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THE

POPULAE SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

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

VOL. XXVII.

MAT TO OCTOBER, 1885.

NEW YOEK :
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 3, and 5 BOND STREET.
1885.

Copyright, 18S5, r

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

/0*f+£

\

INDEX TO VOLUME XXVII.

vol. xxvn.— 55

M. P. E. BERTHELOT.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MAY, 1885.

OUK KECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION.*

Br WILLIAM W. KEEN, M. D.

PROFESSOR OF SURGERY.

LADIES : It is my happy privilege to congratulate you on the com-
pletion of your three years of preliminary study, and on your
merited reward in receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine from
the oldest and largest medical college for women in the world.

By this degree you are permitted to enter the ranks of one of the
most ancient, honorable, and laborious professions. With it you as-
sume certain valued privileges, and have cast upon you certain weighty
duties. Both the privileges and the duties will exact from you all the
intelligence, skill, tact, and faithfulness which you possess.

You will observe that I said a moment since you had finished your
"preliminary" studies; for your first and most pressing duty after
graduation, and one for which happily you will at first have ample
time, is to continue your medical studies. I do not say complete them,
for, be your lives even prolonged far past the allotted threescore and
ten, instant, constant, intense study is the imperative condition of the
right kind of success. You know very little now. Happy both you and
your patients, if even writh gray hairs comes ever-growing knowledge.

But you have other duties than those to self — you have great duties
to the communities in which you wTill live. Women especially will not
only look to you in times of peril, whether in childbirth or sickness or
accident, but also for guidance in that greatest duty and privilege — the
prevention rather than the cure of disease. This is the glory of our
times and the magnificent duty of our profession, that by enlightened

* The Address to the graduates of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, delivered March 11, 18S5.
vol. xxvii. — 1

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

care and wise instruction we can prevent much of the sickness and
sorrow of the race, and bid back the Angel of Death.

Hygiene — well named after Hygeia, the goddess of good health-
must be one of your principal future studies, and its lessons ever on
your lips ; line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there
a great deal. The greatest need of our College to-day is a Professor-
ship of Hygiene. Would that in this vast audience some one could
be found who would endow such a chair in the Woman's Medical Col-
lege of Pennsylvania !

You must also direct public opinion, and especially the opinion of
your own sex, in reference to medical questions ; for your information
and studies will fit you to be their instructors in all such technical
questions.

It is to one of these medical issues of the day that I purpose to
direct your attention at present — one as to which intense feeling, espe-
cially among women, has been aroused — viz., the question of experi-
ments upon animals.

Epithets and invective have been freely used, but, as befits the audi-
ence and the occasion, I shall endeavor to approach it in a perfectly
calm and fair spirit, seeking to lay before you only one aspect of a
many-sided question, viz., the actual practical benefits it has conferred
upon man and animals — a fact that is constantly denied, but which
medical evidence proves to be incontestable.

I shall not consider the important older discoveries it has given us,
but only those since 1850, almost all of which are within my own per-
sonal recollection. Even of these I must omit nearly all of its con-
tributions to physiology and to pathology, though so much of our
practice is based upon these, and confine myself to the advances it has
enabled us to make in medical and surgical practice. I shall endeavor
to state its claims with moderation, for an extravagant claim always
produces a revulsion against the claimant, and is as unwise as it is
unscientific.

Again, it must be borne in mind that, as in nearly every other ad-
vance in civilization and in society, so in medicine, causes are rarely
single, but generally multiple and interwoven. While vivisection has
been a most potent factor in medical progress, it is only one of several
factors the disentanglement of which and the exact balancing of how
much is due to this or to that are often difficult and sometimes impos-
sible. Let me add one word more. All that I may say is purely upon
my own responsibility. I commit the opinion of no one else to any
view or any statement of fact.

Medicine in the future must either grow worse, stand still, or grow
better.

To grow worse, we must forget our present knowledge — happily,
an inconceivable idea.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 3

To stand still, we must accept our present knowledge as a finality,
complacently pursuing the well-worn paths ; neither hoping nor trying
for anything better— happily, again, an impossibility.

To grow better, we must try new methods, give new drugs, per-
form new operations, or perform old ones in new ways ; that is to say,
we must make experiments. To these experiments there must be a
beginning : they must be tried first on some living body; for it is
often forgotten that the dead body can only teach manual dexterity.
They must then be tried either on an animal or on you. Which shall
it be ? In many cases, of course, which involve little or no risk to life
or health, it is perfectly legitimate to test probable improvements on
man first, although one of the gravest and most frequent charges
made against us doctors is that we are experimenting upon our pa-
tients.

But in many cases they involve great risk to life or health. Here
they can not, nay, they must not, be tested first upon man. Must we,
then, absolutely forego them, no matter how much of promise for life
and health and happiness they possess ? If not, the only alternative we
have is to try them on the lower animals, and we would be most unwise,
nay, more, we would be cruel, cruel both to man and to animals, if we
refused to pain or even to slay a few animals, that thousands, both of
men and of animals, might live.

Who would think it right to put a few drops of the hydrochlorate
of cocaine (a year ago almost an unknown drug) into the eye of a man,
not knowing what frightful inflammation or even loss of sight might
follow ? Had one dared to do it, and had the result been disastrous,
would not the law have held him guilty and punished him severely,
and all of us said Amen ? But so did Christison with Calabar bean,
and well-nigh lost his own life. So did Toynbee with prussic acid on
himself, and was found dead in his laboratory.* Accordingly, Roller,

* I add the following striking extract from a speech in defense of vivisection, on
April 4, 1883, by Sir Lyon Playfair, deputy Speaker of the House of Commons — no mean
authority. The italics are my own :

" For myself, although formerly a professor of chemistry in the greatest medical
school of this country, I am only responsible for the death of two rabbits by poison, and
I ask the attention of the House to the case as a strong justification for experiments on
animals, and yet I should have been treated as a criminal under the present act had it then
existed. Sir James Simpson, who introduced chloroform — that great alleviator of animal
suffering — was then alive and in constant quest of new anaesthetics. He came to my
laboratory one day to see if I had any new substances likely to suit his purpose. I
showed him a liquid which had just been discovered by one of my assistants, and Sir
James Simpson, who was bold to rashness in experimenting on himself, desired immedi-
ately to inhale it in my private room. I refused to give him any of the liquid unless it
was first tried upon rabbits. Two rabbits were accordingly made to inhale it ; they
quickly passed into anaesthesia and apparently as quickly recovered, but from an after-
action of the poison they both died a few hours afterward. Now, was not this a justifi-
able experiment upon animals ? Was not the sacrifice of two rabbits north saving the life
of the most distinguished physician of his time? . . . Would that an experiment of a like

4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of Vienna, properly and wisely tried cocaine first on animals,* and then,
finding its beneficial effects, tried it upon man with like results, and
one of the most remarkable drugs of modern times was thus made
available. We are only on the threshold of its usefulness. It has
been used in the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth, the larynx and all
other mucous membranes, in the removal of tumors, and as an internal
medicine. When its physiological action has been still more thor-
oughly and systematically investigated, its poisonous dose ascertained,
when we know how it works, what its effects are upon the blood-press-
ure, the heart, the nerves, the blood-vessels — effects that can not be
accurately studied upon man — its usefulness may be increased to an
extent as yet but little dreamed of. Should it only soothe the last
painful hours of our great hero, General Grant, a nation will bless it
and the experiments which gave it effect. Moreover, had the experi-
ments of Dr. Isaac Ott, of Easton, f on this very drug, borne their due
fruit, America would have had the honor and the human race the bene-
fits of cocaine ten years ago — ten years of needless suffering !

This is but one illustration of the value of experiments upon ani-
mals in the realm of new drugs. In fact, substitute for eocaine other
drugs, or new operations, or new methods of medical treatment, and
the argument repeats itself for each. Within the last thirty years a
multitude of new drugs have thus been discovered, and their effects
have been either first tested upon animals, or their properties studied
exhaustively in a manner impracticable upon man. I will only enu-
merate some of them, since time will not allow me to enter upon each in
detail. Thus have been introduced lily-of-the-valley in heart-disease,
yellow jasmine, in diseases of the heart and nervous system, paralde-
hyde and chloral-hydrate, so valuable for sleep, caffeine for headache,
eucalyptus as an antiseptic and in medicine, nitro-glycerine for nervous
maladies, Calabar bean for diseases of the eye and nervous system,
naphthaline and iodoform in surgery, quebracho as an antispasmodic,
antipyrin and kairin in fever, jaborandi in dropsy, salicylic acid in
rheumatism, nitrite of amyl in epilepsy and intermittent fever, jequir-

kind on a rabbit or a Guinea-pig bad been used by Jobn Hunter, wbo probably shortened
his own noble life by experimenting on himself! . . .

" Let me give one other instance. ... A few years ago two young German chemists
were assistants in a London laboratory. They were experimenting upon a poison which I
will not even name, for its properties are so terrible. It is postponed in its action, and
then produces idiocy or death. A experiment on a mouse or a rabbit would have taught
them the danger of this frightful poieon ; but, in ignorance of its subtle properties, they
became its unhappy victims, for one died and the other suffered intellectual death. Yet
the promoters of this bill would not suffer us to make any experiments on the lower ani-
mals so as to protect man from such catastrophes. It is by experiments on animals that
medicine has learned the benefits, but also has been taught to avoid the dangers of many
potent drugs — as chloroform, chloral, and morphia."

* " Archives of Ophthalmology," September and December, 1884, p. 402, New York,
Putnams.

f Ott, "Cocai'n, Veratrin, and Gclsemium," Philadelphia, 1874.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 5

ity in ophthalmic surgery, piscidia as a substitute for opium, the hypo-
dermic method of using drugs, and so on through a long list. And,
as to the old drugs, it may be truly said that we have little exact, that
is scientific, knowledge of any one except through experiments upon
animals;*

Let us see now something of what America has done in advancing
practical medicine by vivisection. In passing, I may say that the
assertion that America has contributed but little, so far from being an
argument for the restriction of vivisection, is a strong argument for
its further cultivation, in order that greater good may result from
remarkable discoveries here, equal to those that I shall show have
been made in Europe.

Wounds of the abdomen, especially gunshot-wounds, are among
the most fatal injuries known to surgery. A small, innocent-looking,
external pistol-wound may cover multiple and almost inevitably fatal
perforations of the abdominal contents. The recoveries from 3,717
such wounds during the late civil war only numbered 444, and of
those with escape of the intestinal contents the recoveries, says Otis,
may be counted on one's fingers. The prevailing treatment as laid down
in our text-books has been purely conservative, treating symptoms as
they arise. The brilliant results achieved in other abdominal opera-
tions have led a few bold spirits, such as our own Sims, Gross, Otis,
McGuire, and others, to advocate the opening of the abdomen and the
repair of the injuries found.

In May of last year, Parkes, of Chicago, reported to the American
Medical Association f a series of systematic experiments on thirty-seven
dogs, that were etherized, then shot, the abdomen opened, and the
wounds of the intestines, arteries, mesentery, etc., treated by appro-
priate surgical methods. The results confirmed the belief awakened
by earlier experiments and observations that surgery could grapple
successfully with multiple and formidable wounds, by sewing them
up in various ways, or even by removing a piece of the bowel and
uniting the cut ends. Hard upon the heels of this important paper,

# For three hundred years digitalis, for instance, has been given as a depressant of
the heart, and, when a student, I was taught to avoid it carefully when the heart was
weak. But the accurate experiments of Bernard and others have shown that it is, on the
contrary, actually a heart tonic and stimulant. So long as I live I shall never forget the
intense joy of myself and the agonized parents, when one bright young life was brought
back from the very grave, some five years ago, by the knowledge of this fact, and this is
but one of many such cases. Thus have the action and dangers of our common anaesthet-
ics been positively and accurately ascertained ; thus the action of ergot on the blood-
vessels, explaining alike its danger as an article of food and its wonderful use in certain
tumors of the uterus and diseases of the nervous centers ; thus, too, every one who gives
opium in its various forms is a debtor to Bernard, and every one who gives strychnine a
disciple of Magendic.

f "Medical News," May 17, 1884. I shall refer readers frequently to this journal, as
it is often more accessible than foreign journals, and it will refer them to the original
papers.

6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and largely as its result, comes a striking improvement in practice.
And remember, that this is only the first fruit of a rich harvest for
future time, in all countries, in peace and in war.

November 2d, of last year, a man was brought to the Chambers
Street Hospital, in New York, with a pistol-shot wound in the abdo-
men. Under careful antiseptic precautions, and following the indica-
tions of Parkes, the abdomen was opened by Dr. Bull,* coil after coil
of the intestines was drawn out, the bullet was found and removed,
and seven wounds of the intestines were successively discovered and
properly treated, and the patient made an uninterrupted recovery. A
recovery, after so many wounds, any one of which would necessarily
have been fatal under the old methods of treatment, shows that we
have now entered upon a proper and successful method of treatment
for such frightful accidents.

This is but one of the remarkable achievements of late years in
abdominal surgery. The spleen has been removed, part of the stom-
ach has been cut out for cancer, part of the bladder has been dissected
away, the entire gall-bladder has been removed, and several inches of
the intestine have been cut out, all with the most remarkable success.
To all of these, experiments upon animals have either led the way, or
have taught us better methods. To recite each in detail would oc-
cupy too much time, but one illustration I must not omit, for the
improvement, produced by it and other experiments, affects every
abdominal operation. When I was a student, the peritoneum was
avoided by knife and needle wherever possible. After the death of
his fourth case of ovariotomy, Mr. (now Sir Spencer) "Wells, f in making
the post-mortem, was led to believe that the then received treatment
of the peritonaeum was incorrect, and that he ought to bring its sur-
faces in contact in order to obtain secure union. Accordingly, instead
of testing his ideas upon women, he experimented upon a few dogs,
and found that his suspicions were correct. Since then it has been
accepted as a cardinal point in all abdominal operations. Following
this came improvements in the ligatures used, in the method of treat-
ing the pedicle, in the use of antiseptics, etc., all more or less the
result of experiments upon animals, and what are the results ? Tak-
ing successive hundreds of cases, Sir Spencer Wells's percentage of
mortality has decreased steadily from thirty-four per cent to eleven
per cent. In 1,000 operations he has saved 7G9 women from the grave
and added a net gain of 17,880 years to human life, to say nothing of
the happiness of the thousands related to them by ties of friendship
and of blood — a proud boast indeed !

Since then, others have reduced the percentage of deaths after
ovariotomy to three in the hundred ; and Martin, of Berlin, has lost
but one patient from blood-poisoning in his last 130 cases.

* " Medical News," February 14, 18S5.

f Wells, "Ovarian and Uterine Tumors;' 1982, p. 197.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 7

It can not be claimed, of course, as to all this wonderful history of
abdominal surgery — and remember that in 18G2, when I was a medical
student, I heard ovariotomists denounced from a professor's chair as
murderers ! — that experiments upon animals have done the whole
work. No one man, no one series of experiments has sufficed, and
experiment alone would not have done it. But had such experiments
not been made on animals, as to the peritoneum, the pedicle, the su-
tures, the ligatures, etc., we should be far behind where we now are,
and still be ignorantly sacrificing human life and causing human suf-
fering.

But to return to America. The first condition to successful treat-
ment is an accurate knowledge of what any disease is — its cause and
its course — then we may guide it, and in due time, it may be, cure it.

Before Dr. H. C. Wood's* accurate experiments on the effects of
heat on animals, the nature and effects of sunstroke were almost mat-
ters of mere conjecture. Every one had his own theory, and the treat-
ment was equally varied. Even the heat-effects of fever itself — the
commonest of all symptoms of disease — were ill understood. Wood
exposed animals to temperatures of 120° to 130° Fahr. and studied the
effects. These experiments have often been alluded to as "baking
animals alive." You will note that the heat was no greater than that
to which laborers are frequently exposed in our hot summer-days,
when working in the sun or in many industrial works. His experi-
ments showed that the effects of sunstroke — or, as he happily termed
it, Thermic or heat fever, a scientific name now widely adopted — were
solely due to the heat, death following from coagulation of the muscu-
lar structure of the heart, or by its effects on the brain. They ex-
plained also many of the phenomena of ordinary fever as the result of
heat alone. They have established the rational and now generally-
adopted treatment of sunstroke by reduction of the body-tempera-
ture ; and the same method is now beginning to be appreciated and
employed in ordinary fever, f

The same observer, with Dr. Formad, has made important experi-
ments on the nature of diphtheria, and when we learn, as we probably
soon shall, how to deal with the microscopic forms of life which seem
to be its cause, it will not be too much to hope that we may be able
to cope far more successfully with a disease now desolating so many
homes.

In India alone twenty thousand human beings die annually from
snake-bite, \ and as yet no antidote has been discovered. How can we

* Wood, "Thermic Fever or Sunstroke," Philadelphia, 18*72.

f Eighteen out of Wood's experiments were on the general effects of heat, as above
alluded to. In six others the local effects of heat (135° to 190° Fahr.) on the brain, and
in four others the local effects (up to 140° Fahr.) on the nerves were studied, and gave
most valuable results, entirely and evidently unattainable on man.
% Fayrer, " Thanatophidia of India," p. 32.

8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

search intelligently for an antidote until we know accurately the effects
of the poison ? This can not be studied on man ; we must resort to
animals, 01* else let the holocaust go on. Accordingly, Dr. T. Lauder
Brunton began such a series of experiments in London, but was
stopped by the stringent anti-vivisection laws there in force. But Drs.
Weir Mitchell and Reichert,* in this city, have recently undertaken
experiments on cobra and rattlesnake venom, the cobra-poison being
furnished, be it observed, by the British Government, whose own laws
have prevented investigations for the benefit of its own subjects ! The
results are as yet only partly made known, but they have been brill-
iantly successful in showing that there are two poisons in such venom,
each of which has been isolated and its effects studied. The first step
has been taken — the poison is known. Who will raise a finger to stop
progress toward the second — the antidote ? Can the sacrifice of a few
score of animals each year in such research weigh for a moment
against the continuous annual sacrifice of twenty thousand human
beings ? f

The modern history of anaesthetics is also of interest. To say
nothing of ether and chloroform, whose safer use Bert has investi-
gated in France, nor of cocaine, to which I have already alluded, let
us see what experiments on animals have shown us as to bromide of
ethyl — an anaesthetic lately revived in surgery. Its revival has quickly
been followed by its abandonment on account of the frequent sacrifice
of human life — that is to say, experiments on human beings have
proved it to be deadly. Now, Dr. II. C Wood, J soon after its ^intro-
duction, made a study of its effects on animals, and showed its physio-
logical dangers. Had his warnings been heeded, not a few human
lives would have been saved.

The ideal anaesthetic, that will abolish pain without abolishing con-
sciousness, and do so without danger, is yet to be found. Cocaine is
our nearest approach to it. Now, in all fairness and common sense,
would it be real kindness or real cruelty to obstruct the search for
such an anaesthetic — a search which will surely be rewarded by suc-
cess, but which, if not carried on by experiments on animals, must be

* "Medical News," April 28, 1883.

f I am permitted by Rev. It. M. Luther, of this city, to state the following fact in
illustration of the practical value of vivisection in snake-bite : When a missionary in
Burmah, he and his brother-in-law, Rev. Mr. Vinton (two missionary vivisectionists !), made
a number of experiments to discover an antidote to the poison of the "brown viper" — a
snake but little less venomous than the cobra. They found a substance which is an
antidote in about sixty per cent of the cases if applied at once. Thah Mway, one of their
native preachers, when bitten by the brown viper, had some of this antidote with him,
and by its use his life was saved when on the verge of death. This one life saved has
been the means of leading, it is estimated, two thousand Karens to embrace Christianity.
Was not this one life worth all the dogs used in the experiments — to make no mention of
the many other lives that will be saved in all the future ?

X "Philadelphia Medical Times," April 24, 1880.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 9

tried by deadly experiments upon man, or else be hopelessly given
up?

In 1869 I was called to see a man suffering to the last degree from
an abscess in the loin. I recognized the fact that it arose from the
kidney, but I was powerless. All that I could do was to mitigate, and
that, alas ! but little, his pitiless sufferings till death came to his relief,
after nearly a year of untold agony. I have never forgotten his suf-
ferings, nor the sharp pain 1 felt when I learned, two years later, how
I might possibly have saved his life. In the very same year (1869),
Simon, of Heidelberg,* had a woman under his care suffering from
urinary fistulae from a healthy kidney — a surgical accident he in
vain tried to heal. That she could live with one kidney had the other
gradually been disabled by disease was probable, for one such diseased
kidney had been already removed three times when mistaken for
ovarian disease ; and physiologists had often removed one or both
kidneys in animals. But no one had removed a healthy kidney, and
then studied the effects on the remaining kidney and upon the heart ;
no one had tested what was the best method of reaching the kidney,
whether by the abdomen or the loin, or how to deal with its capsule,
or the hemorrhage, or the surgical after-effects. Of course, Simon
could have tried the experiment on his patient, blindly trusting to
Providence for the result. But he chose the wiser course. He studied
the previous literature, experimented on a number of dogs and watched
the points above noted, tried various methods of operating upon the
dead body, and, after weighing all the pros and cons, deliberately cut
down upon the kidney of his patient after a carefully formulated
plan, not by the abdomen, but through the loin, and saved her life.
She died in 1877, after eight years of healthy life, free from her loath-
some disorder.

Now, what have been the results of these experiments upon a few
dogs ? One hundred and ninety-eight times the kidney has been re-
moved, and 105 human lives have been saved ; 83 times abscesses in
the kidney have been opened, and 66 lives saved ; 17 times stones
have been removed from the kidney without a single death — or, in all,
in the last fifteen years, 298 operations, and 188 human lives saved.
Besides this, as an extension of the operation in 17 cases, in which the
kidney, having no such attachments as ought to anchor it in place,
was floating loosely in the abdomen and a source of severe pain, it
has been cut down upon and sewed fast in its proper place ; and all of
these patients but one recovered.

Looking to the future, when not hundreds but thousands of hu-
man beings will enjoy the benefits of these operations, and in increasing
percentages of recoveries, are not the sufferings inflicted on these few
dogs amply justified as in the highest sense kind and humane ? f

* Simon, "Cbirurgie der Niercn," 1871, preface.

f Very erroneous views prevail as to the sufferings of animals from experiments upon

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Not long since Dr. Ferrier, of London, was prosecuted for the
alleged performance of certain experiments on the brains of the lower
animals. With Fritsch, Hitzig, Goltz, Yeo, and others, he had de-
stroyed or galvanized certain limited areas of the brain (and it must
not be forgotten that the brain is wholly without the sense of pain),
and so determined the exact nervous centers for certain limited groups
of muscles. As a result of their labors, the brain is now mapped out
with reasonable accuracy, so that, given certain hitherto ill-understood
or obscure localized symptoms, we can now say that there is certainly
a tumor, an abscess, or other disease in precisely this or that locality.
True, we can doubtfully infer somewhat of the same from the cruel
experiments of disease on man. But Nature's experiments are rarely
ever limited in area or uncomplicated ; they are never systematic and
exhaustive ; it takes years to collect a fair number of her clumsy ex-
periments, and the knowledge is diffused through many minds instead
of being centered in one that will systematize the results.

Said Ferrier, a year ago, in the Marshall Hall oration, " There are
already signs that we are within measurable distance of the successful
treatment by surgery of some of the most distressing and otherwise
hopeless forms of intra-cranial disease, which will vie with the splen-
did achievements of abdominal surgery."

Note the fulfillment ! Last fall, within a year of the foregoing
prophecy, a man, aged twenty-five, entered the London Hospital for
Epilepsy and Paralysis.* From the symptoms, which I need not de-
tail, Dr. Hughes Bennett, basing his conclusions on Ferrier's experi-
ments, diagnosticated a tumor of small size on the surface of the
brain, involving the center of motion for the muscles of the hand.
On November 15, 1884, at his instance, Mr. Godlee trephined the
skull over the selected spot, and a quarter of an inch below the surface
of the brain found a tumor as big as a walnut, and removed it. For
three weeks the man did well, but died on the twenty-eighth day from
blood-poisoning, such as might follow any operation, especially a new
one. Macewen, of Glasgow, f has similarly trephined a woman, the vic-
tim of slow paralysis of body and mind, and opened an abscess a little
distance below the surface, letting out two teaspoonfuls of pus, and
followed by entire mental and physical recovery.

them. Many persons suppose that " vivisection " means deliberate " cutting up " of an
animal, little by little, till not enough is left to live. So far is this from the truth, that
Professor Gerald Yeo, from the actual reports of vivisectionists in England ("Fortnightly
Review, March, 1SS2), estimates that of one hundred such experiments, there are:

Absolutely painless *15

As painful as vaccination 20

As painful as the healing of a wound 4

As painful as a surgical operation 1

Total 100

* " Medical News," January 17, 1885. \ Ibid., January 3, 1SS5.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. n

By these experiments and operations a wide door is open to sur-
gery in the treatment of diseases within the skull — diseases heretofore
so obscure and uncertain that we have hardly dared to attack them.
The question is not whether death or recovery followed in these par-
ticular cases. The great, the startling, the encouraging fact is that,
thanks to these experiments, we can now, with well-nigh absolute cer-
tainty, diagnosticate, and with the greatest accuracy locate such dis-
eases, and therefore reach them by operation, and treat them success-
fully. Would that I had been born twenty-five years later, that I
might enjoy with you the full luxury of such magnilicent life-saving,
health-giving discoveries !

It is, however, by the experimental study of the effects of minute
organisms — microbes, as they are now called — that some of the latest
and most remarkable results have been achieved. The labors of Koch,
Pasteur, Klein, Cheyne, Tommasi-Crudeli, Wood, Formad, Sternberg,
and others, are now known even to the daily press. Let us see what
they have done.

It is but three years since Koch announced that consumption was
caused by the " bacillus tuberculosis." Later he has studied cholera
and found the "comma-bacillus," to which he ascribes that dreaded
disease. In spite of the opposition of prominent scientists, his views
have been in general accepted, and seem to be reasonable.

The method of experiment is simple, though difficult. The sus-
pected expectoration or discharge is placed in a suitable soil, and after
cultivation some of this growth is placed in another culture-soil, and
so on till generation after generation is produced, the violence of the
poison being modified by each culture. A small portion of any one of
these cultures is then injected under the skin of a mouse or other ani-
mal, and in time it dies or is killed, and the results are verified by the
post-mortem.

So exact is the knowledge in tuberculosis now that Koch can pre-
dict almost to an hour when the mouse will die of consumption, or that
it will escape, according to the culture used.

It is far too early as yet to say that these studies have borne the
immense practical fruit that the next few years will show ; but they
have already enabled us to recognize by the microscope doubtful cases
of consumption in their earlier and more remediable stages, and have
made certain what has hitherto been only a probability — that consump-
tion is distinctly contagious.

By Gerlach's experiments on animals with the milk from tuber-
cular cows, also, it has been shown that consumption may be con-
tracted from such milk. How important this conclusion is, in so
universal an article of food to young and old, I need not do aught
than state.

The experiments of Wood and Formad on diphtheria I have already
alluded to. Those of Tommasi-Crudeli also have shown that probably

12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the poison of malaria is due to like organisms, while a large number of
other diseases are being similarly investigated.

As to cholera, the classic experiments of Thiersch, in 1853, * are well
known. He inoculated fifty-six mice with cholera-discharges. Of
these, forty-four sickened and fourteen died from choleraic diseases.
In the same year two water companies in London experimented on
500,000 human beings, one of them inoculating its patrons with chol-
era-discharges through its impure water-supply. This one sickened
thousands and killed 3,476 human beings, most of whom might have
escaped had the lessons of Thiersch's fourteen mice been heeded. To
ask the question, which was the more cruel, is to answer it. f

At present our strenuous efforts are all in one direction — viz., to
study these microbes by the microscope, by clinical observation, and
by experiments on animals, in order to find out their origin, causes,
growth, and effects, and to discover by what means their deadly re-
sults may be avoided, or by what remedies, without harm to the patient,
they may themselves be destroyed. Evidently these studies can not
be tried on our patients. They must either be tried on animals or be
abandoned.

The inoculation experiments of modern times have recently borne
rich fruit in still another pestilential disease — yellow fever — whose
ravages in this country are fresh in our minds. November 10, 1884,
M. Bouley reported to the Paris Academy of Sciences J that, since 1880,
M. Freire, of Rio Janeiro, had experimented on Guinea-pigs with the
virus of yellow fever, and believed that he had been able to produce
such attenuation of the virus that by vaccination he could secure im-
munity from this dreadful scourge. Following the experiments, he and
Rabourgeon tested the results on themselves, some students of medi-
cine, and employes. Later the Emperor Dom Pedro authorized two
hundred wharf-laborers to be inoculated. All these, after a three
days' mild attack, remained free from the pestilence, while their fel-
low-laborers, similarly exposed to the fever, were dying on every hand.
If, in an epidemic, this still prove true, as there seems every proba-
bility it will, from the five hundred lives already saved, we can hardly
estimate either the medical or the commercial advantages to this coun-

* John Simon, "Proceedings International Medical Congress," London, 1881.

f The population supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, in the epidemic
of 1818-'49, died at the rate of 118 in each 10,000, and, in that of 1853-'54, at the rate
of 130 per 10,000. Those supplied by the Lambeth Company died in 1848-'49 at the
rate of 125 per 10,000, but having improved its water supply meantime, the death-rate,
in lS53-'54, fell to 37 per 10,000.

If Thiersch lived in England to-day, he would have to take out a license to kill his
fourteen mice in the interests of humanity — a license possibly refused, or only to be
obtained after the most vexatious delays. But any house-maid might torture and kill
them with arsenic or phosphorus, or Thiersch might give them to a favorite terrier with-
out the slightest interference, provided only it be not for a scientific or a humane object!

\ "Medical News," November 29, 18S4.

OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 13

try alone. Is this cruelty ? Let Norfolk, and Memphis, and Pensa-
cola, and New Orleans answer.

We are all familiar now with the numerous deaths from eating
pork infested with trichina. While I was in Berlin, in 1865-'66, a ter-
rible epidemic of the then new disease broke out at Hedersleben, a
small town in Prussian Saxony. I well remember with what zeal Vir-
chow and his assistants immediately investigated the disease, inocu- •
lated animals with the parasitic worm, studied its natural history,
found out that heat killed it, and to-day, as a result of these and other
experiments, we all know how to avert its dangers by proper cooking,
or to avoid it altogether by the microscope. The value of these ex-
periments, both to human life and to commerce, you know even from
the daily papers.

You will find it difficult to make the non-medical public understand
— nay, you yourselves as yet hardly understand — the enormous ad-
vance in medicine and surgery brought about by recent researches on
inflammation, and by the use of antiseptics. My own professional life
only covers twenty -three years, yet in that time I have seen our knowl-
edge of inflammation wTholly changed, and the practice of surgery so
revolutionized that what would have been impossible audacity in 1862
has become ordinary practice in 1885.

It would seem that so old a process as inflammation would long ago
have been known through and through, and that nothing new could
be adduced. In 1851, however, Claude-Bernard, by a slight operation,
divided the sympathetic nerve in a rabbit's neck and showed its influ-
ence on the caliber of the blood-vessels. In 1858 Virchow published
his " Cellular Pathology." In 1867 Cohnheim (Virchow's " Archiv ")
published his studies on the part that the blood-cells played in inflam-
mation as shown in the frog, followed by further papers by Dr. Nor-
ris, of this city, Strieker, Von Recklinghausen, Waldeyer, and many
others. Already in my lectures I have pointed out to you in detail the
advances made by these studies, both in theory and practice. They
have brought about an entire reinvestigation of disease, and given us
wholly new knowledge as to abscesses, ulceration, gangrene, the or-
ganization of clots in wounds, and after operations and ligature of
blood-vessels for aneurism, as to thrombosis, and embolism, and paral-
ysis, and apoplexy, and a score of other diseases through the diagnosis
and treatment of which now runs the silver thread of knowledge in-
stead of ignorance.

With this the brilliant results of the antiseptic system have joined
to give us a new surgery. Sir Joseph Lister, to whom we chiefly owe
this knowledge, has done more to save hmnan life and diminish human
suffering than any other man of the last fifty years. Had he only
made practicable the use of animal ligatures, it would have been an
untold boon, the value of which can only be appreciated by doctors ;
but he has done far more, he has founded a new system of surgery.

i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

We may reject the spray and carbolic acid, but the surgical world,
regardless of details, with few exceptions follows the principles upon
which his method is founded and humanity is the gainer, by the nearly
total abolition of inflammation, suppuration, secondary haemorrhage,
blood-poisoning, gangrene, and erysipelas, as sequels of accidents and
operations ; by the practicable relief from suffering and death, by op-
erations formerly impossible ; by rendering amputations and compound
fractures safe and simple instead of deadly. Reflect on what each one
of these brief but momentous statements means !

But we have by no means reached perfection. Lister himself, no
tyro, but the great master, is still searching for further improvements.
But when lately he desired to make some experiments on animals, still
further to perfect our practice, so many obstructions were thrown in
his way in England that he was driven to Toulouse to pursue his hu-
mane researches.

I had intended also to speak of many other practical benefits to
man directly, but can only mention such important matters as the sur-
gery of the thyroid gland, the seat of goitre ; the surgery of the lungs,
part of which have been removed ; the surgery of the nerves, removal
of the entire larynx, the remarkable researches of late years as to the
periosteum in the reproduction of new bone after removal of dead or
diseased bone ; Bernard's important observations as to diabetes ;
Brown-Sequard"s experiments on epilepsy, the modern extraordinary
advance in nearly all the diseases of the nervous system, and a
number of other discoveries, as to all of which experiments upon
animals have added largely to our knowledge, and therefore to our
means of diminishing suffering and saving human life. For many
of these, as well as for the most judicial discussion of the vivisec-
tion question I have yet seen, I must refer you to that remark-
able book, "Physiological Cruelty," written, not by a man, but a
woman*

I had also intended to refer in detail to the splendid results of vivi-
section in relieving the sufferings of animals, and in preventing enor-
mous pecuniary loss to man. We are only beginning to see that vivi-
section is as humane to animal life and suffering as it is to human, and
that for financial reasons as well as humane motives it is of the utmost
importance to the State that such diseases as cattle-plague, splenic
fever, chicken-cholera, swine-plague, and others, should be eradicated.
Vivisection has shown us how this may be done, and has so conferred
upon animals too the boon of life and health. For all this, however, I
must refer you to the recent admirable lecture by Professor Robert
Meade Smith, of the University of Pennsylvania.!

One subject, however, is so recent and of such interest, both to
man and animals, that I must not pass it over — I mean that justly-

* Sec also the just issued " Life and Labors of Pasteur."

\ Reprinted from the "Therapeutic Gazette," November, 1884.

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION? 15

dreaded disease hydrophobia. Thanks to vivisection, its abolition in
the near future seems no longer to be a matter of doubt.

Within the last three years Pasteur has announced that, by passing
the virus through the monkey, he has been able to protect dogs from
hydrophobia by vaccination with this weakened virus. The French
Government recently appointed an eminent scientific commission to
report on the alleged discovery. * Pasteur furnished them with 23 vac-
cinated dogs. These 23, and 19 others unprotected, were all inoculated
from rabid animals. Of the 19 unprotected, 14 died. Of the 23 pro-
tected dogs, one died of diarrhoea, and all the others escaped. It* has
yet to be tried on a man suffering from hydrophobia, but, should our
reasonable hopes be realized, what a boon it will be !

With this brief summary of a few of tlie recent practical benefits
from vivisection, I must close. I have given you only ascertained
facts for your future use in the communities in which you may settle.
They may assist you in forming public sentiment on a basis of fact, of
reason, and of common sense. The sentiments of our own profession,
so constantly and so conspicuously humane, are always against inflict-
ing pain ; but if in yielding to sentiment we actually increase disease,
and pain, and death, both among animals and men, our aversion to
present pain is both unwise and actually cruel.

In conclusion, let me wish you the greatest success in your profes-
sional life, and the richest blessings of our kind heavenly Father.
Farewell.

-Oo<>~

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION?!

By W. K. BKOOKS.

THE certainty and rapidity with which our domesticated animals
and plants may be modified in any desired direction by selective
breeding must be regarded as a reason for believing that, if it were
possible to pursue the same course with man, the human race also
might be rapidly improved in the same way. It is difficult to prove
this, for we are almost entirely removed, by our control over Nature
and by our artificial life, from the influence of natural selection ; and,
as we can not dictate to men and women whom they shall marry, we
can not bring about a union of those with the same congenital charac-
teristics, or propagate for a number of generations a peculiarity which
it is desirable to perpetuate and intensify.

There is reason to fear that our freedom from the influence of
natural selection may lead to the degeneration of the race unless some

* "Medical News," August 30, 1884.

\ Review of a paper by Alexander Graham Bell, read before the National Academy
of Sciences, November 13, 1883, upon the "Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human
Race."

16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

way to supply its place is discovered and adopted ; and the first step
in this direction is to prove by actual experiment that the race can he
modified by selection like any other species of organism.

The researches of Professor Bell, which show that a race of deaf-
mutes is actually growing up in the United States through an unfor-
tunate application of the law of selection, therefore have a very great
scientific value, which is entirely independent 'of the warning they
give of a danger which threatens us.

In the paper which is quoted above he renders the community an
important service by pointing out this danger ; but it seems to me that
the chief value of his work is not in this direct practical bearing, but
in the convincing proof which he furnishes to show that the law of
selection does place within our reach a powerful influence for the im-
provement of our race, for, as soon as the truth is borne home to all
men by facts like those which Professor Bell has brought together,
some effective means of applying it to mankind will certainly be
devised.

Mankind will not submit to any direct interference with personal
liberty ; but, if it is true that desirable characteristics can be perpetu-
ated and developed by selection, indirect methods of influencing the
choice of husbands and wives could undoubtedly be devised and em-
ployed.

If all the children which exhibit the desired peculiarity could be
brought together as early as possible, and could be made to live to-
gether during their youth, carefully guarded from the possibility of
making acquaintance with any other children, and if this restriction
could be continued through the period when acquaintances and friend-
ships and attachments are most easily established, this would be a
great step toward selective breeding ; for all the children with the
desired peculiarity would become intimately acquainted with one
another, while they would have few outside friendships. If, after the
children had grown up and become scattered, they were encouraged to
hold periodical reunions for promoting social intercourse between them
in adult life, and if they were provided with newspapers and peri-
odicals of their own, which should make a specialty :>f " personals "
relating to them, giving a full account of their conventions and re-
unions, and keeping their readers informed of all their movements,
their employments, their marriages, deaths, etc., the chances of inter-
marriage among them would be greatly increased.

If they were taught to speak and think in a language of their own,
and Avere furnished with a literature of their own in this language,
they would be very effectively cut off from intercourse with outsiders,
and would be compelled to look to their own numbers for their com-
panions and acquaintances; and there can be no doubt that, if all
these influences Avere employed together generation after generation,
they would soon lead to the establishment of a race sharply marked off

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION? 17

from the rest of the world by the excessive development of the char-
acteristic upon which the selection was based.

If the selection were a wise one, the result would be to the benefit
of mankind ; but the result would follow just as surely if an injurious
peculiarity or a defect were made the basis of the selection, for a
natural law produces its effect, whether it is applied wisely or un-
wisely.

Professor Bell points out that our system of educating the deaf
brings all these influences to bear, and that the means which have been
adopted by philanthropists and others from the noblest and purest
motives to ameliorate the condition of the deaf and dumb are unfor-
tunately the most complete and efficient methods which it is possible
to employ for inducing deaf-mutes to marry deaf-mutes, and that it
would be difficult to devise a more certain means for increasing the
number of unfortunate persons with this infirmity, and for producing
by selection a deaf variety of the human race.

We separate them from other children as early in life as possible,
taking them away from their homes and placing them by hundreds in
institutions where they are isolated from early childhood to the com-
mencement of adult life. Each deaf person is therefore intimately
acquainted with nearly all the others of his own generation, while
there are few opportunities for the formation of congenial and lasting
intimacies with outsiders. The graduates of the institution organize
themselves into societies or conventions for the promotion of social
intercourse in adult life, and these societies are to be found in all
large cities, in rooms where they meet for social intercourse, and for
religious worship. They hold State and national conventions, which
are attended by deaf-mutes of both sexes from all parts of the coun-
try, and they publish newspapers and periodicals of their own which
are filled with personal items.

They are taught a special language which is as different from Eng-
lish as French or German or Russian, and they learn to think in the
gesture-language, so that English is apt to remain a foreign tongue,
while they often write in broken English as a foreigner would speak,
so that they are in a great measure cut off from all of our literature
except its very simplest forms, and they have imperfect sources of in-
formation upon topics which engage the interest of the rest of the
community, such as social and political matters.

Although there is no compulsion or infringement of personal lib-
erty, all these influences combine to induce deaf-mutes to select for
their partners in life persons who are familiar with the gesture-lan-
guage, and with whom they have been thrown from childhood. We
have, therefore, adopted most of the means which tend toward the
formation of a deaf-mute variety of the human race, and time alone is
necessary to accomplish the result ; but there are still other means
which might be employed to hasten it. Professor Bell says that, with

VOL. XXVII — 2

i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this end in view, we might attempt to formulate some plan which should
lead the deaf children of deaf-mutes to marry one another instead
of marrying deaf-mutes who have not inherited their deafness, or to
marry hearing persons belonging to families in which deafness is he-
reditary. If, for instance, a number of the large deaf-mute families of
the United States were to settle in a common place so as to form a
community largely composed of deaf-mutes, then the deaf children
born in the colony would be thrown into association with one another,
and would probably marry in adult life or marry hearing persons
belonging to deaf-mute families, and each succeeding generation of
deaf-mutes would increase the probability of the deaf-mute element
being rendered permanent by heredity ; and we might anticipate that
a very few generations would suffice for the establishment of a perma-
nent race of deaf-mutes with a language and literature of their own.

Plans for the formation of such a community of deaf-mutes have
many times been discussed by the deaf-mutes themselves, contribu-
tions of money for the purpose have been publicly offered, and it has
even been proposed to procure the enactment of laws to secure the
descent of the land and other property in the deaf-mute line alone, so
that the hearing children would be led to leave the community. A
colony of this sort has even been founded in Manitoba, and twenty-
four deaf-mutes with their families have already arrived from Europe
and have settled upon the land, while more are expected this year.

The analogy of all other organisms would lead us to expect that,
with all these selective influences at work, the number of deaf-mutes
should increase rapidly, and the interesting question, " How far do the
facts justify this opinion ? " at once presents itself, and we ask, first,
whether deafness is hereditary ; and, second, whether it is true that
many deaf-mutes marry ; and, third, whether our system of education
does lead those who marry to select deaf-mutes as their partners ; and,
fourth, whether deafness is more frequent among their children than
it is in the community at large.

If the published records answer all these questions in the affirma-
tive, it is clear that, however much the present system may appeal to
our sympathies, it is neither the best one for the interests of the whole
community, nor the best for the deaf themselves, since it tends to in-
crease the evil which it is designed to alleviate.

Few of the institutions publish any record regarding the relatives
of pupils, but the records of the American Asylum, at Hartford, Con-
necticut, show that, of 2,106 pupils admitted to that institution, 693,
or nearly 33 per cent, were known to have deaf-mute relatives, and in
the majority of these cases the pupils have more than one relative deaf
and dumb, while in a few cases as many as 15 deaf-mute relatives are
recorded. The report of this institution for 1877 shows that

593 pupils had one or more brothers or sisters deaf and dumb.
100 " " cousins "

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION?

*9

47 pupils had one or more parents deaf and dumb.

38
29

48

u

uncles or aunts deaf and dumb.

a

a

a

u

a

«

children
distant relatives
grandparents
1 " " " great-grandparent

1 " " " great-uncle or aunt "

That this is not peculiar to the pupils of this particular institution,
and that it holds true of deaf-mutes in general, is shown by the fol-
lowing table, compiled from the records of six institutions :

INSTITUTIONS.

Total

number of

pupils.

Number of pupils

having deaf-mute

relatives.

Percentage of pupils

having deaf-mute

relatives.

2,106

1,165

560

283

1,620

89

693
380
166
103
356
21

32-9

326

29*6

36-4

21-7

Texas Institution

23-6

Total

5,823

1,719

295

The table shows that, among 5,823 deaf-mutes taken from different
parts of the country, 1,719, or 29^ per cent, are known to have had
deaf-mute relatives, and that this is due to the influence of heredity is
well shown when we contrast those who were born deaf with those
who had afterward lost their hearing. Many of those who lose their
hearing by accident or disease have no hereditary tendency to deaf-
ness, but a considerable number of those who lose their hearing at
some time after birth are born with an hereditary predisposition to
deafness. If, therefore, we contrast the congenitally deaf with those
who have become deaf, we should expect the latter class to have a
much smaller percentage of deaf relatives than the former class, but a
greater percentage than the community at large.

Professor Bell has compiled the following two tables from the one
which is given above, and they show that, while only about 13 per
cent of the pupils which were not born deaf have deaf relatives, more
than 54 per cent of the congenitally deaf pupils are recorded as hav-
ing such relatives :
Table II. — Proportion of the Non-eongenitally Deaf who have Deaf Relatives.

INSTITUTIONS.

Number of

non-congenital

deaf-mutes.

Number

having deaf mute

relatives.

Percentage

having deaf-mute

relatives.

American Asylum

1,040
432
268
124
947
53

131
74
32
31

120
8

126

New York Institution

17-1
11-9

Ohio Institution

Indiana Institution

25*

12'7

15*

Total

2,864

396

13-8

20

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Table III. — Proportion of the Congenitally Deaf who have Deaf -Mute Relatives.

INSTITUTIONS.

Number of

congenitally deaf

pupils.

N umber

having deaf-mute

relatives.

Percentage

having deaf-mute

relatives.

American Asylum

973

488
208
149
418
26

552
28V
118

72
194

11

56'7

New York Institution

588

Ohio Institution

56-7

Indiana Institution

483

Illinois Institution

46-4

42-3

Total

2,262

1,234

54'5

These tables show that, of 2,262 congenital deaf-mutes, more than
half are known to have had deaf-mute relatives, and that, even in the
case of those pupils who become deaf from apparently accidental
causes, more than 13 per cent had other members of their families deaf
and dumb.

In answer to the second question, Do deaf-mutes marry ? Professor
Bell gives a number of tables, one of which shows that, out of 1,259
pupils at the American Asylum and the Illinois Institution who were
born before 1840, 571, or nearly balf (45"4 per cent), are recorded
as married. The records for later years show a much smaller num-
ber of marriages in proportion to the total number of pupils ; but
this would necessarily be the case, because most of them are as yet
children.

In order to determine how many of this 45 per cent of deaf per-
sons who marry chose deaf-mutes for their partners, Professor Bell has
compiled the following table from the records of five of our largest
institutions for the deaf and dumb :

Table IV. — Proportion of the Deaf and Dumb who marry Deaf- Mutes.

INSTITUTIONS.

Total number of

pupils recorded to

have married.

Total number

recorded to have

married deaf-mutes.

Percentage.

642

191

56

26

174

502

142

39

21

152

78-2

74-3

696

80-8

Illinois Institution

87-3

Total

1,089

856

78-6

This shows that nearly 80 per cent of the deaf-mutes who marry
at all marry deaf persons ; but it does not follow that 80 per cent of
the marriages were between deaf persons, for it is probable that nearly
all of the 856 pupils who married deaf persons married pupils, so that
there may possibly have been only 428 weddings ; while the 1,089
minus 856, which equals 233 who married hearing persons, may repre-
sent only 233 weddings, so tbat, out of 661 marriages, only 428, or 65

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION? 21

per cent, may have been between deaf persons, but even this is an
alarming frequency, if it is true that the children of such unions are
predisposed to deafness.

If it is true that our system of educating the deaf is responsible
for the number of marriages between deaf persons, we should expect
to find these marriages increasing in numbers, and Professor Bell has
compiled from the table above quoted the following table, which
shows that this is the case :

YEAR OF BIRTH.

Total

recorded to have

married.

Total recorded

to have married

deaf-mutes.

Percentage.

Before 1810

129

715

233

12

72
577
196

11

55-8

1810 to 1839

80-7

1840 to 1859

84-1
917

These two tables show that the tendency of deaf-mutes to select
deaf-mutes as their partners in marriage is very pronounced, and that it
is much more developed now than it was during the early half of the
century, and that it is steadily increasing.

Thus there is every indication that this process of selection will go
on from generation to generation, and that a large proportion of the
deaf children of deaf parents will themselves marry, and that, of those
who marry, the majority will marry deaf-mutes.

If it is true that deafness is hereditary, this can have only one re-
sult— the increase of deafness.

There are very few reliable statistics regarding the number of chil-
dren born to deaf-mutes, or the proportion of deaf children, but Dr.
Turner, formerly the Principal of the American Asylum, stated, in 1868,
that statistics carefully collated from records kept of deaf-mutes, as they
have met in conventions at Hartford, show that in eighty-six families,
with one parent a congenital deaf-mute, one tenth of the children were
deaf; and in twenty-four families, with both parents congenital deaf-
mutes, about one third were bom deaf.

In 1854 Dr. Peet, the Principal of the New York Institution, said
that, of all the families of which he had records, " about one in twenty
have deaf-mute children ichere both parents are deaf-mutes, and about
one in one hundred and thirty-five ichere only one is a deaf-mute ;
and that the brother and sister of a deaf-mute are about as liable to
have deaf-mute children as the deaf-mute himself, supposing each to
marry into families that have, or each into families that have not,
shown a predisposition toward deaf-dumbness"

Our author has attempted to trace out from the scanty records the
history of certain families in which deafness is hereditary, and he has
expressed the facts in a number of graphic diagrams, two of which are
here reproduced.

22

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE HOAGLAND FAMILY, OF KENTUCKY.

In this family nineteen out of twenty-six descendants were deaf,
and it is interesting to note that, although one of the members of the
family was a hearing person, and married a hearing husband (Reed),
their two children and three grandchildren were all deaf. One of the

descendants, No. l,was

•6

ts§»

S

«,

«

I

I 2
IT'S

■oi^

o
ii

rO

i;

deaf and married a
deaf - mute, but their
five children all hear.
No one could refer to
this branch of the fam-
ily as a proof that deaf-
ness is not hereditary,
however.

The diagram on the
following page shows
the genealogy of the
Fullerton family, of
Hebron, New York :

Fullerton had seven
children, all deaf and
dumb. There is no fur-
ther information about
six of these children or
their descendants ; but
the seventh, Jane Ful-
lerton (1), married
Sayles Works (2), who
was also a deaf-mute,
and all their six chil-
dren were deaf and
dumb. No information
was obtained regard-
ing the descendants of
these six children.

Those persons who
are not familiar with
logical reasoning will
point to married deaf-
mutes with hearing
children as proof that
such marriages are not
to be condemned ; but,
in order to prove that
deafness is hereditary, it is not necessary to show that all the children
of deaf parents are deaf, but only that the number of deaf children,

g ^3

ill

-o-

^-

n

c

as-

to £

.9 a

J5

to

a

— ©

-O
-O

-o
-o

o o E

a rt B

to m to

« o o

c3 o rt

° u s

•3 ^3 -3

CAN MAN BE MODIFIED BY SELECTION? 23

as compared with the hearing children, is greater than it is in the
community as a whole, and this fact is proved beyond question by the
statistics.

The census returns show that there are 33,878 deaf-mutes in the
country, or that one person out of every 1,500 is deaf ; or that, out of
each 1,500 children who are born, 1,499 retain their hearing through-
out life, while only one is deaf.

If deaf children are no more numerous in the families of deaf
parents than they are elsewhere in the community, only 23 out of the
33,878 deaf-mutes should have deaf parents ; but we have a record of
nearly ten times this number, for Professor Bell states that, although

Tullertcn.

O 5

Wjrte.

iNb inform aiiorv concerning the\
I descendant s. J

m 6 6 jS 6 o

{X~a\n{ormation> concerning
the descendants.)

THE FULLERTON FAMILY OP HEBRON, NEW YORL.

only thirty-five of the fifty-eight institutions of the country have sent
replies to his queries, the returns from these thirty-five show that no
less than 207 deaf children of deaf parents have been admitted as
pupils. Deaf children are, therefore, at least ten times as numerous in
families where the parents are deaf as they are in the community at
large, and it is impossible, after reading Professor Bell's paper, to
doubt — 1. That deafness is hereditary ; 2. That, of the deaf persons
who marry, nearly all select deaf partners ; 3. That their children
are especially liable to deafness ; and, 4. That the number of deaf-
mutes who marry deaf-mutes is increasing, and that our educational
system fosters this tendency, and is to a great extent responsible
for it.

So far Professor Bell's conclusions seem to be unanswerable, and
there is no room to doubt that the means that we have adopted for
the amelioration of the conditions of the deaf have actually tended to^
increase the evil they were intended to diminish.

24- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The question whether this can be avoided, while the system as a
whole is retained, is one upon which there may well be a difference of
opinion ; and the fact that the publication in 1868 of a paper on "He-
reditary Deafness," by the Principal of the American Asylum, the
Rev. W. W. Turner, has been followed by a decrease in the number
of marriages between the pupils of that institution, seems to show that
it may be possible to accomplish much by repressive influences. Our
author believes, however, that the defect is inherent in our system,
and that a complete change is necessary ; and that the segregation of
deaf children in institutions, where they are kept by themselves, really
lies at the root of the matter ; and that the grand central principle,
which should guide us in our search for preventive measures, should
be the retention of the normal environment during the period of edu-
cation. The direction of change should therefore be toward the estab-
lishment of small schools and the extension of the day-school plan.
The average cost of the education of a deaf child in an American in-
stitution is $223.28 per annum, and a small day-school could be main-
tained at no greater cost, although the parents would be compelled
to furnish, in addition, the industrial training which is now provided
by the State ; but this would give no concern, for so many deaf-mutes
are now earning their livelihood by trades which are not taught in
the institutions as to demonstrate the practicability of apprenticing
deaf-mutes in ordinary shops.

The employment of the gesture-language and lack of articulate
speech are efficient elements operating to separate deaf-mutes from
hearing persons, and Professor Bell advises that all deaf pupils should
receive instruction in articulation and in speech-reading. In the
schools of Europe more than 65 per cent of the deaf and dumb were, in
1882, receiving efficient instruction in this way, and were taught to
speak and understand the speech of hearing persons, while in our in-
stitutions 4,241 pupils received no instruction whatever in articulation,
and only 886, or 14 per cent, were under oral instruction.

The question whether these remedies are the best and most prac-
ticable ones or not may safely be left to the judgment of the able men
who have devoted their lives to the subject ; but all those whose
sympathies for this unfortunate class are strongly excited must bear
in mind that the interests of the whole community are also to be con-
sidered, and no one could, in the interest of humanity, or even in the
interest of that small portion of the human race most directly con-
cerned, advocate measures which lead to the perpetuation and increase
of the evil.

Whether we approve of Professor Bell's recommendations or not, all
persons, those who hear as well as those who do not, must feel that he
has done good service to the community by calling attention to the
danger which now attends our system, but his paper is far more than
a warning : it is a promise, and its direct practical bearing is a very

CHOLERA. 25

small part of its value, for the facts which he has brought together
prove that man can be modified by selection as readily as any of
our domesticated animals or plants, and that increased knowledge
will ultimately enable us to bring about rapid improvements in
our race.

CHOLEEA.

By Dr. MAX VON PETTENKOFER.*
IV. — PREVENTION.

THE last sheet-anchor of the contagionists is always the linen of
cholera-patients. But this view rests on such debatable ground
that in the end it may prove to be fallacious. If cholera is really
spread through human intercourse, then it is clear that the unknown
specific something must accompany other vehicles, which may be man
himself ; and if this something can cause illness in man, then it must
reside in the system of the patient, and ought to be found there. There
can be no doubt of this ; and I am prepared to admit as much. Thirty
years ago I began my investigations on cholera in the belief that the
germs of cholera were contained in the stools ; but afterward, having
made sure that cholera was dependent on locality as well as human
intercourse, I endeavored to see how this relationship obtained by ask-
ing myself what was brought to the soil by man in his journeyings.
The reply was, urine and stools — his excrements and nothing else.
This view ripened into the belief that disinfection of the excreta and
their receptacles ought to be a prophylactic measure against the spread
of cholera, and excreta which had not been disinfected constituted a
source of danger. These thoughts occupied me up to April, 18G6,
when I published with my lamented friends, Griesinger and Wunder-
lich, some regulations on cholera ; and I first relinquished these views
when further study showed the uselessness of measures of disinfection
as well as the harmlessness of the undisinfected excreta of cholera-
patients. If the poison of cholera be contained in the excreta, then,
individual predisposition aside, those who mostly come in contact with
the excreta ought to be most frequently affected. And these should be
the various physicians and nurses in hospitals devoted to the care of
cholera-patients. But experience has clearly shown that the medical
attendants in cases of cholera are not more prone to take the disease
than others. The like holds good of nurses. Let us first of all consider
how the facts stand in the home of cholera, in India. During 1867,
in which the epidemic at Hurdwar prevailed, James Cuningham in-
vestigated the relationship of cholera to nurses in forty garrison towns
containing sixty-seven hospitals ; of the sixty-seven hospitals only eight

* Reprint of a special translation made for the London " Lancet."

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gave instances of cholera in the nurses ; the largest number of cases
occurred at Dharmsala, where there were eleven, Kasanli had three,
Muttra and Moradabad each two, Fazabacl, Lakknau, Mirat, and two
others one each. An epidemic among the nurses can therefore only be
spoken of in the hospital of the First Ghorka Regiment stationed at
Dharmsala, where eight nurses, two porters, and one other officer were
taken ill of the disease. These statements show how exceptional such
occurrences are. Why should not a hospital as well as a garrison now
and again be a center of infection ? Closer investigation proves, how-
ever, that the personnel of the hospital at Dharmsala was not affected in
a greater degree than the population outside the hospitals. It may be
shown that the percentage of cases of cholera among the outside popula-
tion was 8*01 ; in other words, that eighty-six cases occurred out of
1,073, while of the hospital staff of 127 eleven fell ill, or a percentage of
8*66. Cuningham also inquired whether the immunity enjoyed by nurses
could be explained by disinfection. He found from ancient sources
that this striking immunity of nurses was by no means a new thing,
and had certainly obtained before the days of disinfection. He draws
attention, among other writings, to an experience of Dr. Bruce, who
wrote : " In 1848 cholera broke out among the infantry at Caenpur
from May to September. During the whole time the hospital was
never free from single cases of cholera, and at times it was overfilled
with them. The whole institution may be said to have lived in the
rooms of the sick ; the coolies did not leave the beds of the sick for an
hour together, the physicians had much to do with the treatment of the
patients ; and yet not a man, whether European, half-caste, or native,
showed a single symptom of cholera. I took the greatest pains to col-
lect and sift these circumstances, but in this year not a single instance
occurred." In India a practical use is made of this knowledge under
the exceptional circumstances of the nurses being attacked. Nothing
is said of isolation and disinfection ; but the site on which the hospital
stands is looked upon as unfavorable, and a change is made. This
change of place is called by the English a movement, and as a pro-
phylactic measure comes within the first ranks. If the site to which
a movement has been made prove to be more unfavorable than that
which was quitted — from the frying-pan into the fire — the movement
has not availed anything. No good comes of the movement if the
personnel has been already infected as much as possible. The Sixty-
sixth Ghorka Regiment in its march through Tarai was not spared
when it reached the Naini Valley ; but, probably, if it had stayed a
day longer in Tarai, the percentage of illness, instead of being ten,
would have been twenty. It is the same as regards nurses and hos-
pitals in Europe. I shall refer to Munich intentionally, not because it
had so frequently been the seat of cholera (Munich had cholera once
to Berlin's twelve times), but because I am better acquainted with the
particulars. During the epidemic of 1873-'74 we had three hospitals

CHOLERA. 27

—the hospital on the left bank of the Isar, in Lindwurmstrasse, and
that on the right bank of the river in Ismaningenstrasse, and the mili-
tary hospital in Oberwiesenf eld. Cholera behaved in each hospital just
as it behaved in the houses in their immediate neighborhood. Cases of
cholera appeared in all three hospitals. In that on the left bank of the
Isar there was rejoicing on account of the supposed success of isolation
and disinfection until August loth, when the summer epidemic reached
its height ; then an epidemic suddenly broke out. This was at the
time that the epidemic developed in Lindwurmstrasse, in which the
hospital was situate, and the epidemic in the hospital subsided as the
epidemic in the street gave way. In the hospital on the right bank
of the Isar the rejoicings lasted longer. The Ismaningenstrasse took
no part in the summer epidemic, and neither did the residents of the
hospital. But in the winter epidemic the same course of affairs took
place as had occurred on the left bank of the river. The military hos-
pital escaped all along. Of the seven barracks in Munich any cases or
suspected cases of cholera were immediately sent to the military hos-
pital. Now and again a surgical patient or a patient suffering from
other illness than cholera was put among other patients, and later on suf-
fered from cholera. Such cases were of course removed to the cholera
division as soon as the stools betrayed the case. At times the cholera
division was very full, and many nurses were employed therein ; but
none of these fell ill or gave the least indication of cholera, though
many of them must have come in very close relation with the cholera-
stools. In the military hospital in Mullerstrasse the same facts were
observed as were met with in the case of the other hospitals. Seeing
how little contagious cholera is among the nurses, it appears very re-
markable that the washers of cholera-linen should suffer so much. I
think I hear a contagionist say that why nurses of cholera-patients
in hospitals are not infected may be easily explained when it is borne
in mind that great cleanliness exists, that there is much washing of
hands, that they do not eat with unwashed hands, and that what-
ever spurts on their clothes is rapidly dried, and dryness kills the
bacillus. On the contrary, among the washers of cholera-linen it is
easy to imagine that drops may be spurted into the mouth, or that in-
fective material may be conveyed on wet fingers to the lips, and if a
solitary bacillus gets into the intestines cholera may occur. How can
this be seriously discussed ? Can it be supposed that the nurses wash
their hands only in certain hospitals, and during certain times, and
that the chances of taking in the bacilli are less during the cleansing
and attention to a patient than in washing the clothes? Do such
nurses never put the moistened fingers to their lips ? Do their noses
never itch ? The explanation of the contagionists appears to me to be
very comical. And yet there are cases in which the infection must
have been derived from the linen soiled by cholera-stools. A very inter-
esting case came under my observation at Lyons in the washing-village

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of Craponne. In the " Gazette Medicale de Lyon " for 1854, page 252,
we read from a letter by Dr. Gensoul : " In the month of July, 1854,
two fugitives, a man and his wife, from cholera, alighted from Mar-
seilles at the Milanese court. They had hardly arrived before they
were attacked by cholera, the germs of which they had brought with
them, and both died on July 17th. Some days later the washers of
the Gasthof Bouchard in Craponne, a village about twelve kilometres
from Lyons, came to fetch the linen for the wash. The soiled clothes
and linen of the cases of cholera were given out in a separate bundle,
placed in a separate part of the cart, and finally given to a washer-
woman to clean. The washer-woman was struck down by a rapidly
fatal cholera, and the washer's daughter shared the same fate. No
other cases of cholera existed in the district on which the blame could
be thrown. Such a choice of victims needs no comment." The
cholera was not limited to the two cases. J. Garin (" Gazette Medi-
cale," p. 309) says that eight cases of death followed in Craponne, and
among them the washer's wife. From the statistics of Dr. Garin it is
gathered that the disease attacked almost exclusively the washing-
folk and their children. The population of Craponne numbers about
1,600 inhabitants, several families of which have charge of the wash-
ing for the hotels of Lyons. As a later report of Dr. Bouchet showed,
there were besides twenty-five other cases of cholera, with fifteen re-
coveries and ten deaths, which occurred in the course of two months.
The year 1854 was that in which the lower-lying parts of Lyons were
invaded by an epidemic. It remains a striking fact that in the fair-
sized village of Craponne cholera attacked almost exclusively the
laundry -workers. With the exception of the washers, Craponne might
be regarded as a place free from cholera. In 1855 severe epidemics
prevailed in villages near Lyons — e. g., St. Bonnet and St. Laurent de
Mure — though the outlying districts always enjoyed immunity from
cholera. The same held good of other exempt districts. A very in-
structive example of this kind is furnished by Stuttgart in 1854, wbich
is usually exempt from cholera. At the time when the severe epi-
demic prevailed at Munich an inhabitant of Stuttgart left Munich while
he was suffering from diarrhoea, and arrived at Stuttgart, where he
became worse and died of cholera. A few days later a case occurred
in the person of a woman who had never left Stuttgart. She was the
nurse of the case which had come from Munich. This case might be
quoted as one of direct contagion. Again, after some days, a third
case appeared, and this time it was the washer-woman who had cleaned
the clothes of the first case. Finally, the washer-woman's husband suf-
fered from cholerine. But no further cases appeared. Such cases are
always wrongly interpreted by the contagionists as examples of direct
infection, and such, at first sight, appears to be the case. If the case
from Munich had infected the three at Stuttgart, how was it that none
of the three infected other individuals ? For it must be remembered

CHOLERA. 29

that the cases at Stuttgart and at Craponne must have been tended
and their linen washed. How was it that no further cases occurred,
and that an epidemic was not started ? The linen of the case from
Munich was poisonous, but not that from the cases at Stuttgart ! Must
we not also suppose that another factor is necessary to explain the fur-
ther spread of cases introduced from without ? And this local factor
was wanting at Craponne and Stuttgart. If a case from Munich
caused three at Stuttgart, then the latter ought to produce nine. In
places which enjoy immunity from epidemics it is conceivable that
sporadic cases may occur, but, the conditions which are necessary for
the production of an epidemic being wanting, no further development
can take place. The soiled linen appears to me to be infective not be-
cause it comes from cases of cholera, but on account of its arrival from
a locality where cholera prevails. Perhaps linen is a good vehicle for
transmitting the infective material produced in a locality under the
necessary circumstances of time and place. Man is the only creature
that wears linen, and perhaps he alone spreads cholera, and it is pos-
sible that whether he were clothed or naked he would spread it just
as much and no more. But, if we accept this doubtful solution of the
Gordian knot, still the views of the contagionists on the dejecta of
cholera and the soiled linen would not stand on a firmer basis, since we
see not only individual cases but actual epidemics arising without the
introduction of soiled linen. The infective material which produces
cholera may be transmitted at all events in other ways along the paths
of human intercourse. The germs of cholera may be brought from a
locality to a place where the necessary relations of time and place are
not favorable for the epidemic development of cholera, and they may
there slumber for a month before they develop. There is every chance
for the propagation of cholera in India, and yet cholera only shows
itself fitfully in districts lying outside the endemic area. If the inter-
course with India be reduced to the least possible, as it was in the last
century, yet cholera might still at times visit us.

Finally, I shall ask myself what can be done to ward off cholera ?
The measures to be adopted will be very different according to the
theory adopted. According to the contagionists, the spread of epi-
demic cholera depends on personal and material intercourse, as well
as on conditions of time and space when the germs arrive at certain
localities. Moreover, the severity of the epidemic is supposed to de-
pend on the individual susceptibility. If one of these three factors be
wanting, an epidemic of cholera can not develop. Preventive meas-
ures against cholera may be devised in one of three directions : (1)
intercourse ; (2) disposition in time and place ; (3) individual predis-
position. Measures to prevent the spread of cholera by interfering
with human intercourse are, for many reasons, impracticable. If we
ask ourselves what good has resulted from sanitary cordons, inspection,
and quarantine, we are bound to answer, None. All these measures

3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have failed because they simply treat the individual, the possible case
of cholera. But the germs of cholera may be transmitted in the ab-
sence of the disease as manifested by illness. Even perfect sanitary
cordons and quarantine would be also valueless, for the reason that
they are commenced too late. It is true that quarantine and cordons
may prevent a certain quantity of the germs of cholera from entering
a country, so that it will serve as much purpose as a good custom-house
against smuggling. But there is a great difference between articles
of commerce and germs of cholera. The germs of disease are capable
of multiplication, and so the smuggling through of a few may, under
suitable circumstances, be the means for the development of millions
and billions. The epidemics at Toulon and Marseilles afford excellent
illustrations of my argument. Paris has not yet been attacked, while
all the regulations have failed to prevent the appearance of cholera at
Naples. No doubt inspection of ships is a good regulation as tending
to discover unhygienic conditions, but it is useless as preventing the
transmission of cholera. Inspection of places where cholera prevails,
the disinfection of articles coming from localities where cholera is, as
well also as the places where the dead are laid, are important matters,
but too much is not to be expected from these measures. The preva-
lence of contagious diseases like small-pox can not be much dimin-
ished by attempts to limit intercommunication. Protection from
small-pox by vaccination, which leaves human intercourse free, has been
followed by success. But we have not at our command a simple and
sovereign remedy by means of which the individual predisposition to
cholera may be done away with, and yet we can do something in this
direction. Everything which tends to lower the general health and
cause depression, but especially those conditions which induce diar-
rhoea, predisposes to cholera. To these matters every one must look
for himself, and his own efforts may be aided by the advice of doctors.
The organs of public health may also effect much. Medical treatment
should be obtained for the earliest cases of cholera and of diarrhoea.
Care must be taken by the authorities and by the community to take
measures for the treatment of the sick. But the difficult point in the
prevention of cholera is the predisposition in time and place. It is no
use urging, as the contagionists do, that we can not change the nature
of the soil. One of the established facts concerning epidemics of
cholera is the tendency of the disease to rage in those quarters where
the greatest filth prevails. All towns which have been provided with
good drainage and water-supply have lost their susceptibility to cholera.
England affords the best example of this fact. In 1849 there were
recorded 53,237 deaths from cholera, in 1854 the numbers were 20,097,
and in 1866 only 14,378, while from 1872 to 1874, when several epi-
demics prevailed on the Continent, cholera did not reach England. I
do not imagine that this immunity was due to the want of predisposi-
tion to cholera as regards conditions of time. The case of Fort Will-

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 31

iam in Calcutta may be again referred to, as there, I believe, the
immunity from cholera now enjoyed was due not merely to the intro-
duction of a better supply of water, but largely also to the improve-
ment in the other matters of hygiene.

-++*-

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Br J. LAUEENCE LAUGHLIN, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PEOFESSOE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN IIAEVAED UNIVEESITT.

A NATION is sometimes so bitterly taught by sad experience in
financial errors — as was the case with France in John Law's
time, and again in the issue of paper assignats during the Revolution
— that, on the principle of the "burned child," it ever afterward finds
that it unconsciously keeps to the right and avoids the wrong path.
So that to-day France is a country where correct conceptions of money
are almost universal, and her public monetary experiments are, as a
rule, most admirably conducted. In somewhat the same way does the
individual gain his proper knowledge of political economy. Principles
must be seen working in a concrete form. The key to efficient teach-
ing of the subject is to connect principles with actual facts ; and this
process must go on in the beginner's mind only through experience.
By experience, I mean the personal (subjective) effort of each one to
realize the working of the principle for himself in the facts of his own
knowledge. The pupil must be put in the way of assimilating for
himself the principles of his subject, in such a manner that he feels
their truth because they are apparent in explanation of concrete things
all around him. And for this purpose nothing is so useful as a sharp
struggle, an effort, a keen discussion, or possibly a failure of compre-
hension at the time ; for nothing will so awaken one to intellectual
effort and finally result in the safe lodgment of the principle within
one's thinking as an obstruction and its removal. That this is the aim
to be always kept in view by the teacher and student is made clear, it
is to be hoped, by the previous analysis of the " Character and Dis-
cipline of Political Economy." It is now my purpose to make some
suggestions as to the practical methods of teaching by which this can
be carried into effect :

1. The relative advantages of lectures and recitations in political
economy have never, to my knowledge, been openly discussed. An
experience with both methods of teaching leads me to think that the
lecture system, pure and simple, is so ineffective that it ought to be set
aside at once as entirely undesirable. No matter how clear the exposi-
tion of the principles maybe, no matter how fresh and striking the illus-
trations, it still remains that the student is relieved by the instructor

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from carrying on the mental processes which he ought to go through
for himself. In fact, the clearer the exposition by the lecturer, the
less is left to the student — the lecturer, in fact, is the chief gainer by
the system. Moreover, while listening to a connected and logical un-
folding of the principles, the student is lulled into a false belief that,
as he understands all that has been so clearly presented to him, he
knows the subject quite well enough ; and the result is to send out a
number of conceited men who really can not carry on a rational eco-
nomic discussion. They wholly miss the discipline which gives ex-
actitude, mental breadth, keenness, and power to express themselves
plainly and to the point. Then, not being forced to think over a
principle in its application to various phases of concrete phenomena,
they know the principle only in connection with the illustrations given
by the lecturer, while they utterly fail to assimilate the principles into
their own thinking. The subject then becomes to them a matter of
memory. They memorize the general statements without ever real-
izing their practical side, and that which is memorized for the day of
examination is forgotten more speedily than it is learned, and the sum
total of the discipline has been simply a stretching of the memory. In
fact, with the average student in almost any subject the lecture system
leads to cramming, At the best, it affords a constant temptation to
put off that kind of internal struggle which must be gone through
with — a period of doubts and questions — by which alone a clearer con-
ception of the subject ultimately emerges. In fact, it is doubtful if
the student ever gets much, if any, of that mental attrition on the sub-
ject which is the most valuable part of the work. An experience of a
year in lecturing to a class of two hundred and fifty, including the
best and the poorest men in the university, convinced me of the truth
of the above position ; and their examination-books were the most un-
satisfactory I had read for years.

The usual alternative to the lecture system is the plan of recitations
from a text-book. Even the simplest form of recitations is, in my
opinion, better than listening to lectures. At least, the student is put
to it to express the sense in words under the criticism of the teacher.
But this plan has its evident difficulties. If the pupil is called upon
for only what is contained in the book, he falls into the habit of mem-
orizing, and fails to think for himself. If you give him the clew, he
can tell you on what part of the page the statement is found, and can
put the idea in the language of the book ; but he knows nothing of the
power of applying it to what he sees. If the learner is very clever
and inquisitive, he may do something for himself, but the average pupil
quite misses the real good of such a course.

2. As it is evident that neither lectures nor formal recitations in the
old fashion are satisfactory, we are inevitably led to adopt a plan
which possesses the advantages of both. Some text-book is essential
as a basis for the instruction. In it the pupil should find an exposition

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 33

of the principles and a provocation to apply them to practical things
as he reads. Then he comes to the class-room as intelligently familiar
with the principles as his reading can make him. Now comes the
work of the instructor. At first it is surprising how easy it is to
show even to the best men a gap in their knowledge, or a misunder-
standing of the principle. Present an illustration different from that
of the book, and ask them to explain the situation. The necessity of
seeing the essential point in the facts, and the attempt to describe the
operation of the principle, will effectually rout the man who has merely
memorized the book, and teach him to think out the matter more thor-
oughly for himself in the future. The teacher, also, will try to find
out the accidental obstacles which in a young mind obstruct the un-
derstanding of the point in question. Let the pupil be asked to state
the matter, and let the teacher note the imperfections. Now he can
stimulate another student by questioning him as to one of these imper-
fections. If a clear correction is not obtained from a member of the
class, let the instructor apply the Socratic method. At first ask a
question which the learner readily understands, and then lead him
naturally and gradually by logical steps up to the point wherein he
had failed of understanding. He will then see his own difficulty, and
at the same time he has had a little robust exercise for his mind. If
this is carried on before his fellows, it will the better cultivate cool-
ness and self-control before an audience.

3. Above all, the hour should not be wasted in simply rehearsing
what has been read in the book. The student should go away from
the class-room feeling that he has received some new idea, or some
interesting fact which illustrates his subject. The work of the class-
room should be cumulative in its effect as compared with the fruits of
text-book reading. The teacher should in every way stimulate ques-
tions from members of his class, and urge the statement by them,
either orally or in writing, of their doubts and difficulties. If there
is some timidity in presenting a weakness in the presence of a class,
ask some more manly person of the number, and the timid student will
soon see that others are not much better off than he. In fact, all will
have difficulties in understanding, or in interpreting principles, some
trivial, some serious ; and the pupil will become discouraged unless
these are removed. When each one sees that others are also hindered
by obstacles, there will be a greater freedom in asking questions.
Moreover, in order to keep up a steady and regular training, which
will produce the best disciplinary results, let the questions of the in-
structor every day run backward in review, and especially aim to
bring out the connection of one part of the subject with another. It
will be very effective if done just about the time that the past work is
growing a little dim before the presence of newer ideas. In no sub-
ject, perhaps, more than in political economy, is it necessary to know
the preliminary stages in order to understand the later work ; so that

VOL. XXVII. — 3

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the pupil must be actually in possession of principles previously ex-
pounded for which he may be called upon at any time. It is simply
impossible for a person to be absent and neglectful for a time in his
study, and then come into the class-room to make a brilliant show on
an intermediate fragment of the subject. He can be too easily exposed
as a humbug to attempt it a second time. Moreover, thus to force him
to do the work as he goes along is the greatest favor one can do for
the pupil ; and the usual cramming before the examination becomes,
in reality, a general review, which is very useful in bringing him to
see the connection existing throughout the whole subject.

4. If the class is too large to reach each member as often as the
instructor might wish in the above method, there is one device which
is more or less useful. At the beginning of the hour let him write a
question upon the blackboard, to be answered by each one in writing
within the first fifteen minutes. The attempt to write out an explana-
tion clearly, without hint or clew from the instructor, will reveal to
the best student the deficiencies and gaps in his knowledge. Each one
will then have the keenest interest to know what is considered a satis-
factory answer to the question. At the next exercise of the class, the
instructor can read some good and some bad answers, point out the
general mistakes, and advise them for the future. No exercise can be
better than this in cultivating the habit of careful expression, and in
learning how to make a clear and pointed exposition of a subject in a
brief space of time. This practice tends to secure the accuracy which
in the oral discussions is made second to fluency and readiness.

5. Since the chief work of the class-room is not to enable students
to discover principles, but rather to understand and apply them, prob-
ably the most useful method of interesting a class is to present to
them by extracts from the newspapers of the day bits of fallacious dis.
cussions which may come under the head of the subject in hand, and
ask for criticism and discussion of them. The appositeness of a timely
topic is peculiarly valuable for such purposes. In fact, the practical
matters of our own country will never fail to excite a lively interest
in almost any class ; and through this interest the teacher can find a
way of leading men to study principles more carefully. A national
or State campaign is very likely to furnish an instructor with a plenti-
ful supply of extracts for discussion by his class. The learner in po-
litical economy is not hindered by the same disagreeable obstacles, as
impede the medical student, in finding subjects on which to put his
learning into practice.

6. Many minds are unable to keep hold of an abstraction, or gen-
eral principle ; or they have been untrained in making nice distinc-
tions between ideas or definitions. Just as in beginning a strange lan-
guage, when words of widely different meaning have a similarity to
the untutored eye, the distinctions do not make much impression. So
it is in regard to ideas and definitions in political economy. There-

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 35

fore, visible expression of the abstract relationships, by diagrams, or
by any figures which represent the abstract in a concrete form, will be
of very considerable service to the ordinary student. This matter
seems to me to be of such practical importance in teaching that it
will be worth while to illustrate my meaning by a few examples :
(a.) Since material wealth comprises all things that have value ; since
capital is only that wealth employed in reproduc-
tion, and not used by the owner himself ; and
since money is that part of wealth in circulation
aiding in the transfer of goods — the relations be-
tween the three may be expressed to the com-
monest apprehension by some such device as the
following, in which the area of circle A represents
the amount of wealth ; B, the capital saved out of
the total wealth ; and C, the money by which goods are transferred —
only that part of circle C being capital which, inside of circle B, is
being used as a means to production.

Again (6), it is seen that different classes of laborers, arranged ac-
cording to their skill, form, as it were, social strata, of which the largest
and the poorest paid is composed of the unskilled laborers at the bottom.
This may be shown to the eye at once by the sections of a pyramid,
in which A represents the largest and least paid class ; B, C, and D,
etc., the better-educated, and relatively more skillful laborers ; ending
finally in the few, at the top, of the most competent executive man-
agers. Now, if A were to become as fully skilled as B, and competi-

tion should become free between all members of A and B ; and if this
were to go on in the same way to include C— the effects of this break-
ing down of the barriers which hinder competition might be illus-
trated by the following changes in the above pyramid : the areas of
A, B, and C may be thrown together into one area within the whole
of which movement and choice is perfectly free to the laborer, and
wherein wages are in proportion to sacrifice. This can be done by
striking out the lines of division between A, B, and C, and by rep-
resenting the change by the area included between the base and the
dotted lines.

Examples might be continued in illustration of my method, but
these must suffice. By this means there can be planted inside even the

3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dull mind an outline of an idea which can then be modeled and
shaded to the condition of a natural truth. The teacher will find, by
experience, that an idea thus given is very seldom forgotten. The
pupil has thus once turned the abstraction into a concrete form, and
he can now use it for himself after he has once grasped it. It does
not at all imply that he will get hard and definite conceptions of hu-
man affairs by this process ; for he is shown that the principle which
he has once seen in a concrete form, appears in other forms, and he is
constantly seeing that it is so.

7. In close connection with this method, but having an entirely
different purpose in view, is the use of charts and graphic representa-
tions of statistics. The method just described above aimed to help in
finding concrete expressions for the general principles ; but graphic
methods usually have as their object to assist in that part of the eco-
nomic process heretofore referred to as verification. Every one knows
the common dislike of dreary statistics ; to many persons columns of
statistics are repellent or meaningless. Collections of facts regarding
banking, finance, taxation, and wages become a tangle in which one's
direction is constantly lost. But arranged graphically the whole di-
rection of a movement is seen at once, and the mind takes in new and
unexpected changes, which force an investigation into their cause.
Moreover, there comes a certain breadth of treatment, when, in look-
ing at the facts graphically expressed, one is able to see the whole
field at once. There is no waste of thought on temporary and acci-
dental movements, for the action is seen from beginning to end at one
glance. There are many charts which would illustrate this meaning
very distinctly ; but perhaps none are simpler than the one here
appended, showing the steady and continuous fall in the value of sil-
ver relatively to gold since the discovery of the New World. No one
has ever claimed that there has been any " unfriendliness " displayed
toward silver in the legislation of the chief countries of the world be-
fore 1816, at the farthest, and yet the white metal had been steadily
on the decline ever since the Spanish galleons, in the fifteenth century,
began to pour the precious metals of America into the coffers of Spain.

In short, the more extended collection of economic data is now
rendered possible by the better methods employed in census and sta-
tistical bureaus, and the resort to the work of verification of economic
principles by the examination of these data is the one thing only
which can redeem political economy from the baseless and common
charge of being a set of impractical formulae. Into this work one
can carry no instrument so effective and helpful as graphic represen-
tations. In fact, the investigator, after having collected his tables and
columns of figures, will find his gain in first putting them in some
graphic form, before he can intelligently see exactly with what he
has to grapple ; then he can turn his energies directly upon the prob-
lems disclosed by the chart to every other eye as well as his own.

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY.

37

The slow and painful work of months is in this way presented to a
class in a few minutes, and the practical lessons caught at a glance.
Indeed, in most problems the difficulty is to put others in possession of

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the facts which one is about to discuss. For this purpose, charts are
the labor-saving machine of statistics. They can be made on com-
mon white cotton cloth (called sarcenet), which receives ink (black or
red or blue) or water-colors ; or on heavy manila paper, made large

38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

enough by sticking two large sheets together. Some printers can now
rule this paper in squares to suit the convenience of the worker ; but
these guiding-lines ought to be faint, and not so heavy as to over-
power the lines of the chart. So far I have been speaking of charts
for the class-room. Perhaps, in their own good time, such economic
charts can be bought of educational agencies. But ordinary co-ordi-
nate paper, on a small scale, is the best form in which to first arrange
the chart. It can be purchased in sheets at a small price, and is invalu-
able for both student and instructor. In fact, no lesson is more stimu-
lating to a class than to give them the data of a subject and ask them
to put it into graphic form. For the first time they begin to realize
that statistics are not dry ; indeed, any one who has turned over the
pages of Walker's " Statistical Atlas " will find out for himself how
the columns of census tables can talk to him in forms and colors with-
out producing weariness, but even with a power to give a sense of sur-
prise at the interest they excite.

8. When the instructor comes to examinations he will find several
difficulties. In making out questions he ought to keep in view that
they should be arranged so as to test not the memory, but the power
of the pupil to apply principles. For this reason the ideal paper should
contain nothing which the student has seen in that form before. The
facts he is called upon to explain ought to be fresh ones, and the falla-
cies he is to examine should be such as he had not previously consid-
ered. But for practical purposes it seems best to remember that a
class is composed of all kinds of persons, and, while the majority of
the questions should be of the character which I have described, yet
at least a few easier and more encouraging questions should be set.
The student should be instructed to study each question with care ;
and avoid haste in answering, before he is sure that he has really
caught the point and essential idea of the question. Fairly good stu-
dents often write about the question, but do not answer it. It should
be definitely understood that no credit is given for such answers.
Then, also, the examination can be used as a teaching process ; since,
by inserting an important subject, the attention given to it at these
times will be such as to keep it from speedy oblivion. Moreover, it
will be well, after the examination, to read a good and a poor answer
to each question before the class. They will know better what is ex-
pected of them in the future — like troops after their first fight. After-
such an examination the instructor will find his class much more dis-
ciplined and more ready to exert themselves in the intellectual wrest-
ling. The vigorous preparation for the examination has really given
them a better grasp of the subject, and the teacher can easily bring
on a warm discussion now, because they really know something and
feel that they know it.

9. When first approaching the study, it has been found to be of
service to some students to suggest that on the first reading of the

METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 39

text-book they note in the margins in a few penciled words the gist of
each paragraph as it is read ; then, at the close of the chapter, to
advise the reader to review it by means of his marginal notes, and
then make a general but brief synopsis of the chapter. This will both
save time and teach that essential thing — how to study rapidly but
thoroughly. It will destroy aimless reading, which is so common in
these days of many books.

10. In advanced courses, much of what has been said in regard to
these details will be less important, for the teaching is necessarily dif-
ferent in kind. Such courses naturally fall either (1) into those which
continue to study principles, as the systems of various writers or
schools of political economy in the past and present, or (2) into those
which treat historical or practical questions. In the former the lecture
system is unsatisfactory for reasons given above ; and the class should
themselves be constantly wrestling with the fuller discussion of sub-
jects in which they can hitherto have had only a general knowledge.
Experience seems to show that a topic, furnished with references to
writers, affords the best method of procedure. This, of course, implies
a good working library and a list of reserved books.

In the practical courses a large part of the training consists in teach-
ing the student how to use books, how to familiarize himself with the
principal storehouses of statistics, such, for example, as the English
" Parliamentary Documents," or our own Government publications ;
how to collect his materials in a useful form ; and then how to apply
graphic representation wherever possible. The greatest good comes,
of course, from putting the student on his own resources at once and
forcing him to find his own materials, look up his own books and
authorities, and come to a conclusion on the subject assigned to him
independently of all aid or suggestion. The instructor can then at the
conferences take up a paper for criticism and discussion, or first assign
it to another member for that purpose. This is a feasible plan ; but,
if carried on throughout a whole course, it requires of the student so
much time that his other work must suffer, and, in addition, but few
subjects can be taken up in this thorough and leisurely way. In prac-
tice it has been found best to use the lecture system partially. One
subject can be taken up by the instructor at regular exercises, for
which he furnishes beforehand the references, and partly lectures and
partly discusses the subject with his class, thus guiding them steadily
over the field and directing the disposition of the time to be devoted
to each subject. In this way many more subjects can be reached
during the year. But the advantages of the investigating method
can be partly retained by requiring a monograph from each member
of the class on a practical subject of his own selection from a list
prepared by the instructor, and this thesis can count for attendance on
part of the lecture-work. In this thesis the student is pushed to do
his best to give a really serious study to some particular topic, and he

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is expected to do it independently of any aid beyond general oversight
and direction ; and he is warned that the paper will be of greater
value, provided it contain the bibliography of the subject and con-
stant reference by page and volume to his authorities.

11. The preparation of bibliographies is part of a teacher's duty.
Moreover, he who has access to a rich and well-appointed library can
do a service to the rest of his guild by leaving behind him notes of
his bookish experiences. He can in a few words say whether a book
is good or bad for a particular purpose, or indicate what part of it
contains a valuable discussion, or furnishes useful facts in a subject
within the study. For this purpose it has been a great convenience
to have little blank-books of ordinary stiff manila paper, six inches
by three, with each page perforated like postage-stamps near the butt
of the book, so that each page can be torn off smoothly. On this page
a book can be entered under a suitable heading, with its exact title
and author, and room still be left for a very generous amount of criti-
cism or commendation, or for noting the contents of the book. The
cards can be laid away alphabetically by subjects in a drawer, and
will prove of invaluable aid at many times. Books of which one has
heard but never seen, can also be entered with a star, to be erased
when a book has been examined. This systematic habit is peculiarly
desirable when one is hunting for the facts on a certain subject. One
will in this way lose nothing by forgetting where a statement has
once been seen.

In this brief and inadequate way I have attempted to suggest from
my own experience what may enable others to avoid difficulties, and
possibly to aid in a more rational method of teaching political econ-
omy. It is scarcely more probable that what I have said is all new
than that others should agree with me throughout in what I have ad-
vanced ; nor is it unlikely that other teachers may have many other
suggestions to make in addition to mine. If my efforts may call them
out and aid in better methods of teaching, I shall be amply repaid.

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE *

By E. G. HALIBUKTON.

"ATO one can find a "message from the sea," telling of the fate of
-L-^l some long-missing vessel, without a feeling of emotion ; but the
stray waifs that throw light on the history of lost colonies are of a
deeper interest, for they supply missing chapters in the annals of
colonization and early maritime enterprise.

* Abridged from a paper read before the Geographical Section of the British Associa-
tion at Montreal.

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 41

The probable dates of those that are the subject of this paper are :
1. Vinland the Good, discovered a. d. 994 ; 2. Fagundes's settlement
in Cape Breton, a. d. 1521 ; 3. A second Portuguese settlement in
Cape Breton, a. d. 1567 ; 4. A Spanish settlement in Cape Breton,
between 1580 and 1597.

I. Vinland the Good. — It is unfortunate that the early settlers
ever thought of calling a place near Rhode Island Martha's Vine-
yard, for its resemblance to Vinland has led Danish and American
archaeologists to identify them as the same locality. They seem not
to have remembered, that wild grapes are found on the south shore
of the gulf and river St. Lawrence, from Cape North to Quebec,
the Island of Orleans having for this reason been called the Island
of Bacchus. Wild grapes, too, are found on the west coast of New-
foundland, according to Anspach ; and in 1521 the Portuguese colo-
nists in Cape Breton sent word home that among the products of
that country were grapes. The writer of this paper has tasted some
excellent wine made by a relative living at Fredericton, New Bruns-
wick, from the wild grapes that are to be seen hanging in clusters from
the elm-trees on the intervale lands along the St. John River.

But as Vinland and Martha's Vineyard were assumed to be the
same, a voyage by the Northmen from Greenland, not exceeding seven
or eight days, has been extended to Rhode Island, and the circumnavi-
gation of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia has been assumed, although
the Saga of Eric the Red is silent as to it, and though such a voyage,
still a perilous one, was at that time a most difficult and dangerous
undertaking.

The Saga of Eric the Red was written in Greenland by, or in
honor of, Eric and his family, Avho were the discoverers, explorers,
and chroniclers of Vinland the Good.

The later Saga of his son-in-law, Karlsefne, which, like the geo-
graphical notices quoted by Rafn, was written in Iceland, was evi-
dently based, not on information derived from people who had been in
Vinland, but on an imperfect version of the Greenland Saga, for al-
most all the courses described by them differ 90° from those given
in the Saga of Eric the Red, a uniformity of error which must have
arisen from the use of a sketch-map of the voyage to Vinland, in which
the points of the compass were omitted or incorrectly placed. What
is north in the one is generally east in the other.

We have therefore to depend on the Greenland Saga, and what are
its claims to be considered a credible authority ? It was written in
glorification of Eric and his family, and describes the discoveries made
by his sons or sons-in-law, and testified to by no one outside of his
family circle.

Two persons, father and son, the latter of whom was named Eric
the Red, having been guilty of murder in Norway, took refuge in Ice-
land, where Eric committed one if not two more murders, and in con-

42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sequence of them, and of his constant broils and feuds with his neigh-
bors, was banished and outlawed. As the world Avas too small for
him, he was tempted to try to discover and explore the new land in
the West, of the existence of which there were rumors. He therefore
sailed west, and discovered an ice-bound country, which he called
" Greenland," because, quoth he, " people will be attracted to it if the
land has a good name."

This intended fraud upon emigrants was an example that was fol-
lowed in his own day, as well as in later times, for an imaginative
chronicler subsequently asserted that " there is the best of wheat in
Greenland."

In a. d. 994 Eric and his son Leif, having heard of new lands far-
ther west having been sighted by Bjarne, made up their minds to ex-
plore them, and for that purpose bought and fitted out Bjarne's ves-
sel. But Eric while on his way to the port was thrown by his horse,
and took his fall as an omen that he was not destined to give any
more Greenlands to the world, and he therefore allowed Leif to sail
without him., But, from what we know of his proclivities, we may be
quite sure that he had a wonderful name already coined for that neAV
land — Vinland the Good. Could words picture a more attractive bait
for emigrants '?

How much of the story of the subsequent exploration of Vinland
by his son Leif is purely imaginary it is difficult to say. All that re-
lates to ship-loads of grapes, self-sown fields of wheat, and the genial
semi-tropical winter climate of that favored land, we may dismiss as
myths or exaggerations. Where, then, was Vinland situated ?

