of dominion were also
dominant traits of his character, which, along
with his love of independence, his almost
diseased sensitiveness, and his life-long ill
health, enable his biographer to give, in most
cases, a consistent view of his life. But,
when psychology breaks down, medical sci-
ence steps in and completes the rational ac-
count of this hitherto mysterious man.

Readers of the " Monthly " will remem-
ber an article by Dr. Bucknill, in the April
number of last year, giving an account of
" Dean Swift's disease." We were there
told of Meniere's recent discovery of a defi-
nite form of disease — labyrinthine vertigo,
which is shown by conclusive evidence to
have been the " cruel illness " to which
Swift so often alludes in his journal and
correspondence. From the age of twenty
he suffered from this disease, whose charac-
teristic symptoms are, that the patient is
suddenly seized with vertigo and a feeling
of nausea or positive sickness, with great
constitutional depression and faintuess.

" This fact," says Stephen, " requires to
be remembered in every estimate of Swift's
character. His life was passed under a
Damocles's sword. . . . The references to
his sufferings are frequent in all his writ-
ings. It tormented him for days, weeks,
and months." Dr. Bucknill says that it was
not necessarily connected with the brain-
disease which ultimately came upon him, but
it accounts for the terrible anxiety always
in the background, and for much in Swift's
gloomy despondency.

"We commend the book, as well for its in-
trinsic charm, as because it dispels a most
painful feeling in regard to one of the great-
est of men.

Herbert Spencer on American Nervous-
ness : A Scientific Coincidence. By
George M. Beard, A. M., M. D. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 17.
Price, 50 cents.

The late Dr. Beard, as is well known, has
for some years made a professional study of
nervous diseases, and has published a book,
which was duly noticed in these pages, en-
titled "American Nervousness." As was
natural, writing and publishing much upon

the subject, he came to regard himself as a
representative man who had made the field
very much his own; and, as was equally
natural, he grew somewhat sensitive in re-
gard to the recognition of his claims.

The present pamphlet has its origin in
this state of feeling. It is put forth as a
reclamation of ideas which he regards as
belonging to himself, and which have been
used, he thinks, without due recognition of
this fact. He is of the opinion that Mr.
Herbert Spencer was to a very notable ex-
tent indebted to him, consciously or uncon-
sciously, for the distinctive ideas of his
speech at the late complimentary dinner in
New York. Dr. Beard does not accuse
Spencer of plagiarism ; indeed, he repeatedly
disclaims the accusation. Yet he declares
that there is a "coincidence," both of
thought and language, between what he had
published and Mr. Spencer's expressions,
that is so remarkable as to justify calling
public attention to it by printing the respec-
tive statements in parallel columns. There
is here, if not an insinuation of plagiarism,
at least an oblique imputation of literary
indebtedness not acknowledged.

Dr. Beard is at the pains to say that his
action in this matter is not entirely of his
own motion ; he has been influenced in it
by others. He remarks : " I have not been
the first or only person to notice this paral-
lelism ; it has been the subject of independ-
ent comment by various individuals. The
frequency of these comments led me to
make the following detailed comparison."
Dr. Beard was here mislad, both by his
own bias and the bad judgment of his
friends. There is nothing even remarkable
in the similarity of passages quoted, letting
alone all questionable implications — noth-
ing more than that vague "coincidence"
which is constantly arising when two think-
ers happen to be running upon the same
track. Dr. Beard puts his most pointed
illustration first. He quotes Mr. Spencer
as saying : " We have had somewhat too
much of the gospel of work. It is time to
preach the gospel of relaxation." He then
quotes from "American Nervousness," p.
313, his own expression, " The gospel of work
must make way for the gospel of rest," and
this he offers as a remarkable " coincidence."
But certainly no word is more stereo-

LITERARY NOTICES.

707

typed in universal usage than the term
" gospel," as applied to views or doctrines
which a party is engaged in propagating,
from the gospels of the evangelists to Car-
lyle's " Gospel of Dirt," and the " gospel of
dig " now discussed in the educational jour-
nals. The "coincidence" in the applica-
tion of this word we should hold to be of a
very innocent sort.

And here all coincidence ceases. The
two gospels are not of the same kind. The
two phrases "gospel of rest" and "gos-
pel of relaxation " do not mean the same
thing. Instead of being alike, their mean-
ings are rather contrasted. We have sim-
ple passivity on the one hand, and activity
of a given kind on the other. The " gospel
of rest " is obeyed by inaction, by stopping
work, or going to bed ; while the " gospel of
relaxation " implies rather a change of ac-
tivity from work to play, and it connotes
recreation, entertainment, and amusement.
The " gospel of relaxation " means the sub-
stitution of agreeable diversion for tiresome
labor. The Puritanical Sunday would an-
swer to Dr. Beard's " gospel of rest," but it
would not answer to Herbert Spencer's
"gospel of relaxation." Dr. Beard's re-
quirement was made into a gospel of duty
by the ancient Jews ; Mr. Spencer's require-
ment has as yet been made into a gospel of
duty nowhere. The cases are, therefore,
conspicuous for their lack of " coincidence,"
and the same thing will be observed in all
the other counts.

The burden of Dr. Beard's pamphlet, as
we have intimated, is to show that he was
first in the field in the systematic treatment
of " American nervousness " ; and, as he en-
titles his pamphlet "Herbert Spencer on
American Nervousness," the impression is
sought to be conveyed that Mr. Spencer has
recently entered upon a definite field of in-
quiry which Dr. Beard had made his own
long ago. But in the first place the views
of the two men are far from being of the
same character, and, in the next place, Spen-
cer's views are much older than those of
Dr. Beard. As regards priority, it is only
necessary to say that we heard Mr. Spencer
give expression to the main ideas of his ad-
dress long before the name of Dr. Beard
was ever publicly heard of. It was an early
outcome of his evolution studies, that, as in

social progress the fighting dispensation of
society gave way to the working dispensa-
tion, so the working dispensation must in
turn give way and become subordinate to
the higher objects to which work and wealth
are tributary. The stage beyond, to which
he maintains we are tending, will be char-
acterized by a more perfect organization of
the means of human enjoyment. That life
is for pleasure in its largest sense is a car-
dinal idea of the Spencerian philosophy,
and that the social fulfillment of this su-
preme end must come in practical forms, by
giving larger and more systematic play to
our pleasure-loving impulses and varied ca-
pacities of enjoyment, is an explicit and
leading inculcation of Mr. Spencer's works.
That completer living is to be attained by a
multiplication of pleasurable satisfactions,
and the perfected art of enjoyment was
taught ; for example, in his " Education,"
written twenty-five years ago, and the doc-
trine is at the basis of the " Data of Ethics,"
the most advanced treatise of his philo"
sophical system. Mr. Spencer took up this
cherished and long-familiar topic, in his
New York address, simply because he was
freshly and forcibly reminded of its impor-
tance by what he saw in this country.

History of the Pacific States of North
America. Central America, Vol. 1, 1501-
1530. By Hubert Howe Bancroft.
San Francisco : A. L. Bancroft & Co.
Pp. 704. Price, cloth, $4.50.
This volume, the sixth in the great series
of historical works by Mr. Bancroft, gives
the history of the southernmost section of
North America which borders on the Pacific,
during the period of discovery and coloniza-
tion previous to 1530. The first chapter,
of a hundred and fifty pages, is introduc-
tory ; half of it being devoted to " Spain
and Civilization at the Beginning of the Six-
teenth Century," and the rest to a " Sum-
mary of Geographical Knowledge aud Dis-
covery from the Earliest Eecords to the
Year 1540." The summary includes a se-
ries of voyages by the Northmen to the
northeastern shores of America, extending
over five centuries ; and mentions many ex-
peditions both eastward and westward by
travelers from Southern Europe, the earli-
est of these being made in 1096. The value
of this account is increased by copies of fif-

708

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

teen maps drawn by the geographers of this
period. In the second chapter, the continu-
ous narrative of exploration and conquest
begins with the first voyage of Columbus.

The author shows that the princes and
navigators of this period had plenty of
faults. The sovereigns of Spain joined to
their zeal in increasing geographical knowl-
edge, and in extending the domain of the
holy Roman Church, a lively solicitude for
their own power and revenue. The author
finds, both from his study of Spanish au-
thorities and from the admissions of Pres-
cott, that Queen Isabella has been far too
highly lauded by both Prescott and Irving.
Even Columbus, who generally gets so much
pity for the ungrateful treatment he re-
ceived, is shown to have had weaknesses
and faults which brought many of his mis-
fortunes upon him.

The American natives do not suffer
much from a comparison with their white
conquerors. If they sometimes showed a
thirst for Spanish blood, it was because the
means employed to make them good Catho-
lics and citzens were, to say the least, no
gentler than those in use in the Old World.
" They were more children than wild beasts.
.... Seldom was the Indian treacherous
until he had been deceived."

Mr. Bancroft has consulted many books
and manuscripts in preparing this work,
and the list of authorities quoted, which
occupies forty-eight octavo pages, together
with the references in the foot-notes on spe-
cial topics, give the volume great biblio-
graphical value. The numerous foot-notes
give interesting details in regard to ships,
trading, methods of administration, of di-
viding land, and of locating towns. The
volume is well supplied with maps, and the
chronicle is enlivened by many amusing and
illustrative anecdotes.

Statement of Work done at the Harvard
College Observatory, 1 811-1 882. By
Edward C. Pickering, Director of the
Observatory. Cambridge, Massachusetts :
John Wilson & Son. Pp. 23.

The observatory has enjoyed for four
years the revenue derived from an annual
subscription of five thousand dollars. The
last installments of the subscription expire
in the present month, and an effort is now
making to replace it with a permanent en-

dowment of one hundred thousand dollars.
The director calls attention to the fact that
the increased amount of work made possible
by the increased income is quite out of pro-
portion to the augmentation of funds, be-
cause the expenses are largely the same
in either case, and the increase is, there-
fore, directly available for scientific results.
Fiftetii assistants are attached to the ob-
servatory, and, by the division of labor ren-
dered possible by so large a force, each
man may be assigned the kind of work to
which he is peculiarly adapted. In this
way researches can be carried out in a few
years which are beyond the reach of observ-
atories where the corps of assistants is
small.

Proceedings of the American Society of
Microscofists. Fifth Annual Meeting.
D. S. Kellicot, Secretary, Buffalo, New
York. Pp. 292, with Plates.

The meeting of the society was held at
Elmira, New York, August loth to 17th
last, under the presidency of George E.
Blackham, F. R. M. S. The record contains
a considerable number of papers of interest
to specialists and students of microscopy,
many of them well illustrated, of which two
or three relating to organisms in Lake Erie
and the water-supply of Buffalo and a me-
moir of Charles A. Spencer, the eminent
maker of microscopes, deserve especial no-
tice and are of more general interest.

Contributions to the Anatomy of Birds.
By R. W. Shufeldt, M. D., United States
Army. Washington, D. C Pp. 210, in-
cluding Twenty-four Plates.
This monograph is also embodied in the
twelfth annual report of Professor Hayden's
" Geological and Geographical Survey of
the Territories," from which it is extracted.
It contains descriptions, abundantly illus-
trated, of the osteology of the Speotyto, or
burrowing owl ; the Ereniophila Alpestris,
or horned lark ; the Tetraonidce, or grouse
family ; the Lanius, or Shrike ; and the Ca-
(harlidce, or buzzards.

Poems. By Minot J. Savage. Boston:
George H. Ellis.

Mr. Sayage sings his unpinioned thought
and free religion as well as preaches it. Not
that he has made a hymn-book for his Bos-

LITERARY NOTICES.

709

ton society, or can not pretermit, if need be,
the professional function. Quite the con-
trary. There are many quiet poems in this
collection pervaded by genuine humor, or
with fine touches of feeling for nature and
human life, which show that the author
writes from the inspiration of true poetic
art. But the poems that most interest us
are those marked by the strong poetic ex-
pression of ideas and emotions with which
the author's mind is " possessed." The
poems entitled "Where is God?" "The
Age's Unrest," "Infidelity," "Galileo,"
"Vanini," "Magellan," "Darwin," "Kep-
ler," and many other pieces, although mak-
ing up but a small part of the book, would
well justify the title, " Songs of Modern
Thought."

The Gospel of the Stars, or Primeval
Astronomy. By Joseph A. Seiss, D. D.,
author of " A Miracle in Stone," " Voices
from Babylon," " The Last Times," "Lec-
tures on the Apocalypse," " Holy Types,"
etc. Philadelphia: E. Claxton & Co.
Pp. 450. Price, $1.50.

This is an instructive book — instructive
not because of the value of its information,
but because it is an excellent representation
of a certain phase of mind peculiar to these
times, which springs out of the conflict of
great adverse systems of thought. In the
struggle of religion and science, which has
been long developing, and is precipitated
upon this age with much intensity, the fun-
damental question is, Which order of ideas
— theological or scientific — shall predom-
inate, and which take the subordinate
place ? It is now universally held that all
truth is one. But, in the palpable issues
that arise, unity can only be secured by
some latitude of interpretation on one side
or the other. Though all truth is one, the
systems of belief are two, and there has got
to be a yielding somewhere before the al-
leged unity can become a real unity. Men
of science start with nature as it exists
around them, and is open to exploration
and the demonstration of its truths. And,
when any system of thought is offered for
acceptance, the men of science insist that it
must be brought into conformity by inter-
pretation with the order of truth established
by science. Religious teachers, on the other
hand — most of them, at least — start from

theology, hold its doctrines to be in the
ascendant, and demand that nature shall be
interpreted in conformity with them aw a
subordinate system.

The work of Dr. Seiss is a thorough-go-
ing example of the dominance of theological
ideas over scientific ideas. He, too, is en-
gaged in the laudable work of reconcilia-
tion, but, like Hood's butcher, who "con-
ciliated "his sheep by main force, our au-
thor reconciles science to theology by no
little violence of interpretation. Its lesser
details he knocks about without ceremony,
and its larger conceptions he waves aside as
illusions of not the slightest moment. Evo-
lution, he declares, "is a lie" and, as this
sufficiently illustrates, scientific truth has
no weight with him. Steeped through and
through with theological ideas, he can see
nothing in the universe but his own system
of divinity, while science is only useful as
furnishing material to be twisted into con-
formity with theology, as he understands it.
His book is pervaded with Scripture, and,
both from the titles of the works he has
formerly written and from the whole qual-
ity of this, it is seen that his mind is drawn
to the mystical, the obscure, the enigmatic,
cabalistic, and transcendental.

The special object of the present work
is to show that " the true explanation of
the origin and meaning of the constellations
of the heavens, their figures and their names,
as they have come down to us from the
earliest ages of the human race," are only
to be found in connection with Christian
theology. It is commonly supposed that
those fanciful celestial groupings of the
stars into resemblances of animals, men,
and other objects were devices of primi-
tive times, before astronomical science had
arisen. Herschel characterizes "those un-
couth figures and outlines of men and mon-
sters usually scribbled over celestial globes
and maps" as "puerile and absurd." Dr.
Seiss declares all this to be mere " rational-
ist conjecture," and solemnly maintains, on
the other hand, that the constellations are
pious intimations, illustrations, and wit-
nesses of the scheme of salvation. The
breadth of his view of the Christian system
in the present year of grace is indicated by
the following passage : " The gospel is
chiefly made up of the story of the serpent

710

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the cross — the doctrine of the fall and
depravity of man through the subtlety of
'the dragon, that old serpent called the
Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole
world,' and the recovery of fallen man
through a still mightier One, who comes
from heaven, assumes human nature, and,
by suffering, death, and exaltation to the
right band of supreme dominion, vanquishes
the dragon, and becomes the author of eter-
nal salvation. The preaching of this is the
preaching of the gospel."

But the rubbishy erudition that seems
necessary to understand this gospel, accord-
ing to the present commentator, is some-
thing frightful. Certainly, if such a per-
formance as this can pass muster, and the
" Pastor of the Church of the Holy Com-
munion, Philadelphia," has a rightful place
in the Episcopal Church, Heber Newton has
no business in the organization.

Moral Education, its Laws and Methods.
By Joseph Rodes Buchanan, M. B. New
York : S. W. Green's Son, 74 & 7<3 Beek-
man Street. Pp. 395. Price, $1.50.

Although this work, by its title, is lim-
ited to one phase of the great subject of
education, and although the moral idea pre-
vails throughout the exposition, yet the book
is far from being a mere homiletic essay in
the ordinary sense. The moral conception
is dealt with in connection with many prac-
tical questions, so that there is a good deal
of generality in the instructiveness of the
treatise. Indeed, it is chiefly valuable from
the breadth of the author's preparation for
dealing with radical educational questions.
Dr. Buchanan is an unfettered thinker, and
his work is stamped with the individuality
of his studies. He is, first of all, a physi-
ologist— a student of man as a corporeal
being, and he assigns to the subject of or-
ganization that fundamental place which it
must hold in every rational system of cul-
ture, and which is beginning to be more
clearly recognized in our own times than
ever before. Yet the work is by no means
and in no sense a physiological one, and the
author is far enough from being a material-
ist. The truths of organic science are as-
sumed rather than expounded, and on its
basis and under its limitations the author
deals with a whole range of the higher edu-

cational problems. No person interested in
education can read the book without being
helped by its information and its sugges-
tions. It contains much of the philosophy
of life, and many special problems that are
now beginning to press upon teachers and
educational managers are discussed with
acuteness, ability, and much freedom from
the restraints of tradition. It is impossible
to enter here into any of the particular in-
quiries opened by Dr. Buchanan, and we
have to confine ourselves to a general esti-
mate of the character of the book. But,
while very cordially commending it, the
reader will not infer our agreement with all
its views. We are all in that inquiring
stage in regard to education which implies
incompleteness of knowledge and a result-
ing diversity of opinion. We are working,
it is to be hoped, toward a higher agree-
ment, and such contributions as this of Dr.
Buchanan are unquestionably valuable as
means to this important end.

Fifteenth Annual Report of the Trustees
of the Peabody Museum of American
Archaeology and Ethnology. Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts. Printed by or-
der of the Trustees. F. W; Putnam,
Curator. Pp. 103.

The trustees of the museum, in an ap-
peal to the public last year, called attention
to the fact that it is the only institution in
the country especially for the preservation
of collections and the study of American
archaeology, and that its income (the inter-
est of $90,000) is only $4,500 a year. Its
rooms, reasonably commodious and contain-
ing larger or smaller collections from dif-
ferent parts of the world — several hundred
thousand specimens in all — are open free to
visitors during business hours, and are sup-
plemented with free descriptive lectures by
the curator. The additions during the year
include a valuable series of objects from the
Ainos of Yesso (Japan), by Professor Pen-
hallow ; more than two thousand stone im-
plements from Delaware, by Mr. II. R. Ben-
net ; new objects, by Dr. C. C. Abbott, from
his own collections in New Jersey, and ex-
changes from Ohio, Kentucky, and England ;
new specimens of the Wakefield (Massa-
chusetts) stone implements in every stage
of manufacture ; potteries from Southeast-
ern Missouri and Southern New Mexico, by

LITERARY NOTICES.

711

Mrs. S. B. Schlesinger ; M. Bandelier's col-
lections from the Pueblos and from Cholula,
and Mr. Fred A. Obcr's collection of cop-
per implements from Oajaca, Mexico ; speci-
mens from English caves, and casts, by
Mr. Dawkins ; articles illustrating the mak-
ing of pottery by the Caribs of British
Guiana, from Professor H. A. Ward ; soap-
stone pots from Northern Italy, by Dr. Emil
Schmidt ; and a cast of the " Endicott
Rock" of New Hampshire. The curator
carried on field-work at Madisonville, Ohio,
and Indian Hill, Kentucky. More was done
to make the museum and its objects known
to the public, and more use was made of its
collections for instruction and research, than
in any previous year.

Lectures on Art. Delivered in Support
of the Society for the Protection of An-
cient Buildings. London : Macmillan
& Co. Pp. 232.

The six lectures are by five authors,
each of whom has devoted particular atten-
tion to the study of the subject he presents.
The lecturers and their subjects are — Regi-
nald Stuart Poole, on " The Egyptian Tomb
and the Future State " ; Professor W. B.
Richmond, on " Monumental Painting " ;
Edward J. Poynter, R. A., on " Ancient
Decorative Art " ; J. T. Micklethwaite, on
"English Parish Churches"; and William
Morris, on " The History of Pattern Design-
ing," and " The Lesser Arts of Life." The
lectures are, one and all, interesting and in-
structive.

The Factors of Civilization, Real and
Assumed : Considered in their Relation
to Vice, Misery, Happiness, Unhappi-
ness, and Progress. Vol. II. Atlanta,
Georgia : James P. Harrison & Co.
Pp. 359.

The whole work is to be in three vol-
umes, of which the second precedes the first
in time of publication. It treats of the sub-
jects of more immediate and practical im-
portance than those to be discussed in the
first volume. The author maintains that
man naturally inclines to goodness, and that
all vice and misery arise from the operation
of theological causes, bad government, igno-
rance, and poverty ; or that the structure of
society is defective because of defective in-
stitutions. Man, he holds, has a vital im-
pulse to do implanted within him, which

only requires that the institutions of society
shall permit of its development, to create a
growth "as grand in results as the mag-
nificent oak bears in comparison to the in-
significant acorn." The political econom-
ical factors of civilization arc considered in
this volume under the heads of " The Un-
happiness arising from Poverty " and " The
Unhappiness arising from Uncongenial Pur-
suits and Labor." The theological, govern-
mental, and educational factors will be con-
sidered in the first volume ; and the third
volume will be devoted to " The Analysis of
Happiness."

American Hero-Myths. A Study in the
Native Religions of the Western Conti-
nent. By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D.
Philadelphia: H. C. Watts & Co. Pp.
251. Price, $1.75.

This volume is an endeavor to present
in a critically correct fight some of the
fundamental conceptions which are found
in the native beliefs of the tribes of Amer-
ica. The author does not consider it cred-
itable that so little has been done in this
field, and is disposed to be severe, but hard-
ly too much so, on those who have had
opportunities to investigate the subject, and
have not used them. He rejects the idea
that the native myths are distorted histor-
ical reminiscences and exaggerated state-
ments respecting persons that ever really
existed, and has been guided by the princi-
ple that " when the same, and that a very
extraordinary, story is told by several tribes
wholly apart in language and location, then
the probabilities are enormous that it is not
a legend, but a myth, and must be explained
as such." The myths of the lower races,
he believes, " express, in image and in
cident, the opinions of these races on the
mightiest topics of human thought, on the
origin and destiny of man, his motives for
duty, and his grounds for hope, and the
source, history, and fate of all external
nature. Certainly, the sincere expressions
on these subjects of even humble members
of the human race deserve our most respect-
ful heed." With these views and in this
spirit, Dr. Brinton presents the results of
his studies, from the most authentic, ac-
cessible sources, of the hero-gods of the
Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Aztec tribes,
the Mayas, and the Quichas.

712

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Report on the Character of Six Hundred
Tornadoes. By Sergeant J. P. Finley,
Signal Corps, U. S. A. Washington:
Office of Chief Signal Officer. Pp. 19,
with Three Charts.

The increasing frequency with which
notices of tornadoes appear, as the list ap-
proaches the present time, is to be taken
as a sign, not of more tornadoes, but of
better observations. The season in which
tornadoes appear most frequent is summer,
and the month June. Spring is the next
most frequent season, then autumn, then
winter. The region most often visited in-
cludes the States of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas,
and Nebraska, of which Kansas suffers the
most. Outside of this region New York
has the most tornadoes, and next, Georgia.
Suggestions are given for avoiding the vio-
lence of tornadoes ; many other lessons are
derived from the study, and further ones
are anticipated from further studies.

The December (or Christmas) number of
" Wide Awake " is a noble magazine of 13G
pages, with a supplement of 60 pages, filled
with articles of high literary character and
unexceptionable tendency. It is adorned
with a profusion of illustrations, which,
though executed in the best style of the
present fashion in wood-engraving, can not
be considered equal to the illustrations in
the same magazine ten years ago, when a
purer taste and a better style prevailed.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
*** Authors and others, sending papers and
monographs for notice, will please specify, for gen-
eral information, where they can be procured.

Dime Question-Books : General History, As-
tronomy, Mythology, Rhetoric, and Composi-
tion, Botany, with Notes, Queries, etc. Albert
P. Southwick. Syracuse, New York : C. W. Bar-
deen. Pp. 36 to 40 each. 10 cents.

Iowa Wenther-Service Annual for 1883. Gns-
tavus Ilimiclis. Central Station, Iowa City. Pp.
40.

Should American Colleges be open to Wom-
en as well as to Men ? Frederick A. P. Barnard,
President of Columbia College, New York City.
Pp. 17.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eight-
eenth Annual Catalogue, etc. Francis A.Walker,
Ph. D., LL. D., President. Pp. 102.

The Taxation of the Elevated Railroads in the
Citv of New York. Roger Foster. New York :
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 61.

Apparent Attractions and Repulsions of
Small Floating Bodies. John Le Conte. Berke-
ley, California. Pp.10.

Medicine and Medicine-Men. Anniversary
Address. John Godfrey. New Orleans, Louisi-
ana. Pp. 17.

" The Sociologist : A Monthly Journal." Vol.
I, Nos. 1 and 2. Adair Creek, Knox County,
Tennessee: A. Chavaiiues & Co.

On the Loess and Associated Deposits of Des
Moines. W. J. McGee, Farley, and R. Ellsworth
Call, Des Moines, Iowa. Pp. 24.

Circulars of the Department of Education:
High-Schools for Girls in Sweden, pp. 6; In-
struction in Moral and Civil Government, pp.
4; National Pedagogic Congress of Spain, pp. 4 ;
Natural Science in Secondary Schools, pp. 9;
The University of Bonn, pp. 67 ; Proceedings of
Department of Superintendence of the National
Educational Association, 1882, pp. 112. Washing-
ton ; Government Printing-Oflice.

The Naval Use of the Dynamo-Machine and
Electric Light. Lieutenant J. B. Murdock,
U. S. N. Annapolis, Maryland. Pp. 385.

" Census Forestry Bulletin," No. 23— Esti-
mate of the Consumption of Forest Products as
Fuel during the Census Year. P. 1, with Map.

Department of Agriculture— Report of the
Entomologist, 1882. C. V. Riley. Washington :
GovernmentPrintiug-Offlce. Pp.l04,witkPlates.

The Condition of Niagara Falls, and the
Measures needed to preserve them. J. B. Har-
rison. (Author's address, Franklin Falls, New
Hampshire.) Pp. 62.

"The Reconstructionist : Devoted to the
Substitution of Good for Evil." Samuel T.
Fowler. Quarterly. Philadelphia : George A.
Fowler & Co. Pp. 64. 25 cents.

A Method of Teaching the Greek Language
Tabulated. John W. Sanborn, Batavia, New
York. Published by the author. Pp. 44. 30
cents.

Statistical Report of Imports, Exports, Im-
migration, and Navigation, for the Three Months
endfd September 30,1882. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing-Offlce. Pp. 157.

Hospital Accommodations of County Poor-
Houses. Dr. Charles S. Hoyt, Secretary. New
York State Board of Charities. AlbaDy, New
York. Pp. 53.

Bromide of Ethyl (as an Anaesthetic). Julien
J. Chisholm, M. D. Baltimore, Maryland. Pp. 8.

Report of an Exploration of Parts of Wyo-
ming, Idaho, and Montana, in August and Sep-
tember. 1882, made by Lieutenant-Genera] Sheri-
dan. Washington : Government Printiug-Office.
Pp. 69.

"Journal of Social Science." December, 1882.
A. Williams & Co., Boston, and G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York. Pp. 178. $1.

Report of the Standing Committee, New
York State Board of Charities, on County Poor-
Houses. Pp. 8.

On the Geological Effects of a Varying Rota-
tion of the Earth. Professor J. E. Todd. Pp.
12.

" Scientific Proceedings of the Ohio Mechan-
ics'Institute." Quarterly. December, 1882. Cin-
cinnati, Ohio. Publishing Committee, Ohio Me-
chanics' Institute. Pp. 48. $1 a year.

The Place of Original Research in College
Education. J. H. Wright, Dartmouth College,
Hanover, New Hampshire. Pp. 29.

Mutual Relations of Intellectual and Moral
Culture. Joseph Le Conte. Berkeley, California.
Pp. 7.

General Weather - Service, United States.
"Monthly Weather Review," November, 1882.
Washington, D. C. : Office of the Chief Signal-
Officer. Pp. 21, with Maps.

Papers of California Academy of Sciences on
" Footprints found at the Carson State-Prison "
(H. W. Harkness, M.D., Joseph Le Conte, CD.
GibDs) ; on " Fossil Jaw of a Mammoth " (C. D.
Gibbs) ; and on " Fresh-water Mussels " (Robert
E. C. Stearns). San Francisco, California. Pp.
58, with Plates.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

713

Science Ladders: Lowest Forms of Water
Animals. N. D'Anvers. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 59. 50 cents.

First Year Manual and Text-Book of Arith-
metic. James H. House. Syracuse, New York :
C. W. Bardeeu. Pp. 15(5. 50 cents.

A Practical Arithmetic. G. A. Wentworth
and Rev. Thomas Hill, D. D., LL.D. Boston:
Ginn, Heath & Co. Pp. 351.

Notes on Ingersoll. Rev. L. A. Lamhert.
Buffalo, New York: Buffalo Catholic Publica-
tion Company. Pp. 184. 50 cents.

Herbert Spencer on American Nervousness.
George M. Beard, M. D. New York : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 17. 50 cents.

Political Economy. Francis A. Walker. New
York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 490. $3.25.

Introduction to the Study of Organic Chemis-
try. Adolph Pinner. Translated and revised
by Peter T. Austen. New York : John Wiley &
Sons. Pp.403. f2.55.

Catalogue and Index of the Publications of
the Smithsonian Institution. William J. Bases,
Washington, D. C. Smithsonian Institution.
Pp. 328.

Slight Ailments : Their Nature and Treat-
ment. Lionel S.Beale. Philadelphia : P. Blakis-
ton, Son & Co. Pp. 283. $1.25.

The Cause of Variation. M. M. Curtis.
Marshall, Minnesota : Published by the author.
Pp. 115.

Report of the Chief Signal-Officer, War De-
partment, 1880, pp. 1,120, with 119 Charts. The
same, 1881, pp. 1,290, with 59 Charts. Washing-
ton: Government Printiug-Office.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Experimental Demonstration of Ohm's
Law. — An interesting experimental demon-
stration of the truth of Ohm's law was re-
cently given by Professor Alfred M. Mayer,
of the Stevens Institute of Technology, be-
fore the New York Electrical Society. This
law, as is well known, affirms that in any
electrical circuit the current flowing varies
directly as the electro-motive force and in-
versely as the resistance, or, in symbols,

E

C = — , where C is the current, E the
R'

electro-motive force, and R the resistance of
the entire circuit, including that of the gener-
ator. To demonstrate the truth of this law, it
is only necessary to show that, the resistance
remaining constant, the current increases in
the same ratio as the electro-motive force
when this is augmented ; or that, the elec-
tro-motive force being mainMned constant
the current varies in the same ratio as the
resistance as this latter is raised. In Pro-
fessor Mayer's experiments the current was
measured by means of a Thompson reflect-
ing galvanometer — a delicate instrument in
which the deflections of the needle are mul-

tiplied to any desired extent by means of a
beam of light, reflected from a small mirror
attached to the needle, which is received
upon a screen. The novel feature of Pro-
fessor Mayer's demonstration consisted in
his mode of obtaining the current so that the
electro-motive force could be known with
great accuracy, and readily varied. This
consisted in generating it by means of the
movement of a coil of wire along a bar-mag-
net. The electro-motive force of the cur-
rent so produced depends upon the number
of lines of magnetic force cut by the moving
coil in a unit of time, so that this can be
varied by varying the speed with which a
given coil is moved, or, the speed remaining
the same, by varying the number of coils.
Professor Mayer resorted to the latter meas-
ure, his apparatus consisting simply of an
upright bar-magnet over the end of which
a loop of wire could be slipped, the distance
which this could slide being limited by a
stop. The movable coils consisted of the
same lengths of copper wire, in which there
were taken one, two, or more loops, the re-
sistance of each of these pieces being the
same, so as to maintain that of the complete
circuit constant. The coils were placed over
the upper end of the magnet, and carried
down until they rested upon the stop, the
needle of the galvanometer brought to the
zero of the scale, and then the coil pulled
off the magnet with a quick motion. The
deflection of the needle indicated a variation
in the current in proportion to the number
of loops of wire used, and when the resist-
ance was varied in proportion to the amount
of this variation. A better form of the
apparatus is one in which the coil, instead of
being moved by hand, is drawn up quickly
by a spring, when it is released by the pulling
of a trigger. With this, Professor Mayer is
at present studying the development of mag-
netism in eloctro-magnets.

More abont the Lignified Snake. —

Doubts are expressed, in a paper recently
read by Professor C. V. Riley before the
Biological Society of Washington, as to
the so-called " lignified serpent " of Matto
Grosso, Brazil, which was described and il-
lustrated in the November number of the
" Monthly," being really a serpent at all ;
Professor Riley rather believes the forma-

7^4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion to bo the burrow of the larva of some
beetle, filled up with excrement and rudi-
mentary fiber, as such burrows commonly
are filled. In support of his view he makes
the points : that the object in advance of
the so-called reptile's head to the unimagi-
native eye appears, not like an insect larva,
but like a simple knot, similar to two knots
which appear in the body of the more
prominent formation ; that the diameter of
the formation is greatest at the point where
the relief ends, as would be the case with a
larva eating its way from the point corre-
sponding with the " head " of the " ser-
pent " and growing as it advanced toward
the " tail " ; that the first curve, which, on
the serpent theory, the animal must have
made in forcing its way under the bark, is
so abrupt and the relief so doubled upon
itself that a snake could not make such a
bend without breaking its vertebra ; that
the cephalic plates and scales are imagina-
ry ; that the curves shown, though natural
to a burrowing larva, are not natural to a
snake forcing itself into so confined a
space ; that the woody formation of the
relief indicates a burrow beneath the larva,
and not the forcing of anything between
the bark and the wood, for such forcing
would have loosened the bark for some dis-
tance on either side of the relief, and a
forcing of the kind supposed could not take
place without interference with the growth
or soundness of the tree ; that the granular
appearance to be seen along the sides of
the specimen and the fibers observable are
just such as an insect-larva would leave,
and can not be accounted for on M. Olli-
vier's hypothesis ; that the animal matter
in the center of the body may be accounted
for as arising from the exuviae and excre-
ment of the larva ; and that the work of
human hands in heightening resemblances,
particularly about the head and eyes, can be
detected. The whole question, finally, could
be readily settled by careful section, which
would show traces of vertebrae or phos-
phate of lime along the vertebral line if
there really were a serpent. Professor
Gray, in the January number of the "Amer-
ican Journal of Science," suggests two ex-
planations as more probable than that
which depends upon the snake. One is,
that the snake-like body is of the nature of

a root, an aerial root, like those of a Clusia
or a Ficus, which was making its way be-
tween bark and wood, and that the supposed
larva is an incipien t root of the same kind.
The other, which was proposed by Professor
Wadsworth, of Cambridge, while examining
the specimen along with Professor Gray,
" and is to be preferred," " supposes that
the sinuous course is the track of a wood-
eating larva or some kind of insect, the
burrowing of which had not destroyed the
overlying fiber; consequently the new
growth filling the space (except at certain
points) had naturally assumed the likeness
of a snake."

Vital Conditions affecting the Colored
Population.— Dr. S. S. Ilerrick, Secretary of
the Louisiana State Board of Health, pre-
sented facts and tables at the Savannah
meeting of the American Public Health As-
sociation, showing that, as between the two
races, the rate of mortality for all ages is
invariably much greater among the colored
than among the white, and that the disparity
is more marked in the case of children under
five years of age. The colored race appears
to enjoy an advantage in malarial fevers and
cancerous diseases, while it is at a disad-
vantage in all the other diseases. Mr. Pat-
terson's tables, exhibiting the increase by
decades of the colored population in the
United States, given in " The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly" for September, 1881, show
that the rate of increase during the decade,
including the war, fell off by sixty or sev-
enty per cent. The rate was, however,
brought up to near its highest figure in the
returns of the last census. The last fact is
held by Dr. Ilerrick to correct the belief
that the African race is destined to disap-
pear in the struggle for existence. " Ap-
parently, this race is increasing more rapidly
than its white compatriot." The fact, how-
ever, which seems to have been overlooked,
should be borne in mind, that the mulattoes
and quadroons are all reckoned as colored,
so that the increase is partly due to the
whites. If the rapid increase of the colored
race proves anything, it is that there is
plenty of room yet for that class of people.
This leads to the consideration of what will
probably be the future of the colored people
when they are crowded upon. " Whatever

P OP TJLAR MIS CELL ANY.

7i5

may be the capacity of the race for develop-
ment in a state of peace, it is apparent,
from the great check on their increase be-
tween 1860 and 1S70, by the operations of
the civil war, that any serious disturbance
of their industrial pursuits, like a prolonged
foreign war or political convulsions at home,
would produce such distress as to disturb
profoundly their vital movements. The
same event would follow an over-produc-
tion of the staples grown by their labor,
owing to their habitual improvidence. Thus
far they have experienced no serious rivalry,
and therefore no check to their natural in-
crease. . . . This fact is undoubtedly fa-
vorable to the numerical increase of the
race, though it is equally clear that it tends
at the same time to delay its intellectual
improvement by deterring individuals from
pursuing other and higher industries. In
any event, there is little danger that either
race will severely encroach on the ground of
the other in our time, and no danger that
the colored population of any part of the
country will be in the way of the whites,
unless they should so far advance intellect-
ually and morally as to win a commanding
position by sheer force of merit."

Northern Transcontinental Snrvey. — A

"Northern Transcontinental Survey" has
been organized in the interest of the North-
ern Pacific Railroad and its allied lines,
under the direction of Mr. Raphael Pum-
pelly, the purpose of which is to obtain a
satisfactory knowledge of the extensive,
hardly explored regions which may be made
tributary to those lines and their resources.
It has been divided into departments of
mineral resources, climate, rivers and irri-
gation, soils, forests, economic botany, labo-
ratory, and topography, which have several-
ly been put in charge of specialists. A
considerable amount of preliminary work
was done last year, the most important,
perhaps, of which related to the examina-
tion of the black coals of the western part
of the region under survey and of the brown
coal-fields of Dakota. The former coals
were found to be good steam-generators, the
latter not, except in combination or after
special preparation. Particular attention is
paid to the forest resources of the country,
in which we are glad to see that the eco-

nomical use of the timber is not wholly left
out of sight ; and observations are making
on the useful grasses of the country. The
results of the surveys are to be cartographi-
cally represented, in a series of maps de-
lineating severally topographical, hydro-
graphic, climatic, and botanical features.

Langley's Observations on Solar Radia-
tion.— The scientific expedition of Professor
S. P. Langley, of the Alleghany Observa-
tory, to the summit of Mount Whitney, in
1881, has led to some important and novel
conclusions with reference to the effect of
the atmosphere on the action of the sun's
rays, and to the temperature of space.
Among the principal objects of the expedi-
tion were, to determine how much heat the
sun sends to the earth (the solar constant),
and what part of the surface temperature
of the planet is due to the sun's direct
radiant heat, and what part to the effect of
the earth's atmosphere in storing this heat.
Mount Whitney, in Southern California, was
chosen, because of the conveniences afforded
by its great height and the dryness of its
atmosphere, and because two stations could
be found upon it within easy signaling dis-
tance, and yet having a difference of more
than eleven thousand feet in elevation. One
of the earlier observations of the expedi-
tion was to notice, as former observers had
done, "that as we ascended, and the air
grew colder, the sun grew hotter, till our
faces and hands, browned as they already
were by weeks of sunshine below, were
burned anew, and far more in the cold than
in the desert heat. As we still slowly as-
cended, and the surface temperature of the
soil fell to the freezing-point, the solar
radiation became intenser, and many of the
party presented an appearance as of severe
burns from an actual fire, while near the
summit the temperature in a copper vessel,
over which were laid two sheets of plain
window-glass, rose above the boiling-point,
and it was certain that we could boil water
by the direct solar rays in such a vessel
among the snow-fields." This observation
induced the conclusion that if the earth's
atmosphere were withdrawn, the tempera-
ture of the surface would greatly fall, though
under a materially greater radiant heat ; and
Professor Langley expresses the opinion that

716

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the fall would be at least to 50° below zero
of Fahrenheit. " We see," says Professor
Langley, " if these results be true, that the
temperature of a planet may, and not im-
probably does, depend far less upon its
neighborhood to or remoteness from the
sun than upon the constitution of its gase-
ous envelope ; and, indeed, it is hardly too
much to say that we might approximately
indicate the constitution of an atmosphere
which would make Mercury a colder planet
than the earth, or Neptune as warm and
habitable a one." A much greater value
than has hitherto been accepted appeared
to be given by the observations to the solar
constant, amounting to one half more than
that determined by Pouillet and by Herschcl
near the sea-level, and even to more than
the recent values assigned by M. Viollc.
The bolometer observations at the summit
and base of Mount Whitney indicate a dif-
ferent distribution of solar energy at the
upper station from that which prevails at
the lower one. They also indicate, as the
author states in a communication to the
French Academy of Sciences, that only one
quarter of the solar energy which vivifies
the world is found in the familiar field of
the visible spectrum and the ultra-violet ;
and that the other three quarters are found
in the infra-red. Thus the action of our
atmosphere, and, as is inferred from the
observations, that of the solar atmosphere,
is to absorb the short rays more than the
long ones. The real color of the photo-
sphere is blue ; and " white light is not the
' sum of all radiations,' nor even of all
visually recognizable ones, but a composi-
tion of the small groups of special rays,
which, starting from this essentially blue
sun, by virtue of their large coefficients,
and by a kind of survival of the fittest,
have struggled through the solar and ter-
restrial atmospheres to us, while others of
short wave-length have failed on the way."

Infectious Consumption. — Dr. Alexander
McAldowie has considered the much-debated
question whether pulmonary consumption is
an infectious disease in the light of his own
infirmary and private practice. lie is of
the opinion that it is infectious, although it
is not so frequently communicated by in-
fection as it would be were the lungs less

well protected than they are against the
access of germs. He mentions four cases
where the wife, previously healthy, and with
no family history of tubercular disease, be-
came affected while attending to her phthisi-
cal husband, and two cases in which per-
sons suffering from the pneumonic form of
the disease appeared to communicate the
tubercular form to healthy persons. Phthisis
is not often communicated in this manner
by ordinary intercourse, because the germs
are sifted out in the air-passages by the
vibrating action of the cilia situated there,
and are removed by expectoration. The
germs floating in the air are, moreover,
commonly dry, and of feeble infective pow-
er. The lungs are liable to infection only
when the inhaled germs escape the filtering
action of the bronchi and reach the air-
cells, where they come in contact with a
surface highly favorable for their absorp-
tion. This happens only under exceptional
conditions. The parts of the alveoli most
exposed to the attacks of inhaled germs are
those near the entrance, at the points where
the small bronchial tubes lose their cylin-
drical character and become covered on all
sides with the cells ; and pathological ob-
servation has proved that these are frequent
starting-points in phthisis.

Snbterraneous Effects of Atmospheric
Pressure. — Hardly sufficient account has
been taken of the variations in the pressure
of the atmosphere as a force competent to
produce important effects within the earth
and on its surface. The pressure on a
man's body amounts to thirty thousand
pounds, and that exerted upon a table ten
feet long and five feet wide is equivalent to
more than one hundred thousand pounds.
In both these cases the pressure varies alike
on all sides, and changes are not directly
felt ; but the cover of an air-tight box, the
pressure in the interior of which could not
vary, would act very differently, and would
respond to the slightest changes. The
crust of the earth probably — certainly
where cavities exist — is like such a cover.
The consideration of this fact may help to
explain the connection which many persons
think they have found between earthquakes
and coal-mine explosions and low stages of
the barometer. A part of the weight of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

717

the atmosphere being removed, the gases
confined within the earth exert a stronger
pressure on the crust, or flow out and are
inflamed when they reach a light. Mr.
Baldwin Latham has found that the streams
flowing through the chalk, even in dry sea-
sons, give increased supplies of water when
the barometer is falling, and diminished sup-
plies when it is rising.

Mental Shoek and Inebriety.— Dr. T. D.
Crothers, Superintendent of Walnut Lodge,
Hartford, Connecticut, has a paper in the
" Quarterly Journal of Inebriety," the ob-
ject of which is to show how psychical trau-
matism, or injury from mental agitation or
powerful emotion, an agency whose opera-
tion is not generally recognized, is often an
active cause of inebriety. He marks two
distinct periods in all cases of inebriety, the
first of which, beginning somewhere in the
past, is unknown and not noticeable to or-
dinary observers, and terminates with the
first excessive use of alcohol. The second
period starts from this point, is noted by the
occasional or continuous excessive use of
spirits, is terminated only by recovery or
death, and is the period which comes under
the observation of friends and relatives, and
can be accurately studied. The causes and
conditions in the first, or neurotic stage, are
often as varied and complex as those which
produce insanity, and often, notwithstand-
ing their obscurity, present distinct intima-
tions of inebriety far in advance. " A cer-
tain progressive march may be noted, often
broken by long obscure halts or precipitous
strides, changing into various forms and
manifestations of disease. The neurotic
stage will be marked, in most cases, by
nerve exhaustion, instability of nerve-force,
and nutrient perversions. Not unfrequently
delusions and hallucinations about foods and
drinks are unmistakable symptoms. Often
persons who have never used spirits, and
become fanatical in their efforts to reform
inebriates, are in this stage, and sooner or
later glide into the next one." Psychical
traumatism may be considered both as a di-
rect cause of inebriety and as an indirect
cause, as which it develops conditions that
rapidly merge into the disorder. A num-
ber of incidents that have come under the
author's observation, some of which are ex-

tremely striking, arc given as illustrative of
its operation from both points of view. In
all of them inebriety has immediately or
gradually supervened in persons who would
have been the last to be suspected of liabil-
ity to it, after some intense mental shock
or surprise or information of disaster. The
usual explanation of such cases, says Dr.
Crothers, would be that the victims drank
from despair and discouragement, "but a
general study will show a state of psychical
pain and agony for which alcohol alone acts
as a sedative. It very commonly appears,
in a study of cases of inebriety, that the pa-
tient will refer to some event of life, or dis-
ease, from which he is confident that he lost
some power or force which he has never re-
gained. These incidents do not come out as
reasons for his drinking, but as facts per-
taining to his vigor or power of endurance."
Such cases of loss of power are found in
every community, " and of course do not all
become inebriates, but, like a large class of
eccentrics, are on the border-line, or inner
circle, shading into inebriety or insanity. A
large number of persons engaged in the
late civil war, who suffered hardship and
mal-nutrition, became inebriates years after,
following the psychical and physical trau-
matism received at that time. The effects
of commercial disasters, of bankruptcies,
and panics in Wall Street, can be seen in
inebriate or insane asylums. In the asy-
lum at Bingharnton, New York, for inebri-
ates, at one time were eighteen cases whose
inebriety could be clearly traced to a great
money-panic in Wall Street known as ' Black
Friday.' Many of these cases were purely
from psychical traumatism, others were al-
ready in the dark circle close to inebriety,
and needed but a slight cause to precipitate
them over. Political failures are also fer-
tile fields for the growth of inebriety and
the action of psychical influences. Annu-
ally a large class, after the close of a cam-
paign, find themselves literally inebriates,
and, if they have money, go to water-cures,
inebriate asylums, or to the far West, and
begin life again. The inebriety is often of
the paroxysmal or dipsomaniacal type, with
free intervals of sobriety that give renewed
energy to the delusive hope that recovery
will follow the bidding of the will. A class
of moderate or occasional drinkers are al-

7i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ways more susceptible to these influences
than abstainers " ; and it may be stated as
a rule that moderate drinkers suffer more
frequently from psychical shocks of every
form, and are more likely to become inebri-
ates from such causes.

Tine Poison of Cesspools. — M. Bouveret
has reported on a remarkable case of poi-
soning from a cesspool which took place at
Lyons. A workman, twenty-one years old,
having fallen into a cesspool, was taken out,
after having been in it about five minutes,
in a state of convulsions. Inhalations of
oxygen were administered for several hours,
but the convulsions continued with rise of
temperature. Transfusion of blood (defi-
brinatcd) was then tried without effect, and
death took place about twenty-four hours
after the accident. The blood was found,
on post-mortem examination, to be black
and fluid, the lungs and kidneys were con-
gested, and the bronchial mucous membrane
showed a bright hyperaemia, but no coagu-
lation was observed in the pulmonary artery.
The chief toxic agent in the contents of
cesspools is supposed to be sulphide of am-
monium, a poison which acts on the blood in
the same manner as carbonic oxide, deoxi-
dizing the red globules and making them
unfit to perform their functions. Transfu-
sion of blood has been performed with suc-
cess in cases of poisoning by carbonic oxide,
and its failure in the present case has pro-
voked the suggestion that cesspools may
contain gaseous poisons far more complex
and more virulent than sulphide of ammo-
nium, the action of which is more profound
and complicated.

Ancient Maya Records.— Dr. Daniel G.
Brinton, of Philadelphia, has recently come
into possession of a number of facsimile
copies of the Books of Chilan Balam, or
the local records of the Mayas of Yucatan,
and has published an interesting account of
their character and contents. The name,
" Book of Chilan Balam," was applied to
all the works of this character, to Avhatever
village they might belong, and the different
ones were distinguished by adding the name
of the village. Only a few of the original
volumes remain, most of them having been
destroyed by the priests as heretical and

mischievous ; but a few were afterward
compiled over again by natives from their
own knowledge and recollections. Parts
or descriptions of sixteen of these works
remain, not one of which has ever been
printed, or even entirely translated into any
European tongue. Their contents consist
chiefly of astrological and prophetic mat-
ters, ancient chronology and history, medi-
cal recipes and directions, and, in the later
ones, later history and Christian teachings.
One of the most valuable features in these
records lies in the hints they furnish of the
hieroglyphic system of the Mayas, concern-
ing which our only information has hitherto
been in the essay of Bishop Landa. Some
features of Bishop Landa's notes on this
subject have been condemned by Dr. Val-
entini, as we have already mentioned, as
" fabrications," but Dr. Brinton pronounces
Dr. Yalcntini's attack " an amount of skep-
ticism which exceeds both justice and prob-
ability," and he believes that the result of
a comparison with the hieroglyphics of the
books of Chilan Balam and of the Codex
Troano will refute the doubts and slurs that
have been cast on the bishop's work, and
" vindicate for it a very high degree of ac-
curacy."

Lessons on the Danger of Narcotics. —

The deceased poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
was a victim of chloral, which he took for
sleeplessness, with the inevitable result.
About 1868, his friend Mr. Watts says, in
the " Athenaeum," he was attacked with in-
somnia, one of the most distressing effects
of which as manifested in him was " a nerv-
ous shrinking from personal contact with
any save a few intimate friends. This pe-
culiar kind of nervousness may be aggra-
vated by the use of sleeping draughts, and
in his case was thus aggravated. ... No
man ever lived who was so generous as he
in sympathizing with other men's work,
save only when the cruel fumes of chloral
turned him against everything." Another
conspicuous warning against the use of nar-
cotics is given in the case of the death of
Dr. Thomas Atkinson Elias, a physician of
Southport, England, under circumstances
which led the coroner's jury to believe that
it was caused by an overdose of morphia.
It was shown at the inquest that he was

NOTES.

719

occasionally troubled with sleeplessness and
frequently took for it morphia, chloral, ne-
penthe, or bromide of potassium. It is
lamentable, says the " Lancet," to see medi-
cal men drift into such uses of drugs, which
engender the very evils for which they arc
taken, and are so apt to issue in results
quite uncontemplated. " Such evils are to
be cured, and meantime borne with patience,
not met by dangerous medicines in random
doses."