We have one test, viz., the length of the shortest day there. Pro-
fessor Thorfaeus, who wrote at the beginning of the last century, found
that it indicated 49° north, i. e., the latitude of Newfoundland, Avhich
was probably very near the mark, for, though Rafn contends for the
latitude of Rhode Island, 41° 24' 10" north, the latest authority, the
Icelandic-English Dictionary by Gudbrand Vigfasson (Oxford, 1874),
makes the hours of sunrise and sunset 8.30 a. m. and 3.30 p. m. (instead
of 7.30 a. m. and 4.30 p. m., as Rafn contends), and therefore carries
back Vinland to Greenland.

There is no part of the coast from Greenland to Rhode Island
which has not been pounced upon by some writer as the site of Vin-
land.

We can not depend on the sailing directions of the Sagas, and Cap-
tain Graah has shown that, preserved for a long time only by oral
traditions, they have been changed to suit the fancy of the different
persons to whom we are indebted for their preservation. We have,
however, besides the length of the shortest day, another guide, viz., that
the natives met at Vinland were Eskimos, or a race resembling them in
their boats, etc. — such as the Naskapi, or " Mountaineers," who are
found occasionally in Newfoundland. The advocates of the Rhode

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 43

Island theory, in order to explain the presence of Eskimos so far south,
have started the hypothesis that the Skraellings at the beginning of the
eleventh century inhabited the eastern coast of North America as far
south as Rhode Island, but were driven into the Arctic regions by the
races now found on the sea-coast. Not a particle of evidence can be ad-

duced to support this idea, and the authorities cited by Rafn disprove
it, for an Icelandic geographer describes the more northern country,
Furderstrands, as too cold for human habitations, and as bounded on
the south by Skraellingsland. Their home, therefore, was then, as it
still is, Labrador.

Fi'om the various accounts given by Rafn, I prepared a map, show-

44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, which proved to agree almost
with the maps of the Northern Atlantic by the Icelander Sigurd Stepha-
nius (1570), and by Gudbrandius Torlacius (1606), except that I made
Genunga Gap run between Markland and Vinland, in accordance with
one of the authorities quoted by him.

It is clear that what is now called Greenland was assumed to be an
extension of the north of Europe, and that " Greenland " embraced all
the country north of the Strait of Belleisle. Davis Strait was looked
upon as an inlet running into Greenland, but not as a strait sepai'ating
Greenland from the land to the westward. The land north of Hudson
Strait was called Furderstrands, and was so cold as not to be habitable.
All the country south of Hudson Strait was called Helluland, as well as
Skraellingsland (our Labrador), and it was divided into Great Hellu-
land to the north, and Little Helluland or Markland to the south. In
one account, however, Little Helluland is omitted and Labrador divided
into Helluland and Markland, the latter being to the south. The
Westbygda of Greenland, so often referred to, was on the east side of
Davis Strait, and was the site of the cathedral. Assuming such to be
the case, the accounts quoted by Rafn will at once become intelligible
and consistent, though totally at variance with his theory, which
identifies Great Helluland with Labrador, Little Helluland with New-
foundland, and Markland with Nova Scotia.

Rafn quotes the following notice of Vinland from a fragment of
the "Vellum Codex," No. 192, supposed to have been written about
the end of the fourteenth century : " From Bjarmeland [in Europe]
extends uninhabited land toward the north, until Greenland begins ;
south of Greenland is Helluland ; next lies Markland ; thence it is not
far to Vinland the Good, which some think goes out of Africa ; and
if so, the sea must run between Vinland and Markland."

This, I contend, points to Newfoundland, which extends toward
Africa, and is separated from Markland (Labrador) by the Strait of
Belleisle. He adds, "All these countries are in that part of the world
called Europe," an idea that prevailed even after the discovery of
America by Columbus.

With this account agrees one of a very early date : * " Now is to
be told what lies opposite Greenland, out from the bay which has been
before named. The land is called Furderstrands. There are so strong
frosts there that it is not habitable, so far as one knows. South from
that is Helluland, which is called Skraellingsland ; from thence it is
not far to Vinland the Good, which some think goes out from Africa."

Hence it is clear that the Northmen placed the land of the Eskimos
between a northerly uninhabitable region and the more southern Vin-
land.

The same description says, "Between Vinland and Greenland is
Genunga Gap, which flows from the sea called Mare Oceanum, and

* " Gripla. Antiq. Am.," p. 2S0.

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 45

surrounds the whole earth." This is the " River Ocean " of Homer,
and is used in the Eddas as the name of the watery wastes of Chaos.

Bjarne's voyage to Vinland seems to have really taken place, and
to have been accurately described. The accounts of subsequent voy-
ages appear to have been based on Bjarne's, and to be as nearly as
possible mere transcripts of it reversed. In 906 Bjarne sailed from
Iceland to Greenland, but "after three days' sailing, . . . the land was
out of sight under the water," he was driven southward by north
winds, with foggy weather for many days. At length he once more
saw the sun, and having sailed one day more he sighted land. As
the wind had changed from north to southwest, in which quarter it
remained steady, it is evident that the northerly gale went round
with the sun, i. e., to the east, then to the south, and then to south-
west. Had the wind " backed " to the west and southwest, the weather
would have been continued unsettled. Hence we conclude that Bjarne's
vessel was driven to the banks of Newfoundland, where fogs constantly
prevail, whence, the wind veering to the east, south, and southwest, he
was driven into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and around Newfoundland.
The land he first saw was " without mountains, and covered with wood,
and had small heights." It was on his larboard side, and was probably
one of the Magdalen Islands, or possibly the eastern end of Prince
Edward Island. Afterward they sailed two days, when they saw " a
flat land covered with wood." This may have been the northwest
coast of Newfoundland near the west end of the Strait of Belleisle,
which for a long distance is marked on Bayfield's chart as a "low
limestone coast." I am informed that there are woods on it, though
they may be small compared with the vast forests that are found up
the rivers, whence extensive lumbering operations are now being car-
ried on. Bjarne then put to sea for three days, with a southwesterly
wind, and saw a third land, which was " high and covered with mount-
ains and ice-hills." They coasted along it, and "saw it was an island."
They probably sighted Labrador, and, rounding its southeast point,
supposed it to be an island. Thence they sailed with the same favor-
able southwesterly wind (which grew into a gale) for four days, when
they sighted a " fourth land, which was Greenland."

Leif's voyage to Vinland seems, as nearly as possible, a version
of Bjarne's reversed. Neither time nor bearings are given, and we
are merely told that Leif " found the land first which Bjarne had
found last." * They saw no grass there. " Great icebergs were over
all up the country, but like a plain of flat stones was all from the
sea to the mountains." This they called Helluland. They then sailed
thence and found another land which was " flat and covered with
wood, and white sands were far around where they went, and the

* In the account of the Saga of Eric the Red, of Karlsefne's voyage, it is simply
stated that he sailed to Vinland. The Icelandic Saga of a later date was less cautious,
and gives many impossible courses.

46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shore was low." This was therefore called " Markland," i. e., wood-
land. They sailed thence for two days with a northeasterly wind (the
opposite to that which Bjarne met with), when they sighted an island
to the northward of the land, and sailed into a sound between it and a
cape which ran out northwardly from the land. Thence they sailed
westwardly round the cape into a place where at ebb-tide the vessel
was left high and dry some distance from the shore ; and when the
tide rose they towed the vessel into a river, which led into a lake (or
inlet ?), where they landed and built booths.

If this narrative is something more than a Norse " Odyssey " or a
fiction, we must infer that Leif touched at Labrador (called by him
Helluland), sailed thence to some more southern part of Labrador
(called by him Markland), and thence past the Island of Belleisle into
one of the many shallow inlets on the south side of the Strait of Belle-
isle. The " low land covered with wTood " and its " white sands " may
possibly be the part of Newfoundland sighted by Bjarne, or it may be
Blanc Sablon, near Bradore Bay, on the south coast of Labrador. It
is, however, evident that Leif can not have reached the south coast of
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, judging by the number of days expended
on the voyage. The Saga of Karlsefne says that the voyage from
Greenland to Helluland only took two days, and that from Helluland
to Markland three days. Now, Leif's voyage from Markland to Vin-
land took two days, or the number of days spent by Bjarne in going
from the land first sighted by him to the "flat land covered with
wood." Bjarne's voyage from the first land sighted by him to Green-
land occupied in all 2 -f- 3 + 4 = 9 days.

From the Sagas of Eric the Red and of Karlsefne, we learn that
the voyages from Greenland to Vinland took six days in all. Hence,
Vinland, if beyond Labrador, must be sought for in Newfoundland,
either in one of the shallow inlets near the Island of Belleisle, or in
some place along the northwest coast of that island. The fact that
grapes are found there, according to Anspach, lends some weight to
this view. It is possible, too, that the Naskapi, sometimes found in
Newfoundland and resembling the Eskimos in many respects, may have
been included under the name Skraellings by the Northmen.

It is clear that, like Greenland, Vinland the Good was a fraud on
emigrants ; that the stories as to ship-loads of grapes, self-sown fields
of wheat, genial winter weather, etc., were the productions of Eric's
prolific brain ; and that we must first succeed in finding Greenland's
verdant mountains before we can hope to discover the vine-clad hills
of Vinland the Good.

II. The Colony of Terra Nova, or the " Land of the Corte
Reals." — The history of European colonization north of Florida has
been hitherto supposed to have begun at the commencement of the
seventeenth century, except perhaps a small English settlement at St.
John's, Newfoundland. It has not hitherto been known to historians

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 47

that the eastern portion of British North America was the first part of
the New World that was constituted a colony, that from 1500 to 1579
commissions were regularly issued to the Corte Reals as governors of
Terra Nova, and that by virtue of this claim on the part of the Portu-
guese at least three settlements were made by the Portuguese them-
selves, and later by the Spaniards (after they had annexed Portugal),
one of these colonies being the earliest European settlement in North
America after the discovery of the New World by Cabot.

A flood of light has been shed upon this early colonization by Senhor
Ernesto do Canto, of San Miguel, Azores, whose most recent publica-
tion on early Portuguese exploration consists mainly of a selection of
documents connected with the family of the Corte Reals, the explor-
ers and first governors of Northeastern America.

The information contained in Senhor do Canto's work enables me to
claim for the northeastern parts of America almost a century of his-
torical existence prior to the seventeenth century. This colony, em-
bracing Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and, under the
grant to Fagundes, probably a large portion on the east coast of the
present United States, was far the earliest European colony (except-
ing perhaps Vinland) not only in North America, but also in the
New World, for the commissions of the Corte Reals date in regular
succession from 1500 (i. e., two years after America had been dis-
covered by Columbus, and six years after its discovery by Cabot)
until 1579, soon after which Portugal and its possessions were annexed
to Spain.

This colony of the Corte Reals was not merely a nominal one, for
in the course of the sixteenth century the Portuguese made a settle-
ment in Cape Breton in 1521, and another in 1567, while the Spaniards
■ — their successors — sent a third to the same country. Of these three
colonies little or nothing is known ; even the colony of Terra Nova
has lost its place in history, which begins the annals of British North
America a century later with the arrival of French settlers in La Nou-
velle France.

In 1500 Gaspar Corte Real explored the coast of Labrador, proba-
bly nearly as far north as Hudson Strait, and also Newfoundland and
Nova Scotia. He brought back several of the natives, who resembled
the present Micmac Indians. He went there again, in 1501, with
three vessels, but that in which he sailed never returned. In 1502 his
brother, Miguel, sailed in search of Gaspar, and met with the same
fate. Again, in 1503, an expedition was sent out to try to get some
tidings of the two gallant brothers, but without success, and the king,
discouraged by these disasters, refused to allow Vasco Annes, the
elder brother, and one of the ornaments of his court, to continue the
search.

In early charts of this continent the Portuguese flag is frequently
represented as waving over Labrador, Newfoundland (Bacealaos), and

48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Nova Scotia, which were sometimes described as the " Land of the
Corte Reals," and as the " country discovered by Joao Alvares."

We now know that the person to whom these Christian names
belonged was Joao Alvares Fagundes, who early in the sixteenth cent-
ury carried on explorations in Northeastern America, and who, in 1521,
had a grant of the country between the land of the Corte Reals and
the northern boundary of the Spanish colonies, including the " terra
firma and islands " discovered by him, a grant which for the first time
included a portion of the United States.

Traditions as to an early settlement still linger among the Mic-
macs, who aver that certain earth-mounds at St. Peter's, Cape Breton,
were built by white men before the arrival of the French. This be-
lief received many years ago a confirmation by the discovery in one
of these mounds of an archaic cannon formed of bars of iron fastened
with iron bands or hoops, those toward the breech being the strong-
est. This gun attracted little attention at the time, and was broken
up. My knowledge of this circumstance is derived from the historian
of that province,* who for more than twenty years was on circuit in
Cape Breton once, if not twice, a year. He frequently spoke of the
enigma, and regretted the stupidity and utter want of interest which
prevailed at that time with respect to the early history of the country.
An inquiry into the date of the manufacture of such guns showed
clearly that it must have been brought out before the arrival of the
French in Cape Breton, f Were these remains at St. Peter's vestiges
of this early Portuguese colony ?

From a rare pamphlet, " Tractado das Ilhas Novas," by Francisco
de Sousa, written in 1570, and published at San Miguel in 1877, Senhor
do Canto, in his " Os Corte-Reaes " (pp. 89-93) copies an account of
the colony in question, and has also given us a description of the dis-
coveries, and a copy of the commission of Joao Alvares Fagundes.

It appears from this that the colony was planned by some noble-
men at Viana, consequent upon the discoveries made by Joao Alvares
Fagundes. They sent out a ship and a caravel, but Newfoundland
(Baccalaos) having been found too cold, the settlers sailed to the west
and southwest, and, having lost their ships, were obliged to remain.
News was subsequently received from them through Biscayans, who
were then in the habit of frequenting that coast. They asked for
priests ; said that the natives were well disposed ; and that the coun-
try produced " nuts, chestnuts, grapes, and other fruits, showing the
goodness of the soil."

Allusions in early writers point to the existence of this early Portu-
guese colony. Anthony Parkhurst, in a letter published in 1578, when
speaking of the excellent timber in Cape Breton, says : " I could not

* Judge Haliburton, the author's father.

f The article " Artillery," in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," says that such guns
were made from 1500 to 1545, when cast-iron guns were first introduced.

LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 49

find it in my heart to make proof whether it be true or no, that I have
read, and heard, of Frenchmen and Portugals to be in that river" (the
St. Lawrence) " and about Cape Breton. If I had not been deceived
by the vile Portuguese descending of the Jews and the Judas kind, I
had not failed to have searched that river and the coast of Cape Bre-
ton which might have been found out to have benefitted our country."
The colony of Fagundes of 1521 has been unknown to historians,
though the circumstances that led to the attempt to colonize Terra
Nova have not escaped attention. Fagundes had already been an ex-
plorer, and his name is connected with the northeast coast of America
by early charts, while his discoveries, as we have seen, are referred to
in his commission.

We also meet with a probable reference to this colony in connection
with the cattle and swTine which Champlain (1618) says "were left
there " (Sable Island) " more than sixty years ago " (i. e., before 1558)
by the Portuguese. In Haies's report of the voyage of Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, given by Hakluyt, and probably written about 1583, he says,
" Sablon lyeth about twenty-five leagues to the seaward of Cape Breton,
whither we were determined to go upon intelligence wre had of a Port-
ugal during our abode at St John's, who was himself present when
the Portuguese (about thirty years past) did put on the said island
both neat and swine to breed, which were since exceedingly multiply-
ing."

It appears that the Baron de Lery, in 1518, landed some cattle at
Canso, and the remainder on Sable Island, on his abandoning his inten-
tion of forming a settlement in Nova Scotia. It seems also probable
that the Portuguese must for the same reasons have landed their cattle
at Sable Island, and that the date is the probable time when the settle-
ment of Fagundes was broken up.

III. A Portuguese Settlement at Inganish, Cape Breton,
1567. — De Laet (book ii, chapter v) tells us that the Portuguese
placed Port Ningani from eighteen to twenty leagues to the northwest
of the cape which afterward gave its name to the Island Cape Breton,
" where they formerly had a settlement, which they have since aban-
doned." Champlain says that the Portuguese were forced to do this
by the cold and rigorous climate.

Until recently this was all we knew about this colony, but Senhor
E. do Canto has now discovered a MS. charter in the Torre do Tombo,
at Lisbon, from which it appears that the king, on May 4, 1567, ap-
pointed Manuel Corte Real notary public of a colony about to be
founded in Terra Nova, and for which two ships and a caravel were
then about to start from Terceira. In 1579 the captaincy of that
colony was conferred upon Vasco Annes, the fourth in succession of
the Corte Reals. The author of the " Tractado das Ilhas Novas" ap-
pears to have sailed with the expedition of 1567, and it is quite clear
that up till then no tidings from the colony founded by Fagundes had

VOL. XXVII. — 4

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been received. It is also clear that a Portuguese colony existed for
some time at Inganish, which was abandoned on account of the cold.
Was Inganish the site also of Fagundes's colony, as well as of the
settlement made in 1567? It seems improbable that the colony of
1521, cut off from all communication from the mother-country for
half a century, should have survived until 1567, and we are forced
to conclude that the cattle and swine left on Sable Island in 1553
were the property of the Fagundes colonists, who had abandoned
their settlements. It seems clear, at the same time, that the colonists
who sailed in 1567 were aware that Fagundes had found Newfound-
land too cold for a settlement, and had given the preference to Cape
Breton. We must assume, therefore, that the colonists of 1567 settled
some place in Cape Breton or Nova Scotia. Champlain says the Port-
uguese abandoned their settlement at Ningani (Inganish) on account
of the cold. A Portuguese gentleman informed me last winter that
there existed a tradition at Viana that the colony of Terra Nova was
sold to the English on account of the cold climate. Senhor do Canto
refers to a similar tradition, but applies it to the colony of 1521, in-
stead of to that of 1567. This 6ale must have taken place after 1567,
for otherwise the Portuguese, having sold out their rights to the Eng-
lish, would hardly have attempted, after the transfer, to make a settle-
ment in that country.

IV. A Spanish Settlement at Sydney, Cape Breton (Spanish
Harbor), between 1580-'97. — We are told that in the seventeenth cent-
ury Louisburg (called English Harbor) was frequented by the Eng-
lish fishermen ; St Ann's by the French ; and Spanish Harbor by the
Spaniards. Why was Sydney — at one time known as Spanish Harbor
— the favorite resort of Spanish fishermen ? About the time Fagundes
sailed to Cape Breton, the Spaniards seemed to question his right to
that country, as appears from the Spanish map of 1527, where the
Spanish line of demarkation includes Cape Breton and Nova Scotia,
leaving Newfoundland to the Portuguese. It is probable, however,
that the Spaniards did not practically question the claims of the Portu-
guese, which were specially guarded in commissions to Spanish explor-
ers. In 1580, however, the question was settled by the annexation of
Portugal and its dominions by Spain. We know that toward the close
of the sixteenth century a Spanish colony was sent to Cape Breton, and
we can assume that it sailed some time after 1580. Our only account of
it is a melancholy one, for Charlevoix says that the forty poor wretches
whom the Marquis de la Roche left on Sable Island (1598) "found on
the sea-shore some wrecks of vessels, out of which they built barracks
to protect themselves. They were the remains of fyatiish vessels
which had sailed to settle Cape Breton." Any one who has seen the
wreck-strewed coast of Sable Island must remember it as suggesting
a graveyard of vessels. Those that have been there a few years are
soon covered by the drifting sands, and the half-buried skeletons of

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 51

later wrecks are to be counted by the dozen, in different stages of
sepulture and decay. It is probable, therefore, that these wrecks,
which were used by the French convicts, can not have been there many
years previously. The date, therefore, of this Spanish expedition to
Cape Breton must have been between 1580 and 1598.

An inlet in Sydney Harbor is still known as the " Northwest Arm
of Spanish River."

We have no account of the fate of this colony, but we may infer
that it only existed for a short time. The French took possession of
and colonized that country early in the seventeenth century, and their
writers are silent as to the existence of any Spanish settlement there
at that time.

So thoroughly forgotten is this lost colony of Terra Nova that,
though there are many Portuguese names that survive on the map of
Northeastern America, they no longer suggest their origin or meaning.
Few persons imagine that the Bay of Fundy is the "Deep Bay,"
or Baya Fonda ; or that Cape Race means the " Bare Cape " or Cabo
raso. The "Land of the Corte Reals" knows them no more.

■♦»»

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA.*

By GEOEGE 1LES.

"~VyO purpose in the study of history is more instructive than that by
-LN which we trace the progress of freedom against authority, of in-
quiry as opposed to dogmatic assertion, of reason and right against
arbitrary power.

As I shall have frequent need to speak of authority, it may be well
to discriminate between its various species, and state with what specific
meaning the term is to be used in this discourse. In the instruction
of the young we all admit that authority must be the principal method
employed. In early years many lessons were taught us chiefly on that
principle — the rules of arithmetic, the relations of geometry, the for-
mulas of logic, the rudiments of physics, with sundry theories as to the
fluid nature of electricity and the atomic structure of matter. Besides
these were lessons in history, which included the statement that
Charles I was a martyr ; and lastly the Church Catechism — all these
did we diligently commit to memory and regard as truth. With the
lapse of years came the perception that the lessons of childhood and
youth were not all of equal validity. The mathematics and logic
which appealed to the understanding remained, so did the largest part
of physics ; the hypothetic nature of electricity, however, and of the
ultimate structure of matter, being deemed something else than cer-

* A lecture delivered at Montreal, Sunday, March 30, 1884.

52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tain. Our views of history underwent some change, and Charles I
was removed from our roll of the army of martyrs. The revered sen-
tences of the Catechism, which so tersely told the origin and destiny of
all things, the nature and intentions of the Supreme Cause, were sub-
mitted to tests which left them of somewhat less force than of old.
The maturing powers of reason passed judgment on the authorities,
left some of them undisputed, regarded others as approaching correct-
ness with more or less probability, and placed others, again, in the
category of unsupported assertion.

As a typical case of allowable and legitimate authority, let us take
the statement by Dr. Tyndall, that watery vapor, suspended in the at-
mosphere, acts as a powerful absorbent of heat radiant from the earth.
We accept the statement because it is undisputed by physicists who
are competent to execute tests of it, and because, should we choose
to become instructed in the methods of research which Dr. Tyndall
employs, we could verify his conclusions as many inquirers have done.
Genuine authority gives us proofs, it predicts, and fulfillment follows :
The geologist declares that certain strata may be coal-bearing ; we sink
a shaft and find the fuel. The meteorologist forecasts the weather
twenty-four hours ahead, and the skies verify his prognostications.
Venus, we are told from the observatory, is to cross the solar disk at a
specified time, and punctually to the instant the planet appears. Fi-om
elaborate consideration of the molecular groupings of certain com-
pounds of carbon, a German chemist thought that a substance which
he sought to build up from its elements would possess great beauty
and value as a dye-stuff. Success rewarded his patient labor, and a
new hue was placed at the disposal of the textile manufacturer. The
kind of authority which men of scientific achievement exert, and which
all men of special gifts of talent and character enjoy, is an authority
to which we owe intelligent and cheerful allegiance. The world ad-
vances by leadership of this kind and by loyalty to such leadership.
But, when a theologian says that the world was made from nothing,
that man was created from the dust of the earth by instantaneous fiat,
and then caused to be tempted to his fall — when we find all these
assumptions made the basis of an elaborate and definite scheme of
supernatural theology — we confront what seems to us the authority of
unproved assertion, which reason questions and science ignores.

The history of every thinking man, in his separation of the authori-
ties contending around him for obedience into valid and invalid, is a
summary in some sort of the history of the race in its gradual emanci-
pation from dictatorship in science, in the state, and in theology. The
records of science show us the common case where men of extraordi-
nary genius have risen so high above their fellows as to excite reverence
for their results, rather than emulation of their methods. The price
paid by mankind for towering ability has often been the production
of generations of mere quoters and commentators, who revered the

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 53

work of a master as too sacred to require addition or improvement.
Ptolemy's system of the universe was so great an advance on the ex-
planations which preceded it, that for sixteen dreary centuries it was
imposed upon students of the heavens. Not until the time of Coper-
nicus was the theory established that the sun is the center of our sys-
tem, as against the notion that the sun and planets revolve around the
earth. Aristotle had such a wonderful grasp of mind, had so compre-
hensive knowledge, and was a man of so much constructive genius,
that admiration of him paralyzed research in science for nearly two
thousand years. Whewell, the historian of the inductive sciences,
shows how Aristotle's Hellenic love of symmetry in thought led him
to bridge gaps in evidence and induction by verbal propositions. His
works presented a fictitious completeness which imposed upon students
for ages. Mere comment and expansion gave place to original work
only when Bacon, Galileo, and others like them, taught that the way to
know Nature was to observe, experiment, and generalize. When the
methods of Aristotle and Ptolemy as observers were imitated, and
when their results ceased to be echoed, Avas science born again, to
achieve wonderful victories ; then the goose-step of the schoolmen
became the onward march of exploration.

The revolt against the predominance of classical education in
favor of that of science is a noteworthy sign of the times. Greek
and Latin literatures used to be held to furnish a mental training
obtainable by no other studies. Now the dominion of words is pass-
ing away. In technical schools and colleges students are brought into
direct contact with the facts of Nature, and are taught how to interpret
these facts into principles. It is becoming more and more widely held
that the ancient literatures only provided a gymnasium for the mind,
exercise wherein can be profitably superseded and included by that
afforded in the tasks of the laboratory, the workshops or the botanic
field. Instead of repeating Greek prose and verse, the student of
science is taught skill in the use of his senses and reasoning powers,
it being intended that he shall so acquire knowledge as to be able to
add to knowledge.

As in the history of science and education, so in that of the state,
has authority declined before the spread of the love of freedom. The
history of European and American civilization is the history of the
gradual recognition of the individual's rights, as against the claims of
monarchy and aristocracy, of privileged persons, families, and classes.
And, however imperfectly democracy may fulfill the expectations of
its advocates, through freedom having often come before education in
responsibility, one thing is clear, its idea is better than those which it
has displaced — the idea that, as each individual man has duties to the
state, he has correlative rights which entitle him to a voice in appoint-
ing those who make the laws and execute them.

In its advance from authority to freedom, the history of Christian

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

theology supplies a parallel to that of science and that of the state.
Christianity, based on the claim of its 'founder to be the Lord and
Saviour of men, finds its strongest and most consistent exponent in
the Roman Catholic Church. That Church presents its dogmas with
absolute claims to truth and infallibility, and demands the complete
submission of mind and will, as the representative on earth of the
Divine Saviour. The yoke of this Church, though firmly fixed about
the necks of its followers, grew so burdensome at last that the Refor-
mation arose, and belief was transferred by millions of men from the
infallible Church to an infallible book, which book, however, was to be
interpreted in the light of private judgment. While the ecclesiastical
government of Rome was discarded, much of its creed was retained ;
and to this day Protestantism, in its ritualistic and more authoritative
forms, is scarcely to be distinguished from its parent. Dissatisfied
with the Bible as an infallible standard of faith and morals, the Lib-
eral Churches have discarded it from its place of supreme authority
and accept Christ as spiritual Lord and teacher. The Liberal fold in
turn has developed a school of much influence, which, unable to bow
to any external guide, looks within and finds in intuition direction
sufficient for spiritual life. The history of Christianity, from the time
of the apostles to that of Theodore Parker, manifests first the gradual
evolution of authority, and then tells us how by abusing its power and
becoming corrupt and arbitrary it incited the rebellion of bold and
free men, who point by point have taken the citadels of assertion and
dogma. Theology proves on examination to be no more than the
views of Nature entertained by observers in the remote past. These
views, formulated into creeds and crystallized into institutions, have
established churches, ruled not less by the love of power than by the
desire to do good.

The church-makers, in a very different spirit from that of men of
science, have not dealt directly with facts, but with opinions about
facts, and on examination it would appear that they have proceeded
on some erroneous lines. In refusing competency to the intellect in
its attempt at dealing with the problems of life, the theologians have
on another hand overrated the powers of this same intellect.

While affirming the supreme mystery which infolds the universe,
they have inconsistently given verbal explanations of that mystery.
In the same page which speaks of the untrust worthiness and weakness
of the human mind, we may find a full account of the origin and des-
tiny of all things, and an analysis of the Divine nature and intention.
The depreciation of human ability and the need of modesty in attack-
ing the great questions of life and death are stated very forcibly, and
thereupon solutions are offered us of all that a little before was de-
clared inscrutable. In endeavoring to rise from Nature to a concep-
tion of a creating and ruling spirit, different in character from what
observation of Nature would lead us to imagine that spirit to be, the-

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 55

ology has become involved in endless contradictions. The Christian
idea of the Deity would seem to have been developed in the light of
the sympathies which have arisen in the domestic and social life of
man. These sympathies with their allied sentiments have been un-
warrantably projected out beyond their proper sphere, that of human
affairs, into an idea of the Divine — it being forgotten in the process
that Nature in the broad view is the fullest manifestation of divine
power we know, and that from Nature herself in her manifold opera-
tions should we try to integrate a conception of its informing Spirit.
Hence the discrepancy between the conception of the theological Deity
and the facts of the universe. Do the processes of Nature exhibit
sympathy, mercy, or love ? Or do we not rather observe in them the
uniformity of a power manifested through an infinite mechanism
which neither excuses ignorance nor spares weakness ? Yet so widely
and in our view so unjustifiably have the ideas of God and Nature
diverged, that we find Tennyson asking, as he depicts the agony of the
struggle for existence and the profuse waste of organic life, " Are God
and Nature then, at strife ? " Any theory of the universe which en-
deavors to be comprehensive must subdue the impulses of sentiment
and emotion and face all the facts of experience. The natural order
shows us redundant life as necessary for the competition whereby the
fittest individuals and species may survive and advance. The fittest
may not from the human stand-point always be the best or the highest,
for the parasite, protected from contest in the stomach of a man or
horse, may degenerate and assume a type lower than that in which its
existence began. The system of prey, the thousands of species of para-
sites which make the days of so many nobler types of life miserable
and short — all this does the natural order include, no less than the cul-
minations of human consciousness, genius, and conscience which thrill
us with their power as if we stood in the very presence of the Divine.
Nature presents to our view and study a mechanism of infinite com-
plexity. Its rules of action we may know in part, and, when we obey
that knowledge, happiness can be ours ; but, however diligent we may
be in study or willing in our obedience, all its laws we can never dis-
cern, and its wheels may seize us and painfully mar or quench our lives
at any moment — the lurking germs of disease by inheritance within
us, or floating in the air around us, the incalculable forces of earth-
quake or tornado ; the liabilities incidental to modern locomotion, and
many of the processes of modern industry. These, together with the
willful exertion of human malignity, all beset us as subtractions from
joy in life. Our sympathies, baffled in their endeavor to find scope be-
yond the limits of human relations, return thither to their source, as
perhaps to the sole legitimate sphere for their exercise. Humanity re-
mains, though the supreme cause continue undefined. In the spirit of
much of what the theologians say, we find ourselves acknowledging
our inability to rise from phenomena to ultimate cause or essence.

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Declining to attempt solutions of the origin and destiny of the uni-
verse, we would endeavor to attack undone work for mankind near at
hand, neglecting in the mean time all discussion of the remote and im-
possible.

Not only in their overrating the powers of the intellect did our
forefathers err, but also as seriously in their views of knowable truth
did they exhibit immaturity of thought. Truth may be defined as the
reality of things underlying our partial knowledge of them. Except
in the limited area of axiom, our knowledge is imperfect and incom-
plete. On examination, it proves to consist largely of mere signs and
symbols. We can state the law whereby gravitation acts, but the force
itself eludes our scrutiny. We can formulate its rate and measure its
quantity, but why bodies tend toward each other throughout universal
Nature is as little known to our acutest physicists as to the least in-
formed savages. All analogy requires us to think that a medium is
necessary for the conveyance of the attraction, yet, if there be a me-
dium, how does it do its work, and that too across the diameter of the
visible universe with practical instantaneity ? So too with the proper-
ties of substances which are surely among the simplest things we can
consider. What is the essential difference between iron and lead, and
why does water always freeze in six-petaled crystals ? Such questions,
which lie at the very threshold of the temple of inquiry, show us how
hard is our task of getting below our labels, our names of things, and
pursuing investigation more than a single remove from appearance.

At the risk of being tedious, I shall take an example of the growth
of our information about a single substance, to illustrate the indefi-
nitely great extensions of knowledge which are possible to us, in every
direction in which we may seek it — this in contrast with the views
of knowable truth which were current in the infancy of information.
Iron had, doubtless, in very remote times, been observed to be tena-
cious and malleable ; of value, therefore, in making of tools and
weapons. Later on its magnetism was noticed, and, at some uncertain
date, in China probably, it began to be used in navigation as the mari-
ner's compass. The rusting of the metal must have been observed
very long ago ; yet it is little more than a century since that com-
mon fact was rationally explained, and since the chemical relations of
iron began to be studied. Examination has determined its crystalline
structure ; its capacity as a transmitter of sound, heat, and electricity ;
and its improved tenacity, when united with carbon, to form steel.
The long catalogue of its various properties does not seem to be ap-
proaching a limit, but rather the reverse. Within recent years spec-
trum analysis has determined the peculiar lines, several hundred in
number, which enable it to be identified as a fiery vapor, alike in the
flame of the laboratory or in the remote orbs of space. The telephone
proves that a small disk of the metal conceals within its structure the
subtile means of converting sound-waves into electrical tremors, and

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 57

these back again into audible vibrations, with so much of the indi-
vidual tone of a speaker as to be readily recognizable. Now, if iron,
which is comparatively so simple a thing, presents such a multitude of
properties and powers, if it be shown to have relations with all else in
Nature, if very important knowledge respecting it has but recently
come into our possession, how very cautiously should we proceed when
our subject of thought is not a chemical element, but, say, some large
question of human nature or public policy ! The little gray crystal of
iron is eloquent in bidding us have some decent hesitation, when we
are considering, say, some proposed legislation which is to affect the
complex sentiments, desires, and passions of men. For lack of that
decent hesitation, statute-books are filled with laws which are evaded,
or work results opposed to those expected from them, all tending to
establish in the popular mind an injurious contradiction between law
and common sense. And what supreme diffidence should there be
when we are endeavoring to arrive at, not some knowledge in a special
science, not the best policy in a matter of law or state, but when we
approach the highest questions : How best can we interpret Nature so
as to form a conception of its informing sph'it ? If a man die, shall he
live again ? What are the sanctions and what the standard of right
conduct? Which is the higher reverence, that which accepts the
dictum of a local and arbitrary authority in response to these ques-
tions, or that which considers them patiently in the light of all human
experience to the present day, by the aid of the highest faculties we
possess ? We are often told to bow to authority in the singular, but
we are surrounded not by authority but by authorities, many and
diverse. Among them all — religious, social, or scientific — we can but
lean on such common sense as we possess to aid us in selection and
discipleship.

I have defined truth to be the reality of things underlying our par-
tial knowledge of them. Our forefathers thought of truth as a thing
which they might grasp as fully and perfectly as a child's hand in-
closes a pebble ; our conception is of something which we may ap-
proach, but never possess, save in the restricted field of axiom. We
think of truth as of the dim face of a star, discerned through difficulties
of distance, distortions of media, and defects of the seeing eye. The
old view of finality, completeness, and perfection in knowledge, we
discard as utterly disproved by fact. Science knows nothing of the
infallibilities it was aforetime thought necessary to assume. The in-
fallible standards of Church, Bible, and intuition have never yielded
to inquiry more than the verbal husk of assumed certainty. Science
accepts the risks of a fallibility which can not be escaped, but which
it reduces to a minimum by the co-operation of many minds. The
desire to be certain, which set up the oracles and established the suc-
cessive infallibilities is, however, an intelligible desire. Doubt and
ignorance are not pleasant states of mind to acknowledge, and the

5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

process of arriving at fair judgments is both laborious and painful.
Instead, however, of assuming certainty because it is desirable, we
would endeavor to earn it, by recognizing it as every man's duty and
privilege to add to truth, in the justness, completeness, and clearness
of his knowledge of it. And, since the scope of the unknown is infi-
nite, the incitement to the fulfillment of this duty is full of hope and
promise. Science, unlike dogma, does not point to fields harvested
and gleaned long ago, but to continents awaiting their Columbus — to
pressing problems of individual, social, and political life demanding
solutions by thoughtful men. And, in the fields of scientific investiga-
tion, we can see how every newly ascertained fact and law extends the
horizon of Nature, adds to the area of unexplored territory, thereby
stimulating the student to achievement therein. In researches re-
specting mind and brain, and their relations, in probing conscious-
ness to its depths, and in the results which may follow the inquiry as
to whether the intellect does or does not come into direct contact with
external Nature, some of the ablest thinkers of our time place hope
of more light on the chief problems of life. Our conception, then,
of knowledge leads us back to the early similitude which likened
it to a tree. Knowledge does not increase, like a honey-comb, cell
simply added to cell, but, like an oak, whose every year of growth
implies not addition merely, but vital transformation of structure.
Nothing is fixed but the axis from which the branches and boughs
spread out, as if they felt they had all the universe for their expan-
sion. A stripling oak of a few seasons' growth is beautiful enough
in its way ; but would it be wise or useful to uproot it, shelve it
in a museum, and declare it to represent a finality as to oak- possi-
bilities ?

The idea of knowledge which I have sought to express makes
clear the grounds whereon thought and discussion ask for full liberty.
As men differing in natural ability, temperament, education, and
stand-point, strive to attain views of truth, their results must inevita-
bly vary. "Recognition of difference of view" we would, then, sub-
stitute for the offensive term " toleration of dissent," which latter
phrase, from one who holds that he possesses finality, simply means
the permission of known error, which he may be unwilling or un-
able to punish. And the differences of view which men of opposite
temperaments and tendencies may entertain are often mutually com-
pleting, and become indued in a master-mind with stereoscopic relief
and unity. Let me cite an example of this : Two schools of thought
endeavored to explain conscience on different principles. The one
held it to arise from an innate moral sense, the other from the results
of experience. The philosophy of evolution includes in its explana-
tion both series of facts from which these two schools argued. It
shows how ancestral experiences of right and wrong conduct become
organized in the race, and are transmitted as moral tendencies to off-

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 59

spring. These tendencies are advanced in their progress a step by the
experience of each individual life.

Having, then, expressed our dissatisfaction with the method of theo-
logical authority, from its having attempted problems which as yet
are beyond the scope of the human intellect, and because of its erro-
neous notions as to the knowability of truth, let us endeavor to
describe the method of science which we would adopt in the whole
sphere of our mental activity. The scientific method is nothing very
new or unfamiliar ; it is simply ordinary thinking, corrected by the
canons of a more exact and cautious procedure. It is organized, com-
mon sense coming into contact with fact, and carefully sifting the
evidence derived from fact. Business men employ it in importing or
manufacturing their wares, in estimating the demands of markets, and
ascertaining the standing of their employes and customers. Physi-
cians act according to it in diagnosing their cases, prescribing treat-
ment, or operating in surgery. Lawyers employ it in supporting their
pleas and arguments ; and judges use it in rendering their decisions
within the limits of the written law and of their precedents. The sci-
entific method ignores no faculty of man or fact in Nature ; it recog-
nizes to the full our emotions, affections, and sentiments, but subordi-
nates all these to the intellect, whose dictum alone is given command
over the educated will. Authority relies on inspiration, revelation, the
miraculous, and the supernatural ; science relies on brain, on experi-
ence, the mastery of facts by accurate and patient thought. The one
receives or imagines it receives, the other acquires and has no opinion
not subject to revision as new evidence comes in. It entertains no
beliefs beyond evidence, and seeks none. It knows nothing of infal-
lible guides without or within, nothing of authorities which may not
be doubted and which submit no proof of their assertions. Science
endeavors to substitute convictions for mere assent ; and, instead of
mechanical adhesion, would give to genuine authority the intelligent
concurrence earned by the labor of the individual mind. It is not
because science has won its chief victories in the physical world, where
the comparative simplicity of its problems has invited attack, that
we should therefore have an imperfect idea of its scope. Its scope
includes the whole range of human thought and feeling. Science
is not limited to fields where clocks and micrometers may be used to
measure, or logarithmic tables be employed to compute ; it recognizes
human emotions, sentiments, and will. To these it would direct study,
no less than to the areas where exact results are attainable.

Applying, then, the method of science to an examination of the-
ology, it appears to consist in an attempt at explaining the facts of
Nature, and the sanctions of duty, in distant ages of scant knowledge.
Its scriptural revelations come down to us through centuries of untrust-
worthy custodians, and when they reach us at last they are not reve-
lations to us, but hearsay about revelations, and must be judged by the

60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

canons of criticism which we apply to other departments of literature.
Every theology, no matter how emphatic its assertion of a supernatural
source, bears about it the plain marks of its human origin. The con-
ceptions of God vary with the zones and closely parallel the grades of
culture in which they arise. The commandments called divine become
more elevated as the civilization of a people advances. The disciples
of a prophet or apostle direct the noble impulses he has implanted in
their hearts to broaden his teachings and correct his errors. Contrast
the almost human tribal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the
lofty idea of the Deity entertained by Isaiah. Compare this latter,
again, with the universal Father whom Jesus taught his followers to
worship. Mark the cumbrous legality and ritualism of the Old Tes-
tament and its silence respecting the future life ; how different this
from the teaching of Jesus, who exalted the spirit above the letter,
valued love more than sacrifice, and assured his hearers of an immor-
tality which made this world but a temporary scene of trial and pro-
bation ! Note how the high-minded Paul saw nothing reprehensible
in slavery, and compare that with the humanity of an age which gives
even dumb animals rights against their owners. The evolution of
thought in general is fully exemplified by thought in theology, not-
withstanding its assertion of a sacred fixity. John Wesley, sensible
man that he was, said that, if he were to give up his faith in witch-
craft, he would give up the Bible. Yet his followers have dropped
the witchcraft, and kept the Bible.

No study of human history would be valuable or just which did
not recognize as a prime fact the profound religious instincts of our
race. The awe inspired by the sublimity of the starry heavens, and
the terrible and resistless forces of Nature — those of the volcano, the
tempest, the pestilence so mysterious in its origin and spread, and the
famines so devastating in the childhood of races — all these, not less
than the kindly succession of the seasons, and the enjoyments of
health and home, have suggested an infinite Power, the immanent
sustaining spirit of universal life. The baffled hopes and aspirations
of the soul, the anguish of bereaved affection, the enigmas and trage-
dies of life, have joined together to implant a faith in another life
which shall be complement and compensation for this. As a record
of man's perception of his helplessness in the combat with Nature, as
a pathetic registration of his hope, fear, and remorse, the religious
sentiment is entitled to our profound respect. Every sentiment, how-
ever, of the human heart, while compelling our respect or reverence
in itself, awakens some less lofty feeling by its expression in institu-
tions. The Sanhedrims and Councils of the churches, which have
arisen by virtue of the religious sentiments of our race, do not appear
to have been lifted above the passions and partialities of our Congresses
and Parliaments. The inner heart of humility and reverence in relig-
ion we highly respect, but the churches not so highly. The inevitable

RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 61

loss which attends the translation of sentiment into organization may
perhaps be exemplified in the case of our instinct for justice. That
instinct, one with the love of truth, in its expression as a means of
self-protection against wrong, has given rise to law and the courts.
Are the results of their processes such as to awaken the reverence
which the sentiment of justice compels? The discrepancy between
religious feeling and ecclesiasticism ; the love of right and law, as
practically enacted and executed, suggests the parallel gap which
philosophers and poets have so often mourned — the gulf between
thought and language, which leaves music to suggest much that in
speech must remain inarticulate. The great artists of the world,
whose masterpieces fill the generations with wonder, have lamented
how far execution has lagged behind conception. The supreme dram-
atist does not seem to have thought his work sufficiently valuable to
take any special care to hand it down to posterity.

Religious feeling by its arrival at the theistic idea has done man-
kind incalculable service. How potent the thought that the universe
is one, and represents one uncontradicted will ! How influential for
good the thought that a Supreme Mind, too great to be deceived, and
absolutely righteous, knows every thought and act ! " Thou God seest
me," has, I think, restrained evil in the mind of conscientious theists,
with a directness which might have been denied to reflections as to
consequence. It is not because some of us may be dissatisfied with
theology that we fail to recognize its value in the past and present.
Associated with moral codes, it has impressed them on minds unfit by
immaturity for the responsibilities of freedom, and by dogmatic force
has doubtless given stability to order. Not because the Gods of the
sects seem crude and imperfect conceptions are we to expect that the
religious feeling which gave rise to all these will die out in man. It
will, I believe, from age to age, go on endeavoring to form a theory
which shall explain the facts of human life and universal Nature, which
shall impress the imagination and influence the will.

One result of science will be profoundly influential here — its arrival
at the idea of Law, its perception of uniformity and constancy in Na-
ture ; the proof which, in large part, it now possesses, that the history
of the universe, from nebular mist to man, illustrates causation and
continuity. This idea, excluding as it does the miraculous and the
supernatural, leads us to regard the history of the universe as an un-
broken and consistent unfolding. In this view, every item of knowl-
edge we attain is secure from any interference from break in the
natural order. We are incited to explore relations which are un-
changeable. The sense of supreme mystery will grow as the margin
of the known expands and touches larger and larger circles of the un-
known ; but any territory we may win we will feel sure of retaining.
And, although our knowledge may not be either wide or deep, still
much of it will doubtless be regarded as valuable and important

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

throughout the future of our race. The laws of gravitation and evo-
lution may he included by the coming man in wider generalizations,
but we can scarcely conceive their being ever regarded as other than
immovable and fundamental portions of truth. We are not of those
who say that human knowledge is only relative to the individual con-
sciousness, and therefore shadowy and invalid. With reverence be it
said, we hold that such knowledge as we have of water or iron, to be
a part, however infinitesimal, of the divine knowledge of these things.

The instituted religions have not only given us the theistic idea,
but have also laid us under weighty obligations by establishing the
only means of formal instruction in morals known to our race. And
here let us note the damage caused by the accidental association of a
moral code with a cosmogony developed in early stages of knowledge.
It is not because Genesis gives an unsatisfactory account of the world's
beginning, that the decalogue does not validly register the dictates of
human experience, taking form in the brain of a great lawgiver. The
Mosaic and all other authoritative codes of conduct, as currently held
to-day, are supported by appeals to experience ; then it becomes the
mission of competent thinkers to revise these codes in the light of all
that men have thought and done to date. It becomes the duty of
science to investigate the conditions of happiness, which we must
morally fulfill if we want happiness ; no other standard of conduct do
we know than this.

For the essence of religion, the faith that the right will win, and
that we should help it to win, we are indebted to Christianity in its
rationalized forms, and for that faith we thank it.

But the churches have done more than preach theism and teach
morality — they have endeavored to imitate their Founder in his care
for the desolate and oppressed. Countless kind and tender spirits
have found in the noble philanthropies of Christianity scope for their
charity and mercy. Here, as elsewhere, we do not propose, in our in-
dependence, to disinherit ourselves of anything of value which Chris-
tianity can give. The scientific conceptions of duty at which we seek
to arrive are to be broadened and deepened by the sympathies which
yield the highest satisfactions of man. The necessity for the greater
recognition of this element in conduct was never so urgent as now.
The masses of mankind born into a world abounding with pain and
evil have hitherto been disposed to consider their burdens as all
equally providential. They are, however, now beginning to distin-
guish among the ills which beset them. Some they regard as inevi-
table, to be borne with manly courage ; others, again, as infractions of
justice, preventable or remediable by proper means. There is no prev-
alent recoil from the disciplines of home and business life, but there is
wide-spread and growing discontent at the extreme inequalities of for-
tune— inequalities held to be the result of bad laws, unwise customs,
and downright dishonesty. The enormous sale of Mr. Henry George's

A SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE COAL QUESTION. 63

books is not, I take it, due to any popular faith that the remedy he
proposes — the public confiscation of land — will right the wrongs of
poverty. The consciences of the people are shocked at the immorality
of the proposal. Mr. George's vast audience is attentive because he
states very forcibly the anxieties and dangers which beset bread-
winners amid the contingencies of the modern industrial world.
When, from beyond the sea, we hear of nihilistic vengeance, social-
istic uprising, and dynamite plotting, it would seem that the safe-
guards of civilization against a relapse into barbarism are less secure
than is commonly imagined. Do not all these dangers spring from
lack of sympathy between plenty and want ? Not simply between
plenty and want in matters of goods and chattels, but in the better
things of culture and refinement. The generous man who will correct
with kindness the faulty arguments of a neighbor less endowed than
himself, who will cultivate in the youth of his acquaintance love of
literature, of art, and of the natural sciences, is doing as much to
strengthen the bonds of society as when he shares his income with
the destitute and forsaken.

When I was in Ireland, four years ago, I heard many causes as-
signed for the prevailing discontent. My informants averred that, not
less than the injustice of the landlords, had the arrogant and unsym-
pathetic manners of many of them, and of many of their agents,
served to alienate the people. In the development and satisfaction of
the sympathies, let me repeat, lies the chief hope of establishing a
true brotherhood among men.

Seeking happiness as our aim, we declare knowledge, and obedi-
ence to that knowledge, to be its means, and freedom its condition.
The cultivation of the heart must receive our attention, not less than
the improvement and equipment of the brain, if our lives are to be
worthy, useful, and happy.

A SCIENTIFIC YIEW OF THE COAL QUESTION.

By G. GOEE.

IT is well known that our stock of coal is not an infinite quantity,
and can not last an infinite period of time. Different authorities,
and those who have investigated the subject, including a royal com-
mission, have assigned different lengths of time during which our
supply is likely to last ; and, according to the most reliable authori-
ties, it can not be much less than one hundred nor much more than two
hundred and fifty years.

Our abundant store of coal and its application to industrial pur-
poses have been among the largest causes of our wealth and progress.
The value of coal for those purposes depends essentially upon the fact

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that it is combustible and evolves a large amount of beat in burning,
and tbat this heat can be set free at any time and be readily converted
into mechanical, chemical, electrical, and other forms of power. As
an illustration of the great amount of energy contained in coal, it is
well known to scientific men that each piece of it contains sufficient
stored-up power to lift its own weight twenty-three hundred miles in
height, or twenty-three hundred times its own weight a mile high.
The only other common natural substances to be compared with it in
this respect are wood and petroleum, and our stores of these are very
small. It is by the expenditure of the energy contained in coal that
comparatively valueless iron-ore is converted into valuable iron.

It has not been by the mere existence of large quantities of coal in
this country, nor entirely by the sale of coal to foreign nations, that
so much of our wealth has been obtained, but largely by the circum-
stance that we were the first nation to apply coal to industrial purposes
on a large scale and in a great variety of ways. Other nations also
possessing coal, perceiving the great success of this method, followed
our example, have overtaken us, and have now rendered it increas-
ingly difficult year by year for us to maintain our position as manu-
facturers.

As also large quantities of coal, petroleum, and inflammable gas
are continually being discovered and utilized in other countries, and
it is known that the United States of America alone contain nearly
forty times as much coal as our entire stock, the time can not be very
far distant when our chances of maintaining even our present position
among nations by means of our coal will be considerably less than at
present. It would be wise, therefore, boldly to face this serious pros-
pect, and consider by what means our national prosperity can be main-
tained as our coal diminishes in quantity and increases in price,
especially as our population is continually increasing and has to pur-
chase greater supplies of foreign food.

There does exist another and inexhaustible source of wealth and
progress, viz., new knowledge obtainable by means of scientific re-
search. It is upon such knowledge, gained by experiments made to
examine natural forces and substances, that we must sooner or later
depend as a fundamental source of national prosperity. As fast as
this knowledge is evolved by discoverers, it is applied in more imme-
diately practical forms by numerous inventors, and then manufactur-
ers and men of business use those practical realities in the production
of wealth. This has been the order of events in the past and will be
in the future ; this was the way in which we got wealth out of coal.
Persons of narrow views on the subject will consider the above propo-
sition vague and unpractical ; but this order of things is a great fact
and unavoidable. We are the servants of Nature, and have no choice
in the matter ; we might as well hope to live without food as expect
to advance in civilization without the aid of new knowledge.

A SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE COAL QUESTION. 65

The practical value of new scientific knowledge as a source of
wealth and progress is incomparably greater than that of all the coal-
deposits, petroleum-springs, and gold-fields of the earth. This great
truth, though familiar to scientific investigators, is but little perceived
or appreciated by our rulers or by the mass of their electors ; and the
chief reason for this is the fact that they possess insufficient knowledge
of science. Even governments can only appreciate that which they
understand, and can only act as circumstances and public opinion
allow them, and when fettered by an ignorant population are power-
less to preserve a nation from decay.

There can not be a more complete error than to suppose that new
knowledge discovered by means of scientific research is not practical-
Its immense practical value has been abundantly proved in a multi-
tude of cases. It was largely by means of such knowledge respecting
coal, its properties, constituents, and products gained by means of ex-
periments, that coal was applied to so many uses. One of the most
recent proofs of the practical value of such knowledge is the conver-
sion of the heat of coal into electric current and light in the dynamo-
electric machine and electric lamp ; the entire existence of these in-
struments arose from new knowledge discovered in purely scientific
researches by Davy and Faraday. It is not necessary to describe here
the exact beginnings of gas-lighting, phosphorus-matches, photogra-
phy, the voltaic battery, electro-plating, aniline dyes, telegraphy, the
telephone, etc. These, and a multitude of other utilities in common
use, had their earliest origin more or less completely, not in the labors
of the inventor or of the more directly practical man, but in those of
philosophical investigators whose experiments were made with the far
more widely practical* object — the discovery of new scientific knowl-
edge.

It is not the mere possession of good things, but making the best
and earliest use of them that most conduces to success. Our great
stock of coal lay comparatively useless as a source of national wealth
until philosophical investigators discovered its constituents and prop-
erties, and inventors applied these to useful purposes. Other nations
also possessed coal, and our greater success than theirs was largely and
essentially due to the fact that we were the earliest in applying it to
important and varied uses. We must not wait, therefore, for those
nations to discover for us new knowledge respecting natural forces
and substances, but discover it ourselves, in order that we may have
the first chance of applying those forces and substances to practical
uses, and of offering the useful products for sale or in exchange for
food and other commodities.

It is well known that a man who has no faith in medicine will not
apply to a physician until death stares him in the face. Similarly the
average politician and the ordinary elector, having but little knowl-
edge of philosophical experiments or faith in them, will probably not

VOL. XXTII. — 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

believe in their great practical value until national distress and panic
legislation ensue. The love of money also, and the desire of acquir-
ing it quickly without commensurate sacrifice, fostered by our having
so easily obtained it by means of our coal and science, are so strong in
this nation, that probably nothing but the actual loss of wealth in the
form of diminished value of properties will induce capitalists and land-
owners to perceive and examine the scientific basis of their incomes.
When, however, the stern reality of gradually increasing scarcity of
coal, and consequent inability to pay for our great supplies of foreign
food by means of that coal, and of articles produced by its aid, comes
upon us, perhaps the statesmen and wealthy classes of this country
will see the indispensable necessity of new scientific knowledge, and be
more ready to promote experimental research, with a conviction that
its practical results are vast, though not always direct or immediate. —
Nature.

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

Bt w. e. benedict,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI.

II.

MY former paper gave an outline account of the structure of the
cerebro-spinal nervous system. The functions of this system
were examined as far as to the cerebral hemispheres. It was said that
we lacked evidence for the appearance of consciousness in connection
with the activities of the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, the pons
Varolii, and the cerebellum. It was also affirmed that, if consciousness
be associated with the activities of any organs below the cerebrum,
this consciousness is of a general and vague kind, not the intelligence
of clear perception.

The present paper is to state the functions of the cerebral hemi-
spheres, as far as these functions are thought to be established by re-
cent experiment and pathology.

"We shall need to refresh our minds by a general view of the cere-
brum. Looking at this organ from the side, we readily distinguish its
so-called lobes or divisions. These are made by the fissures or fur-
rows which dip down from the surface, penetrating, more or less
deeply, the entire mass.

The prominent fissures are the fissure of Sylvius (S, Fig. 1) and
the fissure of Rolando (R, Fig. 1). The fissure of Sylvius separates,
in part, the temporo-sphenoidal lobe from the lobes above, and has two
branches, a longer, horizontal branch (s), and a shorter, perpendicular
branch (s'). If we push apart the brain-mass at the horizontal branch,
we will see the nerve-matter called the Island of Reil. This is simply
an additional fold of cell and fiber substance lying over the corpus

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 67

striatum. The fissure of Rolando separates the frontal lobe, F, from
the rest of the brain. It begins at the great longitudinal division be-
tween the hemispheres, and pursues an uninterrupted course to within
a short distance of the horizontal branch of the Sylvian fissure. Back
of the fissure of Rolando is the external perpendicular fissure (E) ; it

AT

MP

F3-

T.S.

Fig. 1.— Fissures and Convolutions of the Human Brain. (Wundt.) Left side. S, Sylvian
fissure— s, perpendicular, s\ horizontal, branches of this fissure; R, fissure of Rolando; E,
external perpendicular fissure ; F3, third frontal convolution or convolution of Broca ; AF,
ascending frontal convolution; AP, ascending parietal convolution; AG, angular gyrus or pli
courbe ; F, frontal lobe ; P, parietal lobe ; T.S, temporo-sphenoidal lobe ; 0, occipital lobe.

appears as a simple notch on the upper edge of the hemisphere. It is
a prolongation, on the convex or lateral surface of the brain, of the
deep fissure of the internal zone. This fissure marks the rear limit of
the parietal lobe (P), which therefore lies between the fissure of Ro-
lando and this furrow. Back of the parietal lobe is the occipital lobe
(O). This region is less exactly defined ; an ideal prolongation of the
external perpendicular fissure would determine its anterior and inferior
limits. The temporo-sphenoidal lobe (T) has already been noticed as
lying below the fissure of Sylvius. Among the various convolutions
formed by these fissures there are three or four which must be named,
because it is with them that the experiments in brain-functions are
chiefly concerned. In the frontal lobe there are two of these convo-
lutions (F 3), the third frontal convolution, or the convolution of
Broca, and (A F) the fourth frontal convolution or ascending frontal
fold. Broca's convolution has somewhat the shape of a horseshoe,
and is formed around the ascending branch of the Sylvian fissure.
The ascending frontal fold lies directly to the left of the fissure of
Rolando, which it follows throughout. In the parietal lobe we notice
(A P) the ascending parietal convolution immediately to the right of
the fissure of Rolando, and (A G) the angular gyrus or pli courbe.
This latter convolution is very complex in man.

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It was believed for a long time that the cerebral hemispheres were
insensible and inexcitable to direct stimulation. The Germans Fritsch
and Hitzig discovered, however, that parts of the cerebrum would
respond to a very gentle current of electricity. This beginning has
been carefully followed up by Ferrier, Munk, Goltz, and many others,
until we now have, amid much disagreement and uncertainty, some
results that are interesting, to say the least.

All experiments on the cerebrum are of two kinds (stimulation of
the surface and destruction of the surface), and are necessarily made
on the lower animals. Dupuy offered an objection to experiment by
electrical stimulation, which, if well founded, would destroy the entire
value of the undertaking. He claimed that the effects produced by
electricity at the surface of the hemispheres were due wholly to con-
duction of the current through the mass to the corpora striata below
and so to the muscles. Dupuy proved that conduction did take place
through the cell-mass of the hemispheres. He placed the leg of a frog
in contact with the rear of a brain, and by application of electricity
to the front of this brain produced strong movements in the limb.
Ferrier's answers to Dupuy are a sufficient refutation of the objec-
tion.

If the effects observed under electrical stimulation are due to con-
duction, we could not have (as is the case) strikingly different results
from application of the electrodes to very closely adjacent areas.
Further, when the striata themselves are stimulated, there is always a
general contraction of muscles on the entire opposite side of the body.
There is no limitation of the movements to special groups of muscles,
as always happens when particular centers on the brain-surface are
stimulated. Again, there are many portions of the brain which give
no response to electrical stimulus. How can this be so if such move-
ments as are produced result from conduction, especially since many
of these silent regions of the brain are no more remote from the striata
than the responsive ones ?

Experiment and pathology, despite all the contradictions, seem to
point to the existence of a motor zone on the surface of the hemi-
spheres. This means that certain parts of the brain are directly con-
cerned with the movements of particular muscles and groups of mus-
cles ; also, that these parts can not be shown to be connected with
sensations. The natural, primary occasions of their activity may be
the states of consciousness which we call volitions ; they are not, so
far as evidence goes, the states of consciousness we call sensations.

It is of interest to observe that these motor regions are situated in
the anterior portions of the hemispheres, and occupy here a relatively
small space. They lie above the Sylvian fissure, and are mostly on the
fourth frontal and ascending parietal convolutions.

The experiments have been performed on a great variety of ani-
mals, and repeated a large number of times. The monkey is, of course,

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 69

Fig. 2.— Lateral Aspect op Monkey's Brain, showing
the relative positions of the so-called " Motor Centers "
in the left Cerebral Hemisphere. (Ferrier.)

the most interesting of these animals to us, from the striking resem-
blance between his brain and the human brain.

Hitzig's investigations, published in Berlin in 1874, give all the
results gained up to that time by the stimulation experiments. Fer-
rier's book, " The Functions of the Brain," London, 1876, better known
to English readers, has spe-
cial merit in two respects.
It displays a very intelli-
gent comprehension of the
consequences of electrical
stimulation, and seems to
give a juster account of the
motor regions in the mon-
key's brain than was fur-
nished by Hitzig.

Figs. 2 and 3 will show
the character and results of
these experiments in suf-
ficient detail.

When center No. 1 is stimulated, the hind-limb on the opposite
side of the body advances as in the act of walking ; when No. 5 is
stimulated, the opposite arm and hand reach forward as if to touch
something. These movements go together and are essentially the
same. Centers 2 and 3 work to-
gether ; when 2 is stimulated, there
are combined movements of the
opposite thigh, leg, and foot, and
the foot is brought to the middle
line of the body as in scratching
that part, or in seizing something
with the foot ; 3 gives movements
of the tail. An interesting fact
should be noted at this point.
There is no center No. 2 in the
brain of cat, dog, or jackal, while
No. 3 is present in each. These
animals do not grasp with the foot,
and the monkey alone uses the rear
foot for seizing. That No. 2 should
be present, and of great size, in the
monkey's brain, while absent else-
where, is confirmatory of the ac- ^Z^*^n%£^j %£%
curacy of the experiments. The ^^g^JK °K)ta ^ teft
centers marked a, b, c, d, are on

the ascending parietal convolution. "When stimulus is applied there,
the fingers and wrist move with separate and combined movements

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that end in closing the fist ; in connection with these centers we may
note Nos. 4 and 5 ; they produce movements of the opposite arm and
hand. It is plain that 4 and 5, and a, b, c, d, are closely related to one
another.

According to the theory of localization of functions, we should
expect the centers, a, b, c, d, to be extensive in the monkey's brain,
and to be wanting in the brains of lower animals. As matter of fact,
they are absent in cat, dog, and jackal, except that a is found in the
brain of the cat. This animal uses the front-paw for seizing and hold-
ing. Upon stimulating center No. 6, the fore-arm bends, and the hand
lifts to the mouth. This movement is constant with the monkey.
There is no corresponding center in the brain of the dog or cat. The
centers marked 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, are all concerned with movements of
the mouth — such as elevating the angle of the mouth, depressing
the lower lip, thrusting out and withdrawing the tongue. No. 12
lies quite to the front of the brain ; when it is stimulated, the eyes
open widely, the pupils dilate, head and eyes turn toward the oppo-
site side.

These are the centers in the brain which, by some authorities, are
thought to have a purely motor significance. The centers marked 13,
13', 14, and 15, give movements — the former of the eyes, the latter
of the nostrils — but they are believed to be primarily connected with
sensations.

Aside from the centers enumerated, no other parts of the brain
respond to stimulation.

I have purposely stated the results of Ferrier's earlier experiments
on the so-called motor zone. These experiments have been, in general,
confirmed by other investigators. That is to say, the movements
above described have been found by many to follow stimulation. It
is, however, a part of the present confusion and contradiction which
prevails respecting cerebral localization that the interpretation of these
movements is disputed.

Munk appears (" Transactions of the Physiological Society of Ber-
lin," 1876-1878) with a series of experiments which, as he thinks,
prove that the motor zone is primarily a zone of feeling. He there-
fore divides this portion of the brain into spheres of feeling — one for
the forward limbs, one for the head, one for the eyes, one for the ears,
etc. Munk believes that the animal's movements are affected by
destruction of these centers, because four distinct kinds of feeling are
destroyed. For example, loss of the center concerned with movements
of the fore-limb would, according to Munk, cause a loss — 1. Of the
consciousness of pressure on the limb ; 2. Of the consciousness of the
position of the limb ; 3. Of the consciousness of the motions belong-
ing to the limb ; and, 4. Of the consciousness of touch in the limb.
Whereas Ferrier and others find sensibility, both general and special,
intact after destruction of these motor regions, Munk finds a loss of

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 71

sensibility so well defined and persistent as to justify the fourfold
division above stated.

We have now to inquire as to the testimony of pathology respect-
ing these motor areas in the brain. Charcot and Pitres, in "Revue
Mensuelle," November, 1878, and February, 1879, cite fifty-six cases
of brain-dieases bearing on this subject. Twenty-one of these cases
show lesions in the brain outside the motor zone, and unaccompanied by
motor trouble. Charcot's deductions from these cases are that " there
exist in the cortex of the cerebrum tracts which are independent of
voluntary motion, and when lesions occur in these tracts there are no
permanent affections of the motor functions." The remaining cases
cited by Charcot show lesions in the motor zone, and are accompanied
by varied degrees of paralysis in keeping with the situation and ex-
tent of the lesion. Dr. Bechstrew, in the "Medicinische Wochen-
schrift," St. Petersburg, details a number of cases which confirm the
recent views on the motor functions of the areas about the middle
convolutions. Other confirmatory cases have been cited by Burdon
and Maragliano, by Dr. Henry Obersteiner, and many more. It is
well known, however, that a number of opposing instances are on
record — that is, of lesions in the so-called motor zone without paraly-
sis, and of paralysis unaccompanied by lesions in these portions of the
brain. There is a fundamental objection to this kind of evidence : it
is selected evidence, chosen to make for or against a theory. What
we really need is a collection of all cases of injuries to parts of the
hemispheres, and a full statement of consequences without regard to
the bearing of the example.

This is the proper place to mention a brain disorder more or less
commonly known under the name of aphasia. Aphasia is a disturb-
ance of the power of speech. It appears in two distinct forms, viz.,
amnesic and ataxic aphasia. The person suffering from amnesic apha-
sia forgets substantives and names, other parts of speech being prop-
erly used ; or he forgets a language which he once knew, or he misap-
plies terms, " using pamphlet for camphor, horse for man," etc. In
ataxic aphasia the power of articulation is completely lost. The per-
son understands fully the word to be used, and makes vigorous effort
to use it, but is unable to do so. Sometimes articulation is half de-
stroyed, so that the first part of the word can be spoken, but not the
other. Sometimes automatic phrases can be uttered, such as yes and
no, while it is perfectly clear that these exclamations do not satisfy
the person. Another form of this general trouble is agraphia, or the
inability to express ideas in writing ; this is frequently complete, and
all attempts at writing end in a scrawl. It is noticeable that aphasia
is sometimes, though seldom, unaccompanied by insanity. As early
as 1861 Broca, in Paris, expressed the opinion that aphasia was
connected with disease in the third frontal convolution. While a
large number of cases have been cited for and against this conclusion,

72

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

many pathologists are disposed to regard it as substantially correct.
It would seem just, then, to connect these central functions which are
concerned in speech with the peculiarly developed region of the human
brain that lies on the anterior and lower limit of the Sylvian fissure ;
Wundt adds that perhaps the Island of Reil should be joined to this
territory.

We are now brought to consider directly the relation of portions
of the brain to specific states of consciousness. I shall state the loca-
tion of the senses as formerly made by Ferrier and by Munk, and will
give a specimen experiment from each investigator. Sight is located
by Ferrier in the angular gyrus (A, Fig. 1), by Munk in the occipital
lobe (O, Fig. 1) ; hearing, by both, in the temporo-sphenoidal lobe
(H, Fig. 1). Ferrier places smell and taste in the lower and inner
aspect of the temporo-sphenoidal lobe (IT, Fig. 4). These centers are
not distinguished by Munk. Ferrier names also a tactile center (H,
Fig. 4). This he locates in what is known as the hippocampal region.
If we separate the hemispheres from one another by cutting through
the corpus callosum, we shall obtain a view of the median aspect of
the hemispheres (see Fig. 4).

Attention has been called to the fact that Munk disagrees with all

Fig 4.— Median View op Eight Hemisphere of Human Bkain. (Ecker.) c c, Corpus callo-
sum, connecting band between the hemispheres, longitudinally divided ; w, lower and inner
portion of temporo-sphenoidal lobe, center of smell, according to Ferrier; H, hippocampal
fold, touch.

the authorities, except Schiff, in maintaining that a destruction of the
motor centers destroys sensibility. Munk, therefore, does not indicate
a special tactile center, but finds centers of feeling for head, neck, and
back.

Ferrier's experiment with regard to vision was as follows : He
chloroformed the animal, a monkey, and destroyed the angular gyrus

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 73

on the left hemisphere. He bandaged the left eye, and allowed the
animal to recover from the chloroform. " Upon recovery it began to
grope about a little in loco, perfectly alert, but would not move from
its position ; hearing and the other senses were not affected, for there
was always a prompt reply to stimulation of these senses." The ani-
mal remained in this position for an hour. The bandage was then
removed from the left eye. "It instantly looked around, ran quickly
to the cage and joined its companions. When brought to the light,
as before, it flinched and turned away its head." Ferrier describes the
change in the animal's manner, after removal of the bandage, as most
complete and remarkable. On the following day the left eye was
again bandaged, but "the animal gave plain signs of vision, it ran
swiftly and accurately to the bars of the cage, thrust its head between
them, and began to drink from a cup of water." In his next experi-
ment Ferrier destroyed the angular gyrus on both hemispheres. He
found great difficulty in forming a right test for vision, one which
should discriminate between sight as a state of consciousness and sim-
ple reflex reaction to visual stimulation.

The animal sat perfectly still and would not move from its posi-
tion. "The pupils contracted to light, and light flashed in the eyes
caused the animal to wince." It was utterly unwilling to move from
its place ; nothing else showed lack of vision. Ferrier's test was a
cup of tea, which the animal liked very much. Ferrier placed the tea
to the monkey's lips ; it began at once to drink eagerly. The cup was
then removed, but barely removed, from contact with the lips. " The
monkey seemed intensely anxious to drink, but could not find the tea,
though both eyes were looking straight at it." As soon as contact was
established, the monkey buried his head in the cup and followed it
around the room, as the cup was slowly lowered.

Munk's experiments on vision led him to different results. He re-
moved the entire angular gyrus from the left hemisphere ; he then
raised the lids of the left eye with his fingers and touched parts of the
eye softly ; immediately there were blinking and vigorous movement
of the head and muscles of the eye. The animal made every effort
to draw back its head, and almost always accompanied these efforts
by striking with the left front-limb. With the right eye, however,
the case was entirely different. This eye could be pressed and pinched
constantly, and the animal remained perfectly quiet.

If the finger or hand was brought suddenly up close to the left
eye there was blinking ; if to the right eye, no blinking at all resulted,
unless the lids were actually touched. Munk removed the center,
marked O, Fig. 1, from the occipital lobe in both hemispheres. He
says : " In from three to five days after the opex*ation there was nothing
abnormal in the hearing, smell, taste, movements, or sensations of the
animal, only in the territory of sight was there any peculiar disturb-
ance. The animal moved about the room or garden with perfect free-

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dom, he did not strike against any object, and if things were put in
his way he uniformly avoided them. There was, however, a striking
difference. He regarded very coldly those men whom he used to greet
most affectionately. He was indifferent to the dogs he always played
with before. However hungry and thirsty he was, he did not go to
the corner of the room where his food was, as formerly ; and, if food
and water were placed directly in his path, he would go round and
round them without noticing them at all. The sight of the whip,
which used to drive him into the corner, did not now produce the
slightest effect. He used to raise his paw when your hand was moved
before his eyes ; now he will not lift it, however much the hand is
moved."

From these and similar facts, Munk draws a conclusion which, to
say the least, seems a trifle broader than the premises. He says :
" There can be no doubt about the meaning of these observations. By
the extirpation of this portion of the brain, the dog has become soul-
blind. He has lost the sight-perceptions which he once possessed ; his
recollection-imag&s of things seen before are gone, so that he can not
recognize what he sees — still he sees / sensations of sight come to his
consciousness, so that he receives a knowledge of the existence, form,
and position of external objects, but he does not know what these
mean — this knowledge must be learned anew. The dog has been set
back to his earliest years, to the time when he first opened his eyes ; he
must learn to see."

As removal of this part of the occipital lobe causes soul-blindness,
so a removal of a portion of the temporo-sphenoidal lobe causes soul-
deafness.

Until lately the defenders of localization seemed to be justified in
believing that something had been established as to a motor area of
the brain ; they might well feel, also, that a beginning had been made
toward connecting certain parts of the cortex with specific sensations
and might hope that further experiment would remove, in considerable
degree, the present disagreements. The doctrine of localization, both
as a whole and in detail, has, however, received a severe blow at the
hands of Professor Goltz, of Strasburg. In 1876 this distinguished
experimenter began the publication of a series of papers in " Pfliiger's
Archiv fur die gesammte Physiologic" In September, 1881, this
series was finished and published by itself. Professor Goltz fearlessly
declares that he has overthrown all the conclusions about division of
the brain into motor and sensory areas, and brought back our knowl-
edge of brain-function to the old view of Flourens, viz., that the cere-
brum is one organ, having one function throughout. Professor Goltz's
experiments were confined entirely to dogs, and their chief significance
is due to the fact that he was able to keep the animal alive after re-
moval of larger masses of the cerebrum than any other experimenter.
These experiments seem to have been abundant and thorough. As a

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 75

result of them, Professor Goltz concludes that the degree of the dis-
turbance of function from destruction of brain-substance depends upon
the quantity removed, not upon the location of the lesion. He says,
most positively, that " no extirpation of the motor centers, or of any other
portion of gray matter, could cause permanent paralysis to any muscle
in the body." His emphasis is upon the word permanent. Very many
of the effects insisted on by advocates of localization did follow these
brain-lesions, but the effects were not lasting, and they did not depend
upon removal of specific portions of the substance. Blindness follows
destruction of the angular gyrus, but it is temporary ; the animal will
see again in time. Professor Goltz admits a compensation of brain-
functions, so that remaining portions of the organ may take up the
work of a part destroyed ; but this is not at all the compensation
talked of by the supporters of localization. Their compensation re-
quires that the additional work shall be done by the corresponding
part in the other hemisphere. Professor Goltz destroys the angular
gyrus on both sides and still his dog sees. Professor Goltz believes,
however, that there are some permanent disturbances resulting from
brain-lesions, such as " a certain dullness in the sensation of touch, a
diminished power of vision, everything appearing cloudy to the eye,
and some awkwardness in the movements." It will disturb the oppo-
nents of vivisection to know that Professor Goltz sacrificed fifty-one
dogs in attempting to determine the effects of lesion in both hemi-
spheres. He found that what happened only to one side of the body,
and that the opposite, if one hemisphere was dealt with, happened on
both sides of the body if both cerebral masses were affected. In all
these cases mental weakness increased toith the increasing quantity of
matter removed. When considerable portions were taken away on
both sides, the dog presented a demented appearance, very plain to be
recognized. He could walk, run, see, hear, smell, and taste, but he
was imbecile in all these activities.

It was not to be supposed that so fierce an attack upon localization
would go unchallenged. Professor Goltz certainly did not shrink from
the demand to make good his assertions. He took up basket and dog
and journeyed from Strasburg to London. Here, in 1881, he came be-
fore the physiological section of the International Medical Congress,
opened his basket, and, taking out the dog, placed him over against the
almost equally celebrated monkey of Professor Ferrier. The dog
walked, ran, saw, heard, tasted, and smelt ; this was as his master
desired, yet he should not have behaved so, for he had lost almost all
the centers for these respective functions. Large territories in both
hemispheres were gone. He was clearly weak-minded, but, on the
whole, he was not the kind of dog believed in by the advocates of
localization. Professor Yeo even went so far as to say before the
section, "I candidly admit that, should the entire of the so-called
motor centers prove to be destroyed in this case, Professor Goltz

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

has succeeded in completely changing my views on cerebral locali-
zation."

After the dog there was the monkey. Professor Ferrier intro-
duced him. He had lost the motor zone in the left hemisphere seven
months previously. Of him Professor Ferrier said : " As to any inde-
pendent volitional action of the right arm and leg we have not seen a
single indication since the operation was made. The animal is, in
every other respect, perfectly well, and as to its tactile sensibility there
is not the slightest sign of impairment." It is pleasing to know that,
as the dog had been faithful to his master, so the monkey was true to
his friend ; he displayed the proper amount of paralysis on the oppo-
site side of the body. In this connection Dr. Ireland's words are sug-
gested. He says, "It is to be hoped, in the interest of the martyrs of
cerebral physiology, that definite results will be attained as quickly
and with as little suffering as possible."

Whatever may or may not be accomplished in finding definite cen-
ters of the brain for special movements and sensations, one thing stands
fast — the cerebral hemispheres are the sole organs of the higher intel-
lectual manifestations. From the time of Flourens, experiment has
again and again shown that complete removal of the hemispheres is
followed by stupor. All that resembles intellect disappears — sponta-
neous volition is gone. The animal remains buried in the profoundest
repose. He originates no action. A low form of sensation and a low
form of volition may remain. The animal when pinched gives evi-
dence of pain ; when set in motion, continues the motion till stopped
by external hindrances. A frog deprived of the cerebrum and thrown
into the water will swim until land is reached ; a pigeon thrown into
the air will fly until stopped by an obstacle or by exhaustion. It is
to be particularly observed that the motions of these animals are strict-
ly normal, i. e., pure motions ; they are no longer connected with the
higher power that once controlled them. They continue because they
must continue.

A writer in the "Journal of Anatomy," of Paris, 1870-'71, gives a
clear account of this matter. He says : " As a summary, alike in the
inferior and superior animals, the removal of the hemispheres does not
cause to disappear any of the movements that previously existed, but
these movements assume certain peculiar characters. They are regu-
lar, for no psychical influence intervenes to modify them. They take
place inevitably after excitation. The physiologist can, at will, in an
animal deprived of the brain, determine such and such an act, limit it,
arrest it. He can predict all the movements that will take place as
certainly as a chemist knows in advance the reaction he will obtain
from mixing certain bodies.

Pathology confirms our conclusion respecting these higher func-
tions of the cerebrum. Loss of cerebi-al substance, in man, is followed
by a weakening of the intellectual powers. They make a very childish

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 77

mistake who attempt to deal with the physiological materialism of our
day by citing the American crow-bar case, or any number of cases of
brain-loss unaccompanied by marked intellectual enfeeblement. It is
equally puerile to cite instances of small brains with great intellectual
power. In the first place, these small brains may be of superior qual-
ity, as small muscles often are ; or, in the second place, the boasted
greatness of mind may be anything and everything but greatness of
mind. Learning of a very extensive kind may coexist with small men-
tal caliber. A monkey is shrewd and quick, and cunning and smart —
a parrot is learned, up in a variety of languages, speaking, as many
human parrots do, some French, some Italian, some Spanish : there is
no great-mindedness here.

Proof from size of the brain is, on the whole, reliable. There is,
in general, a remarkable decrease in weight corresponding to the intel-
lectual enfeeblement. Many idiots between the ages of sixteen, forty,
and fifty years, have shown brains weighing 19f, 25f, and 22| ounces.
There is on record the case of a deaf-mute idiot, forty-three years old,
who showed an idiocy of the lowest kind, yet his brain weighed over
forty-eight ounces. Such cases are not to overthrow an induction
based upon a large majority of opposing instances.

It remains for the succeeding paper to consider the question pro-
pounded by the physiology of to-day, respecting the kind of relation
which holds between the brain and consciousness. If we were to ac-
cept the judgment of the younger leading physicians, we should be-
lieve that modern Physiology had answered her own question. A
distinguished physician of my city says, in his published " Lectures on
Physiology " : " The so-called voluntary movements are only the final
responses to impressions made upon the special senses at the time or
in the past. The highest expressions of the intellect of man may be
resolved into the more perfect transmutations of outside forces, by
machinery made more perfect by original constitution or by labor."

Without believing that such a correlation between brain and con-
sciousness as is here asserted can be rationally accepted, there are,
as I think, two general conclusions which may be drawn with cer-
tainty :

A constant relation obtains between nerve-matter and those mani-
festations which are usually said to belong to the soul. This relation
is so important, so constant, as to determine in large measure the intel-
lectual and moral well-being of every individual.

The origination of our states of consciousness, their character and
conduct, are conditioned by physical processes antecedently occurring
in the brain.

78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AECTIC EXPLORATION AND ITS OBJECT.

By Dk. FKANZ BOAS.

THE severe sufferings of the last Arctic expeditions, and the losses
of life and property they occasioned, have depressed the public
mind in regard to Arctic explorations. Great hopes have given way to
the conviction of the impossibility of penetrating the ice-bound seas
and accomplishing the task which formerly seemed easy. The effect
of these failures is even more profound than we could anticipate ; for
scientists themselves, and other men of intelligence and influence, now
doubt if Arctic expeditions could be of any use either for mankind or
for science. And the public mind to-day is so thoroughly imbued with
these ideas, that it is necessary for every geographer to combat them
with all his power.

"We may be allowed to pass by the objections of men who measure
the advantage of every study and of every enterprise by their influ-
ence on commercial welfare. The scientist's objections are those we
wish to refute. Many do not consider the discovery of new lands and
new seas a task worthy a life's work, as they do not consider it a bene-
fit for science — for their science, which is the deduction of laws from
facts. They do not regard the composition of the wonderful picture
of the world, as Humboldt tried to delineate in his " Cosmos " a science
equal in its worth to the one which abstracts physical laws that govern
matter in the worlds as well as in the atoms. However, cosmography,
the study of the world and its development, is not at all inferior to
physics, the study of its laws.

Geography is one of the branches of science which represent the
world as we see it to-day, and as it is developed into its present state.
In its method and subject it is related to astronomy and history. Its
domain is the study of the surface of our planet, as it has been developed
by the physical action of land, atmosphere, and water, as well as by
the relations between land and the organisms which live on it. Re-
garding geography thus in its proper place in the system of sciences,
we can not be allowed to consider any one of its objects as of no con-
sequence and not worthy of being pursued with the same perseverance
as those of physics, of astronomy, or natural history. In every branch
of science the connection between the phenomena and processes, and
the reasons for their distribution in space and time, can only be under-
stood by the most thorough and detailed investigation.

If it be granted that every fact added to our knowledge is of value
for science, not by itself, but by connecting other facts already known,
there is no reason for excluding geographical researches from this
principle, or to consider discoveries of unknown regions as trifling.

For the scientist it is not the benefit of commerce which makes

ARCTIC EXPLORATION AND ITS OBJECT. 7g

the importance of geographical exploration, it is the new material
added to our stock of knowledge which enables us to make new
comparisons and to reach a more thorough understanding of the
world. If we intend to prove the necessity of new polar explorations,
we do not need to dwell upon the many observations which are con-
nected with Arctic research. If we should enter more closely into the
meteorological and hydrographical or the magnetical problems which
may be understood better by researches in regions near the pole ; if
we should try to demonstrate the immense importance of those ques-
tions for the meteorology of our own regions, and for the hydrography
of the navigable ocean, or for the closer investigation of terrestrial
magnetism which is necessary for the purposes of navigation, we
should leave the stand-point we try to maintain here — the principle
that we are not allowed to judge the value of scientific work by its
immediate importance for science and life, but by its value for science
itself.

The effort has often been made to prove the necessity of continued
polar exploration after the failure of so many attempts and the loss
of so many brave lives, but the reasons brought forth were always
those referring to the probable utility of new undertakings. It is not
the proper way to defend a scientific work to point out the direct
advantages which may be gained by it. Science itself has the right
to ask any devotion of man for its purposes. A dangerous enterprise
made in behalf of science does not need any proof of its usefulness,
if it is possible to show that the results will indeed be a gain to the
stock of our knowledge.

If we agree that cosmography be equal in value to physics, or
even if we only understand that progress in physics can not be made
except by exploring the phenomena in the most minute and detailed
way, we have to concede that new explorations in the Arctic regions
are of value for science, and that, therefore, they are undoubtedly
necessary and must be demanded.

At the same time let us ask, What is the object of polar expeditions ?
It is the thorough exploration of the Arctic region and of all its phe-
nomena, a great task which will give scientists work for years to come.
The problems will not be solved by pushing north and gaining the
pole. There are many more objects of study left besides, and it is not
necessary at all to work with all our might for the achievement of this
single aim. The desires of humanity and the wants of science both
direct us the same way. The phenomena of the highest latitudes are
not of a kind which requires the promptest attention. Though the
reaching of the pole may be desirable, it is not so urgent as to demand
the sacrifice of noble lives in hazardous and adventurous enterprises
which might be accomplished with relative safety at a later time. If
the problems awaiting their solution in the Arctic were as pressing as
those of ethnography, any attempt to reach the pole would be justi-

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fied. Physical phenomena, however, are not so suhject to change as
those of ethnography. Unknown tribes may be extinguished, or af-
fected by the direct or indirect influence of civilization. The outlines
of lands, tbe state of the weather and the sea, will not undergo altera-
tions in the course of a few years.

Therefore we can not see any reason why polar expeditions should
be sent out only in order to reach the pole. The history of former expe-
ditions proves that the most successful results were obtained by mak-
ing ample use of the experience gained in former voyages, and that
most of the failures were due to ignorance of previous observations, or
to the careless neglect of previous experiences. If new expeditions
should be organized — and they will be organized — we shall always
plead for a slow but sure progress toward the pole. From the experi-
ence gained hitherto, we are able to start at a point far north, and by
studying the distribution of the land and the state of the ice yet
farther north, we can conquer step by step the region hitherto un-
known with comparative safety. The exploration of the pole is not a
work for the bold and daring adventurer ; it is the task of the careful
scientist, who knows thoroughly what science will profit by every mile
gained, by the study of all the phenomena of regions often passed by
ships or never visited by man.

The results of a single expedition, however lucky it may be, will
always be trifling as compared with the number of problems which
have to be solved in the Arctic. It is quite possible that by favorable
circumstances an expedition might succeed in getting far north, or
discovering large areas of the unknown regions, as has happened in
former years. However, the risk which the adventurers run can not
be compared with the probable results. By deliberate perseverance,
though the progress may be slower, the exploration of the Arctic will
be accomplished in greater safety and with far greater results for
science.

We wish to establish here the principle that, in the present state
of affairs, daring and adventurous explorations have to be excluded
from a plan of Arctic researches which is founded on scientific princi-
ples. This is not the place to determine the course which new expedi-
tions have to take, as the discussion of this subject is not the affair of
the public but of experts, who know thoroughly the phenomena of the
Arctic seas and are conversant with the whole of Arctic literature.
Whatever the new plans may be, the public and men of science must
ask that the plan be not confined to a single expedition. The best
results will be gained by considering the exploration of the polar
regions as one continuous task, and fitting every new expedition into
the far-seeing scheme of a thorough investigation of all the problems
subject to Arctic researches. In this way we have the strong convic-
tion that important results will be gained quicker than by spasmodic
efforts now in Greenland, now in Behring Strait, now in Franz-Josef

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 81

Land. There can be no doubt that such a plan will be expensive,
and not so apt to produce stirring results as any other ; however, it is
not the purpose of the outgoing explorers to become sufferers and
enduring heroes, but to bring home results which are important for
their science. The meteorological stations which were established in
1882-'83 were the first step to the organization of an enterprise like
that we demand, and their results will show the utility of well-founded
plans.

Hitherto I have only referred to the exploration of the unknown
region never visited by men. There is more work left, however,
which has to be included in a comprehensive plan of research. The
southern parts of the Arctic regions — for example, the east shore
of Greenland, many of the immense fjords of its west shore, Baffin
Land, and the central parts of the north shore of America — are barely
delineated. If we look at the charts, we might be induced to believe
that most of these lands are sufficiently known, while, indeed, every
new journey discloses the deficiency of our knowledge. These countries,
which may be reached without serious difficulties, are the proper place
for investigations of great importance, and the exploration of these
parts of the Arctic is even more urgent than that of the far north, as
the study of the numerous tribes which live on the shore of the Arctic
Ocean has to be accomplished very soon ; else the rapid diminution
of those peoples and the influence of European civilization will de-
prive the ethnographer of anything to study but their moldering
remains.

It is easily understood why, after the northwest passage was found,
no new researches in this part of the world were made. Many of the
explorers, or those who planned the expeditions, were often more anx-
ious to find sensational results than to further science. Polar explora-
tion is now mostly considered merely the ambitious struggle of expe-
ditions to get a few miles farther north than all the former explorers.
We have tried to prove, in our remarks, that its aim is much nobler,
and worth all the sacrifices which are brought to it.

THE CHEMISTKY OF COOKEEY.

By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.
L. THE VEGETARIAN" QUESTION.

IK my introductory paper I said, " The fact that we use the digestive
and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, etc., for the preparation of
our food is merely a transitory barbarism, to be ultimately superseded
when my present subject is sufficiently understood and applied to
enable us to prepare the constituents of the vegetable kingdom to be
vol. xxvii. — 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as easily assimilated as the prepared grass which we call beef and
mutton."

This has brought me in communication with a very earnest body
of men and women, who at considerable social inconvenience are ab-
staining from flesh-food, and doing it purely on principle. Some peo-
ple sneer at them, call them, " crotchety," " faddy," etc., but for my
own part I have a great respect for crotchety people, having learned
long ago that every first great step that has ever been taken in the
path of human progress was denounced as a crotchet by those it was
leaving behind. This respect is quite apart from the consideration of
whether I agree or disagree with the crotchets themselves.

I therefore willingly respond to the request that I should devote
one short paper of this series to the subject. The fact that there are
now in London nine exclusively vegetarian restaurants, and all of them
flourishing, shows that it is one of wide interest.

At the outset it is necessary to brush aside certain false issues that
are commonly raised in discussing this subject. The question is not
whether we are herbivorous or carnivorous animals. It is perfectly
certain that we are neither. The carnivora feed on flesh alone, and eat
that flesh raw. Nobody proposes that we should do this. The her-
bivora eat raw grass. Nobody suggests that we should follow their
example.

It is perfectly clear that man can not be classed either with the
carnivorous animals nor the herbivorous animals, nor with the grami-
nivorous animals. His teeth are not constructed for munching and
grinding raw grain, nor his digestive organs for assimilating such grain
in this condition.

He is not even to be classed with the omnivorous animals. He
stands apart from all as The Cooking Animal.

It is true that there was a time when our ancestors ate raw flesh,
including that of each other.

In the limestone caverns of this and other European countries we
find human bones gnawed by human teeth, and split open by flint im-
plements for the evident purpose of extracting the marrow, according
to the domestic economy of the period.

The shell-mounds that these prehistoric bipeds have left behind
show that mussels, oysters, and other mollusca were also eaten raw,
and they doubtless varied the menu with snails, slugs, and worms, as
the remaining Australian savages still do. Besides these they probably
included roots, succulent plants, nuts, and such fruit as then existed.

There are many among us who are very proud of their ancient
lineage, and who think it honorable to go back as far as possible, and
to maintain the customs of their forefathers ; but they all seem to
draw a line somewhere, none desiring to go as far back as to their in-
terglacial trogloditic ancestors, and therefore I need not discuss the
desirability of restoring their dietary.

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY.

83

All human beings became cooks as soon as they learned how to
make a fire, and have all continued to be cooks ever since.

We should, therefore, look at this vegetarian question from the
point of view of prepared food, which excludes nearly all comparison
with the food of the brute creation. I say "nearly all," because there
is one case in which all the animals that approach the nearest to our-
selves— the mammalia — are provided naturally with a specially pre-
pared food, viz., the mother's milk. The composition of this prepara-
tion appears to me to throw more light than anything else upon this
vegetarian controversy, and yet it seems to have been entirely over-
looked.

The milk prepared for the young of the different animals in the
laboratory or kitchen of Natui'e is surely adapted to their structure as
regards natural food requirements. Without assuming that the human
dietetic requirements are identical with either of the other mammals,
we may learn something concerning our approximation to one class or
another by comparing the composition of human milk with that of
the animals in question.

I find ready to hand in Dr. Miller's " Chemistry," Vol. III., a com-
parative statement of the mean of several analyses of the milk of
woman, cow, goat, ass, sheep, and bitch. The latter is a moderately
carnivorous animal, nearly approaching the omnivorous character com-
monly ascribed to man. The following is the statement :

Bitch.

Water

Fat

Sugar and soluble salts

.Nitrogenous compounds and insolu-
ble salts

Woman.

Cow.

Goat.

Ass.

Sheep.

88-6

87-4

S2-0

90-5

S5-6

26

4-0

45

14

4-5

49

5-0

4-5

6-4

4-2

3-9

1

3-6

9-0

1-7

5-7

60-3

148

2-9

16-0

According to this it is quite evident that Nature regards our food
requirements as approaching much nearer to the herbivora than to the
carnivora, and has provided for us accordingly.

If we are to begin the building-up of our bodies on a food more
nearly resembling the herbivora than the carnivora, it is only reason-
able to assume that we should continue on the same principle.

The particulars of the difference are instructive. The food which
Nature provides for the human infant differs from that provided for
the young carnivorous animal, just in the same way as flesh-food dif-
fers from the cultivated and cooked vegetables and fruit within easy
reach of man.

These contain less fat, less nitrogenous matter, more water, and
more sugar (or starch, which becomes sugar during digestion) than
animal food.

Those who advocate the use of flesh-food usually do so on the ground
that it it is more nutritious, contains more nitrogenous material and

84

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more fat than vegetable food. So much the worse for the human
being, says Nature, when she prepares food.

But as a matter of practical fact there are no flesh-eaters among
us, none who avail themselves of this higher proportion of albuminoids
and fat. We all practically admit every day, in eating our ordinary
English dinner, that this excess of nitrogenous matter and fat is bad ;
we do so by mixing the meat with that particular vegetable which con-
tains an excess of the carbo-hydrates (starch) with the smallest avail-
able quantity of alhuminoids and fat. The slice of meat, diluted with
the lump of potato, brings the whole down to about the average com-
position of a fairly-arranged vegetarian repast. When I speak of a
vegetarian repast, I do not mean mere cabbages and potatoes, but
properly selected, well-cooked, nutritious vegetable food. As an ex-
ample, I will take Count Rumford's No. 1 soup, already described,
without the bread, and in like manner take beef and potatoes without
bread. Taking original weights, and assuming that the lump of potato
weighed the same as the slice of meat, we get the following composi-
tion, according to the table given by Pavy, page 410 :

Water.

Albumen.

Starch.

Sugar.

Fat.

Salts.

Lean beef

72-00

75-00

19-30
2-10

18-80

s-Va"

3-60
0-20

5-10

0-70

147-00

21-40

18-80

3-20

3-S0

5-80

73-50

10-70

9-40

1-60

1-90

2-90

Rumford's soup (without the bread afterward added) was com-
posed of equal measures of peas and pearl-barley, or barley-meal, and
nearly equal weights. Their percentage composition as stated in above-
named table is as follows :

Water.

Albumen.

Starch.

Sugar.

Fat.

SaltB.

15-00
15-00

2300
6-30

55-40
69-40

2-00
4-90

2-10
2-40

2-50
2-00

30-00

29-30

13480

6-90

4-50

450

15-00

14-65

62-40

3-45

2-25

2-25

Here, then, in one hundred parts of the material of Rumford's half-
penny dinner, as compared with the " mixed diet," we have forty per
cent more of nitrogenous food, more than six and a half times as much
carbo-hydrate in the form of starch, more than double the quantity of
sugar, about seventeen per cent more of fat, and only a little less of
salts (supplied by the salt which Rumford added). Thus the John
Bull materials fall short of all the costly constituents, and only excel
by their abundance of very cheap water.

This analysis supplies the explanation of what has puzzled many

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 85

inquirers, and encouraged some sneerers at this work of the great
scientific philanthropist, viz., that he found that less than five ounces
of solids was sufficient for each man's dinner. He was supplying far
more nutritious material than beef and potatoes, and therefore his
five ounces was more satisfactory than a pound of beef and potatoes,
three fourths of which is water, for which water John Bull pays a
shilling or more per pound when he buys his prime steak.

Rumford added the water at pump-cost, and, by long boiling,
caused some of it to unite with the solid materials (by the hydration I
have described), and then served the combination in the form of por-
ridge, raising each portion to nineteen and three quarters ounces.

I might multiply such examples to prove the fallacy of the prevail-
ing notions concerning the nutritive value of the " mixed diet," a fal-
lacy which is merely an inherited epidemic, a baseless physical super-
stition.

I will, however, just add one more example for comparison — viz.,
the Highlander's porridge. The following is the composition of oat-
meal— also from Pavy's table :

Sugar 5"40

Fat 5-60

Water 15"00

Albumen 12-60

Starch 58"40

Salts 3-00

Compare this with the beef and potatoes above, and it will be seen
that it is superior hi every item excepting the water. This deficiency
is readily supplied in the cookery.

These figures explain a puzzle that may have suggested itself to
some of my thoughtful readers — viz., the smallness of the quantity of
dry oatmeal that is used in making a large portion of porridge. If we
could, in like manner, see our portion of beef or mutton and potatoes
reduced to dryness, the smallness of the quantity of actually solid food
required for a meal would be similarly manifest. An alderman's ban-
quet in this condition would barely fill a breakfast-cup.

I can not at all agree with those of my vegetarian friends who de-
nounce flesh-meat as a prolific source of disease, as inflaming the passions,
and generally demoralizing. Neither am I at all disposed to make a
religion of either eating or drinking, or abstaining. There are certain
albuminoids, certain carbo-hydrates, certain hydrocarbons, and certain
salts demanded for our sustenance. Excepting in fruit, these are not
supplied by Nature in a fit condition for our use. They must be pre-
pared. "Whether we do all the preparation in the kitchen by bringing
the produce of the earth directly there, or whether, on account of our
ignorance and incapacity as cooks, we pass our food through the stom-
ach, intestines, blood-vessels, etc., of sheep and oxen, as a substitute
for the first stages of scientific cookery, the result is about the same as
regards the dietetic result. Flesh-feeding is a nasty practice, but I
see no grounds for denouncing it as physiologically injurious.

In my youthful days I was on friendly terms with a sheep that be-

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

longed to a butcher in Jermyn Street. This animal, for some reason,
had been spared in its lambhood, and was reared as the butcher's pet.
It was well known in St. James's by following the butcher's men
through the streets like a dog. I have seen this sheep steal mutton-
chops and devour them raw. It preferred beef or mutton to grass. It
enjoyed robust health, and was by no means ferocious.

It was merely a disgusting animal, with excessively perverted appe-
tite ; a perversion that supplies very suggestive material for human
meditation.

My own experiments on myself, and the multitude of other experi-
ments that I am daily witnessing among men of all occupations who
have cast aside flesh-food after many years of mixed diet, prove in-
contestably that flesh-food is quite unnecessary ; and also that men
and women who emulate the aforesaid sheep to the mild extent of con-
suming daily about two ounces of animal tissue combined with six
ounces of water, and dilute this with such weak vegetable food as the
potato, are not measurably altered thereby so far as physical health is
concerned.

On economical grounds, however, the difference is enormous. If
all Englishmen were vegetarians, the whole aspect of the country would
be changed. It would be a land of gardens and orchards, instead of
gradually reverting to prairie grazing-ground as at present. The un-
employed miserables of our great towns, the inhabitants of our union
workhouses, and all our rogues and vagabonds, would find ample and
suitable employment in agriculture. Every acre of land would require
three or four times as much labor as at present, and feed five or six
times as many people.

No sentimental exaggeration is demanded for the recommendation
of such a reform as this.

I must apologize for this digression, as it has prevented me from
closing this series with this paper, as I intended. In my next, which
really will conclude, I shall describe some experiments I have recently
made on the preparation of vegetable food. — Knowledge.

PASTEUK'S KESEAKCHES IN GEKM-LIFE *

Br Professor JOHN* TYNDALL.

THE weightiest events of life sometimes turn upon small hinges ;
and we now come to the incident which caused M. Pasteur to
quit a line of research the abandonment of which he still regrets. A
German manufacturer of chemicals had noticed that the impure com-

* From the Introduction to " Louis Pasteur, his Life and Labors." By his Son-in-Law.
New York : D. Applcton & Co , 1885.

PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE. 87

mercial tartrate of lime, sullied with organic matters of various kinds,
fermented on being dissolved in water and exposed to summer heat.
Thus prompted, Pasteur prepared some pure, right-handed tartrate of
ammonia, mixed with it albuminous matter, and found that the mixt-
ure fermented. His solution, limpid at first, became turbid, and the
turbidity he found to be due to the multiplication of a microscopic or-
ganism, which found in the liquid its proper aliment. Pasteur recog-
nized in this little organism a living ferment. This bold conclusion
was doubtless strengthened, if not pi-ompted, by the previous dis-
covery of the yeast-plant — the alcoholic ferment — by Cagniard-Latour
and Schwann.

Pasteur next permitted his little organism to take the carbon neces-
sary for its growth from the pure paratartrate of ammonia. Owing
to the opposition of its two classes of crystals, a solution of this salt,
it will be remembered, does not turn the plane of polarized light either
to the right or to the left. Soon after fermentation had set in, a rota-
tion to the left was noticed, proving that the equilibrium previously
existing between the two classes of crystals had ceased. The rotation
reached a maximum, after which it was found that all the right-handed
tartrate had disappeared from the liquid. The organism thus proved
itself competent to select its own food. It found, as it were, one of
the tartrates more digestible than the other, and appropriated it, to the
neglect of the other. No difference of chemical constitution deter-
mined its choice ; for the elements, and the proportions of the ele-
ments, in the two tartrates were identical. But the peculiarity of
structure which enabled the substance to rotate the plane of polariza-
tion to the right also rendered it a fit aliment for the organism. This
most remarkable experiment was successfully made with the seeds of
our common mold {Penicillium glaucum).

Here we find Pasteur unexpectedly landed amid the phenomena of
fermentation. With true scientific instinct he closed with the concep-
tion that ferments are, in all cases, living things, and that the sub-
stances formerly regarded as ferments are in reality the food of the
ferments. Touched by this wand, difficulties fell rapidly before him.
He proved the ferment of lactic acid to be an organism of a certain
kind. The ferment of butyric acid he proved to be an organism of a
different kind. He was soon led to the fundamental conclusion that
the capacity of an organism to act as a ferment depended on its
power to live without air. The fermentation of beer was sufficient to
suggest this idea. The yeast-plant, like many others, can live either
with or without free air. It flourishes best in contact with free air,
for it is then spared the labor of wresting from the malt the oxygen
required for its sustenance. Supplied with free air, however," it
practically ceases to be a ferment ; while in the brewing-vat, where
the work of fermentation is active, the budding torula is completely
cut off by the sides of the vessel, and by a deep layer of carbonic-acid

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gas, from all contact with air. The butyric ferment not only lives
without air, hut Pasteur showed that air is fatal to it. He finally di-
vided microscopic organisms into two great classes, which he named
respectively cerobies and ancerobies, the former requiring free oxygen
to maintain life, the latter capable of living without free oxygen, but
able to wrest this element from its combinations with other elements.
This destruction of pre-existing compounds and formation of new ones,
caused by the increase and multiplication of the organism, constitute
the process of fermentation.

Under this head are also rightly ranked the phenomena of putre-
faction. As M. Radot well expresses it, the fermentation of sugar
may be described as the putrefaction of sugar. In this particular field
M. Pasteur, whose contributions to the subject are of the highest value,
was preceded by Schwann, a man of great merit, of whom the world
has heard too little.* Schwann placed decoctions of meat in flasks,
sterilized the decoctions by boiling, and then supplied them with cal-
cined air, the power of which to support life he showed to be unim-
paired. Under these circumstances putrefaction never set in. Hence
the conclusion of Schwann, that putrefaction was not due to the con-
tact of air, as affirmed by Gay-Lussac, but to something suspended
in the air which heat was able to destroy. This something consists of
living organisms which nourish themselves at the expense of the or-
ganic substance, and cause its putrefaction.

The grasp of Pasteur on this class of subjects was embracing. He
studied acetic fermentation, and found it to be the work of a minute
fungus, the mycoderma aceti, which, requiring free oxygen for its
nutrition, overspreads the surface of the fermenting liquid. By the
alcoholic ferment the sugar of the grape-juice is transformed into car-
bonic-acid gas and alcohol, the former exhaling, the latter remaining
in the wine. By the mycoderma accti, the wine is, in its turn, convert-
ed into vinegar. Of the experiments made in connection with this
subject one deserves especial mention. It is that in which Pasteur
suppressed all albuminous matters, and carried on the fermentation
with purely crystallizable substances. He studied the deterioration of
vinegar, revealed its cause, and the means of preventing it. He de-
fined the part played by the little eel-like organisms which sometimes
swarm in vinegar-casks, and ended by introducing important ameliora-
tions and improvements in the manufacture of vinegar. The discussion
with Liebig and other minor discussions of a similar nature, which M.
Radot has somewhat strongly emphasized, I will not here dwell upon.

It was impossible for an inquirer like Pasteur to evade the ques-
tion, Whence come these minute organisms which are demonstrably
capable of producing effects on which vast industries are built and on
which whole populations depend for occupation and sustenance ? He
thus found himself face to face with the question of spontaneous genera-

* It was late in the day when the Royal Society made him a foreign member.

PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE. 89

tion, to which the researches of Pouchet had just given fresh interest.
Trained as Pasteur was in the experimental sciences, he had an im-
mense advantage over Pouchet, whose culture was derived from the
sciences of observation. One by one the statements and experiments
of Pouchet were explained or overthrown, and the doctrine of spon-
taneous generation remained discredited until it was revived with
ardor, ability, and, for a time, with success, by Dr. Bastian.

A remark of M. Radot's on page 103 needs some qualification.
"The great interest of Pasteur's method consists," he says, "in its
proving unanswerably that the origin of life in infusions which have
been heated to the boiling-point is solely due to the solid particles
suspended in the air." This means that living germs can not exist in
the liquid when once raised to a temperature of 212° Fahr. No doubt
a great number of organisms collapse at this temperature ; some, in-
deed, as M. Pasteur has shown, are destroyed at a temperature 90°
below the boiling-point. But this is by no means universally the case.
The spores of the hay-bacillus, for example, have in numerous in-
stances successfully resisted the boiling temperature for one, two, three,
four hours ; while in one instance eight hours' continuous boiling failed
to sterilize an infusion of desiccated hay. The knowledge of this fact
caused me a little anxiety some years ago when a meeting was pro-
jected between M. Pasteur and Dr. Bastian. For though, in regard
to the main question, I knew that the upholder of spontaneous genera-
tion could not win, on the particular issue touching the death tem-
perature he might have come off victor.

The manufacture and maladies of wine next occupied Pasteur's
attention. He had, in fact, got the key to this whole series of prob-
lems, and he knew how to use it. Each of the disorders of wine was
traced to its specific organism, which, acting as a ferment, produced
substances the reverse of agreeable to the palate. By the simplest of
devices, Pasteur, at a stroke, abolished the causes of wine-disease.
Fortunately the foreign organisms which, if unchecked, destroy the
best red wines, are extremely sensitive to heat. A temperature of 50°
C. (122° Fahr.) suffices to kill them. Bottled wines once raised to
this temperature, for a single minute, are secured from subsequent de-
terioration. The wines suffer in no degree from exposure to this tem-
perature. The manner in which Pasteur proved this, by invoking the
judgment of the wine-tasters of Paris, is as amusing as it is interest-
ing.

Moved by the entreaty of his master, the illustrious Dumas, Pasteur
took up the investigation of the diseases of silk-worms at a time when
the silk-husbandry of France was in a state of ruin. In doing so he
did not, as might appear, entirely forsake his former line of research.
Previous investigators had got so far as to discover vibratory corpus-
cles in the blood of the diseased worms, and with such corpuscles
Pasteur had already made himself intimately acquainted. He was,

9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

therefore, to some extent at home in this new investigation. Tbe
calamity was appalling, all the efforts made to stay the plague having
proved futile. In June, 1865, Pasteur betook himself to the scene of
tbe epidemic, and at once commenced his observations. On the even-
ing of his arrival he had already discovered the corpuscles, and
sbown them to others. Acquainted as he was with tbe work of living
ferments, bis mind was prepared to see in tbe corpuscles the cause of
the epidemic. He followed them through all the phases of the insect's
life — through the eggs, through the worm, through the chrysalis,
through the moth. He proved that tbe germ of the malady might be
present in the eggs and escape detection. In the worm, also, it might
elude microscopic examination. But in the moth it reached a develop-
ment so distinct as to render its recognition immediate. From healthy
moths, healthy eggs were sure to spring ; from healthy eggs, healthy
worms ; from healthy worms, fine cocoons ; so that tbe problem of
the restoration to France of its silk-husbandry reduced itself to the
separation of the healthy from the unhealthy moths, the rejection of
the latter, and the exclusive employment of the eggs of the former.
M. Radot describes bow this is now done on the largest scale, with the
most satisfactory results.

The bearing of this investigation on the parasitic theory of com-
municable diseases was thus illustrated : Worms were infected by per-
mitting them to feed for a single meal on leaves over which corpuscu-
lous matter had been spread ; they were infected by inoculation, and
it was shown how they infected each other by tbe wounds and scratches
of their own claws. By the association of healthy with diseased
worms, the infection was communicated to the former. Infection at
a distance was also produced by the wafting of the corpuscles through
the air. The various modes in which communicable diseases are dif-
fused among human populations were illustrated by Pasteur's treat-
medt of tbe silk-worms. " It was no hypothetical infected medium —
no problematical pythogenic gas — that killed the worms. It was a
definite organism."* The disease thus far described is that called
pebrine, which was the principal scourge at the time. Another for-
midable malady was also prevalent, called flacherie, the cause of which
and the mode of dealing with it were also pointed out by Pasteur.

Overstrained by years of labor in this field, Pasteur was smitten
with paralysis in October, 1868. But this calamity did not prevent
him from making a journey to Alais in January, 1869, for the express
purpose of combating the criticisms to which his labors bad been sub-
jected. Pasteur is combustible, and contradiction readily stirs him
into flame. No scientific man now living has fought so many battles
as he. To enable him to render bis experiments decisive, tbe French
emperor placed a villa at his disposal near Trieste, Avbere silk-worm

* These -words were uttered at a time when the pythogenic theory was niorc in favor
than it is now.

PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE. 91

culture bad been carried on for some time at a loss. Tbe success bere
is described as marvelous ; tbe sale of cocoons giving to tbe villa a
net profit of twenty-six millions of francs.* From tbe imperial villa
M. Pasteur addressed to me a letter, a portion of which I bave already
publisbed. It may perbaps prove usefully suggestive to our Indian or
colonial autborities if I reproduce it bere :

" Permettez-moi de terminer ces quelques lignes que je dois dieter,
vaincu que je suis par la maladie, en vous faisant observer que vous
rendriez service aux colonies de la Grande-Bretagne en repandant la
connaissance de ce livre, et des principes que j'etablis toucbant la mala-
die des vers a soie. Beaucoup de ces colonies pourraient cultiver le
mdrier avec succes, et, en jetant les yeux sur mon ouvrage, vous vous
convaincrez aisement qu'il est facile aujourd'bui, nonseulement d'eloi-
gner la maladie regnante, mais en outre de donner aux recoltes de la soie
une prosperite qu'elles n'ont jamais eue."

Tbe studies on wine prepare us for tbe " Studies on Beer," wbicb
followed tbe investigation of silk-worm diseases. Tbe sourness, putrid-
ity, and otber maladies of beer Pasteur traced to special " ferments of
disease," of a totally different form, and tberef ore easily distinguisbed
from tbe true torula or yeast-plant. Many mysteries of our breweries
were cleared up by tbis inquiry. Witbout knowing tbe cause, tbe
brewer not unfrequently incurred heavy losses through the use of bad
yeast. Five minutes' examination with the microscope would have re-
vealed to bim the cause of the badness, and prevented him from using
tbe yeast. He would have seen the true torula overpowered by foreign
intruders. The microscope is, I believe, now everywhere in use. At
Burton-on-Trent its aid was very soon invoked. At the conclusion of
bis studies on beer M. Pasteur came to London, where I had the pleas-
ure of conversing with him. Crippled by paralysis, bowed down by
tbe sufferings of France, and anxious about bis family at a troubled
and an uncertain time, he appeared low in health and depressed in
spirits. His robust appearance when he visited London, on the occa-
sion of the Edinburgh Anniversary, was in marked and pleasing con-
trast with my memory of bis aspect at tbe time to which I have re-
ferred.

While these researches were going on, the germ theory of infec-
tious disease was noised abroad. The researches of Pasteur were fre-
quently referred to as bearing upon the subject, though Pasteur him-
self kept clear for a long time of this special field of inquiry. He was
not a physician, and he did not feel called upon to trench upon the
physician's domain. And now I would beg of him to correct me if,
at this point of the introduction, I should be betrayed into any state-
ment that is not strictly correct.

In 1876 the eminent microscopist, Professor Cohn, of Breslau, was
in London, and he then handed me a number of his "Beitr'age," con-
* The work on " Diseases of Silk-worms " was dedicated to the Empress of the French.

9z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taining a memoir by Dr. Koch on splenic fever (Milzbrand, Charbon,
malignant pustule), which seemed to me to mark an epoch in the his-
tory of this formidable disease. With admirable patience, skill, and
penetration, Koch followed up the life-history of bacillus anthracis,
the contasrium of this fever. At the time here referred to he was a
young physician, holding a small appointment in the neighborhood of
Breslau, and it was easy to predict, as I predicted at the time, that he
would soon find himself in a higher position. When I next heard of
him he was head of the Imperial Sanitary Institute of Berlin. Koch's
recent history is pretty well known in England, while his appreciation
by the German Government is shown by the rewards and honors lately
conferred upon him.

Koch was not the discoverer of the parasite of splenic fever. Da-
vaine and Rayer, in 1850, had observed the little microscopic rods in
the blood of animals which had died of splenic fever. But they were
quite unconscious of the significance of their observation, and for
thirteen years, as M. Radot informs us, strangely let the matter drop.
In 1863 Davaine's attention was again directed to the subject by the
researches of Pasteur, and he then pronounced the parasite to be the
cause of the fever. He was opposed by some of his fellow-country-
men ; long discussions followed, and a second period of thirteen years,
ending with the publication of Koch's paper, elapsed, before M. Pas-
teur took up the question. I always, indeed, assumed that from the
paper of the learned German came the impulse toward a line of in-
quiry in which M. Pasteur has achieved such splendid results. Things
presenting themselves thus to my mind, M. Radot will, I trust, forgive
me if say that it was with very great regret that I perused the dis-
paraging references to Dr. Koch which occur in the chapter on splenic
fever.

After Koch's investigation, no doubt could be entertained of the
parasitic origin of this disease. It completely cleared up the perplexity
previously existing as to the two forms — the one fugitive, the other
permanent — in which the contagion presented itself. I may say that
it was on the conversion of the permanent hardy form into the fugitive
and sensitive one, in the case of bacillus subtilis and other organisms,
that the method of sterilizing by " discontinuous heating " introduced
by me in February, 1877, was founded. The difference between an
organism and its spores, in point of durability, had not escaped the
penetration of Pasteur. This difference Koch showed to be of para-
mount inportance in splenic fever. He, moreover, proved that while
mice and Guinea-pigs were infallibly killed by the parasite, birds were
able to defy it.

And here we come upon what may be called a band-specimen of
the genius of Pasteur, which strikingly illustrates its quality. Why
should birds enjoy the immunity established by the experiments of
Koch ? Here is the answer. The temperature which prohibits the

PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE. 93

multiplication of bacillus anthracis in infusions is 44° C. (111° Fahr.).
The temperature of the blood of birds is from 41° to 42° Fahr. It is
therefore close to the prohibitory temperature. But then the blood-
globules of a living fowl are sure to offer a certain resistance to any
attempt to deprive them of their oxygen — a resistance not experienced
in an infusion. May not this resistance, added to the high tempera-
ture of the fowl, suffice to place it beyond the power of the parasite ?
Experiment alone could answer this question, and Pasteur made the
experiment. By placing its feet in cold water he lowered the tempera-
ture of a fowl to 37° or 38° Fahr. He inoculated the fowl, thus chilled,
with the splenic-fever parasite, and in twenty-four hours it was dead.
The argument was clinched by inoculating a chilled fowl, permitting
the fever to come to a head, and then removing the fowl, wrapped
in cotton-wool, to a chamber with a temperature of 35° Fahr. The
strength of the patient returned as the career of the parasite was
brought to an end, and in a few hours health was restored. The
sharpness of the reasoning here is only equaled by the conclusiveness
of the experiment, which is full of suggestiveness as regards the treat
ment of fevers in man.

Pasteur had little difficulty in establishing the parasitic origin of
fowl-cholera ; indeed, the parasite had been observed by others before
him. But, by his successive cultivations, he rendered the solution sure.
His next step will remain forever memorable in the history of medicine.
I allude to what he calls " virus attenuation." And here it may be well
to throw out a few remarks in advance. When a tree, or a bundle of
wheat or barley straw, is burned, a certain amount of mineral matter re-
mains in the ashes — extremely small in comparison with the bulk of the
tree or of the straw, but absolutely essential to its growth. In a soil
lacking, or exhausted of, the necessary mineral constituents, the tree
can not live, the crop can not grow. Now, contagia are living things,
which demand certain elements of life just as inexorably as trees, or
wheat, or barley ; and it is not difficult to see that a crop of a given
parasite may so far use up a constituent existing in small quantities in
the body, but essential to the growth of the parasite, as to render the
body unfit for the production of a second crop. The soil is exhausted,
and, until the lost constituent is restored, the body is protected from
any further attack of the same disorder. Such an explanation of non-
recurrent diseases naturally presents itself to a thorough believer in
the germ theory, and such was the solution which, in reply to a ques-
tion, I ventured to offer nearly fifteen years ago to an eminent London
physician. To exhaust a soil, however, a parasite less vigorous and
destructive than the really virulent one may suffice ; and, if, after hav-
ing by means of a feebler organism exhausted the soil, without fatal
result, the most highly virulent parasite be introduced into the system,
it will prove powerless. This, in the language of the germ theory, is
the whole secret of vaccination.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The general problem, of which Jenner's discovery was a particular
case, has been grasped by Pasteur, in a manner, and with results, which
five short years ago were simply unimaginable. How much " accident "
had to do with shaping the course of his inquiries I know not. A mind
like his resembles a photographic plate, which is ready to accept and
develop luminous impressions, sought and unsought. In the chapter
on fowl-cholera is described how Pasteur first obtained his attenuated
virus. By successive cultivations of the parasite he showed that, after
it had been a hundred times reproduced, it continued to be as virulent
as at first. One necessary condition was, however, to be observed. It
was essential that the cultures should rapidly succeed each other — that
the organism, before its transference to a fresh cultivating liquid,
should not be left long in contact with air. When exposed to air for
a considerable time the virus becomes so enfeebled that when fowls
are inoculated with it, though they sicken for a time, they do not die.
But this "attenuated" virus, which M. Radot justly calls "benign,"
constitutes a sure protection against the virulent virus. It so exhausts
the soil that the really fatal contagium fails to find there the elements
necessary to its reproduction and multiplication.

Pasteur affirms that it is the oxygen of the air which, by length-
ened contact, weakens the virus and converts it into a true vaccine.
He has also weakened it by transmission through various animals. It
was this form of attenuation that was brought into play in the case of
Jenner.

The secret of attenuation had thus become an open one to Pasteur.
He laid hold of the murderous virus of splenic fever, and succeeded
in rendering it, not only harmless to life, but a sure protection against
the virus in its most concentrated form. No man, in my opinion, can
work at these subjects so rapidly as Pasteur without falling into errors
of detail. But this may occur while his main position remains impreg-
nable. Such a result, for example, as that obtained in presence of so
many witnesses at Melun must surely remain an ever-memorable con-
quest of science. Having prepared his attenuated virus, and proved,
by laboratory experiments, its efficacy as a protective vaccine, Pasteur
accepted an invitation, from the President of the Society of Agricult-
ure at Melun, to make a public experiment on what might be called
an agricultural scale. This act of Pasteur's is, perhaps, the boldest
thing recorded in this book. It naturally caused anxiety among his
colleagues of the Academy, who feared that he had been rash in clos-
ing with the proposal of the president.

But the experiment was made. A flock of sheep was divided into
two groups, the members of one group being all vaccinated with the
attenuated virus, while those of the other group were left unvacci-
nated. A number of cows were also subjected to a precisely similar
treatment. Fourteen days afterward all the sheep and all the cows,
vaccinated and unvaccinated, were inoculated with a very virulent

PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES IN GERM-LIFE.

95

virus ; and three days subsequently more than two hundred persons
assembled to witness the result. The " shout of admiration," men-
tioned by M. Radot, was a natural outburst under the circumstances.
Of twenty-five sheep which had not been protected by vaccination,
twenty-one were already dead, and the remaining ones were dying.
The twenty-five vaccinated sheep, on the contrary, were "in full
health and gayety." In the unvaccinated cows intense fever was pro-
duced, while the prostration was so great that they were unable to eat.
Tumors were also formed at the points of inoculation. In the vacci-
nated cows no tumors were formed ; they exhibited no fever, nor even
an elevation of temperature, while their power of feeding was unim-
paired. No wonder that "breeders of cattle overwhelmed Pasteur
with applications for vaccine." At the end of 1881 close upon thirty-
four thousand animals had been vaccinated, while the number rose in
1883 to nearly five hundred thousand.

M. Pasteur is now exactly sixty-two years of age ; but his energy
is unabated. At the end of this volume we are informed that he has
already taken up and examined with success, as far as his experiments
have reached, the terrible and mysterious disease of rabies or hydro-
phobia. Those who hold all communicable diseases to be of parasitic
origin, include, of course, rabies among the number of those produced
and propagated by a living contagium. From his first contact with
the disease Pasteur showed his accustomed penetration. If we see a
man mad, we at once refer his madness to the state of his brain. It is
somewhat singular that in the face of this fact the virus of a mad dog
should be referred to the animal's saliva. The saliva is, no doubt, in-
fected, but Pasteur soon proved the real seat and empire of the dis-
order to be the nervous system.

The parasite of rabies had not been securely isolated when M. Ra-
dot finished his task. But last May, at the instance of M. Pasteur, a
commission was appointed, by the Minister of Public Instruction in
France, to examine and report upon the results which he had up to
that time obtained. A preliminaiy report, issued to appease public
impatience, reached me before I quitted Switzerland this year. It in-
spires the sure and certain hope that, as regards the attenuation of the
rabic virus, and the rendering of an animal, by inoculation, proof
against attack, the success of M. Pasteur is assured. The commis-
sion, though hitherto extremely active, is far from the end of its
labors ; but the results obtained so far may be thus summed up :

Of six dogs unprotected by vaccination, three succumbed to the
bites of a dog in a furious state of madness.

Of eight unvaccinated dogs, six succumbed to the intravenous in-
oculation of rabic matter.

Of five unvaccinated dogs, all succumbed to inoculation, by tre-
panning, of the brain.

Finally, of three-and-twenty vaccinated dogs, not one was attacked

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the disease subsequent to inoculation with the most potent
virus.

Surely results such as those recorded in this book are calculated,
not only to arouse public interest, but public hope and wonder. Never
before, during the long period of its history, did a day like the present
dawn upon the science and art of medicine. Indeed, previous to the
discoveries of recent times, medicine was not a science, but a collection
of empirical rules dependent for their interpretation and application
upon the sagacity of the physician. How does England stand in rela-
tion to the great work now going on around her ? She is, and must
be, behindhand. Scientific chauvinism is not beautiful in my eyes.
Still, one can hardly see, without deprecation and protest, the English
investigator handicapped in so great a race by short-sighted and mis-
chievous legislation.

A great scientific, theory has never been accepted without opposi-
tion. The theory of gravitation, the theory of undulation, the theory
of evolution, the dynamical theory of heat — all had to push their way
through conflict to victory. And so it has been with the germ theory
of communicable diseases. Some outlying members of the medical
profession dispute it still. I am told they even dispute the communi-
cability of cholera. Such must always be the course of things, as long
as men are endowed with different degrees of insight. Where the
mind of genius discerns the distant truth, which it pursues, the mind
not so gifted often discerns nothing but the extravagance, which it
avoids. Names, not yet forgotten, could be given to illustrate these
two classes of minds. As representative of the first class, I would
name a man whom I have often named before, who, basing himself in
great part on the researches of Pasteur, fought, in England, the battle
of the germ theory with persistent valor, but whose labors broke him
down before he saw the triumph which he foresaw completed. Many
of my medical friends will understand that I allude here to the late
Dr. William Budd, of Bristol.

The task expected of me is now accomplished, and the reader is
here presented with a record in which the verities of science are en-
dowed with the interest of romance.

-♦♦♦-

TEAINING IN ETHICAL SCIENCE.

By H. II. CUETIS.

THE importance of education in the duties of life is recognized in
a greater or less degree by all. People differ widely as to abso-
lute standards of right and wrong, and as to the foundation or source
of such standards, but all concede by daily acts, as well as by avowed
opinions, the necessity of some kind of moral training. Every parent

TRAINING IN ETHICAL SCIENCE. 97

who restrains his child from the commission of a wrongful act, or ap-
proves its conduct when praiseworthy, does so in recognition of the
importance of moral education. Every individual who uses his influ-
ence to keep others from evil associations, or who commends a noble
or kindly act, thus manifests his appreciation of the necessity of moral
or ethical culture. However undefined may be the limits, however
imperfectly understood may be the sources of the laws of duty, it is
continually forced upon the attention of every thoughtful person that
a proper observance of these laws is of vast importance to mankind.
The happiness of man — the great legitimate end of human effort —
depends so largely upon the recognition and adoption of high standards
of duty, that nothing can exceed in importance the cultivation of the
science of duty and the spirit of right action.

The human race is still far from a condition of ideal perfection ;
man has not as yet reached his highest estate. In the words of Ten-
nyson :

" A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth ;
For him did his high sun shine, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for its birth,
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man ;
He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base? ''

The world is full of want and misery ; the strong trample upon the
rights of the weak, the cunning take advantage of the unwary, the
impulsive and the irresolute are lured on to lives of vice and crime.
From every quarter there arise appeals for help, for strength to over-
come temptation, for power to resist oppression, for succor in distress.
Beyond all these things, as we ascend in the scale of ethical develop-
ment, there exists a demand for that recognition of the rights of others,
that spirit of fellowship and true manhood which shall abridge and
overcome the passion of grasping selfishness. How prevalent is the
desire for that ostentatious splendor and luxurious ease which too often
represent the fruits of many a hard and narrow life of penury and
ill-requited toil !

We live in an age of observation, of investigation, of a study of
Nature's laws and methods. Nor is the advance of the physical sci-
ences more marked than that of the useful arts. Do not the problems
of life also demand attention ? Is a knowledge of the laws of the
physical universe so all-important that no time shall be spared, no
thought devoted to acquiring further knowledge of the laws of duty ?
Every thoughtful observer must admit that the great governing factor
in the problem of the advancement of human happiness is the conduct
of man toioard his felloto-man. Immeasurable in importance is the
fostering of a spirit of true devotion to duty. There is no loftier am-
bition, no nobler work, no higher ideal of life, than the promotion of
the virtue, goodness, and happiness of mankind.

VOL. XXVII. — 7

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

What are the means by which these ends shall be accomplished ?
Shall we rely solely upon our supposed consciousness of what is right
and what is wrong, and let moral teaching consist simply of appeals
for obedience to the dictates of conscience ? That which is termed
conscience is, in a large degree at least, a matter of inherited tenden-
cies, education, and intellectual development, and varies with the in-
dividual, his surroundings, and the age in which he lives.

That which seems right to the mind of one man often seems wrong
when presented to the intelligent judgment of other men. The con-
science of the average member of a civilized community differs widely
from the conscience of the average member of a savage tribe. To the
American Indian, revenge is a virtue ; to the Quaker, revenge is a
crime. To Gautama, to Jesus of Nazareth, and to their ascetic dis-
ciples, the total rejection of personal interest or advancement — absolute
unselfishness and self-abnegation, unlimited benevolence, and an entire
absence of the desire or habit of self-protection — were the greatest
virtues and most obligatory duties.

On the other hand, the constitutions of all civilized governments,
whether written or unwritten, the principles of the civil as well as those
of the common law, and the teachings of wise men of ancient and of
modern times, recognize as a duty the protection of individual or selfish
interests. They recognize as just and necessary the restraint and pun-
ishment of wrong-doers, and the protection of the rights and interests
of the individual in person and property. Educated to look upon these
and kindred principles as embodying correct rules of conduct, we view
with approval the resistance of oppression and injustice, and even the
spirit which resents and punishes insult.

There can be no doubt that these are conflicting views of duty,
but both extremes have been honestly maintained, and still are in some
degree. It hardly admits of a doubt that men of pure motives and
good intentions have committed acts of cruelty and inhumanity in the
belief that they were simply discharging duties — perchance religious
duties.

All these things point to the fallibility of human judgment regard-
ing standards of duty, and the imperfect development of ideas of right
and wrong. They furnish no excuse, however, for drifting through
life without an attempt to investigate or discover the principles of the
science of duty, or for neglecting to govern our actions by those prin-
ciples, so far as we may be able to recognize them.

With the waning and crumbling of a faith in any books or records
as containing absolute or inspired standards of duty, the study of the
science and data of ethics should, it would seem, become one of greater
interest and attention than ever before.

Whether we regard the ability to distinguish between right and
wrong conduct as in a great degree inherent in the human mind, or
as having arisen in the course of the evolution of the race, as a sense

TRAINING IN ETHICAL SCIENCE. 99

of that which is conducive to the happiness of man, it is certainly a
faculty or sense which is largely developed by educational training
and example. Without this, it surely can not be relied upon as an
unerring guide in all the problems of life. Man does not possess a
power to distinguish between right and wrong action which rises
superior to the need of cultivation. For such culture teachers are
required, and the great necessity of united action is apparent. If
associated action in the shape of schools of moral or ethical training,
and agencies for charitable work — the fruit of such training — are de-
manded, we are confronted with the question of what their nature
should be, and how far the want is already supplied. If the means
now provided for these purposes are as good as any that can be devised,
and if they are suited to the needs and uses of all, it were idle to supply
other agencies.

Foremost, perhaps, among the agencies now existing, are the
churches. According to the theories adopted and taught by the
various religious organizations which are collectively known as Chris-
tian, the cultivation of ethical truths, or, in other words, the recogni-
tion and adoption of high standards of duty, is regarded as but a part
of a religious system founded upon the revealed will of a Divine Being.

To those who accept so-called revelation as infallible truth, the
rules of conduct or systems of ethics recognized in their Scriptures
furnish, in theory, and so far as they can be harmonized, final and
absolute standards of human duty. To them, theoretically at least,
right or wrong action is such simply by reason of its adherence to or
departure from certain standards of duty recognized in their sacred
writings.

To the individual who looks upon the sacred books of Jew and
Christian, of Mohammedan and Buddhist, as alike the works of men —
men of varying degrees of mental and moral development — the idea
of accepting their conclusions as Jinal upon the great problems of the
duty of man seems narrow and illogical. To him the absolute accept-
ance of these standards as final, however high he may concede some
of them to be, is to place a limit upon moral development and to deny

that

" The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

But it does not follow, even from the point of view of the agnostic,
that there is nothing of value in the ethical teachings of the orthodox
Christian churches. Most if not all religions have recognized, and in
some sense demanded, the adoption of certain exalted standards of duty,
and in this particular the Christian religion stands deservedly high
among the great religions of the world. Charity, kindness, and love,
are not less beautiful because recognized as such by the churches. A
true statement of the duty of man to his fellow-man does not become
false because attributed to a Divine Being, or declared to be inspired.
It does not become false even when the observance of the duty is

loo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sought to be enforced by an appeal to selfish interests — by the promise
of reward or the threat of punishment in a life of which we know not.

Nor is the value of the moral teaching of the churches to be ignored
merely because they insist that it is the duty of all to accept and adopt
their theological teachings — their conception of the infinite and un-
known, with its attendant dogmas and " cramping bounds of creed."

The crude and sometimes wholly indefensible theories of right and
wrong which are recognized and treated as of divine authority in por-
tions of the Scriptures do not furnish a sufficient reason for an unquali-
fied condemnation of the ethical teachings of the churches. It is in
general only in some strained theory — rarely in a practical application
to the duties of life — that the most extreme and ultra standards of duty
recognized in the writings which are collectively known as the Bible
are inculcated, or even defended, inside the churches. Even those men
whose mistaken zeal and religious bias lead them to attempt a defense
of all the varying and inconsistent standards of duty recognized or pro-
mulgated by the many authors of the writings which make up our
Bible, do so rather in theory than in fact. In their daily life, or prac-
tical advice to others, they adopt neither the standard of implacable
and indiscriminating revenge and cruelty on the one hand, nor that of
absolute self-abasement and meek submission to insult and injury on
the other, which are alternately represented as attributes of the Divine
character by the respective authors of these so-called sacred writings.

Without stopping here to discuss the objectionable featm-es of a
system of ethical training or education which has its nominal founda-
tion in the supposed fiat of a Divine Intelligence, and which in theory
necessarily precludes the possibility of the development of higher
standards, it may be conceded that such education in morals is better
than none. The value of such education is not wholly counterbalanced
by the evil of its constant appeal to the selfish interests by promises of
personal reward or threats of punishment, rather than to the nobler sen-
timents of the mind. Conceding the moral education of the churches
to be imperfect in theory, in the manner in which it is imparted, and
the means by which it is sought to be enforced, it nevertheless contains
elements of good to those who can-receive it.

The believer of course finds in the ethical teachings of his church
a deeper and fuller moral education than they impart to others. He
can at least give due weight to their real merits, and they are to him
authoritative in a greater or less degree — the degree being dependent
upon his faith in their divine origin. From long association of ideas
and the influence of early education, the attendant theological teach-
ings do not suggest to him that sense of incongruity and inconsistency
which they present to others.

But how far is the moral education furnished by the Church suited
to the needs of those who are compelled to reject its theological dog-
mas concerning the unknown, and to regard its standards of duty as

TRAINING IN ETHICAL SCIENCE. 101

those of fallible men only ? Does it furnish to the earnest and fearless
seeker for moral truth an undeviating path to the object of his search ?
Is he not constantly invited to depart from his course on journeys
through the pathless wastes of theological speculation, where each
man thinks his diverging creed marks the true highway to heaven ?

There are various reasons why the earnest seeker for truth who is
without religious belief can not feel content with the Church as a
teacher of moral duty. The energy, the time, the money which should
be devoted to building up character, to a recognition of the duties of
man to his fellow-man, to the relief of the afflicted, to an intelligent
dealing with the great problems of this life — he sees devoted largely
to building up, jjromulgating, or seeking excuse for dogmas and the-
ories from which his intelligence revolts. With want and suffering
appealing for relief, with ignorance demanding enlightenment, with a
thousand duties at our doors which scarcely receive a passing notice,
we are asked to follow these blind teachers of the blind away from the
things of this world, and to enjoy with them their irrational conception
of what is to us the unknown — perhaps the unknowable.

Of what value is a sermon on the duty and efficacy of prayer, to
one who looks upon the question of the existence of a Divine Being
as an insoluble problem ? Of what use or benefit to him is a dis-
course on the nature of the Trinity, or the theory of the atonement ?

The rationalist is compelled to look upon the books which make up
the Bible as simply the work of fallible men, of varying degrees of in-
telligence, and representing the thought of widely differing periods of
human development. To him, what is there of interest in attempts to
reconcile their contradictions and inconsistencies — attempts to estab-
lish the untenable theory that they embody and set forth the plan and
design of an all-wise Author of the universe ?

If the rationalist would support and uphold the ethical school of
the Church, he is in a measure also supporting and upholding theologi-
cal ideas which are to him in the last degree unreasonable and improb-
able. His money pays misguided men for teaching the ignorant of
earth that the all-foreseeing and merciful Author of all things would
doom his creatures to suffer untold agony throughout eternity for the
sins and mistakes of a short life, or for using the reason with which
he has endowed them ! Where one dollar goes to relieve want, or
build up character, two go to build up church or creed. The relief of
the widow and the fatherless is thought a matter of less importance
than acquainting the heathen with the theological dogmas of the Chris-
tian Church.

Of course the church-going and church-supporting rationalist must
expect to be continually reminded of the culpability of his unbelief,
which, so far as he can judge, arises simply from an exercise of his rea-
soning faculties, and not from any wrongful intention. He becomes
wearied and disheartened by the want of consideration shown for the

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

duties of this life, and the undue prominence given to a supposed
preparation for an alleged future life, of which he has no evidence
and can form no conception.

But though the Church fails to furnish adequate ethical training
to those who can not accept its theological teachings, some kind of
moral education is necessary if we would have true moral develop-
ment. While much can be done in the home circle in teaching the
rudiments of the science of duty — the beauty of love and charity
and other attributes of noble character — this is not alone sufficient
to meet the demand which should exist for true ethical culture.
Teachers are needed. The complicated interests which surround most
of the great social and moral problems demand the most careful and
patient study, and only he who has brought to these tasks the forces
of a well-trained mind can suggest the true means of relief from con-
ditions which all may recognize as deplorable. The value of associa-
tion with a broad and generous mind — a mind filled with high and
pure conceptions of duty — a mind which ever presents and holds be-
fore us high and noble ideals, can not well be overestimated.

The time may come when the Church will so far outgrow the
myths, the dogmas, and the beliefs with which it now straggles that
there will be room within it for all who would earnestly unite in
efforts to better the condition of man, and to diffuse a knowledge
of those principles which lie at the foundation of human happiness.
There is, indeed, a progress of thought in the Church far broader and
deeper than any actual modifications of written creeds would indicate.
We will not pause to inquire as to what class of thinkers is chiefly en-
titled to the credit for this progress. This rapid development in the
direction of individual freedom of thought may give us at length a
church — by whatever name it may be designated — where the only
creed held binding will be the creed of love, the only devotion essen-
tial to true fellowship a devotion to truth and duty.

Meanwhile, though there are signs of progress, and noble excep-
tions in the few societies for ethical culture now existing, and in sim-
ilar organizations, it is evident that the demand for ethical progress
outside the Church has not as yet culminated in any general con-
structive effort either in the direction of improving the condition of
the weak, the needy, and the suffering, or in the cultivation of the sci-
ence of duty.

It is in one sense an unfortunate circumstance that most rational-
ists are persons of very independent habits of thought. Their work
in the past has been necessarily and perhaps almost too largely one
of iconoclasm. The exposure of shams, the demolition of creed and
dogma, the unveiling of myth and traditional faith based upon founda-
tions which have slowly crumbled away in the light of increasing in-
telligence, have thus far largely occupied the attention of the ration-
alist. The men who have done this work are not of a nature which

A VERY OLD MASTER. 103

bids them cling together for mutual support and sympathy, and as a
whole they have hardly the characteristics which would qualify them
for united constructive effort. Nevertheless, association is needed. A
comparison of views, each individual reaping the benefit of the
thought of his co-workers, is of the highest value. Without associated
action but little enthusiasm can be expected, and enthusiasm is all-
important in carrying forward any good work. The employment of
earnest and competent teachers and leaders in thought is practicable
only through united action. For charitable work — the relief of want,
the alleviation of suffering, the furnishing of employment, the assist-
ance which helps others to help themselves — associated and united
effort is well-nigh indispensable. And in earnest exertions to improve
the condition and add to the happiness of our fellows, may be found
the best and highest ethical culture, giving to those who engage in the
work a new conception as it were of the higher duties and nobler life
of man.

-«-*»-

A VEEY OLD MASTER.

THE work of art which lies before me is old, unquestionably old ;
a good deal older, in fact, than Archbishop Usher (who invented
all out of his own archiepiscopal head the date commonly assigned
for the creation of the world) would by any means have been ready to
admit. It is a bas-relief by an old master, considerably more antique
in origin than the most archaic gem or intaglio in the Museo Borbonico
at Naples, the mildly decorous Louvre in Paris, or the eminently re-
spectable British Museum, which is the glory of our own smoky London
in the spectacled eyes of German professors, all put together. When
Assyrian sculptors carved in fresh white alabaster the flowing curls of
Sennacherib's hair, just like a modern coachman's wig, this work of
primaeval art was already hoary with the rime of ages. When Mem-
phian artists were busy in the morning twilight of time with the
towering coiffure of Rameses or Sesostris, this far more ancient relic of
plastic handicraft was lying, already fossil and forgotten, beneath the
concreted floor of a cave in the Dordogne. If we were to divide the
period for which we possess authentic records of man's abode upon
this oblate spheroid into ten epochs — an epoch being a good, high-
sounding word which doesn't commit one to any definite chronology
in particular — then it is probable that all known art, from the Egyp-
tian onward, would fall into the tenth of the epochs thus loosely de-
markated, while my old French bas-relief would fall into the first. To
put the date quite succinctly, I should say it was most likely about
244,000 years before the creation of Adam according to Usher.

The work of the old master is lightly incised on reindeer-horn,
and represents two horses, of a very early and heavy type, following

io4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

one another, with heads stretched forward, as if sniffing the air sus-
piciously in search of enemies. The horses would certainly excite un-
favorable comment at Newmarket. Their " points " are undoubtedly
coarse and clumsy : their heads are big, thick, stupid, and ungainly ;
their manes are bushy and ill-defined ; their legs are distinctly feeble
and spindle-shaped ; their tails more closely resemble the tail of the
domestic pig than that of the noble animal beloved with a love passing
the love of women by the English aristocracy. Nevertheless, there is
little (if any) reason to doubt that my very old master did, on the
whole, accurately represent the ancestral steed of his own exceedingly
remote period. There were once horses even as is the horse of the
prehistoric Dordonian artist. Such clumsy, big-headed brutes, dun in
hue and striped down the back like modern donkeys, did actually once
roam over the low plains where Paris now stands, and browse off lush
grass and tall water-plants around the quays of Bordeaux and Lyons.
Not only do the bones of the contemporary horses, dug up in caves,
prove this, but quite recently the Russian traveler Prjevalsky (whose
name is so much easier to spell than to pronounce) has discovered a
similar living horse, which drags on an obscure existence somewhere
in the high table-lands of Central Asia. Prjevalsky's horse (you see,
as I have only to write the word, without uttering it, I don't mind
how often or how intrepidly I use it) is so singularly like the clumsy
brutes that sat, or rather stood, for their portraits to my old master,
that we can't do better than begin by describing him in propria persona.
The horse family of the present day is divided, like most other
families, into two factions, which may be described for variety's sake
as those of the true horses and the donkeys, these latter including also
the zebras, quaggas, and various other unfamiliar creatures whose
names, in very choice Latin, are only known to the more diligent visi-
tors at the Sunday Zoo. Now everybody must have noticed that the
chief broad distinction between these two great groups consists in the
feathering of the tail. The domestic donkey, with his near congeners,
the zebra and co., have smooth, short-haired tails, ending in a single
bunch or fly-whisk of long hairs collected together in a tufted bundle at
the extreme tip. The horse, on the other hand, besides having horny
patches or callosities on both fore and hind legs, while the donkeys
have them on the fore-legs only, has a hairy tail, in which the long
hairs are almost equally distributed from top to bottom, thus giving it
its peculiarly bushy and brushy appearance. But Prjevalsky's horse,
as one would naturally expect from an early intermediate form, stands
half-way in this respect between the two groups, and acts the thank-
less part of a family mediator ; for it has most of its long tail-hairs
collected in a final flourish, like the donkey, but several of them spring
from the middle distance, as in the genuine Arab, though never from
the very top, thus showing an approach to the true horsey habit with-
out actually attaining that final pinnacle of equine glory. So far as one

A VERY OLD MASTER. 105

can make out from the somewhat rude handicraft of my prehistoric
Phidias, the horse of the quaternary epoch had much the same caudal
peculiarity ; his tail was bushy, but only in the lower half. He was
still in the intermediate stage between horse and donkey, a natural
mule still struggling up aspiringly toward perfect horschood. In all
other matters the two creatures — the cave-man's horse and Prjevalsky's
— closely agree. Both display large heads, thick necks, coarse manes,
and a general disregard of " points " which would strike disgust and
dismay into the stout breasts of Messrs. Tattersall. In fact, over a
T. Y. C. it may be confidently asserted, in the pure Saxon of the sport-
ing papers, that Prjevalsky's and the cave-man's lot wouldn't be in it.
Nevertheless, a candid critic would be forced to admit that, in spite of
clumsiness, they both mean staying.

So much for the two sitters ; now let us turn to the artist who
sketched them. Who was he, and when did he live ? Well, his name,
like that of many other old masters, is quite unknown to us ; but what
does that matter, so long as his work itself lives and survives ? Like
the Comtists he has managed to obtain objective immortality. The
work, after all, is for the most part all we ever have to go upon. " I
have my own theory about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey,"
said Lewis Carroll ( of "Alice in Wonderland ") once in Christ Church
common-room ; " it is that they weren't really written by Homer, but
by another person of the same name." There you have the Iliad in a
nutshell as regards the authenticity of great works. All we know
about the supposed Homer (if anything) is that he was the reputed
author of the two unapproachable Greek epics ; and all we know di-
rectly about my old master, viewed personally, is that he once carved
with a rude flint flake on a fragment of reindeer-horn these two clumsy
prehistoric horses. Yet by putting two and two together we can
make, not four, as might be naturally expected, but a fairly connected
history of the old master himself and what Mr. Herbert Spencer would
no doubt playfully term his "environment."

The work of art was dug up from under the firm concreted floor of
a cave in the Dordogne. That cave was once inhabited by the name-
less artist himself, his wife, and family. It had been previously ten-
anted by various other early families, as well as by bears who seem to
lived there in the intervals between the different human occupiers.
Probably the bears ejected the men, and the men in turn ejected the
bears, by the summary process of eating one another up. In any case
the freehold of the cave was at last settled upon our early French
artist. But the date of his occupancy is by no means recent ; for
since he lived there the long cold spell known as the Great Ice Age, or
Glacial Epoch, has swept over the whole of Northern Europe, and
swept before it the shivering descendants of my poor prehistoric old
master. Now, how long ago was the Great Ice Age ? As a rule, if
you ask a geologist for a definite date, you will find him very chary of

106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

giving you a distinct answer. He knows that the chalk is older than
the London clay, and the oolite than the chalk, and the red marl than
the oolite ; and he knows also that each of them took a very long time
indeed to lay down, but exactly how long he has no notion. If you
say to him, " Is it a million years since the chalk was deposited ? " he
will answer, like the old lady of Prague, whose ideas were excessively
vague, " Perhaps." If you suggest five millions, he will answer oracu-
larly once more, " Perhaps " ; and if, you go on to twenty millions,
"Perhaps," with a broad smile, is still the only confession of faith that
torture will wring out of him. But in the matter of the Glacial
Epoch, a comparatively late and almost historical event, geologists
have broken thi-ough their usual reserve on this chronological question,
and condescended to give us a numerical determination. And here is
how Dr. Croll gets at it.

Every now and again, geological evidence goes to show us, a long
cold spell occurs in the northern or southern hemisphere. During
these long cold spells the ice-cap at the poles increases largely, till it
spreads over a great part of what are now the temperate regions of
the globe, and makes ice a mere drug in the market as far south as
Covent Garden or the Halles at Paris. During the greatest extension
of this ice-sheet in the last glacial ej)och, in fact, all England except
a small southwestern corner (about Torquay and Bournemouth) was
completely covered by one enormous mass of glaciers, as is still the
case with almost the whole of Greenland. The ice-sheet, grinding
slowly over the hills and rocks, smoothed, and polished, and striated
their surfaces in many places till they resembled the roches moutonnees
similarly ground down in our own day by the moving ice-rivers of
Chamouni and Grindelwald. Now, since these great glaciations have
occurred at various intervals in the world's past history, they must de-
pend upon some frequently recurring cause. Such a cause, therefore,
Dr. Croll began ingeniously to hunt about for.

He found it at last in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. This
world of ours, though usually steady enough in its movements, is at
times decidedly eccenti'ic. Not that I mean to impute to our old and
exceedingly respectable planet any occasional aberrations of intellect, or
still less of morals (such as might be expected from Mars and Venus) ;
the. word is here to be accepted strictly in its scientific or Pickwickian
sense as implying merely an irregularity of movement, a slight wob-
bling out of the established path, a deviation from exact circularity.
Owing to a combination of astronomical revolutions, the precession
of the equinoxes and the motion of the aphelion (I am not going to
explain them here ; the names alone will be quite sufficient for most
people ; they will take the rest on trust) — owing to the combination
of these profoundly interesting causes, I say, there occur certain periods
in the world's life when for a very long time together (10,500 years,
to be quite precise) the northern hemisphere is warmer than the south-

A VERY OLD MASTER. 107

era, or vice versa. Now, Dr. Croll has calculated that about 250,000
years ago this eccentricity of the eai'th's orbit was at its highest, so
that a cycle of recurring cold and warm epochs in either hemisphere
alternately then set in ; and such cold spells it was that produced the
Great Ice Age in Northern Europe. They went on till about 80,000
years ago, when they stopped short for the present, leaving the climate
of Britain and the neighboring continent with its existing inconvenient
Laodicean temperature. And, as there are good reasons for believing
that my old master and his contemporaries lived just before the great-
est cold of the Glacial Epoch, and that his immediate descendants, with
the animals on which they feasted, were driven out of Europe, or out
of existence, by the slow approach of the enormous ice-sheet, we may,
I think, fairly conclude that his date was somewhere about b. c. 248,000.
In any case we must at least admit, with Mr. Andrew Lang, the laureate
of the twenty-five thousandth century, that

" He lived in the long, loog agoes ;
'Twas the manner of primitive man."

The old master, then, carved his bas-relief in pre-glacial Europe,
just at the moment before the temporary extinction of his race in
France by the coming on of the Great Ice Age. We can infer this
fact from the character of the fauna by which he was surrounded, a
fauna in which species of cold and warm climates are at times quite
capriciously intermingled. We get the reindeer and the mammoth
side by side with the hippopotamus and the hyena ; we find the chilly
cave-bear and the Norway lemming, the musk-sheep and the Arctic fox
in the same deposits with the lion and the lynx, the leopard and the
rhinoceros. The fact is, as Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace has pointed
out, we live to-day in a zoologically impoverished world, from which
all the largest, fiercest, and most remarkable animals have lately been
weeded out. And it was in all probability the coming on of the Ice
Age that did the weeding. Our Zoo can boast no mammoth and no
mastodon. The saber-toothed lion has gone the way of all flesh ; the
deinotherium and the colossal ruminants of the Pliocene Age no longer
browse beside the banks of Seine. But our old master saw the last
of some at least among those gigantic quadrupeds ; it was his hand,
or that of one among his fellows, that scratched the famous mam-
moth etching on the ivory of La Madelaine, and carved the figure of
the extinct cave-bear on the reindeer-horn ornaments of Laugerie Basse.
Probably, therefore, he lived in the period immediately preceding the
Great Ice Age, or else perhaps in one of the warm interglacial spells
with which the long secular winter of the northern hemisphere was
then from time to time agreeably diversified.

And what did the old master himself look like ? Well, painters
have always been fond of reproducing their own lineaments. Have
we not the familiar young Raphael painted by himself, and the Rem-
brandt, and the Titian, and the Rubens, and a hundred other self-

108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

drawn portraits, all flattering and all famous ? Even so primitive man
has drawn himself many times over, not indeed on this particular piece
of reindeer-horn, but on several other media to be seen elsewhere, in
the original or in good copies. One of the best portraits is that dis-
covered in the old cave at Laugerie Basse by M. Elie Massenat, where
a very early pre-glacial man is represented in the act of hunting an
aurochs, at which he is casting a flint-tipped javelin. In this as in all
other pictures of the same epoch I regret to say that the ancient hunter
is represented in the costume of Adam before the fall. Our old mas-
ter's studies, in fact, are all in the nude. Primitive man was evidently
unacquainted as yet with the use of clothing, though primitive woman,
while still unclad, had already learned how to heighten her natural
charms by the simple addition of a necklace and bracelets. Indeed,
though dresses were still wholly unknown, rouge was even then ex-
tremely fashionable among French ladies, and lumps of the ruddle
with wrhich primitive woman made herself beautiful forever are now
to be discovered in the corner of the cave where she had her little pre-
historic boudoir. To return to our hunter, however, who for aught
we know to the contrary may be our old master himself in person, he
is a rather crouching and semi-erect savage, with an arched back, re-
calling somewhat that of the gorilla, a round head, long neck, pointed
beard, and weak, shambling, ill-developed legs. I fear we must admit
that pre-glacial man cut, on the whole, a very sorry and awkward
figure.

Was he black ? That we don't certainly know ; but all analogy
would lead one to answer positively, Yes. White men seem, on the
whole, to be a very recent and novel improvement on the original evo-
lutionary pattern. At an}' rate he was distinctly hairy, like the
Ainos, or aborigines of Japan, in our own day, of whom Miss Isabella
Bird has drawn so startling and sensational a picture. Several of the
pre-glacial sketches show us lank and gawky savages with the body
covered with long scratches, answering exactly to the scratches which
represent the hanging hair of the mammoth, and suggesting that man
then still retained his old original hairy covering. The few skulls and
other fragments of skeletons now preserved to us also indicate that
our old master and his contemporaries much resembled in shape and
build the Australian black fellows, though their foreheads were lower
and more receding, while their front teeth still projected in huge
fangs, faintly recalling the immense canines of the male gorilla. Quite
apart from any theoretical considerations as to our probable descent
(or ascent) from Mr. Darwin's hypothetical " hairy arboreal quadru-
manous ancestor," whose existence may or may not be really true,
there can be no doubt that the actual historical remains set before us
pre-glacial man as evidently approaching in several important respects
the higher monkeys.

It is interesting to note, too, that while the Men of the Time still

A VERY OLD MASTER. 109

retained (to be frankly evolutionary) many traces of the old monkey-
like progenitor, the horses which our old master has so cleverly deline-
ated for us on his scrap of horn similarly retained many traces of the
earlier united horse-and-donkey ancestor. Professor Huxley has ad-
mirably reconstructed for us the pedigree of the horse, beginning with
a little creature from the Eocene beds of New Mexico, with five toes
to each hind-foot, and ending with the modern horse, whose hoof is
now practically reduced to a single and solid-nailed toe. Intermediate
stages show us an Upper Eocene animal as big as a fox, with four toes
on his front feet and three behind ; a Miocene kind as big as a sheep,
with only three toes on the front-foot, the two outer of which are
smaller than the big middle one ; and, finally, a Pliocene form, as big
as a donkey, with one stout middle toe, the real hoof, flanked by two
smaller ones, too short by far to reach the ground. In our own horse
these lateral toes have become reduced to what are known by veter-
inaries as splint-bones, combined with the canon in a single solidly
mortised piece. But in the pre-Glacial horses the splint-bones still
generally remained quite distinct, thus pointing back to the still earlier
period when they existed as two separate and independent side-toes
in the ancestral quadruped. In a few cave specimens, however, the
splints are found united with the canons in a single piece, while con-
versely horses are sometimes, though very rarely, born at the present
day with three-toed feet exactly resembling those of their half-forgot-
ten ancestor, the Pliocene hipparion.

The reason why we know so much about the horses of the cave
period is, I am bound to admit, simply and solely because the man of
the period ate them. Hippophagy has always been popular in France ;
it was practiced by pre-Glacial man in the caves of Perigord, and re-
vived with immense enthusiasm by the gourmets of the Boulevards
after the siege of Paris and the hunger of the Commune. The cave-
men hunted and killed the wild horse of their own times, and one of
the best of their remaining works of art represents a naked hunter
attacking two horses, while a huge snake winds itself unperceived be-
hind close to his heel. In this rough prehistoric sketch one seems to
catch some faint antique foreshadowing of the rude humor of the
" Petit Journal pour Rire." Some archaeologists even believe that the
horse was domesticated by the cave-men as a source of food, and argue
that the familiarity with its form shown in the drawings could only
have been acquired by people who knew the animal in its domesticated
state ; they declare that the cave-man was obviously horsey. But all
the indications seem to me to show that tame animals were quite un-
known in the age of the cave-men. The mammoth certainly was
never domesticated ; yet there is a famous sketch of the huge beast
upon a piece of his own ivory, discovered in the cave of La Madelaine
by Messrs. Lartet and Christy, and engraved a hundred times in works
on archaeology, which forms one of the finest existing relics of pre-

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Glacial art. In another sketch, less well known, but not unworthy of
admiration, the early artist has given us with a few rapid hut admira-
ble strokes his own reminiscence of the effect produced upon him by
the sudden onslaught of the hairy brute, tusks erect and mouth wide
open, a perfect glimpse of elephantine fury. It forms a capital exam-
ple of early impressionism, respectfully recommended to the favorable
attention of Mr. J. M. Whistler.

The reindeer, however, formed the favorite food and favorite model
of the pre-Glacial artists. Perhaps it was a better sitter than the
mammoth ; certainly it is much more frequently represented on these
early prehistoric bas-reliefs. The high-water mark of palaeolithic art
is undoubtedly to be found in the reindeer of the cave of Thayngen,
in Switzerland, a capital and spirited representation of a buck grazing,
in which the perspective of the two horns is better managed than a
Chinese artist would manage it at the present day. Another drawing
of two reindeer fighting, scratched on a fragment of schistose rock and
unearthed in one of the caves of Perigord, though far inferior to the
Swiss specimen in spirit and execution, is yet not without real merit.
The perspective, however, displays one marked infantile trait, for the
head and legs of one deer are seen distinctly through the body of
another. Cave-bears, fish, musk-sheep, foxes, and many other extinct
or existing animals, are also found among the archaic sculptures.
Probably all these creatures were used as food ; and it is even doubt-
ful whether the artistic troglodytes were not also confirmed cannibals.
To quote Mr. Andrew Lang once more on primitive man, "he lived in
a cave by the seas ; he lived itpon oysters and foes." The oysters are
quite undoubted, and the foes may be inferred with considerable cer-
tainty.

I have spoken of our old master more than once under this rather
question-begging style and title of primitive man. In reality, how-
ever, the very facts which I have here been detailing serve themselves
to show how extremely far our hero was from being truly primitive?
You can't speak of a distinguished artist, who draws the portraits of
extinct animals with grace and accuracy, as in any proper sense pri-
mordial. Grant that our good troglodytes were indeed light-hearted
cannibals ; nevertheless, they could design far better than the modern
Esquimaux or Polynesians, and carve far better than the civilized being
who is now calmly discoursing about their personal peculiarities in his
own study. Between the cave-men of the pre-Glacial age and the hy-
pothetical hairy quadrumanous ancestor aforesaid there must have
intervened innumerable generations of gradually improving intermedi-
ate forms. The old master, when he first makes his bow to us, naked
and not ashamed, in his Swiss or French grotto, flint scalpel in hand
and necklet of bear's teeth dropping loosely on his hairy bosom, is
nevertheless in all essentials a completely evolved human being, with
a whole past of slowly acquired culture lying dimly and mysteriously

A VERY OLD MASTER. in

behind him. Already he has invented the bow with its flint-tipped
arrow, the neatly chipped javelin-head, the bone harpoon, the barbed
fish-hook, the axe, the lance, the dagger, and the needle. Already he
had learned how to decorate his implements with artistic skill, and to
carve the handles of his knives with the figures of animals. I have
no doubt that he even knew how to brew and to distill ; and he was
probably acquainted with the noble art of cookery as applied to the
persons of his human fellow-creatures. Such a personage can not rea-
sonably be called primitive ; cannibalism, as somebody has rightly
remarked, is the first step on the road to civilization.

No, if we want to get at genuine, unadulterated primitive man, we
must go much further back in time than the mere trifle of 250,000
years, with which Dr. Croll and the cosmic astronomers so generously
provide us, for pre-Glacial humanity. We must turn away to the im-
measurably earlier fire-split flints which the Abbe Bourgeois — un-
daunted mortal ! — ventured to discover among the Miocene strata of
the calcaire de Beauce. Those flints, if of human origin at all, were
fashioned by some naked and still more hairy creature, who might
fairly claim to be considered as genuinely primitive. So rude are they
that, though evidently artificial, one distinguished archaeologist will
not admit they can be in any way human ; he will have it that they
were really the handiwork of the great European anthropoid ape of
that early period. This, however, is nothing more than very delicate
hair-splitting ; for what does it matter whether you call the animal
that fashioned these exceedingly rough and fire-marked implements a
man-like ape or an ape-like human being ? The fact remains quite un-
altered, whichever name you choose to give to it. When you have
got to a monkey who can light a fire and proceed to manufacture him-
self a convenient implement, you may be sure that man, noble man,
with all his glorious and admirable faculties — cannibal or otherwise —
is lurking somewhere very close, just round the corner. The more we
examine the work of our old master, in fact, the more does the con-
viction force itself upon us, that he was very far indeed from being
primitive — that we must push back the early history of our race not
for 250,000 winters alone, but perhaps for two or three million years,
into the dim past of Tertiary ages.

But if pre-Glacial man is thus separated from the origin of the race
by a very long interval indeed, it is none the less true that he is sepa-
rated from our own time by the intervention of a vast blank space,
the space occupied by the coming on and passing away of the Glacial
Epoch. A great gap cuts him off from what we may consider as the
relatively modern age of the mound-builders, whose grassy barrows
still cap the summits of our southern chalk-downs. When the great
ice-sheet drove away palaeolithic man — the man of the caves and the
unwrought flint axes — from Northern Europe, he was still nothing
more than a naked savage in the hunting stage, divinely gifted for art

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indeed, but armed only with roughly-chipped stone implements, and
wholly ignorant of taming animals, or of the very rudiments of agri-
culture. He knew nothing of the use of metals — aiirum irrepertum
spernere fortior — and he had not even learned how to grind and polish
his rude stone tomahawks to a finished edge. He couldn't make him-
self a bowl of sun-baked pottery, and if he had discovered the almost
universal art of manufacturing an intoxicating liquor from grain or
berries (for, as Byron, with too great anthropological truth, justly re-
marks, "man, being reasonable, must get drunk") he at least drank his
aboriginal beer or toddy from the capacious horn of a slaughtered
aurochs. That was the kind of human being who alone inhabited
France and England during the later pre-Glacial period.

A hundred and seventy thousand years elapse (as the play-bills put
it), and then the curtain rises afresh upon neolithic Europe. Man
meanwhile, loitering somewhere behind the scenes in Asia or Africa
(as yet imperfectly explored from this point of view), had acquired the
important arts of sharpening his tomahawks and producing hand-made
pottery for his kitchen utensils. When the great ice-sheet cleared
away he followed the returning summer into Northern Europe, an-
other man, physically, intellectually, and morally, with all the slow ac-
cumulations of nearly two thousand centuries (how easily one writes
the words ! how hard to realize them !) upon his maturer shoulders.
Then comes the age of what older antiquaries used to regard as primi-
tive antiquity — the age of the English barrows, of the Danish kitchen-
middens, of the Swiss lake-dwellings. The men who lived in it had
domesticated the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the invaluable
pig ; they had begun to sow small ancestral wheat and undeveloped
barley ; they had learned to weave flax and wear decent clothing ; in
a word, they had passed from the savage hunting condition to the
stage of barbaric herdsmen and agriculturists. That is a comparative-
ly modern period, and yet I suppose we must conclude, with Dr. James
Geikie, that it isn't to be measured by mere calculations of ten or
twenty centuries, but ten or twenty thousand years. The perspective
of the past is opening up rapidly before us ; what looked quite close
yesterday is shown to-day to lie away off somewhere in the dim dis-
tance. Like our palaeolithic artists, we fail to get the reindeer fairly
behind the ox in the foreground, as we ought to do if we saw the
whole scene properly foreshortened.

On the table where I write there lie two paper-weights, preserving
from the fate of the sibylline leaves the sheets of foolscap to which
this article is now being committed. One of them is a very rude flint
hatchet, produced by merely chipping off flakes from its side by dex-
terous blows, and utterly unpolished or unground in any way. It
belongs to the age of the very old master (or possibly even to a slight-
ly earlier epoch), and it was sent me from Ightham, in Kent, by that
indefatigable uneartber of prehistoric memorials, Mr. Benjamin Har-

SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERT HELOT. 113

rison. That flint, which now serves me in the office of a paper-weight,
is far ruder, simpler, and more ineffective than any weapon or imple-
ment at present in use among the lowest savages. Yet with it, I
doubt not, some naked black fellow, by the banks of the Thames,
has hunted the mammoth among unbroken forests two hundred
thousand years ago and more ; with it he has faced the angry cave-
bear, and the original and only genuine British lion (for everybody
knows that the existing mongrel heraldic beast is nothing better than
a bastard modification of the leopard of the Plantagenets). Nay, I
have very little doubt in my own mind that with it some aesthetic an-
cestor has brained and cut up for use his next-door neighbor in the
nearest cavern, and then carved upon his well-picked bones an interest-
ing sketch of the entire performance. The Du Mauriers of that remote
age, in fact, habitually drew their society pictures upon the personal
remains of the mammoth or the man whom they wished to caricature
in deathless bone-cuts. The other paper-weight is a polished neolithic
tomahawk, belonging to the period of the mound-builders, who suc-
ceeded the Glacial epoch, and it measures the distance between the
two levels of civilization with great accuracy. It is the military
weapon of a trained barbaric warrior as opposed to the universal im-
plement and utensil of a rude, solitary, savage hunter. Yet how
curious it is that, even in the midst of this " so-called nineteenth cent-
ury," which perpetually proclaims itself an age of progress, men
should still prefer to believe themselves inferior to their original an-
cestors, instead of being superior to them ! The idea that man has
riser is considered base, degrading, and positively wicked ; the idea
that he has fallen is considered to be immensely inspiring, ennobling,
and beautiful. For myself, I have somehow always preferred the
boast of the Homeric Glaucus, that we, indeed, maintain ourselves to
be much better men than ever were our fathers. — Cornhill Magazine.

-♦*♦-

SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERTHELOT.

"TNTIL a few years ago, investigation in organic chemistry was
vJ pursued almost wholly by the road of analysis. As Gerhardt
wrote in his treatise: "The chemist did everything in opposition to
living Nature. He burned, destroyed, and worked by taking apart,
while the vital force operated by synthesis or putting together, to
reconstruct the edifice which chemical forces would destroy." The
chemist was, in fact, a great destroyer. He could isolate the essence
from a flower, and could destroy that essence and determine its chem-
ical composition, but he was powerless to reconstruct the destroyed
perfume, and could not even conceive that such a thing was possible.
It is the chief title to fame of M. Berthelot that he introduced the

VOL. XXVII. — 8

n4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

synthetic method into organic chemistry, and devised a system of
processes hy means of which we are able to create organic compounds
by the direct combination of their constituent radicals.

Pierre Eugene Marcellin Berthelot was born in Paris, Octo-
ber 25, 1827. He was the son of a physician of some distinction, and
while a student in one of the lyceums of Paris showed marked tastes
for philosophical studies and chemical research, so that, when the time
for the contest came, he easily won the honors in philosophy. Then,
following his favorite pursuits, he occupied himself especially with
studies of the acids and fatty bodies, and of fermentations. In 1851
he became attached to the College de France as preparator in the
course of chemistry, in which position he was assistant to Balard. In
1854 he propounded his theory of polyatomic alcohols, and was in
the same year made a Doctor in Science. In 1859 he was appointed a
Professor in the Superior School of Pharmacy. In 1861 he received
the Joecker prize from the Academy of Sciences for his experiments
in the artificial production of chemical substances by synthesis. In
1864 he was made a Professor of Organic Chemistry in the College de
France in a chair which had been created especially for him, in which
he was instructed to advance his own ideas, and to treat in his lectures
especially of his own discoveries.

M. Berthelot entered upon the researches in synthesis, which give
him his strongest title to fame, in 1854. Berzelius had said that, al-
though we may produce with inorganic bodies a few substances hav-
ing a composition analogous to that of some organic ones, the imita-
tion is too restricted to justify us in hoping that we shall be able to
produce organic bodies in the same sense that we have frequently
succeeded in confirming the analysis of inorganic bodies by perform-
ing the synthesis of them. Yet, when this was said, Wohler had
already performed the synthesis of urea ; and a few other syntheses
had been made, but they were so isolated, so insignificant, and so
barren of fruit, that all attempts to constitute organic bodies by bring-
ing together the elements of which they are composed were, as a rule,
regarded as chimerical. The law and the manner of the formation of
the organic matters which enter into the composition of the living
being were unknown ; the question whether those substances were
chemical in their character, or depended for their existence and main-
tenance upon a peculiar vital force, had been started, but the discus-
sion of it had not been seriously entered upon. M. Berthelot began
to give his attention to the solution of this problem very early in his
•scientific career.

One of the first syntheses he performed was that of formic acid,
and this was used as the basis of his further researches. Regarding
this substance as formed by the union of water and carbonic oxide, he
brought about a compound of that character through the intervention
>©f potash, and secured the result he sought. Other syntheses followed

SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERTHELOT. 115

this one, conducted, like it, with very simple compounds, till he was
finally led to the artificial composition of the carburets of hydrogen.
Among his most important experiments in this line was the artificial
production of alcohol from defiant gas. Alcohol once obtained syn-
thetically, he had a station whence he could pursue his investigations
in various directions. It was not a long step from this to the compo-
sition with the same elements (oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon) of a
number of volatile organic substances — such as the oils of garlic, mus-
tard, etc. — and then to the formation of glycerine. With these pro-
cesses he had built up by synthesis what we might perhaps call the
first story of organic chemistry. To complete his work it was neces-
sary to produce the saccharine and albuminous substances which con-
stitute what might be called, repeating our figure, the second story of
the edifice — a problem of a more difficult character, because those sub-
stances are less stable in their nature, and are more completely decom-
posed under energetic chemical reactions. On this subject M. Berthe-
lot said, several years ago : " The reconstitution of the saccharine and
albuminoid principles is the final object of organic chemistry, the most
remote one indeed, but also one of the most important, on account of
the essential part which these principles play in our economy. When
science attains it, it will be able to realize the synthetic problem in its
whole extent — that is, to produce, with the elemeuts and by the play
of molecular forces alone, all the definite natural compounds and all
the changes which matter undergoes in the bodies of living beings."

"The labors of M. Berthelot in this line," says an enthusiastic
French biographer, " constitute one of those events which change the
aspect of things, not only by the new processes which they have devel-
oped, or by the substances, more or less known, which they have given
the means of reproducing, but because they have taken hold bodily of
one of the strongest intrenched ideas of mankind and overthrown it.
We had been taught that all the complex substances constituting plants
and animals were produced wholly under the influence of a special
vital force peculiar to organized beings. When it came to verifying
the facts in the case, it was found that Nature acts in a more simple
way than we had thought, and that she employs those chemical affini-
ties that control the metamorphoses of matter equally in executing
those immense earth-convulsions that stir the foundations of countries
and overthrow cities, and in perfuming a flower by the distillation,
molecule by molecule, of its essential oil."

The fruits of M. Berthelot's investigations in this department of
research have been given in a number of publications, among which
we may name the " Combinaisons de la glycerine avec les acides, et
reproduction des corps gras neutres" ("Combinations of Glycerine
with the Acids, and Reproduction of Neutral Fatty Bodies"), 1860 ;
various memoirs in the " Annales de physique et de chimie" ; " Chimie
organique fondee sur la synthese " (" Organic Chemistry founded on

n6 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Synthesis ") 1860 ; and " Lecons sur les methodes g&n&rales de synthese
en chimie organique " (" Lessons on the General Methods of Synthesis
in Organic Chemistry "), a course of lectures in the College de France,
1864.

M. Berthelot has also pursued elaborate researches in specific heat,
and in tbe relations between the heat developed in composition and
decomposition, and the force of affinity. On the subject of the rela-
tions of specific heat with the composition of bodies he said, in 1873,
in a discussion in tbe French Academy with M. Dumas : " Tbe study
of tbe specific heats established by tbe most recent researches tends
to prove that there is a positive characteristic which, it seems to me,
distinguishes tbe elements of modern chemistry from its compounds,
and sbows tbat no known compound body ought to be considered as
of the same order as an actually simple one. The importance of such
a characteristic can not be doubted, and it becomes greater on account
of the mechanical meaning which modern theories attach to specific
heat. . . . Nevertheless, exaggerated conclusions must not be drawn
from such an opposition between the mechanical and physical charac-
teristics of our simple and compound bodies. If our elements have
not as yet been decomposed, and appear not to be decomposable by
tbe forces which are at present at the command of the chemist, noth-
ing compels us to assert that they are not decomposable in another
way than our compounds are ; as, for instance, as Mr. Loekyer asserts,
by means of the forces acting in cosmical space. Nor does anything
prevent that such a discovery as that of voltaic electricity would
enable tbe chemists of tbe future to overpass tbe limits which are
imposed upon us. The possible fundamental identity of tbe matter
constituting our elements, and the possibility of transmuting into one
another the so-called elements, can, moreover, be admitted into the
category of more or less plausible hypotheses without it necessarily
resulting that there is a single really existing matter of which our
actual elements represent unequal states of condensation. In fact,
nothing compels us to conceive the existence of a final decomposition
which shall tend necessarily to reduce our elements either to more
simple bodies, from the addition of which they arise, or to multiples
of a single elementary ponderable xmit."

M. Berthelot's views of the relations between chemical affinity and
the intensity of chemical action were presented in his " Essai de m6ca-
nique chimique fondee sur la thermo-chimie " (" Essay on Chemical Dy-
namics based on Thermo-Chemistry "), 1880, of which Mr. M. M. Patti-
son Muir said, in " Nature," that its publication " marks an important
point in tbe advance of modern chemistry." Among the more recent
investigations which M. Berthelot has pursued in the light of his
thermo-cbemical theories are those into the properties of explosives
and the laws of the propagation of explosions.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

117

CORRESPONDENCE.

FRUCTIFICATION OF THE FIG.
Messrs. Editors:

DEAR SIRS : Some time ago I wrote to
my son, Grant Allen, to say that, in
that special portion of his article (" Queer
Flowers") which referred to the fructifi-
cation of the fig, there must, I thought, be
some mistake, for I had seen a fig-tree bear
a large crop of fruit, and was sure that no
such pains had been taken with it as that
referred to in the article in question. To
this I received yesterday (March 11th) the
following reply, which, though intended
only for myself, I think I break no confi-
dence in publishing : " The fig-tree ques-
tion," says he, "puzzled me myself much,
long ago, for the capvifico doesn't grow in
England, and fig-trees bear abundantly.
But all the authorities arc unanimous, and
I can't go against them. There is a vast
literature on the subject, caprification as
they call it, and Miiller in his ' Fertilization
of Flowers ' gives a list of ten separate works
dealing with it." So that, if he has erred,
he has erred cum patribus. So far for my
son. Now Miiller, who is a specialist on
this subject, and the latest and very highest
authority, tells Us (see " The Mechanisms
of Flowers," part iii, page 521) that "the
latest researches (377, Ficus carica, L.) con-
firm the fact, which Linnaeus (416 A.) was
aware of, that the so-called caprificus which
bears inedible fruit, and the fig-tree, culti-
vated for the sake of its fruit from time
immemorial, stand in the relation of male
and female to one another. Fertilization is
effected by a wasp. ... In most cases,
each crop of figs, whether of the fig-tree or
the caprificus, brings only flowers of one
sex to maturity." Again (p. 522): "While
the fruit of the caprificus, whose only use
is to supply pollen, remains hard and
withers on the tree, or falls off without be-
coming sweet, the fruit of the fig-tree, when
the seeds ripen, becomes sweet and juicy,
and so attracts birds which disseminate the
seeds. From the most ancient times, as
long as the fig-tree has been cultivated, its
artificial fertilization by means of the cap-
rificus, or so-called caprification, has been
practiced," and so on.

How are we to reconcile all this with
the very lucid exposition and array of facts
of your able correspondent in the February
number of " The Popular Science Monthly."
I confess I think your correspondent is in
this particular right. Only that I do not
wish to venture a guess — never permissible
on a question of science, save tentatively —

I might make one here as to how these dif-
ferences might be reconciled, but I forbear.

Though my son is a keen and close ob-
server of Nature, and a good judge of the
men to be relied on for such facts as, in his
yet short life, he could not have scrutinized
himself personally, yet as his more especial
object is to get at the heart of his facts, to
read their hidden meaning, and to show how
whole continents of facts, apparently dis-
connected and unrelated, are yet bound to-
gether by the strongest ties of consan-
guinity or more close or distant relationship,
he has very frequently to go to the works of
able specialists of repute in order to learn
from them what they have observed.

Thus, for example's sake, in a late article
of his in the " Cornhill Magazine " (" Go to
the Ant ") he had, as is obvious, to have
recourse to the vast stores of observations
accumulated by many able specialists in
many parts of the world. Now, it is quite
possible that some of these observations
may in time come to be questioned by more
exact observers ; still, in a case like this of
the fig-tree, when all practical men and
scientific observers have coincided in opin-
ion, and where " all authorities " have for
over a century been " unanimous,'1'' a writer
is to be pardoned for thrusting aside a diffi-
culty in his own mind, in deference to the
practical judgment of the ages and the de-
cision of all experts in the case.

I sent my son by to-day's post the num-
ber of "The Popular Science Monthly"
which contained the letter of your corre-
spondent ; but I wish it to be borne in mind
that the reply here given is mine, not his,
save in the few words quoted from a, private
letter and dashed off by him in great haste.
His reply, on seeing your correspondent's
letter, might be very different.

Yours very truly, J. Antisell Allen.
March 12, 1885.

Messrs. Editors :

In the February number of " The Popular
Science Monthly," Mr. George Pyburn, of
Sacramento, says, " I have yet to see the first
seedling fig," and suspects, therefore, that
the seeds are generally infertile.

In 1878 I planted the seeds of an im-
ported white Smyrna fig. They germi-
nated abundantly, and, in the fourth year
from planting, my seedling fig-tree bore
fruit. I shall try this year a similar experi-
ment with a California fig. I anticipate a
similar result. The seeds are so small that
they require care. They should be planted

n8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in a box, covered shallow with fine sand,
and regularly watered with a sprinkler.

I think figs generally are self-fertilizing.
I had one tree, however, whose fruit uni-
formly fell when about two thirds grown.
I ascribed this to want of fertilization.
Possibly the presence of the caprifico might
have changed results. If so, it would follow
that some varieties are self-fertilizing and
others not. The " fig-wasp " is unknown
here.

The " novel phenomenon " related by
Mr. C. G. McMillan may be found dupli-
cated, though not in precisely the same way,
in Northern Mississippi. His fossil leaves
had retained their color during untold ages.
In the other case it was the resin of the pine-
tree. Near the village of Iuka was lying,
some twenty years ago, and perhaps is still,
a petrified pine-log about two feet in diame-
ter, a ten-pound fragment of which lies here
in my study. Not only does the stone re-
tain the color and appearance of pine-wood,
but the petrified resin has the color, semi-
transparency, and general appearance of
real resin. The surface-land is eocene.

Isaac Kinley.
Los Angeles, Cal., March 11, 1S85.

SAMP AND HULLED CORN.

Messrs. Editors :

Mattieu Williams, in article 42 of his
" Chemistry of Cookery " (" Popular Science
Monthly " for January), says : " Before pro-
ceeding fnrther I must fulfill the promise
made in No. 39, to report the result of my
repetition of the Indian process of prepar-
ing samp. I soaked some ordinary Indian
corn in a solution of carbonate of potash,
exceeding the ten or twelve hours specified
by Count Rumford. The external coat was
not removed even after two days' soaking."
He suspects the corn was too old and dry,
and that the Indians used new or freshly
gathered grain.

In the first place, this is not the way to

prepare samp. Samp is the Anglicized In-
dian name for maize parched and pounded.
It came afterward to be the name for the
new corn, pounded or coarsely ground. This
being done before the kernels were fairly
dry, it was much prized for mush or hasty-
pudding.

The prepared Indian corn he refers to
is called in New England hulled corn. My
grandmother, whose parents were contem-
porary with and from the same part of the
country as Count Kumford, was famous for
her hulled corn.

That this method of preparing corn for
food was learned from the Ind'ans is un-
certain. It was probably a Yankee inven-
tion of early date.

Grandmother's way was to put a peck
of old, dry maize into a pot filled with water,
and with it a bag of hard-wood ashes, say a
quart. After soaking a while it was boiled
until the skins or hulls came off easily. The
corn was then washed in cold water to get
rid of the taste of potash, and then boiled
until the kernels were soft. Another way
was to take the lye from the leaches where
potash was made, dilute it, and boil the
corn in this until the skin or hull came off.
In the experiment tried by Mr. Williams,
his solution of carbonate of potash was not
of sufficient strength, or, if it was, the maize
or corn should have been boiled. It makes
a delicious dish, eaten with milk or cream.

In the early days of New England, maize
was the principal grain, and was designated
corn, which is the significance of the name
now in all parts of the Union. Ground
maize is called in New England " Indian-
meal," and mixed with one third of rye-
meal, fermented and baked, once consti-
tuted the principal bread of the whole coun-
try. It was called " rye-and-indian," pro-
nounced ryningen. Boston brown bread is
an imitation of it. Baked Indian is still a
common appellation for a corn-meal pud-
ding that strikes a stranger as a reminis-
cence of cannibalism. P. J. F.
Clinton, Iowa, Marcli 20, 1885.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

ILLITERACY AS A SOURCE OF NATIONAL
DANGER.

A GREAT deal of attention has late-
ly been drawn to this subject, and
in certain quarters an attempt has been
made to " boom " it in a manner that can
hardly be pronounced entirely disinter-
ested. In certain educational journals,
for example, teachers are urged to peti-
tion the national Legislature for the

passing of the "Blair Bill," on the
ground that it will improve their own
remuneration. One form of petition,
which we find printed for the conven-
ience of teachers, states that "igno-
rance among the masses of the people
now exists to such a degree as to
threaten the early destruction of the
free institutions of the republic," and
that therefore a system of free schools

EDITOR'S TABLE.

119

" should be in part established and,
temporarily at least, supported by con-
tributions from the overflowing Treas-
ury of the United States." The word
"temporaiuly" here will raise a smile
on the lips of those who remember how
often temporary protection for "our
infant industries " has been applied for,
and how invariably the protection so
accorded has become a permanent thing.
Infant industries that are nourished on
" protection " never emerge from the
infant condition. However they may
extend and expand, they never volun-
tarily forego the leading-strings or the
pap-bottle ; and so we shrewdly suspect
it would be with the schools " tempo-
rarily " assisted by the Federal Govern-
ment. If, in the course of a few years,
they demonstrated their ability to dis-
pense with such assistance, they would
do what has seldom been done in this
world. It is a most unusual thing for
any organism to close an easy channel
of alimentation, in order to depend ex-
clusively upon one more difficult. Let
the Treasury of the United States once
begin to overflow in the way of aid to
education "on the basis of illiteracy,"
it may go on overflowing. The " basis "
is not likely to contract, but rather to
widen out from year to year.

The question, however, deserves
careful consideration. Is the stability
of our institutions threatened by the
ignorance of the electorate? By " illit-
eracy " is understood the condition of
being unable to read or write; and we
are asked to believe that our system of
government stands in peril on account
of the extent to which illiteracy as thus
defined prevails. The language used
would point to the conclusion that il-
literacy is now a more serious evil than
at any previous period of our history.
The facts, however, do not support any
such conclusion. The census of 1870
gave the total number of white males
of voting age unable to write as 748,970.
From 1870 to 1880 our population in-
creased thirty per cent. Had the num-
ber of illiterates remained, therefore,

relatively stationary, we should have had
in 1880 not less than 973,661 white
voters unable to write ; instead of that,
the census for that year shows the num-
ber to be 886,659 only, a decidedly re-
duced proportion. It is true, on the
other hand, that, among the colored
population, education is not keeping
pace with the natural increase of num-
bers, but this fact alone does not justify
the interference of the Federal Govern-
ment to supplement the educational
work that is now going on.

"What has not been shown as yet, so
far as we are aware, is that the so-
called illiterate classes are a specific
source of danger to our institutions. If
we review the several crises of our his-
tory, we shall probably find that those
who have done most to bring on these
crises have been, for the most part,
men quite able to read and write. The
Tilden-Hayes imbroglio could not cer-
tainly be traced to the ignorance of the
electorate. Maine is a highly educated
State, and yet it was precisely there
that a few years ago a condition of war
almost supervened in connection with
the State elections. The false returns
which kept this city, and in a less de-
gree the whole Union, in a condition
of fever-heat for days together last fall,
had nothing to do with illiteracy, quite
the contrary. Even the Cincinnati riot
was not the work of men who could
not read or write, but rather of citizens
quite competent in these respects, but
who had momentarily lost their heads.
The fact is, the citizens who can read
and write have everywhere the power
in their own hands, and if they are only
willing to discharge their duties, pri-
vate and public, in a proper manner,
the non-reading and non-writing ele-
ment in the population will give them
comparatively little trouble.

There is, however, another view to
be taken of the matter. If our schools
are not as efficient as they should be,
and if an undue proportion of the
whole population escapes the civilizing
influence of education, what is the-

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cause ? We do not hesitate to say that
the chief cause is one which no Gov-
ernment action, State or Federal, can
ever reach — viz., defect of home disci-
pline. The hoy who will not attend
school, or who, attending school, learns
nothing, is the hoy accustomed to re-
bellion at home, or the boy whose par-
ents are themselves too negligent and
vicious to care whether he learns any-
thing or not. It is no doubt the case
that a certain portion of the population
of these States is being brought up in
partial or total savagery. Not for want
of schools, however, for schools abound.
The evil is deep-seated, and can only be
reached by the vigorous action of pub-
lic opinion, and by wise measures of
reform in connection with the admin-
istration of justice. When we explain
why it is that our educational systems
fail altogether to reach a certain ele-
ment in the population, we explain,
also, why the work of education is in
many cases so shallow, and why it
even seems at times to do more harm
than good. Everything depends on the
spirit with which it is approached. A
well-known figure in contemporary fic-
tion— Maud Matchin — well illustrates
the work of the high school or acad-
emy on the mind of a vain and vulgar
girl, who sets no value upon education,
save as it may help her to a position in
the world, and the vices of whose char-
acter are therefore brought only into
stronger relief by her wretched varnish
of accomplishments. And here we see
the folly of all schemes that would set
the Federal Government at work to
repair the weak places of education
throughout the States and Territories.
All that is proposed is that reading and
writing should be made universal ac-
complishments, so as to remove the re-
proach and danger of technical "illit-
eracy." But there is absolutely no
guarantee that the voter newly in-
structed to read and write would be
any better man than he was before.
If our high-schools are turning out
Maud Matchins by the score and hun-

dred, and if youths by the thousand
leave school to pursue a career of
"smartness," without one thought of
social responsibility, it is evident that
the mere extension of educational facil-
ities is a much less pressing need than
the moralizing of the whole business of
education. Philosophers have told us
that it is perfectly possible to educate
in an intellectual sense without touch-
ing one single moral chord ; and daily
experience confirms the truth of the
statement. Instead, therefore, of en-
gaging the Federal Government to es-
tablish more schools, we would engage
the whole community to place the
schools that now exist upon a higher
moral plane, and to render them more
effectual in their working by a higher
quality of home influence. It is in the
home above all that reform is needed ;
but, unhappily, the school has of late
years so dwarfed the home, so inter-
posed between the parent and his natu-
ral and proper responsibility toward his
child, that to preach " home influence "
to-day is almost like raising one's voice
in the wilderness. Things are badly
complicated ; one thing only is certain,
and that is, that more State interfer-
ence will not help to clear up the com-
plications, or to put things on a sound
basis.