Mechanical and Vital Education.—

" Some dangers of education " are treated
with much intelligence in a thoughtful
essay in the "Saturday Review." One of
the dangers relates to the difference be-
tween what may be called mechanical and
vital education. By mechanical education
is meant " the imbuing the mind with those
elements which can be taught by pure rule ;
in which no demand is made on the child
or youth beyond attention and industry ;
into which the clement of choice on his
part does not enter. Such elements there
are in every subject." Among them are
the teaching of the alphabet, of the pro-
nunciation of written words or syllables, of
spelling, of writing, of the multiplication-
table, of rules for the addition or subtrac-
tion of fractions, of many other arithmetical
processes, and, in the higher subjects, the
inculcation of the Greek and Latin gram-
mar and vocabulary, of the propositions of
Euclid, of historical dates and facts, and of
many elements in the most difficult branches
of learning, the processes of which are me-
chanical and nothing more. "But in all
sound education these mechanical rules are
never treated as an end in themselves, nor
again as a mere stepping-stone to other
mechanical rules of a more difficult kind.
They are, each and all of them, keys to
unlock the several successive chambers of
the world in which we live ; and, whether
the treasures stored up in those chambers
are of a material or spiritual kind, . . . the
unfolding of these several treasures is not
in any way a mechanical, it is a vital process.
And here a totally new element comes in on
the part of the student. It is no longer
with him a matter of attention only ; he will
begin to exercise choice. It is found by
experience that boys and girls are not in-
capable of taking interest in the world in

which they live ; but no prescribed plan for
creating such an interest in them is pos-
sible. Thousands of interesting topics may
be unfolded before the eyes of a boy, and
he will have none of them : at last some-
thing occurs which touches him ; curiosity
or sympathy is awakened ; and from that
moment he takes an initiative, his vital
education is on the move. And from that
moment the mechanical inculcation of rules
ought to be somewhat relaxed ; not that it
may not still be necessary sometimes, but
it ought not to be suffered to interfere with
the more important element — the spontane-
ous pursuit of knowledge, the spontaneous
feeling of sympathy with men. Now, here
is the delicate, the critical point in educa-
tion, the point at which the teacher or the
educational authority has such serious diffi-
culties to contend with in making a decision.
. . . There is a proper medium in the en-
forcement of the mechanical part of educa-
tion : if it is enforced too little, there is the
mischief attendant upon idleness on the
child's part, besides the loss of ' the use of
a valuable instrument ; if it is enforced too
much, vital energies will be quenched, and
the whole result will be dry and formal."
The tendency in the primary schools, and of
all formal competition in the higher schools
and universities, is to produce mechanical
rather than vital excellence.

NOTES.

Dr. Charles M. Culver, of West Troy,
a graduate of Union College and of the Al-
bany Medical College, has been making the
study of the eye a specialty under the guid-
ance of eminent professional men in Lon-
don, Berlin, and Paris, and is now an as-
sistant of the celebrated oculist, Professor
Landolt, at the French capital. Dr. Culver
is at present engaged in translating from
the French into English the treatise on
" The Refraction of Light," by Professor
Landolt, which forms the second volume of
the comprehensive work on " Ophthalmol-
ogy " by Wecker and Landolt. It will be
an interesting contribution to our scientific
literature.

Dr. George M. Beard, a physician well
known for his investigations in nervous dis-
orders, and the contributor of several arti-
cles to " The Popular Science Monthly," died
in this city, January 23d, at the age of forty-
three years.

720

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Mr. G. W. Tinsley, of Columbus, Indiana,
has suggested a new theory of the operation
of solar and lunar gravities in producing the
tides. The tide on the side of the earth near-
est to the attracting bodies is induced by the
acceleration of the rotation of the waters on
that side causing them to rush up toward
the point of greatest attraction. The tide
on the opposite side is due to the formation
of an axis of gravity by the combined at-
tractions of the earth and moon, around the
pole of which the water accumulates ; in the
same manner as if, when we had a fluid sub-
stance that a magnet would attract, and were
to fill a vessel with it and hold a magnet un-
der the vessel, we might expect the substance
to accumulate to a greater depth immedi-
ately over the magnet than elsewhere.

The Rev. James Challis, Plumian Pro-
fessor of Astronomy, and Fellow of Trinity
College, the senior of the professors at the
University of Cambridge, died early in De-
cember, in the eightieth year of his age. He
had actively discharged the duties of his
professorship from 1836, when he was ap-
pointed to succeed Professor Airy, till with-
in two years of his death. He published a
considerable number of scientific works, in-
cluding twelve volumes of astronomical ob-
servations.

The " Moniteur Industriel" says that
electrical force is regularly installed as the
propelling power of the trains on the three
railroads from Lichterfeld to Spandau, Prus-
sia ; from Port Bush to Busa Mills, Ire-
land ; and from Zandvoort to Kostverlorcn,
Holland. Electrical railway lines are in
construction from Wiesbaden to Neroberg,
Prussia ; at Zankerode, in Saxony ; a sub-
terranean and subfluvial road in London ;
and one in South Wales, the motive power
for which is derived from a fall of water.
Of lines projected are the urban railways
of the cities of Milan and Turin ; the Edi-
son Company's projected line in the United
States ; and the South Austrian Company's
line.

Signor Antonio Fayoro is about to pub-
lish a work on the career of Galileo while
he filled the chair of Mathematics in the
University of Padua, from 1592 to 1610, a
period of Galileo's life concerning which
little has been hitherto published. It will
contain about a hundred and fifty docu-
ments, for the most part unedited.

Sir Woodbine Parish, a venerable Eng-
lish diplomatist, a former vice-president of
the Geological and Geographical Societies,
and author of a work on the " Natural Histo-
ry of Buenos Ayres and the Rio de la Plata,"
died recently, in the eighty-sixth year of his
age. He was also known to the scientific
world for having taken to England the re-
mains of the megatherium, glyptodon, and
other great South American fossils.

The death is announced of Andrea Ara-
das, of Catania, Sicily, a laborious student
of marine zoology and paleontology, whose
numerous publications extended over a pe-
riod of forty years.

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology
has acquired a collection of contemporary
potteries in various stages of manufacture,
and pottery-making tools, of the Caribs of
British Guiana, which were bought in per-
son several years ago by Professor H. A.
Ward from a Carib woman whom he was
watching make earthen vessels. Among
the articles were several small and rude ves-
sels which Professor Ward saw the Indian
woman form and give to her children to
play with and amuse themselves while she
continued her work. These toy-vessels sug-
gest that many of the small objects of sim-
ilar character found in mounds and graves
may have been the playthings of children.

Dr. Gustave Syanberg, formerly Profess-
or of Astronomy and Director of the Observa-
tory of the University of Upsala, Sweden,
died November 21st, in his eighty-first year.

One of the largest brains on record is
that of an illiterate, not very intelligent
mulatto, of Columbus, Ohio, who recently
died at the age of forty-five years, and
whose case is reported by Dr. Haldeman
in the " Cincinnati Lancet." His brain
weighed 68f ounces, or nearly five ounces
more than the famous brain of Cuvier. The
case was mentioned, in our December num-
ber, of a bricklayer who could neither read
nor write, whose brain weighed 67 ounces.

The death of the Marquis Orazio Anti-
nori, the distinguished zoologist and African
traveler, is reported from Aden. He had
just started, at seventy-one years of age, on
a new expedition to the Upper Nile.

One of the strongest evidences that prac-
tical education is destined hereafter to re-
ceive a fairer share of attention at the old
universities is afforded by the fact that a
course of lectures has been begun at Cam-
bridge, under Professor Stuart, " On the
Practice of Iron and Brass Founding, with
Practical Demonstrations in the Foundry."

M. Palmieri, Director of the Observatory
on Mount Vesuvius, announces that he has
discovered, in the lava of that voleano, a
spectrum line corresponding to that of heli-
um, the element whose spectrum has hith-
erto been found only in the sun.

The French Academy of Sciences pre-
sented M. J. B. Dumas, the chemist, on the
4th of December, a gold medal, in commem-
oration of his having rsached the fiftieth
year of his membership of the body. M.
Jamin, representing the Academy, expressed
wonder that it had only taken fifty years to
do as much as M. Dumas had accomplished.

4

111

I X CREASE ALLEN LAPHAM.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

APKXL, 1883.

NATUBE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF

POLITICS.

By Peofkssob SHELDON AMOS, LL. D.

THE progress of the strictly physical sciences in modern times has
had a twofold influence on the advancement of those branches of
knowledge which deal less with physical than with moral, social, and
political facts. On the one hand, the exact methods and indisputa-
ble conclusions of the sciences concerned with matter have inaugurated
modes of study and inquiry which are believed to be of universal ap-
plication. On the other hand, the standard of rigorous logic in all
studies is so far exalted that those subjects of thought or investigation
which do not conform to identically the same standard as that main-
tained for the study of matter are thought to be not worth pursuing
with any regard to the claims of a severe logical process. This sort
of antipathy between the physical and the ethical regions of search
and argument has been intensified by the co-existence of two opposed
orders of minds, the ardently speculative and the persistently practi-
cal. The former are discontented with the notion of a so-called Sci-
ence of Politics, because of the complexity of the subject-matter, and
the intrusion, at all points, of such seemingly incalculable factors as
the will and passions of mankind. Practical statesmen, again, im-
mersed in actual business, and oppressed by the ever-recurring pres-
ence of new emergencies, almost resent the notion of applying the
comprehensive principles of science, and still more the conjectural use
of foresight, in respect of subjects which, for them, are in ceaseless
flux, and can, at best, only be safely and wisely handled by momenta-
rily adjusted contrivances.

Between these two extreme classes lies all the large portion of so-
ciety composed of persons with minds less distinctly determined and
vol. xxii. — 46

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

trained in one direction or the other, and therefore all the more open
to be impressed by influences derived from sound thinkers and ener-
getic workers, but experiencing these influences only in a loose and
diluted form. The aggregate result is that the subject of Politics
floats in the public mind either as a mere field for ingenious chicane
or as a boundless waste for the evolutions of scholastic phantasy. If
Politics are to be vindicated from the aspersions cast upon them from
the opposite quarters here indicated, and are ever to be erected into a
science, with its own appropriate methods and limitations, the founda-
tion of these skeptical suspicions must be investigated and their real
value strictly assessed. The investigation will proceed as follows :

1. One obvious class of objections to the possibility of applying
rigorous scientific methods to Politics is founded on the number and
nature of the component and preparatory studies which are presup-
posed in all strict inquiries into the theory of government. Assuming
that the physical sciences — beginning (say) with astronomy and end-
ing with physiology or jDsychology — have reached a strictly scientific
stage, there yet remain, as properly leading the way to the study of
Politics, all those branches of knowledge which depend on the compos-
ite nature of man both as isolated and as in society. Such are Ethics
in the Aristotelian sense, comprehending as topics decorum and pro-
priety as well as duty ; political economy, which deals with the con-
ditions under which national wealth is produced, accumulated, and
distributed ; law and legislation (sometimes comprised under the gen-
eral head of jurisprudence), which deal with the essential nature, logi-
cal distribution, and historical growth of the general rules of conduct
which all governments maintain and enforce ; and, lastly, the some-
what novel science of Sociology, which deals with the inherent prob-
lems to which the aggregation of mankind into groups gives rise, so
far as these problems can be abstracted and treated independently of
government.

This list of studies, whjch might be multiplied and varied to any
extent according to individual proclivities, incloses large areas of
knowledge over the subjects of which the human will and human pas-
sions must have, at least in the course of ages, and in passing from
country to country, an amount of influence which seems to set scien-
tific precision at defiance. Nevertheless, and in spite of all the con-
troversies waged among those who prosecute these studies, there is no
doubt that in all these pursuits the most searching and exact methods,
so far as they are applicable, are beginning to be used, and the cer-
tainty and universality of the sequence of cause and effect — that is, of
laws of Nature — to be recognized as a premise.

The extension of the like severity of process to political studies is
mainly delayed by the constantly disappointing incompleteness of the
constituent and preparatory studies just enumerated. A Science of
Politics, indeed, has its own special sources of embarrassment, owing,

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 723

among other things, to the necessity of co-ordinating in one view all
the conclusions deducible from those other, and as it were introduc-
tory, researches. Of course, this process of combination abounds with
its own manifold opportunities of error ; but this fact need no more
produce despair than the composite quality of physiology leads the
student to be skeptical of the scientific character of inquiries into the
constitution of the animal world.

There is a vast difference between calling a branch of knowledge a
science, because it can only be profitably studied by the use of the
same logical methods as are indispensable in the mastery of the best-
established physical sciences, and being, as yet, scientifically cultivated,
or advanced in outward form to the full proportions of a maturely de-
veloped science. It may be, indeed, that, from a number of causes to
be shortly adverted to, Politics will always present an appearance
neither homogeneous nor, in one sense, exact. But these defects
neither impair the genuine truth of the universal laws to which the
topic is submitted, nor ought to convey any imputation on the only
methods serviceable in treating it.

Admitting, as a provisional and practical postulate, the freedom of
the human will, it might indeed seem to be impossible, on the face of
it, to bring within the domain of stringent scientific methods any class
of materials largely conversant with the direct actions and emotions of
mankind. But there are certain corrections which reduce the signifi-
cance of any skeptical conclusions which might be drawn.

In the first place, the more extensively and minutely historical
studies are carried on and the investigations of travelers pursued and
recorded, the more uniform does human nature appear, and the more
calculable are the actions, sentiments, and emotions of large classes
of mankind, when the antecedents and surrounding conditions are
ascertained. So far as political inquiries are concerned, it is more
with classes, groups, and assemblages of men, and with considerable
stretches of time, than with any individual men at a given moment
that the investigator is occupied. Thus the historical method, in pro-
portion as it is extensively pursued, contains in itself its own cor-
rectives.

But, in the second place, if the researches of historians and the re-
ports of travelers contain an endless and boundless mass of facts which
seem rather to increase the list of human eccentricities than to reduce
it by discovering a dominant order and an integral unit of progress
and purpose, yet here again the problem of finding a scientific form
for the theory of government is on the whole simplified rather than
otherwise. As explorations of all sorts are multiplied and extend,
they take the place of the logical instrument of experiment ; and the
result of them is, that a limited number of propositions are evolved
which admit of being announced with a fair assurance of their univer-
sality. If the area of observation be limited, the truths reached will,

7 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indeed, be proportionately restricted in number, but within this area
they will be none the less valid.

Thus, in the science of political economy, it is not universally true
that, in all conditions of society, population tends to increase out of
proportion to the means of subsistence ; for the effective desire of in-
dividual self-enrichment constitutes in certain conditions a reparative
and compensating force. So in law, it is not everywhere true that a
human being is, in a legal sense, a person and not a thing ; or that
laws proceed from a consciously acting political authority ; or that it
is recognized as an axiom that taxation and representation go together.
The several propositions here chosen, by way of illustration, from two
of the component sciences which, with others, go to constitute the
complete range of political studies, and help to convert those studies
into a separate science, are only partially and relatively true at certain
places and periods. But, within these limits of time and place, their
truth, and the truth of all like propositions, is invariable and incon-
testable.

Thus, if the composite nature of Politics impairs the universality
of the majority of the propositions with which it is concerned, this
only establishes the relativity of these studies, and in no wise detracts
from their usefulness or supersedes the employment of those rigorous
logical methods which in other respects continue to be applicable.

2. Another reason which accounts for the unscientific aspect under
which political studies usually present themselves is that it very rarely
happens, or has happened, that conscious attention to the true charac-
ter of governmental problems, to their difficulties, and to the modes of
their solution, is aroused in any nation till long after a practical solu-
tion of some kind has been instinctively resorted to, and a consider-
able advance in the art of administration achieved.

An exception might be supposed to exist in the case of colonies
and dependencies, at the first foundation of which all the materials
seem to be within the conscious control of the parent or governing
State. But it is just on this very account that theoretical truths have
here their most hopeful platform, and are habitually applied in prac-
tice to an extent which, because of unnoticed but vitiating errors of
calculation, is often fraught with serious hazard. The Cornwallis set-
tlement in Bengal, the early land policy of the Australian colonies,
and the attempted central taxation of the American colonies by the
British Parliament, are all instances of the over-hasty application, to
materials believed to be malleable, of firmly fixed political principles.
The principles themselves, indeed, in all these cases, needed re-exami-
nation and restatement.

The obstacles to at once applying even the best-established prin-
ciples of government, in all conceivable emergencies, so soon as con-
scious attention happens to be awakened to the national needs, are
sufficiently obvious. It is not only that the principles themselves

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 725

usually demand modification in view of the circumstances of the
people and of the day, but that the greatest allowance must always be
made in all political reforms for the influence of fixed sentiments and
habits. It also may happen that bad institutions — such as a bad poor-
law system, or, in the criminal law, a falsely-conceived relationship
between crimes and punishments — may have generated a vast and
complex web of affiliated ideas, customs, institutions, and laws, which
can severally be neither defended in principle nor yet rudely disdained
and cast aside.

For not only do custom and habit enable a peojile, or classes of a
people, to work in long-established grooves with the smallest amount
of friction and obstruction, but the mere fact of the long existence
of a familiar usage so far fashions in its own image the mind and even
the conscience of a people that a critical reformer has a hard and un-
popular task to perform in assaulting even the most indefensible
abuses. The large mass of the people, if disused to political change
of any but the most cautious, slow, and tentative kind, have their sen-
timents of loyalty and reverence outraged by the sudden introduction
of what is new and unfamiliar. Their mind has been trained and
pruned in such a way as to be unable to conceive, as a mere intel-
lectual notion, a better ordered world than that in which they live.
Where too great a disparity, both in sentiments and in intellect, exists
between the reformer and the people, or even between different classes
of the people *in the same community, it may show that the times are
not yet ripe for changes recommended by deference to the claims of
logic and of justice.

Instances in point are supplied by the difficulties experienced by
the British Indian Government in dealing with such patently immoral
institutions as polygamy ; by the attachment of the Scotch to a law
of marriage which notoriously facilitates the most cruel of frauds ;
and by the obstacles in all countries to any comprehensive reconstruc-
tion of the systems of land-tenure and inheritance, and of civil, and
still more of criminal, procedure. These last-mentioned institutions
have seldom been radically altered in any country by any process short
of revolution, however persuasive the voice of right, of reason, and of
utility, in favor of change. So vast is the number of individual per-
sons interested in these classes of matters, so well habituated are they,
and consequently so deeply attached, to the recognized forms, usages,
or even gestures, customarily in use — many of which are of a public
nature and are daily witnessed by all men — that any vital reconstruc-
tion seems little short of sacrilege, and the most conclusive reasons in
favor of it are scarcely comprehensible.

3. It is needless to point out that the conception of Politics as a
Science is much affected by the imperfections of Politics as a practical
Art. It is not only by reason of the existence of ineradicable institu-
tions and ideas that the scientific development of political studies is

726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hampered and delayed. There is another reason of a still more com-
manding importance which operates in the same direction with a still
more signal force. It is that, at any given moment, when the legis-
lator, or administrator, would otherwise most desire to govern with
due regard to well-established principles dictated by abstract political
science, he is imperatively urged on to the front, and impelled into
action, by the pressing necessity of instantly choosing between a
limited number of possible alternative courses. Most of all is this
the case in what are sometimes called constitutionally-governed coun-
tries— that is, countries in which representative institutions have
reached a tolerable degree of advancement, and political knowledge
and interest are widely diffused. In these circumstances a sponta-
neous organization of political leaders and their respective followers
into parties for the purpose of uniform and combined action is sure to
have taken place.

The result is, that an artificial effort will be made, at each critical
occurrence which seems to call for the intervention of the Govern-
ment, to narrow the possible courses of action to a very few immedi-
ately intelligible expedients, recommended rather by their rough con-
formity to some pre-existing schemes or ideals in favor with the
different contending parties than by their intrinsic harmony with
scientific requirements. No doubt the party leader who is himself
imbued with a scientific spirit, and is personally disposed to do as
little violence as possible to his cultured instincts, will do his utmost
to bring all his measures into the shape which his logical and historical
training, applied to all the circumstances of the special case, leads him
to desire. But action at once and without further delay is unavoid-
able. A decision can only be deferred at the cost either of letting go
the opportunity for providing a remedy of some sort for a possibly
crying abuse ; or of openly confessing impotency ; or of surrendering
to others a leadership which, with all its demerits, is probably believed
to be, on the whole, fraught with good rather than with evil. Thus
the peremptoriness of political opportunities and the necessity of in-
stant action withstand, in a country with free representative institu-
tions, every effort to impart to political action through a long period a
comprehensive, consistent, and scientific character.

It is no wonder if the same class of facts reacts on the intellectual
conception of the position of Politics as a subject of study and of
knowledge.

The topic is naturally relegated to the region of caprice and acci-
dent, or to that of tentative experiment and spasmodic contrivance.
This intellectual consequence is intensified by the fact that all Govern-
ments— and not least those known at the present day as the freest and,
on the whole, the soundest — are habitually made the arena of purely
ambitious contention, of selfish aspiration, and even of corrupt con-
spiracies against the public well-being. The wider the territorial area

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 727

of any particular Government, and the more complicated and extensive
its essential mechanism, the more opportunity there is for the exhibi-
tion of personal or, at the most, of local self-seeking. So far as this
prevails, Politics becomes degraded into a mere vulgar struggle for
money, office, or power. All actual reference to scientific considera-
tions is excluded. The tone of public thought and sentiment becomes
proportionately infected, and all the claims which might otherwise be
asserted on behalf of Politics to take its place, by the side of other
sciences dealing with such moral elements as the human Will meet
with a skeptical repudiation.

Where free representative institutions are not found, and absolu-
tism of one type or another prevails, the way is more open for a
deliberate choice of the policy to be pursued in any sudden emer-
gency. Such a case has presented itself, again and again, on the
occurrence of famines in British India. Could such a casualty occur
without being long foreseen in a country enjoying a popular constitu-
tion, the question of remedies would be instantly debated in every
kind of public assembly, and by all the organs of public opinion, with
a ferment of party zeal which would daily gain in heat and vehemence,
and would impel statesmen to select with over-much precipitation be-
tween the limited number of remedial measures which enjoyed, for
one cause or another, the popular favor.

The legislation demanded in the case of a failure of the potato-
crop in Ireland has more than once illustrated this position. One
party advocates the institution of public works, of a purely wasteful
or superfluous kind, on an enormous scale ; another is in favor of in-
discriminate out-door relief ; a third recommends, with the late Lord
George Bentinck, the construction at the public cost of railways, with
the purpose at once of employing labor on a large scale and of distrib-
uting food. However much a judicious statesman may be opposed to
all these views, yet for fear of being reduced to nullity, and of having
to give place to opponents, he can only connect his own name with,
and invite the adhesion of his followers to, what seems on the whole
the least objectionable of the popular alternatives. The utmost he
can do is to combine different courses in such a way as that some
special evil of one may neutralize some greater evil of another, and to
introduce modifications which may escape general attention, but which
none the less go some way, at least, to qualify the mischievous opera-
tion of the scheme, a professed adoption of which can not be evaded.

It will depend, of course, very largely on the constitutional cir-
cumstances of the country how far, even in the case of a pressing
emergency, the art of Politics may be made to comply with the re-
quirements of scientifically ascertained laws. Where a large and
promiscuous population has to be satisfied or must be appealed to by
statesmen for political support, the measures must be instantly intelli-

728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gible and not too far removed in their conception from the average
ken of mankind as represented then and there. The ulterior objects
proposed must not belong to a too distant future : the pursuit of them
must not involve what seem to most people excessive or disproportion-
ate sacrifices : they must easily and obviously connect themselves with
the common wants and feelings of the many at the moment, rather
than with the (seemingly) problematical aspirations of a few in the
indefinite future.

The case is different where popular government has not yet estab-
lished itself, and where, in consequence, none of the above obstacles,
even at a critical juncture calling for the immediate intervention of
the legislator or administrator, are presented. But the exemption of
the statesman or ruler from the checks of popular control of a consti-
tutional kind by no means insures a deference to purely scientific
demands. Timidity, rashness, prejudice, personal rivalries, and the
still less worthy influences of calculating self-interest or of a narrow
ambition, dwarf and vitiate a policy not less surely than do the im-
pediments due to popular ignorance and incompetence. The states-
man, in the one case as in the other, is bound to act — and this too
without delay ; and, though a scientific resolution can not be ex-
cluded, yet, from one cause or another, the temptations to deviate
to this or that side are numerous and urgent. There have indeed
been statesmen who have so far impressed their own personality on
their policy, and communicated their views and aspirations to the
bulk of the governing population that, at special exigencies, the
public confidence previously won has enabled them to dictate a course
scarcely comprehended by the people at large. Such a position was
occupied on certain occasions by Count Cavour in Italy, Presidents
Lincoln and Grant in the United States, even to some extent by
Prince Bismarck in Germany, to a still greater extent by M. Thiers in
France, conspicuously by the Duke of Marlborough for a time in Eng-
land, and in modern times by Sir R. Peel, Lord Palmerston, and Mr.
Gladstone.

So also in Governments not controlled by representative institu-
tions— such as those of almost all the States of Europe except England,
up to very recent days — there have always been found exceptional
rulers who, in spite of all temptations to indulge selfish prepossessions
in favor of ease or aggrandizement, have availed themselves of the
peculiar felicity of their situation to pursue a consistent and far-
sighted policy, undisturbed by all casual occurrences or misadvent-
ures. To this class have belonged many well-known administrators
of British India and of the Crown Colonies of Gi'eat Britain, as well
as certain absolute sovereigns in ancient and modern times.

It appears, then, that not only does the imminent necessity for
immediate action present serious obstacles to the pursuit of a policy
founded on the teachings of critical observation and a wide-reaching

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 729

experience — that is, on science — but the mere fact that statesmen are
constantly impelled to act at once in directions which very imperfectly
correspond to their own conceptions of what is really best throws a
shadow of doubt and uncertainty over the scientific character of the
studies concerned. It is felt, not unreasonably, that if those who are
most concerned to be acquainted with the best methods of political
research forbear to turn these methods to account at the moment of
the utmost need, this is at least as likely to result from the inherently
imperfect and illogical nature of the branch of knowledge in question
as from any other cause. To this comprehensive skepticism some of
the classes of facts above adverted to may be held to supply an an-
swer. The unscientific character of a policy adopted at any crisis has
often been an exact measure of the amount of external pressure ap-
plied through the competition of factions, or through the impetuosity
of a populace only jaded into an unwonted attention to political affairs
by exceptional events. Where this pressure is not at hand, rulers still
may, indeed, through unworthy influences and motives, prefer the
worse to the better way ; but enough instances of the persistent
maintenance of a deliberately adopted policy in the face of the most
seductive allurements to fluctuation have been exhibited to show that
it can not be fairly alleged that Politics must necessarily be unscien-
tific because few in the real business of life have time, or liberty, or
tenacity of purpose, sufficient to withstand the impetuous torrent of
popular zeal generated by sudden crises or catastrophes.

Probably the most real and enduring objection to the claims of
Politics to assume the rank of a true science is the confessedly imma-
ture and imperfectly developed character of the component or pre-
paratory studies, apart from which, in their combination with each
other, the study of Politics can not be pursued. It has already been
noticed that the complex and composite nature of political studies is
of itself a presumption against the facility, if not against the possibility,
of ever imparting to those studies the rigorous certainty essential to
Science. But this presumption is greatly increased by the fact that in
such broad but indispensable preparatory studies — confessedly of a
scientific aspect — as Ethics, Economics, and Jurisprudence, there are
to be found only the very smallest' number of uncontroverted propo-
sitions. And, even as to the logical methods applicable in each branch
of knowledge, no generally assented-to decisions have yet been ac-
cepted.

There is thus afforded to the skeptically-minded a wide opening
for treating as unscientific a study which, like that of Politics, must
be built up on conclusions yet to be established in those other regions
of knowledge, but none of which are as yet established with a certainty
which is beyond debate. Nevertheless, if it be admitted that those
component studies are capable of being placed on a strictly scientific
foundation, and only wait for longer time and attention to assume

730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scientific exactness, at least as much may be claimed for Politics, and
the composite study may advance in logical perfection at an equal rate
with the elementary studies.

The general result of these considerations is that there are a variety
of solid reasons which account not only for the reputation acquired by
Politics of being an inherently unscientific study, but also for the
study itself having advanced only a very short way toward scientific
completeness. But most or all of these reasons have been seen to be
of a kind which hold out a good promise for the future, and thereby
afford an ample encouragement to the use of a strictly logical method
in political investigations, and to the attempt to create a scientific
structure of ever-increasing completeness in this region, as well as in
others more familiai-ly associated with the name of Science.

A science need not be built on universal, nor even upon general,
propositions ; and partial, particular, or even probable premises may
justify conclusions, drawn with logical correctness, which may be a
firm basis for action. Where truths are by their nature restricted in
time and place, or where evidence is yet lacking to demonstrate their
actual generality, the assemblage of such truths will carry with it a
fragmentary and hypothetical character which may to some seem in-
compatible with the rigid demands of Science. But where the inves-
tigator himself proceeds in strict accordance with the severest logical
requirements, conducting his ratiocination with the utmost precision,
and distinguishing at all points the possible or probable from the cer-
tain, the universal or general from the particular, and proof from
plausibility or mere conjecture, it matters little what name is given to
the branch of inquiry concerned. It lacks no one of the essential ele-
ments and recommendations of the best and earliest-established of the
physical sciences. Its terms are submitted to the same process of
definition, its subject-matter to a like arrangement into groups and
classes, genera and species, and the resulting propositions are reached
by a course of reasoning as logically irrefutable.

There ai'e, indeed, certain plain indications that the study of Poli-
tics is already, even by practical statesmen, being placed on a platform
of far higher scientific exactness than ever before.

One of these indications is the large and discriminating use made
of statistics. The collection and due use of statistics belong to very
modern times ; and owing to popular prejudices and social obstacles —
such, for instance, as still exist in England with regard to the collec-
tion of agricultural and religious statistics — they have not yet received
anything like the extension of which they are capable. Nevertheless,
it has become the fashion for all the more advanced Governments to
rival each other in the breadth, fullness, arrangement, and clearness of
the numerical information they obtain on all the groups of national
facts which are susceptible of being tabulated in a systematic shape.

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 731

These tables of statistics are periodically furnished by the Govern-
ment, not only for purposes of contemplated legislation, but independ-
ently of all thought of immediate use. The fallacious use to which
purely numerical facts can be put, with only too seductive a show of
plausibility, is beginning to be fully acknowledged and guarded against.
But the assurance that the registered number of births, deaths, and
marriages, within a given period and area, as well as the periodical
records of crime and disease, and, even more obviously, the tabulated
increase or decrease of commerce, shipping, and manufactures of dif-
ferent sorts, may serve to point to the presence of general laws — that
is, of permanent sequences of cause and effect — is a sufficient justifica-
tion of the labor and expense involved in obtaining the severally-
relevant statistics. The comparison between the numerical results
obtained at one time and place and another, and between those pre-
sented in different countries, is becoming a political method increasing
in prevalence and repute. In many quarters, indeed, the value of
purely numerical estimates has been much exaggerated, and its pecul-
iar liability to error, when made a basis of political reasoning, has
been too much ignored. But when its limits of application are duly
recognized, and care is taken to distinguish legal and political causes
from those which are purely ethical or sociological, the study and use
of statistics must be regarded as a most valuable ally, and an unmis-
takable proof of the scientific character of political studies.

Akin to the token which the enlarged use of statistics affords of
the growing recognition of Politics as a true science, is the ever-in-
creasing disposition, at the present day, to await, at any political crisis,
whether legislative or administrative, the result of a patient examina-
tion of evidence as to the state of the facts and the previous history of
the question.

It is now the practice in the more advanced countries to take, in
the path of serious political change, no step which seems to be other
than the next step onward in a course which has become habitual,
without first nominating, by one process or another, competent persons
to conduct a critical examination and to deliberate and report upon
the matter. The most searching powers are often intrusted to this
body of persons to enable them to inform themselves not only as to all
the interests, in their several proportions, to be affected by the new
policy, but as to the history of the general policy pursued in the past,
and occasionally even as to the practice in other countries.

It often, indeed, happens that after a laborious investigation, last-
ing for months or even for years, the popular interest in the once-
advocated policy is found to be exhausted, or diverted into new
directions, and the thought of new legislation is abandoned, and a
voluminous, costly, and invaluable report cast on one side. Such are
among the inevitable accidents which retard the progress of Govern-
ment.

732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But what is of importance to notice in this place is that the grow-
ing disposition to consult past and surrounding facts before inaugu-
rating change belongs to the strictly scientific habit of mind ; and if
it is true that much laborious investigation seems for the time to be
thrown away, yet it seldom happens that complicated and far-reaching
changes are encountered without the assistance of a previous impartial
and deliberate inquiry of the kind here adverted to. The scientific
method, in Politics as elsewhere, is slowly and surely getting the bet-
ter of the empiric.

-♦♦♦-

THE ECONOMIC FUNCTION OF YICE.

By JOHN McELEOY.

JT^OR some inscrutable reason, which she has as yet given no hint
of revealing, Nature is wondrously wasteful in the matter of
generation. She creates a thousand where she intends to make use of
one. Impelled by maternal instinct, the female cod casts millions of
eggs upon the waters, expecting them to return after many days as
troops of interesting offspring. Instead, half the embryotic gadi are
almost immediately devoured by spawn-eaters, hundreds of thousands
perish in incubation, hundreds of thousands more succumb to the per-
ils attending ichthyic infancy, leaving but a few score to attain to adult
usefulness, and pass an honored old age, with the fragrance of a well-
spent life, in a country grocery.

The oak showers down ten thousand acorns, each capable of pro-
ducing a tree. Three fourths of them are straightway diverted from
their arboreal intent, through conversion into food by the provident
squirrel and the improvident hog. Great numbers rot uselessly upon
the ground, and the few hundreds that finally succeed in germinating
grow up in a dense thicket, where at last the strongest smothers out
all the rest, like an oaken Othello in a harem of quercine Desdemonas.

This is the law of all life, animal as well as vegetable. From the
humble hyssop on the wall to the towering cedar of Lebanon — from
the meek and lowly amceba, which has no more character or individu-
ality than any other pin-point of jelly — to the lordly tyrant, man, the
rule is inevitable and invariable. Life is sown broadcast, only to be
followed almost immediately by a destruction nearly as sweeping. Na-
ture creates by the million, apparently that she may destroy by the
myriad. She gives life one instant, only that she may snatch it away
the next. The main difference is that, the higher we ascend, the less
lavish the creation, and the less sweeping the destruction. Thus, while
probably but one fish in a thousand reaches maturity, of every 1,000
children born 604 attain adult age. That is, Nature flings aside 999

THE ECONOMIC FUNCTION OF VICE. 733

out of every 1.000 fishes as useless for her purposes, and two out of
every five human beings.

Many see in this relentless weeding out and destruction of her
inferior products a remarkable illustration of the wisdom of Nature's
methods. What would they think of a workman so bungling that
two fifths of the products of his handicraft were only fit for destruc-
tion ?

The " struggle for existence " is a murderous scramble to get rid of
this vast surplusage. The " survival of the fittest " is the success of
the minority in demonstrating that the majority are superfluous. It is
the Kilkenny-cat episode multiplied by infinity. It will be remem-
bered that the whole trouble arose from their common belief that two
cats were a surplus of one for the Kilkenny environment.

Darwin's theory recognizes in this super-fecundity of Nature her
most potent agency for improvement. He says, in effect, that the im-
possibility of providing subsistence for more than a fraction of the
multitudinous creation causes a mortal struggle, in which the weaker
and inferior are exterminated, and only the stronger and superior sur-
vive. These in turn have offspring like the leaves of the forest, which
in like turn are winnowed out by alien enemies, and ruthless reciprocal
extermination, the process going on continually with the sanguinary
regularity of the King of Dahomey's administration of the internal
economy of his realm. The benignity of this method of arranging the
order of Nature is not so apparent as a member of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might desire.

But our opinion of this law is not cared for. The main importance
attaches to the recognition of the fact that it is a law. Its application
to society is obvious : Since the propagation of human beings goes on
with entire recklessness as to the quality of the product and the means
of subsistence, some strong corrective is absolutely necessary to estab-
lish limits to population, and to secure the continued development of
the race. If every begotten child lived to the average age of forty,
in a very few years there would not be standing-room on the earth for
its people! Even with such limited propagators as the elephant, each
female of which produces but six offspring in her bearing period of
ninety years, we are told that, if the species had no parasitic or other
enemies, it would only be 740 years until elephants overran the
earth. Where, then, should we assign limits to the productiveness of
the 700,000,000 human females on the globe, each of whom is capable
of producing twenty children in her thirty years of bearing ? If, too,
every child had the same chance of life, without reference to its men-
tal and physical fitness to live, humanity would soon become a stag-
nant slough of vicious vitality. As there are only food and room for
the best, and as the development of the race demands it, only the best
survive, and continue the work of propagation. The rest are destroyed.
By " the best " is understood those having that harmony of mental and

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

physical development which brings them most nearly into accord with
natural laws.

Below the human strata, superabundant generation is neutralized
by the simple device of having every organism prey upon some other
one. In her ten years of fruitful life the female cod lays 50,000,000
eggs. If nothing thwarted the amiable efforts of herself and offspring
to multiply and replenish, they would shortly pack the ocean as full as
a box of sardines. But, while giving one animal the desire and ca-
pacity to produce 50,000,000 lives, Nature has given other animals
the desire and capacity to annihilate those 50,000,000 lives. So, all
through the animal kingdom it is nearly a neck-and-neck race between
Production and Extermination.

Man alone is practically exempt from what is apparently an insepa-
rable condition of all other forms of animal life. While he preys on
a myriad of created things, there is no created thing that preys on
him, and assists in keeping his excessive reproductiveness within the
limits of subsistence. Most singular of all, not even a parasite wages
destructive warfare against him.

This absence of destructive enemies must be compensated for in
some way, and it is accomplished by making vicious inclinations the
agents to weed out the redundant growths, and to select for extermina-
tion those which are inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preserva-
tion or reproduction.

If five human beings are procreated where there is present room
and provision for but three, how are the surplus two to be picked out
and exterminated ? Of course, each one of us feels entirely competent
to pick out in his own community the persons who could be best
spared, but public opinion is at present hostile both to any practicable
plan of making the necessary thinning out, and also to lodging the
power of selection in the hands of even those of us best qualified for
the duty.

Fortunately, the surplus ones relieve us from embarrassment on this
score, by selecting and exterminating themselves. Their methods of
suicide cover a wide range of expedients, but all are very effectual.
Most beneficent of any of the facts that we have to consider is the one
that each of those chosen for extermination embraces his fate with
eagerness, under the delusion that he is about to enhance his own hap-
piness. Immoderate use of stimulants, and the various excesses and
vital errors which are grouped under the general head of " dissipation,"
a " life of pleasure," or the still more expressive phrase, " a short life
and a merry one," etc., are favorite plans of self-annihilation, and
leave little to be desired in the completeness with which they do their
work.

Competent English statisticians estimate that, after a man has
begun drinking beer in large quantities, it takes him 21'7 years to kill
himself, and a whiskey-drinker shortens the time to 16*1 years. In-

THE ECONOMIC FUNCTION OF VICE. 735

temperance, being among the milder vices, kills slowly. Sexual sins
slay more rapidly, and the higher grades of vice do their work with
a swiftness proportioned to their flagrancy. The Psalmist says,
" Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days," but
police records will show that David materially overstates the average.
" One quarter their days " would approach much nearer exactness.

Returning to the major premise, that the " survival of the fittest "
means the selection and preservation of those individuals who are most
nearly in harmony with the conditions of their environment, and that
the progress of the race or species involves the destruction of the
weaker and inferior, who are not in such harmony, the conclusion
follows that any aberration toward vice shows such a discordance in
the individual with the laws of his environment as marks him as
inferior, weak, and obstructive of the race's development.

Vice is not so much a cause as an effect — not so much a disease
as a symptom. Vice does not make a nature weak or defective : a
weak and defective nature expresses its weaknesses and defects in
vice, and that expression brings about, in one way or another, the sov-
ereign remedy of extermination. •

Temperance agitators fill our ears continually with wails as to how
the " demon Alcohol is yearly dragging down to dishonorable graves
hundreds of thousands of the brightest and fairest of our land." This
is supreme nonsense. With very few exceptions, every one who goes
to perdition by the Alcohol route would reach that destination by some
other highway, if the Alcohol line were not running.

Every man whose sloth or improvidence has brought himself and
his family to beggary, every thieving tramp upon the highways, every
rascal in the penitentiary, every murderer upon the gallows, hastens
to plead, "Whisky brought me to this ! " because he knows that such a
plea will bring him a gush of sloppy sympathy not obtainable by any
other means. But whisky makes no man lazy, shiftless, dishonest,
false, cowardly, or brutal. These must be original qualities with him.
If he has them, he will probably take to whisky — though not inevi-
tably— which then does the community the splendid service of hurry-
ing him along to destruction, and of abridging their infliction upon
the public. People who have done much in the way of reforming
drunkards have been astonished to find how little real manhood re-
mained after eliminating wdiisky from the equation. They have sup-
posed the manhood to be only obscured, and have been disheartened
to find how frequently it happens to be demonstrated that there was
never enough of it to pay for the trouble of "saving the victim of
intemperance."

If, as the temperance agitators insist, " intemperance is yearly
dragging a hundred thousand of the men and women of our country
down to the grave," then a love of scientific truth compels the state-
ment that intemperance, while doing some harm, as is usually the case

736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with natural agents, is also doing an immense amount of good. By-
far the greater portion of those who thus succumb to alcoholization,
and to the deadly practices that usually accompany it, are thieves,
thugs, prostitutes, gamblers, sharpers, ruffians, and other members of
the criminal and quasi-cr'vcamdl classes, upon whom whisky accommo-
datingly performs the office of judge and executioner, cutting their
careers off at an average of five years, where, without this interposi-
tion, they would be extended to possibly twenty or thirty. The cer-
tainty and celerity with which it ferrets out and destroys these classes
recommends it strongly over the ordinary processes of justice.

It was exceedingly unfortunate for the community that all the
leaders in the James gang were strictly temperate men. Had it not
been so, their career, instead of extending over twenty terrible years,
would have been cut short inside of five. Uncontrollable predilections
for whisky and the society of strange women brought about the de-
struction of nearly all of the band, who from time to time were slain
by each other's hands or those of justice. Temperance and chastity
in a rascal of any kind mean an immense amount of mischief to the
community. Fortunately, they are quite rare.

During the ages of terrible oppression of the European people,
which culminated in the French Revolution, the main amelioration of
the hardships endured was found in the vices of the oppressors. The
sword of the duelist, the picturesque horrors of delirium tremens, and
the loathsome mal de Naples, continually swept away hecatombs of
tyrant lordlings, and frequently obliterated whole families. In fact,
no aristocratic family ever withstood these adverse influences very
long. Extinction came as promptly and as certainly as the curculio
to the ripening plum.

The student of French and English history is continually aston-
ished at the brief time in which noble names remain in view. They
rise to dazzling eminence on one page, and on the next go down to
oblivion. One rarely finds a name of a century or two ago mentioned
in any of the European news of to-day. Mr. Freeman, the eminent
English historian, shows conclusively that, in spite of the perennial
vaunt of ancestors who " came over with the Conqueror," and of Ten-
nyson's musical mendacity about the " daughter of a hundred earls,"
the families who can trace back to even so recent a date as the reign
of the Stuarts are quite rare. Idleness, luxury, and more or less fla-
grant debauchery have done their appointed work in removing the
deteriorated forms of human life from the world, that their room
might be had for more acceptable growths.

Society has been most aptly likened to a vat of good wine, which
is all scum and froth at the top, dregs and sediment at the bottom,
and good, pure, clear liquor in the middle. Vice does admirable work
in skimming away the supernatant scum, and in drawing off the dregs
and settlings. Unceasing fermentation seems to be a condition neces-

THE ECONOMIC FUNCTION OF VICE. 737

sary to the health of society. The humhlest work incessantly to lift
themselves into the ranks of the middle classes. The middle classes
strive as earnestly to make themselves plutocrats, aristocrats, and lord-
lings. This passion for worldly advancement is one of society's most
powerful engines for good. When a man at last reaches the social
summit, he desists from further efforts at improvement, or, if this
period comes too late in life, his children do it after him. He be-
comes like a man who has struggled forward to the head of a proces-
sion, and then refuses to march another step. Some vice speedily
removes him, and clears the ground for another man to come to the
front, who is also removed summarily when he becomes obstructive.
Were it not for this, the upper stratum of society would speedily be-
come so crowded that ascent to it would be impossible, all healthful,
ambitious motive be taken away from the middle and lower classes,
stagnation follow, and society perish from congestion.

History is full of illustrations of the benefits of vice in assisting
to shape the destinies of nations and peoples. Take, for example, the
Bourbons, whose stupidity and tyranny have passed into a proverb.
In the last century their worse than worthless carcasses filled nearly
every throne in Southern Europe. They seemed to breed like wolves
in a famine-stricken land, and their fangs were at every people's throat.
Fortunately, they had vices. Wine and lechery did what human ene-
mies could not. The pack of wolves rotted away like a flock of dis-
eased sheep. The mortality was so great that for a long time French
kings were succeeded by their grandsons, and great-grandsons, their
sons all burning themselves out before the time came for ascending
the throne. The unutterably vile life of Louis XV was terminated
by the small-pox, communicated to him in the course of a most dis-
graceful amour. His grandson, who succeeded him, had no destructive
vices, and so the people were compelled at last to resort to the guillo-
tine to rid themselves of him. The vast problem before the French
in 1T90 would have been greatly simplified if Louis XIV had been a
short-lived debauche like his father and two brothers. The healthy
German blood of his Saxon mother corrected somewhat the virus in
the Bourbon veins, and he lived to become an intolerable cumberer
and obstructive.

The only Bourbon still remaining on a throne is the King of Spain,
with whom the race, as a royal family, will probably become extinct.
His teeth are on edge from the sour grapes of unchastity which his
fathers ate. Like his mother, the notorious Isabella II, his sisters and
cousins, and indeed every one of the Bourbons, the scrofula, into
which the ancestral syphilitic taint has been modified, has made of
him a mass of physical decay. In his mother it has shown itself in a
very disgusting cutaneous disease, which she has for years tried to
ameliorate or cure, in a truly Bourbonish way, by wearing the under-
clothing of a nun of high repute for piety. His sisters and kinsmen
vol. xxn. — 47

738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all have some one or more of the scrofula's varied physical degrada-
tions or sickening deformities, and occasionally one of them goes out
like an ill-made candle.

A few years ago the people of Holland were threatened with a
most serious calamity. Depraved heredity, unwise sexual selection,
or some other controlling cause, had resulted in the production, as the
Prince of Orange — the crown prince — of an individual of a weak, in-
ferior, and depraved nature. His was such a nature as, on a throne,
becomes a fountain of numberless oppressions and evils, and rarely
fails to goad the unhappy subjects into rebellion, attended with the
usual frightful losses of life and property and vast sorrows. Fortu-
nately, he had destructive vices. The appetites of these led him to
Paris. A few years of riot and debauchery sapped away the dan-
gerous life of " Lemons," as his worthless boon companions nicknamed
him, and he died as the fool dieth. The only harm he was able to
do was the indirect damage of a bad example, and the good people of
the Netherlands were rid of a possible Louis XV, at no greater cost
than that of some years of extravagant life in the French capital.
His father's youthful excesses and present penchant for pretty ballet-
girls have rendered it wholly improbable that there will be any other
heirs to the Dutch throne, and so the country will shortly glide into a
republic, without any of the wrench and sanguinary convulsions that
usually attend such political transitions. The superior economy and
other advantages of a Parisian brothel over civil war as a political
means are obvious to the naked eye.

The most commendable feature of this self-pruning of the objec-
tionable growths in society is that the victims destroy themselves
under the hallucination that they are drinking the richest wine of
earthly pleasure. When execution can be made a matter of keen
relish to the condemned, certainly nothing is wanting on the score of
humanity.

I anticipate the objection that slaying bad men by means of their
own vicious propensities brings much misery to those connected with
them. But then all innocent persons connected with bad men are
fated to suffer in exact proportion to the closeness of the connection,
whether the bad men are destroyed or not. Weak, selfish, perverted,
and criminal men always inflict misery upon their relatives and asso-
ciates. This is not usually intensified by their being also drunkards,
or debauches. It is also true that no one of Nature's methods of ex-
tinction is pleasant to those connected with the victim. A thief or a
thug providentially dying with the delirium tremens is certainly quite
as bearable a sight to those before whose eyes it may come as the
spectacle of a virtuous man, the sole support of his family, slowly
wasting away with consumption, in spite of all that loving services
and agonizing sympathy can do to retain for him a life that is of so
much value to all.

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 739

To the next objection, that the practice of vice is not inevitably
suicidal, since many rascals live to attain as green an old age as the
most righteous, it is sufficient to say that, plentiful as these exceptions
may occasionally seem, their proportion to the whole number is at
least as small as that of the exceptions to any other general law of
biology. The policeman on the next corner will bear decided testi-
mony that the number of scoundrels who survive their thirtieth year
is astonishingly small, and he can point out any number of very troub-
lesome members of the community who are ending their lives in peni-
tentiary or poor-house hospitals, at an age when well-behaved men are
just entering upon the serious business of life.

It is also demonstrable that the proportion of vicious men to the
whole population is much less to-day than at any previous period in
the history of the race. This shows conclusively the improvement of
society by the self-destructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad
men is steadily diminishing, because bad men die sooner, and propa-
gate fewer, than good ones.

-♦♦♦-

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY.*

By ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY.

THERE is much uncertainty as to how the backboned or vertebrate
animals began ; but the best clew we have to the mystery is found
in a little, half-transparent creature, about two inches long, which is
still to be found living upon the English shores and the Southern At-
lantic coast of the United States. This small, insignificant animal is
called the " Lancelet," because it is shaped something like the head of
a lance ; and it is in many ways so imperfect that naturalists believe
it to be a degraded form, like the acorn-barnacle — that is to say, that
it has probably lost some of the parts which its ancestors once pos-
sessed. But, in any case, it is the most simple backboned animal we
have, and shows us how the first feeble forms may have lived. Truly,
it is only by courtesy that we can call him a backboned animal, for all
he has is a cord of gristle, pointed at both ends, which stretches all
along the middle of his body above his long, narrow stomach ; while
above this, again, is another cord containing his nerve-telegraph.

There are large fishes, too, which have this cartilaginous back-
bone. The young shark has nothing but a rod of gristle or cartilage,
and, though he is one of the strongest of sea-animals, he retains this
gristly state of his skeleton throughout his life ; however much he may
strengthen it by hard matter, it never becomes true bone.

* Abridged from Miss Buckley's book, entitled " Winners in Life's Race ; or, The
Great Backboned Family," from which also the illustrations are borrowed.

74°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The first feeble ancestors of the shark and the sturgeon appear at
a time when the crustaceans were the most powerful animals in the
world, and the huge, lobster-like Pterygotus was the monarch of the

Fig. i.

seas. The plated-scaled fish which existed at the same time were
clumsy creatures, for their skeletons were probably feeble, and their
armor-like shields were heavy. So, as history went on, they gradually
gave way, becoming smaller and rarer, while the more active little
shark-like animals gradually grew strong and powerful, and from them
are descended the giant sharks of to-day.

The powerful gristly-boned fishes are much excelled in agility by
the herring, the salmon, and their other bony companions, which move
with much less effort in the water, and so have naturally made their
way into all parts of the rivers and seas. But where have they come
from? We know very little of their early history, but what little
we do know leads us to think that long ago they branched off from
the enameled-scaled fish, and struck out a path of their own, to make
the most of the watery world.

If we wanted to pick out the strangest and strongest proof of how
the shape of fish is altered to suit their wants, we need seek no further

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 741

than the flat-fish. The young sole, when it comes out of the egg, is not
flat like the young skate, but a very thin, spindle-shaped fish, something
like a minnow. He is then about the size of a grain of rice, very trans-

Fig. 2.

parent, and lives at the top of the sea. He has one eye on each side,
like other fish, only one eye is higher up than the other, and the single
fin on its back and the one under its body reach almost from head to
tail. In this way he swims for about a week, but he is so thin and
deep, and his fins are so small, that swimming edgewise is an effort,
and soon he falls down on one side, generally the left, to the bottom
of the sea. Many times he rises again, especially at first, till he has
got used to breathing at the muddy bottom, and meanwhile the eye
that lies underneath is gradually working its way round to the upper
side, his forehead wrinkles so as to draw the under eye up, wdiile his
whole head and mouth receive a twist which he never afterward loses.
His skeleton, it must be remembered, is still very soft, and the bones
of his face are easily bent ; and at last this eye is screwed round, and
as he lies at the bottom he can look upward with both eyes, and save
the under one from getting scratched by the sand, as it must have done
if it had remained below.

742

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

It is clear that if the backboned animals were ever to live upon
land, after they had begun their career in the water, there must have
been some among them which learned gradually to give up water-
breathing, and to make use of free air ; and we shall not have far to
seek for creatures which will help us to guess how they managed it.

Fig. 3.

The common tadpole is to all intents a fish. He swims with a fish's
tail ; he gulps in water at his mouth, passing it out at the slits in his
throat after it has poured over his fish's gills. Moreover, he has a fish's
heart, of two chambers only, which pumps the blood into these gills
to be freshened, while, like the lamprey, he has a gristly cord, enlarged
at the end to form a gristly skull, a round sucking mouth, and no limbs.
As he grows bigger and more active week by week, two little bumps
appear, one on each side of his now bulky body, just where it joins the
tail. These bumps grow larger every day, until, lo ! some morning
they have pierced through the skin, and two tiny hind legs are work-
ing between the body and the tail. In about another week the front
legs appear, and we have a small four-legged animal with a lamprey's
tail.

During this time a bag has been forming inside, at the back of the

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 743

throat, which afterward divides into two, forming a pair of lungs,
which he uses when out of the water, though still using his gills when
below. Little by little the blood-vessels going to the gills grow
smaller, and those going to the lungs grow larger ; while the fish's
two-chambered heart is dividing into three chambers — one to receive
the blood from the body, another to receive it from the lungs, and one
to drive this blood back again through the whole animal. Now that
he can leap and swim with his legs, his tail is no longer of use to hin^
and it is gradually sucked in, growing shorter and shorter, till it dis-
appears. Thus our backboned animal has succeeded in getting out of
the water on to the land.