It is needless, we trust, in conclud-
ing these remarks, to say that we yield
to none in the importance we attach to
education rightly understood. By edu-
cation, however, we do not understand
merely the ability to read and write,
and we are not fully persuaded that
our institutions would be any safer than
they are to-day if every child in the
country over twelve years old could
both read and write. What we know
for certain is, that an individual able to
do both may be in a condition of very
unstable intellectual equilibrium, and
so, we believe, might a whole commu-
nity of such individuals. What we need
to improve our intellectual state is not
an increase of activity on the part of
the Government, but deeper convictions

EDITOR'S TABLE.

121

of social duty throughout the commu-
nity, and, above all, a livelier sense of
parental responsibility. Let us have
these things, and the republic will be
safe, and education will begin to be
truly humanizing and truly progres-
sive.

A TEST OF PHILOSOPHY.

Theee is now a pretty decided agree-
ment among the intelligent and unpreju-
diced that Herbert Spencer takes rank
as the first philosopher of England, and
G. H. Lewes many years ago declared
him to be the only English thinker who
has originated a philosophy. How much
this may mean is well intimated by the
remark of Mr. Lester F. Ward, that,
" when we have reached England's
greatest in any achievement of mind,
we have usually also reached the
world's greatest."

But there is still room to regard the
compliment as equivocal, for the ques-
tion remains, What is it to be " the first
philosopher " ? To be first and alone
in a department of thought obviously
means little or much, according to the
grade of intellectual work involved.
Philosophy is a vague term, and, as ex-
perience shows, may imply the lowest
as well as the highest exercise of the
mind. As applied to systems of specu-
lation in pre-scientific ages, it no doubt
represented the best mental effort then
possible. But as applied in these times
to similar speculations, with little refer-
ence to the rise of modern knowledge,
it is not the highest kind of intellectual
performance. True philosophy — the
deepest and largest understanding of
things — must be so far scientific in
spirit and method as to place facts first,
and work in subordination to them.
The philosophy that is typified by the
Concord school, which is most inter-
ested in the transcendental, which
gives imagination the lead, leaves vul-
gar facts to the Gradgrinds, and is as
jealous of science as theology, is not
a very exalted form of mental exertion,

and to be first in it is no great compli-
ment. Philosophy, to achieve its high-
est objects, must now begin with the
patient study of long-contemned reali-
ties ; must discipline the imagination,
must work in subordination to estab-
lished knowledge, and aim to bring
out profounder truth for the practical
guidance of man in ordering the course
of his life.

To be the first philosopher of the
foremost nation of the world from this
point of view is exalted praise, and this
is the position that Mr. Spencer has
undoubtedly won. His philosophy is
based upon Nature, is limited to Na-
ture, is subordinated to science, and is
such a presentation of the laws and
order of the world as bears imme-
diately upon questions of human con-
duct. It is synthesis of the principles
which become all-determining rules in
the practical sphere of human action.
It bears upon religion, upon politics,
upon education, and upon social and
domestic experience, with the authority
of science and the full power of a veri-
fied system of natural laws. It was
long a reproach to Spencer that he un-
dertook to deal with so many subjects,
but it is now perceived that this was
but the inevitable consequence of that
comprehensive method which the ad-
vance of modern knowledge had made
possible and imperative.

We have been led to these remarks
by a circumstance, not in itself of much
importance, but which is yet significant
as giving a new attestation of the worth
of Spencer's philosophy in its practical
bearings. Mr. Spencer has applied his
philosophical views to the subject of
education, and his little treatise upon
the subject has been rendered into all
the languages of the civilized world.
And now, by an appeal made to the
judgment of English teachers, the ver-
dict has been rendered that the first of
English philosophers is also the first of
English educators. We see, by the Lon-
don " Journal of Education," that an
extra prize was offered for the best list

12:

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the seven greatest living educationists
classed in the order of importance. A
great number of lists were sent in, and
the prize was awarded to "X. Y. Z."
for the following list : 1, Spencer ; 2,
Huxley; 3, Wilson; 4, Thriug; 5, Miss
Buss ; 6, Laurie ; 7, Quick. Besides
this premium list, in which the name
of Spencer was first in importance, his
name also appeared in seventy -two
other lists, while Bain appeared in
fifty; Huxley, thirty - eight ; Thring,
thirty-six ; Miss Beale, thirty-four ; Miss
Buss, thirty-three ; B. H. Quick, thirty-
two ; E. A. Ahbott, tliirty-one ; A.
J. Mundella and J. G. Fitch, twenty-
nine ; J. Buskin and M. Arnold, twenty-
eight.

It has been said in deprecation of
Spencer that " only the Seven Sages
can understand him " ; but it seems
that practical teachers can sufficiently
understand him to be able to form a
very appreciative estimate of his posi-
tion in the field where they are the
most competent judges.

LITERARY NOTICES.

American Political Ideas : Viewed from
the Stand-point of Universal History.
Three Lectures delivered at the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, in May, 1880.
By John Fiske. New York : Harper &
Brothers. Pp. 158. Price, $1.00.

As many will be gratified to learn, Mr.
Fiske has at length published the brief
course of lectures upon " American Political
Ideas " which attracted so much attention
at the time of their delivery in England, and
subsequently in this country. They afford
an excellent popular illustration of the sci-
entific method in politics, and as an original
statement of the place of American politi-
cal institutions in the progress of civilization
they will be read with deep interest and pa-
triotic pride by multitudes of our thought-
ful citizens. Under the three titles of " The
Town-Meeting," "The Federal Union,"
and "Manifest Destiny," the author gives
us a pregnant discussion of the ideas that
are at the foundation of true political devel-
opment, of their historic growth, and the

vast consequences to the world of their pres-
ent success and their future ascendency.

Mr. Fiske takes the "town-meeting," the
idea of which is so thoroughly familiar in
this country, as the elemental basis of our
political system. He devotes his first lect-
ure to the consideration of it as involving
the principle of local self-government. The
present or absence, in various degrees, of
institutions corresponding to this, in differ-
ent countries, is shown to be intimately
connected with the progress of free govern-
ment, and to have exerted a powerful con-
trol over the character and destiny of na-
tions.

Having treated of the corporate units of
society, the township, the village, the parish,
or whatever grouping becomes the seat and
center of local self-control, Mr. Fiske passes
in his second lecture to the important prob-
lem of their combination or aggregation
into coherent extended political organiza-
tions. In communities of despotic type this
is done by conquest and centralized military
power. But wherever and to the degree in
which civilization or civil agencies have re-
placed militancy, the principle of represen-
tation arises, and the freer mode of gov-
ernment takes the form of federal union.
Mr. Fiske illustrates the progress and vicis-
situdes of the federal principle very im-
pressively from Greek, Roman, and modern
history, and in the United States, where
representation and federal unity have re-
ceived their largest application.

The third lecture, on " Manifest Destiny,"
is a brilliant and powerful exposition of the
vast scale and comprehensive interaction of
the political forces that are now so po-
tent in civilization, and that are destined to
work out grand results in the future. He
shows that civilization is to conquer through
peace ; that the militant countries will have
to disband their armies under the irresistible
influence of the industrial competition of
nations ; and that the pacific federation of
great communities is as certain to replace
brute force in the politics of the civilized
world as civil processes have replaced arbi-
trary violence in the private relations of
men. The real significance of the Ameri-
can civil war is shown to consist in the vin-
dicated strength and supremacy of the great
pacific and constructive federative principle
which is to dominate in the political future

LITERARY NOTICES.

123

of civilization ; and the data are given by
which to forecast the stupendous future of
the English race, not only on this continent,
but throughout the world.

Although written with sobriety, to be
submitted to the critical judgment of a cul-
tivated audience, yet these lectures are a
good deal stirring and stimulating in their
effect upon the reader's mind. This is due
both to the charm of the presentation and
to the magnitude of the elements of the
author's imposing theme. " The stand-point
of universal history" affords an exciting
outlook, and Mr. Fiske gives his readers a
clear command of the position. The author
of "Cosmic Philosophy," with whom the
conception of universal evolution has be-
come part of his mental constitution, is well
prepared to handle historical questions in
the fullest breadth of their bearings, and
the interest of the present book is chiefly
derived from this preparation of its author.
It may, in fact, be commended as a spe-
cially instructive study in political evolution.
This is well explained by Mr. Fiske in the
following prefatory passage :

In the three lectures now published I have en-
deavored to illustrate some of the fundamental
ideas of American politics, by setting forth their
relations to the general history of mankind. It is
impossible thoroughly to grasp the meaning of any
group of facts in any department of study until we
have duly compared them with allied groups of
facts ; and the political history of the American
people can be rightly understood only when it is
studied in connection with that general process of
political evolutiou which has been going on from the
earliest times, and of which it is itself one of the
most important and remarkable phases. The gov-
ernment of the United States is not the result of
special creation, but of evolution. As the town-
meetings of New England are lineally descended
from the village assemblies of the early Aryans; as
our huge Federal Union was long ago foreshadowed
in the little leagues of Greek cities and Swiss can-
tons—so the great political problem which we are
(thus far successfully) solving is the very same
problem upon which all civilized peoples have been
working ever since civilization began. How to
iasure peaceful concerted action throughout the
whole, without infringing upon local and individual
freedom in the parts, this has ever been the chief
aim of civilization viewed on its political side ; and
we rate the failure or success of nations 'politically
according to their failure or success in attaining this
supreme end. When thus considered in the light
of the comparative method, our American history
acquires added dignity and interest, and a broad and
rational basis is secured for the detailed treatment
of political questions.

The Nature and Reality of Religion. A
Controversy between Frederic Harrison
and Herbert Spencer. With an Intro-
duction, Notes, and an Appendix on the
Religious Value of the Unknowable, by
Count D'Alviella. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. 1S85. Pp. 218. Price,
cloth, $1 ; paper, 50 cents.

That there is a " chaos of discordant
opinion " in the religious world is a common
remark, and, superficially regarded, the re-
mark is true enough. There are divers
great religious systems accepted by vast
multitudes which exemplify profound diver-
sities of belief ; and these systems are bro-
ken up into sects innumerable, all marked
by divergences of religious opinion. Yet
this state of thought is by no means a
"chaos"; there are order and law in it.
Religious phenomena exhibit their predict-
able sequences of cause and effect. It may
be counted on that people generally will
stick to the faith into which they were born,
and to the sect in which they were brought
up, regardless of any question of the ration-
ality of the creed they hold. Indeed, the te-
nacity with which, generation after genera-
tion, they cling to the accidental tenets they
inherit, is an element of order which gives
to religious organizations their stability and
permanence.

Yet the condition of the religious world
is by no means one of absolute immobility
and stagnation. To the degree in which
the human mind is active, religion shares
the result. While many are quiescent, a
few are ever inquiring, and, with increasing
enlightenment and growing knowledge, the
superstitious element in religion gradually
diminishes and disappears. This, too, is an
orderly change, and goes on in the religious
world by the established laws of progress.

Such controversies as those of Spencer
and Harrison are, hence, quite in the course
of things. With whatever considerations
of personality they may be mixed up, they
are products of religious advancement, and
still further contributions to it. The pres-
ent discussion, however, is of more than
usual significance, as it is not occupied with
incidental but with fundamental religious
questions. The conception of progress in
religion is unquestionably revolutionizing
and destructive, and no problem is more
profound or momentous than that which

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seeks to determine the final result of relig-
ious evolution. However kit is to be com-
mended, or however deplored, the advanced
mind of this generation is deeply engaged
with the most radical religious questions;
and it is fortunate, when, as in the present
case, the contestants are men of earnest-
ness, sincerity, and reverence, as well as of
fearlessness, brilliancy, and power. To the
readers of the " Monthly " nothing need be
said in regard to the special merits of this
controversy, except that they will find the
volume convenient from the completeness
of the views it presents.

Land -Laws op Mining Districts. By
Charles Howard Shinn. Baltimore:
N. Murray. Pp. 83. Price, 50 cents.

Mining - Camps. By Charles Howard
Shinn. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons. Pp. 316. Price, $2.

These two works present the results of
an investigation into the history of mining-
camps, undertaken with a hope of giving
the forms of social organization manifest
in the early " districts " of the Sierras, Coast
Range, and Rocky Mountains, their proper
place in the story of institutional develop-
ment on American soil. The work first
named is one of the " Johns Hopkins Uni- j
versity Series of Studies in Historical and j
Political Science " ; and the editor of the se- j
ries introduces it with the intimation that it
is a "natural, though unconscious, continua-
tion of Mr. Johnson's study of ' Rudiment-
ary Society among Boys,' " which we have
already noticed, " and that it might be called
4 Rudimentary Society among Men.' " The
second work is of larger scope and more
fully wrought out. Mr. Shinn has done a
good work in elucidating some peculiar phe-
nomena of social and political development.
What his essays teach may be illustrated by
quoting one of the passages in "Mining-
Camps": "In every important particular
the organizations of the typical mining-
camps, which we have been considering,
offer sharply-outlined contrasts. Camp-law
has never been the enemy of time-tried and
age-honored judicial system, but its friend
and forerunner. Axe of pioneer and pick
of miner have leveled the forests, and bro-
ken down the ledges of rock, to. clear a
place for the stately structures of a later
civilization. Rude mountain courts, rude

justice of miner-camps, truth reached by
short cuts, decisions unclouded by the verbi-
age of legal lexicons, a rough-hewed, sturdy
system that protected property, suppressed
crime, prevented anarchy — such were the
facts ; and on these frontier government
rests its claims to recognition as other than
mob-law, and better than passionate acci-
dent."

" The Jukes " : A Study in Crime, Pauper-
ism, Disease, and Heredity. By R. L.
Dugdale. Fourth edition. New York :
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 121. Price,
$1.25.

This book embodies the substance of a
famous paper, which, first published in the
report of the Prison Association for 1877,
has probably done more to promote the in-
vestigation of methods for the reform of
criminals and the prevention of crime than
any other single document of the time. It
is, as the editor, Mr. Round, says in the in-
troduction, " known, read, and valued wher-
ever the civilization of the world has ad-
vanced far enough to be alarmed at the
increase of crime, and to be concerned in
reducing the criminal classes." It relates
the story of a large family of criminals,
prostitutes, and vagrants, which infested a
group of counties in New York for two or
three generations, all the descendants of a
prostitute who was left to go her ways for
evil unrestrained by any efforts to reclaim
her. A new edition has been demanded in
the interest of penal science. The original
paper is supplemented with further studies
of criminals, and an introduction insisting
on the importance of the investigations by
Mr. William M. F. Round, Secretary of the
National Prison Association.

A Popular Exposition of Electricity.
With Sketches of some of its Discover-
ers. By the Rev. Martin S. Brennan.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
191. Price, 75 cents.

The object of this book is to make all
familiar with the essential principles, at
least, of the science of electricity ; a pur-
pose which none of the learned and excel-
lent treatises devoted to the subject, " but
so illustrated with complex and intricate
mechanical diagrams as to frighten away
the timid and uninitiated," seem adapted to

LITERARY NOTICES.

125

effect. The author has, therefore, devoted
his attention almost entirely to the explana-
tion of principles, to the exclusion of me-
chanics. He has aimed to exhibit the iden-
tity of all the forms of electricity, and has
accordingly so arranged the matter of his
treatise that each succeeding form shall
appear to flow naturally from its predeces-
sor. For the biographical sketches, those
men have been selected whose discoveries
have added most to the science ; and the
sketches are so distributed that each one
shall be in logical juxtaposition with those
branches of the science that have been most
conspicuously illustrated by its subject. In
the several chapters are given explanations
of magnetism ; the " Mariner's Compass,"
statical and atmospheric electricity, galvan-
ism and galvanic batteries, electro-chemical
decomposition, electrotyping and gilding,
electro-magnetism, the electric telegraph,
magneto-electricity and dynamos, the stor-
age of electricity, the telephone, the aurora
borealis, and Faraday's observations on ta-
ble-moving. The subjects of the sketches
are Faraday, Franklin, Galvani, Volta, Oer-
sted, Ampere, and Professor Morse.

The Care of Infants : A Manual for Moth-
ers and Nurses. By Sophia Jex- Blake,
M. D. London and New York : Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 109. Price, 40 cents.

The subject of this primer is a most
important one, especially in view of the
frightful rate of infant mortality that pre-
vails, largely the result of ignorance and
carelessness. The author is a most compe-
tent person to discuss it. Her purpose, she
says, is " to supply, in the simplest and
easiest possible way, the few leading facts
respecting infant existence, and to specify,
as briefly and clearly as may be, the treat-
ment demanded by Nature and common
sense for the preservation of the frail little
lives that are perishing by millions for want
of it."

Annual and Seasonal Climatic Maps of
the United States. By Charles Deni-
son, Denver, Colorado. Chicago : Rand,
McNally & Co. Five Maps, in Colors,
variously mounted.

These maps are compiled from the re-
turns of the Signal-Service Office, and are
designed to show, graphically, by an equa-

ble standard and on impartial author-
ity, chiefly, the average amount of cloudi-
ness and precipitation at every place in the
United States, for the year and for each
season. In addition to this, they give the
isothermal lines, the directions of prevailing
winds, and of winds that usually and those
that do not usually bring rain or snow, ele-
vation above the sea, location of mineral
springs, annual, monthly, and daily ranges
of temperature, and other information that
can be given graphically, or in a table, re-
lating to the climatology of our country.
The maps can be had separately, or, as in
the case of the set submitted to us for ex-
amination, mounted on opposite sides of the
same sheet.

Controlling Sex in Generation. By Sam-
uel Hough Terry. New York : Fowler
& Wells Company. Pp. 147. Price, $1.

This is an attempt to discover the phys-
ical law influencing sex in the embryo of
man and brute, and its direction to produce
male and female offspring at will. The sub-
ject is an important one to breeders, and the
author thinks he has discovered its law,
claiming that the determination of the sex
of offspring in all life lies in the separate
physical conditions of the two parents. In
his book he shows how he has reached his
conclusion, brings forward the evidence by
which he believes it is sustained, and makes
suggestions respecting its practical bearing.

The National Dispensatory. Containing
the Natural History, Chemistrv, Phar-
macy, Actions, and Uses of Medicines.
By Alfred Stille, M. D., and John M.
Maisch, Ph. D. Third edition. Phila-
delphia: Henry C. Lea's Son & Co.
Pp. 1,755, with 311 Illustrations.

The first edition of the " National Dis-
pensatory" was published in 1879. It in-
cluded descriptions of all crude drugs and
chemical and pharmaceutical preparations,
officinal in the Pharmacopoeias of the United
States and Great Britain, together with the
more important medicines of the French Co-
dex and German Pharmacopoeia which were,
to some extent, prescribed here, or which
might serve for comparison with similar arti-
cles in the English and American stand-
ards ; also, of drugs not recognized by any
pharmacopoeia, but often kept in the shops

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

because they were prescribed by physicians,
or used in domestic practice, either entered
under their own headings, or as " allied
drugs " under those of more important sub-
stances. With these descriptions was given
such information about the botanical char-
acter of plants yielding drugs, the external
and structural characteristics, and the modes
of preparation of drugs, their chemical prop-
erties, and their physiological action as de-
termined by experiment, as seemed appro-
priate to the purposes of the work. The
present edition may be regarded as em-
bodying the pharmacopoeias of the four
chief civilized nations. Those of the United
States and Germany appeared at the close
of 1S82, and formed the basis' of the revis-
ion. The French Codex was published after
the work was prepared for the press, but in
time to admit of its incorporation. The
British Pharmacopoeia has not been revised
since 1867. Many of the newer statements
have been tested and corrected by special
experiments. A large number of extra-
pharmacopceial medicines have been added
to those in previous editions. Numerous
historical notes have been added. The de-
scriptions have been condensed or extended
as occasion seemed to require, and micro-
scopical structure has been more fully de-
scribed and illustrated. While the most
recent views of the physiological action, so
far as it explains the curative effects of
medicines, have been given, all generaliza-
tions have been kept subordinate to the
practical character of the work. The Gen-
eral Index contains more than 3,700 more
references than that of the second edition,
and the Index of Therapeutics nearly 1,600
new references. The references to authori-
ties in the therapeutical portion of the work
have been extended.

Occult Science in India and among tiie
Ancients, with an Account of their
Mystic Initiations, and the History of
Spiritism. By Louis Jacolliot. Trans-
lated by Willard L. Felt. New York :
John W. Lovell Company. Pp. 275.

It may be well to say, in view of the
manner in which the title has been used by
a certain sect, that this is apparently a
real historical study and an account of phe-
nomena which, whatever may be their char-
acter, exist and have not been explained.

The author is Chief-Justice of Chantlema-
gore, in the French East Indies, and of Ta-
hiti, who has, during long residence in India,
given considerable attention to investiga-
tions of the subject, and to observations of
the practices of those who have been initi-
ated into the sect of the Pitris, or ancestral
shades. The book, he declares, is neither a
doctrinal one nor a work of criticism. He
does not feel himself called upon to decide
either for or against the belief in spirits,
either meditating or inspiring, which was
held by those who had been initiated in the
temples of antiquity, and which is the key-
stone of the philosophical and religious in-
struction of the Brahmans ; therefore he re-
gards himself as the better able to write its
history. He assumes to give " the words
themselves," and set forth things as they
actually were ; to interpret and explain the
philosophical compendium of the Hindoo
spiritists ; to tell what he saw with his own
eyes, and faithfully record such explanations
as he received from the Brahmans. He
pays attention to the phenomena which the
fakirs produce at will, which are variously
regarded, but concerning which he remarks
that " the facts which are simply magnetic
are indisputable, extraordinary as they may
seem. As to the facts which are purely
spiritual, we were only able to explain those
in which we participated, either as actor or
spectator, upon the hypothesis that we were
the victims of hallucination, unless we are
willing to admit that there was an occult
intervention."

The Sanitary ' Engineer. Conducted by
Henry C. Meyer. Volume X. June
to November, 1884. 140 William Street,
New York. Pp. 612. Price, $4 a year.

The " Sanitary Engineer " is a journal
of civil and sanitary engineering and pub-
lic and private hygiene, and gives particu-
lar attention to plumbing and the construc-
tion and arrangement of houses, with refer-
ence to sanitary conditions. The present
volume contains many valuable papers;
among them those relating to the Interna-
tional Health Exhibition, to describing and
illustrating the plumbing, heating, ventilat-
ing and lighting of notable buildings, to
steam-fitting and steam-heating, and the
reports of various hygienic conventions.

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

Johns Hopkins University Studies in His-
torical and Political Science.

The projectors of the " Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Politi-
cal Science " offer a third series of their
monthly monographs, which have^ proved
so valuable and instructive, to be devoted
to American institutions and economies.
The series will include papers on " Local and
Municipal Government," "State and National
Institutions," and "American Socialism " and
" Economies." The numbers may be obtained
separately, or the series as a whole after it
is completed, from N. Murray, publication
agent, Baltimore.

One Hundred Years of Publishing, 17S5-
1885. Philadelphia : Lea Brothers &
Co. Pp. 20.

This is a memorial volume commemora-
tive of the hundredth year of the publishing
house whose imprint it bears. The business
of the house was founded by Matthew Carey,
an Irish exile, who began a daily paper in
1785, to which he soon added a monthly
magazine. He and his successors then pub-
lished quarto Bibles — the Douay and au-
thorized versions — the Waverley Novels, the
works of Fenimore Cooper, Washington Ir-
ving, and other early American authors, with
some encyclopedic books which evinced con-
siderable boldness of enterprise for their
day, and introduced the American public to
the genius of Charles Dickens. Gradually
the business of the house tended to medical
and scientific publications, to which, giving
up literary and miscellaneous works, it has
of late years been exclusively devoted. No
member of the house has died in the busi-
ness, but each one has in his turn withdrawn
in season to enjoy the fruits of his industry.

The Mentor. By Alfred Ayres. New
York: Funk k Wagnalls. Pp. 211.

This little book., by an author already
well known by his " Orthoepist," " Verbal-
ist," etc., is intended " for the guidance of
such men and boys as would appear to ad-
vantage in the society of persons of the
better sort." As the author well says, not
wealth, but moral worth, supplemented with
education, and enough money to make one's
self presentable, are the passport to the
better circles of society In the body of the

work are given common - sense principles
respecting what constitutes a good personal
appearance and good behavior — at the din-
ner-table, and in public, in conversation, in
calls, and at cards, " odds and ends," and
" What is a Gentleman ? "

The Next Step of Progress : A Limita-
tion of Wealth. By John H. Keyser,
115 Beekman Street, New York. Pp. 50.
Price, 20 cents.

This document expounds the principles
of a new party which has been formed, or
is in the process of formation, of which
the author appears as one of the active or-
ganizers. It proposes to " level up, not
down," and to break monopoly by promot-
ing a limitation of wealth. For this pur-
pose, it would impose a graduated taxation
on accumulating and accumulated fortunes,
ranging, say, from one half of one per cent
on estates of between $10,000 and $20,000,
to fifty per cent on estates of $5,000,000
and upward.

School-Keeping, now to do it. By Hiram
Orcutt. Boston : N. E. Publishing Com-
pany. Pp. 244. Price, $1.

This volume embodies to a great extent
fruits of the author's experience ; incidents
that have happened during his school-keep-
ing, and the thoughts and principles that
have been suggested by them. Its design is
to aid and encourage teachers who need and
would profit by the experience of others ;
and to awaken an interest in the subjects
treated, and lead to a more extensive read-
ing and study of the works of standard au-
thors on pedagogics, with a more careful
preparation for the important duties of their
position. It is a pleasant book, and con-
tains good thoughts.

Diluvium : or, The End of the World.
By George S. Pidgeon. St. Louis : Com-
mercial Printing Company. Pp. 175,
with Plates.

The author's purpose in publishing this
book is to invite consideration of the pos-
sible consequences that may follow the exe-
cution of such a project as the French one
for turning the waters of the ocean into
the Desert of Sahara, and forming a great
inland sea there. He apprehends that the
sudden transfer of so large a mass of matter

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from one part of the earth's surface to an-
other will be attended with a disturbance of
the center of gravity of the planet, and
with convulsions, floods, and great disasters
to the continents and what is upon them.
Further, "meteorological, electrical, and
other phenomena of equal greatness, grand-
eur, and sublimity, as those of land and
water, would follow a paroxysmal move-
ment of the earth." Therefore, it will be
well to halt before making real so rash a
scheme.

Ingglish az She iz Spelt. Perpetrated by
Fritz Federheld. New York: G. W.
Carleton & Co. Pp. 93. Price, 25 cents.

The compiler of this odd composition
evidently regards the accepted English or-
thography as a fetich to whose sanctity he
does not consider himself bound to pay any
respect ; for he holds it up to ridicule in a
very amusing style by parodies, epigrams,
comic poems, anecdotes, and witty extracts,
the purport of all of which is to stamp the
whole system as inconsistent with itself, and
particular features of it as absurd. The va-
riety of the sounds which are given to the
groups of letters " ough " is humorously set
forth in several pieces, the most noteworthy
of which is Planche's squib on the pronun-
ciation of the name of Lord Houghton.
Other rhymes, drawn from Professor Bar-
nard, Professor Gregory, and others, expose
what appear to be monstrosities of spelling,
but which are shown to be justified by analo-
gous spellings in other words recognized as
orthographic. A series of extracts from
standard authors shows what was the con-
dition of English spelling, at intervals of
about fifty years, from Chaucer to Samuel
Johnson.

Practical Work in the School-Room. Ob-
ject-Lessons on the Human Body. New
York : A. Lovell & Co. Pp. 167.

This volume embraces transcripts of
lessons that have been given in the primary
department of Grammar-School, No. 49,
New York, and which include instructions
consonant with the plan, on the subject of
physiology and the effects of stimulants and
narcotics. The plan of teaching comprises
a model lesson, to show how each subject
should be developed and taught ; a formula,
embodying the principal facts presented ;

questions on the formula ; directions for
touching, or pointing to the part under de-
scription ; questions on the lesson ; and a
blackboard outline.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and
Through the Looking-Glass. By Lewis
Carrol. New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 192 and 224, with 92 Illustrations.
Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents.

Two books in one, of pure nonsense and
delightful absurdities, which have for sev-
eral years enjoyed extensive popularity. In
the first book, Alice goes down into a rab-
bit-hole and has stirring adventures with
the rabbit and an animated pack of cards.
In the second story, she succeeds in getting
into the country behind the looking-glass,
where she finds everything reversed, and
meets the characters of Mother Goose and
English folk-lore mythology.

Serapis. By George Ebers. From the Ger-
man by Clara Bell. New York : Will-
iam S. Gottsberger. Pp. 387. Price,
90 cents.

This is a story of Alexandria in a. d.
391, under Roman rule ; one of those at-
tempts to restore and present to the pres-
ent age the life of antiquity, with some of
the most successful of which the author's
name is associated.

The Wane of an Ideal. By La Marchesa
Colombi. From the Italian by Clara
Bell. New York : W. S. Gottsberger.
Pp. 260. Price, 90 cents.

A story, by a popular living Italian
novelist, of contemporary village life in the
north of Italy, in which " a variety of the
social problems which occupy Italian thought
are treated in a way which is humorous
without being cynical," and having a close
" which is melancholy but scarcely tragical."

The Canadian Record of Science. Vol. I,
No. 1. Quarterly. Pp. 64. Price, $3
per volume of eight numbers.

This journal takes the place of " The
Canadian Naturalist and Geologist," and is
under the charge of an editing committee
of the Natural History Society of Montreal,
which is composed of T. Sterry Hunt, B. P.
Penhallow, B. J. Harrington, J. Wanless,
and J. T. Donald. The intention of the
editors is to present both original and se-

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

lected articles, more particularly those of
especial interest to the Dominion. In the
present number we find a history of the
journal of which this is a continuation ; an
account of " The Royal Society of Canada " ;
a paper by Professor Dawson on " Rhizo-
carps in the Palaeozoic Period ; " a descrip-
tion by the Rev. Emile Petitot of " the Atha-
basca District of the Canadian Northwest
Territory " ; and shorter papers.

"Shadows " : Being a Familiar Presentation
of Thoughts and Experiences in Spirit-
ual Matters, with Illustrative Narratives.
By John Wetiierbee. Boston : Colby &
Rich. Pp. 2S8.

The author's endeavor has been to give,
in a series of chapters, each of which shall
be a finished one of itself, the reasons, with-
out particularly saying 60, why he is a
spiritualist ; or to make a familiar presenta-
tion of the subject of modern spiritualism
to those whom it may concern, both among
its exponents, and among that wider world
who feel interested in the subject, "and
wish it were true," and want the " bottom
facts."

Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions
to the United States. With Minor
Papers. By Herbert B. Adams, Ph. D.
Baltimore : N. Murray. Pp. 102. Price,

75 cents.

This essay constitutes the first number
of the third series of " Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Studies in Historical and Political
Science " — a series which is to be devoted
to American institutions and economics.
Among the purposes the author endeavors
to serve in publishing it is to " call atten-
tion to the territorial foundations of the
American Union, and point out the fact that
our public lands stand in the same funda-
mental relation to our national common-
wealth as did common lands to the village
republics of New England. The great West
was the Folkland of the United States ; it
bound them together by economic interests
when they would otherwise have fallen
apart after the Revolution. To trace out
the further constitutional influence of our
public lands upon the development of these
States, which have increased and multiplied
within the national domain, as did New
England parishes within the original limits
vol. xxvii. — 9

of one town, this would be a contribution
indeed to American institutional history."
As bearing upon this point, the author out-
lines a wide and varied field of research, on
which it is hoped laborers will soon be en-
gaged, and parts of which are to be exploit-
ed in future numbers of this series. The
" Minor Papers " include articles on " George
Washington's Interest in Western Lands,''
the " Potomac Company," and a "National
University."

Egypt and Babylon, from Sacred and Pro-
fane Sources. By George Ravvlinson.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp.
329. Price, $1.50.

The Bible abounds in references to Egypt
and the Mesopotamian empires and their af-
fairs. So long as we had to depend for our
knowledge of those countries in ancient
times from the statements, generally half
informed and often erroneous, of the Greek
historians, these references were obscure
and difficult to verify. The progress of
archaeological discovery has put a different
face upon matters. Under its light the life
and history of these extremely ancient em-
pires have been revealed at many points
with remarkable vividness and a precision
which we have hardly yet attained concern-
ing some contemporary people, and the ref-
erences in the Bible have been, to a very
large extent, endowed with an exact signifi-
cance. It is hardly necessary to say that
further elucidations on points that are still
dark may be anticipated from continued re-
searches. It has been Mr. Rawlinson's task
to collect the references, separately for
Egypt and for Babylon, in the Bible, taking
them nearly in chronological order, and to
compare them with the facts, as related in
other histories, and as inscribed in contem-
porary records, on the monuments executed
by the rulers and peoples of the empires to
which the references are made.

Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine.
Vol. XXXI, July-December, 1S84. New
York : D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 524.
This publication has a place of its own.
It appeals especially to engineers, and to
persons who are interested in the construc-
tion of works beyond the sphere of ordinary
builders, and in extensive applications of
machinery; and its papers on subjects of

13°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

such class, both original and selected from
foreign journals, are, as a rule, written by
experts, by men who have made special
study of the points they are discussing, or
have had experience in the application of
them. It also pays considerable attention
to topics of a more general scientific charac-
ter, and gives much withal that commends
itself to persons who are not specialists or
professionally informed, but who have an
intelligent interest in the progress of the
departments to which it is devoted.

Proposed Plan for a Sewerage System,
and for the disposal of the sewage
of the City of Providence. By Samuel
M. Gray, City Engineer. Pp. 146, with
Plans and Maps.

City Engineer Gray was deputed by the
City Council of Providence, a year ago, to
proceed with his assistant to Europe to in-
vestigate the various plans in practical op-
eration for the disposition and utilization
of sewage, and upon the information thus
obtained to report a plan for adoption in
that city. The list of cities and works he
visited, in England, Wales, Holland, France,
and Germany — wherever, in fact, important
sewerage-works have been undertaken, or
systems for the disposition of sewage have
been tried, or are under trial — shows that
his inspection was a busy one. In the plan
which he has devised, with the aid of these
observations, he has had in view the prin-
ciple which is in reality the Hamlet of the
question, but is too often left out, that " no
system of sewerage is complete which fails
to dispose of the sewage so as to avoid its
causing a nuisance." The report embodies
a large mass of information, presented with
commendable brevity. After an historical
review of the subject, the several systems
for disposing of sewage are considered as
to their general principles and specifically.
Among these are the systems of sewage in-
terception, or dry-sewage systems, the pneu-
matic systems (Licrnur, Berlier, and Shone) ;
the water-carriage system ; and the systems
of disposal by irrigation and precipitation;
with a comparison of the different methods
of purifying sewage. Although prepared
only for a special object, the report might,
in the absence of any other comprehensive
work, serve as a general manual of the sub-
ject.

Tables, Meteorological and Physical.
By Arnold Guyot. Fourth edition, re-
vised and enlarged. Edited by William
Libbey, Jr. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution. Pp. 738.

Professor Gdyot's original work, pub-
lished in 1852, was the first of the series of
" Tables of Constants," to which the Smith-
sonian Institution is gradually making im-
portant contributions, and has proved, by
the demand which arose for it, to be the
one of the series that has met the most
general public want. A second revised
edition was published in 1857, in which the
tables were so enlarged as to extend the
volume of the book from two hundred and
twelve to more than six hundred pages. A
third edition was published in 1879, with
further amendments. The author began
the revision for this fourth edition in 1879,
but was met with delays, and died before
completing the work, which was left for his
assistant and successor in his college pro-
fessorship to finish. The contents consist
of tables comparing the different thermo-
metrical scales, with reductions from one to
another; hygrometrical tables, with tables
for the conversion of metrical hygrometric
measures into others ; barometrical tables ;
hypsometrical tables ; geographical meas-
ures, in which means are given for reducing
the measures of all countries from one to
another ; meteorological corrections ; and
" Miscellaneous Tables useful in Terrestrial
Physics and Meteorology." The whole con-
stitute a valuable reference book.

The Ornithologist and Oologist, Vol. IX.
1S84. Pawtucket, II. I. : Frank B. Web-
ster, publisher. Twelve Numbers. Pp.
152. Price, $1.50 a year; 15 cents a
number.

As is implied in its title, this is a maga-
zine devoted to birds, their nests, and eggs.
It is beautifully printed, and is sustained by
a corps of competent and enthusiastic con-
tributors, who record in it their daily, week-
ly, monthly, yearly, or occasional observa-
tions, on these the most attractive of man's
companions on the earth. It is a pity that
so many of them consider it an indispensa-
ble preliminary to the observations to shoot
the birds or steal their eggs. In the pres-
ent state of science, these things, when they
are done, are unnecessary in nine cases OHt

LITERARY NOTICES.

lV

of ten. Except for the encouragement
given to this practice, which is reprehensible,
except when most sparingly and discriminat-
ingly indulged in, we cordially recommend
the " Ornithologist and Oologist " as a pub-
lication that every lover of Nature will do
well to have by his side. It also admits to
its pages notes and observations on the kin-
dred study of entomology.

Our Bodies; or, How we live. By Albert
F. Blaisdkll, M. D. Boston: Lee &
Shepard ; New York : Charles F. Dilling-
ham. Pp. 285. Price, 60 cents.
This is a "Physiology for the Young,"
intended for an elementary text-book in the
common schools. It aims to present clearly,
concisely, and in a logical order, the most
important facts about the build and health
of our bodies. Prominence has been given
to such facts of anatomy and physiology as
are essential to a proper understanding of
the laws of hygiene. Hence, special em-
phasis has been laid upon the practical bear-
ing of this branch of science upon daily life
and personal health. As far as possible,
each paragraph is complete in itself, and
discusses a definite subject. The instruc-
tions of the text are re-enforced by review
and analytical chapters, and by a systematic
series of practical and suggestive experi-
ments, simple and not requiring expensive
apparatus.

Stories by American Authors. IX. New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 180.
Price, 50 cents.

It was a happy thought to gather up into
this series of volumes, convenient to hold
in the hand or to put in the pocket, the
fugitive short stories that have appeared
from time to time in various publications ;
many of them, perhaps, by authors whose
works would never have been otherwise col-
lected. To say nothing of their interest as
stories, these works are of value — if we
may judge from the present volume — as
giving pictures of American character and
life in various situations, with bright local
coloring. One of the stories pictures a Vir-
ginia neighborhood before the war ; another
gives a piece of the life of a New England
seaport village ; a third offers a view of a
California village, with its political boss ;
and another is a sailor's yarn, told in his
own dialect.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Should Experiments on Animals be restricted
or abolished? Pp. IS. Methods of studying the
Physiological Action of Drugs. Pp. 20. Death.
Pp. 5. All by Robert Meade Smith, M. D. Detroit :
George H. Davis.

"The Pulpit of To-Day." A monthly magazine
of sermons. Alfred E. Rose, Editor, Westfield, N. Y.
New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Pp. 58.

The Thermic Phenomena in Contraction of
Mammalian Muscles. By Robert Meade Smith,
M. D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.50.

The Truth-Seeker Annual and Free-Thinkers'
Almanac, for 1S85. New York: Truth-Seeker Of-
tice, b8 Clinton Place. Pp.120. 25 cents.

A Correction of Certain Statements published
in " The Zoophilist." By H. Newell Martin, M. D.,
Baltimore. Pp. 11.

The New Departure in College Education. By
James McCosh, President of Princeton College.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sous. Pp. 23. 15
cents.

U. S. Department of Agriculture. Report of
the Entomologist, for 18S4. By Charles V. Riley.
Washington : Government Printing-office. Pp. 144,
with Ten Plates.

Report on the Waters of the Hudson River. By
C. F. t 'handler. Ph. D. New York : Trow's Print-
ing and Bookbinding Company. Pp. 35.

" The Journal of Physiology." Edited by Mi-
chael Foster. M. D. Vol. V, Nos. 4, 5, 6. Cambridge,
England. Baltimore : Professor H. Newell Martin.
Pp. ISO, with Plates. $5 a volume.

Alabama Weather Service. February, 1S35.
Auburn, Ala. : Agricultural and Mechanical Col-
lege. Pp. 15.

Medical Jurisprudence in Divorce. By Carl H.
von Klein, M. D., Dayton, Ohio. Pp. 8.

A General Description, etc., of the Cotton-pro-
ducing States. By Eugene A. Smith, Ph. D. Tus-
caloosa, Ala. Pp. 80, with Maps.

Septennial Report of Ligonier Public Schools,
Indiana. Pp. 89.

Supplement to the Transactions of the Sei I
Kwai, or Society for the Advancement of Medical
Science in Japan. " Transactions " Monthly. Tokio.
Pp. 16 English — 40 Japanese. $2 silver a year.

Ten Days in the Laboratory with Dr. Robert
Koch, of Berlin. By George W. Lenois, Jr. Buf-
falo, N. Y. Pp. 15.

Mind in Nature. Vol. I, No 1. Monthly Chi-
cago: Cosmic Publishing Company. Pp. 16. 10
cents a copy ; $1 a year.

A Synopsis of the Medical Botany of Illinois.
By J. M. G. Carter, M. D., Waukegan. Pp. 45.

The Progress of the Working-Classes in the Last
Half-Century. By Robert Griffen. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 43. 25 cents.

The Osteology of Amia Calva. By R. W. Shu-
feldt. Pp. 132, with Fourteen Plates.

The Action and Antagonism of some Drugs on
the Frog's Ventricle. By Thomas J. Mays, M. D.
Philadelphia. Pp. 17.

Sorgham, its Culture and Uses. By Dr. Peter
Collier. New York : Chamber of Commerce.
Pp. 20.

"The Cornell Review," March, 18S5 (Woodford
number). Pp. 28.

An Electric Ophthalmoscope. By Louis J.
Lautenbach, M. D., of Philadelphia, l'p. 7.

New York State Board of Health. Monthly
Bulletin, February, 1S85. Pp. 2.

Science and the Supernatural. By Professor A.
J. Dubois, New Haven. Pp. 32.

Defective and Corrupt Legislation, The Cause
and the Remedy. By Simon Sterne. New York :
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 26. 25 cents.

A Hand -Book on the Teeth of Gears. By
George B. Grant. Boston. Pp.29. $1.

132

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

U. S. Bureau of Entomology. Catalogue of New-
Orleans Exhibit of Economic Entomology. Wash-
ington : Judd &, Detweiler. l'p. 95.

A Solution of the Mormon Problem. By John
Codman. New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons. Pp.
25. 25 cents.

"The Alumni Magazine" (Lincoln University).
Philadelphia : 924 Lombard Street. Quarterly. Pp.
24. 80 cents a number, $1 a year.

International Electrical Exhibition, 18S4. Re-
ports of Examiners: XIX, Electric Telegraphs, pp.
24. XXIV, Electro- Dental Apparatus, pp. 11.
XXVII, Applications of Electricity to Warfare, pp.
8. With Plates. Philadelphia.

New York State Reformatory. Report of the
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Local Institutions of Virginia. By Edward
Ingle. Baltimore : N. Murray. Pp. 127. 75
cents.

International Fisheries Exhibition. Report up-
on the American Section. By G. Brown Goode.
Washington: Government 1-rinting-Office. Pp.
1,279.

Man's Birthright: or, The Higher Law of Prop-
erty. By Edward II G. (.'lark. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 133. 75 cents.

Madam How and Lady Why. By Charles
Kingsley. New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 321,
50 cents.

Mind-Reading and beyond. By William A.
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T. Dillingham. Pp. 201. $1.25.

Obiter Dicta. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons. Pp. 232. $1.

The History of the Present Tariff. 1800-1883.
By F. W. Taussig, Ph. D. New York : G. P. Put-
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Jelly- Fish, Star-Fish, and Sea- Urchins. By G.
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Geology and the Deluge. By the Duke of Ar-
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Paradise Found. By William F. Warren, S. T. D.
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The Lenape and their Legends. By Daniel G.
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The "Quincy Methods" illustrated. By Lelia
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The Rescue of Greely. By Commander W. S.
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Contributions to American Ethnology. Vol. V.
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The Cretaceous and Tertiary Floras of the Ter-
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U. S. Geological Survey. Third Annnal Report.
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Dinooorata. A Monograph of an Extinct Order
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with Fifty -six Plates,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Fifty Years of the Essex lustitnte.—

Professor E. S. Morse has published a re-
view of the condition of zoology fifty years
ago and to-day, in connection with the
growth of the Essex Institute, which has
just completed its first half-century. The
institute has always kept true to its name.
It has been wholly for the benefit and in
the interests of the county of Essex, in
every corporate town of which but one
public meetings have been held, to the num-
ber of two hundred in all ; while the enthu-
siasm of its members has often led it be-
yond the limits of the county and of the
State, into, in all, some sixty -eight "out-cf-
the-way places — little villages, cross-roads,
and hamlets by the sea." To these places
the society has induced the celebrated natu-
ralists of the country to bring the results of
their researches, and the latest and freshest
fruits of science. Further evidence of its
county character is found in the facts that
its members are scattered over the county,
and that it has aimed especially at forming
a collection of the animals and plants of
the county, and has such a collection, which
is not excelled by any other of similar char-
acter. When the Institute was founded,
there was not a single text-book of zoology
in our schools ; now, every high and classi-
cal school has its classes in zoology and
botany, and every college its special pro-
fessor. Then there was not a single popu-
lar periodical devoted to those sciences ;
now there are a number of illustrated week-
lies and monthlies with a large circulation,
the earliest of them, the " American Natu-
ralist," having been founded under the au-
spices of the Institute ; and even the news-
papers keep pace with the progress of
science, and publish special articles on sci-
entific matters of interest. Then, the sci-
ence of archaeology was not born ; now it is
' the most vigorous and aggressive of the
sciences," and one of the Institute's men,
Mr. Putnam, " is, for the first time, teach-
ing the country the proper and only way
of exploring the mysterious mounds of the
West." The little society of a few men
and a library of a hundred volumes has
grown to be a powerful body of three hun-
dred and forty members, with a library of
thirty-eight thousand volumes.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

»33

Why Wool felts.— The cause of the felt-
ing properties of wool is generally attrib-
uted to serratures on the surface of the
fibers, which are supposed, when driven into
the closest possible contact, to hook into one
another, and so to hold together by what
might be called a " beggar's-lice grapple."
The validity of this theory was called into
question by two gentlemen of Hartford
Captain George R. Case, a microscopist, and
Mr. Joseph Dawson, a woolen manufacturer.
These gentlemen, obtaining samples of wool
of different grades, subjected them to vari-
ous manipulations, and found: 1. That a
single fiber of wool, when manipulated by
itself in a lubricant of soap, has no fulling
property, but rather a tendency to lengthen
the fiber ; 2. That a number of fibers placed
side by side, just as they grew on the sheep,
and with simply tension enough to take out
the kinks, when manipulated with a lubri-
cant of soap, have no felting property, 3.
That fibers similarly treated, but with the
roots and tips alternating, have no fulling
or felting property, and no power of adhe-
sion ; but, 4. That a number of fibers placed
side by side, with the tips all one way or
with the roots and tips alternating, without
any tension, have fulling properties ; and,
5. That fine-carded wool, taken from a sec-
ond breaker, with the fibers thoroughly
mixed, has great fulling properties when
properly manipulated. A sample of negro's
hair of suitable length, which was found
by microscopical examination comparatively
free from serratures but slightly spiral in
structure, manipulated in the same manner
as the wool had been, was formed into a
" well-felted sample of cloth." These and
other experiments satisfied the authors that
the fulling properties of wool or any other
fibers were in proportion to the number of
waves, curls, or kinks, and their degree of
fineness, and that the serratures, per se, have
little to do with the matter, excepting pos-
sibly that which may be due to friction.
" To the question, What is the cause of the
fulling or felting of wool ? the simplest an-
swer possible is, it is the looping and in-
terlooping, locking and interlocking of the
fibers until they become inextricably en-
tangled, but by interlooping and interlock-
ing, and not upon the beggar's-lice prin-
ciple."

Spade-Foot Toads —Dr. Charles C. Ab-
bott contributes to the " American Natural-
ist " a study of the hermit spade-foot toad
{Scaphiophis Holbrooki), a rare animal, whose
custom it seems to be to appear unexpect-
edly in numbers, and, after a few days, sud-
denly to disappear. Its name is derived
from its long, horny index-toe, which may
well be characterized as a spade, for it digs
with it rapidly into the ground ; and its
voice, immense for so small an animal, is
like a steam-whistle. The spade-foots first
visited Dr. Abbott's field of observation in
May, 1874, 6tayed a few days, and were
gone. Their next visit, ten years having
passed without a single specimen being seen
or heard, was April 10, 1884, in the same
spot, a sink-hole in a dry upland field near
Trenton, N. J. They remained till the 15th,
when the weather became cooler and they
vanished. Again they came, June 26th,
after a rain-storm that flooded the sink-hole,
and were found sitting on the grass-tufts
and swimming in the pond by the hundred,
all uttering their shrill, ear-piercing groans,
through the day and night; but on the
morning of the 28th all were gone. During
this brief visit the frogs spawned, and the
eggs were found attached to blades of grass
and slender twigs. In about a week, those
of them which were not destroyed by the
retiring of the water were hatched out into
tadpoles very much like other tadpoles. As
they grew, about five per cent of the num-
ber failed to develop as rapidly as the
others. These " retarded " tadpoles were
voracious cannibals, preying upon their fel-
lows, now become " hoppers " and minia-
tures of the adult spade-foots, so extensively
that it was necessary to protect them to
save any. In due time, the water was re-
moved from the aquarium, and earth put in
its place to about an inch in depth. " Upon
this the young spade-foots were placed, and
in less than one minute many had com-
menced digging little burrows, into which
they disappeared as the excavations deep-
ened. ... In twenty minutes all but two of
forty-four specimens were below the sur-
face." A few individuals remained in the
sink-holes as the water dried up into pud-
dles ; but Dr. Abbott having neglected them,
under the supposition that they would bur-
row where they were, for ten days, could find

134

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

no trace of them upon an exhaustive search.
He concludes that the animals must wander
farther from their breeding-grounds than is
supposed, or else must dig far deeper into
the earth than to six or eight inches, as
stated by Holbrook and De Kay.

Effect of Earthquakes on Buildings. —

Mr. John Milne, of Tokio, Japan, has pub-
lished some observations of the effects of
earthquakes on buildings. In regard to the
relative security of buildings on low and on
high ground there is no universal rule, but
each small area in an earthquake-region has
its peculiarities. Theory indicates that soft,
marshy ground is safer, because it will act
as a buffer between the shock and the build-
ing ; and the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus,
was located with reference to this point.
But experience at Tokio and Manila has
shown repeatedly that there is very little,
if anything, in it ; and hard, rocky strata,
where the amplitude of motion is small, but
the period quick as compared with the mo-
tion in the inelastic material of the plains,
proved the better foundation in Jamaica in
1692, and at Lisbon in 1755. Places to be
avoided are the edges of cliffs, scarps, and
cuttings. Europeans fasten the foundations
of their buildings firmly in the ground, and
their houses are much shaken. The Japa-
nese put their structures loosely on top of
stones or bowlders, and they escape seri-
ous disturbance. Europeans and Americans
build iron-bound houses to resist earth-
quakes, and they resist them, though they
get badly shaken, as a steel box would be ;
but they are very expensive. The Japanese
and the people of the west coast of South
America build a kind of wicker - basket
house — a frame house with a light roof,
which lives through the earthquake like "a
reed shaken by the wind." The stability of
such houses depends upon their not being
firmly attached to the earth, and their nu-
merous joints admit considerable yielding,
so that the earthquake-wave passes through
them before they begin to show its visible
effects. A cheap aseismic house would be
a low frame building supported by a num-
ber of slightly concave surfaces resting on
segments of stone or metal spheres in con-
nection with the ground. Chimneys should
be given a play-space around them, and not

be in contact with the roof ; else, since the
vibrational periods of the chimney and the
roof never correspond, clashes will occur
between them, and a shock and overthrow
result. The pitch of the roof should not be
great, or the tiles or slates will be shot off ;
and the upper parts of all buildings should
be as light as is consistent with strength.

Suggestions in School-keeping. — Mrs.
H. F. Wilson, in a paper read before the
Educational Association of Alabama, tells
how in her school she eschewed the system
of marks and statistical reports as pernicious
and false, and imposed as the one rule to
govern the whole school, " Do right " ; and,
as the real goal to be reached, excellence in
everything. Incorrect sentences heard by
any pupil are reported in a blunder-box, to
be corrected by the school. Once a week,
half an hour is devoted to the recitation of
facts, drawn from the public press and
other sources. Half of every holiday is
given to microscopic, stereoscopic, or other
instructive exhibitions. In connection with
the teaching of music, information is col-
lected concerning the old masters of music.
Physical culture is attended to, and dancing
is cultivated as an element of it. In this
work the teacher finds infinite variety and
enjoyment, and has been " filled with amaze-
ment and enthusiasm at the immense amount
of work pupils did unbidden, hunting over
cyclopaedias and books of reference for in-
formation when the text-book was obscure
or inadequate."

Source of Atmospheric Electricity. —

The source of atmospheric electricity has
never yet been satisfactorily indicated, al-
though various theories have been suggested
to account for it. It has been attributed to
aerial friction, to combustion or oxidation,
to evaporation, and to condensation, to in-
ductive or conductive effects of the earth's
electricity, to convection currents, to electri-
fied corpuscles coming from the sun, to solar
radiation, to the friction of aqueous vapor
against dry air, to capillary surface-tension
of water, to the production of hail, etc.
Professor Tait suggests that the mere con-
tact of the particles of vapor with the air
may suffice to produce the exceedingly small
potential requisite to start the effects. He

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

»35

has not had an opportunity to investigate
his hypothesis, but he makes a few state.
ments that illustrate how apparently small
this potential may be. " To raise a single
pound of water," he says, " in the form of
vapor from the sea or from moist ground,
requires an amount of work equal to that of
a horse for about half an hour. This is
given out again, in the form of heat, by the
vapor when it condenses ; and the pound of
water, falling as rain, would cover a square
foot of ground to the depth of rather less
than one fifth of an inch. Thus, a fifth of
an inch of rain represents a horse-power for
half an hour on every square foot ; or on a
square mile, about a million horse-power
for fourteen hours. A million horses would
barely have standing-room on a square mile.
Considerations like this show that we can
account for the most violent hurricanes by
the energy set free by the mere condensa-
tion of vapor required for the concomitant
rain. Now, the modern kinetic theory of
gases shows that the particles of water-
vapor are so small that there are somewhere
about three hundred millions of millions of
them in a single cubic inch of saturated
steam at ordinary atmospheric pressure.
This corresponds to l/ieoo or so of a cubic
inch of water — i. e., to about an average
rain-drop. But if each of the vapor par-
ticles had been by any cause electrified to
one and the same potential, and all could be
made to unite, the potential of the rain-drop
formed from them would be fifty million
million times greater. Thus it appears that
if there be any cause which would give each
particle of vapor an electric potential, even
if that potential were far smaller than any
that can be indicated by our most delicate
electrometers, the aggregation of those par-
ticles into rain-drops would easily explain
the charge of the most formidable thunder-
cloud."

How an Iron-Ore Bed was formed. —

Professor James P. Kimball, of Lehigh
University, has published in a single pam-
phlet two papers on the iron-ores of the
Juragua Hills, of the province of Santiago,
Cuba, beds of a hematite or specular ore,
which appears to be largely the result of
the weathering of the highly basic rock
which gives the geological character of the

formation. These rocks, the eruptive ma-
terial which gave origin to the iron-ore,
consisted of proto-silicates, or silica com-
bined with the protoxide bases, iron, lime,
and magnesia, and with alumina. Under its
new conditions at and near the surface, with
access to oxygen in the atmosphere, circu-
lating waters, etc., the protoxide of iron
became rapidly further oxidized into ferric
or sesquioxide, which is a comparatively
stable product under conditions prevailing
at the surface. The oxidation of the fer-
rous to ferric oxide is attended with more
or less complete dismemberment of the
eruptive rock, little by little. Silica origi-
nally combined with the ferrous oxide is
isolated as silica. Silicates of lime, mag-
nesia, and alumina form new aggregates
among themselves. Soluble matter as fast
as isolated enters into solution in circulat-
ing waters, and is thus at hand to assist
in the work of weathering. This work of
alteration has gone on until a complete
change has been wrought not only in the
composition but also in the arrangement of
the original eruptive rock. By the law of
molecular attraction a process of concentra-
tion has gone on simultaneously with the
process of weathering decay. Homogene-
ous material, such as ferric oxide, was col-
lected by itself to a degree far greater than
the other earthy residues, because, in the
process of conversion from ferrous to ferric
oxide, it has been in solution, and so in cir-
culation, and has hence become finally de-
posited under long - prevailing conditions
of uniform circulation. The process here
briefly followed out has gone on just below
the surface, within the range of the circu-
lating waters. The same action immediately
at the surface is followed by waste or diffu-
sion of the products of alteration. In the
present case, the best of the ore-bodies are
mainly, if not indeed wholly, replacements
of coralline limestone.

Jnles Verne as a Scientific Authority. —

The " Revue Scientifique " discusses a curi-
ous question in giving its estimate of the
value of Jules Verne as a scientific writer.
It considers the judgment, which many of
us are ready to give, that such science as is
inserted into the framework of a romance
is worse than no science at all, as too severe.

136

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Does any one believe seriously that a can-
non-ball can be shot from the earth to the
moon ? But what harm is there ill letting
a child entertain a fancy of the kind for a
few hours ? He amuses himself with it,
and, while he is amused, he learns, without
conscious effort, that the moon revolves
around the earth, and the earth around the
sun, aud that there are forces of gravitation
and universal attraction, etc. . . . The false
idea does no harm, for nothing is built upon
it. ... I venture to say that it is advan-
tageous to inspire children with the love of
hazardous adventures, and the taste for the
unknown that they find in all the romances
of Jules Verne. They will encounter real
difficulties soon enough to be discouraged
from them earlier than they need to be.
Not to see the difficulties is sometimes a
good way to triumph over them. We have
all grown timid and hesitating, and it is not
a bad thing for us to be roused up to ardor
in chimerical enterprises, in which the power
of science is exhibited to us in the service
of an energetic will. It is, perhaps, on this
account, as much as for the amusement they
give us, that we avow a strong liking for
all of M. Verne's works. We might, if it
were worth while, defend M. Verne on other
considerations. When an idea enters the
mind of a child, what matter is it how it
gets there ? Whether it be in a romance, or
in a lesson, or in a text-book, or in a familiar
conversation, makes but little difference, so
the result is acquired. To tell a fourteen-
year-old boy that the diamond is crystallized
carbon, and that fruitless efforts have been
made to produce it artificially, is all very
well, but will he remember it? Are these
abstract facts interesting enough to stay?
Possibly; but the contrary is probable.
When you interest a child by relating to
him the adventures of Cyprian, as he puts
earth and charcoal into a crucible, and tries
to crystallize it into a diamond, the scien-
tific fact will not be forgotten ; and some
day Cyprian will retire into the background,
while the physical fact will be a permanent
acquisition, which he will owe to this new
mnemonic agency. It is more than mne-
monics. While M. Verne entertains us
with adventures, and fastens scientific facts
upon us, he also gives us a taste for sci-
ence. With him it is a goodly personage,

smiling, affable, pleasant, greeting all who
come."

Crickets and u Hair-Snakes." — The so-
called horse - hair snake, as is known to
naturalists, is a parasite of the cricket,
which only becomes active under water.
Dr. H. C. McCook recently read a statement
before the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia which indicates that the crick-
ets are aware of the peculiarity of their para-
sites, and take advantage of it to get rid of
them. A lady having moved into a house
which was a harbor for crickets, was troub-
led by frequently finding the hair-snakes
in her water-pails, a short time after the
water had been brought into the house. She
sat down to watch how they came there. In
a short time she saw " a particularly pleth-
oric cricket " mount upon the edge of the
pail, and, after some uneasy movements,
bring the tip of the abdomen just beneath
the water, and, with a few violent throes,
expel a black mass, which fell slowly through
the water, and, before it reached the bot-
tom, resolved itself into one of the worms.
The cricket seemed much exhausted by the
operation.

Toxic Effects of Smoking.— Dr. Zulinski,
of Warsaw, has made some experiments
upon the effects of tobacco-smoke, which
he determined to be a distinct poison, even
in small doses. Its action on men is very
slight when it is not inhaled in large quan-
tities, but it soon becomes powerful in those
who contract the habit of " swallowing the
smoke." The toxical property is not due
exclusively to the nicotine, but the smoke,
even when disengaged from nicotine, con-
tains a second toxical principle, called so-
lanine, besides carbonic oxide and hydro-
cyanic acid. The effects produced by smok-
ing depend upon the nature of the tobacco
and the way in which it is smoked. The
cigar-smoker absorbs more poison than the
cigarette-smoker, and he than the person
who smokes a pipe ; while the one who uses
a medium, by which the smoke is conducted
through water, reduces the deleterious effects
to a minimum. As a rule, the light-colored
tobaccos are supposed to be the mildest, but
they are sometimes artificially uncolored by
chemicals, the presence of which is danger-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

137

cms. Tobaccos are also generally adulter-
ated, and, if the adulterating matter be
woody, the smoke will be of high tempera-
ture, and liable to cause inflammation of the
tongue.

Antipathies^ — Some strange cases of an-
tipathy are recorded in the lives of eminent
men. Erasmus was made feverish by the
smell of fish. Ambroise Parr had a patient
who would faint at the sight of an eel, and
another who was convulsed on seeing a
carp. Gardan was disgusted at the sight
of eggs. A king of Poland and a secretary
of France bled at the nose when offered ap-
ples. A huntsman in Hanover, who would
attack a wild-boar valiantly, ran away or
fainted whenever roast pig was presented to
his view. A person is told of who fainted
whenever he saw a rose, and similar stories
are told of antipathies to lilies and honey.
Tycho Brahe abhorred foxes, Henry III. of
France cats, mice, spiders, etc., and Mar-
shal d'Albret pigs. There was " once upon
a time " a lady who could not endure the
sight of silk or satin. The man who would
faint whenever he heard a servant sweep-
ing is not so much of a stranger, and the
one who was similarly affected by the sound
of a bagpipe invites universal sympathy.
Boyle was overcome at hearing the splash-
ing of water.

Coinage Alloys. — According to Professor
W. Chandler Roberts, of the Royal Mint, the
term alloy is usually applied in ordinary
language to the mass formed by mixing a
base metal with a precious one, while in sci-
entific language it indicates the base metal
which is added. Alloys are used in prefer-
ence to pure precious metals for various
reasons, chief among which is the fact that
they are harder and more durable. The
fact that their substitution for pure gold or
silver may be a valuable source of revenue
is a less commendable reason, but has not
been without force. When a base metal is
to be chosen for mixture with a precious
one, it should be borne in mind that the re-
sulting alloy must have the qualities of good
color, ductility, and freedom from brittlc-
ness. Silver forms a very ductile alloy with
gold, but lowers the color, while copper
forms a durable as well as a ductile alloy

and heightens the color. A triple alloy of
gold, silver, and copper may be made of
delicate tints ; but it is difficult to assay and
causes complications in the keeping of the
accounts, and for those reasons the simple
copper alloy is now almost universally used.
At the mint, the qualities sought as most
desirable in an alloy are: 1. Ductility; 2.
Durability ; and, 3. Uniformity of composi-
tion. The alloy is, besides, expected to be
sonorous, or to impart the true " ring " to
the coins struck from it, and to possess the
degree of viscosity which will enable it to
flow under pressure into all the fine lines of
an engraved die, while at the same time the
metal must be rigid enough to retain its
impression when submitted to rough usage.
A great variety of alloys have been used
for coinage in the world's history, from pure
precious metal down to base metal with only
a trace of precious metal in it. Those now
in use arc not very numerous. The fine-
ness of alloys of silver is computed with
reference to the troy pound. The compu-
tation in the case of gold alloys is based on
the singular " carat " system, the name of
which is probably derived from the Kepdriov,
a small Greek weight. This has within two
years given way at the British Mint to a
decimal system.

Making Champagne.— The making of
champagne is a process requiring extreme
care and attention at every stage for at
least two years. The grapes are picked with
especial pains to keep any of them from
falling or receiving bruises. Only the juice
of the first pressing is made into high-class
wine, and the quantity of this that shall be
drawn is regulated by weight. Four hun-
dred kilogrammes arc allowed for every
forty gallons of wine, and when the desired
quantity has been obtained the pressing is
stopped. The protruding edges of the mass
which have escaped the heavier pressure are
cut off and subjected to a second pressure,
the juice from which is called the first
tallh. A thirdj pressure gives the second
faille, and a fourth the redeche, juices that
are considered fit only for the workmen.
When the scum has risen in the wine-tubs
it is taken off, and the casks are filled and
fumigated with sulphur and put away, not
quite full, in the cellar, for fermentation.

i38

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

The wine is racked off into other casks when
the fermentation has subsided, and becomes
quite clear by the time the December frosts
set in. It is then mixed, by bringing to-
gether thirty or forty casks of the same
growth, and blended. Tannin is added, to
neutralize grease and deposits, and as much
alcohol as is required. At a later stage a
masque or deposit forms on the side of the
bottle, the removal of which requires much
care and skill and manipulation for several
weeks. Afterward a sirup of sugar and
alcohol is added, in proportions varying ac-
cording to the country to which the wine is
to be sent. Finally, the bottles arc corked,
wired, and set on end.

Changes in the Color of the Hair. —

Cases of changes in the color of hair other
than to gray are not uncommon. Workers
in cobalt-mines and indigo-works sometimes
have their hair turned blue, and workers in
copper green, by deposition of coloring-mat-
ter upon it. This, however, is only a super-
ficial coloring, and can be washed off. Pren-
tiss records a case of a patient to whom
muriate of pilocarpine was administered
hypodermically whose hair was changed
from light blonde to nearly jet-black, and
his eyes from light blue to dark blue.
These changes were due to increase of nor-
mal pigment. Hauptmann relates a case of
a body exhumed twenty years after burial,
the hair on which had changed from dark
brown to red. Leonard cites a case in
which, after death, red hair was changed to
gray within thirty hours. Other cases have
been mentioned in which the color of the
hair has been variously changed in conse-
quence of disease.

Decline of Mnssnlman Indnstries. — Ac-
cording to a letter in the " Allgemeine Zei-
tung," art and industry are in a lower stage
in Algeria than in any other Mohammedan
country, and their progressive decline is per-
ceptible there from day to day. Persons
may be seen walking in the streets of Al-
giers, dressed in Moorish or Arabian cos-
tumes, every piece of which is of European
origin. Many branches of industry are ex-
tinct, others are nearly so, and all show un-
mistakable signs of decay. Many articles
of European production are much cheaper

than Mohammedan fabrics of the same kind,
and are preferred for that reason ; and many
which at the first glance seem to be Mo-
hammedan are in fact European imitations.
Most of the really Mohammedan articles
which are found, such as carpets, cloths, and
table-wares, are not Algerian, but of Moroc-
can or Syrian manufacture. Arms are not
made, for the wearing of them is forbidden
by the French Government ; but the Kabyles
make a kind of iron knife, which can hardly
be called a weapon. The only native in-
dustry still flourishing in the city of Algiers
appears to be shoe-making, and this is be-
cause the Algerine men refuse to wear Eu-
ropean shoes ; but the women wear shoes
of the prevailing fashion, with Louis XIV.
heels. The cause of the depression of Mo-
hammedan industry is the pressure of Euro-
pean population and influence, which has
been attended with a corresponding diminu-
tion of the Turkish element.

Aryan Origins.— Professor K. Penka, of
Vienna, has recently published a work on
" Aryan Origins," in which, according to
Professor A. II. Sayce, an eminent linguist,
he sets out with " the incontrovertible but
hitherto neglected doctrine that language
alone will not interpret for us the former
history of our race. Without the aid of
anthropology, it is not only useless, but
misleading. The theories built on the as-
sumption that language and race are inter-
changeable terms, have introduced nothing
but confusion into science, and have even
left their scar on the politics of the day. It
is only the skull in the hands of the anthro-
pologist which can teach him the relation-
ship of a people ; the language they speak,
or may have spoken, will of itself tell him
but little." Professor 0. Schrader has pub-
lished, at Jena, a work regarding the Indo-
Germanic race from the linguistic side, " in
which," says Professor Sayce again, " for
the first time a thoroughly critical method
has been employed in determining the char-
acter and condition of primitive Aryan so-
ciety by means of the records of speech ;
and the results are very different indeed
from the idyllic picture of that civilized
community to which Pietet and other writ-
ers have accustomed us. The early Aryan
comes before us as a coarse and uncivilized

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

*39

nomad, unacquainted with the use of met-
als, and protecting himself with the skins
of wild beasts from the inclemencies of the
climate." What his society was like, Pro-
fessor Schrader thinks may be gathered
from the remains left by the " pile-villagers "
of the Swiss lakes, whom he regards as Ar-
yans. Both Professor Penka and Profess-
or Schrader express the belief that Europe,
and not Asia, was the original home of the
Aryan family. Penka considers the start-
ing-point of Aryan emigration to have been
Scandinavia, while Schrader suggests the
northeastern lands of Europe generally as
the most probable locality. The evidence,
according to Professor Sayce, is now tend-
ing to show that the districts in the neigh-
borhood of the Baltic were those where the
race or races who spoke the Aryan lan-
guages originally dwelt, and that the Aryan
invaders of Northwestern India were only
a late and distant offshoot of the primitive
stock who were speedily absorbed into the
earlier population of the country as they
advanced southward.

A Highway in the Himalayas. — One of

the native explorers of the Himalayan re-
gions of India lying beyond the British
boundary, says Sir J. H. Lefroy, in his Brit-
ish Association address, " describes a por-
tion of his track at the back of Mount
Everest as having been carried for a third
of a mile along the face of a precipice at
the height of fifteen hundred feet above
the Bhotia-kosi River upon iron pegs let
into the face of the rock, the path being
formed by bars of iron and slabs of stone
stretching from peg to peg, in no place more
than eighteen inches and often not more
than nine inches wide. Nevertheless, this
path is constantly used by men carrying
burdens."

Currency of the Cannibal Isiands. — Mr.

Walter Coote has described some curious
monevs of the New Hebrides and the Solo-
mon Islands. On one of the islands he no-
ticed a neatly-kept house, which he was told
was the money-house. Entering it, he found
a number of mats hanging from the roof,
beneath which a fire was constantly kept
up, under the effect of which they became
covered with a black, glistening coating

and adorned with festoons of soot. It was
a man's business to keep the fire always
burning, and so low as not to scorch the
mats. A well-colored mat is worth about
as much as a well-grown, vigorous boar.
This is the strangest of all kinds of money,
for it must never be taken from the money-
house, even when the title in it is trans-
ferred from one owner to another. The
inhabitants of Santa Cruz Island use for
money rope-ends, about an inch thick, and
ornamented with scarlet feathers, which are
worn about the waist. The traveler could
not obtain new coins of this kind, but found
them current everywhere. The specimens
he bought were already old, and the feath-
ers grown dingy. The money of the Solo-
mon Islands consists of neatly-worked pieces
of shell of about the size of our shirt-but-
tons. They are strung on strings about
four yards long, and are distinguished un-
der the names of red and white money.
Dog-teeth are of higher value, and compar-
able to our gold coins. They are usually
worn on a string around the neck. Mr.
Coote saw a necklace of this kind that was
valued at about a hundred dollars. Marble
rings are also worn on the breast for orna-
ments, and as valuable money. The cur-
rency-table of these islands would be about
as follows :

10 cocoanuts=l string of white-money.

10 strings of white-money = 1 string of
red-money, or 1 dog-tooth.

10 strings of red-money = 1 isa, or 50
dolphins' teeth.

10 isa = 1 fine woman.

1 bahika, or marble ring = 1 head with
the head-antlers, or 1 good hog, or 1 useful
young man.

Theory of Lubricants. — In a British As-
sociation paper on the theory of lubricants,
Professor Osborne Reynolds referred to
some experiments by Mr. Tower, which
showed that, when the rotating journal with
its box was immersed in a bath of the lu-
bricant, the resistance was not more than
one tenth of its value in ordinary oiling,
and that the journal was less likely to heat
at higher than at lower speed ; and that if,
after running the journal for some time in
one direction, a reversal was made, great
heating would result. This was to be ex-

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pected, in the light of an observation made
by Professor Reynolds, that there must re-
sult a difference of pressure on the two
sides of the vertical line through the center
of gravity in the thin space between the
box and the journal — the maximum being
on one side or the other, according as the
rotation is one way or the other ; for, un-
doubtedly, the box and journal became
adapted to each other for a certain direc-
tion of running, and when a reversal was
made some time would elapse before a re-
adaptation would be completed. This would
explain why a new journal and box would
always heat on first being run, however per-
fect they might be.

Deaths by Poisoning. — According to the
English Registrar-General's reports, deaths
by poisoning occur with alarming frequency
in the ordinary course of events. In 1881,
569 deaths were recorded in England alone
from this cause; in 1882, 599, or one in
every 863 of the total deaths registered.
Fully two fifths of the cases in the latter
year were classified under the heading " ac-
cident and negligence " ; the rest, 288, were
suicides. Of the deaths through accident
or negligence, 85 were occasioned by opium,
laudanum, and morphia ; 18 by lead com-
pounds ; 34 by the four stronger acids —
hydrochloric, nitric, sulphuric, and carbolic ;
14 by chloral ; 11 by phosphorus ; nine by
arsenic ; six by chlorodyne ; four by chloro-
form ; and four by soothing -sirup. How
came the victims of these poisons to take
them accidentally in fatal doses ? The medi-
cal reports on the subject trace the mistakes
to two principal causes — the giving or tak-
ing of overdoses of certain remedies con-
taining poisons, and the substitution of one
bottle or substance for another, as where
bottles of all kinds of things are piled to-
gether in the cupboard, and, in the nervous-
ness of haste or in carelessness, the wrong
one is taken. The remedies for these dan-
gers ought to be obvious. One is, never to
give an infant an opiate or other powerful
soothing remedy without first obtaining the
sanction of a doctor. Another is, that no
patient taking powerful remedies should be
permitted, or 6hould permit himself, to
measure or repeat the dose himself. A
third is, never to place bottles or packets

containing poison alongside of or near any-
thing that is to be taken internally. Fourth,
never to put any poison into bottles, jugs,
or cups which children or any other persons
are apt to associate in their minds with sub-
stances not in themselves dangerous. The
last remedy is sovereign. It is, not to keep
strong remedies on hand.

Relation of Color and Flavor in Fruits
and Vegetables. — Mr. Emmett S. Goff re-
cords in the " American Naturalist " some
investigations he has made to determine
whether there may not be a law of relation
between the color and flavor in fruits and
vegetables. He was led to his experiments
by the observation that in several fruits
and vegetables, such as onions, currants, to-
matoes, and raspberries, a white or light-
colored flesh is accompanied by a milder and
more delicate flavor than exists in other va-
rieties of the same fruit or vegetable hav-
ing a dark-colored flesh ; also that seme
vegetables are " blanched " to give them a
more delicate flavor. The usual aim in im-
proving the qualities of fruits and vegeta-
bles is to intensify the desirable qualities
and eliminate the undesirable ones. It is
evident, therefore, Mr. Goff says, that, if the
color of the flesh has a direct relation to its
flavor and tenderness, we have a valuable
index in the work of selection. If by whit-
ening the flesh of a fruit we can eliminate
acid and solidity, or if by darkening the flesh
of another fruit, already too tender and in-
sipid, in the same way, we can heighten its
characteristic flavor and increase its firm-
ness, we have gained a new faculty in mak-
ing the products of Nature subservient to
our wants. Mr. Goff supports his view by
the citation of a number of fruits and vege-
tables of peculiar qualities, and quotes de-
scriptions by various authors, which appear
to be in agreement with it.

The Harp-Seal in the St. Lawrence
River. — It has been long known that the
harp-seal (Phoca Qroerdandica) was accus-
tomed to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence for
bringing forth its young ; but Dr. C. nart
Merriam has collected evidence that its ex-
istence in that river is far more general and
fixed than had been supposed. Mr. Napo-
leon A. Comeau, who lives near the point

POPULAR MISCELLANY

141

of the expansion of the river into the gulf,
says that this species is the most abundant
of all the seals of that locality, and roves
up and down the St. Lawrence in its migra-
tions iu immense numbers ; and he adds
that it is tolerably common as far up as the
Saguenay. From the information furnished
by Mr. Comeau and from other data, it ap-
pears to Dr. Merriam that the harp-seal is a
permanent resident in the St. Lawrence ; that
it spends the summer wandering about, some-
times singly or in small schools, sometimes
in larjre herds ; that it ascends the river at
least as far as the Saguenay, and is common
between Mille Vasches and Manicouagan ;
that it frequents with considerable regular-
ity particular shores and estuaries to feed
on the small fish that congregate there at
certain states of the tide ; that it works down
the river early in the winter, and is particu-
larly abundant about Point des Monts in
December, January, and the early part of
February ; that it then passes farther down
to whelp on the heavy ice in the gulf ; that
its young are born during the latter part
of February or early March ; that, as soon
as the young are able to shift for themselves,
the parents at once return, passing Point
des Monts in great numbers on their way
up the river.

Alleged Nerve-exciting Properties of
American Air. — A correspondent of the Lon-
don " Times " notices as a fact coming
within his own personal experience the
effect of the American air, particularly in
New York, in exciting nervous sensibility.
It is partly an effect of dryness, partly elec-
trical, as is witnessed by the power some-
times observed of lighting a gas-jet with
the electric spark developed by shuffling
rapidly over the carpet. It is observed also
in the greater intensity of the effect of spir-
ituous liquors in this country than in Eu-
rope. ' It is partly local, for it is more
marked in New York than in any ether
place. It seems to be evolving a new type
of mind, and ultimately possibly a new phys-
ical type ; and the American appears to be
becoming a more nervous and more spirited
man. Hence, we have peculiarities in our
statistics of insanity; our army of tramps
— " individuals of all classes, though mainly
of the poorer, who can not endure the drive

and strain necessary to keep up with their
fellows, and whose inertia triumphs " — and
our cranks— •" people who carry eccentricity
almost to iusanity, but are recognized as
responsible persons." After noticing an
increasing development of insanity among
our native-born population, the writer men-
tions two questions that suggest themselves :
" Are we becoming a nation of madmen," or
" are we developing a specialized race from
those who can endure the pressure, and who
by the survival of the fittest will form the
future American stock, while the feeble in-
tellectual natures will become tramps and
lunatics ? "

The Weather and Health.— -Dr. J. W.

Tripe read a paper at the Meteorological Con-
ference, held in connection with the London
Health Exhibition, on "The Relations of
Meteorological Phenomena to Health." It is
only recently that systematic observations
have made the collation of knowledge on
this subject possible. Ordinary variations
of the barometer at ordinary elevations pro-
duce but little effect on health. At consid-
erable elevations disagreeable feelings fol-
low the diminished pressure. Nevertheless,
consumptive and other invalids have experi-
enced relief at mountain-stations ; but this
was because the reduced temperature, with
the total change in the habits of life, more
than compensated for the effects of the
lessened pressure. In residences a sudden
diminution of atmospheric pressure is likely
to be attended with an escape of ground-air
from the soil, and thereby to cause injury
to health. Changes of temperature when
rapid are liable to cause derangements in
either direction ; otherwise man can with
precautions endure a range of about 200°
Fahr. without serious injury. Hot climates,
however, eventually, unless habits are care-
fully adjusted to them, sap the foundations
of life among Europeans. The direct influ-
ence of rain on man is not very marked in
temperate regions, except by giving moist-
ure to the air by evaporation from the
ground and from vegetable life, and by al-
tering the level of ground- water. Consider-
able and sudden fluctuations in the level of
the ground- water generally cause ill health,
and if such water stands at less than five
feet below the surface it is dangerous. Vary-

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing amounts of moisture in the air materi-
ally affect health and comfort. Moist air is
a better conductor of heat than dry air,
hence we feel more chill in thaws than
during crisp, cold weather. Fogs are in-
jurious, net only on account of the vapors
they contain, but because the air is satu-
rated with moisture at a low temperature.
Variations in temperature and pressure ex-
ert a considerable influence on the circula-
tion of air contained in the soil (ground-air),
and this frequently contains that which
it is not well to breathe. Winds affect
health directly by promoting evaporation
from the skin and abstracting heat from the
body, and indirectly by their influence on
the temperature and pressure of the air.
Scarlet fever prevails most when the mean
temperature is between 45° and 57° Fahr.
Diseases of the lungs are fatal in proportion
to the lowness of the temperature and the
presence of excess of moisture and fog.
Relations appear to exist between a high
summer temperature and mortality from di-
arrhoea. The relations between the weather
and disease are not always uniform, for a
discordance has been observed in the curves
for whooping-cough, typhoid fever, and scar-
let fever, between London and New York,
and in diarrhoea between London and India.
Better information is needed on this sub-
ject.

Speetro-pbotomotric Study of Pigments.

—Edward L. Nichols, Ph. D., in a paper
read at the last meeting of the American
Association on " A Spectro - photometric
Study of Pigments," finds that the spectro-
scope shows that pigments can not be con-
sidered even in the roughest approximation
as reflecting monochromatic licrht, but that
they are more nearly related to white.
Hence, " the attempt to express the hue of
non-luminous bodies by comparison with
isolated spectral tints is founded upon a
false conception of the nature of the light
which they reflect. To determine the hue
of a pigment from the analysis of the light
it reflects is a problem in physiological op-
tics, the solution of which varies with the
character of the observer's eye. The three
primary color-curves of the eye must be
determined, and the total intensity of each
wave-length of the spectrum of the pigment

must be divided in the proportions indicated
by the color-curves into three components —
red, green, and violet. Summing up each
of these components for the entire spec-
trum, we obtain an expression for the hue
in terms of the three color-sensations of
which it is the resultant. In default of
this method, which is difficult of execution,
the curves themselves are an expression of
the hue, the only requisite for the interpre-
tation of which is practice in associating the
sensation of color produced by pigments
with the form of curve representing them."

The Manufacture and Applications of

Iridiin 1. — The manufacture of articles from
iridium has recently assumed considerable
importance through the discovery of practi-
cable methods for making the metal. Irid-
ium is obtained, in Russia and California,
as a by-product in the working of the ores
of platinum and gold, and is found only in
the condition of grains, not larger than
grains of rice, or of a fine powder, and oft-
en alloyed with platinum or osmium. It is
one of the hardest substances known, being
in that respect nearly the peer of the ruby,
is not readily or permanently acted upon
by oxygen, and is soluble in no single acid,
and only slightly soluble in aqua rcgia. Its
principal use hitherto has been for the point-
ing of gold pens, for which purpose the
grains had to be taken as they were found,
and soldered on without working over. The
discovery of the process for working iridium
is due to two gentlemen of Cincinnati, Mr.
John Holland, a gold-pen manufacturer,
who found that it could be melted with
phosphorus ; and Mr. W. L. Dudley, who
devised a method for afterward eliminat-
ing the phosphorus. Mr. Holland, seeking
larger pieces of iridium than could be
found in Nature, discovered, after many
experiments, that by heating it to a white
heat and adding phosphorus, with a few
minutes more of heating, he could obtain
a perfect fusion, and could pour out the
molten metal and get a casting of it. The
product proved nearly as hard as the nat-
ural grains of iridium, and to have nearly all
the properties of the metal itself, but, con-
taining from 7"52 to 7*74 per cent of phos-
phorus, was liable to fusion, and could not
therefore be used for purposes, as in elec-

NOTES.

H3

trical apparatus, where it would have to
withstand a white heat. Mr. Dudley under-
took the removal of the phosphorus, and
found that this could be effected perfectly
by heating the metal with lime in an elec-
tric furnace. The manufactured metal will
then resist as much heat without fusion as
the native metal. Iridium is sawed by a
copper disk between four inches and eight
inches in diameter, making twenty-five hun-
dred revolutions a minute, and dipping into
a bath of cotton-seed oil and corundum or
diamond-dust. Many new uses are open-
ing for it since it has been possible to
melt and cast it. It is used for draw-plates,
to replace the ruby plate, in the manufacture
of gold and silver wire; for knife-edges
for scales and balances ; for tipping hypo-
dermic needles; for the negative poles of
arc-lamps; and for many other purposes.
One of the most important applications is
for the contact-points of telegraphic instru-
ments. These points outlive many platinum
contacts, and do not oxidize or stick. Mr.
Dudley is making experiments, with a fair
promise of reaching commercial success, in
the electric deposition of iridium.

The Chaldean Lunar Cycle. — M. Oppert
recently read a paper before the Academy
of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres on an As-
syrian inscription concerning lunar cycles.
More than twenty years ago he discovered
in the inscriptions of King Sargon allusions
to a great lunar cycle one of the revolutions
of which terminated in the year b. c. 712.
He was afterward convinced that this cycle
was the period of 1805 years, after which
the series of lunar eclipses recur in the same
order. The knowledge of this period sup-
poses continuous astronomical observations
among the Chaldeans already of many cent-
uries' duration. They began the calcula-
tion of the period from the year 11,542 be-
fore our era. This is also the year in which
the Sothiac periods (of the Egyptians) of
1460 years begin, one of which ended b. c.
139. These two cycles of 1460 years and
1805 years play an important part in the
chronological computations of the ancient
East. Twelve of each of them form re-
spectively 17,520 and 21,660 years, or 292
and 561 sixties of years, numbers which oc-
cur in the Bible, according, to M. Oppert, to

express the length of time between the Flood
and the birth of Abraham, and from the
birth of Abraham to the end of the history
in Genesis.

NOTES.

Thirty years ago pines were planted in
the Sologne, a tract of waste land near Blois,
France. Fifteen years afterward, as the
pines were cut away, oaks sprang up spon-
taneously to take their places, thus tending
to restore what history tells was the ancient
vegetation of the country. M. Emile Hau-
sen-Blangstcd states, in illustration of the
struggle for existence among trees, that the
pine is dislodging the larch in the Grisons,
while there and in the Jura the beech pre-
vails over both. In Switzerland generally
the beech gains the place of the oak, fir, and
birch, and in Prussia the pine encroaches
on the oak and the birch. Birches and the
ash are extending themselves in the pine-
forests of Russia, and the birch is dislodg-
ing the aboriginal pines in Siberia.

Mr. Frederick Ransome is making a
cement from blast-furnace slag and lime,
much superior to the cements previously
made from this refuse matter. He uses
lime from the gas-works, gets rid of the
sulphur by calcination with coal or coke,
and then dissipates it in the form of sul-
phureted hydrogen. While Portland ce-
ment breaks under a load of 818 pounds,
this cement, under the same circumstances,
exhibits a power of cohesion up to 1,170
pounds.

The Convallaria pob/gonatum, whose
name indicates its relation to the lilies-
of-the-valley, may fairly be described as a
traveling plant. It has a root formed of
knots, by which it annually advances about
an inch from the place where the plant was
first rooted. Every year another knot is
added, and this drags the plant farther on ;
so that in twenty years' time the plant will
have traveled about twenty inches from its
original place.

The continued publication of the " Index
Medicus" has been undertaken, after ar-
rangement with the editors and the rep-
resentatives of the late Mr. F. Leypoldt,
the former publisher, by Mr. George S.
Davis, of Detroit. The first number of the
journal for the current year, having been
necessarily delayed, will comprise the lit-
erature of January, February, and March.
Further publication will be made monthly as
usual. At the end of the year, in addition
to the usual index of names, subscribers
will be furnished with an index of subjects
to the volume.

i44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Geological Society has awarded the
Wollaston medal to Mr. George Busk for
his researches on fossil polyzoa and pleisto-
cene mammalia ; the Murchison medal to
Professor Ferdinand Roemer, of Breslau ;
the Lyell medal to Professor H. G. Seeley,
for his long-continued work on fossil sauri-
ans ; and the Bigsby medal to M. Renard, of
the Brussels Museum, for his petrographical
researches.

The " Saturday Review " gives some
more illustrations of the learning that is
fostered by the English School-Board cram
examinations. One is, that "the earth's
axis is a pole put through the center of the
sun, which turns it round." Another pupil
stated that " the Nile is the only remarkable
river in the world. It was discovered by
Dr. Livingstone, and rises in Mungo Park."
On ancient Britain the examinations brought
out statements that Julius Caesar invaded
the country b. c. 400 ; that the women " wore
their hair down their backs, with torches in
their hands " ; and that the " Druids were
an ancient people, supposed to be Roman
Catholics."

The latest reports from Sydney with
reference to the Monotrcmata state that
Mr. Caldwell has exhibited specimens " show-
ing the stages in the development of the
monotremes from the laying of the egg to
the hatching," and that Baron Miklucho-
Maclay, who had found that the tempera-
ture of Echidna was 82"5° Fahr., now finds
that that of the Ornithorhyncus is only 76°
Fahr., or more than 20° below that of man.

Messrs. Schulz, Knaudt & Co., Essen,
Germany, are now producing, from the ref-
use of the fire-grates of the puddling and
reheating furnaces, two hundred cubic me-
tres of water-gas per hour, which contains
forty-eight per cent of hydrogen, and forty-
four per cent of carbonic oxide. The gas is
used for welding and in the production of
incandescent lights. The firm are about to
build apparatus that will generate fourteen
thousand cubic metres of the gas per day.

In a recent paper by MM. Fremy and
Urbain, before the French Academy of Sci-
ences, attention is called to cutose, the sub-
stance that covers and protects the aerial
organs of plants, which is shown to ap-
proach the fatty bodies in its properties
and composition. It resists the action of
energetic acids, is insoluble in dilute alkalies,
and is not acted upon by neutral solvents,
but is modified in its conditions by boiling
alkaline liquids.

In a recent paper before the Royal
Society on " Underground Temperatures,"
Professor Prestwich, after considering the
sources of error that affect thcrmomctric

observations in collieries and mines, sug-
gested, as the result of a large number of
observations in mines, Artesian-well bor-
ings, and Alpine-railway tunnels, that the
mean thermic gradient is about forty-five
feet for every degree Fahrenheit.

OBITUARY NOTES.

General Helmersen, a Russian officer
of considerable distinction as a geologist
and explorer, is dead.

The death is announced of Hofrath
Schmid, Professor of Mineralogy at Jena.

Mr. John Francis Campbell, who re-
cently died in England, was the inventor of
a " sunshine recorder," a curious instrument
in which the sun burned out its path for
every hour of the day when visible, and in-
dicated by the amount of charring the ever-
varying intensity of the influence of its
rays. Other instruments have been invent-
ed with similar purpose, but their power is
generally limited to the registration of the
chemical action of the sun's rays.

Mr. IIodder M. Westropp, archaeologist,
author of a " Manual of Archaeology " and
other works, is dead.

Mr. Thomas C. Archer, Director of the
Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, died
February 19th. While a customs clerk in
Liverpool, he was appointed to take charge
of the exhibit of that town in the Great
Exhibition of 1851. lie afterward added
to his usual duties the work of lecturing at
local institutions and educational establish-
ments, and became a professor in the Liver-
pool Institution. He was appointed to the
Museum in Edinburgh in 1SG0. Among his
scientific publications are a text-book on
" Economic Botany," and papers before the
Royal Society of Edinburgh on " Graphite
in Siberia," on an undescribed variety of
flexible sandstone, on " Two Species of Fora-
minifera," and on "some objects from the
Nicobar Islands of great ethnological inter-
est."

Mr. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, whose
name is inseparably associated with the ba-
sic or Thomas-Gilchrist process for making
steel from phosphoric pig-iron, died in Paris
on the 1st of February. He was educated
at Dulwich College, England, and was in-
tended for the medical profession, but en-
tered the civil service, while he kept up all
his life a strong interest in the study of
chemistry. The first announcement of the
discovery in iron-working which he and his
relative, Mr. Gilchrist, had made, was given
in a paper which he read before the Iron
and Steel Institute in 1ST8, " On the Elimi-
nation of Phosphorus."

ALFRED E. BREHM.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1885.

AEE WE TO BECOME AFRICANIZED?

Br HENEY GANNETT.

DURING the past few months the presence of the negro in the
United States, his future, and his possible influence upon our
social and political fabric, have become a fertile subject of discussion.
Thus far the argument has tended entirely in one direction, all writers
seeming to be agreed that the country is rapidly getting into a bad
way, by reason of its millions of black laborers. Various remedies
have been prescribed, all of them more or less difficult to apply.

It would appear that the wisest course to pursue would be to first
study the case thoroughly, and make sure that the alleged patient is
really ill, before pouring into him any nauseous draughts. It is pos-
sible that he is merely a hypochondriac.

In " The Popular Science Monthly " for February, 1883, there ap-
peared an article by Professor E. W. Gilliam, entitled " The African
in the United States," in which, by a free handling of the statistics of
the last two censuses, the author attempted to prove that the colored
race is increasing in this country at a much more rapid rate than the
whites, and that consequently, unless some effectual preventive meas-
ure against this increase be taken at once, we are in imminent danger
of becoming Africanized. He proposed, as the cure for the impending
evils, a wholesale, forced migration of the colored people.

This article is re-enforced by another from the same author, in the
November number of the " North American," in which the same views
are reiterated.

As these articles have attracted much attention, it is desirable to
notice them in some detail. The argument upon which Professor Gil-
liam bases his conclusion that the negroes are increasing faster than

VOL. XXVII. — 10

146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the whites runs as follows : During the decade 1870-'80 the whites
increased, upon the face of the returns, 29 per cent, and the blacks 34
per cent. From the former rate of increase he subtracts 9 per cent, to
account, as he says, for foreign immigration, leaving 20 per cent to
represent what he calls the native increase. From the per cent of in-
crease of the blacks, he deducts 5 per cent to allow for his surmise as
to the extent of omissions in the ninth census, "leaving 30 per cent "
(sic). Then he restores the 5 per cent, making a normal rate of in-
crease of 35 per cent for the blacks, on the ground that in the future
they will increase more rapidly than in the past. It can not be denied
that, with these rates of increase for the two races, Professor Gilliam
is well equipped for the task of Africanizing the country, and, if these
figures, or any approach to them, are correct, we may well feel anxious
for the fate of the " white man's government."

With these figures as a basis, Professor Gilliam goes on to predict
the population a century hence, with results as follows : Northern
whites, 240,000,000 ; Southern whites, 96,000,000 ; Southern blacks,
192,000,000.

An analysis of the author's curious method of deducing these re-
sults will, however, aid to dispel this frightful vision of the future.
The increase of white population between 1870 and 1880 was slightly
less than ten millions. The number of immigrants during this period
was a little in excess of two million eight hundred thousand. Sub-
tracting the latter from the former, there is left a number which is 23
per cent of the population in 1870, not 20 per cent, as Professor Gil-
liam has it. But what does this 20 or 23 per cent (it matters not
which) represent ? Certainly not the increase of native whites, as he
interprets it. The census gives directly the numbers of native whites
in 1870 and in 1880, and the proportional gain of this class during
the decade was not less than 31 per cent. These are the figures which
he should have used in making his comparisons.

Now as to the increase of the colored element. Professor Gilliam,
at the outset, deducts from its rate of increase 5 per cent, representing
about a quarter of a million persons, on account of the imperfections
of the census of 1870. Concerning the omissions of this census little
is known, except that they were generally distributed through the
cotton States, were largely, if not mainly, of the colored element, and,
of that element, approximated nearer three fourths of a million than
one fourth, and certainly exceeded half a million. Professor Gilliam's
subsequent addition of 5 per cent, " 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," certainly is not
warranted by the facts or the probabilities, and, as we are reasoning
from what has been and is, and not from what may be, it looks very
much like begging the whole question.

Correcting Professor Gilliam's statements, it appears that the ratios

ABE WE TO BECOME AFBICANIZED?

H7

of gain during the past decade were, as nearly as can be known, as
follows : For native whites, 31 per cent ; for blacks, not above 25 per
cent.

But all such comparisons, based upon the results of the ninth cen-
sus, are utterly worthless. No reliable conclusions regarding the in-
crease of negroes can be drawn from a comparison in which these sta-
tistics enter. The extent of the omissions can be a matter, within cer-
tain wide limits, of conjecture only. The only comparisons which
yield results of any value are those made between the statistics of the
eighth and tenth censuses. That the former was, to a certain slight
extent, incomplete, is doubtless true, especially in regard to the col-
ored element, but the omissions were trifling as compared with those
of the ninth census. A comparison between the results of the eighth
and tenth censuses shows the advantage to be clearly in favor of the
native whites, who increased 61 per cent in the twenty years, while
the colored element increased but 48 per cent. This great increase
of the native whites was effected in spite of the fact that the ranks
of the adult males were depleted to the extent of over a million by
the casualties of war, which the negroes scarcely felt.

This relatively greater increase of the whites is sustained by the
record during the days of slavery. In but one decennial period since
1790 did the negroes increase as rapidly as the whites, and in most
cases their increase was far less, as appears in the following table, ex-
tracted from Scribner's " Statistical Atlas " :

DECADE.

PERCENTAGE

OP INCREASE.

White.

Colored.

1790 to 1S00

35-76
36-13
34-12
34-03
34-72
37-74
37-69
24-76
29-21

32-38

1800 to 1810 ,

37*46

1810 to 1820

28-57

1820 to 1830

31-41

1830 to 1840

23-28

1840 to 1850

26-61

1850 to 1860

22-06

1860 to 1870

9-86

1870 to 18S0

3485

It will be noticed that the only period during which the colored
element increased faster than the white element was between 1800 and
1810, during the continuance of the African slave-trade, which ceased
in 1807. It will also be seen that the rate of increase of the negroes,
while irregular, shows a marked and rapid decrease — a much greater
decrease than that of the whites — even up to 1850, when immigration
from Europe began to make itself felt.

This decrease of the colored race in proportion to the whites is set
forth still more strongly in the following table, quoted from the same
work :

14.8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CENSUS.

PBOPOKTION OF—

Whites.

Colored.

1790

80-73
81-13
80-97
81-61
81-90
83-17
84-31
85-62
87-11
86-54

19-27

1800 .

18-87

1810

19-03

1820

18-39

1830

18-10

1840

16-83

1850

15-69

1860

14-13

1870

12-65

1880

13-12

Between 1790 and 1860 the proportion of colored to total popula-
tion is seen to fall from over 19 per cent to but little in excess of 14
per cent — a decrease of fully one fourth. In the half-century which
elapsed between the date of the first census and 1840, during which
time immigration was very slight, it decreased not less than 2T\4o per
cent, although for one third of this period the slave-trade was being
carried on.

Such being the history of the negroes in ante-helium days, when
they were property, and when every consideration of self-interest
prompted their owners to watch over their health, to encourage child-
bearing, and to protect and preserve the children, is it to be supposed
for a moment that this careless, improvident, ignorant race, thrown
suddenly upon its own resources, should at once, or within a genera-
tion, take on a rate of increase more rapid than before emancipation ?
The wonder is, that in the past twenty years they have not fallen fur-
ther behind.

Considering the colored race in this country as a whole, it is seen
that it has not held its own, either in a state of slavery or thus far in
freedom. It is but another illustration of the fact, that an inferior
race can not thrive side by side with a superior one. It would seem,
therefore, under the circumstances, more profitable to study ways and
means for preserving and strengthening the manual labor element of
the South, rather than to debate the methods of getting rid of it.

In " An Appeal to Caesar," by Judge Tourgee, the question of the
future of the colored element is discussed from a somewhat different
point of view. Without committing himself as to the increase or de-
crease of the colored element in the country at large, in proportion to
the whites, the author finds, upon a somewhat superficial study of the
statistics bearing upon the question, that in the South Atlantic and
Gulf States the negroes have increased decidedly in proportion to the
whites, while in those States which he classes as border States they
have relatively decreased. This massing of the negroes in what may,
for convenience, be denominated the cotton States, coupled with the
steady sharpening of the line of separation between the two races — a
line which, as the author claims, becomes more and more accentuated

ARE WE TO BECOME AFRICANIZED? 149

as the inferior race increases in numbers and advances in education —
will lead to inevitable conflict between the two races. As the negro
becomes numerically the stronger, and, through education, appreciates
more fully his present position, he will commence a struggle for the
mastery, and then the days of the Ku-klux will be eclipsed in blood
and slaughter. Such is the condition to which these ill-fated States
are hurrying. To ward off this impending evil, Judge Tourgee urges
upon the General Government the work of educating the blacks. Such,
in brief, is the " Appeal to Caesar."

Education seems to be regarded as a universal panacea for all the
ills of the people, but in this case, according to the author's own state-
ment of the situation, the education of the negroes would but pre-
cipitate the impending conflict. Our only safety would seem to be in
leaving them in ignorance.

The whole " Appeal " is based upon the theory that the negroes are
migrating southward from the border States into those of the South
Atlantic and the Gulf in great numbers. This theory the author
attempts to establish by deductions from census statistics.

It may, in passing, be suggested that a careful revision of his
figures will show many important arithmetical errors, which may
modify very sensibly some of his conclusions. It is unnecessary to
follow his methods of reasoning, as the truth regarding the questions
at issue can be arrived at much more directly. The fact is, that the
negro is not migrating southward. There is no massing of the col-
ored people in the cotton States. In 1860 the colored element of these
States formed 66 per cent of the colored element of the country.
In 1880 it formed precisely the same proportion. Between 1860 and
1880 the colored element of the country increased 48 per cent. The
same element of the cotton States increased, in this interval, in pre-
cisely the same proportion, neither more nor less. These figures are
conclusive upon this point, and from them there is no appeal.

But the fact remains that, in these cotton States, the colored ele-
ment was in 1880, in comparison with the white element, slightly
stronger than it was twenty years before. This, however, is due not
to a southward movement of the colored people, but to a decrease in
the rate of increase of the whites of those States. While the increase
of the native white population in the country at large between 1860
and 1880 was sixty-one per cent, that part of the same element resi-
dent in the cotton States increased but thirty-nine per cent. This low
rate of increase among the whites might seem to establish Judge
Tourgee's position, though not in the way he states it, were it not for
the fact that three fourths of this increase took place during the dec-
ade between 1870 and 1880. The increase of whites in the South
received a most effectual check during the four years of war, in which
every male capable of bearing arms was in the field, and in which
fully half a million laid down their lives. Since the war the white

ISO THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

race has taken up a rate of increase equal to, if not greater than,
that of the country at large, a greater rate than that of the colored
people within its borders, and there is no apparent reason why they
should not maintain it. It is not, then, a migration of the negroes
southward which has caused their relative gain in these States, but it
is the losses of the white race — losses which, however, are rapidly
being repaired.

As the negroes are not increasing as rapidly as the whites, either
in the country at large or in the cotton States, and therefore are des-
tined to become constantly of less numerical importance, the pressing
necessity for doing something to ward off the evils predicted by the
authors above quoted does not appear to exist.

-♦*♦-

THE NEKVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

Br W. K. BENEDICT,

PEOFESSOB OF PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI.

in.

WE are beginning to hear lamentations over the realism of our
time. Not only are the gods dead, God is dead. Art finds no
place for Imagination, save in setting her to devise ways and means
for a more complete photographic process. Among the crimes laid to
the account of Science, this is not the least ; indeed, perhaps this may
sum them all, that she has taken away our Lord and will show us
nothing in return but the geologic formation of a sepulchre. While
this charge is unjust, radically unjust, it must be allowed that the
manner of commendation employed by many advocates of science is
responsible, in large measure, for our bread-and-butter attitude. The
fault lies in the original constitution of certain men — not that they are
scientists, but that they are small scientists ; men for whom a formula,
or a compound, or a root, or a fact whatsoever, is the end. To know
the most names of the most classifications is to be saved, to apply
chemistry in the manufacture of salable beer is to make " calling and
election " sure. The devotion of these little men to science is not only
at the expense of all that is highest, but is, as was intimated, largely
responsible for the realism over which so many weep. Men of sci-
ence, that is to say men of science, are not accountable for deadness
of soul. The wonder with which those early Greeks looked out upon
the face of all things may not for one instant be compared with the
wonder that fills the soul to-day before this stupendous universe :
" Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen :
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt."
Because we have learned that color is not in sunset or rose, is there
therefore no color ? Is the marvel anywise diminished by knowing

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 151

that, upon matter so adjusted and so acting as the brain is adjusted
and acts, all color depends ? Because there is no sound in bell, or
breeze, or ocean, is there therefore no sound ? And wherein is the
wonder of it diminished when we have learned the construction of the
ear, its possible relation to a particular fold in the brain, and the neces-
sity of this for all the harmonies that fill the soul with glory ? Are
we, the thinking, sorrowing, hoping selves, any the less real because
all this thinking, all this sorrowing, and all this hoping depend in
strictest sense upon that most highly organized form of matter the
human brain ?

George Eliot spoke truly when she said, " To advance in knowledge
is to outline, more perfectly, our ignorance " ; and who does not won-
der before the unknown ? When man is brought, as, if he is capable
of it, science will bring him, face to face with the darkness of mystery,
does he boast himself of all that he has learned? "We may rest assured
that the glory of mystery has not departed from off the face of the
heavens or of the deep. I know not where this mystery is greater, or
the wonder of it more manifest, than in the relation which obtains
between the brain and consciousness, between the brain and the per-
sonality that thinks and feels and wills. This relation is a fact. All
that we call our soul-life, from the sensations, the " building-stones "
of this life, to the most abstract thought and holiest desire, stands de-
pendent upon the activities of nerve-matter. Surely no one will be led
to say, so are these things dependent on stomach, lungs, and heart.
Such dependence is indirect, mediate, the other direct and immediate.
Between consciousness and the brain, between nerve-matter and our-
selves, there is a relation close, constant, immediate ; we may well
strive to reason upon the character of this relation. Here at the out-
set, this term reason must have clear meaning. I intend to use the
word as expressive of the process of inferring, of drawing a conclu-
sion from premises. I have now no concern with those who intui-
tively perceive truths beyond the territories of sense and inference.
Those for whom the immateriality of the soul is a direct deliverance
of consciousness may smile at the crawling pace of my induction ;
still, it is an honest and a needful endeavor to search after those con-
clusions respecting brain and consciousness which the inductive, infer-
ential process shall necessitate.

In such search, nothing, as I think, is more important than to be
assured that, in reasoning from the knowledge given by our senses to
conclusions which transcend such knowledge, we must proceed accord-
ing to discerned resemblance.

Two things agreeing with, which means, for us, resembling, one
and the same third thing, agree with, that is resemble, each other ;
and two things, of which one agrees with, that is, for us, resembles,
and the other does not agree with, that is, for us, does not resemble, a
third thing, do not resemble each other. If the manifestations of

Is2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

nerve-matter and the manifestations of consciousness disagree, seem
unlike after our best examinations, it is unreasonable to give them a
common cause*, they can not, by us as rational beings, be brought into
such close relation.

Permit me to ask attention to a further consideration. Neither
the direct knowledge given b\ our senses, nor this inferred knowledge,
furnishes a solution of the mystery which belongs to the subjects we
investigate. It is often said and as often forgotten that all explana-
tion of natural processes consists solely in the resolution of involved
combinations of activities into their elements. We make a false de-
mand of the evolutionist when we insist that he shall tell us how the
biological is evolved from the a-biological, and he makes a false de-
mand of the spiritualist when he requires to be told how mind acts
on brain or brain on mind. There is no such thing as being told the
how of what takes place. The starting-points are unknowable in
their nature and in the reasons of their operations. If I have not
completely misunderstood that vigorous book, " Modern Physical Con-
cepts," the purpose of its writer was to show that the so-called bases
of physical science do not represent entities any more than the terms
vitality, justice, humanity, law, represent entities, but that the bases
of physical science stand for the present highest generalizations of the
mind working inductively, that these bases do not exist out yonder
among the spaces, but here within the thinker, and that when we
affirm matter to be, outside of us, exactly thus and so, force exactly
thus and so, we are but repeating the mediaeval procedure of declaring
that beneath the oak-tree there is an oak nature, beneath human
beings a human nature. Judge Stallo, as I think, found the mind at
its old trick in modern physical science, the trick of actualizing, and
thrusting out yonder into space, its thoughts, its concepts, and of
worshiping them as lords of all, explainers forever. Service is ren-
dered here, not for orthodoxy as against heterodoxy, not for spiritual-
ism as against materialism, but for all truth as against all error. We
need to keep in mind that the only thing which can be accomplished
by science, or by philosophy, as the unification of the sciences, is a
detection and expression of resemblance between phenomena and
between the modes of their activity. This may give us a law of evo-
lution extending over all manifestations, a law not perched up on
matter compelling it to evolve, but a law expressive of our feeling of
similarity where we had previously felt diversity.

This resemblance is detected by observation. Now, observation is
a process, not a thing. Its character is never determined by the ob-
ject observed. Observation is not an instrument possessed by the
physicist alone. Observation is an intellectual operation, and may be
as genuine, as honest, when directed to thoughts, emotions, volitions,
as when brought to bear on stars, rocks, or brains. The time has
come when the truth shall assert itself that philosophy is an attempt

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 153

to unify all our experiences, an attempt to be able to say that whereas
here and here and here my experiences seemed unlike, separate, they
now seem alike and conjoined.

The application of all this to man is plain ; indeed, has been for these
past years most impressively operative. Formerly, man was supposed
to possess an intellectual and moral nature distinct in kind ; in him was
thought to reside a force peculiar, above and beyond all other forces.
Observation has had much to say, as many believe, in contravention
of these conclusions ; and it is now well known that the doctrine of
evolution is brought to bear on all sides of human psychology in a way
special and searching. I have not here in mind the work of Spencer
or Bain, or their immediate disciples. Within very recent days books
have been published which show painstaking research in distinct psy-
chological departments. Ribot has discussed the physiology and pa-
thology of memory ; Grant Allen has offered help in the " tangled
territory " of aesthetics ; Leslie Stephen has written a science of ethics,
stating as his purpose, " to lay down an ethical doctrine in harmony
with the doctrine of evolution " ; G. H. Schneider, author of a work
on the animal will, has just published a careful treatise on the human
will from the stand-point of the modern development theory ; Professor
Preyer, at Jena, has set out the results of his observations on the soul
of the child — observations made with greatest care three times each
day during the first three years of child-life. I might extend my list
at length ; for this there is no need. We are face to face with the
question of the relation between brain and consciousness. I have said
that this relation is positive and constant, though few, except physi-
cians, realize the meaning of such a fact. It means, in the first place,
that changes of consciousness coincide with molecular changes in the
brain. For every alteration in consciousness, however slight and tran-
sient, there has been a molecular change in the brain. This relation
means, in the second place, that there is a physical basis for memory.
Whether we accept or reject localization of functions in the cerebral
hemispheres, we must believe that the cell-modifications which coin-
cide with specific sensations remain permanently, thus furnishing a
physical, organic requisite for memory. In the third place, this rela-
tion means that, in a recollection of any of our experiences, there is
presupposed a renewed activity of those very portions of the brain
which assisted in the experience. There are no transcendentalists so
transcendental that they may transcend this direct relationship between
what they are pleased to call gross matter and their sublimest ecstasy.
What opinion must we form as to the nature of this relation ?

We have choice of two conclusions which are alternatives. We
may say the relation of brain-matter and consciousness is one of corre-
lation, conversion — or we may say it is one of instrument to person-
ality. Personality is here, as everywhere, a term chosen to represent a
series of manifestations so alike among themselves and so unlike all

i54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other manifestations as to necessitate a specific designation. By adopt-
ing the term personality, we should affirm our belief in the existence
of some form of being, which, for us, is persistently unlike every other
form of being with which we come into relation. Here the element
of speculation, which is a necessary part of all reasoning, appears.
Whether we accept correlation or personality, we accept what can no
more be directly Tcnown than the mortality of men now living, or the
return of the seasons. All reasoning is beyond the facts, and is in this
a speculation ; but reasoning need be no more an unsafe guide on such
subjects as the one before us than on any of the complex affairs where
we gladly trust its teachings. Our demand of Reason must be that,
though she lead us beyond the facts, she shall never lead us contrary
to the facts. Again, I would say, it should be recognized that neither
of the conclusions above indicated is a solution of the mystery attend-
ant upon consciousness. The pride of the little scientists induces them
all too often to declare that, by the first of these alternatives, they
have cleared away the obscurity which they love to call metaphysical
and let in the white light of comprehension.

So, in turn, the other party, seizing hold of the fact of personality,
forthwith affirm that, by it, man's immateriality, immortality, and di-
vinity, are forever made visible in the light of consciousness. All this
is quite aside from that inferential process which, as reasoning beings,
we should prescribe for ourselves. Is the relation between brain and
consciousness one of correlation ; may we, according to the evidence,
believe it to be one of correlation ? Physiological materialism is an
extension of the doctrine of correlation to consciousness. It is needful
to know what is meant by correlation. Correlation is a necessary,
reciprocal production. " Any force capable of producing another
may be produced by it. Each mode of force is capable of producing
the others, and none of them can be produced but by some other
as an anterior force. The various affections of matter, heat, light,
electricity, have a reciprocal dependence ; either may produce or be
convertible into any of the others." The materialism of physiology
extends this doctrine of correlation to consciousness. The well-worn
language of Professor Huxley (" Darwin and his Critics ") is again in
point. " As the electric force, the light-waves and the nerve-vibra-
tions caused by the impact of the light-waves on the retina are all ex-
pressions of the molecular changes which are taking place in the
elements of the battery, so consciousness is, in the same sense, an
expression of the molecular changes which take place in that nervous
matter which is the organ of consciousness." A short sentence from
Dr. Carpenter to the same effect : " There is just the same evidence of
what has been termed correlation between nerve-force and that pri-
mary state of mental activity which we call sensation that there is
between light and nerve-force." Now, the proposition, fundamental to
my paper, is that such a conclusion can not rationally be drawn, un-

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 155

less the characteristics of consciousness, as we know them and are
obliged to know them, resemble the characteristics of brain-activity as
we know them and are obliged to know them. It will not avail to say
there are striking differences between heat, electricity, and light ;
there are striking resemblances — one positive, constant resemblance —
they are all modes of motion. Between the characteristics of con-
sciousness and the characteristics of nerve-matter, as we know them,
there are no resemblances whatsoever. If the smaller physiological
materialists (for the larger do it fully) would but think it worth their
while, and a truly scientific procedure, to fasten their attention upon
consciousness, they might be struck by its peculiarities. The distinct-
ive features of consciousness in general have often been indicated. I
shall restate them here as they have been compared with nerve-activi-
ties, arranging them in pairs for the sake of clearness :

1. Nerve-activities :

All are modes of extension and motion.
Consciousness-activities :

None can be conceived as extended or moving.

2. Nerve-activities :

They may be observed through the senses.
Consciousness-activities :

They are never known through the senses.
8. Nerve-activities :

They are external to the observer.
Consciousness-activ ities :

They are internal to the observer.

4. Nerve-activ ities :

Each may be directly seen at the same time by many observers.
Conscio usness-activ ities :

They can be directly known by one person only, viz., he who
experiences them.

5. Nerve-activities :

They consist of parts external to each other and are divisible.
Consciousness-activities :

They have no distinction of parts and are indivisible.
It may surprise some readers to be told that this contrast is fully
recognized by many leading upholders of evolution. Mr. Spencer
says, " There lies before us, in the study of consciousness, a class of
facts absolutely without any perceptible or conceivable community of
nature with the facts that have occupied us in the study of the nerv-
ous system."

Dr. Tyndall (" Address on Scientific Materialism," Norwich) says :
" The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts
of consciousness is unthinkable. The chasm between the two classes
of phenomena is intellectually impassable." Professor Huxley says :
"I know nothing whatever, and never expect to know anything, of the

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of con-
sciousness is effected. I entirely agree with the sense of the passage
from Dr. Tyndall."

In view of the dissimilarity, the thorough dissimilarity, between
nerve-activities and consciousness-activities, we are not justified in
regarding the former as the sole cause of the latter. Chemists, after
a somewhat protracted examination of the substances found in nature,
announce the discovery of sixty-four different bodies, from which they
can not, by any means now at hand, separate simpler substances. This
does not intend to say that these sixty-four elements are absolutely
simple, but that " they are so as far as our knowledge extends." Now,
why are these sixty-four elements maintained to have a real existence ?
Why is aluminium believed in as a fact distinct from antimony, or
arsenic as a fact distinct from bromine, and so on throughout the list ?
Because, and simply because, the states of consciousness are persist-
ently distinct when dealing with these so-called elements. The chem-
ist is unable to experience resemblance between the actions — i. e., the
manifestations — of aluminium and antimony. Therefore, and there-
fore alone, he says, there are here different substances.

This is the kind of reasoning, and no other, that we wish applied
to the subject of our examination. If the passage between brain-
activity and consciousness-activity be unthinkable, intellectually im-
passable, why is it so ? Not from any a priori or "high-priori " incon-
ceivability, but because these activities persistently fail to resemble one
another, i. e., to produce in us similar states of consciousness. They
can not be rationally called " diverse operations of energy mutually con-
vertible like light, heat, and the other physical forces." Such corre-
lation is opposed through and through to experience. Here is the
irrationality of physiological materialism. This materialism makes a
break in the physical continuity of Nature's workings; a break found
nowhere else ; a break, moreover, which is not found here by any exam-
ination of which we are capable.

Correlation requires that motion should be transformed into some-
thing not motion, and then resume its course as motion. Motion set
up at the periphery of the body produces a definite and measurable
quantity of motion in the brain ; this is well called a mechanical prob-
lem out and out. We find no measurable consciousness, yet conscious-
ness is a reality ; we find no break in physical processes elsewhere, yet,
if correlation be true here, such a break there is. It will, I hope, be
clearly seen that this difficulty is nowise related to the old and worth-
less difficulty thought to be suggested by those who ask the material-
ist how motion is transformed into consciousness. As to the how of
things they have learned most who have learned that they know noth-
ing. The question is not how are brain-motions transformed into con-
sciousness, but the question is exactly this, What ground have we to
believe that such transformation exists ?

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 157

Permit me to repeat the statement that there is no reasoning here
along the " high-priori " road of inconceivability. I see no more incon-
ceivability in supposing that a brain-change should be followed by a
thought than that it should be followed by an increased secretion. The
thing needed is, to know the fact in the case. Are brain-changes
transformed into consciousness, or does the soul, on occasion of these
changes, respond in its peculiar language ?

The brain-changes, as we know them and must know them, consist of
attractions, repulsions, motions, and co-ordinations of the brain-particles.
These, according to the physiological materialist and the young physi-
cian, are transformed into states of consciousness, which states are not
material changes, but separated from them by a chasm " intellectually
impassable." It has been wisely said that the position which a thor-
ough-going scientific evolution ought to defend is this : thoughts, feel-
ings, volitions, any and all states of consciousness, have no existence
for physical science. Indeed, the annoyance caused by consciousness as
a useless "surplusage" is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in
the following passage from Professor Huxley's paper " On the Hypothe-
sis that Animals are Automata." The author writes : " Though we
may see reason to disagree with Descartes's hypothesis that brutes are
unconscious machines, it does not follow that he was wrong in regard-
ing them as automata. We believe, in short, that they are machines,
one part of which (the nervous system) not only sets the rest in motion
and co-ordinates its movements in relation with changes in surround-
ing bodies, but is provided with special apparatus, the function of
which is the calling into existence of those states of consciousness
which are termed sensations, emotions, ideas. It may be assumed, then,
that molecular changes in the brain are the causes of all the states of
consciousness in brutes. Is there any evidence that these states of
consciousness may, conversely, cause those molecular changes which
give rise to muscular motion ? I see no such evidence. The frog
walks, hops, swims, quite as well without consciousness as with it, and
if a frog, in his natural state, possesses anything corresponding with
what we call volition, there is no reason to think that it is anything
but a concomitant of molecular changes in the brain which form part
of the series involved in the production of motion. The consciousness
of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body
as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without
any power of modifying that working as the steam - whistle which
accompanies the work of a locomotive-engine is without influence upon
its machinery. Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion (?)
indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes. It is quite
true that this reasoning holds equally good of men, and therefore that
all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by
molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that, in men
as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the

158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these
positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are sim-
ply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place auto-
matically in the organism, and that, to take an extreme illustration
the feeling (?) we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but
a symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of
the act. We are conscious automata." (The italics in the above quo-
tation are the present writer's.) This passage, published in 1874, will
remain unique as an attempt to " get on " in our examination of man
without consciousness. Consciousness is a collateral product of brain-
change. Whatever may be meant by " collateral," it can not be so
one-sided an affair as to save the break in physical continuity pre-
viously described. If consciousness be at all the product of brain-
changes, it appears, and must appear, as a stranger to these changes,
destitute of a single one of their features. Further, and with sincere
deference, I would say that the reasoning in the passage before us
seems to me peculiar. Consciousness is produced by brain-changes ;
nay more, these are the sole cause of consciousness, and yet there is
no ground to believe that consciousness in its turn ever occasions brain-
changes or muscular movements. Volition is not the cause of a volun-
tary act, but a token that such an act is taking place. This would be
termed in logic a contradiction, both in form and matter.

When we are told that consciousness is completely without the
power of modifying the working of our body, we do, indeed, feel that
consciousness might as well give up and cease to be ; at the same time
we know that consciousness, in the shape of volition, is adjusting, direct-
ing, and in manifold other ways modifying our organism from day
to day. My reason for bringing up this disposition of consciousness
was not so much to show its deficiency (which has been well done by
Dr. Carpenter and others), as to insist upon the fact that consciousness
is not susceptible of scientific treatment by any physical or physiologi-
cal method. I wished also to show that no half-way recognition of
consciousness would meet the demands of investigation. Perhaps the
chiefest benefit to come from the physiological psychology of our day
will be in this, that it will make unmistakably clear its own inadequacy
for a treatment of consciousness as such. I trust I may not be misun-
derstood in this remark. I yield to no one in the belief that an ines-
timable advantage has been conferred on psychology by physiology.
It is now possible to study the sensations, both general and special, with
a thoroughness unknown a few years since. The intimacy of connec-
tion between brain-changes and what we term soul-states has been
once and for all established and proclaimed. Much may be accom-
plished toward a localization of functions in the hemispheres ; the time
may even come when people at large shall know that most of their
stupidity, peevishness, and sin, results from unhealthful brain-activity.
The relation between digestion, ventilation, sleep, and morals, may

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 159

attain general acceptance, to the destruction of a huge load of the
world's misery. All this and more may come, but physiology will
never remove or investigate a state of consciousness ; it will never
front the inner side of a single sensation. This, if I mistake not, is
the annoying thing to many specialists. The resort has, for a long
time, been a vigorous pooh-poohing of consciousness, or a ridicule of
it as somehow synonymous with metaphysics and nonsense. It is a
singular and natural thing — singular in its intensity and narrowness,
natural in its origin — this conviction among many of the younger spe-
cialists that logical and psychological investigations are but rattle-
boxes for babes and fools. The natural origin of this, I say, is plain.
The chairs in many of our colleges and universities are occupied by
men nobly endowed by nature for their special studies, and culti-
vated through years of investigation abroad. They have not, however,
escaped the working of the association of ideas. All they have ever
known about psychology, logic, or ethics, dates back to a few hours'
perfunctory stumbling over the pages of Haven's " Mental Philosophy,"
Day's " Logic," Wkately's " Logic," Thompson's " Outlines of the Laws
of Thought," Butler's " Analogy," Haven's " Moral Philosophy," or,
if specially fortunate, Hamilton's " Metaphysics." These exercises in
torture were held during those groping years of college-boy experi-
ence. Here were given all the facts ever furnished for coming to an
understanding of the processes of thought or the principles of morals.
Interest in these matters, an interest natural to all who share human
nature, was blasted at the outset of its development. Other pursuits
that could and did take on the semblance of reality fastened attention,
and led to the years of toil that fitted for life-work. What more nat-
ural than that henceforth (must it be said forever ?) each approach to
the subject of consciousness is, for these minds, an approach to confu-
sion worse confounded ? The fact that I occupy a chair in Philosophy
will very much weaken the force of what I am about to say ; still, the
conviction will get itself expressed with whatsoever power it may
have. The work of the workers would rise faster, stand firmer, come
to more universal recognition, if guided by some living logic, and some
appreciation of the processes of thought, emotion, and will. The fact
is, that in consciousness and in consciousness alone all things are known.
No physicist ever fronted or ever will front a pure fact, a thing as it
is, apart from consciousness. What the physicist knows are not sub-
stances in themselves, out of consciousness. Force and matter are, in
the way in which he uses them and must use them, products of his
consciousness. He, the conscious person, is affected so and so, that is,
is made to have such and such states of consciousness ; to the common
or resembling elements in these states, he gives a common name, be-
lieving, beyond a doubt, in the existence of a cause for these states,
but often failing to realize that such cause is unknown and unknow-
able, not at all revealed, in its essence and apart from consciousness,

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the abstract terms which he has formed to express it. The physio-
logical materialist can never meet the demand which a proof of his
belief requires, viz., that he should be able to consider the nervous
system apai't from consciousness before declaring it the sole cause of
consciousness. All that is known of the nervous system is known
through consciousness ; is there, then, no importance, no necessity, for
some examination of consciousness for those who would give an account
of their knowledge, be its content what it may ? This position, rightly
understood, will vindicate my assertion that, for all forms of investiga-
tion, the need at present is a critique of knowing, a critique which
shall be not simply a "Zuriickgehen auf Kant" (profitable as this
might prove for an understanding of his relation to materialism), but
a critique which shall embody the contributions of recent years from
investigators in the territories of the senses, the understanding, and
the emotions.

It may be asked, Why should this appeal for consciousness come so
late in the present discussion ? Ought it not rather to have preceded
the statement of the characteristics of consciousness, and so prevented
a break in the course of thought ? Such a break is, of course, unde-
sirable ; still, it is one not to be avoided, as I think, under the circum-
stances.

There remain for consideration certain special features of con-
sciousness, for whose examination and estimation special entreaty was
needed. This solicitation will have more force when placed in direct
connection with the features themselves. The writer ventured to
hope that those broader, more noticeable characteristics of conscious-
ness which lie, as it were, upon the surface, might be left to awaken
attention by their size. Not so with matters now to be brought for-
ward. While there is no purpose to leave, even for an instant, the
territory of experience, we enter a j)ortion of that territory which, to
many, will be new, and therefore, without effort against prejudice, un-
true.

There are certain special facts in consciousness, i. e., ceilain dis-
tinctive features in each person's experience, which prevent, out and
out, the acceptance of correlation as a proper account of the relations
between brain and consciousness. Few would refuse to admit that
sensation is a fact, yet there is danger of studying sensation with the
sensation omitted.

Every sensation has four physical antecedents which, though dis-
tinct, are not different in kind from one another. This is such a pre-
ponderance of the physical that the other element is likely to go un-
noticed. The physical requisites for every sensation are : 1. Some
outward, exciting cause or excitation — this is physical movement,
nothing else ; it may be of ponderable matter or of an imponderable
instrument, as light. 2. The contact of this physical condition of
movement with a sensitive portion of the body. 3. The excitation-

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 161

condition of the sensitive nerve-fibers. This is produced by the out-
ward irritation, but is a purely physical and inward nervous process,
having no other resemblance to its cause than that it is motion, and
having no resemblance to the sensation which is conditioned upon it.
4. The transfer of this condition of the nerve-fiber to the central parts
of the nervous system, especially to the brain. These are the mechani-
cal antecedents for sensation. They are susceptible of physical treat-
ment. They may, and often do, operate without any sensation arising ;
more than this, they may operate so as to produce a reflex activity,
causing violent motions, still without the faintest appearance of sensa-
tion. It is plain, then, that to know anything about sensation we must
pass from physiology to personal experience. It seems a just charge
against the materialism of physiology, both general and medical, that
it takes no account of the element in a sensation-process.

How shall we escape saying that the last step in this process is the
sensation itself, which the soul calls forth from itself in consequence of
the antecedents described ? The sensation is no picture of the outer
thing, the retinal image works, in all probability, chemically upon the
retina, but that image does not and can not get itself transferred to
the cerebral hemispheres. The sensation is an answer to the excitation
in the brain-mass, arising from that image, an answer in such peculiar
language that it must be called language of the soul — not as thereby
explaining it in the sense of resolving its mystery, yet as thereby ex-
plaining it in the only way in which explanation is anywhere possible,
viz., by resolving the combined activities into their elements.

It is a necessary part of this discussion to note that one of these
elements is personality, i. e., a consciousness of the sensation as mine.
It seems unfortunate that, in dealing with this experience of personal-
ity, the strength and weakness of the development theory are not
rightly estimated. The strength of the theory lies in those rudiment-
ary sensations connected with infant life, and with the organic pro-
cesses where it seems but just to say that only feeling is present, i. e.,
no true consciousness, no knowledge of the sensation as mine. The
weakness of the theory, and it is a fatal one, lies in the failure to
recognize the distinction between a matured idea of self which comes
only with years, and a consciousness that the sensation is mine, how-
ever rudimentary this sensation may be. The most primitive distinc-
tions in consciousness, those of pleasure and pain, can not be expe-
rienced without being known. When this is realized, the inadequacy
of the attempt to dispense with personality, or to derive it from any-
thing more elementary than itself, must appear ; the two factors in
every phenomenon, viz., that which manifests itself, and that to which
it manifests itself, are at once disclosed.

Memory, which, though lying in the so-called fog-land of conscious-
ness, is yet a reality, has been brought forward as decisive against the
application of evolution to the origin of knowledge. Memory is a pre-

VOL. XXVII. — 11

162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

requisite for all psychical development. Unless we can compare the
experience of yesterday with the experience of to-day, any advance of
ourselves from the brute condition is impossible. Now, such compari-
son demands that the first experience should have been known as mine.
From this demand there is no escape. Complying with it, something,
some form of being called personality, must lie at the bottom of the
inner side of our nature. Lotze has pertinently said : " We have this
unity of consciousness not because we appear to ourselves to have it ;
we have it because we appear to ourselves to have it."

In each sensation there is consciousness of self in a particular state.
Our sensations are varied and successive. We hear the sound of a
bell, then of a railway-train, then of the wind ; we see cloud, moon,
and mountain-top. Here we have the sensation, the succession of sen-
sations, the discrimination of sensations, and discrimination of things
by the sensations. Devolve this whole business upon nerve-matter in
the cei'ebral hemispheres. Is such ascription of functions rational ?
Is it in keeping with our knowledge of brain-structure ? If we sur-
mount the difficulty of transformation of motions into non-motions
(that is, consciousness), what provision do we anywhere find in the
hemispheres for the unification of such sensations as above described,
their unification in self ?

A further question at once arises. Physiology has arranged for
diversity of result. What has it done toward comparing these differ-
ences ? By comparison, and by that alone, each sensation is known as
distinct from every other. All that physiology offers or can offer is
the integrity of each nerve-fiber. As has been justly said, this fiber
is like every other in construction and action. What provision have
we, apart from personality, for detecting difference in sensations?

Personality is the place at which both parties should expend their
strength. Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain, understanding this, have sought to
obliterate the distinction between feeling and self-consciousness. They
have maintained the priority of an impersonal feeling. Here is the
starting-point, not in personality, but in feeling. Personality is a de-
velopment from impersonality by what Mr. Mill calls a " process of
reference." This is one of those magical terms, like the newer word
"functionate," which serve to obscure the failure of an undertak-
ing. Mr. Bain also starts with a nervous system and feeling, and
gives what may be taken as the latest expression of the movement to-
ward unification of soul and body. He says : " The arguments for
the two substances — mind and matter — have, we believe, entirely lost
their validity ; they are no longer compatible with ascertained science
and clear thinking. One substance with two sets of attributes, two
sides (a physical and a mental), a double-faced unity, would appear to
comply with all the exigencies of the case." This assertion of a
double-faced unity not only fails to bridge the chasm that is rationally
impassable, not only increases the confusion by uniting contradictory

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 163

attributes in too small a compass, but it is a pure metaphysical or
ontological predication, from which reason defend us ! As to the ex-
istence of any Spinozistic substance holding in itself the irreconcilables
thought and extension, how can it any longer be worth while to ex-
press an opinion ? Perhaps matter is double-faced. This is a specu-
lation which, as it transcends, contradicts experience.

If I mistake not, Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain have themselves refuted
their position with regard to the development of personality from im-
personal feeling. Mr. Mill ("Examination of Hamilton," page 242)
says : " If, therefore, we speak of the mind as a series of feelings, we
are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series which is
aware of itself as past and present ; and we are reduced to the alter-
native of believing that the mind or ego is something different from
any series of feelings or possibilities of them, or of accepting the para-
dox that something which, by hypothesis, is but a series of feelings,
can be aware of itself as a series." In his edition of " The Analysis
of the Human Mind" (i, 230) he further says, "There is no mean-
ing in the word ego, or I, unless the I of to-day is also the I of yester-
day." This mast be taken as an admission that personality is an essen-
tial for personal identity.

Mr. Bain says : " We may be in a state of pleasure with little or
nothing of thought " (personal consciousness) " accompanying. We
are still properly said to be conscious or under consciousness. It is
thus correct to draw a line between feeling and knowing that we feel,
although there is great delicacy in the operation. [Italics are the
writer's.] It may be said in one sense that we can not feel without
knowing that we feel ; but the assertion is verging on error, for a feel-
ing may be accompanied with a minimum of cognitive energy or, as
good as, none at all." I am unable to appreciate this passage as other
than an abandonment of the development theory applied to personality.
The language of Professor Calderwood seems just when he writes,
" If in every sensation, every feeling, there is a particle of cognitive
energy " (if the sensation be known as mine in any sense) " the devel-
opment theory as an account of personality fails."

Under the influence of the a priori procedure, both metaphysical
and theological, most of us flee with raised hands of horror at sound
of the word will. Recollections of " you shall and you sha'n't, you can
and you can't, you will and you won't," crowd round in ever-thicken-
ing confusion. Still, it must be said that, apart from all talk about
freedom and bondage, volition is a decidedly large fact in human ex-
perience. Though Goethe is right in saying, " Ein kleiner Ring
begranzt unser Leben," a ring of circumstance, of inheritance, yet
within the circle of that ring a measure of action prevails which no
word describes save the word willed. The action is determined by
personality. It is impossible to find provision for this in the nervous
system. Inhibitory nerves there may be, but the experience of our-

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

selves as using within fixed limits this physical organism is an experi-
ence too unique to come within nerve-actions and reactions before
pleasure and pain.

There is no need to multiply illustrations of the exercise of will in
holding muscles still against pain or of those higher manifestations
where we endure agony, not from any present suffering, but to avoid
future loss.

In conclusion, and for completeness, reference should be made to
the moral consciousness, i. e., the knowledge of obligation. This, too, is
a fact in human experience, and as such demands to be traced to its
ultimates. A significant thing, from the philosophical side, is Mr.
Spencer's anticipatory publication of the " Data of Ethics." By this
publication Mr. Spencer has recognized, what many of his smaller
adherents fail to know, that, in ethics, as an attempt to give a rational
account of the consciousness of obligation, all thinking finds its high-
est and most serious application.

"We discover in the nervous system no provision for the conscious-
ness of duty ; indeed, put in this bald way, no materialist would look
there for any such consciousness. Duty as something to be done for
its own sake, apart from creed, or sect, or party, or consequences, is
properly considered an evidence of culture in thought and action. It
is futile to attempt to resist the application of evolution to ethics by
any appeal to the transcendent beauty of the moral ideal. The rose
is a transcendent thing in color, fragrance, and outline ; still, it de-
velops from that which has none of these.

Development of some kind is a fact. The stress of inquiry in
ethics is, I think, here : Can the sense of right and wrong, however
rudimentary, be produced by pains and pleasures ? In the nervous
system we have the physical antecedents for pain and pleasure; though
no such sensations are in the nervous system, they are in us. Ethics
therefore presents the development theory a further difficulty, viz., the
one of passing rationally from pains and pleasures to right and wrong.
Even Mr. Spencer's form of the development theory, which would seek
to find in the conduct called ethical but a part of conduct in general,
and to regard all conduct, both ethical and non-ethical, as adjustments
of means to ends ; even this form of the theory must be able to make
it plain that the transition from conduct non-ethical to conduct ethical
is gradual, composed of many steps, and not, as experience seems to
teach, sudden, distinct, and sharp.

What belief, then, does reason require in our present state of knowl-
edge as to the relation between nerve-matter and consciousness ? We
distinguish two series, two kinds of experiences ; these stand to one
another as outward and inward, physical and spiritual, compound and
simple. We do not know the nature of either. The terms matter and
soul are our highest generalizations from experience. The materialist
errs when he pronounces upon the character of matter, affirming that

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 165

in itself, as it lies beyond his vision, it is hard, round, inelastic, double-
faced. The spiritualist errs when he pronounces upon the nature of
spirit, as it lies beyond his ken, naming it, in essence, immortal, divine.
Unity there somehow is in this universe. There are no breaks if
we could read aright. Perhaps this reading should see the beginning
in the end, not the end in the beginning. The charcoal sketch of
Angelo would indeed be promise and potency of greater things, and
this because in it was more than charcoal. So it may be well, even
rational, to interpret all things and all beings.

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN":

A CRITICISM OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER.

By EMILE DE LAVELEYE.

" La nature est l'injustice meme." — Renan.

FOUR articles of Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which appeared in the
Contemporary Review, have recently been reprinted together,
and form now a work which Mr. Spencer has entitled "The Man
versus The State." This little volume merits the most attentive study,
because in it the great sociological question of our day is treated in
the most masterly manner. The individualist theory was, I think,
never expounded better or with stronger arguments based on first
principles, or supported by so great a number of clearly analyzed and
admirably grouped facts. These pages are also full of important
truths and of lessons, from whence both nations and governments
may derive great benefit. Mr. Spencer's deductions are so concise
and forcible that one feels oneself drawn, against one's will, to accept
his conclusions ; and yet, the more I have thought on the subject,
the more convinced have I become that these conclusions are not in
the true interest of humanity. Mr. Herbert Spencer's object is to
prove the error and danger of State socialism, or, in other words, the
error and danger of that system which consists in appropriating State,
or communal, revenues to the purpose of establishing greater equality

among men.

The eminent philosopher's statement, that in most civilized coun-
tries governments are more and more adopting this course, is indis-
putable. In England Parliament is taking the lead ; in Germany
Prince Bismarck, in spite of Parliament ; and elsewhere either Parlia-
ment or town councils are doing the same thing. Mr. Spencer con-
siders that this effort for the improvement of the condition of the
working-classes, which is being everywhere made, with greater or less
energy, is a violation of natural laws, which will not fail to bring its
own punishment on nations, thus misguided by a blind philanthropy.

166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I believe, on the contrary, that this effort, taken as a whole, and set-
ting aside certain mistaken measures, is not only in strict accordance
with the spirit of Christianity, but is also in conformity with the true
principles of politics and of political economy.

Let us first consider a preliminary question, on which I accept Mr.
Spencer's views, but for different reasons from his : On what are indi-
vidual rights founded, and what are the limits of State power ? Mr.
Spencer refutes with pitiless logic the opinions of those who, with
Bentham, maintain that individual rights are State concessions, or
who, like Matthew Arnold, deny the existence of natural rights. The
absurdity of Bentham's system is palpably evident. Who creates the
government ? The people, says he. So the government, thus created,
creates rights, and then, having created rights, it confers them on the
separate members of the sovereign people, by which it was itself
created. The real truth is, that government defines and sanctions
rights, and employs the public strength to enforce their being re-
spected, but the rights themselves existed before.

Referring to the history of all primitive civilization, Mr. Herbert
Spencer proves to Mr. Matthew Arnold that in familial and tribal
communities there existed certain customs, which conferred recognised
and respected rights, before ever any superior authority which could
be designated by the name of State had been formed. Only, I think
Mr. Herbert Spencer is wrong in making use of the term " natural
rights." This expression was an invention of the French philosophers
of the eighteenth century, and it is still employed in Germany by a
certain school of philosophers as Naturrecht. Sir Henry Maine's
clever and just criticism of this expression in his book "Ancient Law"
should warn us all of the vague and equivocal meaning it conceals.
The jurists and philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cent-
uries attached two very different significations to the term " natural
rights." They sometimes applied it to the condition of primitive so-
cieties, in which their optimism led them to dream of a reign of jus-
tice, liberty, and equality, and at other times they made use of it when
speaking of the totality of rights which should be possessed by every
individual, by reason of his manhood. These two conceptions are
equally erroneous. In primitive societies, in spite of certain customs
which are the embryo of rights, might reigns supreme, as among ani-
mals, and the best armed annihilate their weaker neighbours. Cer-
tainly, one would look in vain there for a model of a political constitu-
tion or code suitable to a civilized people. Neither can it be main-
tained that the " Rights of man," as proclaimed by the American and
French Revolutions, belong to each individual, only because he forms
part of the human species. The limit of rights which may be claimed
by any one individual must depend upon his aptitudes for making
good use of them. The same civil code and the same political institu-
tions will not equally suit a savage tribe and a civilized nation. If

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 167

the granting of the suffrage to all were likely to lead a people to an-
archy or to despotism, it could not be called a natural right, for suicide
is not a right.

If one analyze completely the expression " natural rights," one finds
that it is really not sense. Xavier de Maistre, annoyed by the con-
stant appeals to nature which are to be found in all the writings of the
eighteenth century, said, very wittily : "Nature, who and what is this
woman ? " Nature is subject to certain laws, which are invariable ;
as, for instance, the law of gravitation. We may call these " laws of
nature," but in human institutions, which are ever varying, nothing of
the sort can exist. This superior and ideal right, which is invoked for
the purjDOse of condemning existing laws, and claiming their reform
or suppression, should rather be called rational right — that is to say,
right in conformity with reason.

In every country, and at all times, an order of things may be con-
ceived— civil, political, penal and administrative laws — which would
best conform to the general interest, and be the most favourable to
the well-being and progress of the nation. This order of things is not
the existing one. If it were, one might say, with the optimists, that
all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and a demand for any
amelioration would be a rebellion against natural laws, and an absurd-
ity. But this order of things may be caught sight of by reason, and
defined with more or less accuracy by science ; hence its name of
rational order. If I ask for free trade in France, for a better division
of property in England, and for greater liberty in Russia, I do so in
the name of this rational order, as I believe that these changes would
increase men's happiness.

This theory permits of our tracing a limit between individual lib-
erty and State power.

Mr. Herbert Spencer proves very clearly that there are certain
things which no man would ever choose to abandon to State power ;
his religious convictions, for instance. On the other hand, all would
agree that the State should accept the charge of protecting frontiers
and punishing theft and murder, that is to say, the maintaining of
peace and security at home and abroad ; only here, like most English-
men, Mr. Herbert Spencer invokes human will. Find out, he says, on
the one hand, what the great majority of mankind would choose to
reserve to an individual sphere of action, and, on the other, what they
would consent to abandon to State decisions, and you will then be able
to fix the limit of the power of public authority.

I cannot myself admit that human will is the source of rights.
Until quite recently, in all lands, slavery was considered a necessary
and legitimate institution. But did this unanimous opinion make it
any more a right ? Certainly not. It is in direct opposition to the
order of things which would be best for the general welfare ; it can-
not, therefore, be a right.

168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Until the sixteenth century, with the exception of a few Anabap-
tists who were burnt at the stake, all believed that the State ought to
punish heretics and atheists. But this general opinion did not suffice
to justify the intolerance then practised. The following line of argu-
ment, I think, would be most in keeping with individual interests, and,
consequently, with the interests of society in general : A certain por-
tion of men's acts ought not to be in any way subject to sovereign
authority, be it republican or monarchical. But what is to be the
boundary of this inviolable domain of individual activity ? The will
of the majority, or even of the entire population, is not competent to
trace it, for history has proved but too often how gross have been the
errors committed in such instances. This limit can, therefore, only be
fixed by science, which, at each fresh progress in civilization, can dis-
cover and proclaim aloud where State power should cease to interfere.
Sociological science, for instance, announces that liberty of conscience
should always be respected as man's most sacred possession, and because
religious advancement is only to be achieved at this price ; that true
property, or, in other words, the fruit of personal labour, must not be
tampered with, or labour would be discouraged and production would
diminish ; that criminals must not go unpunished, but that justice
must be strictly impartial, so that the innocent be not punished with
the guilty.

It would not be at all impossible to draw up a formula of these
essential rights, which M. Thiers called necessary liberties, and which
are already inscribed in the constitutions of America, England, France,
Belgium, Holland, and all other free nations. It it sometimes very
difficult to know where to set bounds to individual liberty, in the in-
terests of public order and of the well-being of others ; and it is true,
of course, that either the king, the assembly, or the people enacts the
requisite laws, but if science has clearly demonstrated a given fact it
imposes itself. When certain truths have been frequently and clearly
explained, they come to be respected. The evidence of them forms
the general opinion, and this engenders laws.

To be brief, I agree with Mr. Herbert Spencer that, contrary to
Rousseau's doctrine, State power ought to be limited, and that a do-
main should be reserved to individual liberty which should be always
respected ; but the limits of this domain should be fixed, not by the
people, but by reason and science, keeping in view what is best for the
public welfare.

This brings me to the principal question I desire to treat. I am of
opinion that the State should make use of its legitimate powers of
action for the establishment of greater equality among men, in pro-
portion to their personal merits, and I believe that this would be in
conformity, not only with its mission properly speaking, but also with
rational rights, with the progress of humanity ; in a word, with all the
rights and all the interests invoked by Mr. Herbert Spencer.

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 169

I will briefly resume the motives given by Mr. Herbert Spencer to
show that any wish to improve the condition of the working-classes
by law, or by the action of public power, so as to bring about a greater
degree of equality among men, would be to run against the stream of
history, and a violation of natural laws. There are, he says, two types
of social organization, broadly distinguishable as the " militant " and
the "industrial" type. The first of these is characterized by the
regime of status, the second by the regime of contract. The latter
has become general among modern nations, especially in England and
America, whereas the militant type was almost universal formerly.
These two types may be defined as the system of compulsory co-opera-
tion and the system of voluntary co-operation. The typical structure
of the one may be seen in an army formed of conscripts, in which each
unit must fulfil commands under pain of death, and receives, in ex-
change for his services, food and clothing ; while the typical structure
of the other may be seen in a body of workers who agree freely to
exchange specified services at a given price, and who are at liberty to
separate at will. So long as States are in constant war against each
other, governments must perforce be on a military footing, as in an-
tiquity. Personal defence, then, being society's great object, it must
necessarily give absolute obedience to a chief, as in an army. It is
absolutely impossible to unite the blessings of freedom and justice at
home with the habitual commission of acts of violence and brutality
abroad.

Thanks to the almost insensible progress of civilization and to
gradual liberal reforms, the ancient militant State was little by little
despoiled of its arbitrary powers, the circle of its interventions grew
narrower and narrower, and men became free economically, as well as
politically. We were advancing rapidly towards an industrial regime
of free contract. But, recently, the Liberals in all countries have
adopted an entirely opjDOsite course. Instead of restricting the powers
of the State, they are extending them, and this leads to socialism, the
ideal of which is to give to government the direction of all social ac-
tivity. Men imagine that, by thus acting, they are consulting the
interests of the working-classes. They believe that a remedy may be
found for the sufferings which result from the present order of things,
and that it is the State's mission to discover and apply that remedy.
By thus acting they simply increase the evils they would fain cure,
and prepare the way for a universal bondage, which awaits us all — the
Coming Slavery. Be the authority exercised by king, assembly, or
people, I am none the less a slave if I am forced to obey in all things,
and to give up to others the net produce of my labour. Contemporary
progressism not only runs against the stream of history, by carrying
us back to despotic organizations of the militant system, but it also
violates natural laws, and thus prepares the degeneration of humanity.
In family life the gratuitous parental aid must be great in proportion

170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as the young one is of little "worth either to itself or to others, and
benefits received must be inversely as the power or ability of the re-
ceiver.

" Throughout the rest of its life each adult gets benefit in proportion to merit,
reward in proportion to desert, merit and desert being understood as ability to
fulfil all the requirements of life. Placed in competition with members of its
own species, and in antagonism wTith members of other species, it dwindles and
gets killed off, or thrives and propagates, according as it is ill-endowed or well-
endowed. If the benefits received by each individual were proportionate to its
inferiority, if, as a consequence, multiplication of the inferior was furthered and
multiplication of the superior hindered, progressive degradation would result,
and eventually the degenerated species would fail to hold its ground in presence
of antagonistic species and competing species." (Page 65.)

"The poverty of the incapable, the distress that comes upon the imprudent,
the starvation of the idle, and the shouldering aside of the weak by the strong,
which leave so many ' in shallows and in miseries,' are the decrees of a large,
far-seeing benevolence." (Page 67.)

When the State, guided by a wrongly inspired philanthropy, pre-
vents the application of this wise law, instead of diminishing suffering
it increases it. " It tends to fill the world with those to whom life
will bring most pain, and tends to keep out of it those to whom life
will bring most pleasure. It inflicts positive misery, and prevents posi-
tive happiness." ("Social Statics," p. 381, edit. 1851.)

The law that Mr. Herbert Spencer desires society to adopt is sim-
ply Darwin's law — " the survival of the fittest." Mr. Spencer expresses
his astonishment that at the present day, more than at any other period
of the world's history, everything is done to favour the survival of
the unfittest, when, at the same time, the truth as revealed by Dar-
win, is admitted and accepted by an ever-growing number of educated
and influential people !

I have endeavoured to give a brief sketch of the line of argument
followed by Mr. Herbert Spencer. We will now see what reply can
be made to it. I think one chief point ought not to have escaped
the eminent writer. It is this : If the application of the Darwinian
law to the government of societies be really justifiable, is it not
strange that public opinion, not only in England, but in all other
countries, is so strenuously opposed to it, at an epoch which is be-
coming more and more enlightened, and when sociological studies
are pursued with so much interest? If the intervention of public
power for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes be
a contradiction of history, and a return to ancient militant society,
how is it that the country in which the new industrial organiza-
tion is the most developed — that is to say, England — is also the
country where State intervention is the most rapidly increasing, and
where opinion is at the same time pressing for these powers of inter-
ference to be still further extended ? There is no other land in which

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. i7i

the effort to succour outcasts and the needy poor occupies so large a
portion of the time and means of the well-to-do and of the public
exchequer ; there is nowhere else to be found a poor-law which grants
assistance to even able-bodied men ; nowhere else would it ever have
been even suggested to attack free contract, and consequently the very
first principles of proprietorship, as the Irish Land Bill has done ; and
nowhere else would a Minister have dared to draw up a programme
of reforms such as those announced by Mr. Chamberlain at the Liberal
Reform Club at Ipswich (Jan. 14, 1885). On the Continent all this
would be looked upon as rank socialism. If, then, as a country be-
comes more civilized and enlightened it shows more inclination to
return to what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls militant organization, and
to violate the Darwinian law applied to human society, may we not
be led to conclude that this so-called retrogression is really progress ?
This conclusion would very easily explain what Mr. Herbert Spencer
designates as the "wheeling round" of the Liberal party with which
he so eloquently reproaches them.

Why did the Liberals formerly do their utmost to restrict State
power? Because this power was then exercised in the interests of
the upper classes and to the detriment of the lower. To mention
but one example : When, in former times, it was desired to fix a
scale of prices and wages, it was with a view to preventing their being
raised, while, to-day, there is a clamour for a lessening of hours of
labour with increased remuneration. Why do Liberals now wish to
add to the power and authority of the State ? To be able to amelio-
rate the intellectual, moral, and material condition of a greater number
of citizens. There is no inconsistency in their programme ; the ob-
ject in view, which is the great aim of all civilization, has been always
the same — to assure to each individual liberty and well-being in pro-
portion to his merit and activity !

I think that the great fundamental error of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
system, which is so generally accepted at the present day, consists in
the belief that if State power were but sufficiently reduced to narrow
it to the circle traced by orthodox economists, the Darwinian law and
the survival of the fittest would naturally follow without difficulty.
Mr. Spencer has simply borrowed from old-fashioned political economy,
without submitting to the fire of his inexorable criticism, the super-
ficial and false notion that, if the laissez-faire and free contract regime
were proclaimed, the so-called natural laws would govern the social
order. He forgets that all individual activity is accomplished under
the empire of laws, which enact as to ownership, hereditary succes-
sion, mutual obligations, trade and industry, political institutions and
administrations, besides a multitude of laws referring to material
interests, banking organizations, money, credit, colonies, army, navy,
railways, etc.

For natural laws, and especially the law of the survival of the fittest,

172

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

to become established, it would be necessary to annihilate the immense
existing edifice of legislation, and to return to the wild state of society
when primitive men lived, in all probability, much as do animals,
with no possessions, no successions, no protection of the weak by the
State.

Those who, with Mr. Spencer and Haeckel and other Conserva-
tive evolutionists, are anxious to see the law of the survival of the
fittest and of natural selection adopted in human society, do not
realize that the animal kingdom and social organization are two such
totally different domains that the same law, applied to each, would
produce wholly opposite effects. Mr. Herbert Spencer gives an admi-
rable description of the manner in which natural selection is accom-
plished among animals : —

" Their carnivorous enemies not only remove from herbivorous herds indi-
viduals past their prime, hut also weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the
least fleet and powerful. By the aid of which purifying process, as well as by
the fighting so universal in the pairing season, all vitiation of the race through
the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented, and the maintenance of a
constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, and therefore most
productive of happiness, is ensured."

This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to pre-
vail in human societies, but everything in our present organization
(which economists, and even Mr. Spencer himself, admit, however, to
be natural) is wholly opposed to any such conditions. An old and
sickly lion captured a gazelle ; his younger and stronger brother
ai-rives, snatches away his prize, and lives to perpetuate the species ;
the old one dies in the struggle, or is starved to death. Such is the
beneficent law of the "survival of the fittest." It was thus among
barbarian tribes. But could such a law exist in our present social
order ? Certainly not ! The rich man, feebly constituted and sickly,
protected by the law, enjoys his wealth, marries and has offspring,
and if an Apollo of herculean strength attempted to take from him his
possessions, or his wife, he would be thrown into prison, and were he
to attempt to practise the Darwinian law of selection, he would cer-
tainly run a fair risk of the gallows, for this law may be briefly ex-
pressed as follows : Room for the mighty, for might is right. It
will be objected that in industrial societies the quality the most de-
serving of recompense, and which indeed receives the most frequent
reward, is not the talent of killing one's fellow-man, but an aptitude
for labour and producing. But at the present time is this really so ?
Stuart Mill says that from the top to the bottom of the social ladder
remuneration lessens as the work accomplished increases. I admit
that this statement may be somewhat exaggerated, but, I think, no
one will deny that it contains a large amount of truth. Let us but
cast our eyes around us, and we see everywhere those who do nothing
living in ease and even opulence, while the workers who have the

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 173

hardest labour to perform, who toil from night to morning in mines, or
unhealthy workshops, or on the sea in tempests, in constant danger of
death, are paid, in exchange for all these hardships, a salary hardly
sufficient for their means of subsistence, and which, just now, has be-
come smaller and smaller, in consequence of the ever-recurring strikes,
and the necessary closing of so many factories, mines, etc., owing to
the long-continued depression of trade. What rapid fortunes have
been made by stock-broking manoeuvres, by trickeries in supplying
goods, by sending unseaworthy vessels to sea to become the coffins of
their crews ! Do not such sights as these urge the partisans of prog-
ress to demand the State's interference in favour of the classes who
receive so inadequate a payment for their labours ?

The economists of the old school promised that, if the laissez-faire
and free contract regime were proclaimed, justice would reign uni-
versally ; but when people saw that these fine promises were not real-
ized, they had recourse to public power for the obtaining of those re-
sults which the much-boasted " liberty " had not secured.

The system of accumulating wealth and hereditary succession alone
would suffice to prevent the Darwinian law ever gaining a footing in
civilized communities. Among animals, the survival of the fittest
takes place quite naturally, because, as generations succeed each other,
each one must create his own position according to his strength and
abilities ; and in this way the purifying process, which Mr. Herbert
Spencer so extols, is effected. A similar system was generally preva-
lent among barbarians ; but, at the present day, traces of it may be
seen only in instances of " self-made men ; " it disappears in their chil-
dren, who, even if they inherit their parents' talents and capacities,
are brought uj), as a rule, in so much ease and luxury that the germs
of such talents are destroyed. Their lot in life is assured to them, so
why need they exert themselves ? Thus they fail to cultivate the
qualities and tastes they may have inherited from their parents, and
they and their descendants become in all points inferior to their ances-
tors who secured to them, by labour and industry, the privileged posi-
tion they hold. Hence the proverb, A pere econome fits prodigue
(To a thrifty father, a spendthrift son).

It follows, therefore, that those who wish to see the law of natu-
ral selection, by the transmission of hereditary aptitudes, established
amongst us should begin by demanding the abolition of hereditary
succession.

Among animals, the vitiation of the race through the multiplica-
tion of its inferior samples is prevented " by the fighting so universal
in the pairing season." In the social order the accumulation and
hereditary transmission of wealth effectually impede the process of
perfecting the race. In Greece after the athletic sports, or in those
fortunate and chimerical days of which the Troubadours sang, " the
most beautiful was sometimes given as a prize to the most valiant ; "

i74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but, in our prosaic age, rank and fortune too often triumph over beau-
ty, strength, and health. In the animal world, the destiny of each one
is decided by its personal qualities. In society, a man attains a high
position, or marries a beautiful woman, because he is of high birth, or
wealthy, although he may be ugly, lazy, and extravagant. The per-
manent army and the navy would also have to be destroyed, before
the Darwinian law could triumph. Conscription on the Continent and
enlistment in England (to a less degree) condemn many of the strong-
est and most warlike men to enforced celibacy ; and, as they are sub-
jected to exceptional dangers in the way of hazardous expeditions and
wars, the death-rate is far higher amongst them than it would be
under ordinary circumstances. In pre-historic times, or in a general
way, such men would certainly have begotten offspring, as being the
strongest and most apt to survive ; in our societies, they are decimated
or condemned to celibacy.

Having borrowed from orthodox political economy the notion that
it would suffice to put a check on inopportune State intervention for
the reign of justice to become established, Mr. Herbert Spencer pro-
ceeds to demonstrate that the legislators who enacted the poor-law,
and all recent and present law-makers " who have made regulations
which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps, who
ramble from union to union, and which maintain a constant supply of
felons by sending back convicts into society under such conditions
that they are almost compelled again to commit crimes," are alone
responsible for the sufferings of the working-classes. But may we
not blame law-makers, or, rather, our own social order, for measures
more fatal in their results than either of these — for instance, the law
which concentrates all property into the hands of a few owners?
Some years ago, Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote some lines on this sub-
ject which are the most severe indictment against the present social
order that has ever fallen from the pen of a really competent
writer : —

" Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects of their
desires — given a world adapted to the gratification of those desires — a world
into which such beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they
have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of them 'has freedom to
do all tbat he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,'
then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, pro-
vided he allows all others the same liberty. And, conversely, it is manifest that
no one or part of them may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest
from similarly using it, seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than
the rest, and, consequently, to break the law. Equity, therefore, does not per-
mit property in land. On examination, all existing titles to such property turn
out to be invalid ; those founded on reclamation inclusive. It appears that not
even an equal apportionment of the earth amongst its inhabitants could generate
a legitimate proprietorship. "We find that, if pushed to its ultimate consequences,
a claim to exclusive possession of the soil involves a land-owning despotism. We

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 175

further find that such a claim is constantly denied by the enactments of our legis-
lature. And we find, lastly, that the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the
soil is consistent with the highest civilization ; and that, however difficult it may
be to embody that theory in fact, equity sternly commands it to be done." " By-
and-by, men may learn that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the
earth is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking
away their lives or personal liberties." (" Social Statics," chap, ix.)

Has Mr. Herbert Spencer changed his opinions as to the proprie-
torship of the soil since these lines were written? Not at all, for,
in the chapter entitled " The Coming Slavery," he writes that " the
movement for land-nationalization is aiming at a system of land-tenure
equitable in the abstract." But if society, in depriving numbers of
persons of their right of co-heirship of the soil, has " committed a
crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their
lives or personal liberties," ought it not, in common justice, to en-
deavour to repair the injury done ? The help given by public assist-
ance compensates very feebly for the advantages they are deprived of.
In his important book, " La Propriete Sociale," M. Alfred Fouillee,
examining the question from another standpoint, very accurately calls
this assistance " la justice reparative." The numerous and admirable
charitable organizations which exist in England, the keen emotion and
deep commiseration manifested when the little pamphlet, " The Bitter
Cry of Outcast London," was first published, the growing pre-occupa-
tion of Government with the condition of the working-classes, must
be attributed, in the first instance certainly to Christian feeling, but
also, in a great measure, to a clearer perception of certain ill-defined
rights possessed by those who have been kept deprived of national or
rather communal co-heirship. Mr. Herbert Spencer has expressed this
idea so clearly and eloquently that I hope I may be allowed to quote
the passage : —

" We must not overlook the fact that, erroneous as are these poor-law and
communist theories, these assertions of a man's right to maintenance and of his
right to have work provided for him, they are nevertheless nearly related to a
truth. They are unsuccessful efforts to express the fact that whoso is born on
this planet of ours thereby obtains some interest in it — may not be summarily
dismissed again — may not have his existence ignored by those in possession. In
other words, they are attempts to embody that thought which finds its legiti-
mate utterance in the law: All men have equal rights to the use of the earth.
. . . After getting from under the grosser injustice of slavery, men could not
help beginning in course of time to feel what a monstrous thing it was that nine
people out of ten should live in the world on sufferance, not having even stand-
ing room save by allowance of those who claim the earth's surface." (" Social
Statics," p. 345.)

When one reads through that substantial essay, " The Man versus
The State," it appears as if the principal or, indeed, the sole aim of
State socialism were the extension of public assistance and increased

176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

succour for the unworthy, whereas the reality is quite the reverse of
this ! Scientific socialism seeks, first of all, the means of so raising
the working-classes that they may be better able to maintain them-
selves and, consequently, to dispense with the help of others ; and,
secondly, it seeks to find what laws are the most in conformity with
absolute justice, and with that admirable precept, " Benefit in propor-
tion to merit, reward in proportion to desert." In the speech deliv-
ered by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, last year (1884), as President of the Con-
gress of Social Science, at its opening meeting at Birmingham, he
traced, in most striking language, all the good that State intervention
had effected in England of late yeai-s : Greater justice enforced in the
relations between man and man, children better educated and better
prepared to become useful and self-supporting members of the com-
munity, the farmer better guaranteed against the exaggerated or un-
just demands of the proprietor, greater facilities for saving offered,
health ensured to future generations by the hours of labour being lim-
ited, the lives of miners further safeguarded, so that there are less fre-
quent appeals to public assistance, and, as a practical result of this last
measure, the mortality in mines fallen in the last three years to 22-l per
thousand, as compared to 27'2 per thousand during the ten previous
years — a decrease of 20 per cent. ! One fact is sufficient to show the
great progress due to this State legislation : in an ever-increasing popu-
lation, crime is rapidly and greatly diminishing.

Suppose that, through making better laws, men arrive gradually at
the condition of the Norwegian peasantry, or at an organization simi-
lar to that existing in the agricultural cantons of Switzerland ; that is
to say, that each family living in the country has a plot of ground to
cultivate and a house to live in : in this case every one is allowed to
enjoy the full fruit of his labour, and receives reward in proportion
to his activity and industry, which is certainly the very ideal of jus-
tice— cuique suum.

The true instinct of humanity has ever so understood social organ-
ization that property is the indispensable basis of the family, and a
necessary condition of freedom. To prevent any one individual from
being deprived of a share in the soil, which was in primitive ages con-
sidered to be the collective property of the tribe, it was subjected to
periodical divisions ; these, indeed, still take place in the Swiss All-
mend, in some Scottish townships, in the greater part of Java, and in
the Russian Mir.

If such a regime as this were established, there would be no more
" tramps wandering from union to union." In such a state of society
as this, not in such as ours, the supreme law which ought to govern all
economic relations might be realized. Mr. Herbert Spencer admirably
defines this law in the following passage : —

" I suppose a dictum on which the current creed and the creed of science are
at one may be considered to have as high an authority as can be found. Well,

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 177

the command, If any would not work, neither should he eat, is simply a Christian
enunciation of that universal law of nature under which life has reached its
present height, the law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself
must die; the sole difference being, that the law which in one case is to be arti-
ficially enforced is in the other case a natural necessity."

This passage ought to be transcribed at the commencement of
every treatise on social science as the supreme aim of all sociological
research ; only the delusion, borrowed from the old political economy,
which consists in the belief that this dictum of science and Christian-
ity is in practice in our midst, ought to be suppressed.

Is it not a fact that, everywhere, those who can prove by authentic
documents that, for centuries past, their ancestors have thriven in idle-
ness are the richest, the most powerful, the most sought after ? Only
at some future date will this dictum of science and Christianity be
brought to bear on our social organization, and our descendants will
then establish an order of things which will create economic respon-
sibility, and ensure to each the integral enjoyment of the produce of
his labour. The difficult but necessary work of sociology is to en-
deavour to discover what this organization should be, and to prepare
its advent. Mr. Shaw Lefevre's speech shows very clearly the road
that ouerht to be taken.

Mr. Herbert Spencer thinks, however, that this road would lead us
directly to a condition of universal slavery. The State would gradu-
ally monopolize all industrial enterprises, beginning with the railways
and telegraphs as it has already done in Germany and Belgium, then
some other industries as in France, then mines, and finally, after the
nationalization of land, it would also take up agricultural enterprise.
The freedom enjoyed by a citizen must be measured, he says, not by
the nature of the government under which he lives, but by the small
number of laws to which he is subject. The essential characteristic of
the slave is that he is forced to work for another's benefit. The de-
gree of his slavery varies according to the greater or smaller extent to
which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of anotherr in-
stead of for self -benefit ; in the regime which is approaching, man will
have to work for the State, and to give up to it the largest portion of
his produce. What matters it that the master under whose command
he labours is not an individual, but society ? Thus argues Mr. Herbert
Spencer.

In my opinion, the State will never arrive at a monopoly of" all in-
dustries, for the very simple reason that such a system would never
answer. It is possible that some day a social organization such as M.
Albert Schaffle, formerly Finance Minister in Austria, has explained,
may grow up, in which all branches of production are placed in the
hands of co-operative societies. But, be that as it may, men would be
no more slaves in workshops belonging to the State than in those of
merchants or manufacturers of the present day. Mr„ Herbert Spencer

VOL. XXVII. — 12

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

can very easily assure himself of this fact. Let him visit the State
collieries at Saarbruck, or inspect the Belgian railways, and interrogate
all the officials and workmen employed ; he will find that, from the
highest to the lowest, they are quite as free, quite as contented with
their lot, as those engaged in any private industry. There is even far
more guarantee against arbitrary measures, so that their real freedom
is greater than elsewhere. The proof of this is the fact that posts in
any industries belonging to the State are always sought for by the
best workmen. If the degree of man's slavery varies according to the
ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is
allowed to retain, then it must be admitted that the majority of work-
men and small farmers are certainly slaves now, for they have very
little or no property, and, as their condition almost entirely depends
on the hard law of competition, they can only retain for themselves
the mere necessaries of life ! Are the Italian contadini, whose sad lot
I depicted in my " Lettres d'ltalie," free ? They are reduced to live
entirely on bad maize, which subjects them to that terrible scourge,
the pellagra. What sad truth is contained in their reply to the Minis-
ter who advised them not to emigrate ! —

"What do you mean by the nation? Do you refer to the most miserable of
the inhabitants of the land? If so, we are indeed the nation. Look at our pale
and emaciated faces, our bodies worn out with over-fatigue and insufficient food.
We sow and reap corn, but never taste white bread ; we cultivate the vine, but
a drop of wine never touches our lips. We raise cattle, but never eat meat ; we
are covered with rags, we live in wretched hovels ; in winter we suffer from the
cold, and both winter and summer from the pangs of hunger. Can a land which
does not provide its inhabitants, who are willing to work, with sufficient to live
upon, be considered by them as a fatherland? "

The Flemish agricultural labourer, who earns less than a shilling a
day, and the small farmer, whose rack-rent absorbs the entire net
profits ; the Highland crofters, who have been deprived of the com-
munal land, the sacred inheritance of primitive times, where they could
at least raise a few head of cattle ; the Egyptian fellahs, whose very
life-blood is drained by European creditors — in a word, all the wretched
beings all over the world where the soil is owned by non-workers, and
who labour for insufficient remuneration ; can they, any of them, be
called free? It is just possible that, if the State were to become the
universal industry director (which, in my opinion, is an impossible hj-
pothesis), their condition would not be improved ; but at all events it
could not be worse than it is now.

I do not believe that " liberty must be surrendered in proportion
as the material welfare is cared for." On the contrary, a certain
degree of well-being is a necessary condition of liberty. It is a
mockery to call a man free who, by labour, cannot secure to himself
the necessaries of existence, or to whom labour is impossible because
he possesses nothing of his own, and no one will employ him !

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. i79

Compare the life of the soldier with that of the hired workman
either in a mine or a factory. The first is the type of the serf in
" The Coming Slavery," and the second the type of the independent
man in an industrial organization under the free contract regime.
Which of the two possesses the most real liberty ? The soldier, when
his daily duties are accomplished, may read, walk, or enjoy himself in
accordance with his tastes ; the woi'kman, when he returns home
worn out with fatigue after eleven or twelve hours' hard labour, too
often finds no other recreation than the gin-palace. The labourer at
his task must always, and all day long, obey the foreman or overseer,
whether he be employed by a private individual, by the State, or by
a co-operative society.

"Hitherto," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "you have been free to
spend your earnings in any way which pleases you ; hereafter you
shall not be free to spend it, but it will be spent for the general bene-
fit." The important point, he adds, is the amount taken from me, not
the hand that takes it. But if what is taken from my revenue is em-
ployed to make a public park which I am free to enter whenever I
feel inclined, to build public baths where I may bathe in summer or
winter, to open libraries for my recreation and instruction, clubs
where I may spend my evenings, and schools where my children may
receive an education which will enable them to make their own way
in the world ; to build healthy houses, let at a low rent, which save
me the cruel necessity of living in slums, where the soul and the body
are alike degraded ; if all this be done, would the result be the same
as if this sum were taken by some private Croesus to spend on his
personal pleasures and caprices ? In the course of last summer, while
in Switzerland and Baden, I visited several villages where each family
is supplied, from forests belonging to the commune, with wood for
building purposes and for fuel ; also with pasturage for their cattle,
and with a small plot of ground on which to grow potatoes, fruit, and
vegetables. In addition to this, the wages of aH public servants are
paid for from the communal revenue, so that there is no local taxation
whatever.* Suppose that these woods and meadows, and this land,

* I may mention as an example, the township of Freudenstadt, at the foot of the
Kniebis, in Baden. Not a single farthing of taxation has been paid since its foundation
in 1557. The commune possesses about 5,000 acres of pine-forest and meadow-land,
worth about £10,000 sterling. The 1,420 inhabitants have each as much wood for their
building purposes and firing as they wish for, and each one can send out to pasture,
during the summer, his cattle, which he feeds during the winter months. The schools,
church, thoroughfares, and fountains are all w^ell cared for, and every year considerable
improvements are made. 100,000 marks were employed in 1883 for the establishment
in the village, of a distribution of water, with iron pipes. A hospital has been built, and
a pavilion in the market-place, where a band plays on fete-days. Each year a distribu-
tion of the surplus revenue is made amongst the families, and they each obtain from 50
to 60 marks, or shillings, and more still when an extraordinary quantity of timber has
been sold. In 1882, 80,000 marks were distributed amongst the 1,420 villagers. What
a favoured country, is it not ?

180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all belonged to a landed proprietor, instead of to the commune ; he
would go and lavish the revenue in large capitals or in travelling.
What an immense difference this would make to the inhabitants ! To
appreciate this, it suffices merely to comjjare the condition of the
Highland crofters, the free citizens of one of the richest countries in
the world, and whose race has ever been laborious, with that of the
population of these villages, hidden away in the Alpine cantons of
Switzerland or in the gorges of the Black Forest. If, in the High-
land villages of Scotland, rentals had been, as in these happy com-
munes of Switzerland and Baden, partly reserved for the inhabitants,
and partly employed in objects of general utility, how very different
would have been the lot of these poor people ! Had they but been
allowed to keep for themselves the sea-weed and the kelp which the
sea brings them, how far better off would they have been than they
now are, as is admirably proved in Mr. Blackie's interesting book,
" The Scottish Highlanders."

A similar remark may also be applied to politics. What matters
it, says Mr. Herbert Spencer, that I myself contribute to make laws
if these laws deprive me of my liberty ? He mentions ancient Greece
as an example to startle us at the notion of our coming state of slav-
ery. He writes : " In ancient Greece the accepted principle was, that
the citizen belonged neither to himself nor to his family, but to his
city — the city being, with the Greek, equivalent to the community.
And this doctrine, proper to a state of constant warfare, is one which
socialism unawares re-introduces into a state intended to be purely
industrial." It is perfectly certain that the regime of ancient Greek
cities, which was founded on slavery, cannot be suitable to modern
society, which is based on a system of labour. But we must not allow
ourselves to forget what Greece was, nor all we owe to that Greek
civilization, which, Mr. Herbert Spencer says, the " coming slavery "
threatens to re-introduce amongst us. Not only philosophy, literature,
and arts flourished as they have never done in any other age, but the
political system so stamped characters with individuality that the
illustrious men of Greece are types of human greatness, whose deeds
and sayings will be engraven on the memory of men so long as the
world lasts. If the " coming slavery " gives us such men as Pisistra-
tus, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Lycurgus, Sophocles, Thucydides,
Epaminondas, Aristides, or Pericles, we shall, I think, have no cause
to complain ! But how is it that Greece produced such a bevy of
great men ? By her democratic institutions, combined with a marvel-
lous system of education, which developed simultaneously the faculties
of the mind and the body.

The German army, in spite of its iron discipline, arrives at results
somewhat similar, though in a less degree. A rough peasant joins a
regiment ; he is taught to walk properly, to swim, and to shift for
himself ; his education is made more complete, and he becomes a man

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 181

of independent character, better fitted to survive in the struggle for
life. If the authorities in towns levy heavy taxes, and employ the
money in improving the condition of the inhabitants and in forming
those who need forming, even more than in the German army, and
after the fashion of the ancient Greeks, will not the generations yet to
come be better able to earn their own livelihood, and to maintain an
honourable position, than if they had been allowed to pass their child-
hood in the gutters ? Mr. Herbert Spencer reasons falsely when he
says, " What matters it that I make the laws if these lawTs deprive me
of my liberty ? " Laws which tax me to degrade and rob me are
odious, but laws which deprive me of what I have for my own good
and for the further development of my faculties are well-meaning, as
is the constraint imposed on his children by a wise father for their
instruction or correction. Besides, to contribute to make laws ele-
vates a man's character. As Stuart Mill has proved, this is indeed one
of the great advantages of an extension of the suffrage. A man called
upon to vote is naturally raised from the sphere of personal to that of
general interests. He will read, discuss, and endeavour to obtain in-
formation. Others will argue with him, try to change his opinions,
and he will himself realize that he has a certain importance of his own,
that he has a word to say in the direction of public affairs. The ele-
vating influence of this sentiment over French, and still more over
Swiss, citizens is remarkable.

It is perfectly true that, for political and social reforms to be pro-
ductive of fruits, the society into which they are introduced must be
in a sufficiently advanced condition to be able to understand and apply
them, but it must not be forgotten that improved institutions make
better men.

Go to Norway ; crimes are hardly known there. In the country
people never close their doors at night, locks and bolts are scarcely
known, and there are no robberies ; probably, first, because the people
are moral and religious, but certainly, also, because property is very
equally divided. None live in opulence and none in absolute beggary,
and certainly misery and degradation, which often results from misery,
are the causes of the great majority of crimes.

The rich financier, Helvetius, wrote, very truly, that, if every citi-
zen were an owner of property, the general tone of the nation would
be conservative, but if the majority have nothing, robbery then be-
comes the general aim. ("De l'Homme," sect. vi. chap, vii.)

In conclusion, let us try to go to the root of the matter. Two sys-
tems are suggested as cures for the evils under which society is suf-
fering. On the one hand, it may be said, in accordance with the
doctrines of Christianity and socialism, that these evils are the conse-
quences of men's perversity and selfishness, and that it behoves charity
and fraternity to remedy them. We must do our best to assist our
unfortunate brethren. But how ? By trying, Christ tells us, to imi-

182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tate God's Kingdom, where " the last shall be first and the first last ; "
— or by " having all things in common," say the Apostles in all the
ardour of primitive Christianity, and later on certain religious com-
munities ; — or by the giving of alms and other charitable acts, says
the Christianity of the middle ages ; — while socialism maintains that
this may be effected by reforms in the laws regulating the division of
property. On the other hand, political economy and evolutionary
sociology teach us that these miseries are the inevitable and beneficent
consequences of natural laws ; that these laws, being necessary condi-
tions of progress, any endeavour to do away with them would be to
disturb the order of nature and delay the dawn of better things. By
" the weeding out of the sickly and infirm," and the survival of the
fittest, the process of amelioration of species in the animal kingdom is
accomplished. This law of natural selection should be allowed free
and ample scope in human society. " Society is not a manufacture,
but a growth." Might is really right, for it is to the general interest
that the mighty should triumph and perpetuate the race. Thus argues
what is now called Science.

In a book entitled " The True History of Joshua Davidson," the
author places ideal Christianity and contemporary society face to face,
and shows very clearly the opposition which exists between the doc-
trines of would-be science and those of the Gospel : —

" If the dogmas of political economy are really exact, if the laws of the
struggle for life and the survival of the fittest must really be applied to human
society, as well as to plants and animals, then let us at once admit that Chris-
tianity, which gives assistance to the poor and needy, and which stretches out a
hand to the sinner, is a mere folly; and let us at once abandon a belief which
influences neither our political institutions nor our social arrangements, and
which ought not to influence them. If Christ was right, then our present Chris-
tianity is wrong, and if sociology really contains scientific truth, then Jesus of
Nazareth spoke and acted in vain, or rather He rebelled against the immutable
laws of nature." (Tauchnitz edition, p. 252.)

Mr. William Graham, in his " Creed of Science " (p. 278), writes as
follows : —

" This great and far-reaching controversy, the most important in the history
of our species, which is probably as old as human society itself, and certainly
as old as the ' Republic ' of Plato, in which it is discussed, or as Christianity,
which began with a communistic form of society, had yet only within the past
half century come to be felt as a controversy involving real and living issues
of a momentous character, and not Utopias only remotely bordering upon the
possible."

I think it may be proved that this so-called "doctrine of science"
is contrary to facts, and is, consequently, not scientific ; whereas the
creed of Christianity is in keeping with both present facts and ideal
humanity.

Darwin borrowed his idea of the struggle for existence and the

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 183

survival of the fittest from Malthus, from whom he also drew his
theories of evolution and of transformism ; but no naturalist ever
dreamt of applying either of these laws to human society. It has
been reserved to sociology to attempt this, because it has accepted,
blindfolded, from the hands of economists, this most erroneous prin-
ciple : that society is governed by natural laws, and that it suffices to
give them free scope for the greatest possible happiness and pros-
perity to reign. It is manifestly true that, as human society is com-
prehended in what we call Nature, it must obey her laws ; but the
laws and institutions, in all their different forms, which decree as to
the acquisition and transmission of property or possessions, and heredi-
tary succession, in a word, all civil and penal laws, emanate from
men's will, and from the decisions of legislators ; and if experience,
or a higher conception of justice, shows us that these laws are bad,
or in any way lacking, we are free to change them. As far as the
Darwinian laws are concerned, it would be perfectly impossible to
apply them to existing society without more radically destroying all
established institutions than the most avowed Nihilist would wish
to do.

If it be really advisable that the law of the " survival of the fittest "
should be established amongst us, the first step to be taken would be
the abolition of all laws which punish theft and murder. Animals
provide themselves with food by physical activity and the use of their
muscles. Among men, in consequence of successive institutions, such
as slavery, servitude, and revenue, numbers of people now live in plenty
on their income, and do nothing at all. If Mr. Herbert Spencer is
really desirous to see the supreme principle, " reward in proportion to
desert," in force amongst us, he must obtain, first of all, the suppres-
sion of the existing regulations as to property. In the animal world,
the destiny of each is decided by its aptitudes. Among ourselves, the
destiny of each is determined by the advantages obtained or inherited
from parents, and the heir to, or owner of, a large estate is sure to be
well received everywhere. We see then, that before Darwinian laws
can become established, family succession must be abolished. Ani-
mals, like plants, obey the instincts of nature, and reproduce themselves
rapidly ; but incessant carnage prevents their too excessive multiplica-
tion ! As men become more civilized, peace becomes more general ;
they talk of their fellow-men as their brothers, and some philosophers
even dream — the madmen ! — of arbitration supplanting war ! The
equilibrium between the births and the deaths is thus upset ! To bal-
ance it again, let us glorify battles, asd exclaim, with General Moltke,
that the idea of suppressing them is a mischievous Utopia ; let us im-
pose silence on those dangerous fanatics who repeat incessantly, " Peace
on earth, good will towards men."

In the very heart of nature reigns seeming injustice ; or, as M.
Renan puts it more strongly, nature is the embodiment of injustice.

184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A falling stone crushes both the honest man and the scamp ! A bird
goes out to find food for its young, and after long search is returning
to its nest with its well-earned gains, when an eagle, the despot of the
air, swoops down and steals the food ; we think this iniquitous and
odious, and would not tolerate such an instance amongst us. Vigorous
Cain kills gentle Abel. Right and justice protest. They should not do
so, for it is the mere putting in practice " of the purifying process by
which nature weeds out the least powerful and prevents the vitiation
of the race by the multiplication of its inferior samples." Helvetius
admirably defines, for its condemnation, this Darwinian law which
Herbert Spencer would have society accept : —

"The savage says to those who are weaker than himself: Look up to the
skies and you see the eagle swooping down on the dove ; cast your eyes on the
earth and you see the lion tearing to pieces the stag or the antelope ; while in
the depths of the ocean small fishes are destroyed hy sharks. The whole of
nature announces that the weak must be the prey of the strong. Strength is a
gift of the gods. Through it I become possessor of all it is in my power to cap-
ture." ("De l'Homme," iv. 8.)

The constant effort of moralists and legislators has been to replace
the reign of might by a reign of justice. As Bacon says, In socie-
tate aut vis end lex viget. The object is to subject men's actions more
and more to the empire of the law, and that the law should be more
and more in conformity with equity. Society has ever been, and still
is, to a great extent, too much a reflection of nature. Violations of
justice are numerous, and, if these are to be put a stop to, we must
oppose ourselves still more to the laws of nature, instead of contem-
plating their re-establishment.

This is why Christianity, which is an ardent aspiration after jus-
tice, is in real accordance with true science. In the book of Job the
problem is tragically proposed. The unjust are equally happy with the
just, and, as in nature, the strong live at the cost of the weak. Right
protests against this, and the voice of the poor is raised against their
oppressors. Listen. What deep thought is contained in the follow-
ing passage ! — " Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are
mighty in power ? Their seed is established in their sight with them,
and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear,
neither is the rod of God upon them." (Job xxi. 7-9). " Some remove
land-marks ; they violently take away flocks and feed thereof. They
cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaf
from the hungry ; which make oil within their walls, and tread their
wine-presses, and suffer thirst" (Job xxiv. 2, 10, 11).

The prophets of Israel raised an eloquent protest against the evils
then reigning in society, and announced that a time should come when
justice would be established upon the earth. These hopes of a Mes-
siah were expressed in such precise terms that they may serve as a

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 185

programme of the reforms which yet remain to he accomplished.
" He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of
the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. He shall spare
the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. There
shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mount-
ains" (Psalm lxxii. 4, 13, 1G). "And the work of righteousness shall
be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for
ever " (Isaiah xxxii. 17). " Surely I will no more give thy corn to be
meat for thine enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink
thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured ; but they that have gath-
ered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord ; and they that have brought
it together shall drink it in the courts of My holiness " (Isaiah lxii. 8,
9). In the New Jerusalem " there shall be no more sorrow nor cry-
ing." "They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not
plant, and another eat ; for as the days of a tree are the days of My
people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands "
(Isaiah lxv. 21, 22).

The prophet thus raises his voice in favour of the poor, in the
name of justice, not of charity and mercy. " The Lord will enter into
judgment with the ancients of His people and the princes thereof :
for ye have eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your
houses. What mean ye that ye beat My people to pieces, and grind
the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord God of hosts " (Isaiah iii. 14,
15). " Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field
till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of
the earth " (Isaiah v. 8). In the future society property will be en-
sured to all, and every one will " sit under his vine and under his fig-
tree" (Micah iv. 4).

The ideal of the prophets comprehends, then, in the first place, the
triumph of justice, which will bring liberty to the oppressed, consola-
tion to the outcast, and the produce of their labours to the workers ;
and secondly, and chiefly, it will bring the glorification and domina-
tion of the elect people — Israel.

The ideal of the Gospel makes less of this second consideration of
national grandeur and pre-eminence, and places in the foreground
the radical transformation of the social order. The Gospel is the
" good tidings of great joy," the ~E>vayyi\iov, carried to the poor, the
approach of the Kingdom of God — that is to say, of the reign of jus-
tice. " The last shall be first ; " therefore the pretended " natural
order " will be reversed !

Who will possess the earth ? Not the mightiest, as in the animal
creation, and as Darwinian laws decree ; not the rich, " for it is
easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man
to enter the Kingdom of God." Lazarus is received into Abraham's
bosom, while Dives is cast into the place of torment, " where there
is weeping and gnashing of teeth." The first of biological precepts,

186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the one respecting the survival of the fittest, as it immolates others
for personal benefit, is essentially selfish, which is a vice incessantly-
reprobated in the New Testament. "Look not every man on his
own things, but every man also on the things of others " (Philip-
pians ii. 4). The chief of all Christian virtues is charity ; it is the
very essence of the Gospel. " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you " (St.
Matthew vi. 33).

How very true is the economic doctrine that, with equitable laws,
each should enjoy the integral produce of his labour, and that, were
this the case, personal activity would attain its highest degree. Noth-
ing is more adverse to the prosperity of a nation than unjust laws ;
and this is precisely what the prophets and Christ teach us.

If Darwinian laws were applied to human society, the utility of
history, considered as a moral lesson for both kings and people, would
be destroyed. The history of man might then be looked upon as a
mere zoological strife between nations, and a simple lengthening out
of natural history. What moral instruction can possibly be drawn from
the study of the animal world, where the strong devour or destroy the
weak ? No spectacle could be more odious or more demoralizing !