IglppElStft

*f?'

>^iy

Pig. 4.

If we glance back to the far-off time when the ancient fishes were
wandering round the shores and in the streams of the coal-forests, we
find that the amphibia were not then the small, scattered groups they
are now, but huge and powerful creatures, which sported in the water
or wandered over the land with sprawling limbs, long tails, and bones
on which gills grew, while their heads were covered with hard, bony
plates, and their teeth were large, with folds of hard enamel on the
surface.

744

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

And now the transformation is complete, for, when we pass on to
the next division of backboned animals, the " reptiles," we hear noth-
ing more of gills, nor air taken from the water, nor fins, nor fishes'
tails. We shall all allow that the tortoises are the most singular of
any. Slow, ponderous creatures, with hard, bony heads, wide-open,
expressionless eyes, horny beaks, and thick, clumsy legs, the tortoises
seem, at first sight, to be only half alive, as they lumber along, carry-
ing their heavy shell, and eating, when they do eat, in a dull, listless
kind of way. This sluggishness would certainly be their ruin, in a
bustling, greedy world, if it were not for the strong box in which they
live. You would hardly guess that the shell of the tortoise is part of
his skeleton. But it is so. The arched dome which covers his back
is made of his backbone and ribs, and the shelly plates arranged over
it are his skin hardened into horny shields, which, in the hawk's-bill
turtle, form the tortoise-shell which is peeled off for our use ; while
the flat shell under his body is the hardened skin of his belly, and the
bones which belong to it.

J\NOW|.

It is not without some struggle that the cold-blooded reptiles have
held their own in the world, nor is it to be wondered at that only four

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 74.5

types — tortoises, lizards, crocodiles, and snakes — should have managed
to find room to live among the myriads of warm-blooded animals
which have filled the earth. These four groups have made a good
fight of it, and many of them even make use of warm-blooded animals
as food. The tortoises, it is true, feed upon plants, except those that
live in fresh water, and feed chiefly on fish, snakes, and frogs, while
most of the lizards are insect-feeders. But the crocodile, as he lurks
near the river's edge, and the snake, when he fastens his glittering
eye on a mouse or bird, are both on the lookout for animals higher in
the world than themselves.

AVe come now into quite a new life, for we are going to wander
among the conquerors of the air, who have learned to rise far beyond
our solid ground, and to soar, like the lark, into the clouds, or, like the
eagle, to sail over the topmost crags of the mountains, there to build
his solitary eyrie.

In those far by-gone times, when the huge land-lizards browsed
upon the trees, the birds living among them were much more like them
in many ways than they are now. Of water-birds there were some
about the size of small gulls, which flew with strong wings and had
fan-shaped tails, but had teeth in their horny jaws, set in sockets like
those of the crocodile, while their backbones had joints like those of
fishes rather than birds ; and with them were other and wingless birds
rather larger than our swans, but more like swimming, fish-eating
ostriches.

In these and many other points the early birds came very near to
the reptiles — not to the flying ones, but to those which walked on the
land. And now, perhaps you will ask, Did reptiles, then, turn into birds ?
No, since they were both living at the same time, and those reptiles
which flew did so like bats, and not in any way like the birds which
were their companions. To explain the facts, we must go much further
back than this. If any one were to ask us whether the Australian
colonists came from the white Americans or the Americans from the
Australians, we should answer, " Neither the one nor the other, and yet
they are related, for both have sprung from the English race." In the
same way, when we see how like the ancient birds and reptiles were to
each other, so that it is very difficult to say which were bird-like rep-
tiles and which were reptile-like birds, we can only conclude that they,
too, once branched off from some older race which had that bone be-
tween the jaws, that single neck-joint, and the other characters which
birds and reptiles have in common.

But where have the feathers come from — those wonderful, beau-
tiful appendages without which the bird could not fly? They are
growths of his skin, of the same nature as the scales of reptiles, or
those on the bird's own feet and legs ; and on some low birds, such as
the penguins, they are so stiff and scale-like that it is often difficult to
say where the scales end and the feathers begin. All feathers, even

746

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the most delicate, are made of horny matter, though it splits up into
so many shreds as it grows that they look like the finest hair, and Dr.
Gadow has reckoned that there must he fifty-four million branches and
threads upon one good-sized eagle's feather.

From their skeletons and feathers which we find, we know that the
strange land-birds which perched on the trees at the time that large
reptiles were so numerous had not a fan-shaped tail, made of feath-
ers growing on one broad bone, as our birds have now, but they had
a long tail of many joints like lizards, only that each joint carried
a pair of feathers, and like lizards, too, they had teeth in their jaws,
which no living bird has. They must have been poor fliers at best,
these earliest known birds, for their wings were small and the fingers
of their hand were separate more like lizards' toes, two of them at
least having claws upon them, while their long, hanging tail must have
been very awkward compared to the fan-shaped tail they now wear.

Our backboned animals have now traveled far along the journey
of life. The fish, in many and varied forms, have taken possession of
the seas, lakes, and rivers ; the amphibia fill the swamps and the de-
batable ground between earth and water ; the reptiles swarm in the

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY.

747

tropics, and even in colder countries glide rapidly along in the warm
sunshine, or hide in nooks and crannies, and sleep the winter away ;
and the birds — the merry, active, warm-hearted birds — live every-
where.

Yet still the great backboned division is not exhausted ; on the
contrary, the most powerful if not the most numerous group is still to

Fig. 1.

come — the mammalia, or milk-giving animals. Let us first notice two
important changes which give them an advantage over other back-
boned creatures. We have found the fish casting their eggs out into
the water, and, as a rule, taking no more thought of them ; so it was
again with the frogs, so with the reptiles, whose eggs, even when care-
fully buried by the mother, are often devoured by thousands before
the little ones have a chance of creeping out of the shell. And with
the birds, in spite of the parents' care, more eggs probably are eaten
by snakes, weasels, field-rats, and other creatures, than remain to be
hatched.

Now, the cat and the cow, as we all know, do not lay eggs as birds
do ; but the mother carries the young within her body till they are
born, perfectly formed, into the world. And when at last her little

748

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ones see the light, the mother has nourishment ready for them : part
of the food which she herself eats is turned into milk, and secreted by
special glands, so that the newly-born calf or kitten is suckled at its
mother's breast till it has strength to feed itself.

Among the earliest milk-givers must have been the ancestors of
the curious pouched creatures of Australia, the " marsupials," which
have a large pouch of skin, into which the mothers put their little ones
when they are less than two inches long, and so imperfect that their
legs are mere knobs, and they can do nothing more than hang on to
the nipple with their round, sucking mouths, as if they had grown
to it.

There the little ones hang, day and night, and their mother, from
time to time, pumps milk into their mouths, while they breathe by a
peculiar arrangement of the windpipe, which reaches up to the back

Fig. 8.

of their nose. Then, as they grow, the pouch stretches, and by-and-
by they begin to jump out and in, and feed on grass as well as their
mother's milk.

Other singularly old-fashioned animals may be found in a Brazilian
forest. The furry little opossum, the dreamy sloth, the strange ant-

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 749

bear, and the armadillo, whose back is covered with long shields like
the crocodile.

Having now taken leave of the curious pouch-bearers and the
strange primitive sloths and armadillos, we find ourselves left to deal
with an immense multitude of modern mammalia, which have spread in
endless variety over the earth, and which may be divided into five great
groups : the Insectivora, or insect-eaters ; the Rodents, or gnawers ;
the climbing and fruit-eating lemurs and monkeys ; the Herblvora,
or large vegetable-feeding animals ; and the Carnivora, or flesh-
eaters.

It is clear that the Rodents and Insectivores do not hold their place
in the world by strength or audacity. Both lowly groups, of simple
structure and with comparatively feeble brains, they have chiefly
escaped destruction from higher forms by means of their nocturnal
and burrowing habits or arboreal lives, and the marvelous rapidity with
which they breed, combined with their power of sleeping without food
during; the winter in all cold countries. But the insect-eaters have no
water-animal to match the beaver among rodents in sagacity or engi-
neering. With his chisel-like front teeth he gnaws a deep notch in
the trunk of a larch or pine or willow, and then, going round to the
other side, begins work there till the trunk is severed and falls heavily
on the side of the deep notch, and therefore away from himself. He
always makes the deep notch in the trunk on the side near the water,
so that the tree in falling comes as near as possible to the stream.
Then, after stripping off the bark and gnawing the trunk into pieces
about six feet long, he uses his fore-paws and his teeth to drag them
into position to build his dam. He does not always clear away all the
branches, but he and his companions place the logs with these lying
down the stream, so that they act as supports to resist the current and
prevent the dam being washed away. Thus they make a broad foun-
dation, sometimes as much as six feet wide, and upon this they pile
logs and stones and mud till they have made a barrier often ten feet
high and more than a hundred feet long. The lighter branches he
uses to make his oven-shaped lodge, laying them down in basket-work
shape, plastering them with mud, grass, and moss, and lining the cham-
bers with wood-fiber and dry grass.

There remain to be noticed two groups of much larger animals :
first, the Herblvora, or grass-feeders ; and, secondly, their great ene-
mies, the Carnivora, or flesh-feeders. We shall see that the vege-
table-feeders have filled every spot where they could possibly find a
footing, and if we could only trace out their pedigree Ave should be
surprised to find how wonderfully each one has become fitted for the
special work it has to do. But three things they all require and have.
The first of these is a long face and freely-moving under jaw, with
large grinding teeth to work up and chew the vegetable food ; the
second, a capacious stomach to hold and digest green meat enough to

75°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nourish such bulky bodies ; and, the third, good defensive weapons
to protect themselves against each other and against their enemies.

4Lfe£Sfeft*j&

Fig. 9.

In the three-toed group of the vegetable-eaters, the horse has the
most interesting history. It was in America that the tribe began, for
there we find that tiny pony not bigger than a fox, with four horn-
covered toes to his front feet (and traces of a fifth), and three toes on
his hind ones. Then, as ages went on, we meet with forms with only
three toes on all the feet, and a splint in the place of the fourth on
the front ones. In the next period they have traveled into Europe,
and we find larger animals with only three toes of about equal size.
One more step, and we find the middle toe large and long, and cov-
ered with a strong hoof, while the two small ones are lifted off the
ground. Lastly, in the next forms, the two side-toes became mere
splints ; and, soon after, well-built animals with true horse's hoofs
abounded, the one large hoof covering the strong and broad middle
toe. For what we call a horse's knee is really his wrist, and just be-
low it we can still find under the skin those two small splints running
down the bone of the hand, while the long middle finger, or toe, with
its three joints, forms what we call the foot. It is by these small

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 751

splints that the horse still reveals to us that he belongs to the three-
toed animals.

A far different race from the Herbivora is the large army of flesh-
feeders, which we find throughout all past ages harassing and destroy-
ing the vegetable-feeders on all sides. And yet it would not be fair
to speak of these larger flesh-feeding animals as if they had worked
nothing but evil to their more peaceful neighbors, for how would Life
educate her children if she put no difficulties in their way to be con-
quered, no sufferings to be endured ? It was in the long struggle for
life that the animals with the largest and strongest horns got the upper
hand, that the swiftest horses or antelopes survived and left young
ones ; while we must remember that it is more often the sickly, worn-
out, and diseased animals that fall a prey to the devourers, and their
life is ended far less painfully than if they dragged themselves into
some hole to die.

" On revient toujours d ses premiers amours" says the French song.
But who would have thought that, after rising step by step above the
fish, and tracing the history of the backboned animals through their
development in the air and over the land till we brought them to a
state of intelligence second only to man, we should have to follow
them back again to the water and find the highly-gifted milk-givers
taking on the form and appearance of fishes ? Nevertheless it is so,
for seals and whales are as truly flesh-eating milk-givers as bears and
wolves. "Do you really mean, then," exclaim nearly all people who
are not naturalists, " that a whale is not a huge fish ? " Certainly I
do ! A whale is no more a fish than crocodiles, penguins, or seals, are
fishes, although they too live chiefly in the water.

A whale is a warm-blooded, air-breathing, milk-giving animal. Its
fins are hands with finger-bones, having a large number of joints ; its
tail is a piece of cartilage, and not a fish's fin with bones and rays ; it
has teeth in its gums, even if it never cuts them ; and it gives suck to
its little one just as much as a cow does to her calf. Nay, the whale-
bone whales have even the traces of hind legs entirely buried under
the skin, and in the Greenland whale the hip-joint and knee-joint can
be distinguished with some of their muscles, though the bones are
quite hidden and useless.

There was once a time when the great army of milk-givers had its
difficulties and failures as well as all the other groups, only these came
upon them not from other animals, but from the influence of snow and
ice.

For we know that, from the time of tropical Europe, a change was
creeping, during long ages, over the whole northern hemisphere. The
climate grew colder and colder, the tropical plants and animals were
driven back or died away, glaciers grew larger, and snow deeper and
more lasting, till large sheets of ice covered Northern Europe, and in
America the whole of the country as far south as New York.

752

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

True, there were probably warmer intervals in this intense cold,
when the more southern animals came and went, for we find bones of
the hippopotamus, hyena, and others buried between the glacial beds

•7 0"

n^G^opic^i '

Fig. 10.

in the south of England. But there is no doubt that at this time num-
bers of land-animals must have perished, for in England alone, out of
fifty-three known species which lived in warmer times, only twelve
survived the great cold, while others were driven southward, never to
return.

Moreover, when the cold passed away, and the country began again
to be covered with oak and pine forests where animals might feed and
flourish, we find that a new enemy had made his appearance. Man —
active, thinking, tool-making man — had begun to take possession of
the caves, making weapons out of large flints bound into handles of
wood, and lighting fires by rubbing wood together, so as to protect
himself from wild beasts and inclement weather.

Many and fierce must have been his conflicts, for the wild beasts
were still strong and numerous, and man had not yet the skill and
weapons which he has since acquired. But, rough and savage though
he may have been, he had powers which made him superior to all

PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY.

753

around him. lie had a brain which could devise and invent, a memory
which enabled him to accumulate experience, and a strong power of
sympathy which made him a highly social being, combining with oth-
ers in the struggle for life.

^A/^^;^^^to^]jAD^^EjD^^^

Fig. 11.

At one time naturalists looked upon the animal kingdom as com-
plete from the beginning, and, when it became certain that different
kinds of animals had appeared from time to time upon the earth, the
naturalists of fifty years ago could have no grander conception than
that new creatures were separately made (they scarcely asked them-
selves how), and put into the world as they were wanted.

But a higher and better explanation was soon to be found, for there
was growing up among us the greatest naturalist and thinker of our
day, that patient searcher after truth, Charles Darwin, whose genius
and earnest labors opened our eyes gradually to a conception so deep,
so true, and so grand, that side by side with it the idea of making an
animal from time to time, as a sculptor makes a model of clay, seems
too weak and paltry ever to have been attributed to an Almighty
Power.

VOL. XXII. — 18

754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION.

By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

III.

SOME international superstitions have a symbolic significance. The
vampire-fable, for instance, typifies the insufficiency of human life,
the sleep-disturbing consciousness of its unattained purposes. Like the
visits of the White Lady, the rambles of the posthumous night-walker
have generally a definite object, the gratification of revenge or desire,
or of some special crotchet, like that of the Turkish horse-ghoul (men-
tioned by the traveler Kohl), who amused himself by galloping the
race-horses of his former master. Mental aberrations can become epi-
demic, and the vampire-delusion seems to be as contagious as the
witchcraft-insanity. In Transylvania the " climate of opinion " ap-
pears to affect even foreigners. In 1859 an Austrian notary of Klau-
senburg recorded the testimony of forty-eight deponents of various
nationalities, who attested the £>ost-mortem appearance of one Fedor
Radotzek, a brevet captain of the Grenz- Corps, or Military-Frontier
Guards. About two years after the funeral of the brevet captain, the
neighbors attended a birthday-party at the house of his widow, and
toward evening some of them were standing in the open porch, talking
to one of his sons, when they saw the old man himself come round the
corner and enter the garden-gate. A few minutes after the garden
was crowded with a mass-meeting of citizens, in a pardonable state of
excitement, for the twilight was still clear enough to remove all doubts
about the identity of the visitor. He had taken a seat on the garden-
bench, making himself at home, as if nothing had happened ; but, on
being taken to task for the eccentricity of his conduct, he had the good
sense to re-die on the spot, and met his fate like a well-behaved corpse,
when a couple of priests took him in charge and hustled him off the
premises.

Vampirism prevails all over Russia, Persia, Greece, Bohemia, and
Poland, but especially in the Danubian Principalities, where the wealthy
families of the last century often buried their dead in sheet-iron-lined
coffins of the heaviest oak-plank, while the poor would sometimes fet-
ter or even hamstring their deceased relatives, to prevent them from
abusing their feet for posthumous excursions. It is one of the few
dogmas which the Moslem share with their Christian neighbors. There
is a variety of maladies, chlorosis and hectic fever, for instance, which
the Turkish beldames unhesitatingly ascribe to the activity of a ghoul ;
and after the massacre of Chios the Capitan Pasha ordered the bodies
to be burned, " lest they should leave their graves." For a similar rea-
son, perhaps, the judges of the Holy Inquisition roasted their victims ;
they believed, with Aristotle, that " fire disembodies the principle of

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITIOX. 75 5

life, and restores the peace of the original elements." The Parsees
worship in fire the purifying principle of Nature. Their millennium,
like that of the Nihilists, will he preceded by a general explosion, a
thorough actual cautery of earthly sores, and uncremated corpses will
have to await the day of that final world-purgatory.

The vampire-superstition has been traced back to the earliest cent-
uries of the Christian era, when the Nature-worship of ancient Europe
had to yield to the dreary asceticism of the new creed, and the ancient
divinities and their retainers had to wander homeless — in the North as
followers of the Wild Huntsman, and in the South as night-hags and
ghouls, like the Lamia of that weird and wonderful ballad, Goethe's
" Bride of Corinth," which his rival, Heine, calls the " lyrical master-
piece of European poetry." A citizen of Corinth, a recent convert,
betroths his daughter first to a young Athenian, and next to the
"bridegroom of the Church," i. e., shuts her up in a nunnery, where
they kill her with prayers and penances. Bridegroom number one
arrives unexpectedly one evening ; explanations are postponed to the
next day, and in the mean time the guest is consigned to a room for-
merly occupied by his lost bride. During the night her mother hears
stealthy footsteps and a whispered conversation, and, impelled by an
irresistible curiosity, she opens the door of the guest-chamber. A
vampire, caught in flagrante, confronts her, and she recognizes her
own daughter, who, instead of collapsing at the sign of the cross,
turns upon her with fierce reproaches, admits the fatal consequences
of her visit, mentions other victims, but finally suggests the remedy —
a Grecian funeral-pile. Her body, she says, has to be removed from
the stifling cloister-vault, and cremated in due form, together with the
corpse of her lover :

" When the stake-fires blend,
When the sparks ascend,
Shall our spirits join the ancient gods."

In the mountains of Upper Austria the natives dread the boding
voice of the Klage, a spectral Cassandra who frequents the desolate
highlands of the Wiener Wald and the eastern Alps. He who meets
her meets his death ; her voice presages imminent misfortune, or
afflicts the hearer with chronic hypochondria, for the echo of her wail
will haunt the ear forever. A precisely analogous spook, the llorona
(from llorar, to weep or mourn), infests the Sierras of old Spain, while
La Pleureuse bemoans the sorrows of life on the French side of the
Pyrenees. This concomitance of highlands and pessimism seems
rather paradoxical ; but mountaineers are mostly autochthones (like
the Basques, Gaelic Scotch, Circassians, Ghebirs, and Druses), and
may have preserved the memory of a Juventus Mundi, which lingered
in their rocks, together with paganism and Ruskinian ideals.

The belief in the malign influence of the mal-occhio, or evil-eye, is

756 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not confined to the Latin races, but prevails in Persia and China, as
well as among the South-China Malays and their East Indian neigh-
bors. In Southern Italy the superstition is almost universal. Accord-
ing to the popular theory, the possessor of an evil-eye can stare his
victims into all sorts of afflictions, palsy, rickets, goitre, etc. Nay, his
power for evil has hardly any limits whatever, for by the same optical
process he can produce death and epidemics — cholera infantum, for
instance. And, moreover, such persons are generally conscious of their
dreadful talent, and can forbear its exercise, for they manage to con-
nive at their favorites. Evil-eye wizards can be known by their pe-
culiar way of squinting, or by their bushy eyebrows, that conceal the
piercing steadiness of their gaze, and orthodox crones lament the de-
cadence of the good old times when such offenders could be brought
to justice. According to the myth of the Puranas, the god Siva can
blight a whole town with his withering look ; and the Indian gods,
who often visit earth in the guise of mortals, are sometimes recognized
by the rigidness of their gaze : they never wink ; to their sleepless eyes
space and time are units. Hecate and Medusa had such optics, and
the basis of the superstition may possibly be the primitive man's
dread of mental superiority, the power of mind over matter, ascribed
to the eye, as the mirror of the soul. Captain Burton noticed that
the negroes of Soodan are almost unable to meet a white man's gaze,
though they quail still more before the fire-eyes of their Semitic neigh-
bors. The Veddahs of Ceylon, too, seem, to dread a Siva in every
foreigner.

But the most wide-spread of all superstitions is the belief in por-
tents. In some of its modifications the tendency to ascribe an ominous
significance to certain events, and good or bad luck to be auspices
of certain times or contingencies, is all but universal. It survives
the influence of every other form of superstition. The elder Pliny,
who calmly rejects the entire mythological system of his country-
men, admits his belief in the prognostications of the haruspices. The
skeptic, Wallenstein, kept two or three professional astrologers. Na-
poleon the Great was a firm believer in lucky and unlucky days. The
Pyrrhonist, Walid, surrounded himself with Egyptian pages on account
of the " favorable auspices of their nationality. The Marquis d'Argens,
the presiding atheist of the Sans-Souci symposia, after shocking even
the scoffing king and the king of scoffers by the profanity of his re-
marks, was apt to turn pale at the discovery of a double peach-stone
or the accidental spilling of the salt. French mariners have ceased
to vow wax-candles to Our Lady of Brest, but they still dislike
to leave a harbor on Friday, or during the progress of a hail-shower.
The agnostic Chinamen (for the gospel of Confucius is nothing but a
secular code of morals) postpone a journey if they meet a decrepit old
woman. Certain dreams impress them so strongly with the dread of
impending disaster that even opium-smokers will forego their drug

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 757

for a day or two, in order to keep all their available wits about them.
A Silesian miner will make his will if his lamp happens to go out be-
fore its oil is spent. According to the analysis of Immanuel Kant, the
basis of the whole delusion is what he calls the post hoc ergo propter hoc
fallacy — " after it, therefore because of it," or the tendency to mistake
an accidental coincidence for the result of a causal connection. From
this point of view there is no specific difference between a misapplica-
tion of the inductive method and the grossest portent-superstition.
The precipitate follower of Bacon has noticed the coincidence of cold
weather and catarrhs, and jumps to the conclusion that a low tempera-
ture deranges the functions of the respiratory organs ; he has known
cases of recovery following the use of Dr. Quack's cough-medicine,
and ascribes the cure to the nostrum. The weather changes about
four times a month, a month has four lunar phases, therefore the
weather depends on the changes of the moon. At the roulette-table
certain numbers may now and then turn up oftener than others : the
gambler concludes that they must be lucky numbers, or bets on red
cards because he twice lost his monthly salary on a black one. To
the objection that the weather-superstition deals, after all, with fixed
natural laws, and the roulette-superstition with capricious accidents,
the gambler might reply that so-called accidents are only necessities
in disguise.

When that disguise is practically impenetrable, the theoretical at-
tempts to that effect speak, perhaps, in favor of an order-loving and
systematic tendency of the human mind. Man is a methodical animal,
and will regulate his conduct by the most fantastic rules rather than
act entirely at hap-hazard. " In the game of life," says Edmond
About, " men are often apt to follow a system where they might just
as well play at random."

In some cases that tendency may be ascribed to a latent fetichism.
In the age of faith every man had his favorite days, months, numbers}
stars, colors, etc. ; for all such things had their presiding deities, and
their partisans, as it were, threw themselves upon the protection of
a tutelary spirit. The hero of the " Cyropsedia " never gives battle
without sacrificing to the genius of the day and the nymphs of the sur-
rounding rivers and mountains. Scipio Africanus used to invoke the
deities of a hostile city before he brought his battering-rams into play,
just as the Zooloo Caffres propitiate the demons of a new hunting-
ground. It seemed the safer way — " If it does no good it can do no
harm " — as the mediaeval apologists justified the invocation of the pa-
tron saints, and in the same way a gambler may defend his "system"
against the objections of his intellectual conscience.

The rules of such systems often suggest the influence of curious
associations of ideas. In ancient Greece the luckiness of the first
lunar phase was deemed so axiomatic that the Spartans missed the
battle of Marathon rather than take the field before the new moon.

758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The two weeks preceding the plenilunium suggest the prime of life,
when things in general progress favorably, while the subsequent half
months correspond to the age of declining strength and general retro-
gression. The haruspices augured on the principle that a bird's flight
from left to right was a favorable omen — things were going the right
way, while by the laws of consistency the opposite direction suggested
adverse tendencies. Birds, as creatures of the air, seemed the fittest
messengers of the gods, who had a way of imparting their revelations
by symbols, and might be supposed to choose the beginning of an un-
lucky enterprise as the best time for warning* their favorites : When
Conradin of Ilohenstauffen set out for that fatal campaign that ended
on the scaffold of Naples, his horse refused to cross the Arno Bridge,
and an old citizen adjured him to turn back, but he dismounted and
led his horse across. " It means that we are going to prevail afoot,''''
he laughed, alluding to the preponderance of his infantry force. A
year before the invasion of the Saracens, King Roderic saw their
horses and riders in a dream ; and Appolonius of Tyana foresaw even
the great aphanasia, the fifteen hundred years' eclipse of common
sense and reason. " Woe be to our children ! " he exclaimed, on
awakening from a trance ; " I see a shadow approaching ; a great
darkness is going to cover this world."

After the analogy of great natural catastrophes, events of national
importance were supposed to cast premonitory shadows, and in nearly
every country on earth the myth-making faculty of the people has
accordingly supplied a set of portents for every momentous incident
of their history. Tacitus records a due number of obituary prodigies
for every one of his Caesars. The battle of Adrianople, where the
clubs of the Visigoths broke the power of the Roman Empire, was
foretold by an augur who had seen a portentous cloud approaching
from the east in the teeth of a strong west wind. The conquest of
Mexico was the fulfillment of an omen that had plainly warned the
natives of their impending fate. In the night when Abderrahman el
Hakim died, shooting-stars showered down as if they were going to
set the earth afire. The tyrant Polycrates of Samos was born during
an earthquake that shook the foundations of the island. Before the
birth of Buddha Sakyamuni the Ganges flowed back to its source,
flowers sprouted in desert places, a sound of music rung through the
air, corpses left their tombs, and a new star appeared. A new star
appeared also after the murder of Julius Caesar, and certainly after the
death of Antinous, for the Emperor Hadrian ordered it to be wor-
shiped as the transfigured spirit of his favorite.

The rationale of the superior luckiness of odd numbers is less ob-
vious, but they were certainly the favorite numbers of the Gnostics
and of all mythological systems. The three Graces, three Fates, three
Furies, three Judges of the dead, and three-headed hell-hounds appear
as mystical as the Indian Trimurti and its derivatives. The seven

CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 759

sacraments, seven gates of the ISTew Zion, and seven golden candle-
sticks, correspond to the seven days of the week. Lars Porsenna
swears by the nine gods, and Ovid by the nine Muses. All, perhaps,
for the negative reason (though oddity may have its positive attrac-
tions) that a deliberative junta of even numbers can not get the bene-
fit of a casting vote. Gamblers rarely bet on even numbers ; it is one
of their corporation maxims, besides which every individual player has
a by-law code of his own. The Spaniard Gai*cia, who broke every
gambling-hell on the Rhine, operated upon the theory that luck, like
history, repeats itself in a certain succession, and kept a list of succes-
sive hits, in order to back the same series after the turning up of the
first number. Count Esterhazy, whose portentous luck made him the
bugbear of the Swiss watering-places, believed in the inspiration of a
first attempt, and relied on the instinct of a pointer — a"ny novice who
in consideration of a percentage woidd consent to locate his stakes.
That the tiger-wardens themselves are not above such superstitions
seems proved by the fact that the managers of the little Bath Pfeffers
once offered him ten thousand francs to dig his gold from a wealthier
mine.

" Fortis Fortuna adjuvat " (" Fortune favors the strong ") was a
Latin proverb, and Napoleon, like Suvaroff and Bismarck, asserted that
she is always on the side of the big battalions, though, like their fel-
low-men, they probably inclined to the private opinion that " lucki-
ness " is a special faculty, and that, irrespective of their energy, pru-
dence, and perseverance, some people manage to score success after
success. In the California bonanza period every camp had its " lucky
man," not always the best mineralogist, but a fellow who somehow had
a knack of stumbling upon " pay-dirt," and thus became the chosen
pioneer of his comrades. It sometimes really seems as if the race
were neither to the swift nor the cunning. We have merchants, spec-
ulators, and politicians, whom Fortune declines to forsake, in spite of
all their blunders — Sontags-Jcinder, " Sunday-children," as the Germans
call them — fellows who have six points ahead in every game and beat
the best players. Where others have wasted their time in mining and
counter-mining, they take every fort at the first assault, and for no
apparent reason, unless good luck begets self-confidence, for pluck is
perhaps, after all, the seci'et of every real success.

The Chinese divide all auspices into yan and yicen, male and fe-
male, positive-lucky and negative-unlucky streams of tendency. The
sun is a yan, the moon a yuen, luminary ; daylight blesses and vivi-
fies ; moonlight blights. For cognate reasons, perhaps, Friday (the
day of Friya, dies Veneris) is an unlucky day : among the Romans,
as well as among the ancient Saxons, it was' sacred to a female deity.
M. Quetelet estimates that the Friday superstition costs the French rail-
way companies an average aggregate of five million francs a year, by
which sum the expenses of Friday passenger-trains exceed the receipts !

760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If we consider the expensiveness of the Delphian oracle and the
Loretto miracle-factory, the suras wasted on all kinds of amulets, from
a brickbat fetich to a marble cathedral, we must admit that supersti-
tions are costly luxuries. Dome-building, the most expensive phase
of the mania, culminated during the night of the middle ages, and
that night is certainly passing away, but many of its specters still
frequent their ancient haunts ; for supernaturalism is a Proteus, and
apt to assume shapes that can not be exorcised with daylight. Like
the poison-habit, the thirst for miracles satisfies its craving with a
variety of stimulants. Ex-Romanists revel in mysticism, as their an-
cestors fuddled with the Rosicrucian Gnostics, and afterward with
magic and astrology. Protestants often yield to the craving for
stronger stimulants and glut it with rectified spiritism, undiluted with
traditions and homilies. Mr. Kiddle's apocalypse is the confession of
a moral opium-eater. In France professional free-thinkers patronize
not less professional clairvoyants ; the pythoness Lenormand amassed
a fortune of two million francs, and was consulted by atheists and
philosophers, and twice even by the Emperor Napoleon, whose specu-
lative dogmas were limited to a few negative tenets. German non-
conformists are apt to contract a passion for ghost-stories. Their
publishers have regular sample-rooms of supernaturalism ; Arnim's
novels, a rock-and-rye mixture of romantic poetry and spook stories,
have become household works ; Jung Stirling's Geister-Jcunde (Spec-
trology), a sort of proof-spirits with a flavor of pietism, has still an
enormous circulation. Men who never enter a church, and treat all
sects with the tolerance of absolute indifference, procure their tipple
from a circulating library, like peace-loving topers who shun tavern-
brawls, but now and then purchase a quart of rum and take it home
in a pocket-flask. On the whole, it is a step in the right direction.
Their liquor is often as strong as anything sold across the bar, but
the effects of their inspiration are limited to the precincts of a pri-
vate sanctum, and they are less apt to force their poison upon their
neighbors.

[Concluded.]

-<►♦-♦-

PERCEPTIONAL INSANITIES*

By W. A. HAMMOND, M. D.

THE simplest forms of insanity are those which consist merely of
false perceptions, and they are not of such a character as to lessen
the responsibility of the individual. There are two forms of false

* Abridged from advance sheets of Dr. Ilammond's forthcoming work on " Insanity
in its Medical Relations."

PERCEPTIONAL INSANITIES. 761

perceptions — illusions and hallucinations. Uncomplicated illusions are
rare ; still thei-e is no doubt that thei*e are illusions not the results of
disease in the organs of sense or of circumstances unfavorable to exact
perception, but which are due to a morbid condition of the percep-
tional ganglia, and the unreal nature of which is clearly recognized by
the individual.

Illusions of sight often relate merely to the size of objects. Thus,
a young lady who had overtasked herself at school saw everything of
enormous size at which she looked. The head of a person seemed to
be several feet in diameter, and little children looked like giants. So
far as her own person was concerned there were no illusions. Her
own hands appeared of the natural size, but those of other people
seemed to be of enormous proportions. Sauvages refers to a case in
which a young woman, suffering from epilepsy, had the illusion of
seeing objects greatly magnified. A fly seemed to her to be as large
as a chicken. In the case which came under my observation, the un-
real character of the perception was fully recognized, and hence the
intellect was not involved.

Morbid illusions of hearing, unaccompanied by other evidences of
mental derangement, are not very common. One case only has come
under my observation. It was that of a gentleman to whom the
ticking of a clock was resolved into articulate words. Generally the
expressions were in the form of commands. For instance, if at din-
ner, they would be, " Eat your soup ! " " Drink no wine ! " and so
on. One day he made the discovery that, if he closed the right ear
firmly, the illusion disappeared ; but, if the left ear were closed, the
words were still distinctly heard. It was hence clear that the center
for hearing on the right side was the one affected, and that that on
the left side was normal. For a long time this gentleman resisted
accepting any of these illusions as facts, but after a time he began to
be influenced by them to the extent of regarding them as guides.
Eventually he put clocks in every room in his house, and professed to
be governed altogether by the directions they gave him.

Illusions of touch, as Michea says, may relate to temperature, move-
ment, weight, and the character of surfaces. Thus, to some patients,
substances that are hot feel cold, and vice versa; others feel the
things on which they sit or lie glide from under them. Illusions of a
general character as regards the whole body are quite common — giving
the sensation of extreme weight or lightness, or as if the body were
immensely lengthened or shortened.

As regards frequency, illusions of the sense of touch occupy the
front rank ; next are those of sight, and next those of hearing. Illu-
sions of taste and of smell, except with persons who are otherwise in-
sane, are not common. A few instances of the latter, however, have
occurred within my personal experience. To one of these, a lady,
everything she put into her mouth tasted like cauliflower ; in another

76z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

instance, the flavor was that of strong Roquefort cheese, and in another
of pears.

The difference between illusions and hallucinations can be recoor-
nized without difficulty, for the latter are entirely cerebral in origin,
and do not require, as do the former, a material basis. They can not
be produced by any defects or derangements of the sensory organs, or
by any external circumstances tending to interfere with the normal ac-
tion of these organs. We have to consider them now as resulting from
disorder of the perceptional ganglia without the implication of those
parts of the brain which are concerned in the production of intellect,
emotion, or will.

The case of Nicolai, the German bookseller, is a striking instance
of hallucinations of sight. For ten months he had been a good deal
disturbed by several melancholy incidents. A customary blood-letting
was omitted, and added to all was an unusual press of business mat-
ters. One morning he suddenly perceived, at apparently the distance
of ten steps, a form like that of a deceased person. The phantom
continued only for about ten minutes, but in the afternoon it reap-
peared. He arose and went to another room, the apparition accom-
panying him — disappearing, however, at intervals, and always main-
taining the erect posture. Later there appeared other figures, unlike
the first.

After the first day the figure of the deceased person no longer ap-
peared, but its place was supplied by many other phantoms, sometimes
representing acquaintances, but mostly strangers. After about four
weeks he began to hear them talk. The application of leeches to the
arms relieved him promptly of his hallucinations.

Hallucinations of hearing are more common than those of any
other of the special senses, and, according to my experience, are more
apt to lead to further mental disorder. Far more people kill them-
selves under the influence of hallucinations of hearing than from
those of all the other senses combined. The reiteration in the ears,
during every minute of the day, of the command to jump into the
river, to plunge a convenient knife into the heart, and so on, day in
and day out, is calculated to shake the power of control of the strong-
est-minded.

Sometimes a single word or a few words constitute the hallucina-
tion, but in their more complex character they are sentences and even
long discourses. No instance that has come under my observation
equals that of a lady who hears recited to her long pieces of original
poetry or prose. She has repeatedly written down these recitations
and brought them to me. This lady had a strong hereditary ten-
dency to insanity, and, shortly after the development of the hallu-
cinations referred to, she imbibed the delusion that she had com-
mitted the " unpardonable sin." She made two attempts at suicide,
and is still insane, but has — an unusual circumstance — lost the delu-

PERCEPTIONAL INSANITIES. 763

4

sion of the " unpardonable sin," and contracted the idea that she has
no bowels.

As hallucinations of sight often exist while the eyes are closed, or
in persons who are totally blind, so hallucinations of hearing continue
though the ears be stopped, or originate in persons who are entirely
deaf. A deaf-mute who came to my clinique at the University Medi-
cal College was constantly subject to hallucinations of hearing. It is
said that in the last years of his life Beethoven became completely
deaf, but that he heard his compositions as distinctly as when he actu-
ally listened to them when performed by an orchestra.

Hallucinations of hearing, like those of sight, are sometimes uni-
lateral— that is, heard by only one ear. Baillarger cites several exam-
ples of the kind.

Calmet gives some interesting details relative to hallucinations.

In one case a M. de S entered his study one afternoon, and, turning

toward the door to go to his bedroom again, was much surprised to
see it shut and barricade itself with the two bolts that belonged to it.
At the same time the doors of a large press opened behind him and
rather darkened his study, because the window which was open was

behind these doors. " At this sight the fright of M. de S is more

easy to imagine than to describe ; however, he had sufficient calmness
left to hear, in his left ear, a distinct voice, which spoke to him in very
good terms, and ordered him to do some one particular thing which he
was commanded to keep secret."

Hallucinations of smell, though not so common as those of sight
and hearing, are yet often met with. A gentleman of my acquaint-
ance was almost constantly subject to the hallucination of smelling
paint or turpentine; another had the odor of coffee ever present in his
nostrils; and another, a physician, was always annoyed with the smell
of the dissecting-room. It is well known that some epileptic seizures
are preceded by the sensation of a horrible stench.

Hallucinations of taste are not common. Indeed, it is sometimes
difficult to say whether they exist or not, as various visceral irregular-
ities may cause the production of tastes by modifications impressed
upon the saliva. Mental excitement will cause a like effect in some
persons. I am acquainted with a gentleman who can not participate in
any engrossing conversation without having a bitter taste developed in
his mouth.

Hallucinations of the sense of touch are, on the other hand, very
frequently met with. Sensations apparently not based on any real
impression are experienced in various parts of the body. It is diffi-
cult, however, to discriminate between illusions and hallucinations of
touch.

Occasionally persons have the power of voluntarily producing hal-
lucinations. A practice fraught with danger, for the time is apt to
come at which they can not get rid of their false perceptions. As an

764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

instance, I cite the following case from Wigan. The painter referred
to is Blake :

" A painter, who inherited much of the patronage of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, was so fully engaged that he told me he had painted three
hundred large and small portraits in one year. The fact appeared
physically impossible, hut the secret of his astonishing success was
this : he required but one sitting of his model. I begged him to de-
tail to me his method of procedure, and he related what follows :
' When a sitter came, I looked attentively on him for half an hour,
sketching: from time to time on the canvas. I removed the canvas and
passed to another person. When I wished to continue the first por-
trait I recalled the man to my mind, and placed him on the chair.
Then I went on painting, occasionally stopping to examine the pos-
ture, as though the original were before me. This method made me
very popular, for the sitters were delighted that I spared them the an-
noying sittings of other painters. ' By degrees I began to lose all
distinction between the imaginary and the real figure ; then all be-
came confusion. I lost my reason, and remained for thirty years in
an asylum.' "

It is related of Talma, the great actor, that he could cause the au-
dience to appear to him like skeletons, and that, when the hallucina-
tion was complete, his histrionic genius was at its height.

Goethe states that he had the power of giving form to the images
passing before his mind, and, upon one occasion, saw his own figure
approaching him.

Several like cases have come under my own observation. In one,
the power was directly the result of attendance at spiritual meetings,
and of the efforts made to become a good " medium." The patient, a
lady, at first thought very deeply of some particular person, whose
image she endeavored to form in her mind. Then she assumed that
the person was really present, and addressed conversation to him. At
this period she was not deceived, for she clearly recognized the fact
that the image was not present.

One day, however, she was thinking very intently of her mother,
and, happening to raise her eyes, she saw her mother standing before
her exactly as she had imagined her. In a few moments the phantom
disappeared, but she soon found that she had the ability to recall it at
will. During the spiritualistic meetings she attended, she could thus
reproduce the image of any person upon whom she strongly concen-
trated her thoughts, and was for a long time sincere in her belief that
they were real appearances. At last she lost control of the operations,
and became constantly subject to hallucinations of sight and hearing.

Although no one presumes to question the honesty of Jerome Car-
dan, or of Swedenborg, it is probable that their visions were also in-
duced by intense mental concentration. In some persons very slight
thought is sufficient to cause hallucinations of great distinctness.

PERCEPTIONAL INSANITIES. 765

The causes of central illusions and hallucinations are generally to
he found in derangements of some kind in the blood circulating in the
brain. These may either relate to its quantity or its quality.

Physical influences calculated to produce cerebral hypersemia or
congestion may give rise to illusions or hallucinations. Brierre de
Boismont refers to a case, on the authority of Moreau, in which an
individual was able to obtain hallucinations of sight by inclining his
head a little forward. A similar case was not long since under my
own care. A gentleman, while sitting at his table writing, happened
to raise his eyes without moving his head, and saw before him the
figure of an old woman with black cloak and hood. Throwing him-
self back in his chair in his amazement, he found that the image slowly
disappeared ; and, as often as he repeated these movements, a like
series of phenomena occurred. On examining him, I found that he
wore a very high, old-fashioned stock, which, as he sat at the table
with his head bent forward, compressed the large veins of the neck,
and prevented for a time the return of blood from the brain. On
chanffimx his neck-wear for other of more modern fashion, he was ena-
bled to bend his head and raise his eyes without encountering the ap-
parition.

A gentleman once consulted me who, for several weeks, had seen,
just as he lay down, the figure of a very old man, who stood by the
side of his bed grinning and beckoning to him. At first he was de-
ceived, and started suddenly from his bed, whereupon his visitor dis-
appeared. He marie several tests which satisfied him as to the real
character of the phantom, and then, like a sensible man, tried to get
to sleep, but in this attempt he succeeded badly.

The explanation of such cases is very simple. The recumbent pos-
ture facilitates the flow of blood to the brain, and at the same time
tends, in a measure, to retard its exit. Hence the appearances were
due to the resulting congestion. As soon as the individual rose in
bed, or stood erect, the reverse conditions existed, the congestion dis-
appeared, and the apparition went with it.

The influence of cerebral hyperozmia in causing hallucinations seems
to be clearly established. Ferriar wrote a treatise with the special ob-
ject of proving that this is the only cause. This is an extreme view,
however, which can not be sustained, for that the very opposite con-
dition, cerebral anaemia, is an immediate cause of hallucinations is seen
in the facts that, during starvation and other conditions producing
great bodily exhaustion, hallucinations are common occurrences.

A striking instance has recently come under my observation, which
shows, undoubtedly, that a reduction in the amount of blood circu-
lating within the cranium may give rise to hallucinations. A young
woman affected with epilepsy had repeated seizures while in my con-
sulting-room, and, with a view of arresting them, I exerted strong
pressure on both carotid arteries. Her face instantly became pale,

766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and, without losing consciousness, she uttered a loud shriek, and pointed
at an object which she apparently saw near her. I at once discon-
tinued the pressure, when she informed me that she had seen an im-
mense negro rushing toward her with a club, and that as soon as I
had stopped pressing on her neck the figure had disappeared. I as-
sured her it was an hallucination, and induced her to let me repeat the
experiment. I now exerted moderate pressure, with the view of keep-
ing it up for some little time. In about half a minute she said that
she saw the figure, but not very distinctly, and I found that I could
make the figure appear distinct or indistinct by varying the degree of
pressure.

Children are very liable to be subject to hallucinations, and fre-
quently give circumstantial accounts of incidents which they believe
have occurred to them, of voices they have heard, etc. It is often im-
possible for them to discriminate between the true and the false, and
I am afraid they are often punished for lying by ignorant parents,
when they have told nothing but what they have had the evidence of
their senses for believing.

A great deal has been written relative to the physiology of halluci-
nations, but without much result so far as any explanation of the pro-
cess is concerned. There is some evidence to show that the thalami
optici are the centers for all real perceptions, and that hence they are
the organs, which, through their disease, give rise to all centric illu-
sions and hallucinations. Luys more than any other physiologist has
elaborated this idea, and has adduced arguments in its support which
it is difficult to overlook. His docti-ine is that the optic thalami are
reservoirs for all sensorial impressions coming from the periphery of
the nervous system, and that, like other ganglionic masses, they elabo-
rate these impressions, and that, by means of the fibers of the corona
radiata, they transmit them to the cortex, to be still further perpetu-
ated by being converted into ideas.

If there is no organ of sense, there can be no normal sensorial im-
pression ; if the optic nerve be divided, the sensation can not be trans-
mitted to the optic thalamus ; if there be a diseased optic thalamus,
the sensorial impression will be perverted and there will be an illusion
of centric origin ; if the cortex be in a normal condition, this illusion
will be corrected and understood as such erroneous perception ; if,
however, the cortex be diseased, the illusion will be accepted as true,
and a false idea, or delusion, will be formed. Such an impression
formed in the optic thalamus is an hallucination, and will be accepted
for reality or not according as the cortex is healthy or diseased.

Such is, I think, the pathology of perceptional insanity. The le-
sions of the optic thalamus necessary to the production of a false sen-
sorial impression may be of varied character. Congestion is probably
that which most commonly exists, especially in the early stages, and in
those cases which are not accompanied by derangements of the other

DWARFS AND GIANTS. 767

categories of mental faculties. Ansemia is likewise a condition of fre-
quent occurrence. At later periods, as Luys says, the optic thalami
are the seats of degenerations which show that there have been fre-
quent perturbations of the circulation. He is very strong in his con-
viction that there are secondary changes, which are the cause of the
transformation of psycho-sensorial hallucinations into those which
Baillarger designated psychic. In my opinion, they are the cause of
the hallucination becoming a delusion, and, indeed, between a psychic
hallucination and a delusion there is very little difference. The former
can not exist without the involvement of the intellect.

-+»+-

DWARFS AND GIANTS.*

By M. DELBCEUF.

A BELGIAN philosopher, M. Stas, declared, two years ago, that
" no science to which measure, weight, and calculation are not
applicable can be considered an exact science ; it is only a mass of
unconnected observations, or of simple mental conceptions." I agree
to this without reserve. Undoubtedly, vain imaginations and crude
theories, which have form without solidity, should be banished from
science ; but it does not follow that we must define science as a col-
lection of weights and measures, and calculations upon them, or as
consisting of combinations of algebraic formulas from which other
formulas may be deduced. These matters of weight, measure, and
calculation must have some synthesis or useful purpose in view. They
should throw light upon some law, and that a law which is an idea, or
which is susceptible of being converted into an idea. It is the philo-
sophic thought penetrating them that gives interest to the statistical
labors of Quetelet. The cry of the positivists of the day is for " facts ! "
To that I oppose another cry : " Ideas ! give us ideas ! " A fact with-
out an idea is a body without a soul, a useless incumbrance to the
memory. I come to the defense of speculation. While I view with
impatience volumes of figures, operations, and formulas, of which the
signification and bearing can not be perceived, I am inclined to be
grateful to the man who throws out a new idea, though it be a thou-
sand times false. There is always more to be learned from the thinker
who talks nonsense logically than from the observer who does not
reason at all. From nothing, nothing can come, but error may bring
forth the truth at the price of its own death.

Laying aside these generalities, let us consider an example of the

* From an address before the Royal Academy of Belgium. Translated for " The
Popular Science Monthly."

768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

way in which we can weigh and measure, submit the results to cal-
culation, and draw from them conclusions which are formally quite
legitimate, and still be all the time on the wrong track ; then examine
how we may be set upon the right road, and led to a new conclusion
more plausible and more in harmony with the rest of our knowledge.

It has been discovered that the flea can leap two hundred times its
length. Our admiration at this is changed to astonishment when it is
demonstrated by calculation that, if nature had endowed the horse
with a degree of strength similarly proportioned to his weight he
would have been able to clear the Rocky Mountains at a bound, and
that with a like effort a whale would be able to leap to a height of
two hundred leagues. What can be more unassailable than these
conclusions, founded on weight, measure, and calculation ?

It is true that, if, instead of comparing the weights of the horse
and the flea, we had compared their heights, we should have found
that the horse's leap would not measure more than three hundred me-
tres. Why is preference given to the weight ? Because it is its whole
body with its three dimensions and its density that the flea hurls to two
hundred times its height, and it is the same feat of strength that we
demand in vain of the horse. Calculations have also been made to
show that, if a man could move with a speed proportioned to that of
certain insects, he would be able to travel more than ten leagues in a
minute, or sixty times as fast as a railroad-train.

The Amazon ants, going to battle, travel from two to two and a
half metres a minute. The Amazons of antiquity, to be even with
them, if we judge by the relative heights, should have traveled eight
leagues an hour. We have, however, in this case, to compare the
forces with which given masses move themselves, and should take ac-
count of weights or volumes. If we proceed by this rule, we shall
obtain formidable numbers, that stagger the boldest imagination. The
warlike inhabitants of the banks of the Thermodon would have to get
over fifty thousand leagues in an hour. Yet, who can deny the truth
of the observations, the rigor of the measurements, or the justice of
the reasoning ?

The authors of these interesting calculations have not had in mind
only to make known some figures of comparison, good to store up, even
if they are never used, but they have endeavored to set forth the idea
that certain insects are much better endowed with powers of leaping
and speed than the vertebrates, and especially than man. The per-
sons who express this conclusion have failed to conform to the precept
that they must not extract more from their facts than is rigorously
contained in them, and are the victims of a scientific illusion, which is
quite wide-spread, but not hard to dissipate. What is in question ?
It is the valuation of the labor necessary to raise a certain weight
to a certain height. The labor increases in proportion to the weight
and the height. When, then, two animals of different masses leap to

DWARFS AND GIANTS. 769

the same absolute height, each one performs a work precisely propor-
tional to its mass ; and, when a man leaps over an obstacle sixty centi-
metres from the ground, he accomplishes, other conditions being the
same, a task as considerable again as that of the flea or the grasshop-
per, which can not spring much above thirty centimetres.

A few figures will make the matter plain. Take a grasshopper
weighing six decigrammes (nine grains), and a man weighing sixty kilo-
grammes (one hundred and fifty pounds). The man is equivalent in
weight to a hundred thousand grasshoppers. But a hundred thousand
grasshoppers grouped into a single mass could only raise that mass
thirty centimetres, while the man can lift his own mass sixty centi-
metres. All the advantage, then, is on the side of the man. Here is
a wide variance from the strength which has been exacted of the horse
to make him a rival of the flea.

The basis of the comparison was vicious. The height or volume
of the agent who handles a weight has nothing to do with the estima-
tion of the labor. A sack of meal is no heavier on the shoulders of a
man than on the loins of a horse. The labor and the effort have been
confounded. The labor is a defined and absolute quantity ; the effort
a vague and variable sensation.

The deductions respecting speed have no better foundation. The
ant, as a moving body, is a little mass of matter on which a determined
force impresses a speed of two and a half metres a minute. To impress
the same speed on a mass of fifteen millions of ants — which I take to
represent the volume of a man — would require a force fifteen millions
greater. This force is developed by a man going two and a half metres
a minute, while in the same space of time he can easily accomplish
a hundred metres and more. In this case, then, if we take notice of
any one of the data, the man manifests a strength forty times greater
in proportion than that of the ant. This is a very different result from
the one arrived at by the other method. Other data, however, com©
in to complicate the comparison and considerably modify the result.

A little closer study of the phenomena of walking will show us that
it absorbs a considerable quantity of force that does not appear in
speed. It is not simply a uniform transportation of the body along
an horizontal line ; but at each step the body is raised, and falls again.
The incessant repetition of the lifting is a great cause of fatigue.
Hence, walking on an uneven road tires us greatly. In the best paths,
the differences of level which have to be overcome correspond with a
notable quantity of force lost from speed. The ant, however, being a
creeping thing, and supported on six feet, has to raise only a very
small part of its weight at each step, and is therefore more advanta-
geously formed than the man, who, having only two feet, gives to his
whole body a double oscillation — sidewise, and up and down. On the
other hand, the ant feels even the slightest inequalities of the ground.
When it goes over the space that represents a man's step, and requires
vol. xxii. — 49

77o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

only a single lifting of his body, it has to lift its own perhaps a thou-
sand times. The sum of all these little lifts would probably give us a
considerable one.

The conclusion we have just reached, that man is relatively forty
times stronger than the ant, deserves, then, a closer examination ; and
it may be that the just interpretation of our facts will cause us to be-
lieve that the energetic capacity of muscular fibers is nearly uniform
in all animals.

There is another illusion in these matters, which we might call psy-
chological. The agility of some animals surprises us. The monad in
a drop of water moves so nimbly that we can hardly follow it ; and
we naturally make a comparison between the distance which an animal
can cover in a certain time and its dimensions. The reasoning of this
comparison presents a problem somewhat difficult of solution. It is
enough to know that we can not draw from the illusion the conse-
quences which we like to see in it.

If I were to attempt an explanation of this agility, which gives
small animals so great facility in escaping their enemies, I should look
for it in the small momentum of their mass when in flight, by reason
of which only a slight effort is required to enable them to change their
direction. Incontestably, we can run much faster than mice ; never-
theless, it is not easy to catch a mouse in a closed room. Our own
mass is an impediment to our agility. By the time we have made a
spring in one direction, the mouse has changed his, and we put our
hand, too late, where he was. It is very hard even to lay hold of a
bird in a narrow cage.

The part of our question that remains to be treated is no less ardu-
ous or obscure than that which we have gone over. I will try to throw
what light is possible upon it, but I can not flatter myself that I shall
fully succeed. M. Plateau some seventeen years ago measured, with
the aid of ingenious harnessings and other devices, the muscular force of
insects. He deduced from his experiments that, aside from the power
of flight, insects have, as compared with vertebrates, an enormous
strength in proportion to their weight ; and that in the same group of
insects the strength varies, as between different species, inversely as
the weight, or, in other words, that the smallest insects are the strong-
est.

Some of his single results were really surprising. While a horse
weighing six hundred kilogrammes can hardly support four hundred
kilogrammes, or two thirds of his weight, he found May-bugs, weigh-
ing a sixth of a gramme, able to support sixty-six times their own
weight, or more than ten grammes. Here, then, was a humble and stu,
pid beetle a hundred times as strong in proportion as the proud and
sturdy horse. Another little insect, weighing half a decigramme-
could move a hundred times its wreight. By this standard we men
ought to be able to struggle with weights of six thousand kilogrammes

DWARFS AND GIANTS.

771

(or fifteen thousand pounds), and elephants should move mountains.
We can not dispute the accuracy of the experiments or the calculations,
nor impeach the sincerity or judgment of the experimenter. The
facts are, moreover, conformahle to observations. A caterpillar in the
closed hand will make prodigious efforts to open his prison ; and
who has not seen ants carrying things three or four times as large as
themselves ? Various attempts have been made to escape the con-
sequences that were deduced from these experiments, but they still
stand, apparently defying criticism. Must we, then, resign ourselves
to beincc a hundred or two hundred times weaker than a beetle ? Are
insects really, in physical force, kings of creation ?

Not yet. An important element has been neglected. No account
has been made yet of the time it takes the insect to perform its won-
derful feat. Whenever we raise a given weight to any height, by
whatever method, the labor performed is in proportion to the weight
multiplied by the height ; and this product always gives the measure
of that labor. The same product, under certain restrictions, furnishes
the measure of the force that is utilized in the work. A dog is not as
strong as a horse, but both animals expend precisely the same force in
raising a kilogramme a metre. Whatever the kind of work he may wish
to calculate, even though it be horizontal, it is always reducible to the
elevation of a certain weight to a certain height, and is in practice
measured by a formula of which these are the terms.

While, however, the quantity of foi'ce that must be expended for a
determined work is invariable, this is not the case with the manner
in which that expenditure may be distributed. If I wish to strike a
single strong blow, I execute a quick movement. If my muscular
power is weak, I must have more time. It is possible, then, for time
to supply a deficiency of power. I can make such a substitution appli-
cable in two ways, by dividing the resistance, or by using a machine as
a lever, which, when everything about it is considered, is nothing more
or less than a device by means of which we replace power with time.

Accurately to compare the strength of a May-bug with that of a
man, we must take into the account the time which the insect requires
to perform the work exacted of it. Suppose a horse harnessed to a
load of half his weight, and a May-bug drawing a tray fifty times as
heavy as itself : the beetle's load will be relatively a hundred times as
heavy as the horse's. But if the horse needs only a second to raise his
load a metre, while the insect takes a hundred times as Ions; to pro-
duce the same effect, then the efforts of which they are both capable
are proportionably the same. The case is the same, only the appear-
ance is changed, when the force is spent in maintaining the weight at
an equilibrium.

In a similar manner we may account for the power manifested by
the insect which I cover with a board a hundred times as heavy as
itself, and which gets its head under the edge, raises it, and escapes.

77 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

You know that, if we should put a horse under a bell weighing sixty
thousand kilogrammes, it could not make its cover move at all. That
is because the animal can not insinuate itself under the eclsre of the
bell, and is not formed to raise weights with its head. But fix a lever
under the edge so that the horse can work conveniently at its longer
arm, and require him to raise the weight, not to a proportionate, but
to an equal height with that to which the insect raised his board in
the same time, and he would not fail to achieve the task.

The interest of the problem before us does not lie singly in learn-
ing why insects are capable of efforts which appear enormous as com-
pared with their size. The important thing is to discover whether
Nature, as has been said, has regarded them more favorably than it
has the vertebrates and man, and has endued them prodigally with
muscular force, while it has been parsimonious to the other animals.
We need not believe anything of this kind. The prodigies of force
that astonish us are due to a very simple cause, and can be accounted
for under the common law that, of two muscles having the same mass
and the same energy, the shorter one is capable of raising the more
considerable weight. We may figure muscular fiber as a spiral spring,
habitually relaxed, which, under nervous action, flies back upon itself.
Suppose this fiber to be a decimetre long and capable of contracting to
half its length, and that it has attached to it a weight, say, of a centi-
gramme. Under the nervous action, it will raise this weight half its
length, or five centimetres. Now, if we replace this single fiber, a
decimetre long, by a muscular bundle weighing just as much but
composed of ten fibers a centimetre long, we can attach a centigramme
weight to each of these fibers, or ten centigrammes to the whole bundle ;
but the weight will be raised, under the contraction of the muscle, only
five millimetres instead of five centimetres. What we have gained in
power we have lost in extent of motion. That is the rule. We have
hence a right to conclude, that short muscles have the peculiarity, as
compared with long muscles of the same volume, that they act more
slowly but can move more considerable masses. Consequently, small
animals perform, absolutely, slower motions, but, in compensation they
can move proportionately heavier masses. We can thus comjDrehend
how our insect can move masses a hundred times heavier than itself,
without having to infer that it is a hundred times stronger than a
horse. Introducing its head and corselet under the obstacle it desires
to remove, it stretches its six legs, raises its body, and develops an
apparently surprising force. Really, it has lifted the obstacle only in
the slightest degree, but enough to allow it to escape. Its strength
has been furnished by the short and thick muscles of its six legs and
its neck. These considerations furnish the key to all the Herculean
labors performed by small animals. The smaller the animal, the more
capable it is of great efforts ; only it loses in speed what it develops in
force. Hence the strongest insects are generally the slowest.

DWARFS AND GIANTS. 773

Let us finish our argument with an imaginary illustration embody-
ing the principles and the consequences derived from them. An ad-
venturous explorer, visiting the countries in which Gulliver traveled,
brings back a Lilliputian and a Brobdingnagian. The giant is thirty
feet hisrh, the dwarf four inches. Since one is about a hundred times
as large as the other, their respective masses, and consequently the
masses of their muscles, must be in the proportion of a million to one.
If a common man weighs sixty kilogrammes, or 150 pounds, the Brob-
dingnagian should weigh 15,000 kilogrammes, or about 38,000 pounds,
and the Lilliputian only fifteen grammes. They agree to compete with
each other in the gymnasium. At the pulleys, the Brobdingnagian
can easily raise a weight of 10,000 kilogrammes, or 2,500 pounds, as
high as his shoulders. Looking to the Lilliputian, we would at first
sight not expect him to be able to raise more than ten grammes to his
shoulders. Pie really proves able to lift a hundred times as much, or
one kilogramme, or the equivalent of seventy-five times his weight.
This is because the distance to his shoulders is a hundred times less
than the distance to his rival's shoulders, and he is able to apply
against the weight the advantage which he derives from the relative
shortness of the distance.

They next try leaping at the bar. The Lilliputian gracefully
clears the pole at a metre from the ground. Will the Brobdingnagian
be able to make a bound of a hundred metres ? Not at all. He can
hardly clear the bar at five or six metres. This is not because he is
lacking in suppleness. Compare his mass with that of his little rival,
consider that he has raised the center of gravity of that mass to the
height of about a metre as the other has done with that of his inferior
mass, and it will not be hard to do justice to his agility.

They are next started on a foot-race. A course of a thousand
metres is laid out. The Brobdingnagian runs it in five minutes by
steps of four metres each per second. The Lilliputian's steps are only
four centimetres each, but he makes a hundred of them in a second ;
so he likewise goes over the track in five minutes. You give all praise
to the Lilliputian, but do an injustice to his competitor. Think of
what the giant has to do to move his legs ! They are a million times
as heavy as the Lilliputian's. But while he may have a million fibers,
or a thousand in the diameter of a transverse section, the Lilliputian
will have ten fibers in the corresponding diameter, or a thousand in all.
Thus, while the masses are in the proportion of a million to one, the
proportion as to the motive fibers is a million to a hundred. The
Lilliputian, then, has the advantage. It may be objected that a hun-
dred steps can hardly be made in a second. The objection is, how-
ever, only specious, for the wings of insects show us what is possible
in this matter.

We are authorized by the aid of these illustrations to draw the im-
portant conclusion that the minute world is not, and can not be, in all

774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

respects a proportional reduction of a larger world. There is an im-
possibility in the matter which I can only indicate, but which depends
on the constitution of time and space.

If the views I have expressed are true, we have a right to infer
that all animals as to their energy stand upon the same line, or, in
other words, that a muscular fiber possesses the same properties,
whether it belong to a vertebrate, an articulate, or a mollusk. Such
a conclusion is more satisfactory at the first view than those which I
have criticised, for our mind is fond of discovering unity and uniform-
ity in nature. I am not certain that it is exact. That can be deter-
mined only by experiments. The question is now put into the hands of
investigators who are endowed with the genius for patient and minute
researches. Let them attack it with their instruments of observation
and precision. The arguments they will deduce will be those before
which we shall be forced to bow.

The main object of my remarks has been, however, to plead the
cause, which in these days has been somewhat compromised, of Specu-
lation, the mother of ideas, which allures us more frequently than it
instructs us, but which stimulates, guides, and pushes us forward, and
sometimes gives us a glimpse, if it does not permit us to contemplate
them, of brilliant and grand horizons.

-♦-»*-

THE CENSUS AND THE FOKESTS.

By N. H. EGLESTON.

THE prudent and thrifty tradesman once a year takes an account
of stock, and thereby assures himself as to what goods he has in
possession, as well as what gain or loss may have accrued to him as
the result of the year's transactions. So the nation, or, if we please
to use the figure of personality, " Uncle Sam," deems it wise occasion-
ally to take an account of stock ; only this is done but once in ten
years, and is called " taking the census." It could not well be taken
oftener. The pi-ocess is too long and too complicated. The reduc-
tion to tabular form of the millions of facts and items of information,
the summarization of the particulars gathered from so many States
and Territories, require no small amount of time, even with the best
an*angements for facilitating the performance of the work. The re-
sults of the census of 1880 are not yet officially before us. Some
facts as to population, the gross number of people in a certain range
of cities and towms, and a few other facts of special interest or im-
portance, have been communicated to the newspapers, and thus have
become known to the public. But not a single volume of the thirty
which the census report is expected to make has yet appeared.

THE CENSUS AND TEE FORESTS. 775

Nor if we could have a more frequent census would it, perhaps,
be desirable. We should not have time to become acquainted with
the facts ascertained by one census, and to see their bearing upon our
life and present occupations, before another census would be at our
door with its claims upon our attention, because possibly necessitating
some important change in our plans or pursuits.

With the growth of the country, the census constantly becomes a
greater and more complicated matter. It was a comparatively simple
affair at first. It was little more than the enumeration of the popula-
tion of the country, for the purpose of apportioning direct taxes in
the several States, and also the representatives in the national Con-
gress. For the latter purpose the respective numbers of whites and
blacks were given, three fifths of the latter being counted, during the
existence of slavery, in determining the quota of representation for
each State.

A noticeable fact in regard to the census of the United States
is, that it is the result of a constitutional ordinance, the very first
article of the Constitution providing for a general enumeration of
the population within three years from the convening of the first
session of Congress, and again during every subsequent decade. The
first census was consequently taken in 1790. It gave the names of
heads of families, the number of free white males above and below
sixteen years of age, the number of females, and the number of slaves.
Subsequent censuses have extended the classification so as to give the
number of persons of any specified age, from one year upward to a
hundred, and in recent years various other particulars. In 1810 the
marshals were directed for the first time to make returns of the manu-
factures and manufacturing establishments of the country. So, from
time to time, the census reports have embraced new facts in regard to
the people and the products of their industry.

The ninth census, that of 1870, was much more full in this respect
than any that preceded it. It gave not only the numbers of the peo-
ple of all ages and the sexes, but their occupations and the products
of their industries, as they had never been given before. Perhaps no
country had ever had its material and social condition, its resources
and productions, so fully presented to view as were ours by this census.
With the experience gained in its compilation, and the satisfaction
which its fullness had given, the census of 1880 was undertaken with
the design to make it still more full and complete. Among other
subjects to which special attention has been given in taking the tenth
census is that of our forests. Hitherto the forests have been looked
upon chiefly as the source of lumber-supply, and the census has taken
account of them only so far as to report the statistics of the lumber-
trade, and some of the industries connected with it or derivable from
it. But the importance of the forests at once appears when we con-
sider that the census of 1870 reported the annual value of sawed

776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lumber produced by our forests as $210,159,327, and that there were
63,928 establishments engaged in the manufacture of articles made
entirely of wood, besides 109,512 establishments in which wood is an
important part of the material used — as in the manufacture of car-
riages, agricultural implements, etc. It has been estimated that the
value of the products annually drawn from our forests exceeds $1,000,-
000,000, and of the vast imports of Great Britain two thirds are said
to be of vegetable character. Such facts show at once the very promi-
nent place which the forests of the world hold among national inter-
ests. But, in addition to the bearing of the forests upon the mechani-
cal industries of life, they have an important relation to climate and
to the meteorologic conditions on which agriculture and commerce and
the health and life of the people depend. When all these things are
taken into account, as until recently they have not been, it becomes at
once apparent that no subject, perhaps, deserves more consideration
among the resources of a country, and that the special attention given
it in the compilation of the present census is abundantly warranted.

Accordingly, the endeavor has been made to ascertain, with more
completeness and precision than ever before, the situation of the
country in respect to its woody covering ; to learn to what extent the
several States and Territories abound in trees in masses ; of what
species of trees the forests are composed, their location, and their com-
mercial and industrial value. The work of ascertaining these facts,
and presenting them in proper form as a part of the census returns,
was committed by the Department of the Interior to Professor C. S.
Sargent, of Harvard University, who is also manager of the Arnold
Arboretum at Brookline. In carrying out the work assigned to him,
Professor Sargent divided the whole country into several districts,
each of which was given in charge to one or two competent persons,
with the needful assistants, for the purpose of making a personal ex-
amination of the districts, and also ascertaining facts by correspond-
ence with residents of different parts of the districts, so that a suffi-
ciently exact report might be made in regard to the timber-growth of
the country. Professor Sargent personally undertook the exploration
of the Pacific division, including California, Oregon, and Washington
Territory.

The result of this forest survey will be to give us a knowledge of
the species and varieties of trees indigenous to our country, with the
districts where they most abound, and where they attain their best
development. It will show us what our forest resources are, whether
for the production of lumber, or fuel, or for ornamental planting. It
will show how far and how fast our forest supplies are diminishing,
and from what cause or causes ; whether from the axe of the lumber-
man, estimating the forests according to the number of feet of boards
or timber which they will yield, or from the axe of the woodman or
the miner ; whether from the fire kindled by the pioneer, eager in the

THE CENSUS AND THE FORESTS. 777

quickest way possible to clear a space in which to cultivate his wheat
and corn, and pasture his herds, or from the fire lighted recklessly or
by accident by some passing huntsman or traveler.

In showing the relative position of our forests in respect to land
elevation and the vicinity of streams, the census report will show the
relation of the forests to the water-supply, and consequently their in-
fluence upon agriculture and manufactures. It will indicate their in-
fluence upon rain-fall and climate, as well as upon the course and effect
of winds, whether considered in their mechanical or their meteorologi-
cal relations. It will have an important use also as indicating the
relative healthfulness of different portions of our wide and diversified
domain.

In prosecuting his study of our forests, Professor Sargent has gath-
ered a large collection of specimens of the different woods. These
will show the natural appearance of the trees, and the variation of ap-
pearance and texture caused by growth under differing circumstances
of soil and climate. From these specimens portions have also been
taken and carefully worked down so as to show the grain and the sus-
ceptibility to polish, and their consequent value for mechanical and
artistic purposes. The beauty of our native woods, and their adapta-
tion on this account to the manufacture of cabinet-work, and to the
interior finish of dwellings, will be made to appear as never before,
and will be a surprise to many. It will be seen that we have gone
abroad and procured materials for cabinet and carpentry uses at great
expense when our own forests stood ready to supply all that the most
fastidious taste could require. Professor Brewer, of Yale College,
reports that there are probably 800 species of woody plants indigenous
to the United States, of which 250 attain a height of thirty feet, and
are abundant in some portion of the country.

Careful experiments have also been made in order to determine
the relative value of our woods for the purposes of construction and
for use as fuel. Blocks and sections of a great variety of trees have
been selected, reduced to the same dimensions, freed to an equal ex-
tent from moisture — in other words, brought, so far as possible, to the
same conditions — and then subjected to treatment at the United States
Arsenal at Watertown, by means of nice and powerful machinery, in
the hands of careful manipulators, for the purpose of determining the
respective amounts of resistance to a crushing and a fracturing strain.
Similar pieces have also been burned, under like circumstances, as
nearly as possible, and the amount of heat developed by their combus-
tion accurately determined. The relative value as fuel of the different
kinds of wood with which our country abounds has thus been ascer-
tained. Probably no more trustworthy and decisive experiments have
ever been made for the purpose of showing the value of different
woods for the uses of construction or as sources of heat.

One of the peculiar and, practically, most valuable features of the

778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

census report of our forest resources is the attempt made by Professor
Sargent to give at a glance, by means of maps, the history and present
condition of our woodlands throughout the country. In the census of
1870 maps had been used for the purpose of showing the distribution
of our native and foreign population, the greater or less degree of
illiteracy in different portions of the country, and the areas of land
devoted to the cultivation of the great staples, corn, wheat, and to-
bacco. The vital statistics were also, to some extent, reduced to the
map form, and the deaths from consumption, fevers, and some other
classes of diseases were presented in the same way.

In the census report now in preparation this plan of presenting
classes of facts at once through the eye by means of maps is applied
to the woody covering of the country. More especially, the object
has been to show the present extent of the supply of pine-timber, as
being of chief importance in connection with the lumber industry of
the country, and so bearing, more or less directly, upon many other
interests and occupations. The hard-woods, also, where prevalent to
any considerable extent, are of course denoted on the maps. Other-
wise, their amount and localities are briefly described in the accom-
panying text of the report.

In general, one map is devoted to each State or Territory, though
in the case of Vermont and New Hampshire the two are grouped to-
gether. The maps are carefully prepared, and the engraving and
printing in colors are such that the eye perceives at once in what por-
tion of any State or Territory the supply of pine is undiminished, and
where and to what extent it has been cut off. It is also made ap-
parent at once where the pine has exclusive possession of the soil, and
where it grows mingled with the hard-woods.

In connection with the maps, but on a separate page, the statistics
in regard to the lumber-supply are given in properly arranged tables,
these with the corresponding map constituting a "Forestry Bulletin."
The first of the Bulletins to be printed was that relating to the " Pine
Supply of Texas," and a brief description of this will show the method
pursued in all. The map of Texas is on a scale of one hundred miles
to the inch. The water-courses are given with great completeness,
and the county lines as far west as the one hundredth parallel. The
map is so printed in colors as to show the parts of the State abounding
respectively in the short-leaved or loblolly pine (Pinus toeda) mixed with
the oak and other hard-woods ; second, those abounding in the short-
leaved or yellow pine {Pinus mitis), mixed with oak and other hard-
woods, together with a little loblolly pine ; third, those abounding
in the long-leaved pine (Pinus Australia), and, fourth, the regions
from which merchantable pine has been cut off. A glance at the
map shows that Texas is poorly supplied with pine-timber, the en-
tire State, with the exception of the few eastern counties, being
uncolored, which indicates the absence of trees in any such numbers

THE CENSUS AND THE FORESTS. 779

as to constitute a forest. It is evident also from the map that in ten or
twelve counties there is a considerable growth of the long-leaved pine,
and in perhaps twenty or twenty-five counties a good deal of the two
species of the short-leaved pine mingled with various hard-woods.
But in seven eighths of the State there is not sufficient pine to be in-
dicated at all on the map.

Turning now to the statistical tables accompanying the map, we find
the estimated amount of merchantable pine standing at the date May
31, 1880, was as follows : long-leaved pine (Pinus Australia), 20,508,-
200,000 feet, board-measure ; short-leaved pine (Plnus mitis), 26,093,-
200,000 feet ; loblolly pine (Times tceda), 20,907,100,000 feet.

It will be noticed that the estimated amoixnts of the various kinds
of pine found in Texas do not vary greatly from one another. The
amount cut during the year ending May 31, 1880, of the long-leaved
pine, is given 'as 06,450,000 feet ; of the Pinus mitis, or short-leaved,
146,420,000 feet, including 30,290,000 shingles ; and of the loblolly
pine, 61,570,000 feet.

The amount of pine standing in the counties which have pine at all
varies from 19,000,000 to 3,216,000,000 feet each.

From this description it will be seen that from such a simple Bul-
letin, with its map, any one can learn in a few minutes very accurately
the condition of the lumber interest in any part of the country.

It will not be amiss, perhaps, to compare for a few moments the
first Bulletin, that of Texas, with the sixth, that of Michigan, the two
representing regions widely separated and differing also in climate
while the latter has been, until quite recently, one of our chief sources
for the supply of pine-lumber. The area of Texas is about five times as
great as that of Michigan. The Upper and LowTer Peninsulas of Michi-
gan are given upon separate maps, which are on a scale of forty miles
to the inch. The engraving and coloring are such as to indicate por-
tions abounding respectively in hard-wood, in pine, in pine and hard-
wood mingled together, the portions also which have been cut over,
whether of pine alone or of pine and hard-wood mixed, and the barrens.

A glance at the maps shows at once that the lower portion of the
State, for a distance of sixty or seventy miles from the Ohio border, is
covered with hard-wood, except as it has been cleared for agricultural
purposes. Above this a broad belt stretches across the State, in which
pine and hard-woods have grown together, but in which the pine has
been mostly swept off by the lumberman's axe, and so thoroughly
swept off as to leave no corresponding growth to follow it in future
years, and the gi-eater part of the hard-wood has also been destroyed.
In the northern part of the Lower Peninsula some pine remains, but it
is apparent that the axe has felled nearly all that grew in the vicinity
of the streams, so that what little is now standing is reached only by
means of railways built especially for the purpose of transporting it to
market.

78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Looking at the map of the Upper Peninsula, the eye sees instantly
that the pine-forests remain only in a comparatively small district
bordering on the northern portion of Wisconsin and not easily acces-
sible, while from that part of the State lying along the Menominee
River and Green Bay, as well as along the upper shore of Lake Michi-
gan and the southern shore of Lake Superior — in short, wherever they
could be reached with facility — both the pine and hard-wood have
been cleared away. There remains a belt of mingled pine and hard-
wood stretching across the interior of the Peninsula, and a section,
consisting chiefly of hard-wood, lying in the extreme northern and
northwestern portions.

These grand facts in regard to one of the principal sources hitherto
of our pine-lumber are seen at a glance from the clear and well-defined
maps of the forthcoming census report. Apart from such a presenta?
tion to the eye, they could not be gained without much and careful
inquiry, and then the facts would make no such clear and distinct
impression upon the mind as they do at once wrhen thus mapped
before the sight.

The rate at which the supply of lumber in any region is increased
or diminished can not be given by a single map, or the relation of the
supply to the annual demand. These facts could be presented to the
eye only by a series of maps showing the areas of forest as they
become changed from year to year. So, in a single page of figures
accompanying each map, we have the estimated amount of merchant-
able timber still standing on the 31st of May, 1880, and the amount
cut during the year ending with that date. The comparison of these
readily gives the probable duration of the supply at the present rate
of consumption. Thus the statement for Michigan is as follows: In
the Lower Peninsula the amount of white pine is:

Board-measure.
In the basins of the streams flowing into Saginaw Bay. . . . 7,000,000,000 feet.

In the basins of streams flowing into Lake Huron 8,000,000,000 "

In the basins of streams flowing into Lake Michigan 14,000,000,000 "

Total 29,000,000,000 "

Cut for the census year ending May 31, 1880, including 2,988,600,000 shingles and
428,445,000 laths, but exclusive of 36,000,000 staves and 3,330,000 sets of headings,
4,06S,773,000 feet.

It will be seen at once that, at the present rate of consumption, the
white-pine lumber of the Lower Peninsula will be consumed in about
seven years. It will probably last somewhat longer than this, because
its increasing scarcity and the increased difficulty of procuring it on
account of its remoteness from streams by means of which it might
be easily floated to market, will advance the price, and thereby lessen
the demand for it. The duration of the remaining pine-forests of
Michigan wTill also be extended by the fact that the augmented price
will lead to the substitution of the hard-woods for many purposes in

THE CENSUS AND THE FORESTS. 781

the place of pine. "We see every day that the hard-woods are coming
into use more and more for the interior finish of buildings, as well as
for many other applications.

There is in the Lower Peninsula an estimated amount of 575,500,-
000 cords of hard-wood distributed over nearly 20,000,000 acres.
About twenty per cent of this is suitable for lumber and cooperage
stock. There were cut for the census year ending May 31, 1880, exclu-
sive of 163,821,000 staves and 18,567,000 sets of headings, and includ-
ing 6,038,000 feet of spool stock, 440,944,000 feet.

In the southern half of the Lower Peninsula the forest has been
largely removed for agricultural purposes or used in manufacturing
although considerable wooded areas generally distributed still remain.
In the upper part of this Peninsula the hard-wood is now being rapidly
consumed in the manufacture of charcoal, to be used for the purpose
of smelting the iron-ores with which that region abounds.

Passing now to the Upper Peninsula, it is estimated that the
amount of merchantable pine-lumber still standing is 6,000,000,000
feet. There were cut for the census year ending May 31, 1881, 328,-
438,000 feet. The supply here, at the present rate of consumption,
would last about eighteen years.

Of hard-wood there is an estimated amount of 124,500,000 cords,
distributed over 10,000,000 acres. There were cut for the census year,
exclusive of fuel and railroad-ties, 1,145,000 cords. The southern
counties contain large areas of swamp covered with tamarack, white
and yellow cedar, estimated in the aggregate at 62,500,000 cords.

We have not undertaken to give the full results of the census,
even in respect to our forests and forest products. We could not do
so, in the present incomplete state of the returns. We have only
endeavored to indicate in advance some of the interesting and valu-
able results which may be anticipated from the publication of the
census returns in regard to our forests and woodlands whenever that
publication shall be made. We have sought to exhibit the method
adopted in compiling the census, as showing the confidence which
may be given to the results presented. Without doubt, under the
careful management of Professor Sargent, with his able corps of assist-
ants, we shall have set before us in the two volumes of his special
report, with the accompanying maps, a great body of most interesting
and important facts in regard to the present and prospective condition
of our forests. We shall know, as it was not possible to know before,
their value as sources of lumber and fuel, and for various uses in the
arts. We shall know, as we have not known before, the various agen-
cies by which the forests are destroyed, and the rapidity with which
their destruction is effected. We shall learn, as we have not learned
before, that, wasteful as is the process of converting our forests into
lumber, more of our precious woodlands are destroyed by fire than by
the axe. It has been ascertained, for instance, that in the compara-

782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tively small State of Massachusetts more than 14,000 acres of forest,
valued at more than $100,000, have been recently consumed by fire in
a single year ; and in Pennsylvania 685,738 acres of forest are reported
as burned over in 1880, with a loss of more than $3,000,000. We shall
learn that the axe and the flames together are consuming our forests
so rapidly that we are threatened with great evils on this account in
the not distant future. Trees are quickly felled and quickly burned ;
they are slow to grow. The lumberman's axe can destroy in an hour
the oak or the pine which has gained its stature and its worth only by
the annual increments of a century. The spark from the tobacco-pipe
of a careless tramp may kindle a flame which will speedily spread over
some great mountain-side and sweep away the forest covering which
has been growing ever since the beginning of our history as a nation.
Great revolutions may come in our national life, and generations of
men will pass away, before that forest covering can be replaced.

The forthcoming census report will show that we have 25,708
establishments for converting the trees of our forests into lumber,
that $181,186,122 are employed as the needful capital for carrying on
this work, and that the value of the lumber produced is $233,367,729.

The revelations of the census will show with new clearness that,
in view of the rapid destruction of our forests and the evils threatened
in consequence, there is no time to be lost in taking measures to avert
those evils so far as possible. What measures in particular should be
adopted it is aside from our present purpose to show. It is enough to
say in general that we should do all that we can individually, and by
legislative enactment where necessary, to prevent the further needless
destruction of our remaining forests. We should be more careful and
less wasteful in cutting them for the production of lumber. We should
guard them more vigilantly, and, by the enforcement of severe pen-
alties if need be, against those chance fires which result in evil, and
evil only, without any incidental good to any one. We should encour-
age the reproduction of forests, by leaving a sufficiency of seed or
mother trees on the ground where the forests are cut, and by carefully
excluding from all such grounds the cattle, whose teeth and hoofs to-
gether are almost as destructive as the axe or the flames. It is im-
possible to grow valuable forests where cattle are allowed to range in
them and browse upon the tender trees. In Europe, they have decided
long ago that the woods are no proper pasture-grounds for cattle.

Finally, we should encourage the planting of many new forests on
what are practically the waste lands of many of our States. Such
lands can thus be made the most productive, pecuniarily, of all our
lands, while in those States and Territories which are comparatively
destitute of forests no land is too good to be devoted to this purpose,
and no labor of the husbandman promises so important and so profit-
able results as that of tree-planting on the large scale. The "North-
western Lumberman," Chicago, in its review of the lumber product

ORIGIN OF THE DONKEY. 783

for the present year, says, " To own a saw-mill to-day, with ten years'
supply of standing timber, is to have that which is far better and
safer than a gold-mine in the Occident." The same paper also says :
" The amount of timber cut from the forests of the Northwest " (mean-
ing Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, chiefly) " in 1881, counting
that made into shingles with the lumber, exceeded 7,000,000,000 feet.
It requires some little grasp of the subject to comprehend such an
enormous sum. Loaded on cars, green, it would make a train nearly
seven thousand miles in length. The amount of money required to
purchase it from first hands would be not far from $125,000,000."

With such statements relative to the consumption of our existing
forests, from authoritative sources, and the well-known fact that the
price of all kinds of lumber has greatly increased during the last ten
years, while that of some kinds has doubled, there should be little
doubt that, looked at as a pecuniary venture alone, tree-planting on an
extensive scale will brino; a sure and abundant reward to those who
engage in it.

ORIGIN" OF THE DONKEY*

By C, A. FIETREMENT.

THE majority of modern naturalists have long attributed an Asiatic
origin to the domestic asses. They have believed that the spe-
cies are derived from the so-called onagras or wild asses of Asia,
which the ancients mention, and which are still met wandering in
droves of greater or less size, from the northern part of the Altai
Mountains to the southern regions of the continent. As late as 1862,
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-IIilaire assumed that the primitive country of
the ass was partly in Asia, partly in Africa, because, he said, " the ona-
gra extends from Asia to Northwestern Africa." In 1869, however,
M. H. Milne-Edwards considered it " well demonstrated that the ass is
essentially an African species, which occurs in Asia only in a domes-
ticated condition ; and that all that the ancients, and modern travel-
lers as well, have said of the wild asses or onagras of Syria, Persia,
etc., is applicable to the hemippus and other varieties of Eqnus hemi-
onas, and not to Equus aslnus. The horse, on the other hand, appears
to have originated in Central Asia and a part of Europe. It is pre-
sumable that the domestication of the ass was effected in Africa,
probably in Upper Egypt or some neighboring country, and that of
the horse took place in the region occupied by the Indo-Germanic
peoples. If the civilization of Central Asia and Europe had much

* From a new work, " Les Chevaux dans le Temps prehistoriqucs et historiques "
(" Horses in Prehistorical and Historical Times "). Translated and abridged for " The
Popular Science Monthly."

784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preceded that of Egypt, we might have presumed that the Egyptians
received trained horses from abroad before taming the ass that lived
wild in their land ; but nothing authorizes us to suppose that this was
the case. In all probability, the Egyptians made use of the indigenous
species, or the ass, before they did of the horse, an exotic species that
never came to Africa till it was domesticated.

M. George, in his " Etudes Zoologiques," brings evidence corrobo-
rative of these views. Real wild asses are now found, according to
him, only in Abyssinia, where they have the slate-gray color and the
cranial peculiarities typical of the species.

The name by which the Semitic peoples call the ass, hamar (an-
cient Assyrian, imeru), a name signifying red or bright fawn color, is
applicable to the hemione and not to the ass, and indicates that, con-
founding the two species as modern naturalists and travelers have
done, they gave to the introduced animal the name which they had
long applied to the similar but not identical native animal. M. San-
son was therefore right in calling the Oriental domesticated beast the
Egyptian breed, or JEquus Caballus Africanxis. M. Sanson has also
made a distinct race, the European, of the asses which are native to
the Hispano- Atlantic center ; and, as their restricted geographical area
leaves no doubt that their original home was there, the propriety of
this distinction can hardly be called in question. Many documents
also indicate that no race of asses is native to the northern regions of
the old continent. Herodotus, Aristotle, and Strabo, all speak of the ab-
sence of asses from Scythia and Northwestern Europe, and account for
it by the severity of the climate, which, they say, the animals are not
able to endure. They were perfectly familiar with that part of those
regions which lies north of the Black Sea ; so their testimony as to
that part is decisive. In the time of Diodorus, three hundred years
after Aristotle, horses were employed in the transportation of tin
from the shores of the British Channel to the mouth of the Rhine ;
and this indicates that asses were still unknown or rare in that part of
Gaul. There is evidence, however, that the ass had been acclimated
in the time of Aristotle in some of the most temperate parts of Cen-
tral Europe ; for Frontin, in his " Stratagems," tells that Atheas,
King of the Scythians, a contemporary of Philip of Macedon, being
at Avar with the Triballians and hard pressed, sent around his whole
unarmed population, with the asses and cattle, to appear on the rear
of his enemies and cause them to believe that he was receiving large
re-enforcements.

Even now the ass does not live in, by any means, all of the north-
ern part of the Eastern Continent. Ujfalvey says that the animals live
and breed at Semipalatinsk, where the temperature falls to 15° below
zero, but that at Omsk they are " fancy stock," and are kept alive
only with great care ; and he gives statistics to show that asses and
mules are very few in comparison with horses all through Turkistan,

ORIGIN OF THE DONKEY. 785

there being only twelve of them to 415,060 hoi-ses in the coldest and
most mountainous government of that country.

We do not know when they were introduced into China ; but it is
related that the Emperor Ling-ti (168-189) made them fashionable at
his court instead of horses. The Abbe Hue says that they thrive in
Thibet and the northern provinces of China. It is, however, certain
that they were not domesticated by the Proto-Mongols, the ancestors
of the Chinese, in Northern Mongolia ; and there appear to be few or
none of them now in that country ; for travelers speak of large
flocks of sheep, goats, cows, camels, and horses, but never mention
asses.

There is no probability that the Aryans were better acquainted
with this animal in their original home than the Proto-Mongols in
theirs. The ass is not among the animals offered in sacrifice by the
heroes of the Avesta, and is only mentioned once in that book. At the
time the Mazdean law was given, the Iranians were in possession of
Northern Persia, where the ass had been introduced, and had been cap-
tured by Tiglath-pileser I.

The ass was taken to India very early, and the law of Menu leaves
no doubt of the antiquity of its use among the Hindoos. It, for exam-
ple, prohibits a Brahman from reading on an ass ; declares that the
Chandelas and Swapakas shall have no property but dogs and asses ;
and orders Dija, who had broken his vow of chastity, to sacrifice a
dark or black ass to Niwiti, and to wear its skin, begging for a year,
and confessing his sin, in seven houses every day.

Asses appear to have been in use among the Hebrews from the time
of Abraham ; in Assyria and the neighboring countries from the time
of Tiglath-pileser I, and in Greece from the time of Hesiod, who men-
tions the custom of castrating mules ; and Homer compares the rage
of Ajax with that of an ass rushing wildly through the fields. The
great Harris papyrus, describing one of the conquests of Rameses,
speaks of the chiefs of Tonoutu as arriving at Coptos with their tribes,
and bringing with them caravans of asses and men. In the same doc-
ument, Menephthah I, relating his victory over the Mashonash and
the Libyans, describes the " vile chief of the Rebu " as losing all his
goods and precious things, and " everything that he had brought with
him from his country, his cattle, his goats, and his asses."

The most ancient instances of the application of asses to useful pur-
poses were in Egypt. A bas-relief in a hypogeum of Gizeh, of the
date of the fourth dynasty, represents two droves of asses ; and M.
Lenormant remarks : " As to the ass, we see it figured on the Egyp-
tian tombs as far back as we go. It is frequently represented in the
tombs of the ancient empire, at Gizeh, Sakkara, and Abousir. The
beautiful bas-relief on the tomb of Ti (fifth dynasty), representing a
group of asses, of which a model was exhibited by M. Mariette at the
Universal Exposition of 186T, has certainly not been forgotten. From

VOL. XXII. — 50

786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the time of the fourth dynasty, the ass was as widely diffused in
Egypt as it is now. In the tomb of Shafra-Ankh, at Gizeh, is an item
of a drove of seven hundred and sixty trained asses among the assets
of the deceased, who was a high functionary of the court of the
founder of the great pyramid. In other tombs discovered by M.
Mariette, but not yet fully described, I have remarked cases of pro-
prietors who boasted the possession of thousands of asses. . . . Fur-
thermore, the facts on this subject derived from the study of the
monuments were not peculiar to Egypt only. ... In the paintings
on the tomb of Noumhotep, at Beni-Hassan-el-Kadim, may be seen
the arrival of the family of Aamon, that is, of the nomadic shepherds
of the Semitic race, who came to establish themselves in Egypt under
one of the first reigns of the twelfth dynasty (about 3000 b. a). Their
only beasts of burden are the asses that carry their goods and children."

Although asses are thus frequently figured on the ancient monu-
ments of Egypt, no representation of the mule has been found there,
not even on the numerous monuments built after the horse was intro-
duced. The people had already a good stock of camels and asses, and
their soil was not of a character to call the work of mules into requi-
sition ; and mules are still scarce in Egypt.

On the other hand, the Assyrians have left us but few figures of
the ass ; but numerous representations of mules appear in their bas-re-
liefs, where these animals are plainly recognizable by their ears and
horse-tails.

The first mules in the East were probably produced in those regions
of Asia lying between the Ganges and the Mediterranean littoral of
Syria, a short time after the arrival of the first Mongolian immigrants
into these countries, where, through their residence, the Asiatic horses
and the African or Nilotic asses first met. It is, then, not surprising
that the legends carry the existence of mules in Assyria back into fab-
ulous times. The cuneiform inscriptions, moreover, furnish certain
and quite numerous facts attesting the antiquity of the existence of
mules in that and the neighboring countries.

The iise of mules was condemned by the Mosaic law, and was not
adopted among the Israelites till after the priestly power had been sub-
ordinated to that of the laity by the establishment of royalty. The
most ancient mention of these animals among the Israelites refers to
the mules on which the people of the tribes of Issachar, Zebulon, and
Naphthali brought provisions to Hebron for David, after the death of
Saul (1 Chron. xii, 40). After this they are frequently referred to.

The mule is mentioned in the Veda ; and Strabo says that the Pra-
sii, on the banks of the Ganges, had them at the time of the voyage
of Megasthenes to India.

Herodotus tells of the mules which Cyrus had to draw his water-
wagons on his march from Persia to the siege of Babylon, and relates
a curious story of one of the mules attached to the expedition of

0 RIG IX OF THE DONKEY. 787

Xerxes against the Greeks. The markets of Tyre, in the time of Eze-
kiel, were supplied with mules by the people of Togarma, or Armenia.

According to Diodorus, Alexander, after the siege of Persepolis,
brought from Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Susiana, a multitude of pack
and draught mules and three thousand camels, with which to take away
the treasure from that city ; and, when the body of Alexander was
taken from Babylon to Egypt, " four tongues were fixed to the chariot,
and to each tongue a train of four yokes, each yoke composed of four
mules, the whole forming a team of sixty-four mules selected for their
vigor and spirit." Homer furnishes a number of evidences of the an-
tiquity of the existence of mules in Asia Minor and Greece, and in one
place declares them superior for certain purposes to oxen.

Not only do we possess fewer ancient facts respecting asses and
mules than respecting horses, because their part in history has been
less important, but the historical documents on asses and mules per-
mit us to trace their past further back in the East than in the West,
and this is easily explained. In the first place, the habit of preserving
the memory of facts arose earlier in the East than in the West ; and,
in the second place, our facts relative to the Western ass are derived
chiefly from the Latin authors, whose references are less exact, because
they were apt to include in a lump under the designation of jumenta
all the kinds of pack and draught animals, horses, asses, mules, oxen,
and camels, that composed the baggage-trains of the armies whose
exploits they related.

It is, nevertheless, true that the domestication of the European ass
must have dated from a very ancient time ; it must have followed
very shortly the importation into the Hispano-Atlantic center of the
use of dolmens and arms of polished stone. M. Boucher de Perthes
has found in the peats of the Somme, some fifteen or sixteen feet
below the level of the stream, an equoid skull, which M. Sanson has
recognized as that of an African or Nilotic ass. The animal to which
it belonged, or one of its ancestors, must have been taken there by
man.

Only a few documents support the probability that mules existed in
Southwestern Europe in very ancient times. Varro says that the sen-
ator Axius bought a stallion-ass for four hundred thousand sestertise,
or $16,800. Columella's treatise on agriculture bears witness to the
importance of work with mules among the Romans. This accounts
for the high prices that were sometimes paid for particular stallions,
for the species was neither rare nor new in Italy. The earliest men-
tion of a mule in Rome, with a definite date, is that of the animals
that drew the chariot in which Tullia rode over the body of her father
Tullius after he was assassinated, b. c. 534.

The histories of the Roman wars contain several incidents in which
mules appear to have been used in the army on a large scale, and of
stratagems in which they were made to play a prominent part : as

788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when the consul L. Papirius Cursor, making war upon the Samnites,
frightened the enemy with the noise of a drove of them rushing down
the mountain and dragging large limbs behind them ; and when Julius
Caesar, in the civil wars, prevented the Pompeiians in Spain from de-
camping by marching his mules with a great bustle by their camp, and
making them think that he was retiring.

Our historical citations show, then, with great probability, that the
two asinine races are natives of hot countries, the one of the region of
the Upper Nile, the other of the Hispano- Atlantic center. For this
reason they are difficult of acclimation in cold regions, while they are
better able than horses to endure the torrid temperature of the dia-
mond-regions of Southern Africa. Furthermore, the African or Nilotic
ass was diffused from a very ancient period over a geographical area
which extended at least from the Ganges to the Atlantic Ocean, while
the European or Hispano-Atlantic ass has hardly got beyond the
boundaries of his original country. The history of asses, then, as well
as that of horses, testifies that the ancient migrations of civilization
did not start from the western part of the continent.

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER*

By HENEY HOBAET BATES, M. A.

Ti

1HE nature of matter is still almost as unknown to us in its essence
as it was to the ancients, since in its minute structure it lies far
below the range of the senses, or of instrumental appliances, and,
therefore, beyond that direct experimental field so necessary in fur-
nishing primary conceptions to the mind. From the impossibility of
originating entirely novel ideas (which would amount to creative
power), we are forced to combine and recombine such conceptions as
we have, derived from experiences within that excessively small por-
tion of the scale of being within the ken of our perceptions and fac-
ulties. This perceptible scale has been somewhat extended in both
directions by refined modern instrumental means, and thus the number
of elementary concepts has been slightly increased, while precision
has been added to those already in possession, by stricter modes of
analysis.

The field, however, is still largely speculative. It might, there-
fore, seem unprofitable and unscientific to labor in it, were it not for
the urgent necessity for and great value of some working hypothesis,
however crude (if on the road to truth), as an aid and stimulus to
further progress. Without hypothesis, we can not interpret or collo-

* Read before the Philosophical Society of Washington, January 27, 1S83.

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 789

cate such facts as we gain ; while, without facts, we can not improve
our hypothesis.

The great trouble about matter is to find out how much of it and
what in it is material. Strange to say, there is nothing on which
philosophers are less agreed. Unfortunately, our notions of matter
are derived solely from sense impressions ; and that form of it which
most impresses the senses is the most encumbered with fugitive and
non-essential properties. We can not say with certainty whether
these properties are positive or negative.

When upon a clear summer's day we gaze outward into a cloudless
sky, we look apparently into clear and void space, except for the deep-
blue diffused light. We recognize vacuity. Even while we gaze,
perhaps a light, fleecy cloud forms itself before our eyes, and we form
the concept of the creation of a material object. We know that it is
not a mere apparition — it is a form of substance. Properties begin to
be recognizable in it. It reflects light — it displays color — it moves.
Should its development progress, we shall have still further evidence
of its substantiality. It will grow darker and more dense. It will
exhibit gravity, and descend in liquid drops or solid flakes, and these
portions in turn will exhibit the typical properties, qualities, and re-
actions of matter.

Now, what elicited this bundle of realities out of apparent nothing ?
A mere local refrigeration — a flaw of nothing tangible — abstracted
something from the invisible potential occupant of the space, reduced
its volume, sapped its mobility, its power of holding its own, and prop-
erties began to appear. Death began its work, and, as the animus fled,
the skeleton framework came within our ken.

We might rise by analogy from the nimbus to the nebula — from
the terrestrial to the cosmical — and see with imagination's eye a simi-
lar inverse evolution producing the apparition of things substantial,
which may be really but the intaglio of the realities. For that which
consists merely in the negation of something can not be the truest
substance. An ulcer is not more material or real than the healthy
tissue before the latter gives urgent call for recognition of its actuality
by inflammation, incipient degradation, and advancing dissolution.

It may be possible, however, to corner a reality by the reverse
process. A fair type of matter is our block of ice. It is sufficiently
substantial, and loaded down with properties. A simple exposure to
different temperature conditions causes its sensational properties to
drop off like old clothes. We soon come to a pair of invisible and
intangible existences, investigable by indirect means only, of which
sufficient knowledge has been gained to establish their discontinuous
or corpuscular character, as imagined by Democritus.

This molecule we must take as the representative of matter ; for
all masses of it, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid, are but aggregations
of similar corpuscles. We can only pursue it with the eye of the

790 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

imagination ; for, as has been shown by the molecular physicists, its
dimensions are so inconceivably minute as to far transcend the mech-
anism of vision, since it would require at least twenty thousand in a
line to occupy a medium wave-length of light.

But could the molecule even be magnified to visible and tangible
dimensions, with a new light to view it by, it could not by any means
be rendered visible, either in whole or in its parts, on account of its
incessant and marvelous activity, both interior and translatory. That
the gas-molecule did not get its interior motion from the heat of dis-
sociation is certain, for, on being allowed to recombine, it yields up
its translatory activity, and with it as many degrees of temperature
as disappeared in accomplishing the dissociation. No means of wholly
destroying the interior motion are known. By some savants it is re-
garded as primordial and ultimate. It is highly probable, for reasons
which Mr. Taylor has pointed out,* that the hydrogen-molecule con-
tains at least four pairs of revolving elements, revolving in different
pei'iods, and in contractile orbits, but with periods as undeviating as
those of the moons of Mars. It is in the revolving or vibratory con-
stituent of this couple that we seek the final essence of matter, though
perhaps not to arrive at it. We must not endow it with gratuitous
attributes, but it is surely an entity of some kind, having, in the first
place, persistent and regulated motion. Secondly, it has inertia, or
mass — the property of conserving vis viva. Thirdly, it has some bond
with its fellow by which the motions of both are modified by a con-
stant stress according to a definite law of distance, and this, following
Newton, we call attraction. Fourthly, it has the complex property of
interchange of momenta, accompanied by that of conserving and com-
pounding motion by angular rebound upon an indefinitely near ap-
proach, which we name resilience, or repulsion. Dimension it need
not have, nor any other property of masses ; but nobody has ever yet
succeeded in getting rid of the above four. This is not universally
recognized, however, and the recent controversies of philosophy are
owing to the strenuous attempts to reduce the number, especially of
those called occult. Motion being in our ordinary experience a result,
has not been so classified, and indeed has only more recently been
recognized as primary. It is with causes that philosophy seeks to
deal, and in our experience causation is a chain. Primordial motion,
however, is as occult and mysterious as static force.

One class of philosophers, recognizing the self -existent character of
motion, has exhausted ingenuity in the effort to deduce attraction
from it, of course wittingly or unwittingly bringing into co-operation
the occult force inertia, to obtain vis viva. Another class would de-
duce all motion from attraction : while in the attempt to contrive a
mechanism to explain resiliency — the most incomprehensible of all in a
body without parts — immensely greater complications and difficulties

* Annual Address before the Philosophical Society of Washington, 1882, p. 24.

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 791

have been introduced. Inertia, so far as I am aware, has always been
accepted as an inscrutable fact, or ignored.

An entity with four unexplained properties is regarded as still a
long way from satisfactory simplicity. But a more important con-
sideration is that the entity is always found associated with its fel-
low or fellows in a dependent and artificial way (when identified at
all), which indicates an advance from primitive independence and sim-
plicity. The complexity of the simplest atom we know of has already
been referred to. The resemblance of the atoms to manufactured
articles was pointed out by Sir John Herschel ; and not only that, but
they resemble articles made in quantities by machinery, all exactly
alike, like Waltham watches or Springfield guns. And the fact that
any recognizable atom, like that of hydrogen, for instance, is always
exactly the same thing, whether derived from the ocean or the coal-
measures, or from the occluded gas of a meteorite, or inspected in the
sun and stars, as pointed out by Maxwell (" Encyclopedia Britannica,"
ninth edition, article " Atom "), would seem to indicate that it must
be the result of an undeviating process, and in its ultimate deriva-
tion made up of finally discrete entities, and not out of continuous
substance, whatever that may mean. The fact, too, of its occurrence
at such wide points of distribution, indicates the unity of the present
scheme of evolution, as well as the great antiquity of its origin, and
its persistency of type.

We have at present no clew to the evolutionary history of the
atom. The atom I distinguish both from the ultimate particle without
parts, and from the complex derivative molecule of the chemical ele-
ments, such as all those we know of are. In fact, these must also be
distinguished from the still differently organized compound molecule
of the chemical combinations, which can be taken apart, and the enor-
mously complicated system of the organic molecule, as of oil or albu-
men, which, if a body so simple as iron contains more than seven
hundred couples, must contain rotary elements which can only be
numbered by millions.

The atom, or elementary couple, is conceived as having dimension,
figure, and polarity, and also perfect elasticity, by reason of its har-
monic vibration. We have to seek an origin for it if we are at all
impressed with its artificial and evolved character. Its artificiality
lies in its rotary motion ; such motion being due to and maintainable
only by a composition of forces.

The weight and ponderosity of matter have proved a stumbling-
block to the conceptions of the later philosophers — especially after
Newton had generalized them as attraction and inertia — far more than
the equally unexplainable property of resistance, though why, it is
difficult to say. Lucretius found no such difficulty with the concep-
tion of weight, for his corpuscles all naturally tended " downward,"
so uncosmical were his ideas. Le Sage revived and modified the by-

792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pothesis of Lucretius, especially to get rid of the (to him) inconceivable
notion of gravity. Those kinematists who follow Le Sage do so with
the same avowed motive. Another school, with the same view, have
revived the continuous notion of matter ; out of which they have
constructed an atom which has permanence and elasticity, but no
avowed occult affection except inertia. It has not been further de-
veloped.