The incomparable sublimity of the Gospel, which is, alas ! only
too often misinterpreted, consists in an ardent longing for perfection,
in that aspiration for an ideal of justice which urged Jesus and His
earliest disciples to condemn the world as it then was. Thence sprang
the hatred of evil in its many various forms, the desire for better
things, for reforms and progress ! Why do Mahometans stand still
in the march of civilization, while Christian countries advance ever
more and more rapidly ? Because the first are resigned to evil, whereas
the second combat and endeavour to extirpate it. The stoicism — the
elevated character of which can hardly be sufficiently admired — the
austerity, and purity of such ancients as Marcus Aurelius, neverthe-
less, bowed before absolute facts, looking upon them as the inevitable
results of the actual and natural order of things. Like modern evolu-
tionists, they glorified the laws of nature, considering them perfect.
Their optimism led them so far as to adore the cosmos as a divinity.
" All that thou wilt, O Cosmos," says Marcus Aurelius, " is my will ;
nothing is too early or too late for me, if it be at the hour thou decid-
est upon. My fruit is such as thy seasons bring, O Nature ! From
thee comes all. Thou art all. All go towards thee. If the gods be
essentially good and just, they must have permitted nothing, in the
arrangement of the world, contrary to right and justice." What a
contrast between this serene satisfaction and the complaints of Job, of
the prophets, and of Christ Himself ! The true Christian, in direct
opposition to stoics and to Mr. Herbert Spencer, holds that the world
is completely infected with evil ; he avoids it carefully, and lives in
the hope of a general cataclysm, which will reduce our globe to ashes,

THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 187

and make place for a new and purified heaven and earth ! The belief
of stoics and of evolutionary sociologists logically advocates inaction,
for it respects the present order of things as attributable to natural
laws. The Christian's belief leads him to ardently desire reform and
progress, but also, when he is deceived and reduced to despair, it occa-
sionally culminates in revolutionary violence and in Nihilism.

Not only Jesus, but all great religious reformers, such as Buddha,
Mahomet, Luther, and the great philosophers, especially Socrates and
Plato, and the great lawgivers, from Solon and Lycurgus to the legis-
lators of the French Revolution — all the elect of humanity, in fact —
are struck with the evils under which our race is forced to suffer, and
have imagined and revealed an ideal social order more in conformity
with the ideal of justice ; and in their writings they place this Utopia
in contrast with the existing order. The more Christianity becomes
despoiled of dogmas, and the more the ideas of moral and social
reform, contained in Christ's teachings, are brought forward as the
chief aim, the more Mr. Herbert Spencer's principles will be shunned
and avoided. In the splendid development of Roman law, which lasted
fifteen hundred years, a similar evolution took place. In the beginning,
in the laws of the twelve tables, many traces of the hard law in favour
of the mighty may be found. This is symbolized by the lance (quir),
which gave its name to the quiritarian right. The father was allowed
to sell or destroy his children, as they were his possession. He had
absolute power over his slaves, who were his " things." The creditor
might throw his debtor in prison, or even cause him to be cut in pieces
— in partes secanto. The wife was entirely in her husband's power —
in manu. Little by little, as centuries rolled on, eminent lawgivers
succeeded each other, and gradual changes were made, so that, finally,
just and humanitarian principles penetrated the entire Roman code, and
the Darwinian law, which glorifies might, gave place to the Christian
law, which extols justice.

This movement will most assuredly continue, in spite of all the
abuse it may receive from Mr. Herbert Spencer, and from others
who think as he does. It is a result of the advance of civilization
from the commencement of Christianity, and even from the time of
the prophets of Israel. It will manifest itself, not as it did in the
middle ages, by works of mercy, but, under the control of economic
science, by the intervention of the State in favour of the disinherited,
and by measures such as Mr. Shaw Lefevre approves of, so that each
and all should be placed in a position to be able to command reward
in proportion to the amount of useful labour accomplished.

Darwinian laws, generally admitted in the domain of natural
history and in the animal kingdom, will never be applied to human
societies, until the sentiments of charity and justice, which Christianity
engraves on our hearts, are completely eradicated. — Contemporary
Review.

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A REJOINDER TO M. DE LAYELEYE.

By IIEEBERT SPENCEK.

THE Editor of the Contemporary Review having kindly allowed
me to see a proof of the foregoing article by M. de Laveleye, and
having assented to my request that I might be allowed to append a
few explanations and comments, in place of a more formal reply in a
future number of the Review, I have, in the following pages, set down
as much as seems needful to prevent the grave misunderstandings
likely to be produced by M. de Laveleye's criticisms, if they are per-
mitted to pass unnoticed.

On the first page of his essay, M. de Laveleye, referring to the
effort to establish " greater equality among men " by " appropriating
State, or communal, revenues " for that end, writes —

"Mr. Spencer considers that this effort for the improvement of the condition
of the working-classes, which is being everywhere made with greater or less
energy, is a violation of natural laws, which will not fail to bring its own pun-
ishment on nations, thus misguided by a blind philanthropy " (p. 485).

As this sentence stands, and especially as joined with all which fol-
lows, it is calculated to produce the impression that I am opposed to
measures " for the improvement of the condition of the working-
classes." This is quite untrue, as numerous passages frcam my books
would show. Two questions are involved — What are the measures ?
and — What is the agency for carrying them out ? In the first place,
there are various measures conducive to " improvement of the condi-
tion of the working-classes " which I have always contended, and still
contend, devolve on public agencies, general and local — above all, an
efficient administration of justice, by which they benefit both directly
and indirectly — an administration such as not simply represses violence
and fraud, but promptly brings down a penalty on every one who
trespasses against his neighbour, even by a nuisance. While contend-
ing for the diminution of State-action of the positively-regulative kind,
I have contended for the increase of State-action of the negatively-
regulative kind — that kind which restrains the activities of citizens
within the limits imposed by the existence of other citizens who have
like claims to carry on their activities. I have shown that " malad-
ministration of justice raises, very considerably, the cost of living for
all ; " * and is, therefore, felt especially by the working-classes, whose
state is most closely dependent on the cost of living. As one of the
evils of over-legislation, I have, from the beginning, urged that, while
multitudinous other questions absorb public attention, the justice-
question gets scarcely any attention ; and social life is everywhere

* " Study of Sociology," p. 415, postscript in library edition.

A REJOINDER TO M. BE LAVELEYE. 189

vitiated by the consequent inequities.* While defending laissez-faire
in its original and proper sense, I have pointed out that the policy of
universal meddling has for its concomitant that vicious laissez-faire
which leaves dishonesty to flourish at the expense of honesty.f In
the second place, there are numerous other measures conducive to "the
improvement of the condition of the working-classes " which I desire
quite as much as M. de Laveleye to see undertaken ; and simply differ
from him concerning the agency by which they shall be undertaken.
Without wishing to restrain philanthropic action, but quite contrari-
wise, I have in various places argued that philanthropy will better
achieve its ends by non-governmental means than by governmental
means.J M. de Laveleye is much more familiar than I am with the
facts showing that, in societies at large, the organized arrangements
which carry on production and distribution have been evolved not
only without State-help, but very generally in spite of State-hindrance ;
and hence I am surprised that he apparently gives no credence to the
doctrine that, by private persons acting either individually or in com-
bination, there may be better achieved multitudinous ends which it is
the fashion to invoke State-agency for.

Speaking of the domain of individual liberty, M. de Laveleye
says —

"To be brief, I agree with Mr. Herbert Spencer that, contrary to Rousseau's
doctrine, State power ought to be limited, and that a domain should be reserved
to individual liberty which should be always respected ; but the limits of this
domain should be fixed, not by tbe people, but by reason and science, keeping in
view what is best for the public welfare " (p. 488).

I am a good deal perplexed at finding the last clause of this sentence
apparently addressed to me as though in opposition. " Social Statics "
is a work mainly occupied with the endeavour to establish these limits
by " reason and science." In the " Data of Ethics," I have sought, in
a chapter entitled the " Sociological View," to show how certain lim-
its to individual liberty are deducible from the laws of life as carried
on under social conditions. And in " The Man versus The State,"
which M. de Laveleye is more particularly dealing with, one part of
the last chapter is devoted to showing, deductively, the derivation of
what are called " natural rights " from the vital needs, which each
man has to satisfy by activities pursued in presence of other men who
have to satisfy like needs ; while another part of the chapter is de-
voted to showing, inductively, how recognition of natural rights began,
in the earliest social groups, to be initiated by those retaliations which
trespasses called forth — retaliations ever tending to produce respect
for the proper limits of action. If M. de Laveleye does not consider

* See " Social Statics : ' The Duty of the State.' " Also " Essays," vol. ii. pp. 94-8 ;
vol. iii. p. 167.

•j- "Study of Sociology," pp. 351-3, cheap edition.
% " Social Statics : ' Poor Laws.' "

i9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this to be an establishment of limits " by reason and science," what
are the kinds of " reason and science " by which he expects to estab-
lish them ?

On another page M. de Laveleye says —

" I am of opinion that the State should make use of its legitimate powers of
action for the establishment of greater equality among men, in proportion to
their personal merits " (p. 489).

Merely observing that the expression " its legitimate powers of action "
seems to imply a begging of the question, since the chief point in
dispute is — What are " its legitimate powers of action ; " I go on to
express my surprise at such a sentence coming from a distinguished
political economist. M. de Laveleye refers to the "old-fashioned
political economy," implying that he is one of those younger econo-
mists who dissent from its doctrine ; but I was quite unprepared to find
that his dissent went so far as tacitly to deny that in the average of
cases a proportioning of rewards to personal merits naturally takes
place under the free play of supply and demand. Still less, after all
the exposures made of the miseries inflicted on men throughout the
past by the blundering attempts of the State to adjust prices and
wages, did I expect to see in a political economist such a revived con-
fidence in the State as would commission it to adjust men's rewards
" in proportion to their personal merit." I hear that there are some
who contend that payment should be proportionate to the disagree-
ableness of the work done : the implication, I suppose, being that
the knacker and the nightman should reeeive two or three guineas a
day, while a physician's fee should be half-a-crown. But, with such a
proportioning, I suspect that, as there would be no returns adequate
to repay the cost and time and labor of preparation for the practice
of medicine, physicians would quickly disappear ; as would, indeed, all
those required for the higher social functions. I do not suppose that
M. de Laveleye contemplates a proportioning just of this kind. But
if in face of all experience, past and present, he trusts officialism to
judge of "personal merits," he is sanguine to a degree which sur-
prises me.

One of the questions which M. de Laveleye asks is —

"If the intervention of public power for the improvement of the condition
of the working-classes be a contradiction of history, and a return to ancient
militant society, how is it that the country in which the new industrial organi-
zation is the most developed — that is to say, England — is also the country where
State intervention is the most rapidly increasing, and where opinion is at the
same time pressing for these powers of interference to be still further extended ? "
(p. 491).

Several questions are here raised besides the chief one. I have
already pointed out that my objection is not to " intervention of public
power for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes,"

A REJOINDER TO M. BE LAVELEYE. 191

but to interventions of certain kinds. The abolition of laws forbid-
ding trade-combinations, and of laws forbidding the travelling of
artisans, were surely measures which improved " the condition of the
working-classes ; " and these were measures which I should have been
eager to join in obtaining. Similarly, at the present time I am
desirous of seeing provided the easiest and most efficient remedies for
sailors fraudulently betrayed into unseaworthy ships ; and I heartily
sympathize with those who denounce the continual encroachments of
landowners — enclosures of commons and the turf-covered borders of
lanes, &c. These, and kindred injustices to the working - classes,
stretching far back, I am no less desirous to see remedied than is
M. de Laveleye ; provided always that due care is taken that other
injustices are not committed in remedying them. Evidently, then,
this expression of M. de Laveleye raises a false issue. Again, he says
that I call this public intervention on behalf of the working-classes
" a return to ancient militant society." This is quite a mistake. In
ancient militant society the condition of the working-classes was very
little cared for, and, indeed, scarcely thought of. My assertion was
that the coercive system employed, was like the coercive system em-
ployed in a militant society : the ends to which the systems are
directed, being quite different. But turning to the chief point in his
question, I meet it by counter-questions — Why is it that the " new
industrial organization" is best developed in England? and — Under
what conditions was it developed ? I need hardly point out to M. de
Laveleye that the period during which industrial organization in Eng-
land developed more rapidly and extensively than elsewhere, was a
period during which the form of government was less coercive than
elsewhere, and the individual less interfered with than elsewhere.
And if now, led by the admirers of Continental bureaucracies, eager
philanthropists are more rapidly extending State-administrations here
than they are being extended abroad, it is obviously because there is
great scope for the further extension of them here, while abroad there
is little scope for the further extension of them.

In justification of coercive methods for "improving the condition
of the working-classes," M. de Laveleye says :

" One fact is sufficient to show the great progress due to this State legisla-
tion : in an ever-increasing population, crime is rapidly and greatly diminish-
ing" (p. 496).

Now, without dwelling on the fact, shown in Mr. Pike's " History of
Crime in England," that " violence and lawlessness " had increased
during the war period which ended at Waterloo ; and without dwell-
ing on the fact that, after the recovery from prostration produced by
war, there was a diminution of crime along with that great diminution
of coercive legislation which characterized the long period of peace ;
I go on to remark that a primary condition to the correct drawing of

192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inferences is — other tilings equal. Does M. de Laveleye really think,
when comparing the state of the last generation with that of the
present, that other things are so equal that to the growth of State-
administrations can be ascribed the decrease of crime ? He ignores
those two factors, far more important than all others, which have pro-
duced a social revolution — railways and free-trade : the last resulting
from the abolition of governmental restraints after a long struggle,
and the first effected by private enterj^rise carried out in spite of
strenuous opposition for some time made in the Legislature. Beyond
all question, the prosperity due to these factors has greatly ameliorated
the condition of the working-classes, and by so doing has diminished
crime ; for undoubtedly, diminishing the difficulties of getting food,
diminishes one of the temptations to crime. If M. de Laveleye refers
to a more recent diminution, then, unless he denies the alleged relation
between drunkenness and crime, he must admit that the temperance
agitation, with its pledges, its " Bands of Hope," and its " Blue Rib-
bon League," has had a good deal to do with it.

Before passing to the chief question let me correct M. de Laveleye
on some minor points. He says —

"I think that the great fundamental error of Mr. Herbert Spencer's system,
which is so generally accepted at the present day, consists iu the helief that if
State power were hut sufficiently reduced," &c.

Now I set against this a sentence not long since published by Mr.
Frederic Harrison :

"Mr. Spencer has himself just published .... 'The Man versus The State,'
to which he hardly expects to make a convert except here and there, and about
which an unfriendly critic might say that it might be entitled 'Mr. Spencer
against all England.' " {Nineteenth Century, vol. xvi. p. 366.)

The fear lest my arguments should prevail, which I presume prompted
M. de Laveleye's article, is evidently ill-founded. I wish I saw reason
to believe that his estimate is nearer to the truth than the opposite
one.

On p. 490, M. de Laveleye writes —

" The law that Mr. Herbert Spencer desires society to adopt is simply Dar-
win's law — ' the survival of the fittest.' " ■$

Perhaps I may be excused for wishing here to prevent further con-
firmation of a current error. In his article, M. de Laveleye has quoted
from " Social Statics " passages showing insistance on the benefits re-
sulting from survival of the fittest among mankind, as well as among
animals ; though he ignores the fact that the work as a whole is an
elaborate statement of the conditions under which, and limits within
which, the natural process of elimination of the unfit should be allowed
to operate. Here my immediate purpose is to correct the impression
which his statement, as above worded, produces, by naming the dates :

A REJOINDER TO M. DE LAVELEYE. 193

"Social Statics" was published in 1851 ; Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Spe-
cies" in 1859.

And now I pass to the main issue. In pursuance of his statement
that I wish society to adopt the survival of the fittest as its guiding
principle, M. de Laveleye goes on to describe what would be its action
as applied to mankind. Here are his words :

" This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to prevail in
human societies, but everything in our present organization (which economists,
and even Mr. Spencer himself, admit, however, to be natural) is wholly opposed
to any such conditions. An old and sickly lion captured a gazelle ; his younger
and stronger brother arrives, snatches away his prize, and lives to perpetuate
the species; the old one dies in the struggle, or is starved to death. Such is the
beneficent law of the 'survival of the fittest.' It was thus among barbarian
tribes. But could such a law exist in our present social order? Certainly not!
The rich man, feebly constituted and sickly, protected by the law, enjoys his
wealth, marries and has offspring, and if an Apollo of herculean strength at-
tempted to take from him his possessions, or his wife, he would be thrown into
prison, and were he to attempt to practise the Darwinian law of selection, be
would certainly run a fair risk of the gallows" (p. 492).

Now though, on the next page, M. de Laveleye recognizes the fact
that the survival of the fittest, as I construe it in its social applica-
tions, is the survival of the industrially superior and those who are
fittest for the requirements of social life, yet, in the paragraph I have
quoted, he implies that the view I hold would countenance violent
methods of replacing the inferior by the superior. Unless he desires
to suggest that I wish to see the principle operate among men as it
operates among brutes, why did he write this paragraph ? In the
work before him, without referring to other works, he has abundant
proof that, above all things, aggression of every kind is hateful to me ;
and he scarcely needs telling that from my earliest book, written more
than a third of a century ago, down to the present time, I have urged
the change of all laws which either inflict injustice or fail to remedy
injustice, whether committed by one individual against another, or by
class against class, or by people against people. Why, then, did M.
de Laveleye make it seem that I would, if I could, establish a reign of
injustice under its most brutal form ? If there needs proof that in
my view the struggle for existence as carried on in society, and the
greater multiplication of those best fitted for the struggle, must be
subject to rigorous limitations, I may quote as sufficient proof a pas-
sage from the " Data of Ethics : " premising that the word co-opera-
tion used in it, must be understood in its widest sense, as comprehend-
ing all those combined activities by which citizens carry on social life:

" The leading traits of a code under which complete living through volun-
tary co-operation [here antithetically opposed to compulsory co-operation, char-
acterizing the militant type of society] is secured, may be simply stated. The
fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall sever-
vol. xxvii. — 13

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by them ;
and this implies, firstly, that he shall suffer no direct aggressions on his person
or property, and, secondly, that he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach
of contract. Observance of these negative conditions to voluntary co-operation
having facilitated life to the greatest extent by exchange of services under agree-
ment, life is to be further facilitated by exchange of services beyond agreement ;
the highest life being reached only when, besides helping to complete one
another's lives by specified reciprocities of aid, men otherwise help to complete
one another's lives " (p. 149).

This passage, indeed, raises in a convenient form the essential ques-
tion. It will be observed that in it are specified two sets of conditions,
by conforming to which men living together may achieve the greatest
happiness. The first set of conditions is that which we comprehend
under the general name justice / the second set of conditions is that
which we comprehend under the general name generosity. The posi-
tion of M. de Laveleye, and of the multitudes who think with him, is
that the community, through its government, may rightly undertake
both to administer justice and to practise generosity. On the other
hand, I, and the few who think with me, contend that justice alone is
to be administered by the community in its corporate capacity ; and
that the practice of generosity is to be left to private individuals, and
voluntarily-formed combinations of individuals. Insuring each citi-
zen's safety in person and property, as well as insuring him such re-
turns for his services as his fellow-citizens agree to give, is a public
affair ; while affording him help, and giving him benefits beyond those
he has earned, is a private affair. The reason for maintaining this dis-
tinction is that the last duty can not be undertaken by the State with-
out breach of the first. The vital requirement to social life must be
broken that a non-vital requirement may be fulfilled. Under a reign
of absolute justice unqualified by generosity, a social life may be car-
ried on, though not the highest social life ; but a reign of generosity
without any justice — a system under which those who work are not
paid, so that those who have been idle or drunken may be saved from
misery — is fatal ; and any approach to it is injurious. That only can
be a wholesome state in which conduct brings its natural results, good
or evil, as the case may be ; and it is the business of Government, act-
ing on behalf of all, to see that each citizen shall not be defrauded of
the good results, and that he shall not shoulder off the evil results on
to others. If others, in their private capacities, are prompted by affec-
tion or pity to mitigate the evil results, by all means let them do so :
no power can equitably prevent them from making efforts, or giving
money, to diminish the sufferings of the unfortunate and the inferior ;
at the same time that no power can equitably coerce them into doing
this.

If M. de Laveleye holds, as he appears to do, that enforcing the
normal relations between conduct and consequences, right as it may

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT. 195

be in the abstract, is impracticable under existing social conditions,
which are in many cases such that men get what they have neither
earned nor otherwise equitably received, and in many cases such that
they are prevented from earning anything ; then my reply is, by all
means, where this condition of things is due to unjust arrangements,
let us rectify these arrangements as fast as we can. But let us not
adopt the disastrous policy of establishing new injustices for the pur-
pose of mitigating the mischiefs produced by old injustices. — Contem-
porary JReview.

~+*+~

WHALES, PAST AND PKESENT.*

By Pbofessob W. H. FLOWER, F. R. S.

FEW natural groups present so many remarkable illustrations of
several of the most important general laws which appear to have
determined the structure of animal bodies as that of the whales. We
find the effects of the two opposing forces — that of heredity or con-
formation to ancestral characters, and that of adaptation to changed
environment, whether brought about by the method of natural selec-
tion or otherwise — distinctly written in almost every part of their
structure. Scarcely anywhere in the animal kingdom do we see so
many cases of the persistence of rudimentary and apparently useless
organs, those marvelous and suggestive phenomena which at one time
seemed hopeless enigmas, causing despair to those who tried to unravel
their meaning, but now eagerly welcomed as beacons of true light,
casting illuminating beams upon the dark paths through which the
organism has traveled on its way to reach the goal of its present con-
dition of existence.

It is chiefly to these rudimentary organs of the Cetacea and to
what we may learn from them that I propose to call your attention.
In each case the question may well be asked, Are they survivals, rem-
nants of a past condition, become useless owing to change of circum-
stances and environment ; or are they incipient structures, beginnings
of what may in future become functional and important parts of the
economy ?

The term " whale " is commonly but vaguely applied to all the larger
and middle-sized Cetacea, and, though such smaller species as the dol-
phins and porpoises are not usually spoken of as whales, they may to
all intents and purposes of zoological science be included in the term.
Taken all together the Cetacea constitute a distinct and natural order of
mammals, characterized by their aquatic mode of life and external fish-
like form. The body is fusiform, passing anteriorly into the head with-
out any distinct constriction or neck, and posteriorly tapering off grad-
* Abridged from a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, London, May 25, 1883.

196

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ually toward the extremity of the tail, which is provided with a pair
of lateral pointed expansions of skin supported by dense fibrous tissue,
called "flukes," forming together a horizontally placed, triangular pro-
pelling organ. The fore-limbs are reduced to the condition of flattened
ovoid paddles, incased in a continuous integument, showing no external
sign of division into arm, fore-arm, and hand, or of separate digits, and
without any trace of nails. There are no vestiges of hind-limbs visible
externally. The general surface of the body is smooth and glistening,
and devoid of hair. In nearly all species a compressed median dorsal
fin is present. The nostrils open separately or by a single crescentic
valvular aperture, not at the extremity of the snout, but near the
vertex.

Animals of the order Cetacea abound in all known seas, and some
species are inhabitants of the larger rivers of South America and Asia.

Their organization necessi-
H^ tates their life being passed
entirely in the water, as on
g the land they are absolutely
jg helpless ; but they have to
rise very frequently to the
surface for the purpose of
respiration. They are all pre-
daceous, subsisting on living
animal food of some kind.
One genus alone ( Orca) eats
other warm-blooded animals,
as seals and even members of
its own order, both large and small. Some feed on fish, others on small
floating Crustacea, pteropods, and medusa?, while the staple food of
many is constituted of the various species of Cephalopods. With some
exceptions the Cetacea generally are timid, inoffensive animals, active
in their movements, sociable and gregarious in their habits.

Among the existing members of the order there are two very dis-
tinct types — the toothed whales, or Odontoceti, and the baleen (whale-
bone) whales, or Mystacoceti, which present throughout their organi-
zation most markedly distinct structural characters, and have in the
existing state of nature no transitional forms.

The problem of the origin of the Cetacea and their relations to
other forms of life is at present involved in the greatest obscurity.
They present no more signs of affinity with any of the lower classes
of vertebrated animals than do many of the members of their own
class. Indeed, in all that essentially distinguishes a mammal from
one of the oviparous vertebrates, they are as truly mammalian as
any, even the highest, members of the class. Any supposed signs
of inferiority are simply modifications in adaptation to their peculiar
mode of life. In the present state of our knowledge, the Cetacea

Fig. 1.— Common Dolphin.

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT. 197

are absolutely isolated, and little satisfactory reason has ever been
given for deriving them from any one of the existing divisions of
the class more than from any other. The question has indeed
often been mooted whether they have been derived from land mam-
mals at all, or whether they may not be the survivors of a primitive
aquatic form which was the ancestor not only of the whales, but of all
the other members of the class. The materials for — I will not say
solving — but for throwing some light upon this problem, must be
sought for in two regions — in the structure of the existing members
of the order, and in its past
history, as revealed by the _, — Vv-~-- -7^ ._.__^ ^ >

discovery of fossil remains. ^^^Ws -- ~ — - « - — •— —

In the present state of science ^^(Kz: --------- fi^. ~

it is chiefly on the former ~^^«s^^^^^^^^^s^

that we have to rely. ofc&

One of the most obvious ~~-^.~- _' -*^^P^:

external characteristics by -7*%-

which the mammalia arc dis- \ :: ^0^^) ^ <^5Smi

tino-uished from other classes - ., *a^%-=-T*w ==-:

of vertebrates is the more or Hit : JW

less complete clothing of the ^^^ff^^^^^^^^g"

surface by hair. The Cetacea

, i , . Fig. 2.— Common Porpoise.

alone appear to be exceptions

to this generalization. Their smooth, glistening exterior is, in the
greater number of species, at all events in adult life, absolutely bare,
though the want of a hairy covering is compensated for functionally
by peculiar modifications of the structure of the skin itself, the epider-
mis being greatly thickened, and a remarkable layer of dense fat closely
incorporated with the tissue of the derm or true skin ; modifications
admirably adapted for retaining the warmth of the body, without any
roughness of surface which might occasion friction and so interfere
with perfect facility of gliding through the water. Close examination,
however, shows that the mammalian character of hairiness is not en-
tirely wanting in the Cetacea, although it is reduced to a most rudi-
mentary and apparently functionless condition.

In the organs of the senses the Cetacea exhibit some remarkable
adaptive modifications of structures essentially formed on the mamma-
lian type, and not on that characteristic of the truly aquatic verte-
brates, the fishes.

The modifications of the organs of sight do not so much affect the
eyeball as the accessory apparatus. To an animal whose surface is
always bathed with fluid, the complex arrangement which mammals
generally possess for keeping the surface of the transparent cornea
moist and protected, the movable lids, the nictitating membrane, the
lachrymal gland, and the arrangements for collecting and removing
the superfluous tears when they have served their function can not be

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

needed, and hence we find these parts in a most rudimentary condition
or altogether absent. In the same way the organ of hearing in its
essential structure is entirely mammalian, having not only the sacculi
and semicircular canals common to all but the lowest vertebrates, but
the cochlea, and tympanic cavity with its ossicles and membrane, all,
however, buried deep in the solid substance of the head ; while the
parts specially belonging to terrestrial mammals, those which collect
the vibrations of the sound traveling through air, the pinna and the
tube which conveys it to the sentient structures within, are entirely or
practically wanting. Of the pinna or external ear there is no trace.

The organ of smell, when it exists, offers still more remarkable
evidence of the origin of the Cetacea. In fishes this organ is specially
adapted for the perception of odorous substances permeating the
water ; the terminations of the olfactory nerves are spread over a
cavity near the front pai't of the nose, to which the fluid in which the
animals swim has free access although it is quite unconnected with the
respiratory passages. Mammals, on the other hand, smell substances
with which the atmosphere they breathe is impregnated ; their olfac-
tory nerve is distributed over the more or less complex foldings of the
lining of a cavity placed in the head, in immediate relation to the pas-
sages through which air is continually driven to and fro on its way to
the lungs in respiration, and therefore in a most favorable position for
receiving impressions from substances floating in that air. The whale-
bone whales have an organ of smell exactly on the mammalian type,
but in a rudimentary condition. In the more completely modified
Odontocetes the olfactory apparatus, as well as that part of the brain
specially related to the function of smell, is entirely wanting, but in
both groups there is not the slightest trace of the specially aquatic
olfactory organ of fishes. Its complete absence and the vestiges of
the aerial organ of land mammals found in the Mystacocetes are the
clearest possible indications of the origin of the Cetaceae from air-
breathing and air-smelling terrestrial mammalia. With their adapta-
tion to an aquatic mode of existence, organs fitted only for smelling
in air became useless, and so have dwindled or completely disappeared.
Time and circumstances have not permitted the acquisition of any-
thing analogous to the special aquatic smelling apparatus of fishes,
the result being that whales are practically deprived of whatever
advantage this sense may be to other animals.

All the Cetacea present some traces of teeth, which in structure
and mode of development resemble those of mammals, and not those
of the lower vertebrated classes, but they are always found in a more
or less impei'fect state.

The meaning and utility of some of the strange modifications in the
dentition of whales it is impossible, in the imperfect state of our
knowledge of the habits of the Cetacea, to explain, but the fact that
in almost every case a more full number of rudimentary teeth is pres-

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT.

199

ent in early stages of existence, which either disappear, or remain as
concealed and functionless organs, points to the present condition in
the aberrant and specialized forms as being one derived from the more
generalized type, in which the teeth were numerous and equal.

Fig. 3.— Toothed Whale, or Spermaceti Whale.

The Mystacocetes, or whalebone whales, are distinguished by en-
tire absence of teeth, at all events after birth. But it is a remarkable
fact, first demonstrated by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and since amply
confirmed by Cuvier, Eschricht, Julin, and others, that in the fetal
state they have numerous minute calcified teeth lying in the dental
groove of both upper and lower jaws. These attain their fullest
development about the middle of fetal life, after which period they
are absorbed, no trace of them remaining at the time of birth. Their
structure and mode of development have been shown to be exactly
those characteristic of ordinary mammalian teeth. It is not until after
the disappearance of these teeth that the baleen, or whalebone, makes
its appearance. This remarkable structure, though only a modification
of a part existing in all mammals, is, in its specially developed con-
dition as baleen, peculiar to one group of whales.

Baleen consists of a series of flattened, horny plates, several hun-
dred in number, on each side of the palate, separated by a bare interval
along the middle line. They are placed transversely to the long axis
of the palate, with very short spaces between them. Each plate or blade
is somewhat triangular in form, with the base attached to the palate,
and the apex hanging downward. The outer edge of the blade is
hard and smooth, but the inner edge and apex fray out into long,

200

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bristly fibers, so that the roof of the whale's mouth looks as if covered
with hair, as described by Aristotle. The blades are longer near the
middle of the series, and gradually diminish near the front and back
of the mouth. The horny plates grow from a dense, fibrous, and highly
vascular matrix, which covers the palatal surface of the maxillae, and
which sends out lamellar processes, one of which penetrates the base of
each blade. Moreover, the free edge of these processes is covered with
very long, vascular, thread-like papillae, one of which forms the central
axis of each of the hair-like epidermic fibers of which the blade is
mainly composed. The blades are supported and bound together, for a
certain distance from their base, by a mass of less hardened epithelium,
secreted by the surface of the palatal membrane or matrix of the whale-
bone in the intervals of the lamellar processes. This is the " interme-
diate substance " of Hunter, the " gum " of the whalers.

The function of the whalebone is to strain
the water from the small marine mollusks, crus-
taceans, or fish upon which the whales subsist.
In feeding they fill the immense mouth with
water containing shoals of these small creatures,
and then, on their closing the jaws and raising

Fig. 4.— Whalebone Whale, or Greenland Whale.

the tongue, so as to diminish the cavity of the mouth, the water streams
out through the narrow intervals between the hairy fringe of the whale-
bone blades, and escapes through the lips, leaving the living prey to
be swallowed. Almost all the other structures to which I am specially
directing your attention are in a more or less rudimentary state in
the Cetacea ; the baleen, on the other hand, is an example of an ex-
actly contrary condition, but an equally instructive one, as illustrating
the mode in which Nature works in producing the infinite variety we

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT. 201

see in animal structures. Although appearing at first sight an entirely-
distinct and special formation, it evidently consists of nothing more
than the highly modified papillae of the lining membrane of the mouth,
with an excessive and cornified epithelial development.

The bony palate of all mammals is covered with a closely-adhering
layer of fibro-vascular tissue, the surface of which is protected by a
coating of non-vascular epithelium, the former exactly corresponding
to the derm or true skin, and the latter to the epiderm of the external
surface of the body. Sometimes this membrane is perfectly smooth,
but it is more often raised into ridges, which run in a direction trans-
verse to the axis of the head, and are curved with the concavity back-
ward ; the- ridges, moreover, do not extend across the middle line, being
interrupted by a median depression or raphe. Indications of these
ridges are clearly seen in the human palate, but they attain their great-
est development in the Ungulata.

Though the early stages by which whalebone has been modified
from more simple palate structures are lost to our sight, the conditions
in which it now exists in different species of whales show very marked
varieties of progress, from a simple, comparatively rudimental and im-
perfect condition, to what is perhaps the most wonderful example of
mechanical adaptation to purpose known in any organic structure.

In the rorquals or fin-whales (genus Balcenopterd), found in almost
ail seas, the largest blades in an animal of seventy feet in length do not
exceed two feet in length, including their hairy terminations ; they are
in most species of a pale horn color, and their structure is coarse and
inelastic, separating into thick, stiff fibers, so that they are of no value
for the ordinary purposes to which whalebone is applied in the arts.
These animals feed on fish of considerable size, from herrings up to
cod, and for foraging among shoals of these creatures the construction
of their mouth and the structure of their baleen are evidently sufficient.
This is the type of the earliest known extinct forms of whales, and it
has continued to exist, with several slight modifications, to this day,
because it has fulfilled one purpose in the economy of Nature. Other
purposes for which it was not sufficient have been supplied by gradual
changes taking place, some of the stages of which are seen in the inter-
mediate conditions still exhibited in the Megaptera and the Atlantic
and southern right whales.

In the Greenland right whale of the circumpolar seas, the Bow-
head of the American whalers {Balcena mysticetus), all the peculiari-
ties which distinguish the head and mouth of the whales from other
mammals have attained their greatest development. The head is of
enormous size, exceeding one third of the whole length of the creat-
ure. The cavity of the mouth is actually larger than that of the body,
thorax, and abdomen together. The upper jaw is very narrow, but
greatly arched from before backward, to increase the height of the
cavity and allow for the great length of the baleen ; the enormous rami

202

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the mandibles are widely separated posteriorly, and have a still
further outward sweep before they meet at the symphysis in front,
giving the floor of the mouth the shape of an immense spoon. The
baleen-blades attain the number of three hundred and fifty or more on
each side, and those in the middle of the series have a length of ten or
even twelve feet. They are black in color, fine and highly elastic in
texture, and fray out at the inner edge and ends into long, delicate,
soft, almost silky, but very tough hairs.

Fig. 5.— Skull op Greenland Whale, showing Whalebone.

How these immensely long blades, depending vertically from the
palate, were packed into a mouth the height of which was scarcely
more than half their length, was a mystery not solved until a few
years ago. Captain David Gray, of Peterhead, at my request, first
gave us a clear idea of the arrangement of the baleen in the Greenland
whale, and showed that the purpose of its wonderful elasticity was not
primarily at least the benefit of the corset and umbrella makers, but
that it was essential for the correct performance of its functions. It
may here be mentioned that the modification of the mouth-structure of
the right whale is entirely in relation to its food. It is by this appa-
ratus that it is enabled to avail itself of the minute but highly nutri-
tious crustaceans and pteropods which swarm in immense shoals in the
seas it frequents. The large mouth enables it to take in at one time a
sufficient quantity of water filled with these small organisms, and the
length and delicate structure of the baleen make it an efficient strainer
or hair sieve by which the water can be drained off. If the baleen
were, as in the rorquals, short and rigid, and only of the length of
the aperture between the upper and lower jaws when the mouth was
shut, when the jaws were separated a space would be left beneath it
through which the water and the minute particles of food would escape
together. But, instead of this, the long, slender, brush-like ends of
the whalebone-blades, when the mouth is closed, fold back, the front
ones passing below the hinder ones in a channel lying between the

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT.

203

tongue and the bone of the lower jaw. When the mouth is opened
their elasticity causes them to straighten out like a bow that is unbent,
so that, at whatever distance the jaws are separated, the strainer remains
in perfect action, filling the whole of the interval. The mechanical
perfection of the arrangement is completed by the great development
of the lower lip, which rises stiffly above the jawbone, and prevents
the long, slender, flexible ends of the baleen being carried outward by
the rush of water from the mouth.

Pig. 6.— Korqual.

Few points of the structure of whales offer so great a departure
from the ordinary mammalian type as the limbs. The fore-limbs are
reduced to the condition of simple paddles or oars, variously shaped,
but always flattened and more or less oval in outline. They are freely
movable at the shoulder-joint, where the humerus or upper-arm bone
articulates with the shoulder-blade in the usual manner, but beyond
this point, except a slight flexibility and elasticity, there is no motion
between the different segments. The bones are all there, correspond-
ing in number and general relations with those of the human or any
other mammalian arm, but they are flattened out, and their contiguous
ends, instead of presenting hinge-like joints, come in contact by flat
surfaces, iinited together by strong ligamentous bands, and all wrapped
up in an undivided covering of skin, which allows externally of no sign
of the separate and many-jointed fingers seen in the skeleton.

The changes that have taken place in the hind-limbs are even more
remarkable. In all known Cetacea (unless Platanista be really an
exception) a pair of slender bones are found suspended a short dis-
tance below the vertebral column, but not attached to it, about the
part where the body and the tail join. In museum skeletons these
bones are often not seen, as, unless special care has been taken in the
preparation, they are apt to get lost. They are, however, of much
importance and interest, as their relations to surrounding parts show
that they are the rudimentary representatives of the pelvic or hip
bones, which in other mammals play such an important part in con-

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

necting the hind-limbs with the rest of the skeleton. The pelvic arch
is thus almost universally present, but of the limb proper there is, as
far as is yet known, not a vestige in any of the large group of toothed
whales, not even in the great Cachalot or sperm whale, although it
should be mentioned that it has never been looked for in that animal
with any sort of care. With regard to the whalebone whales, at
least to some of the species, the case is different. In these animals
there are found, attached to the outer and lower side of the pelvic
bone, other elements, bony or only cartilaginous as the case may be,
clearly representing rudiments of the first and in some cases the sec-
ond segment of the limb, the thigh or femur, and the leg or tibia.

"VYe have here a case in which it is not difficult to answer the ques-
tion before alluded to, often asked with regard to rudimentary parts :
Are they disappearing, or are they incipient organs ? We can have no
hesitation in saying that they are the former. All we know of the
origin of limbs shows that they commence as outgrowths upon the
surface of the body, and that the first-formed portions are the most
distal segments. The limb, as proved by its permanent state in the
lowest vertebrates, and by its embryological condition in higher forms,
is at first a mere projection or outward fold of the skin, which, in the
course of development, as it becomes of use in moving or supporting
the animal, acquires the internal framework which strengthens it and
perfects its functions. It would be impossible, on any theory of causa-
tion yet known, to conceive of a limb gradually developed from within
outward. On the other hand, its disappearance would naturally take
place in the opposite direction.

We turn next to what the researches of paleontology teach of the
past history of the order. Unfortunately, this does not at present
amount to very much. We know nothing of their condition, if they
existed, in the Mesozoic age. Even in the cretaceous seas not a frag-
ment of any whale or whale-like animal has been found. The earliest
Cetaceans, of whose organization we have any good evidence, are the
Zeuglodons of the Eocene formations of North America. These were
creatures whose structure, as far as we know it, was intermediate be-
tween that of the existing sub-orders of whales. In fact, Zeuglodon is
precisely what we might have expected a priori an ancestral form of
whales to have been. From the middle Miocene period fossil Cetacea
are abundant, and distinctly divided into the two groups now existing.
The Mystacocetes, or whalebone whales, of the Miocene seas, were, as
far as we know now, only Balmnopterw, some of which were more gen-
eralized than any now existing. In the shape of the mandible also,
Van Beneden discerns some approximation to the Odontocetes. Right
whales (Halcena) have not been found earlier than the Pliocene period,
and it is interesting to note that, instead of the individuals diminishing
in balk as we approach the times we live in, as with many other groups
of animals, the contrary has been the case, no known extinct species

WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT.

205

Fig. 7.— Narwhal.

of whales equaling in size those that are now to be met with in the
ocean. The size of whales, as of all other things whose most striking
attribute is magnitude, has been greatly exaggerated ; but, when re-
duced to the limits of sober fact, the Greenland right whale of fifty
feet long, the sperm whale of sixty, and the great northern rorqual
(Balcenoptera Sibbaldii) of
eighty, exceed all other or-
ganic structures known, past
or present. Instead of living
in an age of degeneracy of
physical growth, we are in
an age of giants, but it may
be at the end of that age.
For countless ages impulses
from within and the forces
of circumstances from with-
out have been gradually
shaping the whales into their
present wonderful form and

gigantic size, but the very perfection of their structure and their mag-
nitude combined, the rich supply of oil protecting their internal parts
from cold, the beautiful apparatus of whalebone by which their nutri-
tion is provided for, have been fatal gifts, which, under the sudden
revolution produced on the surface of the globe by the development of
the wants and arts of civilized man, can not but lead in a few years to
their extinction.

Let us return to the question with which we started, " What was
the probable origin of whales ? " The evidence is absolutely conclu-
sive that they were not originally aquatic in habit, but are derived
from terrestrial mammals of fairly high organization, belonging to the
placental division of the class — animals in which a hairy covering was
developed, and with sense-organs, especially that of smell, adapted for
living on land ; animals, moreover, with four completely developed
pairs of limbs on the type of the higher vertebrata, and not of that of
fishes.

One of the methods by which a land mammal may have been
changed into an aquatic one is clearly shown in the stages which still
survive among the carnivora. The seals are obviously modifications
of the land carnivora, the Otaria, or sea-lions and sea-bears, being cu-
riously intermediate. Many naturalists have been tempted to think
that the whales represent a still further stage of the same kind of
modification. But there is to my mind a fatal objection to this view.
The seal, of course, has much in common with the whale, inasmuch as
it is a mammal adapted for an aquatic life, but it has been converted
to its general fish-like form by the peculiar development of its hind-
limbs into instruments of propulsion through the water ; for, though

206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the thighs and legs are small, the feet are large and are the special
organs of locomotion in the water, the tail being quite rudimentary.
In the whales the hind-limbs are aborted and the tail developed into a
powerful swimming organ. Now, it is very difficult to suppose that,
when the hind-limbs had once become so well adapted to a function
so essential to the welfare of the animal as that of swimming, they
could ever have become reduced and their action transferred to the
tail. It is far more reasonable to suppose that whales were derived
from animals with large tails, which were used in swimming, event-
ually with such effect that the hind-limbs became no longer neces-
sary, and so gradually disappeared. The powerful tail, with lateral
cutaneous flanges, of an American species of otter {Pteronura sand-
bachii), or the still more familiar tail of the beaver, may give some
idea of this member in the primitive Cetacea.

As pointed out long ago by Hunter, there are numerous points in
the structure of the visceral organs of the Cetacea far more resembling
those of the Ungulata than the Carnivora. These are the complex
stomach, simple liver, respiratory organs, and especially the reproduc-
tive organs and structures relating to the development of the young.
I can not help thinking that some insight has been shown in the com-
mon names attached to one of the most familiar of Cetaceans by
those whose opportunities of knowing its nature have been greatest —
" sea-hog," " sea-pig," or " herring-hog," of our fishermen, Meerschwein
of the Germans, corrupted into the French " marsouin," and also
"porcpoisson," shortened into "porpoise." A difficulty that might be
suggested in the derivation of the Cetacea from the Ungulata, arising
from the latter being at the present day mainly vegetable-feeders, is
not great, as the primitive ungulates were probably omnivorous, as
their least modified descendants, the pigs, are still ; and the aquatic
branch might easily have gradually become more and more piscivorous,
as we know, from the structure of their bones and teeth, the purely
terrestrial members have become by degrees more exclusively grami-
nivorous.

One other consideration may remove some of the difficulties that
may arise in contemplating the transition of land mammals into whales.
The Gangetic dolphin (Platanista) and the somewhat related Inia of
South America, which retain several rather generalized mammalian
characters, and are related to some of the earliest known European
Miocene forms, are both to the present day exclusively fluviatile, being
found in the rivers they inhabit almost up to their very sources, more
than a thousand miles from the sea. May this not point to the fresh-
water origin of the whole group, and thus account for their otherwise
inexplicable absence from the Cretaceous seas ?

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 207

THE FUEL OF THE FUTUEE.

By GEORGE WAEDMAN.

THE practical application of natural gas, as an article of fuel, to
the purpose of manufacturing glass, iron, and steel, promises to
work a revolution in the industrial interests of America — promises
to work a revolution ; for, notwithstanding the fact that, in many of
the largest iron, steel, and glass factories in Pittsburg and its vicinity,
natural gas has already been substituted for coal, the managers of
some such works are shy of the new fuel, mainly for two reasons :
1. They doubt the continuity and regularity of its supply ; 2. They
do not deem the difference between the price of natural gas and coal
sufficient, as yet, to justify the expenditure involved in the furnace
changes necessary to the substitution of the one for the other. These
two objections will doubtless disappear with additional experience in
the production and regulation of the gas-supply, and with enlarged
competition among the companies engaging in its transmission from
the wells to the works. At present the use of natural gas as a sub-
stitute for coal in the manufacture of glass, iron, and steel, is in its
infancy.

Natural gas is as ancient as the universe. It was known to man in
prehistoric times, we must suppose, for the very earliest historical
reference to the Magi of Asia records them as worshiping the eternal
fires which then blazed, and still blaze, in fissures of the mountain-
heights overlooking the Caspian Sea. Those records appertain to a
period at least GOO years before the birth of Christ ; but the Magi
must have lived and woi'shiped long anterior to that time.

Zoroaster, reputed founder of the Parsee sect, is placed contem-
porary with the prophet Daniel, from 2500 to 600 b. c. ; and, al-
though Daniel has been doubted, and Zoroaster may never have seen
the light, the fissures of the Caucasus have been flaming since the
earliest authentic records.

Tho Parsees (Persians) did not originally worship fire. They
believed in two great powers — the Spirit of Light, or Good, and the
Spirit of Darkness, or Evil. Subsequent to Zoroaster, when the Per-
sian Empire rose to its greatest power and importance, overspreading
the west to the shores of the Caspian and beyond, the tribes of the
Caucasus suffered political subjugation ; but the creed of the Magi,
founded upon the eternal flame-altars of the mountains, proved suffi-
ciently vigorous to transform the Parseeism of the conquerors to the
fire-worship of the conquered.

About the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era,
the Grecian Emperor Heraclius overturned the fire-altars of the Magi
at Baku, the chief city on the Caspian, but the fire- worshipers were

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not expelled from the Caucasus until the Mohammedans subjugated
the Persian Empire, when they were driven into the Rangoon, on the
Irrawaddy, in India, one of the most noted petroleum-producing dis-
tricts of the world.

Petroleum and natural gas are so intimately related that one would
hardly dare to say whether the gas proceeds from petroleum or the
petroleum is deposited from the gas. It is, however, safe to assume
that they are the products of one material, the lighter element sepa-
rating from the heavier under certain degrees of temperature and
pressure. Thus, petroleum may separate from the gas as asphaltum
separates from petroleum. But some speculative minds consider nat-
ural gas to be a product of anthracite coal. The fact that the great
supply-field of natural gas in Western Pennsylvania, New York, West
Virginia, and Eastern Ohio, is a bituminous and not an anthracite
region, does not, of itself, confute that theory ; as the argument for
it is, that the gas may be tapped at a remote distance from the source
of supply, and, whereas anthracite is not a gas-coal, while bituminous
is, we are told to suppose that the gas which once may have been a
component part of the anthracite was long ago expelled by Nature,
and has since been held in vast reservoirs with slight waste, awaiting
the use of man. That is one theory ; and upon that supposition it is
suggested that anthracite may exist below the bituminous beds of the
region lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Great Lakes.
Another theory is, that natural gas is a product of the sea-weed depos-
ited in the Devonian stratum. But, leaving modern theories on the
origin of natural gas and petroleum, we may suppose the natural gas-
jets now burning in the fissures of the Caucasus to have started up in
flames about the time when, according to the Old Testament, Noah
descended from Mount Ararat, or very soon thereafter. In the lan-
guage of modern science it would be safe to say that those flames
sprang up when the Caucasus range was raised from beneath the sur-
face of the universal sea. The believer in biblical chronology may
say that those fires have been burning for four thousand years — the
geologist may say for four millions.

We know that Alexander the Great penetrated to the Caspian ;
and in Plutarch we read : " Hence [Arbela] he marched through the
province of Babylon [Media?], which immediately submitted to him,
and in Ecbatana [?] was much surprised at the sight of the place
where fire issues in a continuous stream, like a spring of water, out
of a cleft in the earth, and the stream of naphtha, which not far from
this spot flows out so abundantly as to form a large lake. This
naphtha, in other respects resembling bitumen, is so subject to take
fire that, before it touches the flame, it will kindle at the very light
that surrounds it, and often inflame the intermediate air also. The
barbarians, to show the power and nature of it, sprinkled the street
that led to the king's lodgings with little drops of it, and, when it was

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 209

almost night, stood at the farther end with torches, which being ap-
plied to the moistened places, the first taking fire, instantly, as quick
as a man could think of it, it caught from one end to another in such
manner that the whole street was one continued flame. Among those
who used to wait upon the king, and find occasion to amuse him,
when he anointed and washed himself, there was one Athenophanus,
an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment of the naphtha
upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing-place, a youth with a
ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well. ' For,' said he,
' if it take hold of him, and is not put out, it must undeniably be
allowed to be of the most invincible strength.' The youth, as it
happened, readily consented to undergo the trial, and, as soon as he
was anointed and rubbed with it, his whole body bi'oke out into such
a flame, and was so seized by the fire, that Alexander was in the
greatest perplexity and alarm for him, and not without reason ; for
nothing could have prevented his being consumed by it if, by good
chance, there had not been people at hand with a great many vessels
of water for the service of the bath, with all which they had much
ado to extinguish the fire ; and his body was so burned all over that
he was not cured of it a good while after. And thus it is not with-
out some plausibility that they endeavor to reconcile the fable to
truth, who say this was the drug in the tragedies with which Medea
anointed the crown and veils which she gave to Creon's daughter."

An interesting reference to the fire-worshipers of the Caucasus is
contained in the " History of Zobeide," a tale of the wonderful Arabian
Nights Entertainment. It runs thus :

" I bought a ship at Balsora, and freighted it ; my sisters chose to
go with me, and we set sail with a fair wind. Some weeks after we
cast anchor in a harbor which presented itself, with intent to water the
ship. As I was tired with having been so long on board, I landed
with the first boat, and walked up into the country. I soon came in
sight of a great town. When I arrived there I was much surprised to
see vast numbers of people in different postures, but all immovable.
The merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard ; every one
seemed engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.
... I heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran. . . . Being curious
to know why he was the only living creature in the town, ... he
proceeded to tell me that the city was the metropolis of a kingdom
now governed by his father ; that the former king and all his subjects
were Magi, worshipers of fire and of Nardoun, the ancient king of the
giants who rebelled against God. ' Though I was born,' continued he,
' of idolatrous parents, it was my good fortune to have a woman gov-
erness who was a strict obseiwer of the Mohammedan religion. She
taught me Arabic from Al Koran ; by her I was instructed in the true
religion, which I would never afterward renounce. About three years
ago a thundering voice was heard distinctly throughout the city, say-

VOL. XXTII. — 14

2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing, "Inhabitants, abandon the worship of Nardoun and of fire, and
worship the only true God, who showeth mercy ! " This voice was
heard three years successively, but no one regarded it. At the end of
the last year all the inhabitants were in an instant turned to stone. I
alone was preserved.' "

In the foregoing tale we doubtless have reference to the destruc-
tion of Baku, on the Caspian (though to sail from Balsora to Baku is
impossible), and the driving away into India, by the Arabs under Caliph
Omar, of all who refused to renounce fire-worship and adopt the creed
of the Koran. The turning of the refractory inhabitants into stone is
probably the Arabian story-teller's figurative manner of referring to
the finding of dead bodies in a mummified condition.

It is known that the Egyptians made use of bitumen, in some form,
in the preservation of their dead, a fact with which the Arabians were
familiar. As the Magi held the four elements of earth, air, fire, and
water to be sacred, they feared to either bury, burn, sink, or expose to
air the corrupting bodies of their deceased. Therefore, it was their
practice to envelop the corpse in a coating of wax or bitumen, so as to
hermetically seal it from immediate contact with either of the four
sacred elements. Hence the idea of all the bodies of the Magi left at
Baku being turned to stone, while only the true believer in Mohammed
remained in the flesh.

Marco Polo, the famous traveler of the thirteenth century, makes
reference to the burning jets of the Caucasus, and those fires are known
to the Russians as continuing in existence since the army of Peter the
Great wrested the regions about the Caspian from the modern Per-
sians. The record of those flaming jets of natural gas is thus brought
down in an unbroken chain of evidence from remote antiquity to the
present day, and they are still burning.

Numerous Greek and Latin writers testify to the known existence
of petroleum about the shores of the Mediterranean two thousand
years ago. More modern citations may, however, be read with equal
interest. In the " Journal of Sir Philip Skippon's Travels in France,"
in 16G3, we find the following curious entries :

" We stayed in Grenoble till August 1st, and one day rode out, and,
after twice fording the river Drac (which makes a great wash) at a
league's distance, went over to Pont de Clef, a large arch across that
river, where we paid one sol a man ; a league further we passed
through a large village called Vif, and about a league thence by S.
Bathomew, another village, and Chasteau Bernard, where we saw a
flame breaking out of the side of a bank, which is vulgarly called La
Fountaine qui Brule / it is by a small rivulet, and sometimes breaks
out in other places ; just before our coming some other strangers had
fried eggs here. The soil hereabouts is full of a black stone, like our
coal, which, perhaps, is the continual fuel of the fire. . . . Near Peroul,
about a league from Montpelier, we saw a boiling fountain (as they

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 211

call it), that is, the water did heave up and bubble as if it boiled.
This phenomenon in the water was caused by a vapor ascending out
of the earth through the water, as was manifest, for if that one did
but dig anywhere near the place, and pour water upon the place new
digged, one should observe in it the like bubbling, the vapor arising
not only in that place where the fountain was, but all thereabout ; the
like vapor ascending out of the earth and causing such ebullition in
water it passes through hath been observed in Mr. Hawkley's ground,
about a mile from the town of Wigan, in Lancashire, which vapor, by
the application of a lighted candle, paper, or the like, catches fire and
flames vigorously. Whether or not this vapor at Peroul would in like
manner catch fire and burn I cannot say, it coming not in our minds
to make the experiment. . . . At Gabian, about a day's journey from
Montpelier, in the way to Beziers, is a fountain of petroleum. It
burns like oil, is of a pungent scent, and a blackish color. It distills
out of several places of the rock all the year long, but most in the
summer time. They gather it up with ladles and put it in a barrel set
on end, which hath a spiggot just at the bottom. When they have put
in a good quantity they open the spiggot to let out the water, and
when the oil begins to come presently stop it. They pay for the farm
of this fountain about fifty crowns per annum. We were told by one
Monsieur Beaushoste, a chymist in Montpelier, that petroleum was the
very same with oil of jet, and not to be distinguished from it by color,
taste, smell, consistency, virtues, or any other accident, as he had by
experience found upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in several
places, $s at Berre, near Martague, in Provence ; at Messina, in Sicily,
etc."

In Harris's " Voyages," published in 1764, an article on the empire
of Persia thus refers to petroleum :

"In several parts of Persia we meet with naphtha, both white and
black ; it is used in painting and varnish, and sometimes in physic,
and there is an oil extracted from it which is applied to several uses,
The most famous springs of naphtha are in the neighborhood of Baku,
which furnish vast quantities, and there are also upwards of thirty
springs about Shamasky, both in the province of Schirwan. The Per-
sians use it as oil for their lamps and in making fireworks, of which
they are extremely fond, and in which they are great proficients."

Petroleum has long been known to exist also in the northern part
of Italy, the cities of Parma and Genoa having been for many years
lighted with it.

In the province of Szechuen, China, natural gas is obtained from
beds of rock-salt at a depth of fifteen to sixteen hundred feet. Being
brought to the surface, it is conveyed in bamboo tubes and used for
lighting as well as for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt.
It is asserted that the Chinese used this natural gas for illuminating
purposes long before gas-lighting was known to the Europeans. Re-

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

membering the unprogressive character of Chinese arts and industries
there is ground for the belief that they may have been using this nat-
ural gas as an illuminant these hundreds of years.

In the United States the existence of petroleum was known to the
Pilgrim Fathers, who doubtless obtained their first information of it
from the Indians, for whom, in New York and Western Pennsylvania,
it was called Seneka-oil. It was otherwise known as "British " oil and
oil of naphtha, and was considered " a sovereign remedy for an inward
bruise."

The record of natural gas in this country is not so complete as that
of petroleum, but we learn that an important gas-spring was known in
West Bloomfield, N. Y., seventy years ago. In 1864 a well was sunk
to a depth of three hundred feet upon that vein, from which a suffi-
cient supply of gas was obtained to illuminate and heat the city of
Rochester (twenty-five miles distant) it was supposed. But the pipes
which were laid for that purpose, being of wood, were unfitted to
withstand the pressure, in consequence of which the scheme was aban-
doned ; but gas from that well is now in use as an illuminant and as
fuel both in the town of West Bloomfield and at Honeoye Falls. The
village of Fredonia, N. Y., has been using natural gas in lighting the
streets for thirty years or thereabout. On Big Sewickley Creek, in
Westmoreland County, Pa., natural gas was used for evaporating
water in the manufacture of salt thirty years ago, and gas is still issu-
ing at the same place. Natural gas has been in use in several localities
in Eastern Ohio for twenty-five years, and the wells are flowing as
vigorously as when first known. It has also been in use in West Vir-
ginia for a quarter of a century, as well as in the petroleum region of
Western Pennsylvania, where it has long been utilized in generating
steam for drilling oil-wells.

In 1826 the "American Journal of Science" contained a letter
from Dr. S. P. Hildreth, who, in writing of the products of the Muskin-
gum (Ohio) Valley, said : " They have sunk two wells, which are now
more than four hundred feet in depth ; one of them affords a very
strong and pure salt-water, but not in great quantity ; the other dis-
charges such vast quantities of petroleum, or, as it is vulgarly called,
'Seneka-oil,' and besides is so subject to such tremendous explosions
of gas, as to force out all the water and afford nothing but gas for sev-
eral days, that they make little or no salt."

The value of the foregoing references is to be found in the testi-
mony they offer as to the duration of the supply of natural gas.
Whether we look to the eternal flaming fissures of the Caucasus, or to
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there is much to encourage the
belief that the flow of natural gas may be, like the production of
petroleum, increased rather than diminished by the draughts made
upon it. Petroleum, instead of diminishing in quantity by the mill-
ions of barrels drawn from Western Pennsylvania in the last quarter

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 213

of a century, seems to increase, greater wells being known in 1884
than in any previous year, and prices having fallen from two dollars
per bottle for " Seneka-oil " to sixty cents per barrel for the same arti-
cle under the name of crude petroleum. Hence we may assume that,
as new pipe-lines are laid, the supply of natural gas available for use in
the great manufacturing district of Pittsburg and vicinity will be in-
creased, and the price of this fuel diminished in a corresponding ratio.

Natural gas is now supplied in Pittsburg at a small discount on the
actual cost of coal used last year in the large manufacturing establish-
ments, an additional saving being made in dispensing with firemen and
avoidance of hauling ashes from the boiler-room. It is supplied, for
domestic purposes, at twenty cents per one thousand cubic feet, which
is not cheaper than coal in Pittsburg, but it is a thousand per cent
cleaner ; and in that respect it promises to prove a great blessing, not
only to those who can afford to use it, but to the community at large,
in the hope held out that the smoke and soot nuisance may be abated
in part, if not wholly subdued, and that gleams of sunshine there may
become less phenomenal in the future than they are at the present
time. Twenty cents per thousand feet is too high a price to bring gas
into general use for domestic purposes in a city where coal is cheap.
Ten cents would be too much, and no doubt five cents per thousand
would pay a profit. The fact is, the dealers in natural gas appear to
be somewhat doubtful of the continuity of supply, and anxious to get
back the cost of wells and pipes in one year, which, if successful,
would be an enormous return on the investment.

There are objections to the use of natural gas by mill-operators —
that it costs too much, and that the continuity of the supply is uncer-
tain ; by heads of families, that it is odorless, and, in case of leakage
from the pipes, may fill a room and be ready to explode without giv
ing the fragrant warning offered by common gas. Both of these ob-
jections will probably disappear under the experience that time must
furnish. More wells and tributary lines will lessen the cost and tend
to regulate the pressure for manufacturers. Cut-offs and escape-pipes
outside of the house will reduce the risk of ex2?losions within. The
danger in the house may also be lessened by providing healthful ven-
tilation in all apartments wherein gas shall be consumed.

This subject of the ventilation of rooms in which common gas is
ordinarily used is beginning to attract attention. It is stated, upon
scientific authority, that a jet of common gas, equivalent to twelve
sperm-candles, consumes 5'45 cubic feet of oxygen per hour, producing
3-21 feet of carbonic-acid gas, vitiating, according to Dr. Tidy's
" Handbook of Chemistry," 348-25 cubic feet of air. In every five
cubic feet of pure air in a room there is one cubic foot of oxygen and
four of nitrogen. Without oxygen human life, as well as light, would
become extinct. It is asserted that one common gas-jet consumes as
much oxygen as five persons.

214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Carbonic-acid gas is the element which, in deep mines and vaults,
causes almost instant insensibility and suffocation to persons subjected
to its influences, and instantly extinguishes the flame of any light
lowered into it. The normal quantity of this gas contained in the air
we breathe is *04 ; one per cent of it causes distress in breathing ; two
per cent is dangerous ; four per cent extinguishes life, and four per
cent of it is contained in air expelled from the lungs. According to
Dr. Tidy's table, each ordinary jet of common gas contributes to the
air of a room sixteen by ten feet on the sides and nine feet high, con-
taining 1,440 cubic feet of air, twenty-two per cent of carbonic-acid
gas, which, continued for twenty hours without ventilation, would
reach the fatal four per cent.

Professor Huxley gives, as a result of chemical analyses, the fol-
lowing table of ratio of carbonic-acid gas in the atmosphere at the
points named :

On the Thames, at London -0343

In the streets of London -0380

Top of Ben Nevis -0327

Dress circle of Haymarket Theatre (11.30 p. m.) -0757

Chancery Court (seven feet from the ground) *1930

From working mines (average of 339 samples) '7852

Largest amount in a Cornish mine 2'0500

In addition to the consumption of oxygen and production of car-
bonic acid by the use of common gas, the gas itself, owing to defect-
iveness of the burner, is projected into the air. Now, considering
the deleterious nature of all illuminating gases, the reasons for perfect
ventilation of rooms in which natural gas is used for heating and
culinary purposes are self-evident, not alone as a protection against
explosions, but for the health of the occupants of the house, remem-
bering that a larger supply of oxygen is said to be necessary for the
perfect combustion of natural than of common gas.

Carbonic oxide, formed by the consumption of carbon, with an in-
sufficient supply of air, is the fatal poison of the charcoal-furnace, not
infrequently resorted to, in close rooms, as a means of suicide. The
less sufficient the air toward perfect combustion, the smaller the quan-
tity of carbonic acid and the greater the amount of carbonic oxide.
That is to say, at the time of ignition the chief product of combus-
tion is carbonic oxide, and, unless sufficient air be added to convert the
oxide to carbonic acid, a decidedly dangerous product is given off into
the room. Yet, by means of a flue to carry off the poisonous gases
from burning jets, the combustion of gas, creating a current, is made
an aid to ventilation. Unfortunately, this important fact, if commonly
known, is not much heeded by heads of families or builders of houses.
But in any large community where gas comes into general use as an
article of fuel, this fact will gradually become recognized and re-
spected.

THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 215

The property of indicating the presence of very minute quantities
of gas in a room is claimed for an instrument recently described by
C. von Jahn, in the " Revue Industrielle." This is a porous cup, in-
verted and closed by a perforated rubber stopper. Through the perfo-
ration in the stopper the interior of the cup is connected with a press-
ure-gauge containing colored water. It is claimed that the diffusion
of gas through the earthenware raises the level of the water in the
gauge so delicately that the presence of one half of one per cent of
gas may be detected by it. Other instruments of a slightly different
character are credited by their inventors with most sensitive power
of indicating gas-leakages, but their practical efficiency remains to be
demonstrated. An automatic cut-off for use outside of houses in which
natural gas is consumed has been invented, but this writer knows
nothing of either its mode of action or its effectiveness.

The great economic question, however, connected with the use of
natural gas is, How will it affect the industrial interests of the coun-
try ? There are grounds for the belief that a sufficient supply of natu-
ral gas may be found in the vicinity of Pittsburg to reduce the cost
of fuel to such a degree as to make competition in the manufacture of
iron, steel, and glass, in any part of the country where coal must be
used, out of the question. Such a condition of affairs would probably
result in driving the great manufacturing concerns of the country into
the region where natural gas is to be obtained. That may be any-
where from the western slope of the Alleghanies to Lake Erie or to
Lake Michigan. And, if the cost of producing iron, steel, and glass
can be so cheapened by the new fuel, the tariff question may undergo
some important modification in politics. For, if the reduction in the
cost of fuel should ever become an offset to the lower rate of wages
in Europe, the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, who have long been
the chief support of the protective policy of the country, may lose
their present interest in that question, and leave the tariff to shift for
itself elsewhere. It should be remembered that natural gas is not, as
yet, much cheaper than coal in Pittsburg. But it may safely be as-
sumed that it will cheapen, as petroleum has done, by a development
of the territory in which it is known to exist in enormous quantities.
It is quite possible that, instead of buying gas, many factories will bore
for it with success, or remove convenient to its natural sources, so that
a gas-well may ultimately become an essential part of the "plant" of
a mill or factory. Even now coal can not compete with gas in the
manufacture of window-glass, for, the gas being free from sulphur
and other impurities contained in coal, produces a superior quality of
glass ; so that in this branch of industry the question of superiority
seems already settled.

Having said thus much of an industry now in its infancy but prom-
ising great growth, I submit tables of analyses of common and of the
natural or marsh gas, the latter from a paper recently prepared by a

2l6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

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THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE. 217

committee of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, and for
the use of which I am indebted to that association :

COMMON GAS.

Hydrogen 46-0

Light carbureted hydrogen (marsh-gas) 395

Condensible hydrocarbon 3"8

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" acid 0-G

Aqueous vapor 2*0

Oxygen 01

Nitrogen 0"5

100-00

Natural gas is now conveyed to Pittsburg through four lines of
5f-inch pipe, and one line of eight-inch pipe. A line of ten-inch pipe is
also being laid. The pressure of the gas at the wells is from 150 to
230 pounds to the square inch. As the wells are on one side eighteen
and on the other about twenty-five miles distant, and as the consump-
tion is variable, the pressure at the city can not be given. Greater
pressure might be obtained at the wells, but this would increase the
liability to leakage and bursting of pipes. For the prevention of such
casualties safety-valves are provided at the wells, permitting the escape
of all superfluous gas. The enormous force of this gas may be appre-
ciated from a comparison of, say, 200 pounds pressure at the wells with a
two-ounce pressure of common gas for ordinary lighting. The amount
of natural gas now furnished for use in Pittsburg is supposed to be
something like 25,000,000 cubic feet per day ; the ten-inch pipe now
laying is estimated to increase the supply to 40,000,000 feet. The
amount of manufactured gas used for lighting the same city probably
falls below 3,000,000 feet. About fifty mills and factories of various
kinds in Pittsburg now use natural gas. It is used for domestic pur-
poses in two hundred houses. Its superiority over coal in the manu-
facture of window-glass is unquestioned. That it is not used in all
the glass-houses of Pittsburg is due to the fact that its advantages
were not fully known when the furnaces were fired last summer, and
it costs a large sum to permit the furnaces to cool off after being
heated for melting. When the fires cool down, and before they are
started up again, the furnaces now using coal will doubtless all be
changed so as to admit natural gas. The superiority of French over
American glass is said to be due to the fact that the French use wood
and the Americans coal in their furnaces, wood being free from sulphur,
phosphorus, etc. The substitution of gas for coal, while not increas-
ing the cost, improves the quality of American glass, making it as
nearly perfect as possible.

While the gas is not used as yet in any smelting-furnace nor in
the Bessemer converters, it is preferred in open-hearth and crucible
steel furnaces, and is said to be vastly superior to coal for puddling.

2i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The charge of a puddling-furnace, consisting of 500 pounds of pig-
metal and eighty pounds of " fix," produces with coal-fuel 490 to 500
pounds of iron. With gas for fuel, it is claimed that the same charge
will yield 520 to 530 pounds of iron. In an iron-mill of thirty fur-
naces, running eight heats each for twenty-four hours, this would
make a difference in favor of the gas of, say, 8 X 30 X 25 = 6,000
pounds of iron per day. This is an important item of itself, leaving
out the cost of firing with coal and hauling ashes.

For generating steam in large establishments, one man will attend
a battery of twelve or twenty boilers, using gas as fuel, keep the
pressure uniform, and have the fire-room clean as a parlor. For burn-
ing brick and earthenware, gas offers the double advantage of free-
dom from smoke and a uniform heat. The use of gas in public bak-
eries promises the abolition of the ash-box and its accumulation of
miscellaneous filth, which is said to often impregnate the " sponge "
with impurities.

In short, the advantages of natural gas as a fuel are so obvious to
those who have given it a trial, that the prediction is made that, should
the supply fail, many who are now using it will never return to the
consumption of crude coal in factories, but, if necessary, convert it
or petroleum into gas at their own works.

It seems, indeed, that, until we shall have acquired the wisdom en-
abling us to conserve and concentrate the heat of the sun, gas must be
the fuel of the future.

USE OF SULPHUROUS DISINFECTANTS.

By GASTON TISSANDIEE.

AMONG the most convenient and efficacious substances to be used
for purposes of disinfection are sulphurous acid and bisulphide
of carbon. The question of the merits of these substances and the
advantages of using them was recently considered, in the "Journal de
Pharmacie et de Chimie," by M. Alfred Riche, who said : " M. Dujar-
din-Beaumetz recently requested the concurrence of MM. Pasteur and
Roux in instituting new experiments on the value of disinfectants, and
has just published the results of the same in the ' Bulletin ' of the
Academy of Medicine. Two rooms of about a hundred cubic metres
capacity were selected in the wooden barracks attached to the hoj)ital
Cochin. The walls of these rooms, made of jointed planks, gave pas-
sage to the air through numerous cracks, although the precaution had
been taken of stopping the larger ones with paper. Each of the
rooms was furnished with a bed, the usual furniture, and cloths of
different colors. Bromine, chlorine, and sulphate of nitrosyle were
successively rejected. Three sources of sulphurous acid were experi-

USE OF SULPHUROUS DISINFECTANTS. 219

mented upon — the combustion of sulphur, liquefied sulphurous acid,
and the combustion of bisulphide of carbon. The room was closed
for twenty-four hours. Tubes containing culture-infusions sowed
with different proto-organisms, especially the comma microbe described
by Koch, were placed in rooms, together with tubes containing vac-
cine lymph. After each experiment the tubes were taken to M.
Pasteur's laboratory, and there compared with other tubes used as
tests. The process of the combustion of sulphur is the simplest and
cheapest. To perform this combustion, it is sufficient to set on the
floor a sheet-iron plate — a large potsherd on the ground gives a satis-
factory result — on which is placed a furnace of bricks and mortar, or
better, one of those small, nearly square furnaces of fire-clay recom-
mended by M. Pasteur, twenty-five centimetres long and twenty centi-
metres wide, and having the sides pierced with air-holes. To obtain
a complete combustion of the flowers of sulphur, it is necessary to

Fia. 1.— Burner for Sxtlphur.

take care that the whole surface be evenly burned ; this may be effected
by wetting the sulphur with alcohol and inflaming the alcohol. By
this method we can burn completely and absolutely as large a quantity
as forty or fifty grammes per cubic metre of flowers of sulphur. "With
twenty grammes per cubic metre, all of the culture-infusions experi-
mented upon were sterilized, except the one containing the carbun-
cular (anthrax) bacteria. The activity of the vaccine virus was de-
stroyed. The only probable inconveniences involved in the application
of this economical process arise from the danger of fire in case the
furnace is badly constructed, and from the liability of the metallic
objects that may be present to be tarnished. This may take place

220

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

from particles of the burning element flying around the room, and,
settling on articles of copper and iron, covering them with a sulphur-
ous coating.

" The process of using liquid anhydrous sulphurous acid in siphons
is free from these inconveniences. The siphons contain 750 grammes
of the acid, and one of them is efficient for the disinfection of twenty
cubic metres of space. In using the siphons a vessel is set in the mid-
dle of the room, and is put in communication with the outside by
means of an India-rubber tube passing through a hole in the door.
The door having been closed, the orifice of the siphon is inserted into
the India-rubber tube, and, the liquid being let in through it, is freely
evaporated in the air of the room. This process is very convenient ;
it avoids the danger of fire, and does not affect metallic objects ; and
the penetrative force of sulphurous acid thus administered appears to
be greater than that of the acid obtained by bui-ning sulphur. The
only drawback to its use is the high cost. The siphons are sold to
the general public for a dollar each, but can be bought in large quan-

Fig. 2.— M. Ckiandi Bet's Burner fob Bisulphide of Carbon.

tities for half that price. Thus the expense of disinfecting a room of
one hundred cubic metres with this preparation would be from two
and a half to five dollars."

The process of the combustion of bisulphide of carbon was sug-

USE OF SULPHUROUS DISINFECTANTS.

221

gested by M. E. Peligot ; and all danger in employing it is obviated
in the new burner invented by M. Ckiandi Bey, engineer. This ap-
paratus is illustrated, with a view of its interior arrangement, in Fig.
2 ; and a more detailed explanation of its parts can be obtained from
the examination of Fig. 3.

M. Ckiandi's burner is composed of an exterior receiver of tinned
copper, A B C D, containing an interior vessel, I H E F, to the sides of
which are fixed three siphons, R S. To put it in operation, the cylin-
drical tube, KLMN, is placed in the interior vessel ; sulphide of car-
bon is poured in up to the level a a, and the exterior receiver is then
filled with water up to the level b b. By means of the siphons the water

Fig. 3.— M. Ckiandi Bet's Burner, Sectional View.

penetrates into the interior vessel, presses upon the sulphide of carbon,
which is heavier than it, and drives it in the interior tube up to the
level a' a', where it is taken up by a cotton wick, which is lighted.
The upper end of the tube is crowned with a chimney, P Q, to facili-
tate the draught. The combustion of the sulphide of carbon may be
increased or slackened at will by raising or lowering the level, b b, of
the water in the external receiver ; and this facility will be found of
advantage in many cases.

The burner is placed in the room to be disinfected and lit, when
the room is evacuated and shut up tight. When all the sulphide of
carbon has been burned, its place is taken by water, and the lamp goes
out of itself ; in the mean time the burning goes on with great regu-
larity, and without any danger. About two and a half kilogrammes (six
and a quarter pounds) of sulphide of carbon are sufficient for a room
of a hundred cubic metres. The process is effective and economical
enough ; for sulphide of carbon is sold commercially for fifty centimes
(about ten cents) per kilogi-amme, which gives about twenty-five cents

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as the price of disinfecting a room of a hundred cubic metres. The
burner costs ten dollars, but it will last for a very long time. This
process is evidently practicable and convenient. It does not tarnish
metallic objects, and furnishes a continuous, slow, and regular disen-
gagement of the disinfecting gas. — Translated for the Popular Sci-
ence Monthly from La Nature.

-+•+-

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA.

By J. MACDONALD OXLEY.

IN the month of February last a report was laid before the Parlia-
ment of Canada detailing the results of an expedition dispatched
by the Government of that country particularly for the purpose of in-
quiring into the navigability of Hudson Strait and Bay, and, at the
same time, of gathering information concerning the resources of that
region, and its availability as a field for settled habitation. This report
represents the first properly organized attempt that has ever been made
to pierce the secrets of Hudson Bay for the public benefit.

It is at first blush not easy to understand why this mighty expanse
of water, occupying the peculiarly important position that it does,
should remain for so many generations comparatively unexplored, and
wholly unutilized, except as a hunting-ground for a few New Bedford
whalers, or a medium of easy communication between some half-dozen
scattered factories of the Hudson Bay Company. Although called a
bay, it is really an inland sea, 1,000 miles in length by 600 in width,
having thus an area of about 500,000 square miles, or quite half that
of the Mediterranean. It drains an expanse of country spreading out
more than 2,000 miles from east to west, and 1,500 from north to south,
or an area of 3,000,000 square miles. Into its majestic waters pour
feeders which take their rise in the Rocky Mountains on the west and
in Labrador on the east, while southward it stretches out its river-roots
away below the 49th parallel until they tap the same lake-source which
sends a stream into the Gulf of Mexico. Despite its distance north-
ward, its blue waves are never bound by icy fetters, and its broad gate-
way to the Atlantic is certainly navigable four months out of the year,
and possibly all the year round to properly equipped steamships. Its
depths abound in finny wealth, from the mammoth whale to the tiny
caplin. Its shores are serrated by numerous streams, some navigable
for long distances inland, and all stocked with the finest of fresh-water
fish, and clothed as to their banks with valuable timber ready for the
lumberman's axe. Its islands are rich in mineral ore of many kinds.
The country whose margin its tides lave is well adapted for tillage and
pasturage, while all around the region swarms with animals and birds

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA. 223

whose flesh or fur renders their chase a highly lucrative employment.
How comes it, then, that, for all this superabundant endowment, the
only population outside the wandering bands of Eskimos and native
Indians to be found there to-day gathers in little circles around the
company's forts which dot the shore at immense intervals?

The explanation of this apparent enigma is not far to seek. It lies
simply in the fact that, until little more than a decade ago, Hudson
Bay and vicinity was the subject of a monopoly, which effectually ex-
cluded from it all but the employes of a single corporation. It was first
visited in 1610 by Henry Hudson, who, after giving his name to the
Hudson River, in his rude little bark, well named Discovery, daunt-
lessly pushed his way thither in search of the mythical northwest pas-
sage to the Pacific, and made it both his imperishable monument and
his grave. The stories that his mutinous crew took home with them
did not prevent other vessels being dispatched on the same hopeless
quest, and, if these latter failed to find the northwest passage, they at
all events found sufficient cause for the Hudson Bay Company being
founded in 1668. This astute corporation, easily obtaining a grant of
the bay and its environing territory, together with the most extensive
powers from a king who knew nothing of its value, and cared less,
forthwith set about excluding all possible rivals from their invaluable
fur-preserve. For half a century or more they had a serious obstacle
to the execution of their laudable design in the presence of the French,
and the bay became the theatre of many a hard-fought conflict.

It was not until, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the whole of
Hudson Bay was ceded to the British, that the company were left to
the undisputed possession of their vast estate — the most stupendous
landed property ever owned by one corporation, embracing, as it then
did, the entire Northwest of Canada. As the day for violence had gone
by, they resorted to a subtler but incomparably more effective method
of keeping the country to themselves. The most ingeniously false and
distorted accounts were sedulously spread abroad concerning this
region. According to them, it was a land of eternal snow and ice,
utterly unfit for human settlement. The perils of the passage through
the strait were grossly magnified. Preposterous tales were circulated
as to the rigors of the climate, the fierceness of the wild animals, and
the barbarous character of the inhabitants. The company's efforts
were crowned with the most gratifying success. Decade after decade
slipped by, and they were still in unquestioned possession, and proba-
bly would have continued so to this day, but for their having been
bought out in 1870 for the tidy sum of £300,000, by the Canadian
Government, to whom, with some reservation, they transferred all their
real estate.

With the change of ownership came a complete change in policy.
Under the new regime, the great object held in view was no longer to
keep the country a solitude, unbroken by the hum of human life, but

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to ascertain in how far it might be available as a field for settlement.
In fulfillment of this policy, Dr. Bell, Assistant Director of the Geo-
logical Survey, was sent up there with an exploring party for six suc-
cessive seasons, and his observations constitute some of the most inter-
esting portions of the reports of that survey. The vast importance of
this region rapidly dawned upon the public mind, when it became
known that here was an immense range of country, having a temperate
climate, a fertile soil, and boundless wealth in forest and mine, await-
ing the long-delayed advent of the farmer, the lumberman, and the
miner. And not only so, but the phenomenal development of the
great Northwest drew attention to Hudson Bay upon another and even
more immediately important ground.

Entering as this bay does into the very heart of the continent, and
being connected by navigable rivers with a network of great lakes
which spreads out until it touches the western boundaries of Mani-
toba, the keen-eyed farmers of that fertile province espied in it a
hopeful solution of the vital problem how they should most cheaply
transport their grain to the markets of the Old World. By reference
to a map of the northern hemisphere it will at once be seen that the
shortest possible route between the Northwest Territories and Europe
lies through Hudson Bay. As the result of careful calculations, it has
been ascertained that even the city of Winnipeg, which is situated
in the extreme southeastern part of these Territories, is at least eight
hundred miles nearer to Liverpool, for instance, by the Hudson Bay
route, than by the St. Lawrence, while the difference in favor of the
former necessarily increases the farther we advance northwestward.
If, as Dr. Bell has so clearly pointed out, we take the central point of
the agricultural lands of the Northwest, we shall find that the distance
from it to Winnipeg is about the same as it is to Churchill, the finest
harbor in Hudson Bay. Now, the distance between Churchill and
Liverpool is a little less (about sixty-four miles) than it is between
Montreal and that great entrepot of commerce. The conclusion con-
sequently is that, as between the above-named center and Liverpool,
there is a saving of the whole distance from Winnipeg to Montreal by
the use of Hudson Bay. This saving amounts to no less than twelve
hundred and ninety-one miles by way of Lake Superior, and sixteen
hundred and ninety-eight miles via Chicago.

The translation of miles into dollars and cents is an easy process
nowadays, and it has been estimated that the difference in freight in
favor of the Hudson Bay route is at least thirty-two cents on each
bushel of grain, or, in other words, means an additional profit of over
six dollars an acre to the farmers of the West. When this idea had
once fairly taken hold of the public mind, a profound interest was
awakened, not only throughout Canada, but also in England, where,
at the 1880 meeting of the British Association, Sir J. IT. Lefroy, Presi-
dent of the Geological Section, hesitated not to affirm that the natural

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA. 225

seaports of that vast interior now thrown open to settlement, Mani-
toba, Keewatin, and the other provinces yet unborn, must be sought
in Hudson Bay. The mouth of the Churchill River would undoubt-
edly be the future shipping-port for the agricultural products of the
Northwest, and the route by which immigrants would enter the coun-
try. In Canada the subject was brought before Parliament for the
first time in 1878, and thenceforth pressed upon its attention every
year, until, finally, after a committee had gathered all available infor-
mation upon the subject, it was decided, at the session of 1884, to
dispatch a fully equipped expedition having for it's main object the
determination of the one point upon which the whole question rested,
namely, whether the bay and strait might be relied upon as safe and
serviceable highways of commerce. It was, of course, a matter of
general knowledge that these waters had been plowed by keels for
two hundred and seventy-four years back ; that sailing-vessels of all
descriptions, from the pinnace of twenty tons to the seventy-four-gun
man-of-war, had passed through the strait and spread their white
wings all across the bay ; and that Moose Factory had been visited by
a supply-ship with unfailing regularity every year since 1735. But
facts like these, encouraging as they might be, were not conclusive,
because in all cases these vessels had been free to choose their own
time for entering and leaving the bay, and they therefore still left
the question open as to whether these waters were navigable during a
sufficient portion of the year to render possible the development of
a great and permanent commerce. In order that there should be suc-
cessful shipping-ports upon the bay, there must, of course, be railways
leading from the interior to these ports, and these railways must be
assured of a profitable volume of business during a good long season,
or they would never be built. The expedition, therefore, was charged
primarily with the duty of affixing the limits of the period of naviga-
tion, and at the same time was instructed to gather as much informa-
tion concerning the climate, resources, flora, fauna, and other features
of the region as the limited time at its command would permit.

On the 22d of July last the steamship Neptune, a wooden vessel,
built and equipped with special reference to northern navigation in
prosecution of the seal-fishery, set forth from the port of Halifax, with
the members of the expedition on board. These were some twenty-six
in number, Lieutenant Andrew R. Gocdon, R. N., of the Meteoro-
logical Survey of Canada, being in command, and having with him, in
the double capacity of geologist and medical officer, Dr. Robert Bell,
whose explorations in the vicinity of Hudson Bay have been already
referred to. The rest of the party comprised a photographer, eight
observers, three carpenters, and twelve station-men. As the observers
and station-men were to be left for the winter, they had each of them
been carefully examined by medical authority, and pronounced physic-
ally well fitted to withstand the rigors of an Arctic climate.

TOL. XXVII. — 15

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Sailing up past Capes North and Ray, and thence through the Gulf
of St. Lawrence and the Strait of Belle Isle, the Neptune coasted
along the Labrador shore until reaching Nain on the 29th, where a
pause was made in the hopes of securing fur clothing for those who
were to remain out all winter, and also an interpreter. Failing in
both objects, but experiencing much kindness at the hands of the
Moravian missionaries, one of whose principal stations Nain is, the
expedition continued on to Nachvak, arriving there on the 1st of
August. On the way icebergs were encountered in great numbers,
requiring constant vigilance on board the steamship. At Nachvak,
which is a post of the Hudson Bay Company, both the fur clothing
and the interpreter were readily obtained. The company's agent
informed Lieutenant Gordon that the ice takes over the harbor of
Nachvak, which is in latitude 59° 10' north, and longitude 63° 30' west,
about the middle of November in each year, and, curious to note, has,
for the last seven years, at all events broken up within a day of the
2Gth of June in each year. Off Cape Chudleigh, which is just at the
mouth of Hudson Strait, the Neptune was enveloped in a dense fog,
which compelled her to lay-to from Sunday until Tuesday morning.
Tuesday, however, dawned bright and clear, and, pushing in through
Grey Strait, a fine harbor was found that afternoon on the north-
western shore of the cape, at the entrance to Ungava Bay. On the
shore of this harbor a site was selected for observing station No. 1,
and the place named Port Bur well, in compliment to the observer
appointed to that station. As the best and briefest method of indi-
cating the precise nature of the duties devolving upon these observers
who were to spend a long and dreary winter at their posts, we here-
with transcribe the instructions with which each wras furnished :

Instructions to Officers in charge of Stations in Hudson
Bay and Strait. — As the primary object of the whole expedition is
to ascertain for what period of the year the strait is navigable, all
attention is to be paid to the formation, breaking up, and movements
of the ice.

Each station is supplied with a sun-dial and time-piece, and the
clock is to be tested each day when there is sunshine about noon. A
table of corrections is supplied for the reduction of apparent time to
local mean time ; to this the difference of time will be applied to 75th
meridian, all entries being made in the time of this meridian, and
observations will be taken regularly at the following times throughout
the year, viz., 3h. 08 m., 7 h. 08 m., 11 h. 08 m., a. m. and p. m.

Each morning the sums and means of the observations taken on the
previous day will be taken out and checked over ; they will then be
entered in the abstract-books supplied for the purpose.

After each observation during daylight the observer on duty will
take the telescope and carefully examine the strait, writing down at

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA. 227

the time all that he sees, stating direction and (when possible) velocity
of tide, movement of ice, if any ; also describe the condition of the ice,
whether much broken up, solid field, etc.

Tidal Observations. — Each day the time and height of high and
low water are to be carefully observed, and during the open season the
character of the tide will be carefully noted for two days before and
three days after the full and change of the moon. For this purpose a
post, marked off in feet and fractions of a foot, is to be placed in the
water, at low water in some sheltered spot, if any such be available,
and the height of the water noted every half -hour during the rise and
fall of one tide on each of these days — the height to be noted most
carefully every five minutes during the hour of high water and the
same at low water ; the five-minute observations will also be taken for
one hour during the most rapid portion of the rise. Special observa-
tions of barometric pressure are to be taken in connection with these
tidal observations.

To check the zero-mark for the tidal-observation post, select a spot
on shore from which the horizon line will be projected on the tidal
post, and record the reading of this line when seen projected on the
post by the observer, whose eye is to be placed at a measured height
above the datum-point selected on shore.

All remarks in regard to the movements of birds, fish, etc., and also
as to the growth of grasses, will be carefully entered.

As it is impossible to give to the officers in charge of stations
detailed instructions which would be of service in every contingency
which might arise, the officers are required to observe and enforce the
following rules :

(a.) Every possible precaution is to be taken against fire, and, as it is
anticipated that the temperature can be maintained considerably above
the freezing-point inside the houses, two buckets full of water are
always to be kept ready for instant use.

(b.) As the successful carrying out of the observations will, in
a great measure, depend on the health of the party, the need of
exercise is strongly insisted on during the winter months, and also
that each member of the party shall partake freely of the lime-juice
supplied.

(c.) Each party is supplied with a boat, but, unless some emergency
requires it, it must be a rule that neither afloat nor ashore must any
of the party leave the station for a greater distance than they can be
sure of being able to return the same day.

(d.) As soon as possible after the houses are completed and the
stores all in place, the party will set to work collecting sods, grass, or
any other non-conducting material, and before the winter sets in the
whole house is to be covered with this, boards overlaid, and snow
packed over all ; the assistance of the Eskimos should, if possible, be
obtained, and the whole house arched over with snow.

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

As will be gathered from the above, the observers' duties, while
not onerous, were sufficiently varied and responsible to impart variety
and purpose to the otherwise necessarily monotonous and depressing
round of existence.

It was intended to place station No. 2 on the lower Savage Islands,
at the northern entrance to the strait, and nearly opposite to station
No. 1, but a succession of stormy weather prevented success in doing
so. The expedition proceeded up the strait to Big Island, North
Bluff, where station No. 3 was established, and the place christened
Ashe Inlet. The Eskimos in the neighborhood seemed highly delighted
at the prospect of having white men near them. Station No. 4 was
established at Stupart's Bay, Prince of Wales Sound, across the strait
from Ashe Inlet ; station No. 5 at Port de Boucherville, Nottingham
Island. Other calls were made at Digges Island, near Cape Wolsten-
holme ; at Marble Island, south of Chesterfield Inlet, which was found
marked by the presence of nineteen graves and a monument to six
other persons who had been drowned ; at Churchill, the future Liver-
pool of the region ; at York Factory, the present commercial metropo-
lis of the bay, whence, after a stay of only one day, the return journey
was taken up. The several stations were visited in turn, and the
finishing touches were given to the preparations for the long Arctic
winter. A second attempt was made to establish a station on Resolu-
tion Island. Two bays were examined, in both of which the vessel
ran unwarned immediately from deep soundings upon the rocks, and
the idea was given up. Finally, the Neptune arrived at Port Burwell,
on the 27th of September, where, as at all the other stations, it found
the observers well, pleased with their work, and satisfied with their
provisioning. Thence the expedition returned to St. John's, New-
foundland, where the Neptune was given up to her owner, while the
men took passage for Halifax.

The course of this expedition having thus been briefly outlined,
it now remains to examine into the results so far as they have been
detailed, and consider their bearing upon the important problem sought
to be solved ; and, first of all, with regard to the navigation of Hudson
Strait and Bay. The ice has hitherto been supposed to be the most
formidable barrier to the navigation of these waters, but Lieutenant
Gordon assures us that under investigation its terror very largely dis-
appears. The ice' met with during the cruise of the Neptune could be
divided into three classes — each class having a distinctly separate ori-
gin— namely, icebergs from the glaciers of Fox Channel, heavy Arctic
ice from the channel itself, and ordinary field-ice, being that formed
on the shores of the bay and strait. No icebergs were encountered
in Hudson Bay, nor were any reported as having been seen there in
the past ; but in the strait a good many were seen, principally along
the northern shore, where a number were stranded in the coves, while
others were met with in mid-channel. Of those seen in the eastern

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA. 229

end of the strait, some had undoubtedly come in from Davis Strait,
passing between Resolution Island and East Bluff ; but all of those
met to the westward had come from Fox Channel, as observations
made by the observer at North Bluff show that an iceberg coming in
sight from the westward will pass out of view to the eastward in from
three to four tides, showing an easterly set of upward of ten miles a
day. In Lieutenant Gordon's opinion, the icebergs seen in Hudson
Strait during August and September would form no greater barriers
to navigation than do those met with off the Strait of Belle Isle, nor
were they more numerous in the former than they frequently are in
the latter waters. The field-ice encountered, although it would have
compelled an ordinary iron steamer to go dead-slow, gave no trouble
to the Neptune, the vessel running at full speed between the pans,
and rarely touching one of them.

In the harbor at Ashe Inlet the ice came in with the flood-tide, and
set so fast that the Eskimos were able to walk off to the ship, although
she was at least three quarters of a mile from the shore. On the south
shore, also, it was much the same ; but still no ice was met with
through which the steamer could not easily and safely force her way.
In the center of the strait, to the east of North Bluff, no field-ice was
seen at all, while between Stupart Bay and Salisbury Island long
strings of ice were frequently seen ; but, as their direction was invari-
ably parallel to the vessel's course, it was only necessary to coast round
them. On the homeward voyage none of this field-ice was seen at all.
It is a point of no small significance that, upon the testimony of the
Eskimos, both at Ashe Inlet and Stupart Bay, the quantity of ice in
the strait had been very unusual that year, and the ice had never
been known to hang to the shores so late in the season.