The difficulty in accepting the fact of gravity seems to be a meta-
physical one, though even the metaphysicians have not held that con-
ceivability is a criterion of objective truth. The irrelevancy of this
objection has been well stated by Mr. W. R. Browne, in his article on
"Central Forces" ("London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical
Magazine," January, 1883, page 40), as follows : " I am not aware
that the term 'unthinkable,' which is a new one, has ever been defined.
Until it has been, it is impossible to say whether action at a distance
is unthinkable, or whether the fact of a conception being unthinkable
is sufficient reason, or any reason, for holding it to be untrue." The
many instances of unthinkable truths within our familiar knowledge
will readily recur to all in illustration, as, for instance, the infinite
extension of space, the infinite approach of asymptotes, the nature of
interminable series, etc. In fact, all forms of absolute knowledge are
unthinkable. The refusal to recognize this form of knowledge has led
to much heresy in other branches of exact inquiry — even in mathe-
matics. The sentiment, however, such as it is, has led to many inge-
nious and futile devices in the branch we are now considering — among
others, the invention of the vortex atom, before referred to.

The vortex atom belongs, not to physics, but to purely mathemati-
cal concepts ; being an ideal abstraction — as much so as a surface, or
a line, or four-dimensioned space — invented for the purpose of investi-
gating problems in hydrodynamics. A homogeneous, incompressible,
continuous, perfectly mobile but not miscible substance is an impos-
sible entity, and it would seem an inconsistent one as to mobility ; and,
if vortex motion can not be destroyed in it, it is equally true that no
means can be devised for originating it. An occult force had to be
attributed to it, after all, as mass. Helmholtz, its inventor, discussed
it as a purely mathematical problem ; but its British adopters, struck
with the remarkable attributes deduced from the postulates, set it up
as the basis of a kosmos. By a similar appreciation, when that char-
acteristic product of British genius, a modern plow, was carried to
India — the land of theosophic contemplation — its enthusiastic foreign
admirers, after having been carefully shown its merits, and instructed
in its use, were found to have erected it in the center of the field as
a god !

But, though we have no need of the hypothesis of an ether to ex-
plain away the weight of matter, especially since no such invention
has been so perfected as to prove particularly successful for the pur-

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 793

pose, the establishment of the ether with any demonstrated properties
might aid our conceptions of matter, and be concatenated with it as
one of its higher forms. Maxwell has pointed out (" Encyclopae-
dia Britannica," ninth edition, article "Ether") that, though many
ethers have been proposed for various purposes, none have survived
except that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propaga-
tion of light. Evidence accumulates for this hypothesis, in some form,
for we have no other way of accounting for the facts, but the mechan-
ism is still a mystery.

The very property of the supposititious ethers which is so fatal to
all explanation of a static stress, like gravity, namely, the requirement
of time for their functions, qualifies them so far as a vehicle of radiant
manifestations. Were it not for the transmission of radiant energy in
specific time, doubtless it would be far simpler and more satisfactory
to explain the whole effect as actio in distans, under the necessary law
of conservation, or on the Cartesian principle of contact. The phe-
nomenon of electro-magnetic induction — which is believed to occur be-
tween the earth and sun, as a real material effect manifest in converted
energy, and yet acting in lines transverse to the lines of transmission,
and apparently simultaneous — even now outstands as unexplainable in
any other way, for its mechanism certainly can not at present be com-
prehended. Nor is the mechanism for the transmission of the radiant
forms of energy yet clearly made out, though some postulates about
it having consistency and probability have been laid down. The fact
that something supra-material is necessary and probable on other
grounds gives encouragement to the idea that a basis for the atom can
eventually be found.

The ether has been conceived under four principal modes of struc-
ture, all fashioned out of our concepts of matter. Two of these are
static, and two kinetic. The first is the pseudo-concept of a continuous,
colloidal plenum. This is a metaphysical, not a physical, concept ; de-
rived from an idealization of a false observation of matter which can
not be realized consistently in thought with what is postulated of it
afterward. As Maxwell happily remarks about the notion of homo-
geneous and continuous matter (" Encyclopaedia Britannica," ninth
edition, article " Atom "), " it is in its extreme form a theory incapable
of development."

The second concept is that of a solid. This has been assumed as a
conceivable way of accounting for the very high co-efficient of elas-
ticity required by the undulatory theory, and also for the transverse
mode of transmitting vibrations exhibited. The word " solid," how-
ever, can not have any meaning such as we ordinarily attach to it ;
and under any signification it is admitted that the theory is encum-
bered with several difficulties, some of which have been set forth by
Professor G. G. Stokes, in his " Report on Double Refraction " (" Brit-
ish Association Report," 18G2, p. 253).

794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thirdly, the ether has been conceived to be the ordinary elastic
gases or atmospheres freely expanded into space. But these have no
co-efficient of elasticity sufficient to give them such expansion, and
they would be liable to condensation and compression by their own
gravity about the planets, which would cause a rise of temperature
and dissipation of energy which would rob the ether of its permanent
character. Besides, Maxwell has shown that our atmosphere expanded
into space would be far too rare in the interplanetary spaces to satisfy
the required conditions ; nor is there any molecular velocity at all ade-
quate to the propagation of wave-energy with the velocities observed,
as will be shown further on.

This brings us to the fourth concept, which is that of a pure pri-
mordial gaseous plenum, of sufficiently high tension, and in the condi-
tion assumed by gases in a rarefied receiver, where the mean path is so
long in proportion to the mean distance that a symmetrical movement
arranges itself, according to the law first pointed out by Maxwell as a
corollary from the equilibrium of pressure observed in confined gases,
and the performance of gases in a rarefied space first observed by
Crookes, that particles in free collision in sj)ace tend constantly to re-
arrange their motions automatically so as to move uniformly in all
directions in radial lines from every point. With the gases experi-
mented with the mean path at normal pressure and density is very
short (only about -g^oWo °f an incn> when the molecules have a mean
distance from each other of -fo^irFFo °f an inch), but, at the extreme of
rarefaction which we are able to effect (about -joooooir °^ an atmos-
phere, when the distance of the molecules is still only t,0^6o of an
inch), the mean path rises to about four inches ; and C. T. Preston has
shown ("Nature," vol. xxiii, p. 463), that could we carry the exhaus-
tion to the third power of that obtainable, so that the distance of the
molecules apart should be so much as one seventh of an inch, the mean
path would be raised to 60,000,000 miles, since it increases in the trip-
licate ratio with the distance. But with the ether no such rarity need
be postulated, since mean free path is but a question of size of mole-
cule, and in comparison with the hydrogen-molecule the size of the
particle can only be infinitesimal. It is clear, however, that, with the
enormous velocity due to the particle, all the effect of continuity would
be produced, so far as vision is concerned, by a mean distance apart,
not merely of one seventh of an inch, but of many miles.

We may therefore assign to the ether any required free path, and
any necessary density, tension, and velocity, all of these latter being
imperceptible to molecular structures which float in and are permeated
by it. The motions also of molecules in a gas so constituted would be
practically as unaffected as in free space, since it is demonstrable that
the resistance to motion offered by a medium such as the hypothesis
calls for would be in the ratio of the motion of the moving mass to
that of the particle of the medium, which in the case supposed would

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 795

be excessively small, the velocity of the radiant particles being equal
at least to that of the transmission of light.*

It is clear that, by the use of the term " free path " by the invent-
ors of this form of the ether, its particle had already been tacitly
endowed with the ocult properties of inertia and resilience. Primor-
dial motion was also attributed — an occult factor, which, with the other
two, constitutes and conserves energy.

Such an ether serves to explain the phenomena of light, and the
other radiant modes of energy, better than any other yet proposed.
It, therefore, measurably serves its purpose. Prior to its invention,
we had only — first, Newton's hypothesis of corpuscular emission, in-
stantaneously propagated with explosive violence at an enormous but
still uniform velocity, in all possible directions, in radial lines, which
still were able to fill space at all points to unlimited distances — infinite
and impossible results from a trivial cause ; secondly, we had Huy-
gens's scarcely more credible hypothesis of undulations, propagated,
with the same instantaneous and uniform velocity in all directions,
from a luminous point in a pervading statical solid or fluid medium —
another infinite effect from a trivial cause. But by the hypothesis of
its own independent linear motion, ever conserved — the parasitic en-
ergy alone being transferable, and by a mechanism different from the
translatory motion — many difficulties are got over. The conserva-
tion of the linear motion is due to the law of radiant matter above
stated, and also, I conceive, to another consideration, which tends to
prevent the bombardment of the molecules, and consequent rise of
temperature and distribution of energy, so fatal to the gravitation
theory. It is that the only obstructive portion of the so-called ma-
terial atom (which I have named the elementary molecule) lies in the
extreme boundary ; and even of this it constitutes only such fraction
as the ratio which the dimension of the component particle bears to
the semi-circumference of the atom, which is an infinitesimal ratio.
The component, having a dimension and velocity of an order compar-
able with that of the ethereal particles themselves, can protect itself
from collisions by a readjustment, without rise of temperature, on the
same terms as obtain with ethereal collisions. Collisions, however,
would be excessively rare — as much so as those of the particles among
themselves — and an occasional collision could not destroy the atom,
owing to the peculiar bond of the component with its fellow ; but its
motion would be merely compounded into a gyration. The real field

* The velocity would really be at least one third greater. It has been shown, by a cal-
culation of Maxwell's ("London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine," 1877,
p. 453), that, in a gas constituted as assumed, the velocity of the wave-motion would be
to the velocity of the particle in the ratio of the V 5 to 3 ; that is, about -745+ ; which
would give a velocity for the ethereal particle of nearly 250,000 miles per second. It is
highly probable, moreover, that some forms of electrical radiant energy surpass light in
velocity of transmission.

796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of attraction and bombardment would be the void focus of the disk,
toward which the resultant of all the forces in the ring would tend, as
a corollary from the deduction from synchronism that the force which
binds the atomic couples varies directly as the distance, instead of as
the inverse squares.

In its passage through the disk-atom the ray takes up and conserves
the dropped motion as a transverse vibratory motion of some kind ; or,
as Maxwell styles it, " some vector property which does not interfere
with the motion of translation" (" Encyclopaedia Britannica," ninth edi-
tion, article " Ether "), and which it can impart again to the revolving
systems of atoms through which it travels, in an inverse mode to that
of its derivation. The invention of the mechanism of this vector
motion has its difficulties. I consider, first, that the radiant energies
are not exhibited in matter, except upon a certain degree of disturb-
ance, showing itself in a violent clashing of systems, either from the
forming of new combinations or from incandescence resulting from
the accession of energy from without or within. These clashings dis-
turb the equilibrium of the atomic orbits, and occasion their rapid
deformation by harmonic vibration in elliptic orbits whose rectangular
axes rapidly alternate from major to minor while the agitation is kejDt
up. Now, the circular movements of the components do not disturb
the uniform transit of the linear ray ; but the rapid approach and
recession of the components in passing through the violent elliptical
transitions cause a rapid alternation of stress in the field of stress
through which the rays pass — since the stress varies as the distance of
the components — causing a vibratory deflection of the stream of par-
ticles, due to the variation of the attractive force, in all rays except
the polar ray, and in the plane of the ray normal to the plane of stress.
Since the disk-atoms lie in all planes, we shall have transverse vibra-
tions in all directions ; but, if the rotating disk is gyratory, as would
be the rule and not the exception, the identical ray would receive a
vector or corkscrew motion, similar to what is called for by observation.
The amount of deflection I take to be the index of refraction of the
molecule.

It may seem unaccountable that the whole ray should undulate
from passing through a single locality of oscillatory disturbance, be-
ing composed of discrete and unconnected particles ; but we may com-
pare the parallel phenomenon of a jet of water, forcibly ejected to a
great distance through a hose-nozzle, which exhibits to the eye similar
undulations when the source of discharge is slightly and rapidly oscil-
lated.

It may also seem incredible that any orbital movements could be
permanent enough to sustain oscillatory vibrations of such inconceiv-
able frequency as those which luminous rays are known to execute ;
but I have computed, from the probable dimensions of the hydrogen-
molecule as assigned by the molecular physicists, and an orbital veloci-

SPECULATION'S ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 797

ty due to an ethereal origin for the components, that many hundreds
of revolutions must occur for each transverse oscillation or elliptical
deformation.

In its passage through other disk-atoms in equilibrium which are
in harmonic tension with the vibrating ray (and therefore not diatber-
mal or transparent), I conceive that tbe vibratory ray is able to invert
the process and agitate the diaphragm of stress of the system, as a
fish-line does the surface of a pool ; thus setting up an inverse com-
motion and vibration of orbits due to accession of motion, accounting:
for the effects of reflexion, tbe absorption and conversion of light into
sensible heat, and the chemical and actinic and electrolytic effects ob-
served. The diverse nature of some of these effects may be due to
the extremely diverse character of the vibrations, both of the disks
and of the rays ; e. g., the polar ray, which would have a pulsatory
vibration.

The primitive gas would not, any more than our own elementary
gases, experience any difficulty in holding its own, and maintaining
equilibrium forever, under any ordinary state of diffusion, by reason
of its perfect elasticity. But with emerging matter, or crippled ether,
among other properties gravity becomes apparent ; and though hardly
sensible, at first, yet within the enormous cosmical aggregations of this
novel drift, pressure and condensation would ensue at some point so
great that in the absolute cool of space the critical point of endurance
would be overcome, and some molecular systems would cripple and
collapse, with the resultant liberation of their motion and clashing and
agitation of the neighboring systems known as rise of temperature.
The falling in of others would follow and increase the commotion,
causing local expansion, and currents to a region of less pressure —
sometimes, no doubt, with enough velocity to carry them entirely into
free space, and beyond the control of the system.

It would be futile to attempt here to follow out all the complex
consequences of this initiated evolution, but it is clear tbat tbe temper-
ature of the whole aggregation must rise until, at the outer boundary,
where alone the liberated energy was able finally to escape, the tem-
perature must stand constantly at the heat of dissociation of the par-
ticular element or elements being evolved at any stage of develop-
ment. But radiation would proceed only at the rate allowable by the
nature of the combinations going on at a specified stage, though it
would be practically constant for long periods, as the supply of motion
could be extricated. The aggregation could not become a simple cool-
ing body wbile molecular mobility remained.

Amid all this commotion and lavish escape of energy on the wings
of tbe ether, not one particle of matter is lost. It can not recover its
linear motion. It joins in the dance that is going on, and contributes
to swell the molecular weight of whatever system of molecules is being
evolved at that particular stage of development.

798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The absolute synchronism exhibited under all amplitudes of vibra-
tion by the disk-atom indicates the same law of central force as that
of the pendulum in its synchronous forms, or the spring-governor ;
and if attraction be the bond, it is a similar law of attraction, namely,
directly as the distance. This is the Newtonian law of gravity within
the homogeneous sphere, and thus by actual demonstration the attrac-
tive atom observes the same law as would the earth were it penetrable
— namely, the inverse squares of the distances within the sphere.*

The identity of the radiant particle with the component of the
atom is inferable. It possesses the requisite properties of mass and
resilience, and sufficient linear motion. Whether it should also have
attraction imputed to it as inherent depends on whether that property
in the molecule, where alone it is observed, is derived from the parti-
cle. If not, the latter needs only mass to conserve its deflections and
its course under the first law of motion, and resilience to secure its
compensatory readjustment in equilibrium. Even if possessed of
gravity, the enormous proper velocity of the particle would render
such an affection totally undiscoverable, because the Newtonian curves
of the second order resulting from the composition of force could be
nothing less than hyperbolas, whose branches would be wholly undis-
tinguishable from straight lines.

No means at present offer themselves for suggesting how such a
discontinuity of action as is implied by the change from simple linear
motion to the balanced movements of the atoms could have occurred ;
and especially how a law of attraction according to inverse squares
of distance, which we must postulate, could change for one so extraor-
dinary as that observed within the atom, namely, directly at the dis-
tance. The law referred to rather resembles that of our summer
whirlwinds, wherein the centripetal force, i. e., the pressure from
without due to the rarefaction within, seems to vary directly as the
centrifugal force, and therefore as the radius, until equilibrium of
rotation is established. These also display a species of attraction
within the vortex ; and some forms of matter — as iron — evince a simi-
lar polar attraction at sensible distances when rearranged by vortical
motion. But such a theory does not commend itself by that simplicity
which we should expect in the region of the atom.

The evolution of the atom or elementary molecule from the par-
ticle, even if real, is not continuous with the present order of nature
within our observation, and need not be, any more than the formation

* This parallel holds good only for the balanced couples themselves, in which I have
assumed the cause of the stress to reside. The intensity of the stress would not vary as
the distance from the center for a third body, as in the permeable sphere, but the field
would be like a strained elastic tympanum, with varying tension dependent on the separa-
tion of the elements. The mathematical discussion of this field of force would be most
interesting, involviug, as it does, the investigation of all the phenomena of refraction and
reflexion.

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 799

of a storm-cloud is a continuous process in the atmosphere, or the ap-
pearance of a rash in the human patient is continuous. But the cata-
clysm once accomplished, a new uniformity must have supervened, and
evolution proceeded from that point continuously from the simple to
the more heterogeneous, in accordance with strict dynamical law.
Even now the history of such evolution is as plainly to be read as the
history of the growth of plants in a forest. Some of the nebuloe give
evidence of being collections of the simplest primordial gases, or mix-
tures of such, by the simplicity of their spectral lines. Even in these,
radiant energy is being set free, or we could not know of their exist-
ence. We also know that the sun and stars are tremendous labora-
tories for the organization of matter, where disused motions are liber-
ated in torrents. The creation of molecules in gradually increasing
complexity seems to go on by discontinuous steps or stages, in accord-
ance with the discontinuous and discrete nature of the elemental fac-
tors ; and its products at each certain stage are all duplicates, whether
in this sun or that. Every increase in complexity apparently liberates
motion, which, by the law of conservation, must escape as an efficient
agent. With the constant escape of energy, however, solidification
finally ensues, as our planet bears witness, and the mobility of the
molecules practically ceases. Gases and moisture, however, remain
over to supply mobile conditions, and the work goes on. At this stage
new supplies of sufficient temperature from without are capable of re-
versing the process to a degree, restoring mobility, and introducing
new modes for the play of affinities. The radiant energies of the sun
supply for our planet the extraneous motion necessary to carry the
complexity of the molecule higher than the simple running down of
matter can do, and we have the chemistry of the carbon compounds.
Aided by some discontinuous step, which we can not as yet identify
or explain, vitalized functions appear. The wondrously compound
molecules of the tropics are evolved, oils, starches, sugars, spices,
ethers, and alkaloids — magazines of stored-up vis viva — and, by the
assimilation of these, physiological phenomena in sentient beings are
carried on, accompanied by the mysteries of will and consciousness,
and the still more unaccountable facts of succession and heredity,
which mock, if material, all efforts at conception or comprehension of
matter in its ultimate essence.

The actual amount of energy stored up in the elementary molecule
is not calculable, but it must be enormous. The amount of motion
can not be certainly known, for we do not know whether any could
have disappeared at the birth, and the mass or atomic weight of the
ultimate particle can not be known by any means now in possession.
The great rapidity of oscillation across the small orbit has been viv-
idly illustrated by G. J. Stoney ("London, Edinburgh, and Dublin
Philosophical Magazine," August, 1868, page 132), by the considera-
tion (since numbers convey no idea) that they bear the same ratio of

800 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

frequency to a second of time that a second (or a wave of the hand)
bears to 30,000,000 years — one of the geologic periods, during which a
race of animals may have been evolved and have perished.

Such inconceivable velocity of rhythmical motion in the elementary
molecule points to some cause more potent than the action of any
mere static force combined with any mere energy of position. The
same is true of the more complex molecules of our experience — say of
iron, or calcium — displaying hundreds of spectral lines. We can not
suppose these inconceivably energetic motions to have been all set up
by any mere precipitation which evolved the element, nor to have exist-
ed in their present organization from eternity. The same is, of course,
true of the organic molecule. Their conserved energy lies in the vast
reserve of vis viva stored up in their complex interior movements. A
few ounces of organized food suffice for the expenditure of a moun-
tain-climber for a whole day. An apparently inert explosive is trav-
ersed by a tiny spark, or pressed too closely, and the increased swing
of one molecular orbit sets off the whole mass into new paths and
more economical relations by which a vast amount of motion is lib-
erated, to appear as temperature. This temporarily expands the wrhole
mass many volumes, but, as the agitation subsides, the now surplus
energy dissipates by radiation, and, being picked up by surrounding
bodies, temperature becomes equalized. This mechanical modification
and distribution of motions, resulting in final equilibrium, is more in-
telligible than the instantaneous setting up of immense velocities and
momenta by precipitation from a state of absolute rest.

Besides, research proves that there is absolutely no room for any
such energy of position as was fancied. Sir William Thomson has
shown, by considerations of high probability (" Nature," vol. i, page
553), that the distance from center to center of molecules in solids and
liquids can be but little more than the diameter of the molecules. In
liquids, from their great resistance to compression, the practical point
of contact has been reached, but temperature conserves mobility.

The phrase " dead matter," once deemed so eminently character-
istic, now seems absurd. To deprive matter of its inherent activity is
indeed one of the most difficult problems we can encounter. To do it,
some means for the disposal and transfer of its energy must be pro-
vided. Until very recently, no means were contrivable for subduing
the elementary gases, but, by resorting to the most extraordinary com-
pression, in conjunction with the lowest temperature procurable by
artificial means, the feat has been accomplished. There is a way, how-
ever, of pitting certain elements against each other by taking advan-
tage of their commensurate atomic periods, and in this way we get
our chief supply of artificial heat. This is due to our fortunate store
of carbon and hydrogen, free and combined, and of uncombined
oxygen. The known distances of the molecules of the gases above
named under normal temperature and pressure give no clew to the

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 801

enormous amount of energy liberated by their combination under any
supposable attraction — certainly not under any that is observable.

We are, therefore, compelled to recognize the latent energy in mat-
ter. The kinematists were profoundly impressed by this now estab-
lished fact, and, as is the usual tendency of the promulgation of any
brilliant discovery, they undertook too much with it — to wit, to con-
struct a kosmos.

By a similar tendency, after the establishment of the laws of mo-
tion, and of universal gravitation, followed by the discovery of the
conservation of matter, and later by that of the conservation of en-
ergy, and the perception of the energy of position, these brilliant
advances in knowledge of the absolute had encouraged the hope that
the ultimate could be explained. Matter was then viewed almost en-
tirely in its statical aspect — as is even now too much the case, for we
still see in our chemical text-books molecules absurdly represented by
geometrical diagrams — and, from the fact that motion does actually
result from attraction and position, it was natural to relegate motion
to the category of effects. There were, then, but two factors in the
problem — matter, and its occult affections. But as matter they took
the old " dead matter," in the last gasp of its evolution, freighted
down with its bundle of inert properties of negation, and, to evolve a
universe, simply credited it with its virtue of position, and left it to
the action of the weakest of its affections, gravitation, to run over
again a short portion of its normal course.

Even then, the surprising result appeared that it would galvanize
itself into life with activity enough to supply the radiant energy
which our sun now exhibits for a period of some 20,000,000 years.
This, whether we follow the meteoric hypothesis of Mayer, or the
contraction hypothesis of Ilelmholtz, which have been held to be the
only conceivable hypotheses. How sublime the solution of the prob-
lem could we, in the place of these cinders, put into the mathematical
mill the true data ! James Croll, in groping for some adequate data
to explain the duration actually needed for the exhibition of solar en-
ergy of which we have evidence, suggests (" Climate and Time," page
353) that, on dynamical principles, given two masses each one half the
sun's mass, moving directly toward each other with a velocity of 476
miles per second, sufficient heat might be accounted for to cover an
emission at the present rate for 50,000,000 years. The surplus velocity,
over and above that due to gravity, he derives from stellar proper
motion ; but, while the supposition is violent and unphilosophical, both
in respect to the large proper motion assumed, and particularly as to
the assumption of direct collision, in the plurality of cases called for
by the multitude of suns, the result is still grossly inadequate. The
problem is insoluble from pure dynamical considerations. They take
no heed of the most important factors — elementary specific heat, ele-
mentary affinities, elementary motion. "When we once succeed in

VOL. XXII. — 51

802 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

legitimizing the conception that suns and stars are evolved, not out of
debris, and weak statical force, but from the primordial plenum itself,
equipped with latent power in equilibrium, we can view them as they
apparently are — perennial fountains of energy — incandescent lamps of
eternity — drawing their supplies from the mysterious stoppage of pri-
mordial motions, with the accompanying evolution of chemical ele-
ments, and the radiation of liberated energy in torrents.

Energy of position is undoubtedly a factor, among others more
important, in an evolving nebula or sun. It should be given its due
value, but no more. There is evidence to show that even the transla-
tory motions of suns and worlds can not be wholly accounted for by
gravity alone. This is furnished by the large proper motion of some
of the stars, particularly the notable instance of 1830 of Groombridge's
catalogue, with a linear velocity of at least two hundred miles per
second, if observations are to be trusted. An analysis by Newcomb
proves conclusively that all the stars of the visible portion of the uni-
verse, and all the possible dark masses which could exist there, are
widely incapable either of furnishing a star with such an amount of
motion, or of stopping it.

The recognition of kinetics, then, in conjunction with dynamics, is
what I desire to call attention to, in our philosophical attempts to ex-
tend our generalizations. We need to take note of all the forces and
factors which we can perceive ; and even then it is probable that our
field of inspection will be too restricted to yield a satisfactory insight
into that which was born from eternity. But that should not induce
us to settle down on a " good enough universe " for finite comprehen-
sion, nor plead for boundaries to the infinite and eternal. Some mathe-
maticians have invented a space cut down to finite comprehension.
The trouble with these finite infinities and limited universes is, that
they do not satisfy the mind, nor the definitions.

Although the course of the present order of creation is far longer
than can be assigned or imagined, and, even as to our solar system,
illimitable as measured by our cycles, no doubt it runs its course, for
we can see the evidence of progressive change. The struggle for the
elimination of energy in its entanglement with mass is a fiercer and
more protracted one than we dreamed of, but it goes surely on to its
termination. The energy by which the small vehicles were possessed
escapes by slow dissipation back into the great storehouse of equili-
brated power whence it was arrested, as gases return to the parent
atmosphere from the rotting wood of the forest. The molecule is
never finally taken apart, that we can see. The skeleton-heaps, in
rigid and icy bonds, wander forever as debris and dust through the
streams of space. Their amount, however, is so infinitesimal compared
with the infinite magazine of their elements which has never been sub-
ject to change throughout the eternities, that they may be regarded
as but the calculi resulting from the merest nodules of local and tern-

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GIRLS. 803

porary inflammation — imperceptible to the health of the infinite
corpus.

Thus I admit, with the pure dynamist, that the material universe,
or successive material universes (if such a solecism is pardonable), as
manifestations of matter and motion, are concatenated with time, are
born, run their course, and fade away, as do the clouds of air. But
the infinite reservoir of power wherein they occur as disturbances
remains. What can cause these manifestations of power — these droop-
ings of energy, with their complicated results ? This is beyond our
finite ken ; but it is certain that the mere running through of its
course of a finite evolution does not end the eternal, the infinite, and
absolute. Nor can the mind be restricted to such a conception by any
argument about the limitation of its faculties.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SEEYANT-GIELS.

By OLIVER E. LYMAN.

SHORTLY after the Flood, as we are informed, Abram's wife
turned her domestic, Hagar, out of the house on account of her
arrogant conduct, which is perhaps the first authenticated instance on
record of trouble between mistress and servant-girl. This sort of
trouble, which began so early, still survives in forms so various and often
so exasperating as to raise the impatient question whether the serving
class is the only dark part of creation which improvement has failed
to reach. The question is, no doubt, full of aggravation and discour-
agement, yet there has been improvement, but it has been of slow at-
tainment, forming no exception to the great law of progressive social
amelioration.

Social changes, it is to be remembered, especially of the alleviating
and elevating kind, are always slow. We are beginning to talk about
social evolution, and the new science of sociology which treats of it ;
but we have to take ages into account before we can realize any posi-
tive conception of advance. Much of the barbarism of early society
clings tenaciously to the domestic relations, while the modification of
human nature and the corresponding mitigation of social imperfec-
tions go on but very gradually, tardily, and partially.

A still further reason for the slowness of improvement in the pres-
ent case arises from the peculiarity of the relations involved. In times
of early violence, it is the weak that are subjugated and enslaved, and,
as civilization advances, it is ever the lowest and most ignorant class
of any society that falls into the condition of menial servitude. The
feeblest, the least competent, the least provident, naturally sink to the
bottom of the social scale, and become the helpers, the dependents,

804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the drudges, and the servile appendages of the classes who have
wealth, intelligence, and power. In domestic life these relations be-
come organized with the abject class at the base of the social struc-
ture. Improving agencies will obviously not take effect alike upon the
higher and lower elements. Many causes will operate powerfully to
maintain separate interests, to favor the superior class, and to hinder
their inferiors, so that servants will be the last to be reached by ele-
vating agencies.

How slowly ameliorating changes in the domestic relations have
proceeded, and how long their worst features have survived, are shown
by the tenacity with which a vicious system of domestic servitude was
clung to even in this country. Multitudes still remember the order
of things in which half the country bought their servants from the
auction-block. That primitive condition in which the menial was a
merchantable chattel, with hardly more rights than a brute, continued
down to these times, and has been got rid of only in the present gen-
eration. The slave system could have lasted as long as it did only in
a form of society in which the menial class was low, degraded, and
without influence. And that the slave system has in turn widely re-
acted to promote the social debasement of the working-class there can
be no doubt. The slave system, of course, grew more and more anoma-
lous as the sense of justice and humanity strengthened among the
people i but we must not forget that slavery in this country was not
destroyed by the moral reprobation of the community. It was de-
fended as an historic and permanent order of society until it was
incidentally terminated by revolution. It is now easy to execrate its
atrocious forms, but we have by no means escaped from the baneful
influence of many of its ideas. The idea of an abject menial class is
still entertained as a part of the normal constitution of human society,
while the associations of a degrading and but recently abandoned sys-
tem are still potent for the debasement of those who continue in the
relations of domestic service.

But, in spite of all this, the serving class, however disabled and de-
graded, will be found to have participated much in that general move-
ment which we term the progress of society. Civilization may have
been staggered by the " servant-girl problem," but it has not wholly
broken down before it. The mistress can no longer kill her perverse
domestic with impunity — although she may often think this is a step
backward instead of forward. General tendencies have been at work
which have put an end to the ancient order in this respect. In the
early ages of domestic servitude, one of its incidents was the power
of the master over the life of the servant. This prerogative has
long since disappeared, though not because of the sixth command-
ment, or as a result of law reform, or the enactment of protective
legislation. It was the culminating effect of a succession of natural
causes, whose operation was gradual and extended over centuries. By

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GIRLS. 805

captivity in time of war, or by the voluntary submission of the indi-
gent, the prosperous and opulent became possessed of numerous ser-
vants, whom they chastised, sold, killed, and subjected to unlimited
jurisdiction generally. In time the master possessed so many of these
abject creatures that their numbers surpassed the accommodations of
the household, and it became necessary to quarter them out upon the
fields they cultivated. Here they lived in hamlets, and were called
villagers, or villeins. Living apart from the master, it became less
easy for him to keep a strict watch over their behavior, or to compel
them to labor by chastisement. To incite them to work, gifts of
money were made, and better results were obtained by making the
pay proportionate to the results accomplished. Thus the master, using
bribery instead of compulsion, and being removed from constant per-
sonal contact with his servants, had less occasion to become enraged
at their short-comings, or to visit them with severe punishment. The
exercise of dominion over life became less frequent, then ceased, and
with a growing sense of justice the arbitrary power was forever lost,
though it took centuries of the slow-working processes of evolution to
accomplish this result. Potgresserus says that not till the twelfth
century was the power lost.

But if progress has brought amelioration to the servile class and
promises still more, it has brought also its disadvantages, some of
which are the results of changed and improved relations. In the
early ages masters and servants were more nearly alike in employ-
ments and manners of living than they are now. The acquirement of
wealth and the luxurious habits which wealth introduced destroyed
this degree of equality ; the additional advantages inured to the benefit
of the master alone ; the servant remained indigent. The effect of
social progress was thus to separate their lives as well as their inter-
ests. Servants constitute an isolated class. By an unwritten social law
they are cut off from intimacy with their superiors, and consequently
fail to reap the advantages which follow a community of interests with
those above them. They fail to be leavened by the influences which
act for the elevation of the community at large. This has operated
to retard their progress and elevation, and produces aggravating effects
which are more marked in our own republican country than in those
countries where social gradations are more definitely established.
Even in slavery there was a certain community of interest and respon-
sibility on the part of the master, of which we see but little in the
surviving forms of domestic servitude. This isolation drives servants
to self-defense against the iron hand of control on the part of masters
and mistresses, and results in a spirit of antagonism, leading to tacit
conspiracy against those whom they regard as their enemies. Obliga-
tions sit lightly upon servants, and they habitually study to promote
their own interests by unscrupulous arts and all kinds of dishonest
practices. This may be deplored, but we may well ask, What are the

806 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

servants to do ? They are a disintegrated as well as an isolated class,
and can gain but imperfectly the benefits which arise from combina-
tion. Equality is the universal theory ; why, then, should they not de-
mand increasing privileges, and rebel against the circumstances that
keep them down ?

But slow as has been the improvement of this class, and notwith-
standing their humble social condition, and although they are too fre-
quently regarded as a lower race of beings, with no rights except to
obey, yet they have reached a stage of progress that entitles them to
the protection of law, to which they are amenable also like all other
people. The servant-girl has a legal status just as much as her mis-
tress, and rights which ought to be held sacred, and, if they were so
regarded, one important step toward the amelioration of the relations
of lady and servant would be taken.

The relation of mistress or master, as the case may be, and servant
is based upon contract only, and the two parties to the contract are
upon an equal footing so far as rights are concerned. They differ only
in what they agree to do — one is to work, and the other to pay — and
thereon hang all the law and the prophets. It naturally follows that
physical punishment can not lawfully be administered to a domestic.
As Chancellor Kent said, " that is not an incident of the contract of
hiring." It is hardly necessary to enlarge upon this right of servants,
as the physical punishment of a domestic is rarely, if ever, heard of.

In the case of slavery, where the servant was owned, it was as-
sumed to be for the interest of the master to provide medical attend-
ance in time of sickness, but the free servant has no such claim. If a
servant-girl falls sick, the mistress is not legally compelled to take
steps to restore her to health. According to both Chancellor Kent
and Mr. Story, the party hiring is not bound to provide a servant
with medical attendance or medicines in case of sickness.* If a gentle-
man at the servant's request sends for a physician, he is not liable to
pay the doctor's bill unless he omits to make known who requests
the services, or unless he exceeds his authority, or expressly or im-
pliedly engages to be answerable, either by directly promising to pay
for them, if rendered, or by doing or saying something which justifies
the doctor m supposing that he engages to pay him.f

But if the gentleman has hired a doctor, and given him to under-
stand that he will pay him, he is bound to pay what the services are
reasonably worth ; he can, however, at any time give him notice that
he will not be liable for further services.^ If he calls the doctor in to
attend the servant without the servant's request or consent, he must
foot the bill ; it being considered merely a generous act on his part.*
A lady, too, under the same circumstances becomes similarly liable —
provided she never had a husband or has buried him. If she is still

* 2 Kent, 298 ; 2 Story on Contr., § 1,298. f 41 How- Pr- (N- Y-), 3?0-

% 1 Bosw., 441. * 2 Story on Contr., § 1,29V.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GIRLS. 807

fettered by one, there seems to be some doubt as to whether she can
make a valid contract that will bind anybody at all to pay the doctor.
The law is not well settled. It may be said, however, generally, that
she can not bind her husband, because the obligation of a husband to
furnish medical attendance does not extend beyond his wife and own
children, and he is under no obligations to provide it for a servant.
And, as such attendance for a servant can hardly be called a necessary
which the husband must provide the wife, she can not be considered
as his agent for the employment of the doctor. So, too, she can not,
as a rule, bind herself, because her identity is merged in that of her
husband. She is not sui juris, and has no right to contract.* But, if
she has separate property, the case may be different. In New York
she can be held liable on her separate estate, if the intention to charge
it is declared in the very contract, which is the foundation of the
charges.f The rule everywhere, however, is not the same. There is
a conspicuous lack of uniformity on the subject of married women's
rights. Some day uniformity may be obtained. If those ladies who
cry for the right of suffrage would shed half of their tears for a settle-
ment of the laws pertaining to married women, they would accom-
plish results worth striving for. But to return to the doctor. The
poor man, at present, had better take care when a married woman
comes to employ him for her servant, or he may be " left out in the
cold."

Although not bound to furnish medical attendance and medicines,
it seems the party hiring is bound to furnish proper food, and to sup-
port the servant during her sickness or disability, so long as she re-
mains in his or her employ. J

Another right which a servant-girl has, is a right to the enjoyment
of a good character — provided she has one — and the law presumes she
has it until the contrary appear.* There is, unfortunately, a tendency
on the part of a great many people to speak too freely, too thought-
lessly, and even maliciously, of the characters of others. The more
marked the inferiority in social position of the person talked about, the
greater the freedom with which the unbridled tongue wags ; and just
in proportion as the maligned person's station in life is lowlier, the
injury done is the more irreparable. So it frequently happens that the
character of one who has lived in a menial relation to us is spoken
slightingly of, in a manner not justified by the facts. Thoughtlessness
of the consequences of idle words, revenge for some act of the servant,
or some other motive, may be at the bottom of it, but they afford no
justification. The law protects her — or will, if she has cash enough
to invoke its protection, or can persuade a lawyer to take her case on
speculation. If, however, the communication is made by a person
acting honestly and without actual malice, then, even though it be

* Sctaouler on Hus. and Wife, § 123. \ 22 N. Y., 450.

\ 2 Story on Contr., §g 1,297, 1,298. * Starkie on Libel and S., p. 19.

808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

defamatory, the law protects the one making it. Servants bear such
a peculiar relation to society that it is deemed necessary, for the com-
mon protection and well-being of its members, that honest and proper
communications in regard to servants should be freely made, and that
those called upon to make such communications should not be ham-
pered by the apprehension of vexatious litigation. The good of the
many is not to be sacrificed to save the few from injury. We see the
same principle of protection in regard to communications made respect-
ing the solvency of traders, the skill of professional practitioners, the
trustworthiness of persons in confidential positions. The welfare of
society demands that they be made freely, faithfully, and truly, and
to give a servant a good character that is undeserved is a grievous
offense.

On the other hand, one who designedly gives a bad character not
deserved, under the pretense of discharging some duty to herself or to
society, offends against justice and humanity, and the law throws no
protecting cloak around her words. On one occasion a gentleman un-
asked wrote a letter in regard to a servant's character to another party,
with the result of injury to the servant. The man was sued, and the
jury found that he had acted maliciously, and rendered a verdict against
him. The judge remarked : " I do not mean to say that, in order to
make libelous matter (written by a master) privileged, it is essential
that the party who makes the communication should be put into action
in consequence of a third party's putting questions to him. I am of
opinion he may (when he thinks that another is about to take into his
service one whom he knows ought not to be taken) set himself in mo-
tion and do some act to induce that other to seek information from
and put questions to him. The answers to such questions, given bona
fide with the intention of communicating such facts as the other party
ought to know, will, although they contain slanderous matter, come
within the scope of a privileged communication. But in such a case
it will be a question for the jury whether the defendant has acted bona
fide, intending honestly to discharge a duty, or whether he has acted
maliciously, intending to do an injury to the servant."*

In another case, a person told a servant girl's mistress that the girl
was irregular in her conduct. The result was, she lost her place, and
sued her defamer. The judge remarked : "If a neighbor make in-
quiry of another respecting his own servants, that other may state
what he believes to be true ; but the. case is diffei'ent where the state-
ment is a voluntary act ; yet, even in this case, the jury is to consider
whether the words were dictated by a sense of the duty which one
neighbor owes to another." f

Voluntary communications are looked upon askance. Stronger
evidence is necessary to show that they were made in good faith than
when the statements are made in response to inquiry. \ And if a lady

* 8 B. and C, 578. j 1 Car. and Mar., 104. \ 8 B. and C, 5*78.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GLRLS. 809

unasked displays a forward and officious zeal in giving a character
prejudicial to a former servant, it will be a material guide to the jury-
in ascertaining the real motive.* The mere fact, however, that a com-
munication is voluntarily made does not of necessity render it unprivi-
leged, and, if the publication is warranted by an occasion apparently
beneficial and honest, and there is no malice, it is not actionable.f If,
for instance, a lady who has given a servant a good character finds
that she was not justified in so doing, it is her right and it becomes
her duty to communicate the facts to the person to whom the other
communication was made, in order to prevent that person's being mis-
led by the previous recommendation, and such a communication is
privileged.^ So, too, if a person to whom a servant has been recom-
mended finds out that the character given was not justified by the ser-
vant's actions, and informs the lady who recommended her of the fact,
and cautions her against giving recommendations for morality or hon-
esty, this is, in the absence of malice, a privileged communication.*
Where a lady gives a character in response to an inquiry, she will not
be presumed to have been actuated by malice. | Even if what she
says is untrue, she can not be successfully sued, unless the servant can
prove that she spoke maliciously, and knew that what she said was
untrue and injurious.A And she need not prove the truth of her state-
ment unless it is plain that she was actuated by malicious motives. If
under such circumstances a prima facie case of falsehood be made
out, she will be bound to show that the assertions were made under a
belief in their truth. § A lady once had a yoivng woman in her em-
ploy, who was afterward dismissed. Having a chance to make another
engagement, she referred to her former mistress, who wrote to the
person making inquiry : " I parted with her on account of her incom-
petency, and not being lady-like nor good-tempered. P. S. — May I
trouble you to tell her that, this being the third time I have been re-
ferred to, I beg to decline any more applications ? " The result could
have been foreseen. The girl lost the engagement. Stung by the let-
ter, she sued the writer, and general evidence was given of her com-
petency, lady-like manners, and good temper, and that, in reply to the
two previous applications which were made before her dismissal, the
writer had recommended her. It did not appear in evidence why she
was dismissed. The judge told the jury that they must decide whether
there was sufficient proof that the defendant, in writing the letter, had
been influenced by some improper-feeling toward the plaintiff to make
a false statement knowingly. They found that there was, and the
plaintiff got a verdict.

On another occasion a man was asked about the character of a
servant who had been in his employ, and he replied that she was dis-
honest. Of course, she lost the prospective engagement. She sued.

* Starkio, 344. f Starkie, 344. % 30 N. Y., 20. * 1 F. and F., 24.

|| Burr, 2425. A 3 Q. B., 11. Q 3 Q. B., 5 ; 109 Mass., 193.

810 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It appeared from the evidence that the charge of stealing was not
made until after she had left the defendant's service ; that he had
told her he would sav nothing about it if she would resume her
employment at his house, and that he afterward said to her that,
if she would admit the theft, he would give her a character. The
jury concluded that he was not acting bona fide in the reply he
gave to the inquiry as to the girl's character, and gave her a
verdict.*

In making a damaging statement to an inquiring person about a
domestic, it is perhaps kinder to her to see that no one is present but
the one interested in the inquiry. It may also turn out to be the safer
course to pursue. It is true that such caution is not absolutely essen-
tial for the protection of the communication, but, if an opportunity is
sought for making a charge before third persons when it might have
been made in private, it affords strong evidence of a malicious inten-
tion, and thus deprives it of that immunity which the law allows to
such a statement when made honestly ; and, too, the fact that a third
person is present is a circumstance which, taken in connection with
others, such as the style and character of the language used, would
have weight with a jury in determining whether the person making
the statement had acted in good faith or had been influenced by mal-
ice, f The same thing may be said of an accusation made to a servant
in the presence of another. It is a question for the jury. If it is
made at such a time, on such an occasion, and under such circum-
stances that the inference of malice prima facie arising from the ac-
cusation is rebutted, the burden of showing that it was actuated by
malice or ill-will rests upon the servant. It must, for instance, be
made in good faith and for a justifiable purpose, in the discharge of
a duty, public or private, legal or moral, or in the prosecution of one's
own rights and interests, and without any design to defame the person
to whom it relates, even though it is all untrue.J Thus, if a lady is
about to discharge a servant, and calls in a third person to hear the
reason therefor, and states the reason in that person's presence, the
courts have held that such a communication made with honesty of
purpose is privileged.* It has been held, however, in Massachusetts,
that a false charge made before a third person is libelous. | If the
statement is made in answer to inquiries, it must be to some person
who has an interest in the inquiry, and not as mere matter of gossip. A
So, where a gentleman, having dismissed his servant for dishonesty,
refused to give him a character, alleging to those who applied that
he had dismissed him from his service for dishonesty, and the servant's
brother afterward inquired of the master why he had so treated the
servant, and was thus keeping him out of a situation, the gentle-
man replied, " He has robbed me, and I believe for years past."

* 16 C. B. N. S., 829. \ 109 Mass., 193. % 3 How. (IT. S.), 266.

* 16 Q. B., 322. || ] 09 Mass., 193. A 1 C. M. and R., 181.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GIRLS. 81 1

Only one instance of robbery Lad been charged or proved, but ic
was held, nevertheless, that the answer to the brother was privi-
leged.*

It seems, too, that it is within the scoj)e of privileged communica-
tions to honestly protect one's interest by informing servants of the
dishonesty of a fellow-servant. A man, having dismissed his servant,
afterward remarked to two other servants : " I discharged that man
for robbing me ; he is a thief, and if ever you speak to him again or
have anything to do with him I shall consider you as bad as him, and
shall discharge you." This was held on a subsequent trial to be a privi-
leged communication.

Let us now look at another right. Servants have well-defined
rights in regard to wages. If they perform their part of the contract,
they are entitled to a performance on the part of the party of the first
part, to wit, the party hiring. Just what the servant has to do has
been succinctly stated by Mr. Story : "A servant," says he, "is bound
to obey all the just and reasonable commands of his master, to be care-
ful and faithful as to all property committed to his charge, to do with
diligence and care his proper and appointed work, and to behave with
decency and in a manner consistent with his station as servant. . . .
But the command must be just and reasonable, and within the fair
scope of his employment." f

The right to the wages is not affected by the fact that there is
nothing for her to do, if she is on hand and holds herself ready to
serve. \ The hiring being an accomplished fact, and the time of ser-
vice begun, the right to wages exists. If there is nothing to do, so
much the luckier for the servant. As a matter of fact, however, it
may be safely said that such an easy state of affairs seldom occurs in
the experience of most domestics.

The right to wages is unaffected also by damage done by the ser-
vant. For instance, if she injure articles or lose them in the course of the
service, the party hiring can not without a specific agreement to such
effect, deduct from the servant's wages their value, but must bring her
cross-action against the servant for compensation.* So that, if a lady
deducts for some such cause a portion of her cook's wages, the cook
would have a perfect right to sue for the sum deducted. Inasmuch,
however, as the party hiring can bring a cross-action, or, as in New
York practice, set up a counter-claim in the cook's action, for the lost
articles, the cook's net recovery would be nil. In other words, the
legal and illegal ways of settling for the damaged or lost articles end
in similar results. "It is six of one and half -a dozen of the other."
As a matter of practice and advisability, the illegal method of deduc-
tion, although it overrides the servant's rights, is better for her, as it
saves her the expense of a lawsuit merely for a principle. The wise

* 16 Q. B., 322. f 2 Story on Contr., § 1,304. \ 32 Barb., 564.

* 2 Story on Contr., § 1,297.

8iz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cook will not grumble at it. She, if anybody, ought to know that the
frying-pan is better than the fire.

Nor can the party hiring deduct from the servant's wages any sum
paid a physician called in by the hirer for the servant without the re-
quest or consent of the latter, nor in this case can a cross-action be
brought for such sum, as the act is considered as merely one of gene-
rosity.*

If a servant hired for a specific time is wrongfully discharged be-
fore the expiration of the time for which she was hired, she can sue
the party hiring for a breach of contract. She can bring an action
either to recover for the services that she has actually rendered or for
damages for the breach, in which latter case she can recover any
amount already due her for services, and also compensation for
damages sustained by the wrongful dismissal.f She can not wait,
however, until the expiration of the period for which she was hired,
and then sue for the whole wages on the ground of a constructive ser-
vice.! It is obligatory upon her to diligently try to find another place.
She must make reasonable exertions to diminish the damages. This
is an active duty which the law wisely imposes. " Public interest and
sound morality accord with the law in demanding this, and if the in-
jured party through negligence or willfulness allows the damages to
be unnecessarily enhanced, the increased loss falls upon him, and he
can recover nothing for damages which by reasonable diligence on his
part could have been prevented." \ If the servant has been unable to
find employment, and has been forced into involuntary idleness by
circumstances, her damages will be an amount equal to the whole
compensation agreed upon. This was held in a case where the action
did not happen to be brought until the time of hiring had expired.*
In another case where a servant who had been hired for two months
was discharged without cause at the end of five days, it was held that
the servant was entitled to recover the wages for the whole two
months, although there had been so few days' service. ||

If, now, on the other hand, the servant hired for a specific time is
justly dismissed, or without reasonable cause leaves the service, what
are her rights in regard to wages ? Chancellor Kent says that in such
case she loses her right to wages for the period she served.A This is,
undoubtedly, the rule where the full performance of the contract is a
condition precedent to the right to wages, and through the servant's
fault fulfillment becomes out of the question. Common sense and
strict justice, however, lead to a different rule where the fulfillment of
the contract is prevented or rendered impossible by the sickness or
death of the servant. The law makes a distinction between the will-
ful or negligent violation of a contract and where its fulfillment is
prevented by the act of God. " In the one case, the application of

* 2 Story on Contr., § 1,297. f 4 Daly, 401. % 2S New York, 76.

* 1 E. D. Smith, 70. || 26 IIow. Pr., 528. A 2 Kent, p. 292.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF SERVANT-GIRLS. 813

the rule operates as a punishment to persons wantonly guilty of the
breach, and tends to preserve the contract inviolable. In the other
case, its exception is calculated to protect the right of the unfortunate
and honest man who is providentially and without fault on his part
prevented from a full performance."* In general, the contract is
subject to the implied condition of health and strength, and sickness
will excuse a servant from liability, and justify her in rescinding the

agreement.f

Such are some of the rules regarding the rights to wages of ser-
vants who are hired for a specific time. With those who are not
hired for any particular time, as is the case with the majority of
domestic servants, the case is different. The servant is considered as
hired with reference to the general understanding that she shall be
entitled to her wages for the time she serves, and either party, in the
absence of any agreement to the contrary, may determine the service
at any time. J The question most likely to arise on such termination
is whether any notice must be given by the party terminating the
service. In England, a month's notice is customary, and, if it is the
hirer who ends the hiring, he can give a month's wages instead of the
notice. If the dismissal is for misconduct, however, the servant is not
entitled to the month's wages.* The English rule has not been incor-
porated in the law of this country. As was stated by Chancellor
Kent, there is no distinction between menial and other servants.
Whether notice is to be given depends upon the contract between the
parties, or, if that is silent on the subject, it depends upon the custom
of the particular place. Where there is an express contract upon the
subject, it is binding, and must be observed, except in case of the dis-
obedience of the servant, or under some other such circumstances. If
the parties have not seen fit to take the subject of notice into consid-
eration, no notice is required unless a well-established custom to give
notice exists. ||

Before closing the discussion of the right to wages, mention should
be made of an exception to the rule that the servant who performs
faithfully her contract without breach is entitled to wages. The
exception is that of persons whom the law deems unable to contract.
Take the case of a married woman, for example. Where the common
law still controls the relation of husband and wife, all wages the wife
eai*ns belong absolutely to him, and any promise made to pay her is
considered as a promise made to him. And the common-law rule
prevails except where it has been modified or changed by statute. In
New York State, before 18G0, a married woman who contracted for
her personal services with the knowledge and consent of her husband,
and was promised by the party hiring what her services were reason-
ably worth, acquired no title to her earnings in her own right. A It

* 20 N. Y., 197. f 2 Story on Contr., § 1,303. % Shars. Black., 426, r>.

* Cooky's Black., p. 129, n. 1 Shars. Black., 420, n. A 42 Barb., G6.

8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was hard upon a poor wife, and the Legislature gallantly enlarged the
rights of married women, so as to enable them to conti-act for their
services, and receive and keep the pay for them for their sole and
separate use, and to invest the same.*

Then take the case of minor servants. In general, a child's earn-
ings belong to and are recoverable in the name of the parent. In the
absence of an agreement, express or implied, that payment may be
made to the child, the parent alone is entitled to the child's earnings.f
The father, if living, can claim his child's wages ; but, if he be dead,
they belong to the widow so long as she remains unmarried. J The
law puts upon her the support of the children, and so, if they go
out to service while under age, gives her the right to their earnings,
and to collect them. But if she marries again — presto ! — her legal ca-
pacity is gone. She is no longer herself, but has merged her identity
in another, and she can no longer control the property or earnings of
her children.*

If in general there is an express or implied agreement that the
child may receive the wages, that agreement supersedes the common-
law rule. For instance, if a minor makes a contract for her services
on her own account, and the father knows of it and makes no objec-
tion, there is an implied assent that she shall have her own earnings. ||
If, again, the parent resides in the same place, and neither receives nor
claims any wages for the daughter's services for a long period, the infer-
ence would be strong that he or she intended that the daughter should
receive her own earnings. Or, if the parent is absent for several years,
and leaves the child to shift for itself, the presumption is that there
was an intention to emancipate the child.A In New York State the
Legislature has taken a hand in this matter, and provided that pay-
ment of wages to a minor in service shall be valid unless the parents
or guardians of such child notify the party employing the minor
within thirty days after the service begins that they claim the child's
wages. Q And, under any circumstances, if it appears that the child at
service has no parent or guardian entitled to her wages, the mistress
must pay them to the servant.^

Such are some of the rights of those who serve us. It would be a
difficult task in the limits of a magazine article to treat of all their
rights. Being human beings, and performing their lowly duties by
contract only, the law clothes them with rights similar to those pos-
sessed by other persons, who are not compelled to undertake what we
call menial work. Their property rights, for instance, are as sacred as
those of princes. To steal a dollar from a cook is as wrong as to break
open the safe of a banker. Their rights of life and limb also are just
as inviolable as those of their employers. To kill a waitress is murder
as well as when a queen is put to death violently. To chew up the

* L. 1860. f 5 Wend., 204. % 5 Lans., S39. * 5 Barb., 122.

| 10 Barb., 300. A 8 Cow., 84. 0 L- 1S5°- $ 29 Barb*' 160,

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 815

thumb of a chamber-maid is mayhem just as surely as if it were the
thumb of the President.

And so we might go on enumerating their rights in general, but
the purpose of this article has been attained — to point out some of the
rights of servants more or less peculiar to their calling in life, in the
hope that a due recognition of them by those whom fortune has placed
on a higher social pedestal will contribute a little to mitigate the worst
evil of housekeeping. That it will eradicate the evil, or even be a
panacea for half the attendant woes, is not for a moment claimed or
expected. There are too many other independent elements at work to
keep up the evil. But as each single drop of water falling on the
stone helps to wear it away, so the observance of one form of relief
will do its little toward wearing away the trouble which began with
Hagai*, and will end — Heaven only knows when.

-♦♦«-

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.*

By JAMES HALL, LL. D., State Geologist.

THE history of the Geological Survey of New York from 1835,
when the Legislature passed a resolution requesting the Secretary
of State to report a plan for a geological survey of the State, is very
easily traced, through the public documents and published reports
made since that period. The events preceding, and which led to that
action of the Legislature, are, however, of great interest and impor-
tance, and would of themselves form a very interesting chapter in the
history of scientific progress in the State of New York, and of the
country at large.

The mineral resources of the State had been the subject of discus-
sion and inquiry even during the period of the Revolution ; and, soon
after the conclusion of peace, societies were formed for the purpose of
continuing these investigations, but so little of scientific knowledge
was at that time possessed that no systematic progress could be made
in this direction. The gradual but constantly increasing interest in
agriculture and the arts stimulated inquiry, and there were not want-
ing men of intelligence, wealth, and position to foster and encourage
such investigations.

These indirect influences, which resulted in shaping public opinion
and making a geological survey possible, were for many years quietly
in operation ; and the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts,
and Manufactures, afterward the Society for the Promotion of Useful
Arts, instituted in the city of New York in 1791, laid the foundation
of scientific inquiry in the State, and its transactions afforded the
* From advance sheets of " The Public Service of the State of New York."

816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

means of communication between the more intelligent people of the
State upon all subjects embraced in its title. Chancellor Robert R.
Livingston was the president of this society from its formation till the
time of his death, in 1813 ; and the first volume of the Transactions
(1791 to 1799) contains no less than eighteen communications from his
pen upon various subjects.

The Annual Address for 1813 was delivered before the Society for
the Promotion of Useful Arts, at the Capitol, in Albany, by Dr. Theod-
oric Romeyn Beck. In the preface to this address he stated that his
aim in composing the address had been a special one. " It was to ex-
hibit at one view the mineral riches of the United States, with their
various application to the arts, and to demonstrate the practicability
of the increase of different manufactures, whose materials are derived
from this source."

The most notable and important movement in the progress of scien-
tific study began about 1817, when Professor Amos Eaton, after hav-
ing prepared himself at Yale College with the best means and instruc-
tion then afforded, began his courses of scientific lectures at Williams
College, which he afterward extended to the larger towns of New
England and New York. In 1818, at the invitation of Governor De
Witt Clinton, who was ever a most enlightened and liberal advocate
of scientific progress, Professor Eaton gave a course of lectures before
the New York Legislature, some of whose members had already been
his pupils. At this time much interest was awakened in the subjects
of geology and other departments of natural history throughout the
State. Professor Eaton's lectures in Troy led to the organization of
the Troy Lyceum of Natural History, which at that time could boast
of possessing a more extensive collection of geological specimens than
could be found in any other institution within the State of New York.
In 1820 and 1821 Professor Eaton, with the assistance of Drs. T. Ro-
meyn and Lewis C. Beck, under the patronage of Hon. Stephen Van
Rensselaer, carried out an agricultural and geological survey of Rens-
selaer and Albany Counties. These surveys, reports of which were
published, were intended to be made subservient to the interests of
agriculture, and were spoken of in the " American Journal of Science "
as being the most extensive and systematic efforts of the kind made
up to that period. In 1822, under the patronage of Hon. Stephen Van
Rensselaer, Mr. Eaton undertook a geological and agricultural survey
of the district adjoining the Erie Canal. The report upon this work
was published in 1824, in a volume of one hundred and sixty-three
pages, with a geological profile extending from the Atlantic to Lake
Erie, and a " profile of rocks crossing part of Massachusetts " (from
Boston Harbor to Plainfield), by Rev. Edward Hitchcock, who also fur-
nished a description of the rocks and minerals crossed by this profile.
In 1824 General Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School in
Troy, and its graduates became efficient aids in the dissemination of

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 817

scientific knowledge and in the cultivation of those scientific tastes
which pervaded all the better classes of communities for many years.
Much had already been done, therefore, to prepare the way, and the
public mind was fully awake to the interests and importance of a geo-
logical survey, when the Albany Institute, in 1834, memorialized the
Legislature for some action in that direction.*

These memorials were referred to a committee of the Legislature,
who recommended a resolution by which the Secretary of State was
" requested to report to the Legislature at its next session the most
expedient method of obtaining a complete geological survey of the
State, which shall furnish a scientific and perfect account of its rocks,
soils, and minerals, and of their localities ; a list of all its minei'alogi-
cal, botanical, and zoological productions, and provide for procuring
and preserving specimens of the same ; together with an estimate of
the expenses which may attend the prosecution of the design, and of
the cost of publication of an edition of three thousand copies of the
report, drawings, and geological map of the results."

In pursuance of the request contained in this resolution, the Sec-
retary of State, Hon. John A. Dix, presented a report at the following
session of the Legislature, wThich contained much valuable information
with reference to what had already been done toward developing the
mineral resources of the State, giving a summary of our knowledge
of the subject at that time, and discussing several questions of great
interest ; for example, the salt and salt-bearing formations, our min-
eral springs, and the probabilities of finding coal within the limits of
the State. He also gave a statement of what had been done in other
States, and of work in a similar direction elsewhere in progress or in
contemplation.

Under their distinctive heads he discussed the botany and zoology
of the State, and gave reasons why each one should receive due atten-
tion. Under the head of Zoology the subject was treated under the
following subdivisions : Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Testacea,f Zoo-
phytes, etc., and lastly the Insects.

The report concluded writh the recommendation of a plan for the
Geological Survey by a subdivision of the State into four districts, %

* Senate Document No. 15, 1834.

f Under this head the Secretary of State said : " Our shells, whether of marine, lake,
river, or land production, deserve a very critical examination, more especially as the fos.
sil remains of this extensive tribe of animals, both of living and extinct species, are
considered as affording the most certain criteria for determining the priority of existing
geological formations in the ord^r of time. There is no department of our natural his-
tory which, for scientific purposes, requires more careful investigation. Specimens should
be preserved for systematic classification and arrangement ; and it is by no means im-
probable that these collections, with the fossil specimens, which may be found imbedded
in our rocks and soils, will be instrumental in showing the identity of formations here and
in the Old World, which have hitherto been considered entirely different in their geologi-
cal character."

\ The First District consisted of the counties of Suffolk, Qucens> Kings, Richmond,
vol. xxii. — 52

818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which plan, with some modifications, was carried out in the final or-
ganization. This plan contemplated the employment of two geolo-
gists for each district, which was modified to the appointment of one
geologist and an assistant for each district. One mineralogist was ap-
pointed for the entire State, and also one botanist and one zoologist.

During the session of 1836 the Legislature passed " an act to pro-
vide for a Geological Survey of the State," authorizing and directing
the Governor to employ a suitable number of competent persons,
whose duty it shall be, under his direction, to make an accurate and
complete geological survey of this State, which shall be accompanied
with proper maps and diagrams, and furnish a full and scientific de-
scription of its rocks, soils, and minerals, and of its botanical and zo-
ological productions, together with specimens of the same ; which
maps, diagrams, and specimens shall be deposited in the State Library ;
and similar specimens shall be deposited in such of the literary insti-
tutions of this State as the Secretary of State shall direct.*

The act further provided for an annual appropriation for defray-
ing the expenses, and required the persons employed to make an an-
nual report to the Legislature on or before the first day of February
in each year, setting forth the progress made in the survey.

The magnitude and importance of the work were duly considered
by Governor Marcy and his advisers,f and the appointments were
made only after long deliberation, and extensive correspondence with
the prominent scientific men of the country, and with the Governors
of other States.

The appointments of the principal geologists were made as follows :
Lieutenant W. W. Mather, a native of Connecticut, who had lately
resigned from the United States Army, was assigned to the First Dis-

New York, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, Sullivan, Delaware, Ulster
Greene, Columbia, Rensselaer, Albany, Schoharie, Schenectady, Saratoga, and Washington
containing an area of 12,263 square miles

The Second District consisted of the counties of Warren, Essex, Clinton, Franklin
Hamilton, and St. Lawrence, to which was afterward added the county of Jefferson
making 10,817 square miles.

The Third District comprised the counties of Montgomery, Herkimer, Oneida, Lewis
Jefferson (afterward added to the Second District), Oswego, Madison, Onondaga, Cayu
ga, Wayne, Ontario, Monroe, Orleans, Genesee, and Livingston, making, as reorganized
11,468 square miles.

The Fourth District consisted of the counties of Otsego, Chenango, Broome, Tioga,
Cortland, Tompkins, Seneca, Yates, Steuben, Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie and
Niagara, embracing an area of 11,59-1 square miles.

The Third and Fourth Districts were afterward reorganized, making all the counties
to the west of Cayuga Lake, and a line drawn north and south from its two extremities,
the Fourth District, which contained 11,060 square miles.

* Laws of fifty-ninth session, chapter 142.

f Among these gentlemen were Hon. John A. Dix, Secretary of State, Hon. Stephen
Van Rensselaer, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck, Professor Amos Eaton, and Edwin Croswell, Esq.,
who had frequent meetings, which were continued at intervals through several months.

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 819

trict ; Professor Ebenezer Emmons, of Williams College, was assigned
to the Second District ; Mr. T. A. Conrad, of Philadelphia, was as-
signed to the Third District ; and Mr. Lardner Vanuxeu, of Bristol,
Pennsylvania, to the Fourth District.*

The mineralogical department was assigned to Dr. Lewis C. Beck,
a native of Albany, but at that time a Professor in Rutgers College,
New Jersey. Dr. John Torrey, of New York city, was commissioned
as State Botanist, and Dr. James E. De Kay, of Long Island, as State
Zoologist.

The assistants in the geological department commissioned by the
Governor were, Caleb Briggs in the First Geological District, James
Hall in the Second, George W. Boyd in the Third, and James Eights
in the Fourth District.

The instructions given to these officers were essentially the same
as recommended in the report of the Secretary of State. Each of the
geologists was required to collect, in his own district, eight suites of
rock specimens, but no conditions of this kind were imposed upon
the mineralogist, botanist, or zoologist. A special draughtsman was
appointed for the zoological department and also for the botanical
department. The geologists were each allowed a small sum ($o00)
annually to pay for drawings of sections, maps, etc., which might be
required for the illustration of their reports.

This, in brief, was the organization of the Geological Survey at its
commencement. At the end of the first year, it became evident to the
geologists that the relations of the rock formations, the age and order
of superposition, among the then unknown, or very imperfectly under-
stood, stratified deposits, could only be determined on paleontological
evidence. They therefore itnanirnously recommended to the Gov-
ernor that some competent person be appointed to devote himself to
that department. To this position Mr. Conrad was assigned, thus
leaving a vacancy in the Third Geological District, which, after a
reorganization of its boundaries, as before explained, was assigned to
the charge of Mr. Vanuxem, and Mr. Hall was appointed to the Fourth
District.

As had been suggested in the report of the Secretary of State, the
scientific staff assembled each year, and sometimes twice a year, in
spring and in autumn, at the Capitol, to compare notes and observa-
tions, to agree upon methods of work, and to receive suggestions from
the Governor. These meetings became more important and even
essential to the geologists, since they soon found themselves dealing

* It will be seen that neither of the principal geologists was a native or resident of
the State of New York, though Lieutenant Mather had previously been instructor in the
Natural Sciences in the Military Academy at West Point. Nor should it be forgotten that
no inquiry was ever made regarding the political opinions of these gentlemen, and it
proved that, of the seven principals of departments thus appointed, six were in political
opposition to Governor Marcy.

820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with a series of rocks which, up to that time, had received no full
elucidation in any country ; hence the necessity of comparing obser-
vations and views, with the purpose of agreeing upon some common
terms of designation became apparent, and very soon, imperative.
The comparison of observations and interchange of views led to the
opening of correspondence, by a formal resolution of the New York
Board, with other geologists, especially with those engaged in State
surveys, of which several were then in progress. This correspondence
led to an agreement for a meeting of geologists in Philadelphia in the
spring of 1840, and this assemblage of less than a score of persons led
to the organization of the American Association of Geologists, which,
at a later period, on the occasion of its third meeting, added the term
Naturalists ; and finally, by expanding its title, it became the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Science. It is due to the
State of New York that these facts appear in this connection, and it
is but fair to state that her geologists have contributed largely to the
subjects of discussion and to the array of new facts which have been
brought before the scientific world through the agency of this organi-
zation.

During the few years of field work, the New York geologists had
harmonized the conflicting views before entertained regarding the rela-
tions of the geology of the eastern and western parts of the State ;
they had traced the boundaries of the successive geological forma-
tions ; had shown the extent and limits of the iron-bearing strata, and
had rectified the erroneous views which had been held till some time
after the commencement of the survey, regarding the boundaries and
distribution of the salt-bearing formation of the State. They had,
also, shown the limits of the granitic formations, and their associated
mineral products ; the thickness and extent of all the limestone, sand-
stone, and shale formations of the State, and had definitely settled the
relations of the rocks of New York to the coal-measures of Pennsyl-
vania and the geological formations of the Western States.

Their labors had in a great degree quieted the feverish anxiety
regarding the discovery of coal within the limits of New York, for
which frequent explorations had been made in the black slates of the
Hudson River Valley and elsewhere, involving the expenditure of
much money and loss of time.* A rational idea of the general geo-
logical structure, and the relations of the geological formations of the
State, had been acquired by the intelligent population, through the
annual reports of the survey, which presented the results of each sea-
son's work in the field.

* Professor Mather has estimated, from what he regarded as reliable data, that the
fruitless coal-mining enterprises which had been undertaken in the Hudson Valley alone,
during the fifty years preceding 1840, had cost more than a quarter of a million of dollars.
The sums thus expended in other parts of the State, though doubtless much less, must,
nevertheless, have been very large.

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 821

During these years the New York geologists had accumulated a
vast amount of material and of facts regarding the geological forma-
tions within the State, proving conclusively that they could not be
parallelized with any of the described and well-determined formations
of Europe. The Silurian system of Murchison, as described and illus-
trated in the " Edinburgh Review," in 1838, and as finally published
in 1839, although covering a portion of similar ground, was not broad
enough to meet the requirements of the geology of New York. Thus
failing to find the means of comparison and identification, the term
" New York System " was proposed, to embrace the sedimentary for-
mations from the Potsdam sandstone to the base of the carboniferous
system ; or, as the formations were developed in New York and south-
erly into Pennsylvania, the upward extension of this term reached to
the base of the coal-measures.* This term, " New York System," in-
cludes the formations ordinarily embraced in the names Cambrian,
Silurian, and Devonian of England and the Continent of Europe. The
geological series in New York is so complete that the succession leaves
no lines or breaks for the establishment of " systems," the whole being
but a single system ; and had the older rocks of the globe been first
studied in this State, no such terms or subdivisions would ever have
found their way into geological nomenclature. The strongest line of
demarkation, however, or the most marked interruption of continuity
in the succession, occurs at the termination of the Hudson River group,
where a great conglomerate or a heavy-bedded and well-marked sand-
stone terminates the physical and biological conditions of the preced-
ing period. This break in the continuity, which is the proposed limit
of the Cambrian system, is, however, only of local importance.

Since there was no possibility of identifying the individual rocks
and groups of strata with those of Europe, as described, the New
York geologists were compelled to give names to the different mem-
bers of the series ; and since the sandstones, limestones, slates, and
shales are so similar in different and successive groups, it was impos-
sible to give descriptive names which would discriminate the one from
the other. Therefore, local names were proposed and adopted, as, for
example : Potsdam sandstone, Trenton limestone, Niagara limestone,
and Niagara shale (the two latter, with subordinate beds, making the
Niagara group), the Medina sandstone, the Onondaga salt group,f the
Hamilton, Portage, and Chemung groups, thus giving typical localities
of the rock instead of descriptive names. This method or system

* In Southern New York and adjacent Pennsylvania the highest member of the New
York system is the Upper Catskill gray sandstone and conglomerate. The rocks pertain*
ing to the coal-measures supervene, without the presence of the great carboniferous lime-
stone and associated strata of this age in the States of the West and bordering the Missis-
sippi Valley.

f The term " Onondaga salt group " was regarded as objectionable on account of its
length, and the term Salina was not adopted simply because the rocks of the formation
or group are not visible nor accessible in the town of Salina.

822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of nomenclature leaves no possibility of mistake or confusion which
might arise from a different appreciation of descriptive terms. The
typical locality always remains for study, comparison, and reference,
and there need be no difference of opinion or discussion as to what
was intended by the use of any one of the terms. The progress of
geological science in the country is greatly indebted to this system of
nomenclature, and to the absolute working out of the succession of
the groups, and the members of the same, to which this system of
nomenclature has been applied.

At the final meeting of the Geological Board the adoption of the
term " New York System " was considered imperative, because of the
impossibility of harmonizing the formations here known with those of
Europe. In the adoption of the names of rocks and groups — the
nomenclature as now known — there was scarcely a dissenting voice,
and the names as then adopted were published in the final reports, and
have become the nomenclature of the science in America.

As the field-work of the survey approached completion, the ques-
tion of publication became a matter of deep interest to every one con-
nected with the work. The incumbents in each one of the depart-
ments were desirous of publishing their work in octavo, that the re-
sults of the survey might appear in a convenient form, aud become
hand-books for students in science. This plan, however, was over-
ruled by Governor Seward and his advisers, who considered it due to
the dignity and importance of the State of New York that the vol-
umes should be published in quarto form, especially as they were to
be presented to other States and foreign governments as emblematical
of the greatness of the State. Governor Seward himself wrote an
introduction of nearly two hundred pages to the first published vol-
ume of the work (Zoology — Mammalia) in 1842. This volume was
followed by others in the same year. The geological reports were all
completed in 1843, and the last volume of Zoology, that upon the
birds of the State, by Dr. De Kay, was published in 1844.*

In 1842 Mr. Conrad resigned his position as paleontologist of the
survey without communicating any report to the Governor, and the
four geologists who had expected to avail themselves of the results of
his investigations were left to their own resources. In this state of
affairs each one of the geologists illustrated his own report, as best he
could, by figures of characteristic fossils of the rocks and groups which
he had studied in his own district. By this means a very considera-
ble number of the more common and characteristic fossils were illus-
trated in woodcuts, which were printed in the text, thus giving au-
thentic guides for the determination of all the more important mem-
bers of the series.

* The work thus completed embraced the following subjects: botany, two quarto vol-
umes ; zoology, five quarto volumes ; mineralogy, one quarto volume ; geology, four
quarto volumes, of each and all of which three thousand copies were published.

THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 823

The incompleteness of the contemplated Natural History of the
State was recognized by the Governor and Legislature, and it was also
claimed that agricultural interests had not been sufficiently considered
in the work already published. It was, therefore, determined that the
department of paleontology should be re-established, and that of
agriculture be added to the plan of the work. Under the latter title
Dr. Emmons published five volumes ; the first being devoted to the
general relations of the topography and geology of the State to its
agriculture and agricultural products ; the second, to the chemical
analysis of the soils and agricultural products, with extended observa-
tions upon the temperature of the air, soil, etc. ; the third and fourth
(text and plates), to the description and illustration of the cultivated
fruits of the State ; and the fifth, to insects, chiefly those injurious to
vegetation.*

The paleontology was committed to Mr. James Hall, who entered
upon the work in 1844. f Volumes one and two had been substantially
completed and the third considerably advanced, when, in 1850, fur-
ther appropriations were withheld and the work virtually suspended.
In 1855, through the influence of the Hon. E. W. Leavenworth, Secre-
tary of State, the work was revived and a plan for its completion pro-
posed. A provision was also inserted that an appropriation from the
State for the collection of fossils should be made annually for eight
years. Through this means large collections were made and a great
amount of new material added to that j^reviously obtained, and this
necessarily and unavoidably expanded the work much beyond what
was originally contemplated, and beyond wdiat could have been ex-
pected before such collections were made.

At the present time, five volumes of the Paleontology have been
published, two of which were bound in two parts, making the entire
number of seven bound volumes. These volumes contain about twen-
ty-seven hundred pages of text and five hundred and sixteen plates.
At the time of this writing the work has been virtually suspended for
the past two years, with one hundred and seventy-five plates already
lithographed and printed, and more than sixteen hundred pages of
manuscript ready for the printer, besides drawings for more than one
hundred and twenty-five plates.J

* Many of the results obtained by the late Dr. Fitch, of Salem, New York, and by
Dr. Harris, of Cambridge, are incorporated in this volume.

f The work was begun almost without collections of fossils of any kind, without a
library for reference, without artists or any of the appliances or resources considered
necessary in scientific investigation and illustration. It became necessary to create the
department from the beginning. No appropriations of money were made by the State
for the collection of fossils until 1856, and this burden of labor and expense bore heavily
upon the author of the work.

% No printing has been done for three years (since 18*79), and no lithographic work
for about two years. The delays in the publication of the volumes during the past are
not chargeable to the author. The work was virtually suspended from 1850 to 1S56.

824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Up to the present time the entire publication of the Natural His-
tory of the State, exclusive of the Annual Reports of the Survey and
thirty-five Annual Reports of the State Museum, may be enumerated
as below :

Botany, in two volumes bound in 2 volumes.

Zoology " "5 "

Mineralogy " "1 "

Geology " "4 "

Agriculture " "5 "

Paleontology, five volumes " "7 "

24 volumes.

Of these twenty-four volumes, three thousand copies each have
been published, making the entire number of seventy-two thousand
quarto volumes, which have been published and distributed as the
result of the Geological Survey of the State.

At the close of the field-work of the survey, the question of the
disposition of the collections which had been made became a subject
of much interest. It had been originally suggested that these might
occupy a room in the State Library, or be arranged in some of the
unused committee-rooms in the Capitol. The amount of material,
however, was so great, and the importance of its proper arrangement
so manifest, that the old State Hall, at that time about to be vacated,
was appropriated for the purpose of a State Museum. At a later
period (1857) the old building was demolished, and a more commodious
one erected en the same site ; and this is now filled to overflowing,
and a large amount of collections remain unprovided for. In nearly
all respects the survey has been carried out according to the original
conception and plan. It has resulted in far larger and more interest-
ing collections, and in far more interesting and valuable publications,
than could ever have been anticipated by its original promoters. It
has laid the foundations of geological science in our country, and
made the State of New York the classic ground for the study of palae-
ozoic geology.

The cost of the survey being computed in dollars, the value of
the results is sometimes estimated by a similar standard ; but the peo-

Great delay occurred in the completion of the plates of volume three after the text had
been printed. The fourth volume was greatly delayed, both in the printing of the text
and the lithography of the plates, owing to the enhanced price of all materials and labor
during the war ; and for the same reason very little progress was made with the fifth
volume until a modification of the printing contract was made in 1871, which enabled
the printer to go on with the work. Fully four years were lost on this account. The
manuscript for volume five was, according to contract, deposited in the State Library in
1866, but after these years of delay it became necessary to revise and expand the same
to include new material, which had been obtained and investigated during this interval.
In the end, therefore, it became necessary to make two parts of this volume, one of
which has already been published, and the other has been for three years ready for
printing.

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 825

pie of the State of New York might with equal propriety measure
the value of the common-school system by the commercial value of
their school-houses and grounds. The absurdity would be equally as
great in the one as in the other case. Like the system of public edu-
cation, the results of the Geological Survey have penetrated into
every school district and into every corner of the State ; and these
results are not to be measured by the figures representing dollars, but
by the increased intelligence of the people, and the proud satisfaction
that we have been able to lay broad and deep the foundations of geo-
logical science in the soil of a people whose motto is " Excelsior."

-<**<>-

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY.

By Professor WILLIAM FOESTER,

DIRECTOR OBSERVATORY, BERLIN.*

THE significance of the astronomical portion of the calendar is ma-
terially different at present from what it was in the earlier stages
of its development. That this may be clearly understood, and the
modern problem with which astronomy has to deal in the yearly con-
struction of the calendar justly appreciated, let us examine the history
of its origin.

The word " calendar " is derived from calendium, denoting the
commencements of months, which, in the language of ancient Rome,
were called dies calendce, or simply calendce ; i. e., clays on which
" calling out " should occur, from " calo" I call. This " calling out "
took place upon the reappearance of the small crescent after new
moon, and at the present day remains the custom among those people
who, as for instance the Turks, reckon time wholly from the recurring
phases of the moon. This was loudly proclaimed from the roofs of
public buildings by appointed priests or seers, who were required to
seek for the moon's crescent in the evening sky either two days after
new moon, or four or five days after the last appearance of its light in
the morning sky ; this, then, was established as the beginning of the
month, the single days being reckoned by counting backward or for-
ward from the night, or from the intermediate day of full moon.
This method of reckoning time from the revolutions and phases of
light of the moon has been long practiced in those countries in which
the constant clearness of the heavens enables people to determine with
considerable accuracy the first appearance of the moonlight, the so-
called " new light," and, again, among those whose limited intercourse
with other nations afforded no comparison of fixed standards. In

* '.' Popularische astronomische Mittheilungen." Berlin : Ilorrwitz & Gossmann.
Translated by L. M. Muzzey, B. S.

826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

countries, however, where continued clearness" of the sky was not
afforded, or where the necessity was urgently felt for a regular deter-
mination of future dates, the seers at length desired that they be per-
mitted to calculate, upon the basis of the past determinations of the
duration of the regular months, the recurrence of the phases of the
moon for a certain time in advance, and therewith the regular succes-
sion of the months, and to publicly record the number and the method
of counting the days of the single months. Thus, in place of the
public proclamation from the house-tops of the observed appearances,
the calendar now came into use, containing calculations of the " call-
ing days."

Gradually, however, when after a length of time the new light of
the moon failed to appear at the specified date, in consequence of the
imperfection of the calendar's determination, the proclaiming was
entirely abandoned, and the moon in the calendar became more the
standard for reckoning time than the moon in the heavens. It was
repeatedly sought to compensate for these variations by revision of
the calendar ; but the more accurate methods for computing time,
which gradually came into general use, soon supplanted the lunar
chronology, and the months retained in their duration simply an ap-
proximate relation to the lunar month of twenty-nine and a half days,
and were finally apportioned as twelve nearly equal divisions of the
year.

The solar year, as a great heat-period, naturally attracted the ob-
servation of men at an early time, and the knowledge of the recur-
rence of the same degree of warmth was early'recognized as of great
importance to the interests and progress of agriculture and navigation.
As a period, however, for the reckoning of the days the year was too
long, and it was only with the advance of science that it gradually
attained to chronological significance, namely, as a large and suitable
unit of time for the division into months and days. The recurrence
of similar phases of the year and evolution of heat were next asso-
ciated each time with the appearance of certain celestial phenomena,
in like manner as the commencement of the month with the resuming
of the moon, and these observations were intrusted to individuals, who
either proclaimed or published them. A common yearly calendar was
thus prepared in advance, upon the basis of long and careful observa-
tions of the times of the recurrence of these phenomena, giving the
days of certain months of each year on which they were to be seen, the
changes of weather which would then take place, and these days were
to form the reckoning points of time.

These phenomena in the heavens from which the data were derived
were those positions of the sun in the sky, at certain intervals, relative
to some fixed star or constellation, which could be most readily recog-
nized with the naked eye ; and, since the light of the sun far super-
sedes that of the brightest fixed star, these observations could be made

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 827

only in the morning or at evening twilight, when it was noticed what
bright star was visible near the horizon immediately before sunrise or
after sunset. The apparent movement of the sun in the sky made
itself manifest from the fact that the stars which were discernible in
the western horizon shortly after sunset ceased to be visible after some
days, the sun seeming to approach them, and that those observable in
the eastern horizon shortly before sunrise gradually remained longer
visible in the dawn, the sun appearing to recede from them.

In Egypt, for example, it was noticed that the overflowing of the
Nile — which is the result of certain tolerably regular changes in the
weather, caused by the position of the sun — always occurred on those
days on which the bright light of Sirius was again visible in the morning
twilight. In Greece it was likewise observed that those risings and
settings of the Pleiades, of Orion, Arcturus, and others, which occurred
in the morning or evening twilight, were related to certain yearly
variations of heat, and to the directions of great atmospheric currents,
and were, therefore, convenient guides in agriculture and navigation.

As the calendar advanced, however, in the predetermination of
days and phenomena on which periods of human labor were dependent,
the attention of the majority of men was diverted more and more
from the direct observation of the moon, the sun, and stars, resting
contented with what was stated in the calendar, so that even in the
civilization of the present day an evening is accepted as clear if moon-
shine is set down in the almanac. The sun, moon, and stars, together
with those other wandering bodies in the heavens, the planets, won
a new significance through the origin of astrology, which advances
in the following manner with the progress in calendar calculations :

The publication of arranged calendar matter and the constant im-
provement in the same were owing chiefly to the efforts of wise men,
in early Greece, for instance, to the zealous labors of the priesthood at
Delphi, who justly esteemed an established calendar a potent element
of national unity and order, and as a means of security against the
power and influence of those fostering secret teaching. Among other
people, as the Romans, the selfish and ignorant priesthood deemed it
for their interests to allow such determinations to remain in obscu-
rity, or, on the ground of real or fictitious observations, to regulate
the calendar as they desired. In fact, the influence of the seers and
priests upon the people would be greatly lessened if the knowledge,
which they had acquired of the times of revolution of heavenly bodies
and the chronological periods dependent thereon, were to become the
property of all ; and this loss would be still more augmented, when
the unavoidable inaccuracies of these public observations became after
a time recognizable, rendering repeated changes in the calendar neces-
sary, or when, in consequence of this, several systems of reckoning
time strove for preference.

The difficulty lay chiefly in the fact that the light phases of the

8 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

moon and the positions of the sun in the heavens do not recur in a
full number of days, and that a solar year does not contain a full num-
ber of months ; the various phases of the moon requiring a little more
than 29^ days, and the positions of the sun somewhat less than 365£
days ; thus making the solar year contain about 12 months and 11
davs.

To illustrate : if months of 29 and 30 days be alternated, if 365
days be allotted to each solar year, and after 99 6uch months (equiva-
lent to eight years), the counting of the months be made from the same
date of the year, a tolerable agreement with celestial signs could, in-
deed, be attained, but after a number of years the date of the month
would differ from that indicated by the moon, and with a greater lapse
of time the accepted solar year would show a decided variation from
the annual position of the sun and moon, and, in fact, from the yearly
heating effects of the sun. An improvement could, indeed, be made
if, in the alternation of months of 29 and 30 days, two months of 30
days each be allowed to succeed each other at intervals of 33 months ;
also, if each fourth solar year were to contain 365^ days instead of 365,
and if, finally, once in nineteen years, the so-called golden cycle, the
reckoning of the lunar months began with the same date of the sun ;
but a uniform and perfect coincidence of these cycles of days, months,
and years would also, in this manner, be unattainable. In short, the
problem was purely an arithmetical one, especially difficult so long as
it was sought to make the minor divisions of the year agree with the
appearances of the moon, and it is, accordingly, no matter of wonder
that many fruitless attempts at improvement were made before a
judicious and adequate method was discovered. The founder of
Islam clearly recognized the danger which the unsuccessful attempts
to construct a calendar for future time engendered for the authority
of the leaders in that religion, and hence arose the fear that the un-
avoidable conflict of different calendars would promote the formation
of religious sects. Mohammed forbade, therefore, the establishment of
any connection of the lunar month with the solar year, and ordered all
calculations to be made from the observation and proclamations of the
new light of the moon. While the peculiar difficulties of the chrono-
logical problems had afforded, on the one hand, advance in the ob-
servation and understanding of the movements of the heavenly bod-
ies, and, on the other, had brought calculations of time into discredit,
these astronomical inquiries produced still other important results at
an early date, as in Babylon, many centuries before the conquest of
Alexander the Great. These results, extending beyond the limits
of chronology, secured to astronomers a mighty influence over the
minds of the people, notwithstanding the repeated inaccuracies oc-
curring in the calendar. This was attained through the teachings of
astrology.

The systematic and long-continued recording of the celestial phe-

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 829

nomena had made known, among other things, the cycle of eighteen
years, eleven days, in which the lunar eclipses repeat themselves in the
same order, and in which there occurs also the possibility of the
solar eclipses succeeding each other in nearly the same order. The
prediction of eclipses, based upon a knowledge of these periods, and of
phenomena which had no such regularity of occurrence as the funda-
mental chronological ones, and which seemed as frightful disturb-
ances among the heavenly bodies, naturally produced a deep impres-
sion, which, in many cases, has been pictured to us, and therefore
rendered the knowledge of the stars a peculiarly prophetic wisdom in
the eyes of the people. Hence it followed that the development of
the solar calendar and its connection with the position of the sun,
relative to certain fixed stars and constellations, necessarily produced
the conception of a particular influence of the stars upon the destinies
of men.

The first appearance of a star in the morning twilight was consid-
ered as an indication of important earthly events, of wind and weath-
er, of moisture and dryness, growth and harvest, and its simple posi-
tion was held, in the popular belief, to be cajsable of exerting a great
variety of influences.

Moreover, the advance made in the knowledge of the stars had
also led to more careful investigation of the movements of those five
bright stars which, like the sun and moon, changed their position in
the heavens, two of them seeming, like companions, to connect them-
selves with the sun ; so that these five planets which, on account of
their movements among the stars, seemed nearer the earth than the
stellar world, soon came to receive a share of the deification of the
sun and moon.

They formed with the latter the sacred number of the seven heav-
enly powers. This number " seven " is supposed to have led to the
division of the interval between two successive changes of the moon,
forming the week of seven days. It was hence perfectly natural that
the mythical names which the planets soon came to bear, and their
positions in the heavens relative to one another and to important fixed
stars specified in the calendar, should be regarded as pregnant with
meaning, and especially so when the peculiar character of the planet
itself, as illustrated in Mars by its striking red light, rendered its
deification of increased significance.

Thus, the prediction of eclipses and of other celestial phenomena,
as the only means of forecasting future events which had then been
attained, the explanation in the calendar of the rising and setting of
the stars and the mythical characterization of the planets, were all
the fruit of the strong desire in men to lift the veil of the future and
of a deep earnest reverence for the lights of heaven, which pursue
their eternal and unchanging courses above all earthly mutability.

Another cause of the power which this mighty system of as-

8 3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

trology continued to exert over the minds of people during so many
centuries, and whose traces are still observable in greater or less
degree, not only in the minds of the masses, but also in men of acute
understanding, is suggested in the pithy remark of Kepler : " The
failures of astrological predictions are soon forgotten, because they are
of little consequence ; their fulfillments are retained with the greatest
tenacity ; hence, the astrologer remains in veneration."

In fact, such teachings did not receive, at first, unhesitating accept-
ance ; and it was not until individual chance successes were attained,
that the belief in the positions of the stars as affecting human destiny
found so deep root in inclined minds as to render the prophecies
themselves instrumental in bringing to pass predicted events, so that
for centuries no doubt to the contrary found popular recognition.
When the first teachings of astrology thus founded by the priest-
hood, and more or less designed to promote its interests, became the
possession of philosophers, as of the Greek astronomers of the Alexan-
drian school, they then gradually assumed a certain scientific char-
acter. The force which the moon exerts upon the waters of the earth,
in causing the ebb and flow of the tides, was regarded by Ptolemy as
chief scientific proof that other heavenly bodies besides the sun ex-
ercise a direct influence upon terrestrial life.

Moreover, it was held that the moon exerted a disturbing influence
upon sleep, its monthly recurrence affecting the nervous system. On
the basis, therefore, of these general predictions, it was then sought to
determine the influence upon life and destiny which the various posi-
tions of the moon and planets among the constellations of the zodiac
exerted, and to discover, partly by astronomical calculation, partly by
tradition, what positions the planets had assumed at the time of the
birth, as well of striking events in the lives, of distinguished men ; or,
in general, during the time of a series of important events.

A seeming uniformity in the casual coincidence of celestial phe-
nomena with certain fortunate and unfortunate events was thus de-
rived from this knowledge of the past, and formed the foundation of
the methods for forecasting the future.

Naturally, this teaching had to embody a certain number of ap-
parently verified prophecies, which were not derived from conclu-
sions concerning the past, but were purely conceived, or which were
associated with the mythical character of individual heavenly di-
vinities.

Thus the planet Saturn, or Cronos, was universally regarded as
destroying and harmful, as the powerful, all-consuming god of time
whose name he bore ; the planet Jupiter, on the contrary, indicated
universal fortune, majesty, and beauty.

The planet Mars represented by its omens the dangerous and
violent ; Venus the mild and pleasant ; Mercury the ambiguous and
deceptive. Each of the planets had, however, somewhat varying

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 831

forebodings, according to the position which it assumed by day or by
night in the zodiac or horizon. The twelve signs were assigned to the
sun, moon, and planets, as follows : Leo to the sun ; Cancer to the
moon ; and two to each of the five planets — the influence of each of
these heavenly bodies being regarded as augmented when it stood in
that sign belonging to it, or at points in the other signs which were
esteemed peculiarly critical for it.

Thus, the significance of the combined situation of all these bodies
received its decisive character from the striking actions of one or
more propitious or unpropitious planets, which stood in those positions
of increased influence. The so-called horoscope, however, with its de-
rived prognostications concerning the entire future life of the individual,
was deduced from that point of the zodiac which appeared in view at
the hour of birth. Not only was the planet to whose sign this point
in the zodiac belonged the prescribed ruler for life, but also the indi-
vidual portions of the zodiac, by means of their relations to the single
planets, furnished special significations for the horoscope.

The influence of the ruling planet was again essentially modified
by the relative positions of the other planets who were entitled to a
respectful hearing in the prediction. Indeed, a perfect system finally
evolved itself for thus foretelling, from the various situations and as-
pects at the time of birth, the important events in each year of the
life of the newly-born.

In its beginning it possessed much profound thought, since from
the positions of the planets at the time of birth, with the aid of their
times of revolution, and later, by a theory of all their movements, it
could be calculated in advance how they must stand in each year of
the individual's life ; but the whole soon degenerated into an arbi-
trary, invented play upon numerical relations. During the lapse of
centuries, in which astrology was perfecting and establishing itself in
the minds of men, the pre-calculations for the positions of the moon
among the planets had been zealously pursued, particularly by the
Arabians, and, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, by the peo-
ple of the Orient. From this period on, these calculations received,
aside from their chronological and astrological interest, an augmented
importance, on account of the increased demands in naval undertakings
and voyages of discovery. The calculations in calendars and epheme-
rides (in which literature Nuremberg took the lead) were continually
amplified, the calendar becoming now concerned with many subjects
which grew out of and were nourished by astrological ideas, so that,
even at the close of the past century and the commencement of the
present, it contained a wonderful mixture of superstitious hints and
precepts. These related chiefly to rules of the weather, health, and
life ; as, for instance, the times favorable for cupping, bleeding, etc.
In fact, in many calendars now circulated, there are detailed state-
ments concerning the indications of the planets, etc., and amusing

832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

descriptions as to how children will thrive who are born under such
and such signs in the heavens.

Moreover, numerous customs and prejudices still reveal the re-
mains of a belief in the stars ; such expressions as " unlucky days "
and " numbers," " our stars," " saturnine," " jovial," and the like
being firmly implanted in nearly every language.

To the superficial view, the whole system of astrology will appear
as a vexatious error of mankind ; to the deeper observation, however,
there is discernible not only the fund of astronomical knowledge
acquired, but also a purer sentiment lying at the basis of all, acknowl-
edging man's dependence upon higher powers.

Indeed, soberly considered, the notion that the heavenly bodies
controlled the laws of health, etc., possessed one noteworthy attribute,
in that it aided in establishing a belief.

The acceptance of particularly mysterious agencies often rendered
efficacious such prescriptions, in consequence of the compulsion which
they opposed against human convenience and caprice in requiring ful-
fillment, thereby effecting a salutary influence which in themselves
they did not possess.

We have yet to consider another phase of the calendar's being
which has a certain connection with the astrological predictions —
namely, the " weather prophecies." Among the most cultured of the
ancients the weather was not an object of daily interest and regard to
the extent which it has become at the present day. In the regions of
Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa, where the weather was
at first the most zealously studied, the daily as well as yearly changes
of temperature, direction of wind, cloudiness, and precipitation, have
a far greater regularity than in our climate.

As Nature there also yields her fruits in greater plenitude, the
dependence of universal welfare on the weather phenomena is far less
painful and disturbing than in our latitudes. Egypt, only, formed an
exception, her harvests being largely dependent upon the overflowings
of the Nile ; but these would be endangered for only a comparatively
short portion of the year.

We have already considered how the first calendars took note of
the great yearly changes in the weather from their connection with
the rising and setting of bright stars in the morning and evening twi-
light. As culture, however, slowly penetrated the more northerly
regions, which are the chief field of the unremitting conflict between
the warm equatorial air-currents and the cold polar currents, and which
sections are thereby subjected to incomparably greater changes and
uncertainties of weather, it was proved no longer wise to associate
such variations with the slow changes in the positions of the sun
among the stars. Hence the natural inclination to regard earthly as
controlled by celestial influences developed itself into a system of mani-
fold predictions concerning weather phenomena, and accordingly the

ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 833

most rapidly moving body in the heavens, the moon, was regarded as
the most potential ruler of sudden changes.

It was thus always the problem of the calendar-maker, during the
middle ages, to prophesy on the basis of observations of celestial in-
fluences, and in a lesser degree also upon the weather itself, certain
changes in the weather, and the task was nowhere an ungrateful one ;
for a successful prediction was a foothold for enthusiastic belief in
the prophets, and scarcely ever was a failure regarded with much
attention.

The belief in the moon's influence upon the weather is still fos-
tered with a tenacity and universality that seem to lend an especial
value to specifications in the almanac regarding the so-called " moon's
changes." Many have no concern as to the manner in which the
" moon's changes " can affect the weather, but follow simply uncon-
sciously the old astrological inclination in ascribing what is doubtful
to heavenly influences ; others, on the contrary, accept, indeed, with-
out question, the fact of such influence, but construct for themselves a
kind of scientific explanation for it.

The moonlight, they say, dissipates the vapors ; and, since the moon
determines the ebb and flow of the tides, so it causes also an ebb and
flow in atmospheric currents, thus affecting the weather. That sounds
quite scientific, yet proves nothing. That such an influence is no
longer not incontestable, but placed entirely in doubt, careful records
are more clearly proving every year.

The Greenwich Observatory, which is especially engaged with
observations upon the moon, has recently fully demonstrated, in its
observation register of the moon and weather extending over many
years, the complete insignificance of the positions and phases of the
moon as affecting the condition of the atmosphere ; that all so-called
"experiences " to the contrary must be regarded as possessing not the
slightest value. In fact, such " experience " is a matter peculiar in
itself. The human memory of past events is often a very capricious
thing, as we have already illustrated in the words of Kepler, and the
remembrance of any one who has not learned to systematically collect
pure and conclusive " experiences," free from bias and superstition,
upon which to base a rational and conscientious judgment, possesses,
as a rule, little value. Scientifically arranged facts are also not proof
against erroneous conclusions, and it has too often happened that over-
hasty conclusions in science, which were opposed to the clear views of
practical men, have been subsequently destroyed by further scientific
inquiry ; but in the case now considered the aspect is entirely differ-
ent. Here the so-called practical men are the visionists, and that piti-
ful remnant of an ancient false belief now no longer cope with the
intrinsic worth, the clear and simple results of coincident measure-
ments and calculations. Let us, therefore, throw into the ruins of
astrology all still existing presumption to forecast for any extended

TOL. XXII. — 53

834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time the character and changes of the weather, and aid, rather, by-
careful and honest tabulation of meteorological phenomena, in advanc-
ing a science whose foundations have already been laid by men of
genius, and which in conjunction with the telegraph is furnishing its
timely aid to agriculture and navigation. By means of advanced,
systematic research into the laws governing the movements of storms,
wind, and air-currents, it enables voyages to be made under increased
security and rapidity — furnishing information of incalculable value to
the navigator.

From the above review of the astrological belief in destiny and
weather, let us again revert to our original question : What signifi-
cance, then, do the present astronomical rules in the calendar possess,
and what is the problem therewith associated in popular astronomical
instruction ? The reckoning of time has almost wholly emancipated
itself from astronomical observations. If we simply continue to
reckon the days according to our present arrangement of the year,
calling each fourth year a leap-year of 366 days, and assign to each
hundredth year 365 days — although it ought to be a leap-year, accord-
ing to the four-year cycle — and again to each four hundredth year
366 days, we shall be certain to remain for thousands of years in such
agreement with the sun that we do not need to concern ourselves in
the least in the times of his revolution and positions in the heavens.
In fact, the calendar is so perfectly arranged and independent in itself
that it requires no special assistance from astronomers. The state-
ments regarding the position of the moon in the zodiac and the
situations of the planets, and even the exact times of the moon's
changes (if we except the significance of these latter respecting the
ebb and flow of the tide), no longer possess any value in daily life if
^ve are free from astrological superstition.

Still, there is a persistent clinging to these ideas, and when, some
years ago, the Berlin " Astronomical Year-Book " pointed out the in-
significance of the moon's influence on the weather, many protests
were received from almanac publishers, especially in Poland and Hun-
gary.

Although, as above stated, the popular calendar has become less
and less dependent upon astronomy, yet there is evinced an increased
interest among people in the yearly astronomical communications.
The dependence of ideas and arrangements on the heavenly phenomena
is less, but the desire for an understanding and observation of them
is much greater. The prediction of eclipses in the almanac might
also be omitted but for the probable danger which would arise from
sudden frightening of the people ; they can not, however, be well
omitted, since every one is desirous of observing at the appointed
time the more or less remarkable effects of the phenomena, and of
bearing a share in testing the accuracy of the times of prediction.

Moreover, life is constantly demanding greater precision, especially

SKETCH OF INCREASE ALLEN LAP HAM, LL.D. 83 5

in the measurement of time. The time is not far distant when in-
struments will be devised for ascertaining in the simplest manner and
with the utmost accuracy the time of day from the sun and stars.
In general, astronomy will find occasion each year, in ever-increasing
measure, to communicate for universal use its advanced determina-
tions and measurements.

The study of astronomy is especially fascinating and helpful to
the understanding, in that the mind, translated so far away from the
sphere of earth, catches glimpses of the grand and universal outlines
of celestial phenomena, and is enabled to emancipate itself from the
astrological superstition which we have endeavored to illustrate in the
foregoing pages.

-♦»-♦-

SKETCH OF INCREASE ALLEN LAPHAM, LL. D.

THE advancement of American science has beeu greatly promoted
by the co-operation of a host of earnest workers, who, asking
nothing in the way of money profit or fame, but moved by the pure
love of science for its own sake, have been satisfied to labor in special
or local fields, and contribute of what they could produce as free gifts
to the sum of knowledge. Such a man of science was Dr. I. A. Lap-
ham, who, according to a most excellent authority, " would have held
a more prominent position if he had been more ambitious " ; who was,
however, well enough known to the people of his own State and in
scientific circles everywhere ; and the fitting memorials of whose life-
work are conspicuously visible in the organization of the Weather Ser-
vice of the United States and the prominent position Wisconsin has
taken as a region where scientific thought is active.

Increase Allen Lapham was born at Palmyra, New York, March
7, 1811, and died on Lake Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, September 14,
1875. His father was a contractor on public works, which, in the days
of the son's youth, were chiefly canals ; he built the arches of the first
aqueduct at Rochestei*, and the wood- work of the combined and double
locks at Lockport, on the Erie Canal, and was engaged in other im-
portant works of a similar character. Young Lapham's earlier tastes
were guided largely by the business pursuits of his father. He earned
his first money by cutting stone for canal-locks and making plans of
the locks for travelers ; then he became interested 'in the minerals
that were found in the rock-cuts at Lockport, and was thus directed to
the observation of nature. He next appears, in 1826, as an aid to his
father, an assistant engineer, in laying out a road down the Canada
bank of the Niagara River below the falls ; afterward on the Welland
Canal ; then on the Miami Canal, under Byron Kilbonrn ; and, during
the two years from 1827, on the canal around the falls of the Ohio,

836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at Louisville, Kentucky. Here his attention was drawn to the study
of the luxuriant flora of that favored region, and he began a collection
of plants which grew till it numbered about eight thousand species.
He also collected the river-shells of the region, and sent several new
species to Isaac Lea, of Philadelphia. His first scientific paper was
produced in connection with his work here, and was " a Notice of the
Louisville and Shippingsport Canal, and of the Geology of the Vicin-
ity," illustrated with plans, geological sections, and a map, and re-
markable for containing the first published notice of the occurrence of
petroleum in the cavities of limestone rocks. He was next engaged
on the Ohio Canal, at Portsmouth, and published in 1832, in the
" American Journal of Science," where his former paper had appeared,
a second article on the " Geology of Ohio." In the next year he was
appointed Secretary of the Ohio State Board of Canal Commissioners,
and removed to Columbus, where he continued his scientific studies
under the stimulus of improved opportunities ; figured as an officer
and active member of the Historical and Philosophical Society of
Ohio ; and served as a member of a committee appointed by the Legis-
lature to investigate and report upon the subject of a geological sur-
vey of the State.

In 1836 he removed to Milwaukee, then in the Territory of Michi-
gan, now in the State of Wisconsin, where, or in the neighborhood,
he spent the rest of his life, and where he was identified with the birth
and development of the scientific interests of the Territory and State.
It was his privilege here to play an important part in the institution
of security and the settlement of land-titles, the effects of which were
undoubtedly felt in the peaceful settlement of the country and the
establishment of its society. New-comers found the Territory as yet
unorganized, and without any provisions for the purchase or pre-emp-
tion of the public lands. Conflicts might easily arise, and the best
claims could have no legal title to rest upon. The settlers agreed upon
the course they would pursue, and appointed Mr. Lapham a register
of claims, to take charge of the records of all entries of land and trans-
fers. Under this system farm improvements were made in confidence,
and, when the land-offices were established, the register's records were
recognized and acted upon as authentic evidences of pre-emption right.
Mr. Lapham performed this service gratuitously.

Mr. Lapham's life was henceforth spent between the conduct of a
business that secured him a competency without superabundant wealth,
and the scientific study of all that related, or could be of interest to,
the Territory and State. In 1838 he printed a catalogue of the plants
and shells found in the vicinity of Milwaukee ; and in 1844 he pub-
lished a comprehensive work on Wisconsin which served for a long
time as a standard manual of the character and resources of the State
and a guide to immigrants. A treatise on the grasses of Wisconsin and
the adjacent States, which was published in the first volume of the

SKETCH OF INCREASE ALLEN LAP HAM, LL. D. 837

" Transactions of the State Agricultural Society," was the forerunner
of a suggestion which he made to the Commissioner of Patents (the
Hon. Charles Mason), that the agricultural department of his office
might appropriately undertake a descriptive catalogue of all the native,
naturalized, and cultivated grasses of the United States. An appro-
priation was obtained from Congress for this object, and Mr. Lapham
was invited by the Commissioner of Patents to undertake the work.
It was to include the collection of specimens and their ai-rangement in
books for distribution among State societies and agricultural colleges ;
drawings and enlarged illustrations of the flowers of each species ; the
collection and distribution of seeds ; the preparation of an exhaustive
report on each species, and all facts relating to its economic value ; and
an expedition to the West Indies or South America for the collection
of improved varieties of sugar-cane. Several months were spent in
the preliminary arrangements for this work ; but when the first quar-
ter's account for salary was presented to the Secretary of the Interior,
whose indorsement of it was required by law, that officer, who had not
recognized Mr. Lapham's appointment, refused to allow it, saying that
so useful and responsible a trust should not be conferred upon one
whose political sentiments were not, in all respects, in accord with
those of the party in power. Mr. Lapham, though disappointed and
a thousand dollars poorer for what he had done, went on with his cata-
logue and completed it so as to include all the grasses of the United
States and Territories, so far as they had been previously described
and named, with their localities, geographical distribution, time of
flowering, etc., which still remains in manuscript. The subject of
authorizing this investigation was again favorably considered by Presi-
dent Lincoln's Administration, but any action upon it was prevented
by the war.