After passing the east end of Salisbury Island the ice got heavier
and closer, and when off Nottingham Island the pack was so run to-
gether that no attempt was made to force the ship through it. Viewed
from a hill on Nottingham, the sea in every direction seemed one vast
ice-field, in which four vessels could be noted fast prisoners. This ice
was of an altogether different type to that which had been hitherto
met. In some cases there were sheets of solid blue ice not less than
forty feet in thickness, not a mere aggregation of field-ice, but evi-
dently frozen just as it stood. In other places the thickness would be
twenty feet, and the general average of the whole field at least five
feet. Now, the question as to the origin of this ice, and whether it
will be frequently met with in- the strait, is one of paramount impor-
tance. Lieutenant Gordon does not consider it possible for ice to form
in Fox Channel to a greater thickness than ten feet in a single year,
and consequently feels convinced that much of the ice encountered was
the accumulation of several years. Ice is well known to be a very
poor conductor of heat, and therefore, when once a certain thickness
has been formed, the subsequent rate of thickening must be very slow.

2 3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The depth to which water will freeze has never yet been determined ;
but measurements of the formation of ice which are to be carefully
made at the observing-stations will, no doubt, materially assist in a
determination of this important question.

At Churchill the harbor-ice forms, on an average, about the middle
of November, and breaks up about the middle of June, and these two
dates may therefore be taken as marking the extreme limits of the
season during which that harbor may be used.

With regard to the time consumed in making the passage through
the strait, it is necessary to note that, had the Neptune gone direct
from Cape Chudleigh to Churchill, instead of coasting and working
across the strait, there would have been no greater delay on account
of the ice than forty-eight hours at the most ; but, at the same time,
no ordinary iron steamship, built as the modern freight-carrier is, could
have got through the heavier ice without incurring serious risk, if not
actual disaster.

There is one matter to which Lieutenant Gordon draws attention
that will require the serious consideration of mariners navigating these
waters, namely, that in working through the strait, especially at the
western end, he found the ordinary compass so sluggish as to be prac-
tically useless. The Sir William Thomson card, however, worked
admirably when properly compensated. The reason of this difficulty
with the ordinary compass is that, from the proximity to the magnetic
pole, the horizontal directive force of the earth's magnetism, which
alone directly affects the compass-needle, is very small compared with
the whole magnetic force, and consequently the effect of induced mag-
netism in the iron of the shij) on the compass becomes very large in
comparison with the direct action above mentioned, the result being
that, in an imperfectly compensated compass, the error due to local
attraction is very greatly increased. The means of correcting this
error in the Sir William Thomson binnacle are perfect and easily
mastered, and the system is such that the compass can, after the first
voyage or two, be perfectly compensated by using certain proportions
of soft-iron bars and magnets as correctors, the proportion having to be
determined by actual observation and experiment on the voyage. All
steamshijjs making the voyage through the strait, Lieutenant Gordon
therefore concludes, should have one of these compasses as a standard,
and the captains should familiarize themselves with the methods of
correcting them, and, as opportunity offers, take azimuth observations,
both stellar and solar.

Great caution will have to be observed by all vessels approaching
the strait in thick weather, owing to the strong southward current
there prevailing, which, during the forty-eight hours the Neptune was
lying-to, swept her forty miles out of her course by dead-reckoning,
showing that the amount of southerly set exceeds that indicated by
the Admiralty directions. Then, again, the tides rise to a consider-

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA.

231

able height, as much as thirty-two feet at springs in some places, and
in their fluctuations create tide-races, which have to be taken into con-
sideration and carefullv allowed for. Thus at the entrance to Church-
ill there is a tide-race, the velocity of which was estimated to be not
less than seven knots.

In the matter of weather, Hudson Strait would seem to compare
very favorably with that great highway of commerce, the Strait of
Belle Isle, as the following table, which is for the month of August,
clearly indicates :

Number of days on which fog is recorded

Approximate number of hours of fog ,

Days on which snow fell

Days on which rain fell

Days on which wind exceeded twenty-five miles per hour, but

did not reach forty

Days on which wind exceeded forty miles

Hudson

Strait.

9

102
4
8

5

1

This is a very favorable showing for Hudson Strait, and it is
strengthened by the annexed table, affording a comparison between
Station No. 1 at Cape Chudleigh and Belle Isle. This table covers
the month of September :

Number of days on which fog is recorded

Approximate number of hours of fog

Days on which snow fell

Days on which rain fell ,

Days on which velocity of wind was between twenty-five and

forty miles per hour

Days on which velocity of wind was forty miles or over per

hour

Hudson
Strait.

4
34

8
(5

So far as weather is concerned, therefore, Hudson Strait enjoys a
decided advantage over Belle Isle Strait, and on that ground, at all
events, presents no difficulties of such a character that they can not
readily be overcome by experienced, careful navigators.

Those portions of Lieutenant Gordon's report which deal with the
resources and trade of the region he visited, interesting and important
as they are, must be passed over for the present, while we hasten on
to what he has to say concerning its natural history. Before doing so,
however, it is worth noting that, although Hudson Bay belongs to
Canada, its whale and walrus fisheries have been hitherto enjoyed by
the Americans altogether, and the fur-trade has been entirely monopo-
lized by the Hudson Bay Company,, so that the Dominion practically
obtains no benefit from these vast possessions whatever. Lieutenant
Gordon accordingly, very properly, presses upon the Government of
Canada the necessity of their turning their attention to this unaccount-

232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ably neglected field for enterprise and investment, and especially of
seeing that its treasures are not prematurely exhausted, but so pre-
served as to be a permanent source of revenue and profit.

We come now to Lieutenant Gordon's observations upon the nat-
ural history of the country, and first of all as to its human inhabitants.
These are very scanty, and, with the exception of a few white men at
the traders' posts, are solely Eskimos. On the north side of the strait
they are quite familiar with the ways of white men, and seem to be
highly pleased at the prospect of increased intercourse with them.
Occasionally one is met with who has mastered the English tongue,
but not often. Many others understand well enough what is said to
them in that language, although they can not be persuaded to speak
it. They are particularly fond of any article of civilized clothing, and
the head-man at North Bluff manifested no small pride at the posses-
sion of a stand-up linen collar, which he displayed to the utmost ad-
vantage. In character they are docile, amiable, and willing to work.
When landing the stores and coal at North Bluff they worked all day
along with the men, carrying heavy weights up over the rocks, and
toiling away as cheerily and heartily as could be desired, asking no
other remuneration than biscuits, of which commodity they are inor-
dinately fond. These people have no farinaceous food of any kind,
and, as a consequence, the children are not weaned until they reach
the age of thi*ee or four years. The families are small, there rarely
being more than two or three children, and, although early marriages
are the rule, their numbers must be diminishing, because signs of their
presence were met with everywhere, while the people themselves were
found at only three places along the straits, and there are only some
five or six families known to be between Cape Chudleigh and Nach-
vak. Along the Labrador coast the Eskimos gather in small settle-
ments around the Moravian mission-stations. Nain is considered the
largest settlement, and its Eskimo population does not exceed two
hundred souls. Those at the stations are all educated, being able to
read and write in their own language, and, according to the mission-
aries, are regular attendants at church, and very fond of music — two
excellent and hopeful traits certainly.

Practical prohibition prevails, thanks to the vigilance of the mis-
sionaries, and the only liability to temptation that ever falls in the
way of an Eskimo is when some unprincipled Newfoundland fisherman
offers him a pull out of his flask. This, however, is a rare occurrence,
and there is no record of any disturbance or trouble ever having been
raised that would elsewhere demand the presence of a policeman for
its quelling. The missions are so well managed as to be self-support-
ing, the modus operandi being for the missionaries to supply the Es-
kimos on loan with the very best traps, fishing-lines, and other gear,
and then to purchase from them all their catch, whether it be seals,
cod, salmon, furs, or anything else. A vessel which comes out from

THE MEDITERRANEAN OF CANADA. 233

London every year transports the stock thus accumulated to London,
where it is sold for the benefit of the mission, and in this way a con-
siderable income is secured annually. In reference to the work thus
carried on by the missionaries, Lieutenant Gordon pays them a well-
deserved compliment by giving it as his opinion that their system of
dealing with the natives, when honorably carried out, as it has been,
and is on the Labrador coast, is the one which best meets the wants
of the natives, and tends to the improvement of their condition.

So much has been said by Arctic explorers about the incorrigible
kleptomania of the natives they encountered, that we read with no
less surprise than gratification this testimony as to the moral condition
of the Eskimos at Hudson Strait : " One word may be said in regard to
their honesty. Although scraps of iron and wood possess a value to
them which we can hardly appreciate, they would take nothing with-
out first asking permission ; not even a chip or broken nail was taken
without their first coming to the officer who was on duty at the build-
ing for permission to take it."

In the matter of animals, the Hudson Bay region is quite as scanti-
ly supplied as it is in human inhabitants, the list of terrestrial mam-
malia comprising only four species, namely, the polar bear, the fox,
the hare, and the reindeer. The skin of the polar bear is quite valu-
able, a good one bringing twelve dollars with the agents of the Hud-
son Bay Company. These animals, although reported by the Eskimos
to be very savage, will not, as a rule, attack human beings unless first
wounded or rendered desperate by hunger, under which circumstances
any beast of prey becomes an undesirable neighbor. The Eskimos on
the south side of the strait stated that, at certain times of the year,
there were large numbers of these animals seen. Their meat is not
unpalatable, but the liver is said to be poisonous. Of foxes there are
three kinds found, to wit, the white, the blue, and the red. The white
species would seem to be very numerous, judging from the number of
skins seen with the natives. These skins, however, have no commer-
cial value. The blue fox is properly of a steel-gray color. The skins
are in good demand ; but the animals are not at all numerous. As to
the red fox, its sole value consists in the fact that its presence indi-
cates the "possibility of that most precious of all pelts — a black fox's —
being somewhere in the vicinity. This species is met with on the south
side of the strait, and black foxes are annually shot or trapped in the
country south of Cape Chudleigh. The most important and beneficent
of all the animals of the country, however, is the reindeer, which fur-
nishes food and clothing, and much more, too, for its Eskimo master.
The hare is common over the whole coast, and with game-birds of many
kinds — geese, swans, duck, and ptarmigan — will no doubt furnish many
a toothsome dish for the tables of the men at the various stations.

Having thus traversed the whole ground sought to be covered by
the expedition, Lieutenant Gordon brings his admirable report to a

234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

close with some suggestions to the Government as to what should be
done during the coming season. While much, no doubt, will be learned
from the observations taken during this winter as to the formation and
breaking up of the ice and generally in regard to its movements, and
also of the other phenomena affecting navigation, it would be mani-
festly impossible to state definitively from one year's observations what
the average period of the navigability of the strait might be. In
order to do this, the stations should be maintained for a second or even
a third year.

The question, therefore, as to whether the navigable season of the
strait is sufficiently long to permit of an extensive commerce grow-
ing up and being profitably maintained, remains still an open one, and
must do so for perhaps a year or two more. Yet, in view of what has
been already ascertained, it certainly seems as if the probabilities were
all in favor of the Hudson Bay route being found practicable, and
pressed into the world's service at no very distant day.

The era of sailing-vessels is rapidly passing away. The freight-
carriers between the continents will ere long be exclusively steamships,
and to steamships properly adapted for the work the passage of Hud-
son Strait has been clearly shown to be perfectly feasible and free from
danger. The matter has resolved itself down to this single point :
For how many months may a steamship navigate those waters ? And
even if the answer, deduced from the observations taken at the stations
now established, be that these months are too few to make the route
pay, Lieutenant Gordon's expedition will not have been undertaken
in vain, for it has thrown a flood of light upon a region hitherto com-
paratively unknown, and has opened Canadian eyes to the fact that
here, right in the heart of their own territory, they possess sources
of wealth, both in the seas and on the land, requiring nothing but a
little enterprise and capital to yield the most satisfactory returns. In
the bay and adjacent waters the whale, porpoise, walrus, narwhal, seal,
salmon, trout, and cod are ready at the summons of hook and harpoon
to make substantial contribution to the national wealth. Upon the
shore and throughout the islands minerals without number and forests
without limit await the lumberman and the miner.

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS.

By Dr. ALFRED E. BREHM.

SHEIK KEMAL EDIN DEMIRI, who died about a. d. 1405, and
was the author of a voluminous treatise on the life of animals,
relates the following story as a fact : " The inhabitants of a town
called Olila, on the shore of the Red Sea, were in olden times meta-

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 235

morphosed into monkeys, in punishment for their wickedness. They
had broken the Sabbath by fishing. Some of their pious fellow-citi-
zens endeavored in vain to convey them back into the path of virtue ;
and, finally, when all admonitions proved useless, left the town. Re-
turning to their homes three days later, they found, instead of their
neighbors, baboons, which met them looking sorrowfully, and ex-
pressing by signs and attitude that they recognized the friends whose
advice they had scorned with so dreadful a result. In his anger, Allah
had inflicted a terrible sentence upon them." The writer carefully
insists on the circumstance that the culprits were Jews.

The Prophet and his followers admit this metamorphosis by God's
special intervention as a fact, and this fully explains the prominent
part assigned to apes in all Arabic fables and tales. The early Egyp-
tians believed religiously that some groups of monkeys were ex-
perts in writing, and, by that fact alone, equal if not superior to
mankind in general. A number of apes were consequently sheltered
and fed in the temples, worshiped during life, and embalmed after
death. Those privileged specimens of the four-handed tribe, when
first introduced into the temple, were handed a slate and pencil by the
chief -priest, and humbly requested to show their right to admission into
the sacred asylum by writing. The gamboling and grinning candi-
dates wrote, and nobody ever doubted that the figures traced by their
agile hands fully deserved to be classed in the category of hieroglyphs.
So highly were they held in respect and veneration, that the holy
Sphinx was represented with their hair-dress, and, till to-day, men and
women in the country of the Mahdi give their hair the same shape. But
the Egyptians never admitted that the priests or Pharaohs were the de-
scendants of monkeys, while, on the contrary, the Hindoos built houses
and temples to shelter and worship apes, and venerated the princes of
their country as the direct offspring of the holy animals. The Arabs
regard the latter as " the descendants of the wicked, to whom noth-
ing is sacred, nothing respectable, nothing too good or too bad ; who
never feel friendly dispositions for other creatures of the Lord, and are
damned by Allah, and carry the likeness of the devil and of man com-
bined on their ill-shaped bodies."

We, the sons of civilization, agree up to a certain point with the
Arabs. We also — at least that portion of modern society who have
not been given an education or an overtraining in physical science —
decline to see in apes anything more than caricatures of ourselves,
and repudiate with much aversion the inferences drawn from Dar-
win's theory. On the other side, highly educated men all over the
world have opened the discussion of the relationship between man
and monkey, and speaking about the latter nowadays has become
a dangerous task, in so far as there is but one alternative left — to
offend the ancestry or the offspring ! For my own part, I feel no
hesitation in approaching the question of relationship to examine its

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

value, and in trying to illustrate the life of that pretended cousin
of ours.

The apes have established their homes in every continent, Aus-
tralia excepted. Warmth seems to he one of the principal conditions
of their existence, as they are only found in the warmer regions. In
America they are spread from 26° south to Mexico ; in Asia, from the
Sunda Islands to the Japanese Sea. In Europe there exists hut one
species of monkeys, and its members live all together in one troop on
the rocks of the fort of Gibraltar, under the special care and protection
of the garrison. That troop numbered in all twenty-three individuals
when I visited Gibraltar in 1881.

The principal thing the monkeys claim from a country, whose
clime they are enjoying otherwise, is food, plenty of varied food ; and
this fact fully explains the predilection they have always shown for
places where pious superstition provides for their wants and makes
their life comfortable.

Among other mammifers the female element wields the scepter in
family life, but in the realm of apes the male is invested with the sov-
ereign power, not by general suffrage, but by the right of force. The
oldest and strongest male of a troop proclaims himself chief and leader,
after having vanquished all his competitors, viz., the rest of the senior
males. The longest teeth and the strongest arms decide in the ques-
tion of supremacy. All those who show some reluctance to submit are
chastised till they come to political reason. To the strongest belongs
the crown ; in his sharp teeth resides his wisdom.

This ferocious tyrant understands his duty as a leader, and per-
forms the same with dignity. His subordinates flatter and fondle him
in every way ; the ladies of his harem rival in keeping his dress clean
from annoying parasites. As a genuine pasha, he accepts this respect
with a kind of languid acquiescence. In return, he watches carefully
over his vassals, and shows a continual anxiety for their welfare and
security. He orders and directs minute details in daily life, and sub-
dues all opposition — for there exists a Left also in the monkey state — by
striking and sharp bodily argumentation. As a general rule, the monk-
eys go early to bed, rise late, and establish their night encampment
on the summit of rocks, if possible'. The first thing they do in the
morning is to warm themselves, for which purpose they climb to the
tops of rocks and trees and turn slowly around in the sun till their hair,
wetted by the nightly dew, is entirely dry. This preliminary operation is
followed by a thorough cleansing of the skin, and, immediately after,
by breakfast. Every eatable thing suits monkeys — fruits, onions, roots,
seeds, nuts, leaves, insects, eggs, young birds, snails — and they enjoy
generally a copious, free board. Their notions concerning property
are very defective. " "We plant and the apes harvest," says the Arab
of Eastern Soudan, with his natural apathy in the presence of facts
and events that he can not prevent. Does not the monkey show in

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 237

this a pronounced analogy with mankind who, since tLe existence of
the world, though under severe penal legislation, find it so hard a
task to observe the difference between mine and thine ?

The hungry crowd of quadrumana infest fields and gardens : neither
lock nor bolt, neither fence nor wall is an obstacle for those robbers,
who steal and destroy everything in their way, whether it be eatable
or not. It is not surprising, to any one who has witnessed such dep-
redations, to see the farmers entertain a mortal hatred against these
dark, grinning thieves ; and the Arabs range them in the category of
evil spirits. When they are surprised in their mischievous work, they
flee like cowards toward the nearest trees or rocks, the mothers carry-
ing their children. Only when flight is impossible do they show fight,
and attack men as well as the biggest beasts of prey, and even elephants,
with that impetuous temerity which distinguishes the coward in de-
spair.

After a gestation of from seven to nine months, the female monkey
gives birth to one young one, very seldom to twins. The new-born
monkey is a little ugly creature, bare of hairs, with spindling limbs
and a repulsive, senile face. But the mother is passionately fond of her
monster, and caresses and nurses it with remarkable devotion. She
does not leave it for a single moment, she presses it to her heart, rocks
it to and fro, and takes the utmost care to keep it absolutely clean. In
the first pei'iod of life the baby is apathetic and almost insensible, but
begins gradually to play with urchins of its age. The mother is a
patient observer of the first steps of her beloved, and watches care-
fully that no harm may befall it. In the mean time, she trains it ; and
the first virtue inculcated in the mind of the youngster is obedience,
obedience in the strictest sense of the word. Men have ridiculed the
maternal affection of the brute, and speak of "apish love." In our
eyes the tenderness exhibited by the monkey may have a ridiculous
side, but where is the man who could, without deep emotion, witness
the anxiety of a mother-ape nursing her sick child ? I must confess
that, to my eye, in such cases she is at least the equal of the human
mother. If the young ape dies, the spectacle is a piteous one. The
mother can not be separated from the dead body, refuses all food, and
frequently perishes from grief. In such crises the ape proves cer-
tainly his congeniality with the human race, and in his moral affec-
tions could stand as an example to many men.

The intellectual cultivation of which the monkeys are susceptible
neither raises them so high above the average of mammifers, nor places
them so far beneath the level of mankind, as some people contend.
Further on, we find in no order of animals, as far as intellect is con-
cerned, so wide a difference between the highest and the lowest indi-
viduals as among the monkeys, while, in inverse proportion, the lowest-
gifted human creature hardly differs from the apes whose intelli-
gence is most developed. In many instances the mental and bodily

238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

likeness to humanity is so pronounced that the observer feels quite
uncomfortable in presence of the evidently small chasm existing be-
tween man and beast.

After this general characterization of the whole species, I may be
allowed to trace in large outlines the families and some of their prin-
cipal representatives. Science establishes two families, the monkeys of
the Old World and the monkeys of the New World, and divides the lat-
ter into two sub-families, viz., the claw or squirrel apes and the howl-
ing monkeys, or scientifically, the Ouistitis and the Alouattes. The
home of the ouistitis extends from Mexico to Brazil. The squirrel-
apes are not yet perfect monkeys, though having the same number of
identically shaped teeth as the monkeys of the Old World. Their limbs
end in true paws, bearing narrow, compressed, and sharp-pointed nails
on the four fingers ; the thumbs alone are provided with flat, large nails
like human nails. They are the representatives of the transition from
the unguiculated quadrupeds to the quadrumana, and rank, physically
and intellectually, far below the genuine monkey with heraldic quarters.
The easy, bold, and graceful movements of the latter in climbing,
jumping, walking, and resting, are above their reach, and in the line of
bodily abilities they hardly attain to their model, the squirrel. No one
ever saw them walking in erect posture, and they always step on the
full flat sole, contrary to the real monkeys, whose feet rest on the
outer edge only. The cry of the squirrel-ape sounds like the whistle
of mice or the pip of young birds, and its wit does not, by any means,
reach the level of the genuine ape. A notorious coward, it shows all
the coward's distinctive attributes — a plaintive voice, inability to submit
to unavoidable facts and events, and the endeavor to swagger, even in
the moment of flight.

The first rank in the family of the apes of the New World belongs
incontestably to the howling monkey. Its body is slender, its limbs
are proportionately developed, its hands end in fjve fingers, and each
finger shows flat, slightly convex nails. The fur is coarse, and the hair
under the chin forms a kind of long, protruding beard. A distinctive
feature is to be found in a kind of bony, sixfold drum or barrel
formed by an inflation of the hyoid bone, which communicates with
the larynx, and gives to the voice an enormous volume and frightful
sound. Hence the name of howling monkeys. The long tail is naked,
callous, and of great muscular strength at its extremity, and forms a
convenient prehensile organ, which might be called a kind of fifth hand,
or rather the principal hand of the animal. The alouattes are not
poor climbers, but they never take bold jumps, and always keep their
hold by the tail till their hands have grasped the next limb, aud this
makes them slaves to the trees. They seldom venture upon the ground
or on rocks. The howling monkeys herd in troops and follow slowly
and awkwardly in the steps of their leader, whose slightest move-
ments are imitated by every individual. There is no character in

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 239

their voice nor in their general behavior : they act like automata and
yell and howl like maniacs. In the morning, when all the rest of na-
ture is rejoicing in the new-born daylight, the troop of howling monk-
eys will descend gravely from the leafy tree where they have passed
the night, closely gather in a huddled crowd, and, having secured
some breakfast, will proceed to indulge in a kind of social entertain-
ment which is as exempt from frivolity and impropriety as it well can
be, but which well reflects the character of the participants. The
company make choice of some leafless tree, which they climb with
great dignity. Each member takes his place as he pleases, but one
large bough is reserved for the exclusive use of the leader, who paces it
to and fro, solemnly raising his tail, and begins to utter low sounds,
similar to the grunt of a young hog. The prelude grows insensibly
louder, the time is quickened, after a few moments the pauses are
omitted, and the wretched tune, sinister at first, becomes an unin-
terrupted, dreadful yelling. Now the crew are thrown into raptures,
and all join in one deafening cry and howl in concert. The powerful
roar of the jaguar, the terrific growling of the panther, the wild
shouting of a crowd of beastly, drunken rustics, lamentations, groans,
seem to be combined in this chorus. And, curiously, the artists have
no idea of expressing any special feeling. Such entertainments some-
times last several hours. Those long-tailed howlers are tiresome
creatures, and I must confess that, in the matter of apes, the Old World
takes the lead. Here, also, we find two sub-families — the Cynopithecini
(dog-apes) and the Anthropomorpha (man-shaped apes). The former
have perfectly developed teeth, like the quadrupeds, and a tail ; the
Anthropomorpha, on the contrary, have no tail, and their set of teeth
resembles that of men, with the exception of the canine teeth, which
are stronger and intermediate between those of beast and man.

The Cynopithecini present almost all the features in character
which distinguish monkeys in general. The leadership is intrusted
to the strongest male ; he assigns to each member of the troop his
duties, and watches for the general welfare. Their well-shaped hands
give to these monkeys advantages which other animals do not enjoy,
but still it is a question whether the dog could not in justice be placed
on the same level with them as regards intelligence and sagacity. Apes
and dogs show discernment and exercise restraint on their manner
of living ; both are aware that every disorderly act on their side is fol-
lowed by punishment, but the apes believe themselves far above the
dogs. Excessively susceptible to reproaches, they want to be praised
and fondled, while they themselves tease and insult other animals at
every opportunity. They are docile, they eat with knife and fork,
drink from the glass, dress, ride on horseback, submit to military drill-
ing, wait on their masters, but only when, where, and as long as they
are pleased, and never with the same care and conscientiousness that
characterize a well-trained dog. There is no troop in the world so hard

240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to manage as a troop of these monkeys, which peculiarity hrings them
near the hopeful youth of modern age. Another proof of their supe-
rior intellect may be found in the fact that they avail themselves of
the means afforded by others to make their life as comfortable as pos-
sible.

I had often seen and closely observed individual baboons in cap-
tivity, but had never had a chance to meet those interesting animals
living the life of liberty in organized troops. That pleasure was in
store for me one morning, in the year 1862. I was traveling in Bogos-
land at the time. On the morning in question I found myself sepa-
rated for a while from my companions, and had just sat down to take
a short rest when I heard a kind of strange barking, coming from a
steep cluster of rocks in the vicinity. Some minutes before my atten-
tion had been aroused by a number of curiously shaped forms on the
summit of the rocks, but I came to the conclusion that they were large
blocks of stone. The barking disabused me, inasmuch as the forms,
true and genuine baboons, were now starting up. Considering the
shouting of the animals as a personal provocation, I hurried up the hill
and fired a shot at the troop, which at once took to their heels and
were soon out of sight. About half an hour later, after I had joined
my friends, we saw the same troop in file on a narrow bridge running
at considerable height along a rocky wall. Another gunshot made
them disappear once more, but a short distance farther, where the
valley turned at a sharp angle, we met them just at the moment when
they were crossing to reach the opposite hills. Our hounds, though
trained to hunt hyenas, hesitated in bewilderment, but soon gave
tongue and made an impetuous rush at the monkeys. At once the old
males rallied and faced the dogs, forming a wide semicircle, roaring,
grinning, and furiously beating the ground with their hands. Their
threatening attitude and spiteful glances frightened the hounds, which
recoiled in amazement. The monkeys took advantage of this moment-
ary failure of our animals and retreated in haste. When the latter
were rallied and started for a fresh attack, there were only a few more
in the valley, and the last of the stragglers was a pug of about six
months, which retreated in agonizing terror to the top of a large block
of stone where the hounds set it. " That pug will be ours," I shouted,
but was thoroughly mistaken. One of the senior males, a strong, pow-
erful individual, started from the other side of the valley, advanced
quietly toward the block, pride and mischief shining in his eyes,
marched straight to the hounds, which trembled under his vicious
glances and threatening gesticulations, climbed the stone, fondled the
young one, put it on his back and calmly returned, while we were
standing there all startled. Similar acts of self-exposure of a male are
only found among monkeys, while among all the other animals, even
the lions, it is always the female which risks life to save her cub.

Some time afterward I crossed the same valley in company with

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 241

Duke Ernst, of Coburg-Gotha, and near the same place we met the
troop moving half-way up on the rocky slope of the hill. On the
duke's motion, we resolved to offer them fight. Seven men, armed
with patent rifles, opened the attack. At the first volley the females
took to flight with the young ones, while the males not only did not
flee, but advanced, and in less than no time a formidable hail of stones
whistled around our heads. Some of the stones thrown were as large
as a man's head. It was full time for us to withdraw, and so we did.
The monkeys remained the masters of the battle-field.

On my second voyage to Eastern Soudan we stopped in Khartoum
during the rainy season. I suffered much, even more than I am
suffering here in New York, from fever and chills. In the long, tedi-
ous hours of leisure we made a collection of monkeys, and those ani-
mals cheered me up many a time in my physical and mental troubles.
We played with them, and at the same time undertook their training,
and that in a fashionable manner. So we gave them riding-lessons.
An old, fat, lazy donkey had the honor to serve as horse, and, although
the apes showed disgust and fear at first, one single lesson was
sufficient to initiate them into the secrets of the noble sport, and in
a few days they were, in their way, masters in the art. They would
mount the donkey three, four, and five at a time, the first one em-
bracing fondly the neck of the trotter with the fore-hands and cramp-
ing his hind-hands convulsively in the pelt of the animal's abdomen ;
the next one taking hold of his comrade, and securing his equilibrium
in the same way by means of the hind-hands ; and so on in a file. A
funnier sight than this, four or five grinning apes closely nestled to
the donkey's back, can hardly be imagined. The gray-haired trotter
sometimes had to suffer from the mischievous riders, and did not con-
ceal his feelings, to the great amusement of his tormentors. Besides
playing, the monkeys were instructed in many little arts and tricks,
and on that occasion I learned to appreciate them as smart and most
sagacious creatures.

But passion makes them blind — unlike men, as it is said by the
monkey-haters — as if men always kept quiet, composed, even-minded,
and sober ! As well as the apes in general, our baboons were passion-
ately fond of strong liquors, and had a peculiar propensity for merisa,
a kind of beer made of the grains of durrah by the inhabitants
of the Soudan. Brandy was not to their taste, but, unfortunately,
they made an exception one day. After having swallowed copious
quantities of merisa, each one of the troop was offered a big glass
of date -brandy, which he drank. As a consequence they became
completely intoxicated, insolent, passionate, bestial, and grinned and
gamboled in a fearful manner ; in one word, they offered the hideous
caricature of drunken men. The next day thirteen of the drunk-
ards were suffering from the consequences of the spree, and looked
sick unto death. All food gave them nausea ; they turned away with

VOL. XXTII. — 16

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

disgust from merisa and even from wine, a favorite beverage in ordi-
nary time ; the only things they accepted were lemons, of which each
one ate an average of twenty pieces. In this wretched state they
comported themselves like men, and would, doubtless, have enjoyed a
sour herring if it had been possible to secure this antidote in the
country of the Mahdi. In the evening they felt better, and were all
right the next morning. I hoped this hard lesson would teach my
pupils the advantages of abstinence, but, alas ! I was mistaken once
more in my life. They drank and reveled all the same, and from that
day drank brandy with predilection. More than that, they claimed
their rum every day as a privilege.

I took one of these baboons — it was a female — along to my home
in Germany, because she had always proved to be of extraordinary
sagacity, and actually exhibited a far greater intelligence than the
average of the countrywomen of Thuringia, where I was living. Apes
in general like other creatures, provided they submit to their caressing
and fondling. My baboon at first concentrated her tenderness upon
the children of the village, but, to her great sorrow, found no recipro-
city. Then she turned to cats and dogs, and teased and tormented
them in every way. A bright pussy, which the most of the time she
carried in her arms, was tired one day of her company and attempted
to escape. The ape strongly objected, and the kitten, in its strug-
gles, scratched her in the shoulder. Gravely the baboon seized one of
the paws of her pet, examined it carefully, and finding, probably, the
sharp claws a dangerous superfluity in so small a being, bit them all
off, one by one. We sometimes tried a practical joke on her by put-
ting a little powder near the place where she was secured during part
of the day, and flashing it by means of burning spunk. When the
powder flashed, she screamed and jumped back as far as her chain per-
mitted it. But she had very early found out the connection of things ;
the next time we threw the burning spunk near the powder, she rushed
forward, extinguished it, and quietly ate the explosive, which she prob-
ably relished on account of its saltpetrous taste.

The aptitude of the Cynopithecini to distinguish between cause
and effect is really remarkable. They are aware when they have done
wrong, and expect punishment. An old crowned guenon, also called
Chinese bonnet, living in captivity, once assaulted its attendant, lacer-
ated his arm, and cut an artery. The animal being an old offender,
the master ordered it to be shot. When the man charged with carry-
ing out the order approached the cage of the ape, the latter, appre-
hending his fate, retreated to the adjoining shanty serving as bedroom,
which communicated with the cage by a door. Neither flatteries nor
tempting titbits could move him to come out from there. The man
then had dinner brought and placed in the front cage as usual, and
walked off. As soon as he was out of sight, the monkey cautiously
crawled out, took part of the food, and jumped back to his hiding-

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 243

place. He went a second time, but found his retreat cut off, the door
between the cage and the shanty having been shut. Seeing at the
same moment the attendant armed with the dreadful gun reappear, the
monkey understood at once that he was lost, jumped furiously at the
closed door, tried to escape through every corner, and, finding that
flight was impossible, lay down trembling, and awaited the deadly
bullet.

The ape holds himself far above the other animals, and endeavors
to make them understand it. My baboon showed her superior stand-
ing by tormenting every other animal in the house without any reason
or the slightest provocation. I had an old dog whose temper had been
spoiled by age, and which lived in open war with every creature in the
house. My baboon picked it out as an object for her tricks. Wben
the dog was taking its siesta, the ape would crawl cautiously near, seize
the animal by the tail, and, jumping back, give it an awful jerk. The
dog, roused from slumber, flew into a violent passion, and went howl-
ing and barking for the ape, who quietly watched him, and aggravated
his excitement by patting the floor with her hands. As soon as
the dog was near enough to reach her, she made a jump upon his
back, and again squeezed his tail. These successive insults made the
dog nearly frantic ; he foamed and howled, but, the more excited he
grew, the worse the monkey tormented him. Finally, the old hypochon-
driac, seeing the uselessness of trying to chastise the foe of his rest,
marched off with his tail between his legs whenever the monkey showed
her face.

The sagacity and docility of the Cynopithecini, wonderful as they
are, can not be compared with the intelligence of the Anthropomorpha,
especially the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang-outang, and others.
I have closely observed several individuals of the family, allowed them
to play with my children, and cared for their training and education,
and have drawn astonishing results from my studies. These monkeys
are creatures which one treats involuntarily like men, or at least like chil-
dren. The orang-outangs are melancholic and not very sympathetic with
men ; the variety of the pongos, to which the chimpanzee belongs, is
jovial and by far the most intelligent. Their voice is pure and plain,
and, while it can not be denied that the voice of the gibbons sounds
more melodious and constitutes a veritable song, that of the chimpan-
zee is a formal language. All the sounds are fully accentuated, and
the observer soon understands the meaning of the different modula-
tions, while children, playing with the animal, catch at once the sense
of its utterances.

It is really impossible to treat the chimpanzee like an animal ; his
character and general behavior show so much of humanity that men
are induced to commune with him in the same way as with their
equals. In captivity he is perfectly conscious of his position, and sub-
ordinates himself willingly to the superior mental gifts and capacities

244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of mankind, but holds himself better and higher than other animals,
especially than other monkeys. Paying in every instance high regard
to men, he likes children if they do not tease and molest him. Sportive
and humorous, he indulges in joking with men and animals. He is not
only inquisitive but eager to acquire knowledge, examines carefully
things strange to him, and falls into ecstasy when he has found out their
purpose and learned to use them in the right way. While able to under-
stand men and things, he is, nevertheless, modest and kindly, seldom
willful, and never stubborn, although he claims what is in right due to
him. Of variable temper, he is now good-humored and jolly, now sad
and morose, and gives vent to his feelings as men do, but sometimes in
a more passionate way.

I was once the owner of a highly educated chimpanzee. He knew
all the friends of the house, all our acquaintances, and distinguished
them readily from strangers. Every one treating him kindly he
looked upon as a personal friend. He never felt more comfortable than
when he was admitted to the family circle and allowed to move free-
ly around, and open and shut doors, while his joy was boundless when
he was assigned a place at the common table, and the guests admired
his natural wit and practical jokes. He expressed his satisfaction and
thanks to them by drumming furiously on the table. In his numerous
moments of leisure his favorite occupation consisted in investigating
carefully every object in his reach : he lowered the door of the stove
for the purpose of watching the fire, opened drawers, rummaged boxes
and trunks and played with their contents, provided the latter did not
look suspicious to him. How easily suspicion was aroused in his mind
might be illustrated by the fact that, as long as he lived, he shrank
with terror from every common rubber-ball. Obedience to my orders
and attachment to my person, and to everybody caring for him, were
among his cardinal virtues, and he bored me with his persistent
wishes to accompany me. He knew perfectly his time for retiring,
and was happy when some one of us carried him to the bedroom like
a baby. As soon as the light was put out he would jump into the bed
and cover himself, because he was afraid of the darkness. His favor-
ite meal was supper with tea, which he was very fond of, provided it
was largely sweetened and mixed with rum. He sipped it from the
cup, and ate the dipped bread-slices with a spoon, having been taught
not to use the fingers in eating ; he poured his wine from the bottle
and drank it from the glass. A man could hardly behave himself
more gentlemanlike at table than did that monkey.

He was especially engaging in his association with my children,
always gentle, obliging, and tender, and they liked him as a good
fellow and pretty playmate. When he was first introduced to my
little girl, who was then six months old, he seemed perplexed, and
observed her with astonishment, as if speculating whether that little
bit of a creature was really a human being. At last his mind was

THE WAYS OF MONKEYS. 245

made up ; he touched her cheek with one finger and then offered her
his hand in friendship. My chimpanzee conversed very little with
other animals ; like the apes in general, he was afraid of the big ones
and despised the smaller ones. He was always around us, and we, on
our side, did not make any difference between him and a man.

The animal fell ill of mumps, followed by pneumonia. I had seen
many sick chimpanzees, but never one of them behaved as he did. I
engaged two competent physicians to take charge of him. He knew
them from the first day, allowed them to feel his pulse, showed
his tongue, and directed the hand of the attendant doctor to the pain-
ful swelling, which had to be cut open afterward, there being danger
of suffocation. The doctors would not use chloroform, out of regard
to the affection of the lungs ; but, fearing the chimpanzee would not
keep quiet during the operation, engaged four strong men to hold him.
The sick animal did not submit to that rough treatment, but excitedly
pushed the men aside, and then, without any compulsion whatever, but
in compliance with the fondling words of his nurse, in whose lap he was
sitting, offered his throat. The operation was performed, the ape never
flinching or complaining. He felt afterward much relieved, and ex-
pressed his gratitude by pressing fervently the hands of the physicians
and kissing his nurse. But his life was not spared ; he died from pneu-
monia. Meekly and patiently he bore his long agony and died more like
a man than an animal. The doctor told me that never in his life, at
any death-bed, had he felt an emotion similar to that which seized him
at the humble couch of the poor monkey. In Berlin, many beautiful
eyes shed tears when the news of the sad end of my widely known and
generally petted chimpanzee was spread.

Was the ancestor of the human race a monkey ? That is the vexed
question which still raises so much dust.

There is no doubt that man is not more and not less than the chief
creature in the animal kingdom, and that the monkeys are his immedi-
ate neighbors ; but I can not see why this fact should logically involve
the assumption that our great-great-uncles were gamboling in paradise
in the shape of apes. The doctrine of gradual evolution may seem trust-
worthy in the highest degree and beautiful from the scientific stand-
point, but it is based upon a simple hypothesis, and a hypothesis is not
a proof ; and here I wish not to be misunderstood. Even if the physi-
cal and intellectual development and perfection of humanity through-
out the succession of thousands of centuries is a fact, there is no
authority for the inference that, eo ipso, a monkey-nest was the cradle
of mankind.

Darwin's treatise on the variation of species gave rise to the ardent
controversy of our days. Darwin used the wrong word. It is not
" species " he ought to have said, but " varieties " ; for species never
interbreed with each other. Man and monkey, though belonging to
the same group, represent two distinct species. There is, consequently,

246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a simple and irrefragable natural law refuting peremptorily the thesis
of the enthusiastic propugnators of the pedigree rooting somewhere
amid a grinning tribe gamboling in the wild forests of Asia or Africa.
The criterion that the human race has large, round hands and blunt
canine teeth would be sufficient of itself to establish the truth that no
monkey-blood is pulsating in our veins ; but there are more distinctive
features. Men have strong, well-shaped legs, walk constantly in an
erect posture, and enjoy the faculty of speech.

The monkeys rank near humanity in the general organization of
the world ; they show in many instances much likeness with mankind,
physically as well as intellectually. But a further concession would
be a denial of positive natural laws. Nay ! old Adam was not a monk-
ey, not a baboon, not even a chimpanzee !

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHEKS.

By AUGUSTUS E. GEOTE, A. M.

ONE day, in the British Museum, while waiting a moment in a
room where entomological specimens were exhibited, I saw two
workmen bending over a case containing butterflies and moths.

" There is the Camberwell Beauty," said one, pomting out a par-
ticular example to his companion.

"Ay ! " was the ejaculatory response, and the tone of that "Ay !"
I am not likely to forget. It took me at once to the speaker's proba-
bly humble home, stored with treasured specimens in their boxes,
pinned down low, labeled and arranged. How many hours of stormy
evenings had not been pleasurably spent in sorting and debating, in
setting and classifying, these downy bits of Nature's finery ! From
how much worse employment may not these "little beauties" have
saved their owner !

There is no doubt that in England, as well as in France and Ger-
many, the collecting of moths is a very general recreation as compared
with the United States. That it is harmless is a negative praise ; that
a pursuit of its objects is healthful, and takes the man who works in
the city out into the fresh country air, is a positive recommendation.
But the labor is also instructive. Things have now changed very
much since the days of Malpighi, and biology is a respected and neces-
sary study. And throughout the world of animated beings it may be
safely said that the growth and changes of life can nowhere be so
easily and pleasantly observed as in the rearing of butterflies and
moths from the egg. As to butterflies, it may be asserted that they
are less interesting than their cousins the moths, who constitute the

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 247

elder branch of the great natural group of scaly-winged insects, or
Lepidoptera, to which both belong. The butterflies are less numerous
in species, or kinds, and more uniform in habit and appearance. These
gaudy and papery- winged day-flies have their own attractions and pre-
sent their own scientific problems, but in number, diversity, soft and
delicate colors, and patterns and unexpected modes of life, they can
not hold a candle, to speak both figuratively and appositely, to the
foolish but lovely moths.

First, let us assure ourselves that by moths we do not mean clothes-
moths. These terrors to the housekeeper are only of two or three
kinds, and of small size, belonging to the genera Tinea and Tineola;
while there are over seven thousand species of North American moths
already in our catalogues, from the large and gorgeous "Regal Moth"
( Citheronia regalis) to the "Tiny Gem" (Lithariapteryx) , of all shades
of color from gray to pink, from black to yellow, all innocent of carpet-
or clothes-eating in their young larval days. To some general state-
ments as to these, the methods of hunting and preserving them, and
those who carry on the fascinating pursuit, I claim the reader's indul-
gence for a few pages of what I shall try to make easy and instructive
reading.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that moths, like plants, bear,
each kind, a particular double Latin or Latinized title, as Actias lima,
the " American Moon-Moth," or " Queen of the Night." The first
name is that of the genus, the second of the species. The genus is
founded on certain particular points of structure, and usually em-
braces a number of kinds or species which share in these particular
structural features. While the genus Actias, for instance, is known
by its thinly scaled, pale-green wings, the hind pair furnished with
twisted " tails," our species lima differs from a number of Asiatic and
African species by certain marks and peculiarities of pattern and size.

These Latin names are a source of some difficulty to lay readers
and to many amateurs. Some people prefer English names by which
to designate their specimens, but our species have not been known for
years, as have the European moths ; consequently very few have re-
ceived vernacular names. The " cotton- worm " (Aletia argillacea),
and the " army- worm " (Heliophila unipiincta), are, indeed, two
species of moths well known for their ravages in the larval state, and
which are consequently provided with vernacular names by which they
are distinguished. But we have no English names for the great ma-
jority of species, which are really different in kind from their trans-
atlantic brethren.

The introduction of common names for our moths is evidently a
matter not to be forced, but to be left to itself. The rule of priority,
which Linnaeus appointed to govern the Latin names, can not obtain
here. Some of our butterflies have received several English names, as
the common "milk- weed butterfly." Some of the names for moths in

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

use in England are very pretty, such as the "Arches" and " Wains-
cots " ; others are peculiar and less attractive, as the " Pugs " and
"Lackies." English names for our moths will, it is to be hoped,
gradually appear in our literature and come into general use. The
vernacular names proposed in economic works, such as the reports of
State entomologists, are often very ugly, and have nothing to recom-
mend tbem. They are simple translations from the Latin in many
cases, and are then quite often ridiculous. Dubiosa is translated
doubtful; fraterna, fraternal, and so on ; it is clear that the Latin
names are much better than these. But see what lovely names they
have in England for their moths : the " Kentish Glory," the " Peach-
Blossom," the " Buff Arches," the " Common Wainscot." About the
vernacular names for our moths must come the cooling touch of time ;
they can not be struck out in the heat which accompanies the coining
of a Latin name for a new species. Around their cradle some tutelary
divinity must hover ; some old tale, like an ancient crone, must be its
nurse ; out of some melody, dedicate to fields and flowers, must the
words be taken which are to serve as the title for the new-comer. Af-
fection for the object, quite distinct from the passion of the scientist,
must have its part in the English name, which should also be apposite
and express the appearance or habit of the moth. One of the names
proposed for a North American species, Ommatostola Lintneri, appears
to fill these conditions — viz., the "Dune Wainscot." It is a reed-
colored moth, found on the sandy ridges (dunes) near the Long Island
beaches. Again, another species, vividly colored, black, pink, and yel-
low, is called the " Spanish moth," as it bears the Spanish colors. Its
scientific name is Euthisanotia timais. It breeds in Florida, and
comes up our Atlantic coast-line in summer, being often beaten into
the lighthouses with the birds, during wind-storms, or simply attracted
by their light.

Our species of moths east of the Mississippi are pretty well
known, and all but the very small ones, the Tineidm or leaf -miners, are
described in different publications. What a change during the twen-
ty-five years which have just passed, and which span my own career
as a catcher of moths ! When, a boy of fifteen, I tried to find out the
names of some of our moths, I had great difficulty in ascertaining that
there was such a science as entomology at all ! At that time, even
in Agassiz's museum, at Cambridge, there were not fifty kinds labeled
which had been described and named in this country. Now we have
about seven thousand names of known species in our catalogues, and
from one to two hundred are being added to the list every year. Our
new discoveries come chiefly from the West, where wonderfully
beautiful species are " turned up." Arizona and New Mexico, as well as
Colorado, seem to be perfect paradises for rare and lovely moths.

The reader will have seen that there are two kinds of names, the
scientific and the common. Nothing, it seems to me, that will promote

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 249

popular interest in the study should be neglected ; therefore I hope
that pretty English names for our moths will appear and lighten the
studies of many who find Latin difficult and ugly. It must be remem-
bered, however, that when we wish to designate a certain kind of moth
with precision, we are obliged to fall back upon the Latin name, and
that there is a good deal of prejudice against common names by scien-
tists, whose opinions are worthy of respect, but whose foible it is to be
very exact and precise in their statements about a moth, or any object
upon which they have special information, but who are otherwise as
fallible as the rest of us when it comes to matters of conduct and art.

The old saying in natural history, that everything comes from an
egg, holds good for moths. Nevertheless, modern science has wrought
wonderful changes in our ideas on this subject since the days of Ray
and Willoughby. The young are now considered as part and parcel of
the old — a continuation, to some extent, of the bodies of their parents,
whether we consider a moth or a man. The affinity between the seed
of a plant and the egg of an animal is indeed illusory, but in some of
the lower animals there is a process of reproduction allied to budding
in plants. Years ago the poet Chamisso discovered the fact that the
young of a lowly organized marine animal called Salpa did not resemble
their parents. We know now that in some cases several generations in-
tervene before the final form of the species is assumed. When we read
of the discoveries in biology of Goethe and Chamisso, we see that
there is some justice in the observation that it is the poet who under-
stands Nature best. Perhaps we should rather conclude that the im-
agination is a quality which the naturalist can by no means dispense
with. Goethe's theory of the true structure of the vertebrate skull is
now accepted ; Chamisso died before Steenstrup, in 1824, vindicated
at least the general truth of his particular observations. A curious
story is told of the first discoverer of the true nature of the coral-
makers. The French Academy of Sciences would not print his essay
on the subject, and persisted in the old belief that the coral was a
plant.

To return to our moth-eggs. While certain flies reproduce by a sort
of budding in the larval state, our moths, so far as known, all come
from eggs laid by the female moth on leaves, flowers, or the branches
and trunks of trees. Some are inserted in crevices of the wood itself,
and the little caterpillars, when they hatch, bore into the heart of the
tree upon which they feed. The " peach-borer " (JEgeria exitiosa)
and the " plum-borer " (JEgeria pietipes), Bailey's " goat-moth " ( Cos-
sus centerensis) are examples of certain kinds of wood-eating cater-
pillars. The little moth-eggs, usually attached singly, sometimes in
belts and clusters, vary in the length of time which elapses before they
hatch after they are laid. It is difficult to assert that there is any rule
in this respect, and it is certainly hard to tell when they are "addled."
When they are " bad" and fail to give the little worm, it is often be-

250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cause they are " stung " by minute four- winged flies, parasites upon
these tiny objects.

One of the most curious things about the laying of moth-eggs is
the botanical knowledge of the mother-moth. In the dark she knows
the particular trees upon which her brood flourish, out of a whole for-
est. The proverb about one man's meat being another man's poison
holds good when applied to the caterpillars of moths. They will starve,
as a rule, before eating, or die upon eating, the wrong kind of leaves.
The little eggs, sown here and there by the mother-moth in her nocturnal
flights, are often very pretty to look at through the microscope, being
adorned with delicate traceries. Some kinds are nearly smooth, as
those of the Cecropia, which are quite easily found on lilac and other
leaves, gummed on, with a little brown spot above, over the micro-
pyle, through which the curled-up caterpillar within, a little black,
thorny creature, escapes. Some caterpillars eat the empty egg-shell for
their first meal, but the practice is far from general. Some which I par-
ticularly noticed, those of the " chestnut-stripe " or honeysuckle-leaves,
only nibble at the empty egg-shell, and, I thought, were attracted by
some of the softer parts which might remain. The caterpillars of this
moth (Homohadena badistriga) afterward make a rather stout cocoon ;
I have reared them from eggs found in the back-yard of a house in the
heart of New York city. So far do our country friends penetrate.

The bodies of caterpillars and moths are made up of segments,
or rings, hardened by a substance called chitine, so that it has been
said that insects really follow out Sydney Smith's suggestion, given
under exceptional circumstances, and " sit in their bones " the whole
time. They strike against the outside world with the knobby parts
of their anatomy. A child once described a caterpillar as a " jointed
tube, filled with soft stuff." I don't know how she found out about
the " soft stuff," but the insides are soft, and, when carefully exam-
ined, show the respiratory canals, opening by little narrow slits in the
sides of the segments (for insects do not breathe by the mouth), the
nervous and the muscular systems, networks of little whitish threads,
as also the central digestive apparatus, which takes up the most room,
as our caterpillar is principally a feeding animal. The stiffness of the
rings of insects is obviated by their being connected by a highly flexi-
ble membrane. The caterpillar increases in size by changing its skin.
The old covering becomes too small to hold the food which is retained
and transformed by the chemistry of the body into caterpillar-flesh.
It splits behind the head, and, with more or less trouble, the cater-
pillar frees itself from it, stepping out, and leaving its old skin, a thin
and almost colorless pellicle, to be blown by the summer winds into
Nature's rag-bags which the spiders mostly carry about.

Caterpillars are of all colors, and, within certain limits, of all sizes,
variations of the " jointed tube, with soft insides." They are plain
and smooth, or ornamented with tufts of hair, or fleshy, colored humps ;

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 251

when young, the head and tail are somewhat swollen, and in this state
one kind has been described as looking like " little animated dumb-
bells." When they attain their full size, they prepare to pass into the
chrysalis state, and here their methods are equally diverse. A few
hang themselves up by threads, like butterflies ; others penetrate the
ground, and, without any web, change into a naked, brown-colored
pupa, which reposes in a sort of cell, made merely by the movement
of the caterpillar pressing back the earth. This is the burial of Psyche.
From it a host of oratorical and poetical figures are taken. It affords,
in one way, even religious consolation. The human body, buried in
the mold, gives to eternity and heaven the soaring soul, as the chrysa-
lis, from its earthy cell, discloses the moth which beats the ether with
unquiet wing. Again, many kinds of caterpillars spin thick cocoons, as
the "American silk-worm" (Telea polyphemus), the "cecropia moth"
{Platysamia cecropia), and the " sassafras emperor " ( Callosamia Pro-
methea). Many have been the efforts to utilize the silk thus made by
our native moths, and interesting experiments are detailed with that
spun by the American silk-worm, as published by Mr. Trouvelot. The
silk of all these species can be no doubt used, because the Chinese and
Japanese silk-worms belong to the same or nearly related genera.
But none of them equal the original Indian or European silk-worm,
the Bombyx jnori, cultivated chiefly in the south of Europe, and
which yields the silk of commerce. After several unsuccessful at-
tempts, of late years, the rearing of the cocoons has been profitably
undertaken in the United States, probably through the establishment
of silk-mills and the protective tariff which stimulates the silk in-
dustry.

Everywhere in the country one may find the chrysalides of moths.
Under stones, under moss, and beneath the loose bark of stumps, spun
fast to branches and wrapped in the dead leaves of autumn, at the
foot of the trees which fed the caterpillars, they may be found in all
sorts of hiding-places. The duration of the apparently torpid chrysa-
lis-life is different with the season and the species. From a few weeks
to sometimes two years, the still nascent insects lie imprisoned. But
at length the hour for escape arrives. The brown shell of the chrysa-
lis splits, and the moth, struggling out of all its envelopes, crawls to
some near foothold, where it may shake out and expand its feathery
wings in safety. And then, when night comes, and the breeze, it gives
itself to the darkness, braving all dangers, to deposit its eggs in safety
and perpetuate its species, its main object accomplished often at the
sacrifice of its own brief life.

While the moths are inseparably connected with the butterflies, we
shall know them by their antennae not being knobbed at the tip, their
more downy wings and body, their generally softer colors, and their
usual sleepy habit in daytime, when they fold their wings and seek
dark places for repose.

252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Except a few small groups, most of which I can not admit as form-
ing distinct families, our North American moths may be divided into
ten groups, to each of which the term "family" is applied, just as we
have the same term given to certain similar groups of other animals,
such as the birds or fishes. These ten families are : 1. The Sphingi-
dce, or " hawk-moths," of which we have 91 species in our territory ;
2. The ^Egeriadce, or " clear-wings," of which there are catalogued
about 120 sorts ; 3. The Zygceniclce, or " clear - spots," comprising
over 60 kinds ; 4. The Bombycidm, or " spinners," of which there
are more than 400 species ; 5. The Noctuidce, or " owlet - moths,"
with nearly 1,600 different kinds ; 6. The Geometridce, or "spanners,"
with 500 species ; 7. The Pyralidce, or " snout-moths " ; and 8. The
Tortricidce, or " leaf -rollers," with over 400 kinds of each ; 9. The
Tlneidce, or " leaf -miners " ; and 10. The Pterophoridce, or " feather-
moths," the former a large family of minute and often brilliantly col-
ored species, the latter a smaller one containing curious slender moths,
having the wings split into feathery fingers or rays. These last two
groups are very incompletely known.

[To be continued.]

-■+*+--

CONCERNING KEROSENE.

Br Professor S. F. TECKHAM.

A MODERN French writer has said : " In the domain of the use-
ful arts each age reveals characteristic tendencies. In the last
century, mankind had need to clothe itself cheaply. . . . The nine-
teenth century has wished for light." To the development of the pe-
troleum industry the gratification of this wish is mainly due ; yet,
while the products of petroleum are used in nine tenths of all the
dwellings of the land, but few of those who occupy them realize that
60,000 barrels of crude oil flow from the earth every day, that more
than 30,000,000 barrels are now stored above-ground in huge iron
tanks, and that 15,000 barrels are required to supply each day's de-
mand in the United States alone. Of this vast quantity, by far the
largest proportion is consumed as illuminating oil, or kerosene, for the
production of which a stream of oil is constantly flowing through six-
inch pipes from the oil-region of Western Pennsylvania to Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and Jersey City. In each of these cities establishments,
constructed for the purpose, convert the crude oil into various products,
principally illuminating oil, for the home market and an export trade
of vast proportions. In these refineries the oil is first allowed to settle
in large tanks, in which a small percentage of water and sediment
accumulates. From these tanks the oil is pumped into stills, holding

CONCERNING KEROSENE. 253

about 1,200 barrels each, beneath which fires may be kindled, and
urged by a strong draught until a red-heat is attained.

Petroleum consists of a great many different fluids, which range
in volatility from the boiling-point of ether to nearly a red-heat. Such
being the case, as soon as the oil is heated at all, the most volatile
products begin to come over, at first colorless as water, but very
gradually assuming a yellow tinge until the most dense distillate com-
ing over at the last is quite dark brown in color, so that, if all the dis-
tillate were allowed to run into a tank together, it would not look very
differently from the original petroleum. In the ordinary process of
refining petroleum, the distillate is divided into three portions. The
first is the lightest, colorless portion, nearly as volatile as ether, and is
called crude naphtha, or "benzine." Like the crude petroleum, this
crude naphtha may be distilled and divided into gasolene, A, B, and C
naphtha, which are used in gas-machines, for mixing paints, and other
similar purposes, sometimes also for burning in lamps and stoves.

The middle portion of the distillate, which is neither very light nor
very heavy, and having but little color, is the crude illuminating-oil,
or kerosene. As it runs from the still it has a very offensive odor, due
to the decomposition of certain portions of the petroleum at the high
temperature reached in the still. To remove the offensive compounds,
the oil is first agitated with about five per cent of strong oil of vitriol.
This combines with the offensive oils, forming a black, tarry residue
that falls to the bottom of the tank as soon as the oil is brought to
rest. This mixture of acid and oil is called " sludge," and is used in
large quantities in the manufacture of commercial fertilizers. After
the acid is drawn off and the oil washed with water, it is again washed
with a strong solution of caustic soda, which removes the excess of
sulphuric acid, and also some peculiar acid compounds that exist in
the oil. The oil, after another washing with water, is nearly colorless,
with the peculiar balsamic odor of kerosene, and possesses the slight
opalescence peculiar to these oils. As usually prepared, they belong
to the class known as " high-test " kerosenes, and consist almost en-
tirely of oils that exist in the petroleum already formed, being merely
separated from the lightest and heaviest portions. Such oils are called
the eclucts of the petroleum.

The heaviest portions of the distillate contain paraffine, and are
called paraffine-oils. They also are mainly educts of the original oil ;
they, however, contain a much larger proportion than the kerosene of
the products of the decomposition of the oil. A tarry residue remains
in the still, called " residuum."

In other establishments the naphtha and illuminating oil are dis-
tilled from the petroleum, and the dense oil remaining in the still,
called "reduced petroleum," is draMrn out and used for lubrication.
A large part of this dense oil from which the naphtha and illuminat-
ing oil have been removed is " cracked," or destructively distilled, by

254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

slacking the fires, and allowing the distillation to proceed so slowly
that the dense portions of the vapors are condensed on the dome of
the still, and, falling back upon the surface of the hot oil, are heated
above their boiling-points, and decomposed into a lighter oil and a car-
bonaceous residue. By continuing this process for several hours the
oil has passed out of the still, leaving a quantity of residuum, as in
the first instance. This cracking process is never complete, as a por-
tion of the oil is cracked too much and another portion too little ; but
the average gives a burning-oil of the proper density, color, etc., while
in other respects it is greatly inferior to the oil that is not cracked.
The reader will readily perceive that by mixing these constituent oils
of the petroleum suitable for burning-oil, which have been very prop-
erly called " normal " burning-oils, with different proportions of the
cracked oils, a great variety of products may be obtained ; but I pro-
pose in this article to speak of only three classes of burning-oils, and
to show that these three classes may furnish oils that meet the de-
mands of legal enactments, while at the same time they may be both
very dangerous and very bad.

The first class of oils mentioned that are distilled from the petro-
leum unchanged consists of compounds of hydrogen and carbon com-
bined in such proportions that the percentage of hydrogen is greater
than in any other similar substances. In addition, they are very inert
to chemical reagents, in this respect resembling paraffine or India-rub-
ber. They may be washed with sulphuric acid or strong solution of
caustic soda, and very completely purified ; but they are not acted on
by either of these powerful reagents, and the product is a pure, color-
less oil, with the odor of kerosene, and burning with a dazzling, white
flame. The wick is burned but little more rapidly than that of an al-
cohol-lamp. The flame does not smoke, neither does it emit any un-
pleasant odor. These oils are safe, healthful, and economical ; in fact,
they constitute the best and cheapest illuminating agent ever given to
man.

When the oils too heavy for illuminating oils are destructively
distilled or " cracked," the product is largely contaminated with oils
containing less hydrogen in proportion to the carbon, and which are
not inert to chemical reagents like those just described. When these
oils are treated with sulphuric acid, both the oil and the acid are de-
composed. The sulphur and a part of the oxygen of the acid (S02)
take the place of a part of the hydrogen of the oil, while this hydro-
gen unites with the remaining oxygen of the acid and forms water.
This sulphur and oxygen thus become constituents of the oil, and when
the oil is burned they escape into the room as sulphurous oxide iden-
tical with the fumes of burned brimstone. But this is not all : the sul-
phur compounds, and the heavy, imperfectly cracked oils, soon impair
the capillary attraction of the wick ; and, the flow of the oil being im-
peded, the wrick becomes charred and coated with unburned carbon.

CONCERNING KEROSENE. 255

This imperfect combustion produces smoke and imparts to the atmos-
phere of the room unpleasant odors, and not infrequently leads to an
explosion of the lamp and disastrous conflagrations. The steady flow
of the oil through an unencumbered wick keeps the wick burner
comparatively cool, and prevents the heating of the lamp and of the
oil within it ; but, when the capillarity of the wick is impaired, the
burner, lamp and oil within it become heated to a temperature that
finally produces a distillation of the lighter portion of the oil, in many
instances causing the flame to become dense and smoky ; sometimes
streaming above the top of the chimney ; and, if not speedily ex-
tinguished, resulting in an explosion and the destruction of the
lamp.

When the normal and cracked oils are mixed, the mixture partakes
of the mingled characteristics of the constituents. The mixture may
be nearly as good as the normal oils, or nearly as bad as the cracked
oils. At the present time the common kerosene sold is either a
" cracked" or a "mixed " oil, while the bulk of the high-test kerosene
is supposed to consist of " normal " oil ; and, while any or all of these
oils may be of any required test, they are of very various quality in
other respects.

The test of an oil, " high " or " low," represents the temperature
to which the oil must be heated in order that a suitable quantity —
usually one half-pint — may give off a sufficient amount of inflammable
vapor to either flash or burn. The temperatures at which the same oil
will flash and burn vary greatly with the character of the oil, being
from 10° to 50° apart by Fahrenheit's scale. While it has been repeat-
edly demonstrated, by several of the most eminent scientific experts
now living, that the temperature at which an oil will burn is of no im-
portance as an indication of its safety, this test is still in use in many
localities. It is, however, the temperature at which the vapors will
flash that is usually understood as the " test " of an oil, and it varies
from 70° to 90° Fahr. in low-test oils to 120° to 140° in high-test oils.
Experiment has repeatedly demonstrated that an oil that will give off
vapors that will flash at 100° Fahr. is safe for any legitimate use. As
painful and disastrous accidents are liable to follow the explosion of a
lamp, and as the increased danger of explosion where low-test oils are
used is obvious to any reflecting person, all efforts to restrict the
manufacture or sale of unsafe oils by legislation have been hitherto
directed toward the exclusion of very low-test oils from the market.
In England such legislation has been based upon very elaborate re-
search, and has been in the main successful ; but in the United States
no less earnest though less carefully considered measures have been
embodied in legislation which has resulted in the enactment of a great
variety of statutes — giving to some States laws unreasonably exacting,
to others wise provisions, while yet others have no legislative restric-
tions whatever. Of course, such diverse enactments relating to a

256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

single interest and question can not command the respectful considera-
tion that uniform, just, and reasonable legislation would receive from
all intelligent persons interested ; hence, it may be fairly stated that
in this country legislation relating to the testing of petroleum is in
in many respects unsatisfactory.

It is not, however, to the generally unsafe character of low-test oils
that I wish to call attention, but to those characteristics, not yet gen-
erally or fully recognized, that render some oils that come within the
legal provisions regarding test unhealthy and unsafe for use.

The petroleum industry, in many of its aspects, is the product of
development. This statement is true, not only as respects its vast
magnitude, but also as pertaining to many of its details. The process
of cracking had been employed in treating the distillates from coal
before petroleum became an article of commerce ; yet petroleum, for
a number of years following its discovery in large quantities, was uni-
formly distilled into naphtha, normal burning-oil, and paraffme-oil.
At that time but few uses were known for naphtha, and it was a drug
in the market. At the same time the paraffine-oils were contaminated
with more or less of the products of destructive distillation that were
unavoidable attendants of even rapid distillation. These oils were
consequently very poor lubricators, and, moreover, possessed a very
unpleasant odor. They never commanded a good price and were slow
of sale, for which reason it was obviously the interest of the manu-
facturer to put into the burning-oil as large a proportion of the naph-
tha as possible, for the purpose of holding in solution a maximum
quantity of paraffine-oil. This often produced an oil unsafe from ex-
cess of naphtha, but it was an oil consisting mainly of normal oil, and
almost entirely of the educts of the petroleum. Sulphur had not then
been observed as an impurity in burning-oil, although the same process
of treatment was then used, but less carefully than now. As the
original district of Oil Creek produced, at the end of ten years, a
smaller proportion of the entire production of crude oil, the character
of the burning-oil on the market in 1875 was different from what it
was in 1865. At the former date the "lower country," so called in
Butler and Clarion Counties, yielded an oil in some respects different
from that of Oil Creek, and unequaled for the manufacture of burning-
oil, inasmuch as the percentage of normal oils suitable for burning was
found to be considerably greater. In five years the diminished pro-
duction in the Butler-Clarion field, and the increased production of the
Bradford district, together with the mixing of the entire production
in huge tanks and pipe-lines without regard to quality, had entirely
changed the relation of the amount of normal to that of cracked and
mixed oils. The vast production and low price of crude oil had
thrown the manufacture of petroleum into the hands of corporations
controlling immense capital, and establishments in which the oil is
handled in quantities proportionate to the enormous demand. Mean-

CONCERNING KEROSENE. 257

time a method of refining petroleum bad been generally introduced, by
which a large proportion of the total burning-oil produced consisted of
mixed or cracked oils. Such a proportion of high-test oils as were
demanded by the market was made, but the great bulk of the distil-
late had been converted into a cracked or mixed oil. The petroleum
was distilled but once, the naphtha was removed, and then the remain-
der of the oil manipulated to produce such crude burning-oils as were
desired, leaving in the still only a small percentage of residuum.
These crude burning-oils were treated with sulphuric acid and caustic
soda in such a manner as to produce the lightest colored oil possible,
and they were further manipulated to bring the test within the legal
requirements. As it was much less difficult to bring the mixed or
cracked oils within the requirements of a burning rather than a flash
test, the burning test has always found strong advocates among a cer-
tain class of the manufacturers of petroleum. This method of manu-
facture was well established, and the markets of the world were well
accustomed to handling the various pi'oducts during that period when
the bulk of the crude oil came from the Butler-Clarion district. But
gradually, as has been stated, the major portion of the crude oil that
flowed into the pipe-lines was no longer from the Butler-Clarion wells,
but from those of Bradford. By the end of 1881 more than three
quarters of the crude oil was Bradford oil, and the relative proportion
has steadily increased. This change in the crude material has been
accompanied by a corresponding change in the character of the prod-
uct. Instead of mixed and cracked oils, consisting largely of normal
burning-oil, the products of Bradford crude oil consist largely of the
products of destructive distillation, and this is due to the fact that the
petroleums of the Butler-Clai*ion and Bradford districts represent two
extremes ; the first contains the smallest proportion and the latter the
largest proportion of paraffine-oils of any crude petroleums found in
large quantities. The proportion of cracked oils in the distillate from
the Butler-Clarion petroleum was too small to injure the general qual-
ity of the oil. In the Bradford distillates, on the contrary, the prod-
ucts of destructive distillation give character to the whole. And not
only is this statement true, but the proportion of high-test normal oils
to be obtained at present from the pipe-line crude oil has gradually
become so reduced that the best brands of oil on the market have
deteriorated, until it is very difficult, if not impossible, to purchase
an article of burning-oil equal in quality to the best offered for sale
a few years since. All this time the requirements of law in regard
to test have been met, perhaps it may be said, with increased faith-
fulness.

From the foregoing pages it must be manifest that any improve-
ment in the increasingly bad quality of kerosene can be looked for
only from one of two directions. Either it must come from the devel-
opment of a new field for crude oil of superior quality, or from the in-

TOL. XXTII. 17

25 8 . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

troduetion of new methods of manufacture. There are no indications at
present that warrant any expectation that any material change is immi-
nent in the character of the crude oil. The change must, therefoi'e,
come from the introduction of different methods of manufacture. These
methods need be neither novel nor unreasonably expensive. Cracked
oils of good quality are nothing new, but I have never seen them made
by one distillation and one treatment. Cracked oils should be finished
by distillation, not treatment. A second distillation would enable the
refiner to first remove the two volatile products of cracking and the
heavy, uncracked portion of the paraffine-oil, besides destroying the sul-
phur compounds. But such a technology would so far increase the
cost of the oil that those employing it could not compete in the mar-
ket with those who did not, except by virtue of the superior quality
of their oil.

It is in respect to this difficulty that the public weal could be well
served by judicious legislation that in its broadest sense might well be
considered sanitary legislation. It is a proper subject for physicians
to determine, what the precise effects upon the general health may be
resulting from the combustion in lamps and stoves of the vast quanti-
ties of inferior oils that are daily consumed throughout the country.
That the effect must be bad, determining a tendency to certain forms
of disease and aggravating others, can not fail to be apparent to the
most unreflecting person, especially when it is considered in how few
instances any means are employed to remove from the apartment in
which these oils are burned the products of combustion. When under
such circumstances a pure oil is burned into pure water and carbonic
acid, the atmosphere receives a sufficient burden ; but when to these
are added vapors of burned sulphur and a variety of irritating vapors
with smoke, the eyes, lungs, and nostrils pay a heavy tribute. Added
to this is the new source of danger from fire resulting from explosions
arising from imperfect combustion — a source of danger not hitherto
recognized in legislation, but of not infrequent occurrence.

For the reasons stated, it appears that the health and safety of the
public, and the protection of those manufacturers who would make a
radical change in the methods of manufacture now employed, alike
demand legislation that will exclude from the market not only oils
that are unsafe from excess of naphtha, but those which in their gen-
eral character are unhealthful to use and unsafe from other causes.
Such legislation should be based upon an exhaustive scientific exami-
nation of the subject, with a view to placing the fewest restrictions
upon the manufacture and sale of these oils consistent with the de-
mands of public health and safety. Such an investigation can best be
undertaken by the General Government, to be followed by such amend-
ments to the national legislation now in force as the results might
justify. Such national legislation, based upon a comprehensive knowl-
edge of the subject, could not fail to be followed by a general revision

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 259

of State and municipal legislation throughout the country and the en-
actment of uniform laws that, while securing the adequate protection
of the public, would no longer embarrass by needless and unreasonable
requirements the manufacture and sale of articles in universal demand.

+*+

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY.

By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.
LI. — MALTOSE AS A COOKING AGENT.

A FEW years ago the " farmer's friends " were very sanguine on
the subject of using malt as a cattle-food, and at agricultural
meetings throughout the country the iniquitous malt-tax was elo-
quently denounced because it stood in the way of the great fodder-
reform. The malt-tax was repealed, and the subject fell out of sight
and hearing immediately thereafter. Why was this ?

The idea of malt-feeding was theoretically sound. By the malting
of barley or other grain its diastase is made to act upon its insoluble
starch, and to convert it more or less completely into soluble dextrine,
a change which is absolutely necessary as a part of the business of
digestion. Therefore, if you feed cattle on malted grain instead of
raw grain, you supply them with a food so prepared that a part of the
business of digestion is already done for them, and their nutrition is
thereby advanced.

From what I am able to learn, the reason why this hopeful theory
has not been carried out is simply that it does not "pay." The advan-
tage to the cattle is not sufficient to remunerate the farmer for the
extra cost of the malted food.

This may be the case with oxen, but it does not follow that it
should be so with human beings. Cattle feed on grass, mangel-
wurzels, etc., in their raw state, but we can not ; and, as I have already
shown, we are not even graminivorous as they are — we can not digest
raw wheat, barley, oats, or maize.

We can not do this because we are not supplied with such natural
grinding apparatus as they have in their mouths, and we have a much
smaller supply of saliva, besides a shorter alimentary canal.

We can easily supply our natural deficiencies in the matter of
grinding, and do so in our flour-mills ; but at first thought the idea of
finding an artificial substitute for saliva does not recommend itself.
When, however, it is understood that the chief active principle of the
saliva so closely resembles the diastase of grain that it has received
the name of animal diastase, and is probably the same compound, the
aspect of the problem changes.

Not only is this the case with the secretion from the glands sur-

26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rounding the mouth, but the pancreas, which is concerned in a later
stage of digestion, is a gland so similar to the salivary glands that in
ordinary cookery both are dressed and served as " sweetbreads," and
its secretion, the pancreatic juice, is a liquid closely resembling saliva
and containing a similar diastase, or substance that converts starch
into dextrine, and f rom dextrine to sugar. Lehmann says, " It is now
indubitably established that the pancreatic juice possesses this sugar-
forming power in a far higher degree than the saliva." Besides this
there is another sugar-forming secretion, the " intestinal juice," which
assists the graminivorous animals in the digestion of raw grain. This
being the case, we should, by exercising our privilege as cooking ani-
mals, be able to assist the digestive functions of the saliva and the
pancreatic and intestinal secretion, just as we help our teeth in the
tlour-mill ; the means of doing this is offered by the diastase of malt.

In accordance with this reasoning I have made some experiments
on a variety of our common vegetable foods, by simply raising them (in
contact with water) to the temperature most favorable to the convert-
ing action of diastase) 140° to 150° Fahr.), and then adding a little
malt-extract or malt-flour. This extract may be purchased ready made
or may be prepared by soaking crushed or ground malt in warm water,
leaving it for an hour or two, or longer, and then pressing out the
liquid.

I find that oatmeal-porridge, when thus treated with malt or malt-
extract, is thinned by the conversion of the bulk of its insoluble starch
into soluble dextrine ; that boiled rice is similarly thinned ; that a
stiff jelly of arrowroot is at once rendered watery, and its conversion
into dextrine is demonstrated by its altered action on a solution of
iodine. Instead of instantly striking a blue-black color on admixture,
only a slight brownish tinge is displayed, and not even this when the
temperature has been carefully maintained.

Sago and tapioca are similarly changed, but not so completely as
arrowroot. This is evidently because they contain a little nitrogenous
matter and cellulose, which, when stirred, give a milkiness to the other-
wise clear and limpid solution of dextrine.

Pease-pudding when thus treated behaves very instructively. In-
stead of remaining as a fairly uniform paste, it partially separates into
paste and clear liquid, the paste being the cellulose and vegetable
casein, the liquid a solution of the dextrine or converted starch. Tur-
nips, carrots, potatoes, etc., behave similarly, the general results show-
ing that, so far as the starch is concerned, there is no practical difficulty
in obtaining a practically sufficient amount of conversion of the starch
into dextrine by means of a very small quantity of maltose.

" Hasty-pudding," made of boiled flour, is similarly altered ; gener-
ally speaking, the degree of visible alterations is proportionate to the
amount of starch, but, the smaller the proportion and the greater that
of cellulose, the more slowly the change occurs.

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 261

I have made a malt-porridge by using ground malt, from which I
sifted out as much husk as possible, instead of oatmeal. I found it
rather too sweet ; but, on mixing about one part of malt-flour with
four or more of oatmeal, an excellent and easily-digestible porridge
was obtained, and one which I strongly recommend as a most valuable
food for strong people and invalids, children and adults.

Further details of these experiments would be tedious, and are not
necessary, as they display no chemical changes that are new to science,
and the practical results may be briefly stated without such details.

I recommend — 1. The production of malt-flour by grinding and
sifting malted wheat, malted barley, or malted oats, or all of these,
and the retailing of this at its fair value as a staple article of human
food. Every shopkeeper who sells flour or meal of any kind should
sell this.

2. That this malted flour, or the extract made from it as above de-
scribed, be mixed with the ordinary flour used in making pastry, bis-
cuits, bread, etc.,* and with all kinds of porridge, pea-soup, and other
farinaceous preparations, and that when these are cooked they should
be slowly heated at first, in order that the maltose may act upon the
starch at its most favorable temperature — 50 or 60° below the boiling-
point.

3. When practicable, such preparations as porridge, pastry, pea-
soup, pease-pudding, etc., should be prepared by first cooking them in
the usual manner, then stirring the malt-meal or malt-extract into
them, and allowing them to remain for some time. This time may
vary from a few hours to several days — the longer the better. I have
proved by experiments on boiled rice, oatmeal porridge, pease-pudding,
etc., that complete conversion may thus be effected. When the temper-
ature of 140° to 150° is carefully obtained, the work of conversion is
done in half an hour or less. At 212° it is arrested. At temperatures
below 140° it proceeds with a slowness varying with the depression of
temperature. The most rapid result is obtained by first cooking the
food as usual, then reducing its temperature to 150° and adding the
malt flour or extract, and keeping up the temperature for a short time.

4. Besides the malt-meal or malt-flour, which I presume will be
preferably made from barley, I recommend the manufacture of what I
may call " pearl-malt," that is, malt treated as barley is treated in the
manufacture of pearl-barley. This pearl-malt may be very largely used
in soups, puddings, and for other purposes evident to the practical cook.

* I have lately learned that a patent was secured some years ago for "malt-bread,"
and that it is still obtainable from many bakers, who make under a license from the
patentee. The " revised formula " for this, which I have just obtained, says : " Take of
wheat-meal, six pounds ; wheat-flour, six pounds ; malt-flour, six ounces ; German yeast,
two ounces ; salt, two ounces ; water sufficient. Make into dough (without first melting
the malt), prove well, and bake in tins." Malt-flour is also sold, but at fancy prices, ab-
surdly beyond its just value.

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It may be found preferable to the malt-flour or meal for some of the
above-named purposes, especially for making a pur&e like Rumford's
soup. I strongly recommend such a soup to vegetarians, i. e., the Rum-
ford soup No. 1, already described, but with the admixture of a little
pearl-malt with the pearl-barley (or malt-meal failing the pearl-malt).

A small proportion of malt flour, one twentieth for example, has a
considerable effect, and if a fancy price is to be paid for it such a pro-
portion may be used ; but, if it comes into sufficient demand to be sub-
ject to wholesome competition, larger proportions up to one fourth will
be desirable.

In my experiments I used the malt-extract in order to render the
result visible, but this is not necessary in practice. Either the extract
or the flour may be used, as may be convenient. In all cases time
should be allowed for the conversion of the starch to take place before
raising the temperature to 212°, keeping in view the principles above
explained as regards the temperature and time required for conversion.

I have not yet met with any malted maize commercially prepared,
but the experiments that I have made on a small scale show that it is
a very desirable product. I name it here and now (January 8, 1885)
to prevent its becoming patented, as there are so many greedy people
who rush to the Great Seal Office with any idea tbey may pick up,
however trivial. Any previous publication of the invention is suffi-
cient to frustrate the monopoly. The same applies to the other uses
of malt that I have specified.

I am still unable to speak positively as to the efficiency of vegeta-
ble diastase in breaking up or effecting the hydration of cellulose and
its conversion into sugar ; but the following facts are promising :

I treated sago, tapioca, and rice with the maltose as above, and
found that at a temperature of 140° to 150° all the starch disappeared
in about half an hour, as proved by the iodine test. Still the liquid
was not clear ; flocculi of cellulose, etc., were suspended in it.

I kept this on the top of a stove several days, the temperature of
the liquid varying from 100° to 180°, while the fire was burning, and
falling to that of the atmosphere at night. The quantity of the in-
soluble suspended matter sensibly diminished, but it was not entirely
removed.

This has led me to make further experiments, now in progress, on
the ensilage of human food, with the aid of diastase. I am packing
various kinds of vegetable food in small silos, adding to them varying
proportions of malt-flour or malt-extract, and I hereby declare, for the
benefit of would-be patentees, that this invention, whether worthless or
otherwise, is mine, and can not be secured by them, as I have witnesses
of the date of this writing and copy thereof. I shall certainly not
patent this or any of the above inventions myself, and will prevent
others from interfering with their free use in the improvement and
cheapening of our food-supplies. I am also treating such vegetable

SKETCH OF BR. ALFRED E. BREHM. _ 263

food material with various acids for the same purpose, and make the
same claim in reference to this.

When by these or other means we convert vegetable tissue into
dextrine and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening of a
pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we
shall extend our food-supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes,
turnips, mangel-wurzels, etc., will become delicate diet for invalids,
horse-beans better than beef ; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as
well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood-shav-
ings, plus a little leguminous flour.

This may be done now. Long ago I converted an old pocket-
handkerchief and part of an old shirt into sugar. Other chemists
have done the like in their laboratories. It has yet to be done in the
kitchen.

I should add that the sugar referred to in all the above is not cane-
sugar, but the sugar corresponding to that in the grape and in honey.
It is less sweet than cane or beet sugar, and a better food.

I now conclude this series, with the expression of my firm convic-
tion that the application of chemical science to cookery is capable of
vastly extending and improving our food-supplies, and thereby of
greatly increasing the numbers of prosperous human beings capable of
living on the earth. This, however, demands a great deal of further
experimental research.

I have done so little of this in proportion to my suggestions for
further research that I fear my readers will liken these papers to those
others found by Prince Hal in the pockets of Jack Falstaff : " Oh, mon-
strous ! but one half -pennyworth of experimental bread to this intol-
erable deal of speculative sack ! "

-+++-

SKETCH OF DR. ALFEED E. BREHM*

ON the 11th of November last there died a man who is entitled by
every consideration to a distinguished place in the pages of a sci-
entific journal. For, whatever Alfred Brehm may have lacked in the
systematic formalism of technical zoologists, it can not be denied that
he was really great and even unique in the sympathetic comprehension
of animals as living beings. Other works similar to the " Thierleben "
(" Animal-Life ") exist, and have great merit, but in this sympathetic
aspect they are far behind this ten-volumed work. It in no way de-
tracts from his merit that he had to call in specialists to assist him in
describing the insects and the lower animals ; for these departments
are a world in themselves, requiring a whole lifetime for their study,

* We are indebted for the materials of this sketch to an affectionate memoir of Dr.
Brehm, published by Dr. Karl Muller in "Die Natur" of December 21, 1884.

26+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and his life was too short to compass everything. But he opened a
new door to the vertebrate world ; and, if the question be asked how
it was possible to give so large and expensive a book permanent cur-
rency with the German public, the answer must be found in tbe sym-
pathetic element of the work, which brought a new world so near to
us, and so inspired it that the soul-life of animals is no longer an
empty sound.

It was Alfred Brehm's privilege to grow up among the most fa-
vorable circumstances conceivable for a nascent naturalist. He was
born on the 2d of February, 1829, at Renthendorf, near Neustadt, on the
Orla. He could have had no better guide to his future course than his
father, the pastor of the parish, who as " Father Brehm " was known
among the older ornithologists of his time as indisputably one of the
most distinguished observers of the habits of birds. What the no less
eminent ornithologist Z. F. Naumann was for Anhalt and its vicinity,
Christian L. Brehm was for Thuringia, a favorite region for all lovers
of birds, and full of inspiration for youth having a taste for natural his-
tory. This inspiration could not fail to work deeply in so receptive a
spirit as the son possessed, and he thus grew up literally in an ornitho-
logical atmosphere, in which his especial taste and aptitude later took
tirm root. Thus were early developed in him the future ornithologist
and the self-reliant, independent spirit. In 1847 the famous and
wealthy African traveler, Baron J. W. von Midler, proposed that he
go with him to Africa as his ornithological assistant. It was known
that young Brehm was already not only an accomplished ornithologist,
who was acquainted with the voices of all the birds, but that he was
also a splendid shot, who had himself contributed many precious addi-
tions to his father's great collection of European birds, which was esti-
mated to contain nine thousand specimens. Brehm had just passed his
abiturient examinations when Midler's invitation came to him ; and, as
his father had nothing to say in opposition to it, he immediately made
his own conditions and decided to go. The journey was to be under-
taken at once, and to last five years. Brehm did not return till 1852,
after he had explored Egypt, Nubia, and Eastern Soudan, countries that
have always had great attractions for zoologists, especially for ornithol-
ogists. Here is the resort of many birds which migrate from Europe
to seek a winter home in summer-land, and also the abode of a multitude
of African species which never leave that quarter of the world. Nau-
mann also sent his apostles hither at about the same time, and one of
them, the youthful Vierthaler, who has long been resting in Nubian soil,
described with much spirit, in " Die Natur " for 1852, the kind of a bird-
paradise which he found on the banks of the White and the Blue Nile.
It was given to young Brehm alone comprehensively to depict this life
in his first publication, "Reise Skizzen aus Nordost Africa" ("Travel-
Sketches from Northeastern Africa"), three volumes, Jena, 1853.
After he had attended the University of Jena, and had subsequently

SKETCH OF DR. ALFRED E. BREHM. 265

studied the treasures of the Zoological Court-Museum at Vienna, under
the guidance of the recently deceased Leopold Joseph Fitzinger, its cus-
todian, he became as it were dead for any other than a scientific world,
and only the innate energy of his character enabled him to maintain a
fixed purpose in life. For every effort to establish himself was de-
feated in consequence of his having so long lived a wandering life in
Africa — as is generally the case with extensive travelers, he had no
taste tor a sedentary career — and it was, therefore, not strange to see
him starting off again in 1856. This time the field of his researches
was Spain and its bird-life, which a brother of his had already studied
to some extent. Then, in order to study an opposite region to this, he
went in 1860 to the North and visited Norway and Lapland. The fruit
of this journey was " Das Leben der Vugel" ("The Life of Birds"),
Glogau, 1861, and a general fame as a traveler and writer. He soon
afterward received an invitation from Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha to go with him on a hunting-journey to Bogosland and Abys-
sinia, which was begun in 1862. At the request of the duke, he worked
up the collected impressions and observations of this hasty expedition
in 1863 into "Ergebnisse einer Reise nach Habesch " ("Results of a
Journey to Habesch"), Hamburg, 1863. The physiognomic and sym-
pathetic tastes characteristic of Brehm are also prominent in this book.
He was at about the same time appointed director of the Thiergarten
in Hamburg, a position which furnished him an excellent opportunity
to add to his store of zoological observations. It must have been of
much value to him, for he had already conceived the idea of publishing
an " Illustrirtes Thierleben " on a grand scale. Nevertheless, he sur-
prised the world four years afterward by voluntarily giving up this
position and turning his back on Hamburg.

Brehm was also too busy at that time with his own enterprises to
be a*ble to devote his whole powers to responsible positions. His
" Thierleben " occupied him closely, and required him to review the
whole store of observations which he had collected, especially in his
later years. What he himself thought of the subject is shown by the
following passage of the prospectus which he wrote for the second edi-
tion, in 1876 : " The activity of science has also worked fruitfully on
the public desire for knowledge. The nearer view that is given to it
of animals in Nature (in zoological gardens), the word spoken from
the professorial chairs of the schools, and its multiplied repetition in
writing and picture, have — each supplying its part — contributed to
spread, with the knowledge of animals, interest in them and apprecia-
tion of them. Thus, man's approach to the forms of creation nearest
related to him, his recognition of the existence and life of animals,
has taught him that this circle of living beings includes its own life
within itself, and simply with the entrance into it has much light
been shed over the problem of his own origin, which a rigid dogma
had long kept in darkness." In this passage he evidently referred to

266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the then still new doctrine of descent of Darwin, but a sure tact pre-
served bim from tbe mistake of permitting it to bave any influence
on bis great work. Tbe prospectus also gives information on tbis sub-
ject ; for be says at tbe close of it, in tbe name of tbe publisher : " The
question will come up with every one of what will be tbe attitude of
this work toward tbe movement of our time which is leaving away
bebind itself the mark of exact research, and is losing its head in the
regions of speculation. On tbis subject it is proper to remark that
the author has not followed this movement in the present work ; that
he has kept aloof from the strifes of tbe learned and from brilliant
conjectures ; and in tbe well-understood interest of the layman, who
will seek instruction through him, he has confined himself to demon-
strated facts and established observations. No one, therefore, need
fear that his faith or conscience will be damaged, or that he will have
reason to be afraid on account of bis similarity with monkeys."
Brehm was also aware that he must in his treatise abandon the region
of the systematic in which all other text-books of zoology were cast.
" With the abandonment of the sterile domain of the systematic," he
says again in his prospectus, " a rich field of observation has opened
out before the eye of the naturalist." But be well understood that he
could not include everything with this one-sided view, and knew that
the naturalist could not be a fast-bound teacher, but must lead the life
of a hunter and wanderer, as he himself had done till then. He con-
siders expressly, in the preface to the second series of his " Tbierleben,"
tbe manner in which readers will have to judge it : " The ' Tbierleben '
is not afraid of a stringent criticism. Whoever seeks in it what the
title and the opening pages will justify bim in looking for will not find
himself deceived ; for, if he will always keep the title in mind, he will
not seek there for what he can not find." He was so fortunate as to
have the aid, in preparing his first edition, of the gifted animal-painter
Robert Kretscbmer, of Leipsic. The two men were well acquainted
with each other. They had both been attached to the Abyssinian
expedition, Kretschmer as its artist ; and the water-color illustrations
of it, painted on the spot, which he brought home with him, are
among the most beautiful of their kind. Brehm was, therefore, quite
right in calling his first edition an illustrated " Tbierleben " ; those
fresh, lively pictures, painted with such grasping perception and free-
dom from restraint, contributed greatly to pave its way to tbe public ;
without them, the success of tbe book, notwithstanding its excellent
contents, would have been much smaller. Brehm wrote the first five
volumes of his book between 1863 and 1868, while Oskar Schmidt and
C. L. Taschenberg prepared the sixth volume, containing invertebrates.
A second edition, in ten volumes, was published in 1868, and the follow-
ing years. The great pains with which the whole work was gradually
pushed to completion bore good fruit, and, when we state that the
book was translated into most of tbe living literary languages, it is not

SKETCH OF DR. ALFRED E. BREHM. 267

necessary to say anything of the appreciation in which it was held by
German-speaking people. A popular edition in three volumes was
published 1888 to 1872.

During the publication of this great work, Brehm resided in Ber-
lin, where, as in Hamburg, he occupied himself with introducing the
public to the forms of life which were described in so masterly a man-
ner in the " Thierleben." A joint-stock company was formed, with a
capital of nine hundred thousand marks, for the establishment of a
great aquarium, of which Brehm was given the direction. The posi-
tion, however, did not suit him, for he found himself too closely
hedged up for his comfort. The establishment he founded still re-
mains one of the famous sights of the city, but he withdrew from it,
to devote himself again to his literary labors, which he varied with
lectures in different cities. Among his literary enterprises is a book
in two volumes on " Captive Birds," which was published at Leipsic
and Heidelberg in 1872.

Brehm again left his country, to pursue zoological researches, in
187G, when at the suggestion of Dr. M. Lindermann an expedition to
West Siberia was organized in the Bremen Union for Arctic Explo-
ration, the cost of which was defrayed pai*tly by the Union and partly
by private contributions and the Russian merchant Michaelovich Si-
biriakoff. The expedition consisted of Dr. O. Finsch, Dr. A. Brehm,
and Count Waldburg-Zeil-Trauchburg, who joined it as a volunteer.
Its route extended over the Ural across the Ischim Steppe, and along
the Irtish to Semipalatinsk, to the Arrat Mountains, through the land
of the Kirghiz to the Dzungarian Ala-Tau, thence to Nor-Saissan,
then over the Chinese Hoch-Altai and through the Altai crownland
to the Obi, and lastly across the Tundra to the country of the Ostiaks
and Samoyeds, whence Brehm returned home by way of St. Peters-
burg, where he stayed a short time to deliver lectures. Reaching
home safely, he also delivered lectures there, upon the journey he had
just performed. In the same year, 1877, he accepted an invitation
from the Crown-Prince Rudolph of Austria, to whom he had dedi-
cated the second edition of his " Thierleben," to go with him on an
excursion to the forests of the middle Danube, of which the crown
pi*ince afterward published a sketch. Two years later, in 1879, he
accompanied the crown prince to Spain. In 1880 he, on his own ac-
count, visited Noi'th America to deliver lectures. This visit had an
unfortunate ending ; he was attacked by a violent fever ; and after
he returned home, having gone to Renthendorf, he was prostrated
with a disease of the kidneys which soon proved fatal. This prema-
ture ending of his life was the more deplorable, because the restless
naturalist was engaged on a new natural history of animals, which
was to have a very wide scope. In him passed away one of the
noblest of Germans, a man to whom the animal world was a world
full of spirit and inspiration.

268

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

LIBER TY IN ED UCA TION.

DR. McOOSH has published an ar-
gument on freedom in the higher
education. He bad discussed the subject
with President Eliot before the Nine-
teenth Century Club, and he has since
issued a pamphlet, entitled " The New-
Departure in College Education, being
a Reply to President Eliot's Defense of
it in New York, February 24, 1885."
The traditional collegiate system which
has descended to us from old mediaeval
and monastic times, so little impaired
in its essential method, is now brought
to the test of modern ideas. Not only
is it a question of introducing and or-
ganizing modern studies in place of the
classical studies, that are losing their
hold upon the cultivated mind of the
age, but this involves an inquiry into
the theories and principles of the older
and the newer education as to how far
we should go in the direction of a more
pliant, adaptive, and liberal system, and
how far students are to have liberty of
choice among the subjects of collegiate
study.