In 1867 Mr. Lapham, as chairman of a committee appointed under
an act of the Legislature of Wisconsin " to ascertain and report upon
the injurious effect of clearing land of forests, and the duty of the
State in relation to the matter," made a report covering the whole
ground of the subject, which was published as a legislative docu-
ment.

Though particularly interested in botany, Mr. Lapham was active
in many other departments of scientific work. In 1847, writing in
one of the city papers on the fluctuations in the level of Lake Michi-
gan, he suggested a method for determining whether it had a tide.
His observations on the phenomena of the level, begun as early as
1836, were found to be of great practical value in the preparation of
plans for river and harbor improvements, and for all works of the cities
of Milwaukee and Chicago in any way connected with the lake and
rivers emptying into it, and their importance was recognized in Cap-
tain (afterward General) Meade's " Report on the Lake Survey " for
1861. On the 3d of September, 1849, he announced, in a paper of the

838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

city, that by a series of observations made every three hours, during the
month of August, he had ascertained that there was a slight lunar tide
in Lake Michigan. A similar statement was made to the Smithsonian
Institution, in connection with the report of his meteorological ob-
servations for the month. In a report made to the British Association
in 1863, he stated that the amount of this tide was about an inch and
an eighth, and that subsequently a self -registering tide-gauge, similar
to that used by Prof essor A. D. Bache on the Coast Survey, was put in
operation at the port, the indications of which, deducing the curves
from 5,450 half-hourly ordinates, between July, 1859, and November,
1860, gave results almost exactly corresponding with those of his
original observation.

Mr. Lapham was engaged, almost from the beginning of his resi-
dence in Wisconsin, in the study of the aboriginal earth-works of the
State. He was the first to notice that many of the mounds were
really gigantic figures of men, beasts, birds, and reptiles ; and as early
as 1836 he gave accounts in the newspapers of a turtle-shaped mound
at Waukesha and of several other effigies of animals. Perceiving the
danger of these structures being obliterated, he, availing himself of
assistance offered by the American Antiquarian Society, made a sys-
tematic survey of many of them, the results of which were published
in 1855, under the title of "Antiquities of Wisconsin," in a fine, richly
illustrated volume by the Smithsonian Institution. Twenty years
later, near the end of his life, he prepared a series of bas-relief mod-
els of some of the more characteristic mounds, for the Centennial
Exhibition of 1876.

In 1868 fragments of a meteorite, afterward known as the " Doer-
flinger meteorite," were found on a farm about thirty miles northwest
of Milwaukee. A specimen of the stone was obtained for the Wiscon-
sin Natural History Society, of which that body, in consideration of
the services he had performed for it, gave a piece to Dr. Lapham.
Examining his piece, which had been polished and etched by Dr. J.
Lawrence Smith, of Louisville, Kentucky, he discovered in it the
familiar crystalline markings known as the Widmannstattian figures,
and within these another set of lines, to which Dr. Smith, on their
being brought to his notice, gave the name of the Laphamite Mark-
ings. A representation of this stone, showing both sets of marks, is
given in the new " American Cyclopaedia," article " Aerolites." In
connection with these observations, Dr. Lapham prepared a com-
plete list of North American meteorites, with a map showing the
exact place where every one fell, which, however, has not been pub-
lished.

Dr. Lapham was one of the first men in the United States, if not the
first, to move effectively in favor of general systematic weather obser-
vations for the purpose of forecasting and preparing for coming storms.
Espy had shown that such a thing was possible ; Professor Henry had

SKETCH OF INCREASE ALL EX LAP HAM, LL. D. 839

suggested, in 1847, that the telegraph might he used in aid of such a
work ; and the Cincinnati Observatory had issued a daily weather
bulletin and chart in 1868 and 1869 ; but Dr. Lapham's efforts were
the ones that bore fruit in the shape of national action on a national
scale. In 1842 he published, for information and as a stimulus to harbor
improvement, a list of marine disasters on Lake Michigan ; in 1858 he
suggested to a railroad manager, who was building a line of steamers
for a lake-ferry, the importance of procuring a knowledge of coming
storms. The manager answered, politely, that he had more confidence
in the size and speed of his boats than in storm-signals. He afterward
addressed a lake-captain on the subject, and the sailor replied that he
had " little time to investigate meteorological papers, and had never
been impressed with the opinion that our changeable and fickle climate
could be put under any rules by which mariners might be guided with
any certainty or much profit." The idea, however, was gradually
commending itself to the moneyed men of Chicago, when, in 1869,
Dr. Lapham met the Hon. E. D. Holton, who was just about to go to
attend the meeting of the National Board of Trade, at Richmond, Vir-
ginia, and explained his scheme to him. Mr. Holton secured the pas-
sage, by the National Board of Trade, of a resolution which Dr. Lap-
ham had drawn up, commending the project to the consideration of the
Government. A bill, introduced by General Paine, of Wisconsin, for
the establishment of the Weather Service, was passed, and on the 15th
of March, 1869, " Old Probabilities," as the office was for a long time
nicknamed, was installed. Dr. Lapham was appointed in November,
1871, Assistant Signal-Officer at Chicago, and had the pleasure of send-
ing home, at the end of a month, a draft for " the fix-st considerable sum
I have ever received as salary for any scientific work." The amount
was $166.67.

In 1873 Dr. Lapham was appointed, in accordance with an act
constituting the Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Chief Geologist, with
authority to select his subordinates. The fitness of the appointment
was universally recognized, but by some oversight the nomination was
not sent to the Senate for confirmation. The work was prosecuted by
him with great energy and most fruitful results for nearly two years,
by which time "the political aspect of the State had changed, and
there had been an upheaval of strata of which our geologist had taken
no notice." He first learned through the newspapers that he had been
superseded. Nearly a month later (March 21, 1875) he received a letter
from W. R. Taylor, Governor, notifying him that " all authority (if
any possessed by you), as Chief Geologist, ceased and was annulled on
the 16th day of February" previous.

On the 14th of September, of the same year, Dr. Lapham, having
retired to his farm on Lake Oconomowoc, had just finished a paper on
the capacity for fish production of that and other small lakes of Wis-
consin. Then he went in his boat upon the lake. He was found a few

840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hours afterward, lying in the bottom of the boat, dead from heart-
disease.

The nature and variety of Dr. Lapham's scientific pursuits are illus-
trated by his biographer, Mr. S. S. Sherman, in an anecdote : " When
asked, by a gentleman well known in scientific circles, in what depart-
ment of science he was laboring, he replied, ' I am studying Wisconsin.' "
The variety and accuracy of his knowledge made him a kind of ency-
clopaedia— a ready reference on almost every subject ; and Mr. Sher-
man fills several pages of his biography with a list of questions on
which he was consulted by farmers, citizens, miners, archaeologists,
amateurs, or scientific men like Professor Agassiz (to whom, apologiz-
ing at one time for not being able to send a better supply of certain
fishes he had asked for, he pleaded that he was " not an expert fisher-
man "), Asa Gray, and Alfonso Wood. Professor Wood placed him
"among the five or six most active and intelligent botanists in the
country." Professor Gray declared him the pioneer botanist of his
State, whose name would be inseparably connected with its flora, and
called a new genus of plants after him, Lcqihamia. He was one of
the founders of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Letters, and
Arts, an LL. D. (1860) of Amherst College, an honorary member of
the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen, and a member of
most scientific associations of the United States. The list of his pub-
lications, some of the more important of which have already been
indicated in the course of this article, numbers about forty-five titles.
Ten of them are upon geological subjects, nine on subjects of botany
and natural history, seven climatological and meteorological, three on
the antiquities and the Indians of Wisconsin, three upon physical
phenomena (the effects of the destruction of the forests, the great
fires of 1871, and the great fresh-water lakes), and one is the article
" Wisconsin " in the " American Cyclopaedia." The others are topo-
graphical, or relate to miscellaneous subjects. The last was "The
Laws of Embryonic Development the same in Plants as in Animals,"
which was published in the "American Naturalist" of May, 1875.
Besides these, he left a mass of valuable notes and manuscripts, show-
ing the fruits of industrious research.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

841

CORRESPONDENCE.

TIIE AFKICAN IN THE UNITED STATES.

Messrs. Editors.

HAVING read with much interest Pro-
fessor Gilliam's article on " The Af-
rican in the United States," and agreeing
with his general conclusion that " they must
forever remain an alien race among us,"
it seems to me that there still remains some-
thing to be said, and that now is the time
to say it, and this must be my excuse for
this appeal to your courtesy.

The obstructive Chinese legislation was
received at first, by most thinking men in
the country, not in direct contact with the
question, with aversion, and a regret at a
departure from one of the first principles
of our Government, viz., the equality of
man. But most of us are now satisfied that
while this American life is a furnace which
melts into good Americans the peculiarities
of all white races, the attempt to assimilate
a race of different color, and of a civiliza-
tion older than ours, and one that has re-
sisted conquest, oppression, and time, would
certainly have resulted in failure, and that
a majority of citizens of Chinese birth or
descent, on the Pacific slope, would have
made of that section practically a foreign
land.

That the case of the negro, as stated by
Professor Gilliam, is hardly as bad, is evi-
dent. The negro is not the heir of an an-
cient and scientific social order. What
knowledge he has of social order and po-
litical forms is American, and, however much
he may develop, his development will still
follow these lines, and there will hardly be
a race war of virulence enough to attract
the attention of the country as a whole.
At the same time it is very certain that the
fact of color will forever keep the two races
separate, and that as the negroes realize the
voting strength of mere numbers there will
be a tendency among them to gather in cer-
tain sections of the country in overwhelm-
ing power, and by the perfectly legal means
of the jury system and the ballot drive the
whites, not only from office, but from among
them. The process will be slow and grad-
ual, and there will be probably neither oc-
casion nor opportunity for the interference
of the Federal power. But the concentra-
tion of an alien and unassimilable race in
any section of the country, especially in a
section of so much strategic importance as
the mouth of the great river that is the fu-
ture door to our house — however much their
civilization may be an outgrowth of our
own — is certainly a political arrangement to
be avoided if possible. And how is it to

be avoided ? Professor Gilliam gives us no
hint except the vague regret that the San
Domingo purchase was lost to us. The his-
tory of the centuries is before us. The long
education of the African is complete. The
dark continent is opened. The slave has re-
ceived his freedom. The generation that
intervened between the slave and the con-
quering freeman of old has nearly passed
with our bondmen of to-day. All things
indicate that the time has come when steps
must be taken toward the solution of the
problem of the colored race among us, or
we must pay in the future, as in the past,
for our neglect or mistakes in dealing with
this matter, with losses and suffering, per-
haps again with blood.

A bill passing Congress establishing a
steam mail line to Liberia from some South-
ern port — Charleston, or preferably New Or-
leans— with a subsidy for mail-carriage,
sufficient to insure its being kept up, how-
ever great the expense, would have reasons
in its favor worthy of the following consid-
erations :

Our merchant marine is destroyed, and
must for national and economic reasons be
rebuilt, and, in spite of our present preju-
dice against subsidies, capital must at first
be attracted to this field by national boun-
ties. This is the way England's supremacy
was organized, and is kept up. It is the
way France and Germany are increasing
their fleets, and there is no other way.
Trade and travel follow regular steamship
lines. This needs no demonstration. Eng-
land's successful efforts in this direction
keeps her to-day the workshop of the
world. The wealth of Africa is at this mo-
ment the cynosure of industrial nations.
England, France, and Belgium, by arts of
peace or war, are pressing forward to take
possession of its coast. It is only a ques-
tion of time before, on some petty pretext,
Liberia will be attacked and pass into Eng-
land's possession, unless we cultivate closer
relations. It is a country capable of great
development. It is already progressing,
and its governmental forms and traditions
are American. The establishment of a
steamship line to Liberia would produce the
following results : The formation of a stable
government in Africa, sprung from and
modeled after our own. A nation that
would assimilate and develop the native
tribes instead of destroying them ; a na-
tion that would have our customs, our en-
ergy, and our tools, know and buy our
wares, would, by the railroad-building arts
they take from us, conquer and control the

842

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

heart of Africa, and, above and beyond the
trade considerations, would settle forever,
in accordance with natural development,
the question of race hatreds among us, by
affording a career in a new and virgin field,
to every turbulent, reckless, and energetic
spirit among the colored Americans. These
are the advantages. The cost is the direct
mileage to steamers of one thousand tons
or upward capacity, less the indirect advan-
tage of trade. The profit of the freight
and passenger traffic is probable during the
second year. The time is now. But the
fact remains that the Solons at Washington
are more interested in the distribution of
the offices than the future prosperity of the
country, and that our republic is so strong
that no safety-valve is needed until after
the explosion. C. E. Chittenden.

Scranton, Pa., February 15, 1883.

RAILWAY CONSOLIDATION.

Memrs. Editors.

I always enjoy and value your able jour-
nal, and feel in reading it that the actual
facts are treated of without any fear or
turning aside.

I must express particularly the degree
of education I have received from the paper
on railway consolidation as especially ex-
emplified by the Union and Central Pacific
roads.

I see now, what I had failed before to
recognize, that only complete consolidation
of all the routes to the Pacific is needed to
perfect the contribution of all the railways
can offer to rendering that coast Utopian
in fact.

There were once impressions in the minds
of ill-informed men that two gigantic and
immensely subsidized corporations, the Pa-
cific roads and Pacific Mail, had combined to
wring all that was possible from the public
that contributed so generously to give them
existence.

Another fancy was, that rates were so
much higher to points far this side of San
Francisco, that shippers sent goods through
and brought them back, at way-freight rates,
to save money. It was even asserted that
paying through rates would not secure the
right of unloading en route.

Newspapers not inspired with integrity
have even started the rumor that merchants
who would not sign a bond committing them-
selves to sending all their freight by the Pa-
cific roads were not given favorable rates.
How sad that such things have been written
and said ; and how bitterly must men feel
who read the last sentence of your exhaust-
ive article, and are conscious that, before
reading the decimals that so accurately
measure the blessings of consolidation, they
thought that roads untrammeled by legisla-

tion might become imbued with some selfish
motive !

The odious term " monopoly " being treat-
ed with scientific accuracy becomes a charm-
ing expression, and, beyond question, the
time will soon come when its perfection may
be arrived at by the simple result of all trans-
portation being consolidated in the hands of
one man. Then it can be done at a mini-
mum profit, from the fact that there will be
but one family to maintain from the net earn-
ings, and, of course, a railway-man is prone
to all economy.

Very few feel called upon to pay their
own fare, or the hauling of the cars in which
they deny themselves the simple necessaries
of life, sturdily confining themselves to the
bare luxuries.

The tramps which the engines so often
cast aside, mangled masses of flesh and old
clothing, may have done more for practical
progress than the railway " beat " who lords
it at the stockholders' cost. Put this is no
matter, if the magnate who hurls along over
unguarded crossings, with no regard for life
or limb, can only go sixty miles an hour, and
arrange a consolidation in a few moments.

It is well that your magazine can so read-
ily dispel " fundamental misconception " by
the clear enunciation of " economic laws "
as to remove all the old ideas, in twelve
pages of comparative lines and decisive
decimals.

So guarded, the public is safe, and the
"politician and the press," other than the
strictly scientific, are needless.

Grateful for information so serene and

simple, I am, yours very truly,

L. W. Ledtakd.

Feenwood Farm, Cazenovia, N. Y.,
February 19, 1883.

THE COPYRIGHT DISCUSSION.

Messrs. Editors:

My object in writing the article which
appeared in your March number, on " Pi-
ratical Publishers," was to provoke such
a discussion of the subject of international
copyright as its importance demands, and
I am neither disappointed nor displeased
with the rather severe editorial strictures
which followed it. But, while I am quite
willing to concede that some of your argu-
ments have sufficient force to weaken, in a
measure, those presented by me, I am firm
in the conviction that most of my positions
have been unsuccessfully assailed.

I write, however, now, to prevent mis-
apprehension, by stating — what I ought to
have said before putting my name to the
article referred to— that I have no personal
concern in the question under discussion,
being no longer a republishes and having
no interest, pecuniary or otherwise, in the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

publishing business. Also that I have — or,
rather, the publishing house which has so
long borne my name has — for more than
thirty years past, paid a liberal sum to all
the English publishers whose works it re-
printed, and that the most cordial relations
between the parties have always been main-
tained ; so that my article was not written
in vindication of my own conduct, but, as
already stated, for the purpose of present-

ing such extreme views on one side of the
question as should call forth the strongest
points that could be presented on the other,
and thus bring about the fullest possible
discussion on the subject. I trust your
criticism is an earnest of what is yet to
follow from those who may have access
to the pages of "The Popular Science
Monthly."

Leonard Scott.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TEE NEW SCIENTIFIC WEEKLY.

SINCE our last issue the new weekly,
"Science," an American journal,
much on the plan of " Nature," has
made its appearance at Cambridge. "We
had been much interested in the previ-
ous announcements of the project. The
cultivators of science in this country
are certainly sufficiently numerous to
maintain an organ by which they can
promptly communicate with each other
and with the world on those multifarious
results of investigation for which there
have hitherto been but very inadequate
means. The want of such a periodical
has been long and urgently felt, and
attempts have before been made to
meet it, though not with success. Two
things are required to put such an en-
terprise upon a satisfactory basis — the
general and hearty support of scientific
men, and capital enough for all the
preliminary needs of the undertaking.
"Science" has secured both. That it
has the abundant confidence and co-
operation of American scientific men in
all departments of inquiry is attested
by the large number of eminent names
that have appeared in the newspapers
in connection with it, and also by the
statement of the prospectus that '"Sci-
ence ' has secured in advance the good-

" SCIENCE " : Published weekly at Cambridge,
Mass. Moses Kin?. Publisher. Proprietor. ■■ The
Science Company ": President, Daniel 0. Uilman;
Vice-President, Alexander Graham Bell; Directors,
D. C. Gilman, A. G-. Bell, G. G. Hubbard. O. C.
Marsh; Treasurer. Samuel H. Scudder, of Cam-
bridge. Pp. 2>. Published every Friday; price 15
cents per number, or $5 a year.

will and active support of a large body
of the most competent scientific men of
the country, as will sufficiently appear
upon publication of a few numbers."

Equally necessary was a liberal pro-
vision of funds to float the enterprise.
Notwithstanding the alleged interest in
science with which our age is so abun-
dantly credited, it remains doubtful if a
journal designed mainly for the wants
of specialists can be remunerating, at
least until after a considerable period
of time. It must chiefly appeal to the
intellectual requirements of advanced
men ; but these form a large clientage.
Working upon the frontiers of scien-
tific thought, it will be conversant with
inquiries that are, to a considerable ex-
tent, beyond popular reach. Records of
the progress of research and criticisms
of original work must inevitably be
technical, and therefore but little at-
tractive to the non-scientific classes.
" Science " will, of course, have its pop-
ular features, but, if it does tolerable
justice to the body of American inves-
tigators and gives us a weekly con-
spectus of the condensed results of cur-
rent research in the scientific world, it
can devote but limited attention to pop-
ular science. But, with abundant capi-
tal, it is independent.

The numbers of "Science" that
have thus far appeared fulfill every
reasonable expectation, and give assur-
ance that the journal will take a high
i rank among periodicals of its class.
There is, of course, room for criticism,

844

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

as there would be at any rate, whatever
the excellence of its plan or the thor-
oughness of its execution ; but its saga-
cious editors and enterprising managers
may be best trusted to detect its deficien-
cies, and to repair them by self-correct-
ing experience. The first number, of
course, exemplifies the plan of the week-
ly. Besides its prospectus, and the open-
ing introductory article, there are inter-
esting communications from Professor
Langley, Samuel Kneeland, Captain
Dutton, and E. H. Hall, together with
an admirable notice, by Professor Asa
Gray, of Alphonse de Candolle's work
on "The Origin of Cultivated Plants,"
contributed to the " International Sci-
entific Series," and soon to appear in
English. After a brief review of the
"Natural History of Minnesota," we
come to perhaps the most distinctive
feature of the journal, in the " Weekly
Summary of the Progress of Science "
which is given in the first number,
under the successive headings of Mathe-
matics, Physics, Chemistry, Metallurgy,
Geology, Meteorology, Physical Geog-
raphy, Geography, Botany, Zoology,
Vertebrates, Physiological Psychology,
and Early Institutions. Several of these
have subdivisions, as Acoustics, Optics,
Photometry, and Photography, under
Physics; and Fish, Reptiles, Birds, and
Mammals, under the title of Vertebrates.
The information is of the most varied
kind, but all refers to recent observa-
tions, experiments, or inquiries. Each
distinct statement or item is numbered,
for convenience of future reference;
and, in the ten pages here devoted to
the weekly progress of science, we have
seventy-nine of these brief articles, each
signed with the initials of a responsible
editor in his own branch. We know
something of the immense care and la-
bor which such a department involves.
Following this is "Intelligence from
American Scientific Stations," with
" Notes and News," general and person-
al, and a copious list of " Recent Books
and Pamphlets on Scientific Subjects."

Our new journal is thus packed with
the concentrated nutriment of science,
and will have value wherever the sub-
stantial data of inquiry are appreciated.
"Science "is sure to contain a great
deal of information that is of general
importance, and we cordially recom-
mend it to the patronage of all classes
who care anything for the positive ad-
vance of knowledge in this country.

It is proper to add that we are
ourselves interested in the success of
"Science," with special reference to
our own line of work. The law of
progress is ever through division of
labor, which in this field takes the
shape of specialty of publication. We
have felt the need of such a periodical
as " Science," because we have been
pressed to do the work which it now
undertakes, but which it has been im-
possible for us to perform. A monthly
can never compete with a weekly or
with the daily press in giving scien-
tific news ; as to do that work well re-
quires a definite and comprehensive
organization for the purpose, and a
frequency of publication that shall se-
cure the prompt diffusion of scientific
intelligence. " Science " will do this
work effectually, and, by becoming an
organ of accredited discovery and au-
thorized opinion, will leave us free to
devote ourselves to popularizing and
diffusing the approved results of scien-
tific inquiry.

INCENTIVES TO THE PURSUIT OF SCI-
ENCE.

But while welcoming our new coad-
jutor with unqualified approbation as
to its purpose and method, we confess
to some misgiving about its first formal
utterance on " The Future of Ameri-
can Science," which it is declared almost
in a tone of jubilation is to be distinct-
ively and supereminently utilitarian.
The utilitarian passion of the American
people, it is here maintained, must also
become the animating impulse of Amer-
ican science. Criticism may seem un-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

845

gracious in this place, yet we can not
refrain from asking if it is quite appro-
priate to the character of such an
enterprise to begin by letting down
instead of elevating the ideal of in-
spiration in the pursuit of original sci-
ence.

After com mending the men of the
past who have made eminent achieve-
ments in pure science in this country,
the writer says : " The leading feature
of American science, however, and that
which most distinctly characterizes it, is
its utilitarianism. True there are in our
country able investigators working in
scientific fields which do not offer the
promise of material reward ; but, not-
withstanding this, it remains still true
that those sciences whose principles are
capable of useful application are the
most zealously cultivated among us, and
attract the largest number of students.
Nor is this to be at all regretted. Re-
search is none the less genuine, inves-
tigation none the less worthy, because
the truth it discovers is utilizable for
the benefit of mankind. Granting even
that the discovery of truth for its own
sake is a nobler pursuit, because a less
purely selfish one, does it become any
the less noble when it is ascertained
that the truth thus discovered is capa-
ble of important applications which in-
crease tenfold the happiness of human
life? It may readily be conceded that
the man who discovers nothing himself,
but only applies to useful purposes the
principles which others have discov-
ered, stands upon a lower plane than the
investigator. But when the investigator
becomes himself the utilizer, when the
same mind that made the discovery con-
trives also the machine by which it is
applied to useful purposes, the com-
bined achievement must be ranked as
superior to either of its separate re-
sults."

There is here a reversal of the gra-
dation in the motives to scientific studj-
which has been too long and too clear-
ly recognized to be lightly brushed

aside. The most exalted incentive in
the pursuit of truth is that high appre-
ciation of it which makes its bare dis-
covery the supreme compensation of
the investigator. There is deeply im-
planted in the human mind a desire to
find out the secrets of nature; and
there is a pleasure in the satisfaction of
this desire which has ever been the
sharpest spur of scientific research. It
is, moreover, this impulse to seek the
truth of nature for the simple love of it
that has played much the most promi-
nent part in the progress of science.
But, though animated by a noble pur-
pose men are human still, and so they
have been also impelled to scientific
discoveries by the lower impulses of
personal ambition, or because of the
honor and fame they will confer.
There is, besides, an inducement to
scientific inquiry on account of the use-
fulness of its results in practical life,
or the motive of public utility. And,
finally, there is the desire to reach new
results for the selfish individual advan-
tage of turning them to profitable ac-
count: this is the mercenary motive,
and is, of course, the lowest of all.

Now, human motives are often a
good deal mixed, yet dominant inten-
tions are not difficult to detect. In this
case, what a man does with his discov-
ery must be taken as proof of his inten-
tion in making it. If a man finds out
a new fact, makes a new observation,
or works out a new principle, and then
communicates it to the world, he is to
be fairly credited with the motive of
laboring for the increase of knowledge
for the sake of knowledge. If he is
solicitous about the priority of his re-
sult, we know that he prizes the per-
sonal honor that it will confer. If he
makes a discovery and applies it to
some useful end, and then presents it
to society for the promotion of the
public good, he is to be credited with
the philanthropic motive of contribut-
ing to the common utility. But, if he
makes a discovery, and, shrewdly keep-

846

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing it to himself, applies it to a prac-
tical use, and then patents it for his
own profit, the act qualifies the motive
as selfish and sordid, and of the lowest
kind. The writer in "Science" main-
tains that where an invention is tacked
on to a discovery, the compound result
must he superior to its separate ele-
ments. But invention is not science,
and can not count in ranking scientific
achievement. Rank is here determined
solely by the elevation or the degrada-
tion of the motives by which men are
impelled to research. Davy made dis-
coveries in combustion which enabled
him to #invent the safety-lamp, but he
at once gave it freely to the world. Dr.
Wollaston discovered the malleability
of platinum, and devised the means of
producing it on a commercial scale, but
he kept his inventions a secret and ac-
quired great wealth by them. The two
transactions, however, are ranked in
scientific history as of two orders, and
as widely apart as generosity is from
greed.

Inventions are excellent things, and
we have certainly no objection to pat-
enting them ; but, as we have said be-
fore, they are not parts of science, and
when introduced in connection with the
work of scientific discovery they serve
only to mark the lower purpose for
which it is pursued. We are not re-
sponsible for this mixing up of patent-
rights with science, and protest against
the use of them to magnify utility, and
cast virtual disparagement upon the
highest motives of scientific investiga-
tion. The writer upon "The Future of
American Science " identifies the inter-
ests of invention with those of science
in a way that antiquates the simple-
minded devotee to truth for its own
sake. He says : " The inventive genius
of this country is pre-eminent. We
reap the benefits of it on every side.
Our houses are more comfortable, our
railways more safe, our fabrics cheaper,
and our education more thorough, be-
cause of useful inventions. Becoming

restive at the slow progress of discov-
ery, the inventor has himself assumed
the role of investigator ; and the results
of his researches appear in the records
of the Patent-Office. In the olden times,
the investigator was content to make
his discoveries, and to publish them,
consecrating to science the knowledge
thus obtained. His more modern rep-
resentative carefully treasures what he
has discovered until he has exhausted
its practical application. In conse-
quence, the discoveries upon which
many of the most important scientific
inventions of the day rest will be
searched for in vain in scientific litera-
ture. The telegraph, the telephone,
and the electric light are inventions
which illustrate the fact now stated in
an eminent degree."

The significance of the new depart-
ure, which substitutes the lowest for
the highest inducement to scientific
labor, is here sufficiently apparent. It
is the old fogy of "the olden times"
that was content "to make his dis-
coveries, and to publish them " ; it is
his wide-awake "modern representa-
tive" that keeps his results to himself
until he can turn them to the purposes
of private speculation, through the
agency of the Patent- Office. But if it
is not to be the policy of the coming sci-
entific utilitarian to publish, pray what
is the function of the new weekly?
And, when the inventor gets "restive
at the slow progress of discovery," and
proposes to take hold of it himself we
may commend his enterprise, but there
are some things of which it is desirable
that he should be reminded. First of
all, and as a matter of fact, scientific
truth has been a slow growth of ages.
" The telegraph, the telephone, and the
electric light" illustrate a good deal
more than is here stated. Centuries
of labor, and the blood of generations
of indefatigable scientific workers, had
been expended in experimental re-
searches upon electricity, before the
facts were disclosed and the principles

EDITOR'S TABLE.

847

established which have now become
available in their useful applications.
Priestley's "History of Electricity,"
published a hundred and sixteen years
ago, was even then a ponderous volume,
though it was but an epitome of older
successful work, and took little note of
the labors that failed to issue in new
results. Science is, indeed, a very slow
growth, and long periods of unremit-
ting toil must pass before its final stages
of flowering and fruiting are reached,
even in those comparatively few cases
where the fruit can be turned into gold.
There are those who have at length the
good fortune to shake the tree of scien-
tific knowledge when its fruit is ripe,
and they may be alert to clap the pad-
lock of the Patent-Office on their results
so as to be able to use them with profit ;
but there can be no greater mistake
than to assume that the time has come
when scientific workers generally can
be encouraged to devote themselves to
the reaping of the profitable pecuniary
harvest of past researches. In the broad
field of original scientific investigation,
not one part in a hundred is capable of
being cultivated with any possible hope J
of turning its results to pecuniary ac- 1
count. A hasty glance at the pages of 1
"Science" is quite sufficient to show
the utter futility of supposing that the
multifarious labors there indicated can
ever issue in any pecuniary advantage
to those who perform them.

But the writer in " Science " pushes
his case still further, as follows :

The science of to-day is in thorough ac-
cord with the spirit of the American peo-
ple. They are proud of every achievement it
makes, and are satisfied with the returns it is
giving them for their investments. To con-
tinue this entente eordiale should be the ob-
ject of every scientific worker. He may the
more readily concede some practical return
for the facilities for investigation which the
people have furnished, since the march of
discovery is not in the least hindered but
rather promoted by the practical application
of the new truth it develops. His attitude
toward invention should be appreciative and
cordial. He should cast aside all prejudice

against the man of patents and practical de-
vices, and should stand ready to welcome the
investigator, m whatever garb he appears.

Again we protest against this con-
founding of science with business. The
writer talks about the American people
investing in science, and being satisfied
with the returns. But science is not a
thing to be invested in ; people invest
in patent-rights and stock-companies,
and may be well pleased with their re-
turns, and proud of their inventors,
but they are not therefore patrons of
science. Let the man of patents stand
upon his own merits, and go for what
he is worth, and not construe the suc-
cess of his business operations as an
evidence of the high public apprecia-
tion of genuine scientific work.

The disparagement of scientific in-
vestigation from its highest motive, by
the writer in " Science," is undisguis-
edly and almost offensively explicit.
He says, " While the scientific cynic
may condemn the utilitarianism of our
age, the more liberal man rejoices in
it." The devoted student, impelled by
the loftiest spirit, which refuses to be
influenced by lower considerations, is
not well characterized as a " scientific
cynic " ; nor is he who works from the
lowest motive entitled to applause as
"the more liberal man." "We reiterate
that the nobler motive has been a
thousand-fold more potent in creating
the great body of scientific truth than
the more sordid motive. The one su-
preme lesson taught by the history of
science for the last three centuries is,
that the world mainly owe3 its great
results to the single-minded devotion
of its cultivators, to the pursuit of
truth for the sake of truth alone. This
has ever been, and it must always con-
tinue to be, the most elevated and gen-
erous, as well as the most powerful
mental motor in the prosecution of
truly scientific investigations. That
there is a wide-spread and an active
tendency in this country to degrade
science to the low, money - making

848

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

level of a society immersed in mate-
rial interests and given over to the pur-
suit of wealth, is no doubt true, but
it is a state of things to be deplored
and to be withstood, rather than to be
complacently accepted aud applauded.
Let men pursue science from whatever
motive they will — all valid results are
valuable — we only object to this for-
mal surrender of the highest ground
at a time and in circumstances which
require that it should be steadfastly
maintained. It is neither possible nor
desirable to disconnect science from its
useful applications, but as Goethe says,
"the useful may be left to take care of
itself"; there is no danger of its being
neglected. Our objection is to this
inaugurating something like a national
policy of science, animated by the mer-
cenary spirit which it has been the glory
of science to have always resisted as
the proper or highest motive of its cul-
tivation.

HINDRANCES TO THE SCIENCE OF
POLITICS.

We briefly notice, in its appropriate
place, a new book having the title of
the "Science of Politics," and we re-
print a portion of its important pre-
liminary chapter, designed to point out
the nature and limits of this alleged
science. The author shows the valid
grounds upon which it rests, and the
certainty of its future development ;
but he at the same time indicates very
clearly the formidable difficulties which
hinder, and will long continue to hin-
der, the recognition of politics as a
regular branch of scientific inquiry.

And among these obstacles attention
is called to one which seems singularly
enough to be itself a product of politi-
cal progress : it is that a conception of
a scientific politics may be expected to
meet with most resistance under gov-
ernments theoretically most liberal and
advanced. "We should certainly antici-
pate that where there is the greatest in-
telligence, and the form of government

is most popular, there would be the
greatest tendency to the study of politi-
cal institutions from a scientific point of
view ; and accordingly we might expect
that the subject would be congenial to
American students of political affairs.
And yet it is probable that nowhere else
will there be found so wide-spread and
pronounced a skepticism in regard to
it as in this country. If we could take
the sense of the American Congress
upon this point, who can doubt that
its members would decide with the
greatest unanimity that there is, and
can be, no such science as that of which
our author undertakes to lay down the
elements? Nor can we for a moment
expect that the law-makers in all our
State Legislatures would disagree with
such a congressional decision. So much,
at any rate, may be assumed, that,
whether or not there be such a thing as
a possible or actual science of this kind,
American politicians generally are pro-
foundly ignorant of it, and will, more-
over, have little interest to inquire
seriously into its claims. Nor can we
escape the conclusion that, of all classes
of the community, none are so little
concerned about politics, as a problem
of principles, as the class of men who
make politics a profession. This is a
curious state of things in a country
where we hear on every hand that
intelligence is the first condition of
the perpetuity of popular government.
While intelligence is held to be so fun-
damental a necessity in this republic
that the state actually assumes the duty
and the responsibility of molding the
minds and characters of its citizens into
conformity with our political require-
ments, yet the idea that there is any
science or fixed order of relations, or
inevitable working of cause and effect,
in the political sphere, will be generally
scouted as chimerical.

What is the explanation of this anom-
alous state of things? The answer is,
that the most popular forms of govern-
ment engender the worst forms of poli-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

849

tics, and favor and foster states of mind
that exclude all considerations of a sci-
entific nature. This may be an unpal-
atable conclusion, but unpalatable con-
clusions are often true. We have to
face the disagreeable fact that it is under
the most liberal and perfected political
institutions, so called, that the incal-
culable element of personal caprice in
political affairs comes into greatest as-
cendency. "We speak of kingly rule as
the type of personal government, but
personal government is only seen in its
highest power and effect where each
citizen has become a sovereign. It is
only where the self-seeking of the sin-
gle monarch is multiplied by millions
in a nation of potential office-holders,
that the selfishness of personal politics
rises to its maximum influence. It is
only in a country where everybody is
eligible to office, where the incentives
to office-seeking are universal, where
politics has become such a national pas-
sion that the whole scheme of public
education is subordinated to it, that
personal aspirations and the interests
of selfish ambition will dominate unre-
stricted in the management of public
affairs. And it is undeniable that poli-
tics with us is coming to be more and
more a business, a vocation to be pur-
sued for profit and emolument by suc-
cessful office-seeking. Under such a
system the winning politician will not
be the man of intelligence, deliberation,
and principle, but the man skilled in
all the low arts which will insure po-
litical success. He will be the shrewd-
est operator of the partisan mob. Noth-
ing is more notorious than that under
the working of our popular political
institutions, the best men go to the
wall, and the worst men come to the
front. By the very conditions of the
case, it is the crafty operators, the long-
headed managers, caucus manipulators,
party intriguers, and brazen, indefati-
gable demagogues, who secure the of-
fices. From the General Government
down through all the ramifications of
vol. xxii. — 54

legislation and administration to the
petty town officials, the places are fill-
ed by partisan professionals, so that
the first presumption in regard to an
office-holder is that he is unfit for
the place. And such is the extent of
this field, and the intensity of the com-
petition in it, that the preparation for
it is of the most absorbing nature, so as
to afford a virtual guarantee that the
incumbents of office will be profoundly
ignorant of all that it is most important
for them to know. These are of course
not the men to appreciate the scientifie
elements and aspects of governmental
affairs. Such considerations are not
available for their purposes. Every-
thing like statesmanship, the forecast
of distant consequences in government
policy, will be excluded from their
minds by the pressure of immediate
interests, the advancement of personal
projects, and the achievement of po-
litical success in accordance with cur-
rent ideas. The politician looks out
first for himself, and all his study is to
get a better thing than he already has.
Only the one at the top can get no
higher, and his soul is devoured by the
ambition to be re-elected By the very
instinct of the situation, which involves
calculations of immediate effect, the pol-
itician will be comparatively indifferent
to all those slow-working agencies which
yield enduring results of the highest
value, and which it is the great object
of science to elucidate, and of genuine
statesmanship to recognize in govern-
ment policy.

In dealing with the hindrances to
the due consideration of a science of
politics, the author of the work referred
to remarks as follows upon the adverse
tendencies which are to be met with
even under the best governments:

The topic is naturally relegated to the
region of caprice and accident, or to that of
tentative experiment and spasmodic contriv-
ance. This intellectual consequence is in-
tensified by the fact that all governments —
and not least those known at the present day
as the freest, and, on the whole, the sound-

850

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

est — are habitually made the arena of pure-
lv ambitious contention, of selfish aspiration,
and even of corrupt conspiracies against the
public well-being. The wider the territorial
area of any particular government, and the
more complicated and extensive its essential
mechanism, the more opportunity is there for
the exhibition of personal, or, at the most, of
local self-seeking. So far as this prevails,
politics becomes degraded into a mere vul-
gar struggle for money, office, or power. All
actual reference to scientific considerations
is excluded. The tone of public thought and
sentiment becomes proportionately infected,
and all the claims which might otherwise be
asserted on behalf of politics to take its place
by the side of other sciences dealing with
such moral elements as the human will meet
with a skeptical repudiation.

LITERARY NOTICES.

INTEKNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC 8EEIES.
No. XLIII.

The Science of Politics. By Sheldon
Amos, M. A., author of " The Science of
Law," etc., late Professor of Jurispru-
dence in Universitv College, London.
Pp. 490. Price, $l"75.

It is doubtful if any book could be of-
fered to the American public of which they
would be so little able to judge what it might
be about, as a treatise on " the science of
politics." It would rather be expected that
the writer would choose some such title to
give respectability and character to new po-
litical theories of his own, and it would at
any rate be anticipated that the work would
be largely of a visionary and speculative
nature. Yet no such expectation would
have been justified in the present instance.
Professor Amos has given to the world an
instructive and valuable contribution to the
important subject which he has felt it incum-
bent upon him to undertake. It is first of
all a moderate, judicious treatise, indulging
in no extreme or extravagant views, and
imbued throughout with the true scientific
spirit. Professor Amos has this claim, which
is probably an advantage in the treatment of
his subject: he is not a man trained in the
field of physical science who has felt that
he had a mission to carry physical methods
of study over into the political region to
open a new dispensation of political philoso-
phy. On the contrary, he is an erudite stu-

dent of history, law, and civil institutions,
and has made jurisprudence and the work-
ing of political constitutions a matter of life-
long and critical investigation. His prepa-
ration has been in the general field which
furnishes the subject-matter of his book,
and he has come to the large conception of
a science of politics through inquiry into
the relations of political phenomena. From
this consideration, his work will have a
weight and a practical character which no
amount of preparation in the special sciences
could have given it. We are of opinion
that Mr. Spencer's " Development of Politi-
cal Institutions," dealing strictly with the
subject from the point of view of historic
evolution, is probably a more valuable contri-
bution towai'd the organization of a political
science than this work of Professor Amos,
and yet it may not be so well adapted to inter-
est general readers in the claims and grounds
of this new subject. At all events, Professor
Amos's book is better suited to the state of
mind of politicians, who, being generally of
the class of lawyers, will be more familiar
with his data and the questions he discusses
than they would be with the rigorous in-
quiries into the genesis of political ideas
worked out by an analysis of primitive so-
ciety. The plan of the work before us may
be best gathered from a statement of the
topics dealt with in its successive chapters.
These are : I. " Nature and Limits of the Sci-
ence of Politics." II. " Political Terms."
III. "Political Reasoning." IV. "The Geo-
graphical Area of Modern Politics." V.
" The Primary Elements of Political Life
and Action." VI. "Constitutions." VII.
"Local Government." VIII. "The Gov-
ernment of Dependencies." IX. " Foreign
Relations." X. " The Province of Govern-
ment." XL " Revolutions in States." XII.
" Right and Wrong in Politics."

Obviously the first implication of science
is of laws or principles of a general nature,
or that are universal in their operation. A
science of politics, therefore, if there be such
a thing, must deal with political phenomena
in their most comprehensive forms, or as
exemplified under wide diversities of consti-
tution. It will be seen from the titles above
enumerated that the range of discussion in
the present volume is broad, and deals with
all the chief fundamental problems relating

LITERARY NOTICES.

851

to the policy of government. Under the
forms of diverse institutions, Professor Amos
seeks to trace the tendencies and influences
that are at work for good or for evil, and
by which the value of the accompanying
forms must be judged. The book, in the
nature of things, can not be as spicy as a
treatise on local politics, appealing to the
bias and prejudice of patriotic feeling, but
just for this reason its influence will be salu-
tary and wholesome. We greatly need that
catholicity of view in dealing with political
subjects which it is the object of science to
illustrate and enforce.

Description of Houghton Farm by H. E.
A. ; with experiments on Indian Corn,
1880-81, by Manly Miles, Director of
Experiments. With a Summary of the
Experiments with Wheat for Forty
Years at Rothamsted. Cambridge :
Printed at the Riverside Press. Pp. 75.

Experimental scientific agriculture —
anything truly entitled to the name— is
perhaps one of the most difficult things that
a man can undertake. Experimental sci-
ence, anyhow earnestly pursued, is the hard-
est kind of work. Mere experiments are, of
course, easy enough, and it is easy to parade
their results and talk about new discoveries,
of which people generally know nothing.
But to make experimental investigations
tributary to any real advance of knowledge,
to get new and valuable results which will
stand, or to give greater precision and trust-
worthiness to accepted conclusions, is as far
as possible from easy, and is, indeed, so
difficult as to be but rarely attained. It is
quite a mistake to suppose that laboratories
grind out new truth with the regularity of
a flouring-mill. Elaborate experiments may
go on for years, and nothing come of them
worth preserving. It is exactly this diffi-
culty in getting it that makes scientific truth
so precious. It is like diamond-digging,
only the " finds " are much less frequent,
and infinitely more valuable.

But, if in each of the sciences, with per-
fected equipments of research and a com-
paratively narrow field, it is so hard to add
anything new to the stock of knowledge,
how much more difficult must it be when
the attack is made upon a whole group ot
mutually dependent sciences ! The farm,
taken as an arena of experiment, is itself a

congeries of laboratories. The phenomena
involved are physical, chemical, geological,
meteorological, and broadly biological — that
is, embracing the economy of vegetal and
animal life, from mildews to fruit-orchards,
from insects to vertebrates. To know the
nature of the soil, the nature of the air, the
nature of fertilizers, the nature of plants
and animals of all kinds, so as to study them
in their vital connections by experimental
processes that shall bring out valuable and
lasting results, is hence, as we have said,
one of the most formidable of tasks.

In the first place, there will arise all the
difficulties encountered in the pursuit of the
special sciences, with the disadvantage that
the means of investigation are very rarely
so perfect. But the peculiar and most for-
midable difficulty of agricultural science
arises from the fact that the farm is itself
a grand laboratory of nature, which imposes
its own conditions of inquiry. And the
first of these conditions is, that Nature must
be taken at her own pace. Her processes
go on at their own rates, and can not be
much forced. The natural changes in-
volved in agricultural effects proceed slow-
ly, and the experimenter must conform his
plans to this fact. The changes of soil, the
action of fertilizers, the improvement of
crops, the culture of stock, involve slowly
accumulating results, require time, and, in
addition to knowledge and skill on the part
of the investigator, he must also have pa-
tience and perseverance, remembering that
the fruits of his efforts belong to the future.
Agricultural science, if honest, can not
strike for immediate results ; that scientific
farming which demands something to dis-
play promptly, like prize-cattle and prize-
crops, or that seeks to astonish the neigh-
borhood, is a sham, and only brings an
excellent thing into unmerited disgrace.
This is what must be, and what is shown
by abundant experience. The farm estab-
lishments started by rich men for the pro-
motion of agricultural science, and which
have come to nothing, may be counted by
hundreds. On the contrary, the one which
has a world-wide reputation for having
made the largest contribution to agricultu-
ral progress is working by a system which
requires a long series of years to develop its
results. The Rothamsted farm of Messrs.

852

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lawes and Gilbert has been forty years in
getting under way, and its most important
results are still matters of hope and belong
to the future. This is in accordance with
the spirit and requirements of true scientific
agriculture.

We have been led to these remarks by
an examination of the pamphlet before us,
which reports the initial steps of a new
American attempt at scientific agriculture.
Six hundred acres of Orange County land,
named Houghton Farm, and owned by a
wealthy manufacturer, Mr. Lawson Valen-
tine, have been devoted by him to " a long-
cherished plan for doing something toward
the progress of American agriculture." The
proprietor resolved that to attain this ob-
ject he would constitute " a scientific depart-
ment devoted to agricultural investigation
and experiment, and that such department
be of the highest order " ; and that " the
farm operations be carried on in accordance
with the best-known methods and under
the best possible organization and manage-
ment, with a view of educating and en-
lightening others by furnishing valuable
examples and results in practical agricul-
ture." A good deal of hard thinking and
difficult work was here laid out for some-
body, and very naturally Mr. Valentine, a
business man, cast about for able help in
carrying on his enterprise. He had the
good fortune to secure the services of Dr.
Manly Miles, of the Michigan Agricultural
College, a man well prepared for original
agricultural investigations, to take the di-
rection of the farm experiments. It was
proposed to attempt for Indian corn in this
country what had been done for wheat by
Lawes and Gilbert in England — that is, to
carry its cultivation through a course of
years on assigned plots of ground, for the
purpose of determining the quality and
quantity of the product with different fer-
tilizers, different modes of treatment, etc.
The pamphlet before us contains Dr. Miles's
report on the work of 1S80-'81. This re-
port lays down the method to be pursued,
and embodies the first results. It indicates
the plans of drainage adopted, gives the
previous history of the plots of ground,
describes the selection of seed, and gives
the carefully tabulated results from unma-
nured plots, plots treated with farm-yard

manure, and a considerable number of the
most important artificial fertilizers. The
mechanical operations of culture arc care-
fully described, the peculiarities of the sea-
son recorded, and there is a minute descrip-
tion of the precautions taken to determine
accurately the quantitative results of the
matured crops. The main results, of course,
assume a tabular numerical form, but Dr.
Miles has also introduced very successfully
the graphic method of conveying generali-
zations and comparisons to the eye by means
of diagrams. There are all the indications
in this report of intelligent, conscientious,
painstaking, and persevering work. The
document is undoubtedly valuable for the
positive information it contains, although
from the nature of the case the first results
of such a trial-scries of experiments must
have the lowest value of any terms of the
series. Single experiments in agriculture
are worth but little, and only become valu-
able as they are verified. Time and con-
tinued research are indispensable for the
elimination of error.

No one can carefully examine this report
without recognizing that the experiments
were intelligently planned and thoroughly
executed as far as they went, giving prom-
ise that by rigorously carrying out the sys-
tem adopted still more valuable results will
be attained. We have been informed that,
when Dr. Miles undertook the work, he did
so under the explicit condition that he
should have charge of the experiments for
at least a period of ten years, that time
being indispensable to achieve anything
worthy the name of a contribution to agri-
cultural science. Yet, after a year of pre-
paration, and two seasons of systematic
work, presto, the director of experiments
at Houghton Farm is found installed as
professor in the Agricultural College at
Amherst, Massachusetts. What there was
about these initiative experiments on In-
dian corn which Mr. Valentine found un-
satisfactory does not appear in the docu-
ment before us ; but we have heard that the
director of experiments was complained of
as " slow." This is probably because strik-
ing results did not come out fast enough to
suit the enterprising proprietor ; but, if so,
it docs not augur well for the usefulness
of Houghton Farm. That highest order of

LITERARY NOTICES.

853

progressive agriculture which is really to
educate a community is not accompanied by
monthly displays of sky-rockets. A " fast "
director of experiments may astonish the
natives with his performances, but cautious
deliberation is one of the first conditions of
scientific success. Quickstep, hurrah-boys
scientific agriculture, which demands that
there must be something to show by a week
from next Saturday that will make a rattle
in the newspapers is quite too-too to be of
much value to anybody. No doubt your
enterprising American is not going to daw-
dle forever over miserable trifles, but for
that simple reason not much is to be ex-
pected of him in the way of the substantial
advancement of science.

Anatomical Technology, as applied to
the Domestic Cat : An Introduction to
Human, Veterinary, and Comparative
Anatomy. With Illustrations. By Burt
G. Wilder, B. S., M. D., and Simon II.
Gage, B. S. New York and Chicago :
A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 575. Price,
$4.50.

This book is intended as a guide to stu-
dents in their early dissection- work. The
experience of the authors has led them to
choose the cat for the subject to be treated,
as being the mammal most nearly resem-
bling the human species, which is readily
obtainable, and of convenient size to dis-
sect and preserve. They begin at the be-
ginning, and give full directions in regard
to weights and measures, terminology, note-
taking, instruments and their care, killing
the animal, etc., and throughout the book
the methods of dissecting and preserving
the several parts are fully detailed. The
book does not aim to describe all the mus-
cles, veins, nerves, etc., of the animal, and
it gives a large proportion of space to the
viscera. The illustrations are numerous,
and where possible the technical names are
printed upon the several parts. There are
numerous lists and tables, and many refer-
ences to other publications, which afford
collateral reading. While this is a work
adapted to a physiological laboratory, where,
no doubt, it has been prepared, yet it will
be of service to many who are denied the
opportunities of such an institution. It
will be a very useful book for young stu-
dents at home, who propose to pursue the

medical profession. Like all other manip-
ulation, the earlier dissection is practiced
the better, and certainly the earlier the
student gets an outline knowledge of prac-
tical anatomy by his own examination of
anatomical structures, the greater will be his
advantage when he comes to the crowded
and multifarious studies of the medical
college.

Experimental Physiology, with an Address
on Unveiling the Statue of William Har-
vey. By Richard Owen, C. B., M. D.,
F. R. S., etc. London : Longmans, Green
& Co. Pp. 216. Price, 5 shillings.

The advancement of the healing art by
means of experimental research is the sub-
ject of which this little volume treats, and
which also forms the theme of the address
that is prefixed to it. In England vivisec-
tion has been closely restricted by act of
Parliament, and a society exists whose aim
is to entirely suppress the practice. Dr.
Owen demonstrates the unreasonableness
of the supersensitive members of this so-
ciety, by showing how immensely the physi-
cian's power of relieving human suffering
has been extended by the knowledge gained
by Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation
of the blood, by Hunter, and by later ex-
perimenters, through vivisection. He men-
tions aneurismal and intra-abdominal tu-
mors, fevers, and nervous diseases as among
the disorders for ■rchich vivisection has
suggested means of successful treatment.
Among the lesser ills he mentions the pain
in teeth that have been filled, and states
that a method of devitalizing the tooth-pulp
was discovered through experiments on three
dogs. " As many millions of human beings
have been and will be, in the present gen-
eration, relieved through Dr. Arkovy's vivi-
sections from sufferings equal to, perhaps
greater and much more prolonged than,
those which were endured in behoof of
those millions by three dogs. Add to these
millions the generations of the so-relieved
in time to come."

Physics, and Occult Qualities. By Will-
iam B. Taylor. Washington : Judd &
Detweiler, Printers. Pp. 50.

This is the retiring president's address,
delivered before the Philosophical Society
of Washington on the 2d of December last.

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856

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that we are not surprised to find much new
matter which has never before been fully
presented iu any systematic treatise, and, to
those who wish to keep abreast with the
times and with the latest views of geologists
on all important questions, we can recom-
mend a perusal of Professor Geikie's work,
the value of which to the student is greatly
enhanced by his copious references to au-
thorities and works consulted.

Annals of the Astronomical Observatory
of Harvard College. Volume XIII.
Part I. Micrometric Measurements.
Cambridge, Massachusetts : John Wil-
son & Son. Pp. 204.

The work tabulated in this volume was
done with the equatorial telescope of fif-
teen inches aperture, from 1866 to the close
of 1881, under the direction of Professors
Winlock and Pickering, the successive di-
rectors of the observatory, and includes ob-
servations of double stars, nebula?, the
satellites of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and
Mars, the asteroids, comets, and occultations.
Micrometric determinations of position, ex-
cept in the cases of small stars near the
equator and in and near the nebula of
Orion, the results of which have appeared
in former volumes, have formed only a small
part of the work done with the large tele-
scope ; and the present volume records
chiefly the miscellaneous micrometric work
that has been accumulated during the in-
tervals of other investigations.

Quintus Claudius : A Romance of Imperial
Rome. By Ernst Eckstein. From the
German by Clara Bell. New York: Will-
iam S. Gottsberger. 2 vols., pp. 313, 303.
Price, $1.75.

This is an attempt to reproduce in a life-
like form, and with the interest of a romance,
the manners and moods of a past age. With
reference to the particular era selected, the
period of imperial Rome at the close of the
first centur}-, the author observes that it
bears, in its whole aspect, a stronger resem-
blance to the nineteenth century than per-
haps any other epoch before the Reforma-
tion ; and that hardly another period "ha>
ever been equally full of the stirring conflict
of purely human interest, and of dramatic
contrasts in thought, feeling, and purpose."
The numerous allusions to peculiar features
of the time are explained in foot-notes.

Traits of Representative Men. By George
W. Bungay. New York : Fowler & Wells.
Pp. 2S6.

This, says the author, is not a book of
biography, but of pen and pencil pictures
of men of the time who have distinguished
themselves in their respective callings, from
which the young may derive lessons that will
be of service to them. Among the thirty-
five men whose biographies are given, with
their portraits, politics, literature, the clergy,
finance, and art are represented, but science
not at all.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

%* Authors and others, sending papers and
monographs for notice, will please specify, for gen-
eral information, where they can be procured.

The Manual Training School of Washington
University, St. Louis, 1882-1863. C. M. Wood-
ward, Secretary. Pp.45.

Admission of Women to Universities. By W.
Le Oonte Stevens. New York : S. W. Green's
Sons. Pp. £6.

The Foundation Principle of Education hy the
State. By Samuel Barnet. Boston : New Eng-
land Publishing Company. Pp. 11.

Annual Report of the School Committee of
the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts. M L.
Hawley, Superintendent. Pp. 66.

Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion, Annual Report, 1882. S. W. Johnson, New
Haven, Director. Pp. 114.

Zoological Society of Cincinnati, Annual Re-
port, 188a. Frank J. Thompson, Superintendent.
Pp. 16.

Pitcher Plants. By Joseph H. James. Pp.11.

The Storage of Electricity. By Henry Greer,
New York Airmt, College of Electrical Engineer-
ing, 122 East Twenty-sixth Street. Pp. 64.

Buffalo Naturalists' Field Club Bulletin ; Vol.
I, Nos. 1 and 2. Buffalo, New York : George
Wardwell. Pp. 48. Bi-monthly. $1 a year.

Nature of Electricity and Cosmie. By Raald
Arentz. Hartford, Connecticut : Case, Lockwood
& Brainard Co. Pp. 24.

Value of the "Nearctic" as one of the Pri-
mary Zoological Regions. By Professor Angelo
Heilprin. Philadelphia. Pp. 20.

Observations of the Transit of Venns, 1882, at
the Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton. By Pro-
fesssor David P. Todd, of Amherst College.
Pp.8.

State Museum of Natural History, and Com-
pletion of the Palaeontology of New York. (Leg-
islative Document) Albany. Pp. 28.

Alcohol a Factor of Human Progress. By Will-
iam Sharpe, M. D. London: David Bogue; New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.14. Sixpence.

Esmarch, A ntiseps is, and Bacillus. By Will-
iam Hunt, M. D. Philadelphia. Pp. 2?.

Scrofula and its Gland Diseases. By Frederick
Treves. F.R.C.S. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea's
Son & Co. Pp. 77. 10 cents.

The Prevention of Insonity. By Nathan Al-
len, M. D., Lowell, Massachusetts. Pp. 23.

Vaccination : Its Fallacies and Ev'ls. By Rob-
ert A. Gunn, M. D. New York : Nickles Pub-
lishing Company. Pp.38, 25 cents.

From Zone to Zone. A Prize Poem. By
Frank D. Y. Carpenter. Pp. 22.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

857

" The Journal of Physiology." Michael Fos-
ter, Editor, January, 1883. W. T. Sedgwick,
Ph. B., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Pp. 42, with Plate. $5 a year.

The Treatment of Acute Eczema. By George
II. Rohe, M. D. Baltimore, Md. : Office of Medi-
cal Chronicle. Pp. 7.

What shall we do for the Drunkard ? By Or-
pheus Everts, M. D. Cincinnati, Ohio : Robert
Clarke & Co. Pp.51. Price, 50 cents.

Law Reform and the Future of the Legal Pro-
fession. By Charles C. Bonuey. Chicago : Legal
News Company. Pp. 28.

Sixteenth Annual Report, State Board of
Charities, New York. Albany : Weed, Parsons
&Co. Pp.28.

Forest Protection and the Tariff on Lumber.
Spirit of the Press. No puolisher's name. Pp.
35.

Report on ihe Development of the Resources
of Colorado. By Allen Smith, State Geologist,
Denver, Colorado : Chain & Hardy. Pp.159. 35
cents.

Kissena Nurseries, Flushing, New York,
Catalogue of Ornamental Trees and Shrubs-
Parsons & Sons Company, limited. Pp. 88.

Forestry Bulletins, Census Office, Nos. 24 and
25. Amount of Tannin in the Bark of some of
the Trees of the United States.— Forests of West
Virginia.

Archasological Institute of America. Bulle-
tin, January, 1S83. Pp. 40; Regulations, Offi-
cers, and List of Members. Pp.14. E.H. Green-
leaf, Secretary, Boston, Massachusetts.

Prehistoric Trephining and Cranial Amulets.
By Robert Fletcher. United States Army. Wash-
ington: Government Printing- Office. Pp. 32,
with Plates.

A Study of the Manuscript Troano. By Cyrus
Thomas, Ph. D. : Introduction by D. G. Brinton,
M. D. Washington : Government Printing-Of-
fice. Pp. 237.

The Battle of theMoy: or, How Ireland gained
her Independence, 1892-1894. Boston: Lee &
Shepard. Pp.74.

Catalogue of Books published by Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. Pp. 80.

TheNew-EnLilanders : A Comedy of the devo-
lution. By E. M. Davidson. New York : Collins
& Brother. Pp. 55. For private circulation.

A Handbook of Vertebrate Dissection. By
H. Newell Martin. D. 8c, M.D., M. A., and Will-
iam A. Moale, M. D. Part II. How to Dissect a
Bird. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1883. Pp.
85. 60 cents.

The Unending Genesis. By H. M. Simmons.
Chicago : Tiie Colegrove Book Company. 1883.
Pp. 111.

Astronomy Corrected. By H. B. PMlbrook-
New York : John Polhemus. 1882. Pp. 54.

An Outline of Qualitative Analysis for Be-
ginners. By John T. Stoddard, Ph. D., North-
ampton, Massachusetts. 18S3. Pp. 55. 75 cents.

A Dictionary of Electricitv. By Henry Greer,
New York, Agent of the College of Electrical
Engineering. 122 East Twenty -sixth Street.
1-S33. Pp. 192. $2.

Electro-Magnets. By T. H. Du Moncel. New
York : D. Van Nostrand. 1S63. Pp. 112. 50
cents.

A Word, Onlv a Word. By Georg Ebers.
New York : Wiliiam S. Gottsbergcr. 1883. Pp.
348.

A New Theory of the Origin of Species. By
Benjamin G. Ferris. New York : Fowler &
Wells. 1833. Pp. 278. $1.50.

Report npon the i'rianirulation of the United
States Lake Survey. By Lieutenant-Colonel C.
D. Comstock. Wa-hingfon: Government Print-
ing-Office. 1883. Pp. 922, with 30 Plates.

The Theories of Darwin and their Relation to
Philosophy, Religion, and Morality. Ily Rudolf
Schmid, with an introduction by the Duke of
Argyll. Cnicago: Jansen, McC'lurg & Co. 1883.
Pp. 410. $2.

Notes on Evolution and Christianity. By J.
T. Yorke. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 1883.
$1.50.

Astronomical paper prepared for the Use of
the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac
under the Direction of Simon Newcomb, Ph.D.,
LL. D. Vol. I. Washington : Bureau of Naviga-
tion. 1882. Pp.487.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Aberrations iu Fog-Signals.— Mr. Arnold
B. Johnson, of the Light-house Board of the
United States, has been pursuing on our
coast parallel investigations with those re-
ported some years ago by Professor Tyndall
on the aberrations of audibility of fog-signals.
The results of this work, as summarized by
Lieutenant-Commander F. E. Chadwick, U.
S. Navy, who aided in the investigation, are,
that navigators, when attempting to pick
up a fog-signal, must give attention to the
direction of the wind. If they are to the
windward of the signal, in a moderate breeze,
the chances are very largely against their
hearing it, for there is nearly always a sec-
tor, of about 120° to windward of the signal,
in which it. either can not be heard at all,
or is very faintly heard. As they bring the
signal to bear at right angles with the wind,
the sound will almost certainly in the case
of a light wind increase, and will soon as-
sume its normal volume, being heard almost
without fail in the leeward semicircle. Fog
appears not to be a factor of any conse-
quence whatever in the question of sound.
Signals may be heard at great distances
through the densest fogs, which may be to-
tally inaudible in the same directions and at
the same distances in the clearest atmos-
phere. It seems established by numerous
observations that the best possible circum-
stances for hearing a fog-signal are in a
northeast snow-storm, and they appear to
be best heard then with the observer to
windward of the signal. In light winds the
signal is best heard down the wind or at
right angles with the wind. The worst con-
ditions for hearing sound seem to be found
in the atmosphere of a clear, frosty morning
on which a warm sun has risen and has been
shining for two or three hours. The result
of the whole is, that " the mariner will do

858

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

well, when he does not get the expected
sound of a fog-signal, to assume that he may
not hear a warning that is faithfully given,
and then to heave his lead, and resort to
the other means used by the careful navi"
gator to make sure of his position." (Wash"
ington : Judd & Detweiler, printers.)

Herbert Spencer and the Land Question.

— Mr. Herbert Spencer sends to the " St.
James's Gazette " (London) the following
communication, explanatory of his views on
the ownership of land: "During my absence
in America, there appeared in the ' St.
James's Gazette ' (27th of October, 1882)
an article entitled 'Mr. Herbert Spencer's
Political Theories.' Though, when it was
pointed out to me after my return, I felt
prompted to say something in explanation
of my views, I should probably have let the
matter pass had I not found that elsewhere
such serious misapprehensions of them are
being diffused that rectification seems im-
perative. Before commenting on the state-
ments of your contributor, I must devote
a paragraph to certain more recent state-
ments which have far less justification. In
old days among the Persians, the subordina-
tion of subject to ruler was so extreme that,
even when punished, the subject thanked
the ruler for taking notice of him. With
like humility I suppose that now, when after
I have been publishing books for a third of
a century ' the leading critical organ ' has
recognized my existence, I ought to feel
thankful, even though the recognition draws
forth nothing save blame. But such elation
as I might otherwise be expected to feel is
checked by two facts. One is that the
' Edinburgli Review ' has not itself discov-
ered me, but has had its attention drawn
to me by quotations in the work of Mr.
Henry George — a work which I closed after
a few minutes on finding how visionary were
its ideas. The other is that, though there
has been thus made known to the reviewer
of a book of mine published thirty-two years
ago, which I have withdrawn from circula-
tion in England, and of which I have inter-
dicted translations, he is apparently uncon-
scious that I have written other books,
sundry of them political; and especially he
seems not to know that the last of them,
1 Political Institutions,' contains passages

concerning the question he discusses. Writ-
ers in critical journals which have reputa
tions to lose usually seek out the latest ver-
sion of an author's views ; and the more
conscientious among them take the trouble
to ascertain whether the constructions they
put on detached passages are warranted or
not by other passages. Bad the Edinburgh
reviewer read even the next chapter to the
one from which he quotes, he would have
seen that, so far from attacking the right of
private property, as he represents, my aim
is to put that right upon an unquestionable
basis, the basis alleged by Locke being un-
satisfactory. He would have further seen
that, so far from giving any countenance to
communistic doctrines, I have devoted four
sections of that chapter to the refutation of
them. Had he dipped into the latter part
of the work, or had he consulted the more
recently published ' Study of Sociology ' and
' Political Institutions,' he would not have
recklessly coupled me with Mr. George as
upholding 'the doctrines of communism,
fatal alike to the welfare of society and to
the moral character of man' ; for he would
have discovered the fact (familiar to many,
though unknown to him) that much current
legislation is regarded by me as communis-
tic, and is for this reason condemned as
socially injurious and individually degrad-
ing. The writer of the article in the ' St.
James's Gazette ' does not represent the
facts correctly when he says that the view
concerning ownership of land in ' Social
Statics ' is again expounded in ' Political
Institutions ' — ' not so fully, but with as
much confidence as ever.' In this last work
I have said that, ' though industrialism has
thus far tended to individualize possession
of land, while individualizing all other pos-
session, it may be doubted whether the final
stage is at present reached.' Further on I
have said that ' at a stage still more ad-
vanced, it may be that private ownership of
land will disappear ' ; and that ' it seems
possible that the primitive ownership of land
by the community . . . will be revived.'
And yet again I have said that ' perhaps the
right of the community to the land, thus
tacitly asserted, will, in time to come, be
overtly asserted.' Now it seems to me that
the words I have italicized imply no great
' confidence.' Contrariwise, I think they

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

859

show quite clearly that the opinion conveyed
is a tentative one. The fact is, that I have
here expressed myself in a way much more
qualified than is usual with me ; because I
do not see how certain tendencies, which are
apparently conflicting, will eventually work
out. The purely ethical view of the matter
does not obviously harmonize with the polit-
ical and the politico-economical views ; some
of the apparent incongruities being of the
kind indicated by your contributor. This is
not the place to repeat my reasons for think-
ing that the present system will not be the
ultimate system. Nor do I propose to con-
sider the obstacles, doubtless great, which
stand in the way of change. All which I
wish here to point out is that my opinion is
by no means a positive one ; and, further,
that I regard the question as one to be dealt
with in the future rather than at present.
These two things the quotations I have
given above prove conclusively."

Valne of the Evidence of Stone Imple-
ments.— Professor Putnam suggests in his
report, as curator of the Peabody Museum of
Archaeology, that it will not do to draw too
large inferences from the finding of stone
implements. That our recent Indians, he
says, " used many exceedingly rude stone im-
plements can not be questioned, and even to-
day, among the Western tribes, stones picked
up at random are used for various domestic
purposes, and when a camp is changed many
such are left, with other things which are of
too little value to be taken away. From
these facts it is evident that the ruder im-
plements and utilized natural forms are
not a certain evidence of the period of de-
velopment of the people who made use of
them. That we, in camping out, are so often
forced to make use of stones, shells, bones,
and withes of roots or bark, should be con-
sidered in drawing deductions from the rude
character of any set of implements."

Responsibility of Criminal Lunatics. —

Dr. S. S. Herrick, of the Louisiana State
Board of Health, has published (New Or-
leans) a plea in favor of enforcing the re-
sponsibility of criminal lunatics, to the extent
at least of putting them where they can do no
harm. He starts with the obvious proposi-
tion that " the welfare of the sane members

of society is vastly more important than the
liberty, or even the life, of a dangerous lu-
natic," and expresses the belief that proba-
bly at least three sane persons are acquit-
ted on the " insanity plea " for every insane
criminal convicted. A vast amount of silly
sentimentality, he continues, " is effused on
criminals, both sane and insane ; as if a few
such worthless wretches deserve more con-
sideration than the great mass of well-be-
haved and respectable people. It is indeed
shocking to take the life of a madman, ju-
dicially or otherwise ; but it is simply bad
management to allow a lunatic to commit
an act for which a sane person would be
punished, and still worse to risk its repeti-
tion." Dr. Herrick objects to capital pun-
ishment for any class of criminals ; but he
advises that the insane be held amenable
to punishment like other criminals, and be
made to know that its infliction is sure.
This will operate as a restraint upon them,
and conduce to security of life and property
and to the welfare of the insane. It may
be alleged, adds Dr. Herrick, " that the res-
toration of penalties upon the insane is a
relapse toward the bai'barism of the past.
The answer to this is, that by their immu-
nity from punishment is demonstrated a
deviation from progress, inasmuch as it
practically increases crime and provokes
violent and unlawful retaliation."

What is Adulteration. — What is the
wrong of adulteration if the adulterant is
not injurious is shown up by Professor Al-
bert B. Prescott, of Ann Arbor, in one of
the papers of the Michigan State Board of
Health. Adulteration infringes upon the
right of every person — unrestricted except
by considerations of sanitary welfare and
public police — to decide for himself what
he shall eat. " An adulteration is a fraud, a
deception, a counterfeit. It is systematical-
ly concealed from the purchaser. Its object
is to induce people to accept an article which
they would not accept for the use then want-
ed, if it were not for the deceit. To sell
an admixture of coffee and chiccory, if the
terms and proportions of the mixture are
printed on the wrapper in a way to have
them seen by the purchaser is not adul-
teration. To sell oleomargarine under its
own distinctive name, with no credit bor-

86o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rowed from butter, is not an adulteration.
But to supply sugar made from corn-starch
for the ordinary sugar made from cane-juice,
or to deal out milk-and-water or skim-milk
for entire milk, is an adulteration — a viola-
tion of the right of the consumer to obtain
his food on his own discretion." The plea
that may be made, that the adulterant is
as wholesome as the real article " is not to
be heard at all ; it belongs to the consumer
to judge for himself what he will provide
for his own table." Even if the falsifica-
tion be not committed to injure health, it is
directly objectionable on sanitary grounds,
for it is a violation of a great safeguard of
health. To the plea that people are not
really deceived by the sophistications, but
that they are understood, tolerated, and even
preferred by customers, " let it be replied,
if the pretense is so thin as to deceive
no one, and if the admixture is in demand
for use as it is, the pretense can the more
easily be dropped, and at any rate the ad-
mixture must go under its own description
and by its own name. Not a single article,
unless indictable as a positive poison, need
be withdrawn from the market."

Festivals of the Pagan Iroquois.— Mrs.

Erminie A. Smith gave an interesting ac-
count, at the late meeting of the American
Association, of some peculiar festivals and
superstitions of the Iroquois Indians. About
half the Iroquois, she said, are not Chris-
tians, but worship a Great Spirit, a god of
love, and look to him with great confidence.
Their religion is not idolatrous, but quite
spiritual. Their only private worship is
burning tobacco, and an occasional solitary
dance of the squaws. There are eight an-
nual festivals, at which varied Romish, Jew-
ish, or Protestant forms have been en-
grafted on the ancient dancing, games, and
incense-burning. The Tuscaroras of West-
ern New York have hardly a trace of their
old religion. About half the Senecas are
still pagan. The Onondagas have numer-
ous festivals, beginning with the feast at
the first new moon of the new year, at which
the chiefs occupy four days in narrating the
teachings of Handsome Lake, who nearly a
hundred years ago introduced a new form
into their religion. On the next three days
the chiefs and their followers "put their

sins in the wampum " (i. e., confess). The
clans are then divided into sides for the
gambling, which lasts three days. A white
dog is strangled and presented to the win-
ning side, who decorate it and dance around
it. Afterward the dog is thrown into the
fire, and the sides are reunited. Then there
are war-dances, and the women dance with-
out lifting their feet from the ground. At
the tapping of the maple-trees there is a
war-dance to bring warm weather and make
the sap flow. A seven days' festival is held
at corn-planting, and there are also straw-
berry, bean, and green-corn festivals ; the
latter is preceded by a hunt. In the gam-
bling the women sometimes play against the
men for the silver brooches which cover
their dresses. The last public festival is at
the corn-gathering, when there is a repeti-
tion of the confession of sins. A special
dance takes place at the death of a medi-
cine-man. The property of an oi'dinary
dead person is often played for. Friend-
ships are cemented by dances. It is a sad
fact that the pagan Iroquois are better than
their Christian brethren. No wonder the
missionaries have great obstacles, when all
the immoral white intruders are counted
as Christians. New York has much to an-
swer for, and should care more for her In-
dians than for the Greenlanders and Hot-
tentots. The author dwelt on the great in-
fluence for good of one good woman. Great
results have flowed from some schools
founded long ago. Mrs. Smith introduced
the following names of the moons, or mouths,
in the Mohawk tongue : January, old beech-
leaves fall ; February, bull-frog on pond ;
March, moss all falls ; April, turkeys gob-
ble ; May, plant corn ; June, strawberries
begin ; July, corn getting ripe ; August,
corn quite ripe ; September, all ripe and
dry ; October, getting cold ; November, cold-
er ; December, very cold.

Suicide in Switzerland.— Mr. Wynell-
Mayow has attributed the high rate of
suicide that has been remarked in Switzer-
land to Calvinism, and assumes that that
republic "is the most Calvinistic country
in the world." Mr. William Westall, in
the London " Spectator," shows that he is
wrong in two points. Calvinism is not the
faith of the majority in the confederation,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

861

but only of a part of three fifths of the
population, among whom Protestants of
every denomination are included, and it
has long ceased to be a living faith there.
It would be more reasonable to ascribe the
prevalence of self-murder to drink, for Switz-
erland is one of the most drunken countries
in the world. The fact is, however, that
suicide is not excessively prevalent among
the Swiss. Self-murders are committed in
the country, but not by natives. Thus the
statistics show that, of 263 suicides com-
mitted in the Canton of Geneva between
1873 and 1S78, 48-3 per cent were com-
mitted by foreigners, and only 26-6 per
cent by natives of the canton, the others
having been natives of other cantons than
Geneva.

Folk-Lore of the Elder and the Juniper.

— The elder and the juniper were formerly
sacred to the German goddess Bercht Hol-
da, and many traces of their former sanc-
tity remain in popular customs. Thus elder-
branches are scattered around, and juniper
is smoked, on the day of Corpw Christi.
The German name of the juniper ( Wach-
holder) appears to be a corruption of a com-
bination of words, which, when analyzed,
are found to signify the living tree of Holda.
A number of superstitions may be traced
back to the former connection of the elder-
bush with the goddess. Witches are thought
to produce bad weather by stirring water
with branches of elder. Some believe that
to burn elder-wood will bring harm to the
house. It is not considered lucky to cut
down elder-bushes or juniper-trees without
asking their consent, and offering an ex-
change. February was the month of Holda,
and Lady-Day was her particular day. On
that day, the women were accustomed to
dance in the sunshine, having elder sticks
in their hands, with which they struck the
men who came near them. The ancient
Prussians made offerings to the god of death
under elder-trees, and the pollen was con-
sidered dangerous. The Slovaks made elder-
men out of the pith, to be servants of the
death-god ; and the Poles never ventured to
cut down the bush except under the protec-
tion of an incantation. When any one died
in Hildesheim, the undertaker took the
measure for his coffin in silence with an

elder-rod, and the driver of the hearse had a
whip of elder-wood. The gods of the lower
world were propitious to every one who
planted an elder. In Vinchgau, in the
Tyrol, it was thought that any one on whose
grave a transplanted elder-bush became
green was happy ; the bier of the dead was
a cross made entirely of elder-wood. The
wood was worn as a charm for protection
against epilepsy, and whoever took hold of
the amulet acquired the disease. Similar
superstitions were attached to the juniper.
The berries were holy ; the plant, bearing
green berries along with ripe ones, gave
protection against the small-pox, as well as
against witches. The pollen was consid-
ered invaluable for the young growth of the
wood. The spirits loved to dwell among
the bushes ; whoever could make himself
invisible could change himself into a juni-
per-bush, which no one would dare to touch.
A statue of the Virgin was surrounded by
juniper, and the Christ-child had a queen-
bee in his hand. The dead were burned
with juniper-wood. The hornbeam had such
an affection for the juniper that it would
die if its neighbor was plucked up. The
linden, the hypericum, the hazel, the service-
tree, and the ash, were also consecrated to
Holda, and the first tree in the list played a
prominent part as a magic tree, with which
many different usages are associated.

Advantages of Cremation.— Dr. W. H.

Curtis, of Chicago, in an address before the
American Public Health Association, at its
Savannah meeting in 1881,* summarizes the
objections to the disposition of the dead by
burial as consisting in the pollution of the
soil, air, and water — a real danger in crowd-
ed cemeteries; the peril from body-snatchers;
and the possible danger of persons being
buried alive. The objection to crema-
tion, that it is a heathen rite and not a
Christian one, is dismissed as untenable ; it
may be as Christian as any other method.
There remain but two objections that de-
serve notice. Cremation may be used to
destroy evidences of crime ; and it is too
costly for general use. The former objec.
tion is outweighed by the advantages that
might be derived from the general adoption
of cremation, and can be obviated by the

* Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

862

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

enforcement of easy precautions. The cost
is reducible to a very small amount by means
of the modern appliances. " In the im-
proved furnaces of to-day the body does not
come in contact with the fire at all, only
with an intense heat of 2000° or more. At
this temperature the body simply withers
away into a pure white ash. The gases gen-
erated are burned in a separated chamber
adapted to the purpose, and no smoke, odor,
or other unpleasant phenomena occur, to
offend the sensibilities of any one, be they
ever so acute. To attain these nearly per-
fect results, of course, costs money. The fur-
nace can not be erected in this country for
less than from three to five thousand dollars
— a mere bagatelle compared with the cost
of some of our cemeteries. The fuel neces-
sary to attain this high temperature, with
the necessary attendance, makes the ex-
penses of the incineration of a single body
about fifteen dollars. The apparatus used
by the Danish society at Copenhagen effects
the cremation in about an hour, and costs
only from five to seven shillings. After all,
the costliness of cremation does not seem to
be such a very great objection. Of course,
if we are forced to send the body to Wash-
ington, Pennsylvania, to Milan, to Padua,
or any other of the existing crematories, the
privilege is placed beyond the means of any
but the rich. But when the crematories are
more numerous and accessible, as they no
doubt soon will be, the necessity for an ex-
pensive lot in an expensive cemetery, an ex-
pensive casket, and all the pride, pomp, and
circumstance of a funeral d la mode, may be
dispensed with."

Instruction in Physics. — The quality
and best methods of education in physics
may be stated as the subject of the address
of Vice-President Mendenhall before Section
B of the American Association at its recent
Montreal meeting.* Presupposing that the
diffusion of information, or instruction, is an
important means of advancing science wor-
thy of a place by the side of original re-
search, and that teaching should be accom-
panied— not taking the place of it or sur-
rendering itself to it — by experimental work,
he suggests that quantitative work, and that
the best possible under the circumstances,

* Printed at the Salem Press, Salem, Massa-
chusetts.

should occupy the attention of the student,
while illustrative experiments and the quali-
tative work necessary to a good understand-
ing of the subject should be relegated to the
lecture-table of the instructor. That which
the pupil gets which is of most worth in his
course in a physical laboratory is not a fa-
miliarity with the principles of the science,
but a training in the methods of investiga-
tion in use among physicists, including a
knowledge of the use and abuse of experi-
ment and the necessary limits of our knowl-
edge derived therefrom. The study which
he ought to make of errors, instrumental
and accidental, will be of great value in va-
rious fields. It is better for the laboratory
to contain a few instruments of precision
than a large number of inferior performance
and accuracy. It is not a matter of great
importance upon what particular department
of physics a student shall spend his time
and strength. The underlying principles of
the method are common to all, and skill in
one begets facility in the others. To sum
up, the course of study in physics for the
undergraduate collegian should include a suf-
ficient training in mathematics to enable
him to apply his knowledge with ease and
facility to the more common physical prob-
lems; a thorough and exacting course of text-
book and lecture-work, in which the appli-
cation of his mathematical knowledge would
be made, and during which all illustrative
experiments necessary to a complete under-
standing of the text should be exhibited by
the instructor from the lecture-table; and,
finally, this to be supplemented by a course
in the laboratory in which more attention is
paid to the quality than to the quantity of
work done ; during which every problem is
discussed, as far as possible, both mathe-
matically and experimentally, and especial
attention is given to the discussion of the
results of experiment and of the more ele-
mentary portions of the theory of errors.
" Considering the work as thus divided into
three parts," says Professor Mendenhall, "I
am unable to see which is the least essen-
tial."

Work for Amateur Astronomers. — Pro-
fessor Edward C. Pickering, of the Harvard
College Observatory, invites amateurs who
have small telescopes to the observation of
the variable stars, and assures them that by

NOTES.

863

systematizing their work, and each selecting
a particular field, they can not only observe
with more satisfaction to themselves, but
may aid the progress of science. Some may
make real discoveries, and they are prom-
ised all the credit they may deserve for them>
if they give due early notice of the fact.
Steady and repeated observations of the
same object are wanted once or twice in
every month, in order to secure determina-
tions of their light -curves or variations.
This point has been heretofore to a large
extent omitted, and only the fact of varia-
tion, its period, and its extremes, have as a
rule been ascertained. Amateurs may do
service in this line, while professional ob-
servers are attending to more delicate points.
Professor Pickering has published a pam-
phlet giving directions and the other infor-
mation needed to secure intelligent observa-
tions, which may be had on application to
him at Harvard College Observatory, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts.

Roman Remains. — Mr. Alfred Tylor has
recently described, before the Royal Institu-
tion of Great Britain, some Roman remains
that were discovered last year in London
about nineteen feet below the present sur-
face of the ground. They include several
cinerary urns, one of which, fifteen inches
high, was of glass, containing the results of
the cremation of human bodies, and a re-
markable turned vase of stone. Four of
the urns were inclosed in leaden ossuaria
without solder, in the inside of one of which
was found an emblem of Mithra, the Per-
sian sun-god. Some of the other urns were
protected by roofing-tiles. The coins found
during the excavations bore dates from a. d.
60 to 300. The Mithraic emblem was proba-
bly of a date soon after a. d. 50.

Dizziness and Deafness. — Dr. "William
James, of Harvard University, has made
some experiments to test the modern theory
that the semicircular canals, instead of be-
ing connected with the sense of hearing,
serve to convey the feeling of movement of
the head through space, which, when inten-
sified, becomes dizziness. It occurred to
him that deaf-mutes, having their auricular
organs injured, might afford some corrobo-
ration of the theory, if it were true, by show-
ing a smaller susceptibility to dizziness than

persons with normal hearing. Of 519 deaf-
mutes examined by subjecting them to a
rapid whirling, 186 were wholly insuscep-
tible of being made dizzy, 134 were made
dizzy in a very slight degree, and 199 were
normally, and in a few cases abnormally,
sensitive. Nearly 200 students and instruct-
ors in Harvard College, supposed to have
normal hearing, were examined for purposes
of comparison, and but a single one proved
exempt from the vertigo. These results
seemed to Dr. James to support the theory
which was the object of his inquiry. It oc-
curred to him that those persons not affect-
ed by dizziness ought also to lose their power
of orientation when diving under water ; but
the experiments that were made to test the
correctness of this view were so varied in
their results that no conclusions could be
drawn from them.

Errata. — Messrs. Editors : Permit me to
call attention to a few errors in the first col-
umn of page 714 that make nonsense of what
I am quoted as saying of the supposed " lig-
nified snake." According to my remarks,
as published in the Washington " Star," in
line two, "rudimentary " should read " re-
jeetamentary." In line twenty-seven, "lar-
va " should read " liber." In lines thirty-
three, thirty-four, " without interference
with the growth or soundness of the tree "
should read "except where the bark is
already loosened, a supposition which in-
volves the idea of death or decay in the
tree, and consequent incapacity to renew
tissue. C. V. Riley."

NOTES.

In the twenty-third " Forestry Bulletin "
of the Census-Office, the total consumption
of wood for fuel in the United States during
the year of the census is estimated at 145,-
77S,"l 37 cords, the value of which was 8321,-
962,373. Of this quantity, 140,537,490
cords were used for domestic purposes ;
1,971,813 cords by railroads ; 7S7,SG2 cords
by steamboats ; 358,074 cords in mining and
amalgamating the precious metals; 266,771
cords in other mining operations; 1,157,522
cords in the manufacture of brick and tile ;
540,448 cords in the manufacture of salt ;
and 158, 20S cords in the manufacture of
wool. During the same year 74,00S,972
bushels of charcoal were burned, the value
of which was $5,276,736.

864

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

That plants have the faculty of adapting
themselves to suit a new environment has
been curiously illustrated in the case of
some Australian acacias that were intro-
duced to the Neilgherrics of India in 1845.
At home, these trees flower in October, which
is there a spring month. The transplanted
acacias continued in India to flower in Octo-
ber till about 1860, when they were observed
to flower in September ; in 1870 they flow-
ered in August; in 1878 they flowered in
July; and lastly, in 18S2, they began to
flower in June, the spring month which cor-
responds most nearly with the Australian
October. The trees imported since 1845
have not yet gone so far back in the time
of their flowering.

A female hippopotamus, which was pre-
sented to the London Zoological Society in
1853, by the Viceroy of Egypt, has just died,
with the exhibition of all the signs of old
age. Her mate died in 1S77, after having
lived twenty-seven years in the garden. As
the condition of the teeth and bones indi-
cate that the animals could hardly have been
able to live as long in their native wilds as
they did under attention at the park, the
conclusion is drawn that the limit of life of
the hippopotamus is about thirty years.

Dr. Joseph Kidd relates, in " The Prac-
titioner," a history of the course of disease
in a family, the effect of which is to illus-
trate strikingly, if it does not demonstrate,
the transmissibility of Bright's disease. A
woman, two of whose brothers had died
of this disease in early manhood, who her-
self died of it when sixty years of age, was
the mother of twelve children, seven of
whom also died from it, and grandchildren,
of whom two at least are afflicted with kid-
ney-disease.

A story is told of a woman in Boston
who discovered and located a leak in the
waste-pipe of a wash-bowl, by taking advan-
tage of the fondness of cats for the oil of
valerian. Having put two cats in the par-
lor, where an offensive odor was perceived,
the woman poured the oil into the basin
of an upper room and watched for the re-
sult. The cats shortly began to sniff the
air and move toward a closet through whieh
the waste-pipe ran, then jumped upon a shelf
and purred as if enjoying a great luxury.
The wall was cut away to expose the pipe,
and a considerable leak was found at the
very spot pointed out by the cats.

The Russian admiral. Count Frederic
B. Liitke, known as the " Patriarch of the
Fleet," a distinguished navigator of more
than half a century apo, has recently died.
He circumnavigated the globe in 1817-18;
was employed during the four successive
summers, 1821-24, in scientific surveys of

Nova Zembla, from which rich additions to
the knowledge of the Arctic regions were
derived; and from 1S26 to 1829 he com-
manded an expedition of the corvettes Se-
niavine and Moller to Kamchatka and other
parts of Northeastern Asia, Behring's Sea
and its archipelagoes, and Alaska, in the
course of which extensive collections were
made and much knowledge was acquired.

Professor John Nichol, speaking in his
" Historical Sketch" of American literature
of the non-existence of international copy-
right, says that "this gross injustice to the
authors on both sides of the Atlantic, for
the benefit of the publishers on one, leads
to the intellectual market being glutted
with stolen goods. Considerations of inter-
est in business are of course everything ;
those of principle or art or patriotism noth-
ing."

England has lost an active and highly
appreciated scientific student by the death
of Edward B. Tawney, Assistant Curator of
the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge. He
was the son of a clergyman, and was born
in 1841. For six years before going to the
Cambridge Museum, he had been Assistant
Curator of the Bristol Museum. He was
author of numerous papers on topics in ge-
ology, was versed in several Continental lan-
guages, and relished the masterpieces of
literature; thus showing in his life that
science is not narrow or its pursuit hum-
drum.

The United States Commission of Fish
and Fisheries is about to build, in connection
with its new station there, an aquarium, to
be devoted to biological researches of every
description, at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts.
Preparations are being made at the adjoin-
ing station for the artificial propagation of
cod, mackerel, halibut, and other fishes use-
ful for food.

The death is announced of Johann Bene-
dict Listing, a German philosopher who was
distinguished for his studies in recondite
questions in physics — in such matters as the
world ordinarily does not, or does not try to,
understand. His most important discovery
was a law, called after him, Listing's law, in
physiological optics, which relates to the
position of the eyeball when it turns from
looking at one object to another, without
movement of the head. Other studies re-
lated to the geometrical qualities of knots,
the inversion and perversion of geometrical
figures, helices, the complexes of space, and
similar puzzling conceptions.

Dr. Carl Hornstein, Professor and Di-
rector of the observatory at the Carl Ferdi-
nand University, Prague, died December 22d,
aged fifty-eight years.

INDEX

PAGE

Abbott, Charles C., M. D 315

Abney, Captain, F. R. S 397

Aborigines of the Isthmus 427

Adulteration ? What is 859

African, Tbe, in tbe United States 433

African, The, in the United States, Letter on 841

Allen, Nathan, M. D., LL. D 139

Allen, Professor Grant 94, G62

Anios, Sheldon 721

Animal Life, Queer Phases of. 589

Antiquity of Man in America 286

Arcadia, A South African 650

Asphalts, American and Foreign 188

Ass's Milk for Infants 425

Astronomers, Amateur, Work for 862

Astronomy, Physical. Modern Methods in 477

Backboned Family, Progress of 739

Bain, Alexander 458

Bates, Henry Hobart, M. A 788

Beard, R. O., M. D 535

Beets, Wine from 287

Benson, Berry 120

Bergeron, M 495

Bicycles and Civilization 556

Bicycle Controversy, The, in Stockbridge, Letter on 550

Birds in Cold Weather 431

Boileau, J. P. H., M. D ' 172

Boodle, R. W 511, 606

Books noticed :

" Ideological Etymology " (Andrews) 123

" Elements of Universology " (Andrews) 123

" Vice Versa " (Anstey) 125

" The Coming Democracy " (Harwood) 126

" The Change of Life " (Tilt) 126

" The Cornell University Register " (1881-'82) 126

" Light " (Wright) 127

" Memoir of Daniel Macmillan " (Hughes) 127

" Progressive Religious and Social Poems " (Vaughan) 127

" Water-Power of the Southern Atlantic Water-Shed " (Swain) 127

" Studies in Science and Religion " (Wright) 128

" Physiognomy " (Stanton) 129

vol. xxii. — 55

866 INDEX.

Books noticed : page

" Statistics of the Population of the United States " ("Walker) 129

" Wave-Lengths of Fraunhofer Lines " (Mendenhall) 129

" Report on Submarine Mines " (Abbott) 129

" Chronological List of Auroras," 1870 to 1879 (Greeley) 130

" Statistics of Public Indebtedness " (Porter) 130

" Appalachia," June, 1882 130

" Atlantis " (Donnelly) 131

" Meteorology of Tokio, Japan " (Mendenhall) 132

" The Chemistry of Sake-Brewing " (Atkinson) 133

" Construction and Maintenance of Time-Balls " (Hazen) 133

" George Eipley " (Frothingham) 276

" The New Botany " (Beal) 277

" Is Consumption contagious ? " (Clapp) 277

" The Sun " (Young) 278

" La Navigation Electrique " (Dary) 278

" Report of Smithsonian Institution " (1880) 278

" The Peak in Darien " (Cobbe) 279

" The Fire-Protection of Mills " (Woodbury) 279

" Easy Star Lessons " (Proctor) 280

" Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1880 " 280

" Manual of Blow-pipe Analysis " (Cornwall) 281

" Catalogue of 1,098 Stars " 282

" James Mill" (Bain) 414

" The Winners in Life's Race " (Buckley) 415

" Herbert Spencer on the Americans, and the Americans on Herbert

Spencer " 416

" Unity Pulpit " (Savage) 416

" A Practical Treatise on Hernia " (Warren) 417

" Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington " 418

" A Guide to Modern English History " (Cory) 419

" Address (New England Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute)

(Atkinson) 419

" Contributions to Mineralogy " (Genth) 419

" Age of Tejon Rocks of California " (Heilprin) 420

" Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences " 420

" How to succeed " (Abbott) 420

" Cerebral Hyperemia; Does it exist? " (Buckley) 420

" The Solution of the Pyramid Problem " (Ballard) 421

" A Guide to Collodio-Etching " (Hartley) 421

" United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries " (1879) 421

" The Gulf Stream " (Bartlett) 422

" Proceedings of the Department of Superintendence of the National

Educational Association " (1882) 422

" Putnam's Art Hand-Books " (Carter) 422

" A Dictionary of Music and Musicians " (Grove) 422

" The Hoffman Cover and Binder " 423

" American Journal of Physiology " 423

" Modern Stenographic Journal " 423

" Ragnarok " (Donnelly) 560

" Zoological Sketches " (Oswald) 561

" Check-List of North American Birds " (Coues) 563

INDEX. 867

Books noticed : PAGE

" New Check-List of North American Moths " (Grote) 563

" House-Drainage " (Gerhard) 564

" Diagram for Sewer Calculations " (Gerhard) 564

" New Method of learning the French Language " (Berger) 564

" Chapters on Evolution " (Wilson) 564

" Dress and Care of the Feet " (Kahler) 565

" Report of the Maryland Fish Commissioner " (Ferguson) 565

" Report of the Wisconsin Board of Health " 565

" Youth : Its Care and Culture " (Mortimer-Granville) 565

" Report of the Detroit Board of Health " 586

" American Citizens' Manual " (Ford) 566

" Railroad Economics " (Robinson) 566

" Strength of Wrought-Iron Bridges " (Robinson) 566

" Potable Water " (Folkard) 566

" Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club " 566

" Report of the Ninth Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition " 566

" Practical Life and the Study of Man " (Wilson) 567

" Schelling's Transcendental Idealism " (Watson) 567

" Speech and its Defects " (Potter) 567

" The Magazine of Art " 567

" Revue Scientifique " 568

" Facts and Phases of Animal Life " (Morwood) 704

" Swift " (Stephen) 705

" Herbert Spsncer on American Nervousness " (Beard) 706

" History of the Pacific States of North America." Central America.

(Bancroft) 707

" Anatomy of Birds " (Shufeldt) 708

" American Society of Microscopists 708

" Poems " (Savage) 708

" Work at Harvard Observatory " (Pickering) 709

" Gospel of the Stars " (Seiss) 709

" Education, Moral " (Buchanan) 710

" Report of the Peabody Museum " 710

" Lectures on Art " 711

" The Factors of Civilization " 711

" American Hero-Myths ... 711

" Wide Awake " 712

" Report on Six Hundred Tornadoes " 712

" The Science of Politics " (Amos) 850

"Description of Houghton Farm " (H. E. A.) 851

" Anatomical Technology " (Wilder and Gage) 853

" Experimental Physiology " (Owen) 853

" Physics, and Occult Qualities " (Taylor) 853

" Barometric Hypsometry " 854

" The Eleventh Commandment " (Barrili) 854

" Signal-Service Tables " (Dunwoody) 854

" A Study of Tennyson's ' The Princess ' " (Dawson) 854

"Text-Book of Geology " (Geikie) 855

" Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College " 856

" Quintus Claudius " (Eckstein) 856

" Traits of Representative Men " (Bungay) 856

868 INDEX.

PAGE

Brain-Weight and Brain-Power 172

Briesen, T. von 503

Brooks, Professor W. K 195, 364

Buckley, Arabella B 739

Biittner, C. G 650

Calendar, Origin of the, and Astrology 825

Camp-Meeting, Evolution of the 622

Cell-State, The 174

Cemetery, A Prehistoric 445

Cesspools, The Poison of 718

Child, A. L., M. D 204

Chittenden, C. E 842

Citric Acid, Action of, on Minerals 288

Civilization, Bicycles and 556

Civilization, Coeval Grades of. 430

Colin, Professor Ferdinand 174

Cold, The Poles of Extreme 570

Colored Population, Vital Conditions affecting the 714

Comets, M. Eespighi on the Light of 574

Comets, Professor Huggins on 428

Comet, The Great, of 1882 289

Consumption, Infectious 716

Continent, The Sunken Southern, again 429

Copyright Discussion, Letter on 842

Correspondence 120, 550, 841

Cowries and African Currency 141

Craters, Lunar, The Formation of 495

Cremation, Advantages of 861

Criminality in Animals 244

Cults, Ancient, among the Berbers of Morocco 286

Curiosities, Physiognomic ^

Customs, Ancient Old World and American, Analogies of. 287

Dawkins, W. Boyd \2

Deafness, Dizziness and °"3

Deformities, Bodily, in Girlhood ^23

Delboeuf, M VG7

Depression, The, of our Atlantic Coast 136

Donkey, Origin of the "r83

Draper, Professor Henry, Sketch of 405

Du Bois-Beymond, Eniil

Dwarfs and Giants ^^

Eatables, A Few Words about 6'i"r

Editor's Table 121,268,410,553,699,843

Education, Bain on University

Education, Brain-Power in

Education, Machine

71 1

Education, Mechanical and Vital '

INDEX. 869

PAGK

Education, the Influence of, on Observation . 359

Edwards, Henri Milne-, Sketch of 545

Egleston, N. II 774

Egypt as a Health Resort 141

Elder and the Juniper, Folk-Lore of the 861

Engler, E. A 156, 328

Errata 863

Esquimaux, The 137

Farming, Scientific, at Rothamsted 81, 383

FingaPs Cave, Is it artificial ? 231

Flora, North American, Succession of 135

Flora, The, of North America 283

Florida, Remedial Value of the Climate of 641

Foester, Professor William 825

Fog-Signals, Aberrations in 857

Foot-prints, Fossil, Human, in Nevada 137

Forestry, Scientific, Progress of 140

Forests, The Census and the 774

Forests, The World's, Waste of 428

Forest, The Possible Annual Yield of a 572

Fouillee, M. Alfred 300, 521

Geological Map, the Proposed, of Europe 283

Giants, Dwarfs and 767

Gilliam, Professor E. W 433

Girlhood, Bodily Deformities in 322

Gold, The Decrease of 503

Growth, Annual, of Trees 204

Growths, Some Curious Vegetable 30

Gulf Stream, The 134

Hall, James, LL. D 815

Hallock, E. J., Ph. D 188

Hamilton, Frank Hastings, M. D 1

Hammond. Dr. W. A 760

Hericourt, M 225

House-Walls, Hygiene in 135

Hunt, T. Sterry, F. R. S 165

Ice and Fog in the North Atlantic 628

Implements, Stone, Value of the Evidence of 859

Increase, Human, The Law of 39

Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory 424

Indians, The American, and the Aryan Race 286

Infection ? Do House-Flies convey 571

Insanities, Perceptional 760

Iroquois, the Pagan, Festivals of 860

Isthmus, Aborigines of the 427

James, Joseph F 445

Janssen, Jules C 477

870 INDEX.

PAGE

Jaw-Bone, The Infant Giant, of Stramberg 138

Juniper, Folk-Lore of the Elder and the 8G1

Kacheen, Marriage Customs of the 573

Lacassagne, A 244

Land Question, Herbert Spencer and the 858

Lansing, Gen-it L 577

Lapham, Increase Allen, Sketch of. 835

Larrabee, W. H 30

Law against Eight 699

Ledyard, L. W 842

Le Sueur, W. D., B. A 145

Letters, Eoman, Physiological Analogies of the 285

Life, American, Social Forces in 491

Life, Animal, Queer Phases of 589

Life-Insurance, The Decline of 429

Lion, The British 72

Literary Notices 123, 276, 414, 560, 704, 850

Lockwood, S., Ph. D 341

Lunatics, Criminal, Responsibility of 859

Lyman, Oliver E 803

Magnified Objects, Apparent Size of 137

Mallock and his New Science 121

Man, Antiquity of, in America 286

Marriage Laws, Indian 135

Mastodon, A, in an Old Beaver-Meadow 341

Matter, Speculations on the Nature of 788

Medicine, The Schools of. 535

Mental Shock and Inebriety 717

Miles, Manly, M. D 81, 383

Moraine, The Glacial, in Pennsylvania 134

Mortality in Town and Country 424

Mound-Builders, Were the, Indians? 285

Musical Sensations 225

Names, Geographical, Central American, Letter on 120

Narcotics, Lessons on the Danger of 718

Nerve- Vibration as a Eemedy 575

North Atlantic, Ice and Fog in the 628

Notes 143, 288, 431, 575, 719, 863

Observatory, Dearborn, Work of the 570

Ohm's Law, Experimental Demonstration of. 713

Oswald, Felix L 6, 345, 471, 589, 754

Overwork, The Question of 411

Parrish, Dr. Joseph 622

Pasteur, A Medal to 284

Pathology, A Chapter in Transcendental 659

Petroleum, Origin of. 284

INDEX. 871

PAGE

Philanthropy, Scientific. 300, 521

Photography, Eecent Advances in 397

Physics, Instruction in 8G2

Physiognomic Curiosities 63

Pietrement, 0. A 783

Piratical Publishers 656

Piratical Publishers or a Piratical Government 702

Plants, Use of the Gummy Secretions of. 572

Playas and Playa Lakes 380

Politics, Hindrances to the Science of 848

Politics, Nature and Limits of the Science of 721

Popular Miscellany 134, 283, 424, 569, 713, 857

Prairies, Formation of 285

Pre-Indian People, Traces of a 315

Pressure, Atmospheric, Subterranean Effects of 716

Primitive Man ? Who was 94

Principle in Small Things 273

Publications Received 133, 282, 423, 568, 712, 856

Publishers, Piratical 656

Radcliffe, Dr. 0. B 677

Radiations, Solar, Langley's Observations on 715

Railway Consolidation, Growth and Effect of 577

Railway Consolidation, Letter on 842

Records, Ancient Maya 718

Recreation, the Gospel of. 354

Redding, Benjamin B., Obituary Notice of 575

Religion, Natural 511, 606

Rhine, Alice Hyneman 625

Roberts, Charles, F. R. C. S 322

Roman Remains 863

Rothamsted, Scientific Farming at 81, 383

Russell, Israel C 380

Russian Geological Research 287

Schleiden, Matthias Jacob, Sketch of 256

Schools, European Technical 573

Schreiber, Dr. A 109

Science, Incentives in the Pursuit of 844

Science in Relation to the Arts 48, 206

Science in the Sick-Room 497

Sciences, the Natural, The Relations of 165

Science, The, of the Present Period 20

Scientific Weekly, The New 843

Scott, Leonard 656, 843

Sea-side, Sewage at the 625

Servant-Girls, Legal Status of the 803

Sewer-Gas ... 1

Shackford, Captain J. W 628

Shooting-Stars, their Traditions and Origin 142

Sick-Room, Science in the 497

872 INDEX.

PAGE

Siemens, 0. W., F. R. S 48 206

Small Things, Principle in 273

Smith, Mr. Gold win, on the Data of Ethics 245

Smyth, C. Piazzi 240

Snake, A Lignitied 239

Snake, Lignified, More ahout the 713

Social Porces in American Life 491

Spectroscope, The, and the Weather 240

Spencer, Herbert 354 491

Spencer, Herbert, and the Land Question 858

Spencer, Herbert, The Banquet to 410

Spencer's Impressions of America 268

Stanley, H 120

Statue, The Bartholdi 414

Stature, American 571

Stethoscope, Evolution of the 488

Storms, Origin of, Letter on 120

Suicide in Switzerland 860

Sumatra, Life among the Battas of 109

Sun, Theory of his Light and Heat, Letter on 120

Superstition, Curiosities of 345, 471, 754

Survey, Northern Transcontinental 715

Survey, The New York Geological 815

Thomson, Sir C. Wyville, Sketch of 693

Time Keeping in London 156, 328

Trees, Annual Growth of. 204

University Ideal, The 458

Varieties, Entertaining 263

Venus, Observations of the Recent Transit of . . . 569

Vice, The Economic Function of 732

Vivisection and Practical Medicine 615

Walton, Dr. George E 641

Weeks, Clara S 497

Wheat, The Pedigree of. 662

Whitehouse, F. Cope, M. A 231

Wilks, Samuel, M. D 488

Wine from Beets 287

Wurtz, Charles Adolphe, Sketch of 114

Yeo, Dr. G. F 615

Young, Professor C. A 289

Zoology, Speculative 195, 364

END OF VOL. XXII.

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