Dr. McCosh argues against freedom
in the higher education, taking the
ground that has ever been taken against
the progress of liberty — that it will be
abused and run into license. As politi-
cal liberty was resisted because it would
destroy government, and lead to an-
archy ; as religious liberty was resisted
because it would destroy the Church and
put an end to religion ; and as the liber-
ty of the press was resisted because it
would subvert public order — so the lib-
erty of study is now opposed because
it will degrade education and destroy
the colleges. To all this, the reply dic-
tated by the world's experience is sim-
ply that, while there are undoubted
objections to liberty, its advantages
outweigh its drawbacks. Dr. McCosh

maintains that, if the students are left
free to elect their subjects, they will
choose those which are easiest, and
therefore most worthless for purposes
of mental cultivation. But this is con-
trary to both reason and experience.
President Barnard, of Columbia Col-
lege, in a passage appended to this arti-
cle, testifies that students left free do
not choose the easier subjects. But the
reason of the case is, that what is hard
to one student is easy to another ; and
this fact, with its implications, is the
key to the movement in behalf of great-
er liberty in the choice of studies. Dr.
McCosh makes little concession to those
rights of individuality which originate
in personal aptitudes and diversities of
mental constitution, and which impel
students to different lines of effort. He
would enforce a common method upon
all under a theory of mental discipline,
rejected by reason and experience, and
fortified only by long tradition. Dr.
McCosh protests that he is not behind
the age or an obstructive, and is "for
freedom quite as much as Dr. Eliot is,"
and he allows "a certain amount of
choice of studies," but this is in strict
subjection to the classical ideal and the
old college practice.

There is talk in this option contro-
versy about a great number of things,
but the issue is over compulsory Greek
and Latin. It is a fight of the classi-
cists, and, so long as they can force the
dead languages, they care very little
what else comes or goes. Classical edu-
cation knows nothing of this modern
spirit of liberty. It has ever been
closely associated with priestly domina-
tion, with religious intolerance, with
despotic collegiate authority, and arbi-
trary state regulation. In the old and
powerful English universities the dead
languages are the one tiling that has

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

been forced for centuries. They have
been legislated as the tests of scholar-
ship, the credentials of culture, and the
badges of gentility. That the classical
spirit should be one of arrogance and
tyranny, and adverse to liberty, is suf-
ficiently explained by the history of the
old universities. There is much talk
about the freedom of the German uni-
versities ; but, so far as classics are con-
cerned, their policy is one of simple,
unmitigated despotism. Students, of
course, are left free to attend lectures
and recitations or not, as they please,
and to study much as they like; but
what does that amount to when they can
not get into the universities with any
chance of success except through the
gymnasium, where they are subjected
to years of unrelenting classical drill ;
and, if they do not graduate in conform-
ity to high classical standards, are un-
able to get places under the state in
either the church, the army, or the civil
service? The educational system of
Germany is an iron despotism of a mili-
tary state. Dr. McOosh understands
this ; and, true to his classical instinct,
would be willing to concede the utmost
option to Harvard University if Massa-
chusetts would but adopt the German
plan. He says :

I know that in Germany they produce
scholars without requiring a rigid attendance,
and I rather think that in a few American
colleges they are aping this German method,
thinking to produce equally diligent students.
They forget that the Germans have one power-
ful safeguard which we have not in America.
For all offices in church and state there is an
examination by high scholars following the
college course. A young man can not get an
office as clergyman, as teacher, as postmaster,
till he has passed by that terrible examining
bureau; and, if he is turned by them, his
prospects in life are blasted. Let the State
of Massachusetts pass a law like the Prussian,
and Harvard may then relax attendance, and
the State will do what the colleges have neg-
lected to do.

The following passages, from a paper
read before the Kegents of the Univer-
sity of New York by President Barnard.

of Columbia College, is a sufficient an-
swer to the objections urged by Dr.
McCosh :

Every new subject of study which has
been admitted in the college course since the
century began has been admitted in acknowl-
edged violation of the theory on which the
course is assumed to have been originally
founded. Chemistry has been admitted, for
instance, into the course, on the ground that
it is important that every well-educated man
should know something about the elementary
composition of the matter which surrounds
him ; anatomy and physiology, because he
ought to understand the structure of his own
frame and the functions of its several organs ;
and mineralogy, geology, botany, physics,
etc., for similar utilitarian reasons. So great
is the multiplicity of subjects at present
taught as to destroy altogether, especially in
later years, the character claimed for the col-
legiate course as a system of mental disci-
pline.

It is time, as it appears to me, that we
should revise our theory of collegiate educa-
tion, with a view to make it conform a little
more nearly to our actual practice ; or that we
should modify our practice to make it harmo-
nize more nearly with our theory. The most
judicious course, apparently, would be to ad-
mit, to some extent, both species of change at
the same time ; and with this would neces-
sarily follow the introduction into the system
of instruction of the element of plasticity,
permitting it to be varied in its character
to accommodate the exigencies of different
minds. The doctrine that all varieties of
mind may be profitably subjected to the same
educational regimen is a doctrine which it is
not safe to admit, unless we confine its applica-
tion to the most elementary stages. The true
theory of education is not that theory which
aims professedly to secure for all minds iden-
tically the same description of development
and to force every mind into absolutely the
same mold ; but that, on the other hand,
which anticipates, as inevitable, differences
which no external influences can ever compel
effectually to disappear, and which adapts its
culture to these ineradicable and irrepressible
differences.

The first business of education is, there-
fore, to find out what the individual is fit for ;
the next is to make the most of him in that
for which he is fit, and, according to this true
theory of a subject which plausible specula-
tion has done very much to obscure, a special
system or training, adapted to the idiosyncra-
sies of the individual, is just as distinctly in-

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dicated for the latter years of a liberal educa-
tional culture as a general one, equally en-
forced on all, is for the earliest. And it
further follows that, if at this later period the
student is permitted to follow the bent which
his previous training has served to develop,
his choice will fall upon those studies which
are in harmony with his bent without any
reference to the question whether they are,
in the common sense of the word, "easy"
studies or " difficult." For these terms
"easy" and "difficult" as applied to mat-
ters which concern the understanding, admit
of two quite different modes of definition.

No mental pursuit is easy if it be distaste-
ful, no matter how small the labors its prose-
cution demands ; and no similar pursuit is
difficult if pleasing, even though to follow it
may exact the severest and the most persist-
ently sustained exercise of the faculties. And,
in corroboration of the truth of this proposi-
tion, it may here be stated that, in Columbia
College, under the system which permits the
members of the senior class to select, for the
most part, studies which they prefer to pur-
sue, there is no lack of volunteers for a sub-
ject commonly reported to be so difficult and
forbidding as the calculus, or as obscure as
the metaphysics ; nor is there, on the other
hand, any observable predominance in the
number who select a branch so fascinating as
physics, or so practical as technology or chem-
istry.

The distribution has been, in fact, approxi-
mately equal among all the studies presented
for option. And this result is one which we
may reasonably look for when parallel courses
of study are offered to the choice of the stu-
dent during the later years of the academic
course, whatever might be true if the offer
were made at the beginning. For the effect
of the early years of training is to bring out
the character of each individual mind, and to
determine what are its native idiosyncrasies,
and what it is possible to make of it. And
though the doctrine that all the faculties of
all minds should be developed as far as pos-
sible by appropriate educational exercise and
discipline is a true doctrine, yet the doctrine
that all faculties of all minds are equally ca-
pable of development is a fallacy which no
enlightened educator will think of maintain-
ing.

That every faculty should receive its fair
amount of fostering attention is certainly just
and right, but to expect that this fair amount
or that any amount of individual culture,
however laborious, will secure to every in-
dividual an equal power or chance of success
in any given direction — as, for instance, in
poetry or mathematical research — is as unrea-

sonable as to expect that every sapiing in a
nursery may, by proper care, be made equally
prolific of fruit. After all that has been 6aid
about the desirability and the importance of
symmetrical mental development, and of the
duty of shaping the educational culture with
a view to secure such a development, the sim-
ple fact is that all minds develop themselves
unsymmetrically, just as certainly as that dif-
ferent minerals crystallize into different geo-
metrical figures ; and that it is just as hope-
less for the educationist to look for that ideal
conformity and perfection of mental propor-
tion among his pupils which has been so
much insisted on as the end at which educa-
tion should aim as it would be for the chem-
ist to attempt by his science to compel all his
salts to crystallize into spheres.

The great evil of the invariable curricu-
lum of study in our colleges at the present
time is that it makes it impossible, at least
after the end of the second year of the course,
to teach any subject with satisfactory thor-
oughness. From an examination of the pro-
gramme of instruction in Columbia College
for the junior and senior years — I select my
own college rather than another that ray re-
marks may not seem invidious — it appears
that if every student were compelled to take
every subject, and if to every subject should
be given an equal proportion of the available
time, no single subject, if pursued continu-
ously, could occupy a longer period than
about a month. How is it possible to expect
results satisfactory either to instructor or to
learner from such a state of things as this ?
There is no remedy lor the evil but that of
permitting the student to concentrate his at-
tention upon those subjects which are most
in harmony with his native bent, and to leave
the others to those to whom they in turn may
be more acceptable.

BE LA YE LEY E ON SOCIALLSM.

"No apology is needed for printing
the long article of M. de Laveleye in
reply to Herbert Spencer, together with
the latter's brief rejoinder. The Bel-
gian state socialist is a man of mark,
who believes in the extension of the
powers of government for the general
purposes of philanthropy; and it was
natural that he should see the need of
breaking the force of Spencer's argu-
ment. But, quite regardless of that
result, his paper is of interest as re-
vealing the condition of mind of a
man admitted to he strong in politics

EDITOR'S TABLE.

271

and economics, but who shows such a
want of familiarity with the elements
of social science as gives confusion to
his exposition. Notwithstanding its
merits, looseness and inaccuracy in im-
portant parts of his paper must go far
to impair our confidence in the integ-
rity of his intellectual work.

What trust, for example, can we
have in the information or the thinking
of a man who says, ''Darwin borrowed
his ideas of the struggle for existence
and the survival of the fittest from
Malthus, from whom he also drew his
theories of evolution and transform-
ism"? Now, "the struggle for exist-
ence " is certainly not an idea belong-
ing either to Darwin or Malthus, but is
far older than both. And so also with
the principle of the "survival of the
fittest"; it is a formula of Herbert
Spencer, adopted by him to represent
the same idea that Mr. Darwin ex-
presses by the term "natural selec-
tion " ; but the conception is found in
the writings of the earlier naturalists,
and what the modern thinkers have
done is simply to work out new and
important views of their results.

M. de Laveleye constantly speaks
in his article of "Darwin's idea," and
constantly misconceives it. What Mr.
Darwin did was to show how the ideas
or principles or conditions of nature
known as the struggle for existence and
the survival of the fittest, together with
heredity and variation, give rise to new
species of plants and animals. It was
an idea belonging strictly to the sphere
of biological science, and aiming to ac-
count rationally for the great diversi-
ties of kinds among organic beings.

M. de Laveleye not only misappre-
hends "Darwin's idea," of which he
is constantly talking, but speaks of it
as something seized upon by Herbert
Spencer and applied by him to human
society. But, in the first place, Dar-
win had nothing to apply ; and, in the
second place, Spencer was in the field
long before him. The struggle for ex-
istence and the survival of the fittest

were ideas which Spencer had devel-
oped in their social applications, tracing
out their results and assigning their
limitations in his book upon human so-
ciety, of 1851 ; while " Darwin's idea,"
belonging in quite another field, was
not enunciated till 1859.

But this laxity of thought and mis-
information affecting the fundamental
conception of his argument go fur-
ther. Not only does he misapprehend
the "Darwinian idea," which is in fact
entirely irrelevant to his argument, and
not only does he constantly make Spen-
cer the follower of Darwin, where
Spencer was the actual predecessor, but
he discloses an ignorance of the prin-
ciples he professes to deal with, in their
social bearings, which is somewhat sur-
prising in a man who ventures to take
issue with the leading sociologist of the
age. He accuses Spencer of borrowing
from Darwin, and applying to society
an inhuman principle, which reverses
all the equities of government and gives
license to the worst of crimes. He
says, " If it be really advisable that the
law of the survival of the fittest should
be established among us, the first step
to be taken would be the abolition of
all laws which punish theft and mur-
der." And does M. de Laveleye really
consider that it is optional with any-
body whether the principle of the sur-
vival of the fittest shall be established
in society or not ? Are not the princi-
ples of the struggle for existence and
the survival of the fittest simple demon-
strated facts of nature, as old as men's
observations of the economy of life
upon earth,' and no more to be escaped
than temperature, the atmosphere, or
gravitation ? Because the law of gravi-
tation is destructive, and maims and
kills people daily, and everywhere, and
without remorse, is the question to be
raised whether or not it is to be es-
tablished among us ? And will M. de
Laveleye maintain that the only way
" to establish among us this heartless
and cruel law of gravitation" is to give
everybody a license to kill ? The law

272

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of gravitation is established, and, with
all its deadly results, it is a law of infi-
nite beneficence. Nothing remains for
man but to accept it and heed it : if it
causes wounds when he stumbles, it is,
nevertheless, the condition by which he
walks; he is to avoid its injurious ef-
fects and secure its useful effects. Na-
ture, of which man is a part, is a mixed
system, in which good comes out of
evil, and suffering is made tributary to
ever-increasing beneficence. The prin-
ciples of the struggle for existence and
the survival of the fittest are inexorable
ordinances of Nature, full of violence
and death, but through which the prog-
ress and improvement and elevation of
life upon earth have been accomplished.
They were in operation upon a vast
scale countless thousands of years be-
fore man appeared. They have been
in operation in his development many
thousands of years before he began to
take a conscious and intentional part in
the work of his own elevation ; and
they must continue in operation as long
as the present order of natural things
prevails, and the movement is upward
and onward toward greater good. The
sole question is, whether these great
laws are to be wisely recognized and
made use of by man in furtherance of
those ameliorations to which they have
already so immensely contributed. Only
gross inappreciation of the subject, or
sheer intellectual perversity, could as-
sume that these principles require the
abolition of the penal restraints of crime
in organized society.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Jeli-t-Fish, Star-Fish, and Sea-Urchins:
Being a Research on Primitive Nervous
Systems. By G. J. Romanes. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Tp. 323.
Price, $1.75.

The main object of this work by Pro-
fessor Romanes is the description of the
investigation of the physiology of the ani-
mals lowest in organization, with especial
reference to determining the presence of
a nervous system in them and its extent

and functions. The author at first intend-
ed to supplement the accounts of his own
work with an exposition of the results
which had been obtained by other inquir-
ers, concerning the morphology and devel-
opment of those animals. He found, how-
ever, that he would not be able, within the
limits of the contemplated book, to do jus-
tice to the labors of others, and has con-
fined himself to giving an account of his
own researches. The nervous systems of
these animals, as studied by Professor Ro-
manes, are mainly subservient to the office
of locomotion, the plan or mechanism of
which is completely different in the two
classes, and unique in each. The investiga-
tions of which this treatise is the result
were carried on through six summers spent
at the sea-side out of the vacations of
twelve years, and were profitable and edi-
fying in more ways than one. On this
point, the author makes some remarks which
form a fitting introduction to the story of
hia detailed and technical experiments.
"Speaking for myself," he says, "I can
testify that my admiration of the extreme
beauty of these animals has been greatly
enhanced — or, rather, I should say that this
extreme beauty has been, so to speak, re-
vealed— by the continuous and close ob-
servation which many of my experiments
required ; both with the unassisted eye and
with the microscope numberless points of
detail, unnoticed before, became familiar
to the mind ; the forms as a whole were
impressed upon the memory ; and, by con-
stantly watching their movements and
changes of appearance, I have grown, like
an artist studying a face or a landscape, to
appreciate a fullness of beauty the esse of
which is only rendered possible by the
percipi of such attention as is demanded
by scientific research. Moreover, associa-
tion, if not the sole creator, is at least a
most important factor of the beautiful ;
and, therefore, the sight of one of these
animals is now much more to me, in the
respects in which we arc considering, than
it can be to any one in whose memory it
is not connected with many days of that
purest form of enjoyment which can only
be experienced in the pursuit of science.
And here I may observe that the worker
in marine zoology has one great advantage
over his other scientific brethren. Apart

LITERARY NOTICES.

273

from the intrinsic beauty of most of the
creatures with which he has to deal, all the
accompaniments of his work are aesthetic,
and removed from those more or less of-
fensive features which are so often neces-
sarily incidental to the study of anatomy
and physiology in the higher animals."
This book is Volume XLIX of the " Inter-
national Scientific Series."

Geology and the Deluge. By the Duke
of Argyll. Glasgow : Wilson & Mc-
Cormick. Pp. 47.

This is the substance of a lecture deliv-
ered in Glasgow, in which is considered the
question whether any scientific evidence
exists that there has occurred a deluge, or
a great submergence of the land under the
sea over a considerable area of the globe ;
of a temporary character; accompanied
with the destruction of animal life ; since
the birth or development of man ; in oth-
er words, corresponding with the flood de-
scribed in the Bible. The author finds evi-
dence of such a flood, not only in universal
tradition, but also in many superficial geo-
logical facts ; among them, the existence of
beds of recent marine gravel on mountain-
tops in Wales and other countries ; the
loess, with its abundant land-shells ; the
extinct mammalian fauna of Europe, of the
sudden destruction of which he adduces
many evidences ; and the masses of mam-
moths in New Siberia. The evidences of
the contemporaneousness of man with the
phenomena are discussed, and the question
of his antiquity incidentally. The time
of the flood in question is believed by the
author to have been about the close of the
glacial period.

The Rescue of Greelt. By Commander
W. S. Schley, U. S. Navy, and Profes-
sor J. R. Soley, U. S. Navy. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp.
2*7*7, with Illustrations and Maps. Price,
$3.

This book gives a plain account of the
Greely expedition, of the attempts that
failed to relieve it, and of the one that final-
ly succeeded. It has been the aim of the
writers to describe the events simply as
they occurred, and avoid all criticism of the
pe-rsons who took part in them. This they
have done, in the colorless manner in which
vol. xxvii. — 18

all stories ought to be told on which the
world is to be called upon to pass an im-
partial judgment. The relation is begun
with a general description of the region in
which the search was prosecuted, as " the
gateway of the Polar Sea," and an account
of the circumpolar stations which were
established under the auspices of the In-
ternational Polar Conference, with which
Greely's expedition eventually became con-
nected. Then are given accounts of Gree-
ly's Lady Franklin Bay expedition and the
unsuccessful relief expeditions of 18S2 and
1884, and the detailed account of the ex-
pedition under Commander Schley which
succeeded in bringing back the survivors
of Greely's command. Of the spirit in
which the last expedition was prosecuted,
the author of the book says that all of the
officers and men " knew that the object of
the voyage was something above and be-
yond the ordinary calls of service, and . . .
felt an earnestness of purpose which a
mere exploring expedition would hardly
have called forth. At any rate, whatever
may have been their feelings, they certainly
evinced a determination to spare no pains,
to incur any exposure, to assume any re-
quired risk, and to be unflagging in watch-
ing for opportunities to gain a mile, a yard,
or a foot, on the journey toward Greely
and his party."

In the Lena Delta. A Narrative of the
Search for Lieutenant -Commander De
Long and his Companions, followed by
an Account of the Greely Relief Expedi-
tion. By George W. Melville. Edited
by Melville Philips. Boston : Hough-
ton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 497, with Maps
and Illustrations. Price, $2.50.

Op the world's heroes, the men of the
Jeannette Expedition were certainly among
the noblest, the sturdiest, and the most en-
during. Whether we regard the single in-
cident of the attitude in which Lieutenant
De Long's body was found, with the arm
frozen stiff in the position in which it was
raised and bent to cast his journal to a safer
place ; or wl ether we consider the trials and
sufferings and pluck of Melville's party, of
eleven men, during their trying and lonely
journey — we can almost, and when we take
note, as well as of these incidents, of the
history of the expedition as a whole, we can

7+

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quite say with Mr. Philips, that " in all the
world's history the story has no parallel."
This story has already been told by differ-
ent persons from different points of view ;
but by none who had a better right to tell
it and from whom the world had a better
right to ask for it than Engineer Melville,
who after De Long's death was the titular
commander of the expedition. The earlier
part of the expedition, up to the crushing of
the Jeannette by the ice, being already famil-
iar, is but lightly dwelt upon. The real inter-
est begins when the men took to the ice, and
increases till the end of the search for De
Long's party. The book abounds with inci-
dents that help to realize what Arctic life
really is. The constant imminence of its
dangers was shown when the floe on which
the party were encamped split through the
center of De Long's tent ; " and had it not
been for the weight of the sleepers on either
end of the rubber blanket those in the mid-
dle must inevitably have dropped into the
sea." A strong picture of the straits to
which men may be reduced for food ap-
pears in the observation that walrus -hide
may have the solitary advantage over hemp
for ropes, in that " upon a pinch it can be
eaten. Indeed, fresh walrus -hide, roasted
with the hair on, is toothsome at any time,
and many members of our company feasted
on it after consuming their rations of pem-
mican.'" We have views of what traveling
on the ice is when we are told that the men
did not mind having their toes protruding
through their moccasins so long as the soles
of their feet were clear of the ice, but they
could not keep them clear ; and in the inci-
dent of their finding — having, in order to
keep all their things together, to go thirteen
times over each mile — that, after marching
from twenty-five to thirty miles a day for
two weeks, they had been drifted back
twenty-four miles. Finally, at the begin-
ning of winter, on the 6th of August, they
were able and glad to take to the sea, in
three boats. They kept together till some
time after the 10th of September, when they
were separated in a furious storm, and one
of the boats was never afterward heard
from. It was agreed they should all en-
deavor to land at Cape Barkin, and meet
there. How they landed, and what befell
either of the two parties that survived the

sea-voyage, are graphically told by Engineer
Melville, from his own experiences and from
the narratives of Nindcman and Noros and
the notes left by Captain De Long.

The account of the Greely Relief Expe-
dition is brief, but testifies to the value of
Greely's work — that there is no one living
competent to criticise his conduct of the expe-
dition on which he was sent, " beyond affirm-
ing that he performed the greatest amount
of scientific work possible at least expense,
and made good his retreat from depot to
depot, until he arrived at the point of safety,
where our Government had promised to de-
posit supplies and have a vessel awaiting to
carry him and his band away from the
' Land of Desolation.' " Not daunted by
what he has seen and experienced of Arctic
traveling, Mr. Melville has started again for
the north pole, expecting to reach it, and
to confirm a theory he has formed of the
proper way of getting there. Believing that
no vessel can penetrate the ice-barrier much
beyond where explorers have gone, he fig-
ures to himself a firm or nearly firm ice-cap
interspersed with frequent islands, cover-
ing the sea from the eighty-fifth parallel to
the pole, and that a properly equipped ex-
pedition can cross this and return upon it,
the whole distance both ways being only a
hundred miles greater than his party trav-
ersed from the Jeannette to the Lena Delta ;
and he believes that the results to accrue
from reaching the pole will more than pay
for all that has been spent in other efforts.

MiND-READING AND BEYOND. By WlLLIAM

A. Hovey. Boston : Lee k Shepard.
Pp. 201. Price, $1.25.

An association of gentlemen engaged in
scientific investigation was formed in the
spring of 18S2, under the designation of the
Society for Psychical Research, the object
of which was stated in its prospectus to be
to examine the nature and extent of any in-
fluence which may be exerted by one mind
upon another, apart from any recognized
mode of perception ; the study of hypnot-
ism, mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, and al-
lied phenomena ; a careful investigation of
data regarding apparitions ; and an inquiry
into the phenomena commonly called spir-
itual. Among the members of this society
were Lord Rayleigh, the Bishop of Carlisle,

LITERARY NOTICES.

275

Professor Sidgwick, Professor Balfour Stew-
art, William Crookes, and Alfred K. Wallace.
They made a considerable number of ex-
periments, in which phenomena were de-
veloped that are not yet fully accounted for.
From the reports on these experiments made
by the several committees to whom the su-
pervision of them was intrusted, Mr. Hovey
has prepared the present interesting and sug-
gestive volume.

The Patriarchal Theory, based on the
Papers of the late John Ferguson Mc-
Lennan. Edited and completed by Don-
ald McLennan. London: Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 355. Price, $4.
Mr. McLennan, in his book on " Primi-
tive Marriage," and in an essay which he
published about fifteen years ago, on " The
Worship of Animals and Plants," propound-
ed some original and striking views, and
opened up new lines of inquiry into the ori-
gins and conditions of primitive society.
He was making the investigations of which
these publications were the first fruits, his
life-work, when his career was cut short, be-
fore he was able to perfect anything further,
by sickness and death ; but not till he had
seen his views received respectfully, con-
firmed in his own mind by new facts and
circumstances, and made a part of the light
under which the continued study of an-
thropology would be conducted. It was his
purpose, if health and strength had been
given him, to undertake a general work on
the structure of the earliest human socie-
ties. " In particular," says his brother, " he
felt that he was able to give a much more
consistent and intelligible view of the con-
dition of rude or undeveloped communities
than anything that had previously been of-
fered to the public." His research being of
a very extensive and far-reaching kind, and
involving the use of " a very large apparatus
of evidence," he proposed " to prepare the
way for his larger work by first issuing a
critical essay, by which he hoped to clear
out of the way a body of opinion, the prev-
alence of which seemed to oppose an ob-
stacle to the proper appreciation of his con-
structive argument." This " body of opin-
ion" was represented by the theory that
the family living under the headship of the
father was the ultimate social unit, which
while it is very old, had recently taken its

most important and influential shape in the
works of Sir Henry Maine. This " critical
essay" he had on hand, assisted by his
brother, who now completes it, and had
carried out to seven of the nineteen chap-
ters of the present volume, with notes em-
bodying his views as to other parts of the
work, when he died. The work is neces-
sarily, by the circumstances of the case,
somewhat polemical in form, but not wholly
so, for the latter part of it is largely de-
voted to the buildng up of a theory of the
origin of agnation, in the course of which
it became necessary to go into the whole
question of the Levirate and of the family
custom of the Hindoos. " It has appeared
at all points," says the editor, " not only that
the phenomena dealt with are not intelligi-
ble on the patriarchal theory, but that they
carry us back to a stage of society prior to
the form of the family which has a father
at its head, to the stage of polyandry, and to
the form of the family founded upon kin-
ship through women only. The argument
has been throughout constructive as well as
critical, and no slight part of the work is
purely constructive."

Cnited States Commission of Fish and Fish-
eries. Report of the Commissioner for
1882. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. 1,101, with Plates.
The commission having completed the
tenth year of its work, the report takes
general notice of what it has accomplished.
It was formed primarily to investigate the
alleged decrease of food-fishes in the United
States, but had added to its duties in its
second year that of promoting the propaga-
tion of fish. It has accomplished much for
science by prosecuting, or aiding others to
prosecute, researches into the general natu-
ral history of marine animals and plants.
It has made very large collections of aquatic
animals in aid of monographic research,
and has given a full series to the National
Museum, and sets to several hundred insti-
tutions of learning, etc. During 1882 it
secured a permanent sea-coast station at
Wood's Holl; fitted up the Armory Build-
ing as its central Washington station ; ac-
quired stations in Maryland and Virginia ;
furthered the artificial production of oysters,
and the production and distribution of the
carp ; and made inquiries into the extensive

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

destruction of the tile-fish in the North At-
lantic. For the future it hopes to extend
its general inquiries ; to promote improve-
ment in methods and apparatus of fishing,
and in fishing-vessels ; to determine the ex-
tent and general character of the old fishing
localities and discover new ones ; to improve
methods of curing and packing fish for the
market ; and to continue the work of in-
creasing the supply of valuable fishes in the
waters of the United States.

Report of the Operations of the United
States Life-Saving Service for the Year
ending June 30, 1883. Washington:
Government Printing- Office. Pp. 519.

One hundred and ninety-four stations
were maintained at the close of the year
covered by the report— one hundred and
forty-nine on the Atlantic, thirty-seven on
the lakes, seven on the Pacific, and one
at the Falls of the Ohio. The number of
disasters to documented vessels and small
boats was 416, in which $7,242,729 of prop-
erty and 4,040 persons were involved, while
$5,671,700 of the property and 4,021 per-
sons were saved, and 651 shipwrecked per-
sons were succored at the stations. Twenty-
two other persons were rescued who had
fallen from wharves, piers, etc. Ten dis-
asters, involving the loss of lives, took place
within the scope of the service. All of the
nineteen persons lost were entirely beyond
human aid.

Researches on Solar Heat and its Absorp-
tion dy the Earth's Atmosphere. By
S. P. Langley. Washington: Govern-
ment Printing - Office. Pp. 242, with
Plates.

Professor Langley's observations are
already quite well known to the scientific
world, and their value is universally acknowl-
edged. They were made on the slopes of
Mount Whitney, at a height of twelve thou-
sand feet above the sea, and about three thou-
sand feet below the summit of the mountain,
with special instruments of the observer's
own devising. Notices of some of the re-
sults have been given in the " Monthly."
The author expresses the opinion that Mount
Whitney is an excellent station for such ob-
servations, fully equal to any that is pos-
sessed by any other nation ; and, upon his
recommendation, it has been declared a Gov-

ernment reservation, available for purposes
of scientific research. Professor Langley
records some very interesting facts respect-
ing a dust-cloud which appears to hang in
the Sierras at a certain height above the
sea, the effects of which he was able to ob-
serve from his camp, and which appears to
be permanent. Professor Clarence King as-
cribes its origin to the loess of China. The
author also speaks of large logs, which were
found to be quite numerous on the mount-
ain-side at a considerable height above the
timber-line, as indicating that the region
formerly enjoyed a warmer climate than it
now has. The relation of the observations
which formed the object of the expedition
is very important and interesting to men of
science, but too technical for the edification
of general readers.

The Stars and Constellations. By Royal
Hill. New York : Funk & Wagnalls.
Pp. 32.

This work is intended to enable students
and others, who are interested in the ap-
pearance of the heavens, to identify the
principal objects of interest without refer-
ence to star-maps, which as a general thing
are very perplexing to unprofessional read-
ers. The plan adopted by the author is
new, and constitutes the main feature of
the work. It consists in the employment of
two accurately drawn time-charts, giving
the exact time of rising and southing for
every day in the year, of twenty-five of the
brightest stars, which are more distinctly
identified in the text. From the positions
of these " landmarks of the sky," any oth-
er object at all likely to attract the atten-
tion of naked-eye observers is so described
that it is very difficult for any person of or-
dinary intelligence to miss the information
desired. As each object is identified, the
student can learn whatever is of interest
concerning it by consulting the separate
account that is given of every conspicuous
star and constellation visible in this country.
The subject is suitably introduced by some
interesting information concerning the con-
stellations, the names and numbers of the
stars, and the methods adopted by astrono-
mers to designate them. It is illustrated
by several very clear maps of the zodiacal
constellations, upon which the place of the

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

sun for every day in the year is accurately
marked. These maps, which show every
star in these constellations to the fifth mag-
nitude, we understand are the first ever
published based on the admirable photo-
metric observations of Professor Pickering,
the Director of Harvard Observatory. We
regard the idea on which the plan is based
as a sound one, and the execution of the
work as conformed to it. The arrangement
is simple, and the directions, in the table, in
the charts, and in the text, are clear and
accurate.

The " Quincy Methods " illustrated. Pen-
Photographs from the Quincy Schools.
By Lelia E. Partridge, New York :
E. L. Kellogg & Co. Pp. 660. Price,
$1.50.

The educational world was startled a few
years ago by the report of the great things
that were going on in the schools of Quincy,
Massachusetts. A new superintendent had
been placed over them — Colonel Francis W.
Parker — who had dared to break through the
shell of formalism and routine within which
they were being fossilized, and to infuse into
them life, spontaneity, and real progress.
The fame of the schools and of the new sys-
tem— which was not new, however, to many,
but too few, teachers of rare genius for their
work — spread widely, and Quincy became a
place of frequent resort for persons having
at heart the interests of real instruction.
Among those who went there was Miss
Partridge, who recorded what she saw, and
now publishes her record. She takes the
reader into the school-room and its different
classes, day after day, and exhibits, in her
printed account, a transcript, exact as it
may be, of what occurred there — illustrating
how the teacher started, now this subject,
now that, and patiently, and with tact, drew
out whatever suggested itself to each of the
pupils upon it. As the lessons are advanced,
they shape themselves into a kind of sys-
tem, the operation of which is to awaken
the minds of the pupils to self-action and
independent thinking. The manner in which
these accounts are rendered justifies the
secondary title of " Pen-Photographs" which
the book bears. The author is careful to
remind her fellow-teachers that the example-
lessons she gives are not to be copied from
but are to serve as types, after which teach-

ers must form their own methods according
to the bent of their minds and the kind of
children they have in charge. The essential
features of the Quincy method are flexibili-
ty and spontaneity. What is called by that
name might, in the hands of a humdrum
teacher, become as dead and worthless as
any of the stereotyped forms it is intended
to supplant. It is its spirit that must be
caught, not any of its particular models fol-
lowed ; and the success of its execution will
depend most largely upon the power of the
teacher to strike out a way of his own.

Mortality Experience of the Connecticut
Mutual Life Insurance Company, of
Uartford, Connecticut, from 1846 to
1878. Hartford, Conn. Pp. 91.

A series of thirty-seven tables, showing
the mortality results of as many kinds of
policies or classes of insured, accompanied
by a text explaining the taole, and calling
attention to the more important of the re-
sults.

The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Forma-
tions of the West. By Edward D.
Cope. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. 1,009, with 135 Plates.

This bulky quarto is " Book I " of the
fourth volume of the final reports of the
Haydcn Geological Survey. Its import in
paleontological science is of much signifi-
cance, for it contains a great number of
species and genera of vertebrate animals
from the fertile tertiary beds of the West,
which had not been previously discovered.
Some of these fill gaps in the chain of spe-
cies, and make the connection and the course
of development more plain than they were
before. The whole collection represents a
part only of the results of the researches
which the author prosecuted either person-
ally or with the aid of his trained assistants
during the exploring seasons of 1872, 1873,
1S77, 1878, 1879, 1880 and 1881, and to a
lesser extent in some of the intervening
years not recorded in this list. The regions
in which the explorations were conducted
cover portions of the States and Territories
included between British America on the
north, the western boundaries of Minnesota
and Missouri on the east, the northern bor-
ders of the Indian Territory and Arizona and
the middle of New Mexico on the south,

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the Sierra Nevada on the west. The
present volume does not include all the re-
sults of Professor Cope's researches, for
another is to follow. Professor Hayden
well says of the whole, in his letter trans-
mitting the report, that " the amount of
new matter toward the origin and history
of the mammalian groups brought together
by the author in these two volumes is most
extraordinary, and will probably never be
surpassed." In this single volume are given
the vertebrata of the Eocene and of the Low-
er Miocene, less the Ungulata, with descrip-
tions of 349 species, which are referred to
1 25 genera. The author sums up fifteen im-
portant results that have accrued through the
researches here set forth in the discovery of
new genera and families, among which are
the discovery of the phylogenetic series of
the Canida;, or dogs, and the same of the
ancestors of the Fclidce, or cats. As the
book was stereotyped in 1883, all conclu-
sions of later date than that are necessarily
excluded from it ; but the author's final
conclusions from the material described
are mostly to be found in a series of illus-
trated articles he has been publishing in
the " American Naturalist " in the years
1883-'85.

The Ten Laws of Health ; or, IIow Dis-
eases ARE PRODUCED AND PREVENTED. By

J. R. Black, M. D. Published by the
Author. Baltimore. Price (by subscrip-
tion), $2.50.

A part of this book was published sev-
eral years ago. The edition having been
exhausted for many years, the matter has
been revised to bring it up even with the
progress of the age, and an entirely new
part has been added, comprising nearly a
fourth of the present volume, on thorough
disinfection within the sick-room and the
sick-bed as the most effective means for pre-
venting the spread of contagious diseases
and epidemics. The author is a strong be-
liever in the doctrine that disease is unneces-
sary and preventable ; in his view man is the
most sickly of beings, because those — which
means most men — " who neither know nor
strive to be governed by law in the uses
they make of themselves, become victims to
hundreds of evils in the various forms of
disease." The ten laws of health are taken
up in their order and explained ; the viola-

tions of them are shown, with their attend-
ant results ; and the mode of observing them
is taught. The first law is, that a pure air
must be breathed. To obtain this within
the house, supposing that the surroundings
arc pure, " the great and imperative require-
ment is air-movement, a decided though gen-
tle current through an occupied room day
and night." Second ; the food and drink
must be adequate and wholesome. The evil
to be guarded against in the United States
is excess, for inadequateness or a deficiency
of food on this continent, although the com-
mon sentiment is quite the reverse, is not
often a direct cause of disease. As to the
quality of our food, as we prepare it, " of
the many books published on the subject of
cooking, there are few, if any, that have not
receipts by the score which can not be ex-
celled for producing indigestion." The ef-
fects of tea and coffee and alcoholic stimu-
lants are carefully considered. The third
law enforces the necessity and judicious
practice of out door exercise ; and the fourth
law prescribes adequate and unconstraining
covering for the body. The fifth law con-
cerns the exercise of the sexual function.
Under the head of the sixth law are consid-
ered the effects of changes of climate, and
the measures to be taken for safe acclimati-
zation when that step is taken. Regarding
changes of climate for the sake of health,
the author concludes, from a survey of the
available facts on the subject, " that an im-
prudent change of climate more frequently
destroys the health of the healthy than it
cures the sickness of the sickly." The sev-
enth law relates to the choice of occupation.
Its admonition is to select such pursuits as
do not cramp and overstrain any part of
the body, or subject it to irritating and poi-
sonous substances ; and, of course, to avoid
those of an opposite character. Next, we
are to keep personally clean, bathing sys-
tematically and changing regularly all cloth-
in" next to the skin. " Those who for month
after month, and even for year after year,
do not cleanse and invigorate the skin by
frequent baths, followed by brisk friction
of the skin, lose the good offices of a very
active organ of regeneration, and cause their
blood to be in a state very favorable for the
production of disease from slight causes."
Ninthly, we must preserve the mind in a trail-

LITERARY NOTICES.

279

quil state, and secure adequate rest and sleep.
"For health, as well as happiness, moderation
and diversity of pursuits arc essential requi-
sites." Tenth and last law : " No inter-
marriage of blood relations." The principle
is kept in view and enforced by frequent
repetition that violations of any of these
laws work injury from the beginning, the
evil increasing as the violations become ha-
bitual, and that for years, perhaps, before
the sinner perceives that anything of the
kind is taking place ; even while he may be
boastful of his strength and his superiority
to the bad effects of his wrong-doing ; and
that, when the injury is at last revealed, it
is generally past remedy.

The injunctions in the second part of the
book, for preventing the spread of infectious
diseases by stamping them out within the
sick-room, are based on the germ theory of
disease. The principles on which they are
justified, concisely stated, are, that " persons
sick of infectious diseases are the breed-
ing hot-beds from which the germs issue;
that these germs make of air, drinks, and
foods, mediums by which they are carried
into the bodies of others; and, that when
they once pervade the air, mix with foods
and drinks, they can neither be detected nor
destroyed ; and, as a corollary, that the only
time effectually to destroy them is at the
bedside as they pass from the bodies of the
sick." To wait, as is too often done, till
they have escaped, expecting then by stern-
er measures to stop the spread of disease, " is
like waiting until a fire becomes an alarming
conflagration before making systematic ef-
forts to subdue it " — and " even far worse."
The directions for enforcing this summary
disinfection are plain and practical.

Resultados del Observatorio Nacional
Argentino en Cordoba. (Results of
the Argentine National Observatory in
Cordoba.) By Benjamin A. Gould, Di-
rector. Vols. II, III, IV, VII, and VIII.
Spanish and English. Buenos Ayres and
Cordoba. Tp. (total) 2,243.

We have already (March, 18S2) given a
sketch of Professor Gould's life and astro-
nomical work, both at home and in Cordoba,
and a notice of the first publication of the
results of his observations in the southern
hemisphere, in the " Uranometria of the
Southern Heavens." The present volumes

embrace a part of the record of his work at
Cordoba as it has been pursued, in consid-
erable but not complete detail. At the
beginning, the author entertained the hope
of being able to publish all the observa-
tions in essentially the same form as they
had been made, affixing the instrumental
corrections separately. The observations
of the years lS72-'73 were prepared for
the press in this form, but the im possibility
of carrying out the plan became manifest
as the number of results increased ; and
at last anxiety arose lest it might not be
possible to secure a prompt publication of
the results in any shape whatsoever. The
observations for the catalogue have there-
fore been given in the compact form adapt-
ed to the requirements of the case ; and
those of the zones with only so much de-
tail as seemed needful when a large propor-
tion of the stars had been observed but
once. The original observations and all
the calculations have been preserved for
reference. The zones which have been sur-
veyed in these observations cover a breadth
of 52' 20' in declination, extending from
23° to 80° south. Previous determinations
of position by zone-observations have been
essentially differential in their character, in
one co-ordinate, at least, when not in both ;
in the present undertaking, Dr. Gould has
endeavored to obtain so-called absolute de-
terminations for all the stars observed.
During the eight and a half years of work
up to the close of 1880, more than 250,000
stellar observations were made with the
meridian-circle ; and the number of differ-
ent stars observed is estimated at 35,000 —
all belonging to the southern hemisphere.
Among the special observations was a care-
ful determination, of positions and proper
motion, of fifty-four circumpolar stars for
determination of the azimuthal errors of the
instrument. Vol. II of the present scries
contains the observations made in 1872;
Vols. Ill and IV, those made in 1873; and
Vols. VII and VIII, the zone-observations
made in 1875. In making these observa-
tions, between declinations 23° and 47°, the
normal width of the zone was two degrees,
with 10' additional at each margin and
extremity for overlap ; from 47° to 75°,
their width increased with the declination ;
until, finally, the last five degrees, 75° to

28o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

80°, were comprised in a single belt. The
zones were also subdivided, where that
seemed best.

The Distribution of Products, or the
Mechanism and Metaphysics oe Ex-
change. By Edward Atkinson. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 303.
Price, $1.25.

Mr. Atkinson, a man of business, has
spoken so often, so intelligently, and so
much to the purpose on financial questions
as to give him a right to be heard and weight
to his views. The present volume includes
three essays — on " What makes the Rate of
Wages ? " " What is a Bank ? " and " The
Railway, the Farmer, and the Public." The
subject of the first essay is attended with a
complication of conditions and relations,
and differences of opinion upon it are in-
evitable. Mr. Atkinson takes an optimistic
view of the prospects of a satisfactory set-
tlement of the relations of capital and la-
bor on the conditions set forth in his funda-
mental proposition. He shows that a high
rate of wages does not necessarily signify
high cost of production, and vice versa, and
enforces a distinction, too often overlooked,
between rate of wages and sum of wages in
the manufacture of a given product. The
second essay presents an exposition of the
principles on which safe banking is con-
ducted. In the third essay the author shows
that the railways have performed a great
service in our national economy, and that a
large reduction in the costs of transporta-
tion has been brought about by the consoli-
dation of the principal lines ; and maintains
that nearly all the features of our present
railway system are working, as a whole, for
good.

Paradise Found: A Study of the Prehis-
toric World. By William F. Warren,
LL. D. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin &
Co. Pp. 505. Price, $2.
The Count de Saporta, Mr. G. Hilton
Scribner, and others, have made our readers
familiar with the hypothesis that the cradle
of the human race and of all life must be
sought at the north pole. The accession
of so many men known to be careful ob-
servers, imbued with the scientific spirit,
and habituated not to express an opinion
unless they have reason- nt hand with which
to fortify it, as have uttered views consist-

ent with this hypothesis, has lifted it up
out of the category of speculations to a
genuine theory, claiming deliberate investi-
gation. Dr. Warren, who is President of
Boston University, has arrived at conclu-
sions nearly coincident with those of Count
de Saporta and those who agree with him,
through his own independent studies, though
not, of course, without having them re-
enforced by theirs. In the present work,
he offers the considerations by which the
theory of polar origin is to be supported,
carefully worked out, and in their order.
Beginning with a survey of the present state
of the question of the location of Eden and
of the existing theories upon it, he presents
in Part Second his own hypothesis, with a
definition of the conditions on which it may
be admissible ; in Part Third, the scientific
bearing on it of gcogony, geography, geol-
ogy, prehistoric climatology, paleontologi-
cal botany, zoology, and archaeology and
general ethnology; in Part Fourth, confir-
mations of the hypothesis by ethnic tradi-
tion— from ancient cosmology and mythical
geography, and from Japanese, Chinese,
East Aryan, Iranian, Akkadian, Assyrian
and Babylonian, ancient Egyptian and An-
cient Greek thought ; in Part Fifth, fur-
ther verifications of the hypothesis, based
upon a study of the peculiarities of a polar
paradise ; and in Part Sixth, the significance
of the results he has drawn from these con-
siderations.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Preliminary Analysis of the P>aik of Fouqueria
Splendens. By Helen C. DeS. Abbott. Pp. 8.

The Lineal Measures of the Semi-Civilized Na-
tions of Mexico and Central America. By Daniel
G. Brinton, M. D. Pp 14.

Proceedings of the Colorado Scientific Society,
1SS3 and 18o-4 Denver, Col. Pp. 147, with Plates.

Notes on the Literature of Explosives. By Pro-
fessor Charles E. Munroe, Annapolis, Md. Pp. 82.

Spiritism ; the Origin of all .Religions. By J. P.
Dameron, San Francisco. Cal. Pp 10S.

Elephant Pipes. Davenport, Iowa. By Charles
E. Putnam. Pp. 40.

The Filth-Power. By J. B. Oleott. Ppv41.

Starling Medical College, Columbus. Ohio. Pp.
16.

Contagiousness of Tuberculosis. By W. II.
Webb. M. D. Philadelphia. Pp. 2S.

Scriptural Temperance. By W. H. Ten Eyck,
D. D. New York : P. Brinkerhoff. Pp. 44.

Liffht of Comparison Stars for Vesta. Pp. 8.
Astronomical Observatory, Harvard Collie. Re-
port of Director. Pp. 12. Observations of Variable
Stars in 1884. Pp. 10. All by Edward C. Pickering.

The Lemuroidea and the Insectivora of the

LITERARY NOTICES.

281

Eocene of North America. Pp. 16. The Position
of Pterichthys. Pp. 6. Evolution of the Verte-
brata. Pp. So. Marsh on American Jurassic Di-
nosaurs. Pp. 2. The Amblypoda. Pp. 38. All by-
Professor E. D. Cojie.

Standards of Stellar Magnitudes. Report of
Committee A. A. A. Si. Pp. 2.

Proceedings of the State Board of Health of Ken-
tucky, March. 1885. Pp. 32.

Gold and Silver Conversion Tubles. Pp. 8. Ele-
vations in 1 ho Dominion of Canada. Pp. 48. Fossil
Faunas of tue tjpuar Devonian. Pp. 36. On Meso-
zoic Fossils Pp. 36. Washington: Government
Printing-Oiflce.

Sanitary Council of the Mississippi Valley at New
Orleans. Pp. 21.

On Color. By Colonel James W. Abert. Pp. 24.
Ancient Aztec or Mexican Method of comput-
ing Time. By Colonel Jame3 W. Abert. Pp. 30.

State Sanitary Survey. Illinois State Board of
Health.

Disinfection and Disinfectants. Preliminary Re-
port, American Public Health Association. Pp. S.
Batteries. Pp. 24. with Plates. Machinery and
Mechanical Appliances. Pp. 12. Reports, Inter-
national Electrical Exhibition.

The Instruments and Work of Astronomy. By
Asaph Hall. Pp. ID.

Dictionary of Altitudes in the United States (U.
S. Geological Survey). Washington: Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 325.

Herbert Spencer's Philosophy as culminated
in his Ethics. By James McL'osh. New York :
Charles Seribner's Sons. Pp. Tl. Price, 50 cents.
The Diamond Lens, with other Stories. By
Fitz-James O'Brien. New York : Charles Serib-
ner's Sons. Pp. 337. Price, 50 cents.

" American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb." E.
A. Fay, Editor. Vol. XXX, No. 1. Quarterly.
Washington, 1>. C. Pp. 92. Price, $2 a year.

" Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Wash-
ington, D. CV Vol. VII. Pp.135.

Osteology of Ceryle Alcyon. By R. W. Shufeldt.
Pp. 16, with Plates

Forests of the Adirondacks. Report of Brooklyn
Constitutional t lub. Pp. 11.

The Limits of Stability of Nebulous Planets. By
Professor Daniel KirkwooJ. Pp. 10.

The Morals of Christ By Austin Bierbower.
Chicago : Oolegrove Book Company. Pp. 200.
Price, 53 cents and $1.

The Six Nations. By Judge Daniel Sherman.
Jamestown, N. V. : Chautauqua Society of History
and Natural Science. Pp. 23.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Colum-
bus. Report for 1 jS4. William R. Lazenby, Direct-
or. Pp. 210.

School Bulletin Year- Book of the State of New
York for 1385. By C. W. Bardeen. Syracuse, N.
Y. : C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 160.

The Eroding Power of Ice. Pp. 12. The Depo-
sition of Ores Pp IT. Cy J. S. Newberry. Hew
York : John Wiley & Sons.

Proceedings of the Natural History Society of
Wisconsin, March, 13S5. Pp. 40.

Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute.
By Theodore F. Rodenbough, New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 139, with Map. Price, 50
cents.

Many Drugs, Few Remedies. By George T.
Welch, M. D. Pp.12.

On Oxygen as a Remedial Agent. By Samuel
8. Wallian, M. D., New York. Pp. 52.

Tableau de Diverges Vitesses (Table of Different
Speeds). By James Jackson. 446 Broome Street,
New York. Pp. 8.

Geographical Society of Paris. ComptesReudus,
January 23, 1SS5. Pp." 40.

Recent American Socialism. By Richard T. Ely,
Ph. D. Baltimore : N. Murray. Pp. 74. Price, 75
cents.

Australian Group Relations. By A. W. Hewitt.
Washington : Government Printing-Office. Pp. 28.

Miscellaneous Pages on Anthropology. Smith-
sonian Report, 1883. Washington: Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 122.

Architecture simplified. Chicago: George W.
Ogilvie. Pp. 75. Price, '/5 cents.

Typhoid Fever and Low Water in Wells. By
Henry B. Baker, M. D., Lansing, Michigan. Pp. 24.

The Jenner of America. By W. M. Welch, M.
D., Philadelphia. Pp. 32.

Why don't He lend a Hand ? and other Agnos-
tic Poems. By Samuel P. Putnam. New York :
'•Truth Seeker" Company. Pp. 1C.

The Religion of Humanity better than Eter-
nal Punishment. By M. Babcock. New York :
"Truth Seeker" Company. Pp. 86. Price, 10
cents.

The Distribution of Canadian Forest-Trees. By
A. T. Drummond. Montreal: Dawson Brothers.
Pp. 15.

Bureau of Labor, Michigan. Second Annual Re-
port Lansing. Pp. 445.

National Conference of Charities and Correction.-
Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Session, St.
Louis. Pp. 433.

Descriptive America. Georgia. New York :
George H. Adams & Son. Pp. 32, with Maps.
Price, 50 cents.

Prehistoric Fishing in Europe and America. By
C. Rau, Washington. Pp. 842.

Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Har-
vard College. Edward C. Pickering, Director. Vol.
XIV, Parts I and II. Cambridge : John Wilson &
Son. Pp. 512.

Anales de la Oficina Meteorologiea Argentina
(Annals of the Argentine Meteorological Office).
By Benjamin A. Gould. Vol. IV. Buenos Ayres.
Pp. 599.

Origin of Species. Pp 76. Offices of Electricity
in the Earth. Pp. 42. By II. B I'hilbrook, 21 Park
Row, New York.

Notes from the Physiological Laboratory of the
University of Pennsylvania. By N. A. Randolph,
M. D., and Samuel G. Dixon. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Company. Pp. 88').

How to dram a House. By George E. Waring,
Jr. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp.222. Price,
$1.25.

Geology of the Virginias. By the late William
Barton Riogers. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 832, with Charts.

An Introduction to Practical Chemistry. By
John E. Bowman. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston,
Son & Co. Pp. 24S. Price, $2.

The Microtomist's Vade-Meeum. By Arthur
Bolles Lee. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son &
Co. Pp. 424. Price, $3.

Hesrel's ^Esthetics. By J. S. Kedney . Chicago :
S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 302. Price, $1.25.

The Protestant Faith. By D. II Olmstead. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 77. Price, 50
cents.

The Sun and his Phenomena. By the Rev. T.
W. Webb. New York : Industrial Publication
Company. Pp. 80. Price, 40 cents.

Lessons in Hygiene. By John C. Cutter. Phil-
adelphia : J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp. 189.
Price, 50 cents.

Organic Chemistry. By Ira Remsen. Boston:
Ginn, Heath & Co. Pp. 364. Price, $1.30.

The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism.
By Morton Prince, M. D. Philadelphia : J. B. Lip-
pincott Company. Pp.173. Price, $1.50.

Easter Cards. New York: Raphael Tuek &
Sons.

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Microscope in Botanv. From the German
of Dr. J. W. Behrena. By Kev. A. B. He rvey and
E. H. Ward. Boston : S. E. Cassino & Co. l'p.
4GG. Price, $5.

Assyriology ; its Use and Abuse in Old Testa-
ment Study. By frrancis Brown. New York:
Charles Ser'ibner's Sons. Pp. 9G.

The Russians at the Gates of Herat. By Charles
Marvin. New Sfork: Charles Scribners Sons. Pp.
185. Price, 50 cents.

Transactions of the New York State Medical As-
sociation, 1?84. JN'ew York: D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 054. Price, $5.

Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois. Thh;d Bi-
ennial Report. John S. Lord, Secretary, Springfield.
Pp. G51, with Maps.

The Lenape Stone. Bv H. 0. Mercer. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Son's. Pp. 95. Price, $1.25.

Insomnia, and other Disorders of Sleep. By
Henry M. Lyman. M. D. Chicago : W. T. Keener.
Pp. 239. Price, $1.50.

The French Revolution. By II. A. Taine. Vol.
III. New Y'ork : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 509.
Price, $2.50.

Cotustock Mining and Miners. By Eliot Lord
(U. S. Geological Survey). Washington : Govern-
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 451.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Schools of Fifty Years ago and of To-
Day. — The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in a re-
cent article on " Half-Time Schools," assert-
ed, among other things, that, on the whole,
schools and school-teachers were better fifty
years ago, when they turned out an occa-
sional Daniel Webster, than they are now ;
that all schools are " revolting " to pupils ;
that the average boy, who has many weeks
of vacation per year, is likely to learn the
value of time, the necessity of punctuality,
and the need of subordination, and to ac-
quire modesty and self-control, order and
method, quite as well as he does at school ;
that the old idea of school, as a place for
study in reading, writing, and arithmetic, is
the correct one, and all else is to be taught
and learned somewhere else ; and that such
practical affairs as a knowledge of things,
tools, and the processes of handicrafts, can
not be successfully taught at school, but are
learned more quickly and better at home or
at work. Professor Woodward, of Washing-
ton University, St. Louis, has answered some
of Mr. Hale's points. He quotes, from an
article of his own, the evidence that the
boys in his manual training-school enjoy
their school hours with real zest, and re-
marks on what schools of to-day should
teach, as contrasted with the schools of Dan-
iel Webster's day : " When Daniel Webster
was a boy, there was not a railroad, nor a

telephone, not even a telegraph nor a steam-
boat, in the land. Our present methods of
supplying cities with food, with fuel, with
shelter, with clothing, were unknown. There
was not an armored ship, nor a breech-load-
ing gun, nor a dynamo, in the world, and
one half of the present occupations of men
did not exist. Are our schools to be con-
ducted in blissful ignorance of all this?"
He adds : " I do not say that schools should
teach trades, any more than that they should
teach banking, or piano-playing, or teleg-
raphy. They should only teach principles,
and methods, and the use of tools and appli-
ances applicable to a majority of the occu-
pations of American civilization; these they
should teach for three reasons : 1. Opening
the way to an intelligent choice of occupa-
tion ; 2. Insuring success in the chosen oc-
cupation ; and, 3. Raising the intellectual
and moral standards of manual occupations.
It is scarcely necessary to add that three
hours per day given to manual training
(drawing and tool-work) leave abundant
opportunity for literary and scientific train-
ing, or that the intellectual development of
pupils thus broadly exercised is both whole-
some and rapid."

The Medico-Legal Society. — Mr. Clark
Bell, in his address on retiring from the
presidency of the Medico-Lf gal ^ociety,points
to the high character of the membership of
the body as entitling it to that respect and
confidence which arc now awarded it by stu-
dents of medical jurisprudence throughout
the civilized world. It has three hundred
and ninety-four members. Its library has
largely increased, by the gift of books from
members and honorary and corresponding
members, and is now said to be the best sin-
gle collection of works on medical jurispru-
prudence in this count iy outside of that em-
braced in the library of the Surgeon-Gener-
al's office in Washington. Its list of honor-
ary and corresponding members embraces
gentlemen of the highest distinction and emi-
nence in the science of medical jurispru-
dence, in America and Europe. The con-
stitution of the socicly has been enlarged
so as to admit to active membership persons
throughout the United States and Canada.
The " Medico-Legal Journal " has a circula-
tion of two thousand copies. The address,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

283

after reviewing the progress of the science
in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland,
Scandinavia, Austria, and Hungary, men-
tions the organization of the Society of Medi-
cal Jurisprudence in Philadelphia, and re-
fers to the progress of the work of the Mas-
sachusetts Medico-Legal Society. Mr. Bell
is succeeded in the presidency of the soci-
ety by Professor R. 0. Doremus.

Cardinal Pitri on Scientific Studies. —

Cardinal Pitri, a prelate enjoying high dig-
nities at the papal court, has appeared as
a contributor to the Roman scientific jour-
nal " Cosmos " of an article, advising the
clergy to cultivate science. "It is a good
thing," he says, "for those who have in
theology the key to all the sciences, not to
neglect any of them. We, too, ought to
have our specialists who understand and
help us to understand the views of men of
learning, and are prepared to meet them on
their own ground. While they cherish the
science of the sanctuary, the clergy should
also be familiar with secular knowledge."
Not only this, but " ecclesiastics and mem-
bers of religious orders, especially those
addicted to tradition, should be found
among the men of bold speculation and re-
search ; for tradition is no less necessary
for science than for faith." The cardinal
recommends those studies, although they at
first sight look dry, as sure to afford "a
pure and healthy delight, which grows into
enthusiasm in proportion as they are per-
severingly cultivated." It must be remem-
bered, he adds, that such studies only tend
further to establish " those fundamental
verities whence flows more or less directly
the explanation of whatever can be ex-
plained." For the material universe is " a
sealed book " to those who acknowledge no
Divine Crea:or and Upholder of the wonder-
ful forces which surround us on every side.
But it behooves the young clergy to be care-
ful against coming to too hasty conclusions
in their endeavors to harmonize theology
and science. " It is neither prudent nor
safe to adopt scientific hypotheses too quick-
ly into the domain of theology and her-
mencutics." The observation is enforced
by incidents in his own experience, that wo
have had " modern theologians retreating
from explanation to explanation, embar-

rassed between the periods of the anterior
creation " : and, while the texts that have
given occasion to controversy are " equally
inspired with the rest of Scripture," it is
" dangerous to apply them unreservedly to
each passing system " ; and is much more
prudent " not to be in a hurry to make a
theological thesis of a learned hypothesis
and commit one's self to it, when no such
obligation is imposed on us by the constant
teaching or defined dogmas of the Church."

The Soil-Ferment. — It was determined
by experiment, a few years ago, that the
capacity of earth to purify sewage from
organic matters by oxidation could be sus-
pended by treating the earth with chloro-
form, but that in time the soil would regain
its oxidizing quality. The conclusion was
reached from this observation, that the
oxidation of organic matters ia sewage de-
pends, in part at least, on the presence of
small living organisms whose activity could
be suspended by dosing them with chloro-
form. This conclusion has been confirmed
by subsequent observations, and it is be-
lieved now that the oxidizing property of
the soil is promoted by the presence of
a micrococcus, which acts most efficiently
at a temperature about that of the blood,
but more feebly at higher or lower temper-
atures, while its efficiency ceases entirely
at near the freezing-point and above 130°
Fahr. It appears to bo, in dry soils, most
abundant in the upper six inches, and to
cease to act at depths below eighteen inches.
It has been further determined by these ex-
periments that nitrogenous solutions to be
acted upon by the ferment must be alkaline,
while acid solutions are not affected. Ordi-
nary house sewage is slightly alkaline and
readily acted upon, but this susceptibility is
destroyed when acid-manufacturers' wastes
are admitted to be mixed with it, or with
the soil.

Evolution of Warlike and of Peaceful

Races.— The "Pall Mall Gazette" finds in
the doctrines of hereditability and modifi-
ability reasons for supposing that the pres-
ent Continental organizations of military
life may ultimately result, by the weeding
out of the warlike, in the development of a
more peaceful and industrious race of men.

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The cloister-life of the middle ages tended
to the increase of the warriors by drawing
gentle spirits and those skilled in the handi-
crafts to the convents, and leaving it to the
knights and their retinues to do the marry-
ing and the bringing up of posterity. Now
the military establishments of the European
empires are working in the opposite direc-
tion. They tend to draw the brave and the
turbulent from married life, and to leave
the raising of families to the industrious
and those who shun the field of battle. The
effect of the system on the population of
France after the Napoleonic wars was visi-
ble, and has been much remarked upon.
Hence it is probable that the warlike na-
tions are destined to decline, and peaceful
ones, like Great Britain and the United
States, to prevail, and thus will come to
pass the prediction in the Sermon on the
Mount, that the meek shall inherit the earth.

The Mole a Fri?nil to Man. — A writer in
" Land and Water " pleads for the mole as
a much-abused animal which really does
more good than harm, fulfilling its mission
" of ventilating the soil with many-branched
tunnels, and of converting insects, worms,
etc., into fertile mold. . . . The ingenuity
which the mole exhibits in the formation of
his covered ways might stimulate — perhaps
has done so — agriculturists to improve their
drainage systems ; the comminuted earth
and other material which he leaves behind
him mijrht also instigate them to produce
the same results on a scale commensurate
with their requirements. . . . We cease to
be surprised at the work executed by the
mole when we examine its structure. The
fore-paws, short and very sturdy, are moved
by immense muscles, and are supported
by a clavicle of great strength ; the broad
palms arc turned outward, the better to
form scoops for throwing earth, gravel, soil,
etc., behind while the animal is burrowing.
The ' fingers ' are small, so much so, in fact,
as easily to be overlooked, but each is ter-
minated by a nail, long, flat, sharp-edged,
and very strong, eminently calculated as a
tool for cutting through the soil. The snout,
which we have noticed as furnished with a
terminal bone, a<si<ts in these operations,
and the neck is supplied with muscles of
extraordinary vigor." But the hinder part

of the animal is undeveloped and feeble,
and it is said that the creature can progress
more swiftly in the ground than on it. Its
sense of hearing is very acute, but it has no
external ears, and its eyes are barely visi-
ble. Its hair is very fine and stands straight
out, so that, whichever way the animal goes,
it is not " against the grain." The nest or
home in which the mole resides, and in
which the young are produced, is worthy of
notice. A high arched roof is made by the
removal of a quantity of earth ; here and
there pillars — portions of the solid soil —
are allowed to remain as supports. The
earth, of which the nest is composed, is
pressed and beaten, and with it are mingled
grass-stalks and roots to give it a greater
consistency, and by this means to make it
sufficiently compact to throw off heavy rams.
Within the dome is erected a small mound,
littered with soft grass and leaves. This is
the bed, and from its elevated position is
secure from whatever drainage may casually
make its way below. From this mound
lead off, in various directions, the passages
excavated by the animals, and these often
extend as far as thirty or forty feet from
the central hall." The small mounds dot-
ted over the scene of the animal's labors
are merely the soil thrown up while in
search of worms, etc., and have nothing in
them specially worthy of examination. The
mole usually seeks to be near the water, or
to have access to it.

Obesity. — Obesity, fays the " Lancet,"
may be promoted or relieved, to a limited
extent, by the selection of diet and regi-
men, but it is fundamentally dependent on
some inherent state of being or habit of
life. For its safe and effectual treatment,
provided the case be not of so long standing
as to be beyond all remedy, this state must
first be understood and regulated. What-
ever interferes with oxidation, or with the
due metamorphosis of digested food within
the tissues, is apt to lead to its storage in
the form of fat. It is, therefore, necessary
for health that consumption should be lim-
ited as nearly as may be to what is neces-
sary for sustenance, and that discharge of
waste and tissue demand should be at the
same time encouraged by moderate bodily
exercise. The limitation of food should.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

however, be in its quantity rather than in its
kind, for, if the requisition of mixed food for
the health of the whole body be rudely inter-
fered with, some other function may suffer
and become deranged. " While, therefore,
we are ready to admit that stout persons
should be content with a less rich diet than
the spare - bodied, we are careful to pre-
serve its essentially mixed character, to limit
its consumption in quantity, and to rely for
disposal of the products of digestion mainly
on regular and methodical physical exer-
tion. There should be no difficulty about
this latter, seeing that it may be taken in
different forms suited to various ages and
constitutional types."

Comparative Value of Disinfectants. —

Dr. W. J. Miller, of Dundee, has contrib-
uted to " The Practitioner " the results of
studies he has made on the efficiency of va-
rious disinfectants, in which he used vac-
cine as the experimental infectious matter!
His preference is decidedly expressed in fa-
vor of sulphur. Chlorine was found to be
a reliable disinfectant, the practical appli-
cation of which was, however, attended
with considerable inconvenience. Potassic
permanganate was declared not certain in
its effects. It possesses considerable disin-
fecting power, but is not as certain as it is
reputed ; but, as a deodorant, when it can
entirely cover the offensive matter, it is of
great value in the sick-room. Hydrochloric
acid, though not generally in use as a dis-
infectant, is of very certain efficacy. In
acetic acid, we have " a ready, safe, efficient
and cheap disinfectant." Sanitas failed to
verify the claims that had been set up in its
favor. Perchloride of mercury is pronounced
decidedly inferior in agency to several oth-
er disinfectants ; but, as it has been seen
that the virtue of infective inflammation
is destroyed by considerably weaker dilu-
tions of a disinfectant than vaccine, and
in view of the weight of authority by which
it has been introduced, the author will not
presume to throw doubt on its value in ob-
stetrical and surgical practice. The results
with chromic acid, creosote, and eucalyptus-
oil do not appear to have been definite.
Cupralum, in concentrated solution, imme-
diately destroyed vaccine, and ferralum and
terebene appeared to have the same power.

Seven days' exposure to air saturated with
the vapor of camphor, killed vaccine, while
four days failed to do so. Chloralum is
uncertain. Boracic acid had little effect on
lymph, and salicylic acid in saturated solu-
tion was little more satisfactory. Davaine
found iodine the most certain disinfectant
for malignant pustules. Dr. Miller regards
vaccine as one of the most suitable viruses
with which to make the experiments, for
it exhibits stronger powers of resistance
against the action of disinfectants than al-
most any other contagium. Several general
conclusions are drawn from the experiments.
Thus, while it is very doubtful whether any
efficient disinfection of a sick-room can be
practiced while it is occupied, still atmos-
pheric disinfection may be useful to weaken
the contagium and impair its power of re-
production. Sulphur is the most efficient
and convenient substance to employ for this
purpose. The skin of the patient, particu-
larly the scarlet-fever patient, should be
sponged several times a day with diluted
acetic acid, preferably with the aromatic.
For the final disinfection of the sick-room
nothing equals sulphur. Clothing is disin-
fected by being exposed, with the fumes of
sulphur, to a temperature of about 250°, for
three hours in a specially constructed cham-
ber ; excreta of patients, by mixture with
hydrochloric acid diluted to 1 to 20. For
hand disinfection, carbolic solution 1 in 20,
acetic acid, and sulphurous acid, are almost
certainly thoroughly effective.

The Value of Recess.— The subject of
" recess or no recess in schools " was re-
ported upon at the meeting of the National
Council of Education in Madison, Wis., last
July, and was remanded to the commit-
tee for further investigation, and to be re-
ported upon again, at the next meeting of
the Council, in July of this year. The com-
mittee, seeking facts of experience, has sent
out a circular of questions which it desires
answered by all persons connected with
sohools or interested in them. Among these
questions, reaching to the merits of the case,
are : What effect has the no-recess plan
upon the management of your schools, es-
pecially in the matter of the pupils' habits
or conduct ? Does or does not the no-recess
plan affect the duties and privileges of the

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pupils in such a way as to develop or aggra-
vate in any of them nervous irritation?
Does or does not the no-recess plan affect
the pelvic organs ? Does it or docs it not
affect the eye-sight ? Does it or does it not
affect the nasal passages and lungs ? How
do the physical exercises substituted by the
no-recess plan for those of the recess affect
relatively the rapidity of the pulse of the
pupils, when it is compared to the rapidity
developed in the exercises of the out-door
recess? Answers may be sent to J. H.
Hoose, State Normal School, Cortland, N. Y.

Pacific Coast Panthers.— A correspond-
ent, "Forked Deer," in "Forest and
Stream," communicates some notes on the
habits of the panther as he has observed
them in the Pacific coast region. He ex-
presses surprise that the settlers should
have given this animal a different name —
California or mountain lion — from the East-
ern animal, for the " two panthers are so
nearly alike that no one would dream, upon
comparing them, of regarding them as dis-
tinct species." Yet " the panther of the
West coast never indulges, for his own en-
tertainment, in those fierce, cat-like screams
with which his Eastern brother occasionally
makes night hideous." The correspondent
has a growing skepticism in regard to pan-
thers ever willingly attacking a man. " I
have known them," he says, " on several
occasions to follow persons a short distance,
and I have seen wolves do the same thing,
especially when I have been packing in
freshly-killed meat, but I do not believe
that in either case they meditated an attack.
In one instance, in the Cascades, near the
Hood, I knew a panther to jump at a man
as he lay at night in his blankets, but as
soon as the man partly arose and shouted
for assistance the animal bounded into the
brush and disappeared. In talking it over,
we all came to the conclusion that the pan-
ther had seen the man move under his
blankets, and had mistaken him for some
less formidable antagonist, and that when
the deception was revealed to him he threw
up the job at once. . . . That the panther
will run from the smallest yelping cur that
can be induced to follow his trail is true,
but I am satisfied that instinct . . . warns
them of the hunter behind the dog, and

that it is the latter only which they fear.
Panthers ascend the immense trees near
the mouth of the Columbia, which are
frequently three hundred feet high, and
sixty, eighty, or even a hundred feet to the
first limb, precisely as a cat would climb
them, and when wounded will sometimes go
to the very top. Although they may in
some places spend the day lying upon the
limb of a tree, they are believed to prefer
rocky ledges and caverns, where they are
accessible, for that purpose."

Cremation of Household and City Refuse.

— The ultimate of sanitation, Mr. J. M.
Keating, of Memphis, Term., argued in his
address before the American Public Health
Association, last fall, must be by fire. In
support of his thesis, he proved by the
citation of dozens of instances in the con-
dition of European and American cities,
towns, rivers, water-sheets, public institu-
tions, and private houses, that when the
people do not complain of polluted water,
as they have to do in most cities, they do
of sewer-gas ; that when resting seemingly
secure in an approximately good system of
sewerage, they have to complain of the
means for and methods of sewage dis-
posal ; that by the London method, so ex-
haustively expensive, the Thames is still
nothing better than a wide-open sewer ; that
the Paris method is only partial, and too ex-
pensive, and altogether impossible for large
cities ; that by the New York method the
docks are filled with excreta, and the en-
trance to the harbor is threatened by bars
formed of the street and house wastes, car-
ried out to sea at great expense by barges ;
that rivers are being destroyed by sewage
which kills the fish and make what was
once a source of health a permanent nui-
sance ; that as privies and cess-pools are
condemned because they saturate the soil,
sewers are to be condemned, in some in-
stances, for the same reason, and because
they throw off and fill dwellings with sewer-
gas, and docks and harbors and rivers with
death-dealing sewage ; and that all present
plans of sewage disposal are defective be-
cause they are not final, because they merely
contemplate the removal and not the de-
struction of what is conceded to be the
prime factor in promoting and perpetuat-

NOTES.

287

ing, if it is not the original cause of, much
of the disease that afflicts country and city
alike. " The next step in the line of progress
is cremation, and it has already been taken
by thousands of households, . . . who cre-
mate all of their household wastes and
kitchen garbage, greatly to their comfort
and relief. The kitchen-stove is found to
be a convenient furnace, and into this every-
thing but excreta is dumped, to be utterly
consumed, and thus put beyond the process
of fermentation and slow decay." The
method of cremation is to be carried out in
London on a large scale, in an establishment
which has been erected for the purpose by
Mr. George Shaw. Its introduction into all
cities would relieve them of a multitude of
evils, and bring no new ones in.

Early Mention of Maple Sugar. — Messrs.
Editors : Professor H. W. Wiley, chief
chemist of the Department of Agriculture,
has recently published analyses of maple-
sugars and sirups (" Chemical News," Feb-
ruary 20, 1885), and says he is surprised to
find almost no data concerning the compo-
sition of maple-sugars in chemical litera-
ture.

I can confirm this observation as to the
paucity of information, having had occasion
to institute a search for such literature.

I have found an early mention of maple-
sugar, which seems to me to be of great in-
terest, and append the extract to this note.
The references to sugar from maize and from
water-melons are curious, and I should like
to inquire of your readers whether experi-
ments on manufacturing sugar from water-
melons have been made in more recent times.
If so, with what success?
Very truly yours,

II. Carrixgton Bolton.
Hartford, Connecticut, March 14, 1SS5.

Extract from ITo.w Robert Boyle's " Use-
fulness of Experimental Natural Philos-
ophy," Oxford, 1663, Essay iv, p. 112.
" Since the writing of these last Lines,
being visited by an ancient Virtuoso, Gov-
ernor to a considerable Colony in Northern
America, and inquiring of him among other
particularities touching his Country, some-
thing in relation to the thoughts I had about
the making of several kindes of Suger, he
assur'd me, upon his own experience, that
there is in some parts of New England, a
kinde of Tree, so like our Wallnut-trees, j

I that it is there so called, whose Juice that
I weeps out of its Incisions, &c, if it be per-
mitted slowly to exhale away the superflu-
ous moisture, doth congeal into a sweet and
saccharine substance ; and the like was con-
firmed to me, upon his own knowledge, by
the Agent of the great and populous Colony
of the Masatlmsets.

"And very lately demanding of a very
eminent and skilful Planter, why, living in
a part of America, too cold to bare Sugar-
Canes, he did not try to make Sugar of that
very sweet Liquor, which the Stalks of
Maize, by many called Indian Wheat, af-
fords, when their Juice is expressed ; he
promised me he would make trval of it:
Adding, That he should do it very hopeful-
ly, because that though he had never been
solicitous to bring this Juice into a saccha-
rine form, yet having several times, for try-
al sake, boild it up to Syrup, and employed
it to sweeten Tarts, and other things, the
Guests could not perceive that they were
otherwise sweetened than with Sugar, and
he farther added, That both he and others,
had, in New England made such a Syrrup
with the Juice of Water-melons."

NOTES.

The " Lancet " states that " a marked
increase in the death-rate from cancer dur-
ing the latter part of the present century
has for some years occupied the minds of
several well-known pathologists in endeav-
ors to reveal its cause." It being generally
agreed that the disease is prone to arise out
of prior morbid states which do not appear
to be directly or necessarily related to it,
among which are tissue exhaustion, the
" Lancet " adds : " If we admit, therefore, as
we consistently may, that tissue-exhaustion,
the result of toil, anxiety, or privation, and
whether inherited or induced, affords a suffi-
cient basis for the development of cancer,
we may not look far into the history of our
laborious age to find an explanation of a
rise in its death-rate which at first may seem
anomalous."

MM. Fol and Sarrazin, of Geneva, have
been experimenting on the depth to which
light can penetrate the waters of the Medi-
terranean Sea. They find that at two hun-
dred and eighty metres the effect is about
the same as that of a moonless night, and
that the chemical rays cease to be felt at
four hundred metres. A curious result of
their experiments is the discovery that the
water of the Lake of Geneva is far less
transparent than that of the sea.

Dr. James Paget, of London, has been
elected a corresponding member of the
French Academy of Sciences in the section
of medicine and surgery, replacing M. Bouis-
son, deceased.

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Mr. L. P. G rat a cap recently read before
the Natural Science Association of Staten Isl-
and a paper on chlorides in the rainfall of the
island for 18S4. The results of his obser-
vations on thirty-two rainfalls, or about two
thirds of the number that occurred during
the year, gave "228 gramme of chlorine, or
■376 gramme of common salt, as the aver-
age amount of those substances that fell
with a gallon of water. Taking an average
rainfall of 3*5 inches, he was led to the con-
clusion that, calculated as common salt, the
amount of chlorides brought down with the
rain in 1SS4 was 6*10 pounds per acre. Free
hydrochloric acid and reactions for sulphates
and sulphuric acid were also obtained, prob-
ably from neighboring manufactories.

Vaseline has been recommended by
some one for shortening in pastry, but M.
A. Riche has warned the health authorities
of Paris that its use in foods is injurious to
health.

An English translation is about to ap-
pear of M. Paul Bert's "First Year of
Scientific Instruction." The work has had
an extraordinary sale in France, amounting
to ten editions of fifty thousand copies each
in three years, and is used in nearly all the
schools.

Platinum has been discovered in New
South Wales in connection with gold in the
Ophir district ; in small grains in the Hun-
ter and Macleay districts ; as a nugget,
weighing 208 grains, in Wiseman's Creek ;
and in the sand of the sea-coast near Rich-
mond River.

In a recent United States consular re-
port, the population of Liberia is estimated
at 767,500, of whom 750,000 are aborigines
not yet enjoying the rights of citizenship,
and the remainder are immigrants and civil-
ized aborigines and their descendants. The
Ca.valla River, navigable for two hundred
miles, has great commercial importance,
having an agricultural country with some
gold-washings upon it.

OBITUARY NOTES.

George Helmersen, the eminent Rus-
sian geologist, is dead, at the age of eighty-
two years. Having studied at Dorpat, he
accompanied his teacher, Engclhart, along
the course of the lower Volga and the
Ural ; then took part in Hofmann's and
Humboldt's explorations of the Ural region.
Having been appointed to a position in the
Mining Institute of St. Petersburg in 1835,
he made vacation geological journeys over
the Kirghiz Steppe, through Norway and
Sweden, the coal districts' of Poland and
Silesia, the mining districts of Lakes Onega
and Peipus, and the bituminous-coal regions

of Kherson and Kiev ; and explored the
gold - mines of Beresovek. He published
numerous memoirs on the results of these
investigations.

Conchology has lost one of its most in-
dustrious students by the death of Mr. Geof-
frey Nevill, at Davos Platz, February 10th,
in the forty-second year of his age. He was
a son of Mr. William Nevill, of Ilolloway,
England, who was interested in mineralogy
and had a famous collection of Meteorites.
Inspired with some of his father's tastes, he
began making collections of shells at an
early age. With these, and other collec-
tions of his own, he enriched the Museum of
Calcutta, with which the most important la-
bors of his life were connected. He con-
tributed many papers on his favorite study
to the " Journal " of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal, and compiled the valuable " Hand
List of Mollusca in the Indian Museum,"
which, however, he was not able to complete,
on account of ill health. During the later
years of his life, while an invalid, he was
engaged in making collections near Mentone
and around the Lake of Como.

The Russian naturalist, Mr. N. Severt-
soff, died January 11th, in consequence of
the cold following his being plunged into the
river Don by his vehicle breaking through
the ice. He explored the Thian Shan in
1867, and wrote books on the vertical and
horizontal distribution of the animals of
Turkistan and on the birds of the Pamir,
to which is owing what is known of those
subjects outside of Russia.

The death is announced of Mr. Frederick
Field, one of the original members of the
Chemical Society, who had been vice-con-
sul in Caldera, Chili, and Professor of Chem-
istry at St. Mary's Hospital and in the Lon-
don Institution. He contributed to scien-
tific publications numerous papers on vari-
ous branches of chemistry, especially on
topics relating to the mineralogy and metal-
lurgy of South America.

The death is reported of Professor Dun-
ker, mineralogist and paleontologist, of Mar-
burg.

Sir Frederick Palgrave Barlee, who
died in Trinidad last summer while serving
as governor pro tern, of the island, had done
considerable official service to geographical
and archaeological exploration. As Colonial
Secretary of Western Australia, he gave en-
couragement to Mr. John Forrest's explora-
tions, and had the great Lake Barlee named
after him. As Lieutenant-Governor of Brit-
ish Honduras, he extended official support
in aid of Mr. II. Fowler's journey across the
unexplored part of the colony, and also en-
couraged and assisted the explorations of
Dr. Le Plon''eon in Yucatan.

S. P. LANGLEY.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JULY, 1885.

A GKEAT WINTER SANITARIUM FOR THE AMERI-
CAN CONTINENT.

Br Professor EDWAED FEANKLAND, M.D., F. E. S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY.

THE great importance of a winter sanitarium for patients suffering
from or threatened with consumption and other allied diseases
has long been recognized and acted upon in Europe. The favorite
resort of this description is the valley of Davos, in the Engadine, in
Switzerland, where, at an elevation of five thousand four hundred feet
above sea-level, the patients enjoy, during the winter months, in a
sheltered position, brilliant sunshine, and an early equable sun-tempera-
ture from sunrise to sunset.

Dr. Hermann Weber, one of the highest authorities in Europe on
chest-diseases, thus summarizes the physiological effects of the climate
of Davos :

1. Increased activity of the skin, better nutrition, and invigoration
of the skin.

2. Strengthening of the heart and the contractile fibers of the
vascular system, with augmented frequency of the heart's contractions
at first, but reversion to the normal state after a longer sojourn, to-
gether with greater force of each contraction, and thereby increased
suction-power.

3. More rapid respiration at first, but return to the normal rate after
a few days. Probable increase of depth of inspirations. Strengthen-
ing of the respiratory muscles, and probably also of the elastic fibers
of the finest bronchial branches. Increased flow of blood through the
lungs.

4. Generally a marked increase in the excretion of water through
the lungs, and increased and facilitated excretion of carbonic acid.

VOL. XXVII. — 19

290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

5. In most cases, transient or continued increase of appetite, inges-
tion of food, digestion and assimilation.

6. Thereby improved production of blood and nutrition of the
organs.

7. Greater energy of nervous and muscular action.

8. In most cases, improvement of sleep.

9. Probable augmentation of tissue-change.

During last fall I became acquainted with an elevated plateau
in the United States which rivals if it does not even surpass Davos
in the excellence of its winter climatic conditions. I allude to
that most interesting tract of territory — the Yellowstone National
Park.

The beneficial effects of a winter climate like that of Davos depend
upon the concurrence of several conditions which are difficult to secure
at a lower elevation than that just indicated. In the first place, the
sun's rays are far more powerful at great than at low elevations, and
their intensity is much more equable throughout the day ; thus the
temperature in sunshine observed by me at Davos on the 26th of
December was 89*2° Fahr. twenty-five minutes after sunrise, 108*5°
Fahr. at noon, and 91*6° Fahr. at thirty-five minutes before sunset.
And the intensity of solar radiation at Davos is such that, on the 22d
of December, I obtained, in a box lined with padded black cloth and
covered with plate-glass, a temperature of 221° Fahr., or 21° above the
boiling-point of water at Davos (200° Fahr.).

Besides the intensity of solar radiation and its comparative uni-
formity during the day, the rarity and calmness of the air are im-
portant factors among the causes of the peculiar climate of Davos.
With the barometer standing at 615 millimetres, the weight of air in
contact with a given surface of the skin is about one fifth less than it is
at the sea-level. The excessive dryness of the air at Davos has probably
but little special influence upon the sensation of heat and cold, because
the maximum proportion of aqueous vapor present in air near the
freezing-point is everywhere small, and the specific heats of equal
volumes of air and aqueous vapor are not widely different. On the
other hand, the absence of suspended watery particles in the air has,
no doubt, very considerable influence in preventing the chilling of the
skin. Not only are such liquid particles present when there is visible
fog, but they often exist in great numbers when the air presents a
perfectly transparent appearance. The most important influence upon
the sun-temperature, however, is the reflection of solar rays from the
snow. The valley of Davos has precipitous sides and a flat sole, and
the hotels are situated on the northwest slope of the valley ; conse-
quently they receive, in winter, the scattered solar rays reflected from
a large area of snow. A considerable proportion of the thermal rays
of the sun falling at an acute angle upon a surface of snow is known
to be reflected.

A GREAT AMERICAN WINTER SANITARIUM. 291

It is obvious that this action of extensive reflecting surfaces of
snow must exert a powerful influence upon the maximum temperature
of places favorably situated for receiving the reflected rays ; and,
moreover, where the proportion of heat reflected varies (as it has been
proved to do in the case of water, and as it doubtless also does in the
case of snow) inversely as the angle formed by the incident rays and
the reflecting surface, this action must materially contribute, espe-
cially in winter, to the maintenance of an approximately uniform sun-
tempei-ature throughout the day. At Davos, and similar elevated
stations, however, the comparative freedom of the air from suspended
particles must, to a great extent, contribute to such a result ; for, as
pure and dry air is transcalent and reflects heat but very slightly, the
horizontal sunbeams, passing through such air, would be nearly as
powerful as vertical rays.

The peculiar winter climate of Davos depends, therefore, upon the
following: conditions :

1. Elevation above the Sea. — This single condition favors a ge-
nial and wholesome winter climate in several ways. In the first place,
by reducing the weight of cold air in contact with the body, whereby,
even with a much lower thermometer, the air, if still, feels warmer at
an elevated station than in the lower and denser regions of the at-
mosphere, in consequence of the slower abstraction of heat from the
body. In the second place, the air at great altitudes is more permeable
to the heating rays of the sun, owing both to its dryness and to its
freedom from dust and suspended particles generally. In illustration
of this I have made many experiments, chiefly in England and Switzer-
land, and an abstract of the results obtained is given in the following
table :

PLACE OF OBSERVATION.

Oatlands Park, Surrey

Biffelberg, Zermatt

Hiirali, Zermatt

Gornergrat, Zermatt

"Whitby, Yorkshire

Pontresina, Engadine

Bernina Hospitz, Engadine
Diavolezza, Engadine

Elevation
above sea-
level.

Sun's
altitude.

Sun-
temperature.

Foi-t.
150

Degrees.
60

Degs. Fahr.
74-7

8,428

60

81-9

9,491

61

86-6

10,2S9

61

84-6

Air-
temperature.

Degs. Fahr.
86-0

76-1
68 2
576

60

50

68 0

5,915

49

79-2

7,644

51

83-5

9,707

50

107-1

90-0
79-7
66-4
42-8

It is thus evident that, although the air-temperature continually de-
creases as we ascend, the sun-temperature as regularly augments. The
horizontal line in the table divides the observations into two groups,
in each of which the sun's altitude was approximately the same. In
these, and similar observations described further on, the air-tempera-
ture was found by placing an ordinary mercurial thermometer upon a

29z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sheet of white paper and shading its hulb with a small arch of similar
paper doubled, the sun-thermometer (blackened bulb in vacuo) was
also placed either upon white paper or upon snow, and the numbers in
the column headed " sun-temperature " were obtained by deducting
the readings of the air or shade thermometer from those of the sun-
thermometer. Thus, on the Diavolezza, the reading of the air-ther-
mometer (42'8°), being subtracted from the reading of the sun-ther-
mometer (1±9'9°), left the number 107'1° as the sun-warmth, or the
temperature, above that of the surrounding air, to which the sun's rays
raised the blackened bulb in vacuo.

The very high sun-temperature observed on the Diavolezza was
recorded at a station surrounded by snow-fields in brilliant sunshine,
and the thermometer was placed upon snow.

Not only is solar radiation much more intense at great altitudes,
but it is also more equable during the whole day, inasmuch as the
comparative absence of suspended matters in the air renders the ther-
mal power of the rising and setting sun more nearly equal to that of
the meridional sun. Thus it has been observed that, at or near the sea-
level, the sun-temperature increases about 15° Fahr. between 8.30 a.m.
and noon, and decreases to the same extent between noon and 3.30
p. m. ; whereas on the Riffelberg, 8,428 feet above the sea, the increase
and decrease between the same hours are only 9° Fahr. These obser-
vations were, however, made in summer ; in winter, the difference
between the two stations would doubtless be still greater. Moreover,
an elevation of 5,000 or 6,000 feet places us, especially in winter, to a
great extent above the region of cloud, and thus enables us to enjoy a
bright sun at time when clouds effectually cut off his rays from lower
altitudes.

Lastly, and this is of the highest importance to invalids, the air at
great elevations is characterized by comparatively great freedom from
zymotic matters. By numerous and ingenious experiments Pasteur
found this to be the case at a height of 6,300 feet, on the slope of Mont
Blanc, and Tyndall at an elevation of 6,730 feet, on the Bel Alp, in
Switzerland.

2. Reflection from Snow. — Although the air-temperature in mid-
winter, at elevations of from 5,000 to 10,000 feet, differs but little from
that of much lower levels in the same localities, the low temperature
prevails for a longer time. Thus the valley of Davos and the sur-
rounding mountains are usually thickly covered with snow from No-
vember to the beginning of March, and the solar heat reflected from
this snow is an important factor in the production of the genial winter
climate of Davos. By laying a sun-thermometer on surfaces of differ-
ent materials, I have demonstrated the high reflective power of snow.
The following summary of the results of these experiments shows the
degrees to which the blackened bulb in vacuo was raised when laid in
the sunshine upon each of the materials experimented with :

A GREAT AMERICAN WINTER SANITARIUM. 293

White paper 116-6° Fahr.

White linen 116-1 "

Snow lll'O "

Metallic minor 9r5

Common mirror 9 < '5

Light-colored soil 96-3

Parched grass ^5'3

Gray rock 884

Green grass • 88-2

Clack silk 84-0 "

Black caoutchouc 82"2

Black merino 80-4

White paper and white linen were therefore the most perfect re-
flectors of solar heat ; but the efficiency of snow was but slightly infe-
rior, while it greatly surpassed that of even polished metal.

The relative proportions of direct and reflected solar heat, falling
upon a body in sunshine surrounded with snow, has not been deter-
mined, although it has been ascertained where water is the reflecting
surface. Thus, M. Dufour has measured the proportions of direct and
reflected solar heat incident at five different stations on the northern
shore of the Lake of Geneva. He found that the proportion of reflected
heat was as much as sixty-eight per cent of the heat directly incident
from the sun, when the sun's altitude was between 4° 38" and 3° 34".
At about 70° altitude, the proportion was between 40 and 50 of re-
flected to 100 of direct heat ; and, even at an altitude of 16°, the pro-
portion was between 20 and 30 of reflected to 100 of direct heat ; but
when the sun was higher than 30° the reflected heat was hardly appre-
ciable. My own observations confirm these results, for I found at
Alum Bay, Isle of Wight, that the reflection from a ruffled sea, at 6.45
p. m., in May, added no less than forty-four per cent to the direct solar
heat.

It is obvious, therefore, that the Davos sanitarium is much indebted
to its snow-covered valley for a winter day-climate which is so genial
as to allow the patients to spend nearly the whole of every sunny day
in the open air, although the temperature of the air may be 15° or 20°
below the freezing-point. Five minutes after sunrise, many of the
patients walk in the open air without any special wraps, and some of
them even without overcoats. In the brilliant sunshine, one feels
comfortably warm sitting in front of the hotel in a light morning coat.

3. Freedom from Air-Currents. — Davos is well sheltered from
general atmospheric movements, and, as the surrounding snow can not
be warmed above the freezing-point, no local currents or valley- winds
can be set up. An almost uniform calm, therefore, prevails during the
continuance of snow. This immunity from air-currents is of the high-
est importance to the patients, for, without it, they would not be able
to sit out-of-doors and enjoy the free and comparatively germless air
as already described. In still though cold air the skin is less chilled

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

than in much less cold air which impinges with considerable velocity
upon the surface of the body. The effect of motion through the air
upon the sensation of warmth and cold at Davos is very striking. Sit-
ting perfectly still in the sunshine, the heat in midwinter is sometimes
almost unbearable ; on rising and walking about briskly, a delicious
feeling of coolness is experienced ; but, on driving in a sledge, the cold
soon becomes painful to the unprotected face and hands.

Such are the conditions prevailing at Davos, and producing the
delightful climate of this winter resort. They may be thus briefly
summarized : 1. Great elevation above sea-level ; 2. A continuous, and,
during winter, permanent covering of snow ; 3. A minimum of watery
vapor in the air ; 4. A clear sun ; 5. A clean atmosphere, free from
zymotic germs, dust, and fog ; 6. A sheltered position, favorable for
receiving both the direct and reflected solar rays.

I have been thus particular in describing these conditions in order
to make clear the capability of the Yellowstone plateau to provide a
similar beneficent winter climate for invalids.

From my own observations, and from inquiries made on the spot,
I am of opinion that the Yellowstone National Park possesses, in a
high degree, all these essential conditions. In elevation above the sea
it surpasses Davos ; the great plateau of the park is between 7,000 and
8,000 feet above sea-level, while it is stated that not one of the narrow
valleys dips below 6,000 feet. The mountain-ranges, partly surround-
ing and partly within the park, rise to heights of from 10,000 to
12,000 feet. I should anticipate, therefore, that all the advantages
which, as a winter resort for invalids, Davos possesses from its elevated
position, would be enjoyed even in a greater degree in the Yellowstone
Park. The period of permanent snow is longer, so that invalids could
remain there probably until the end of April, whereas the melting of
the snow generally compels them to leave Davos early in March, when
the climate of the valleys is peculiarly unfavorable for chest-com-
plaints. It is to be expected, from its greater elevation, that a still
clearer sky and a larger proportion of sunny days would be experienced
in the Yellowstone Park, while the wholesomeness of the air would be
still more marked, owing to its comparatively greater freedom from
zymotic matter.

The latitude of Davos is 47°, and the Yellowstone Park lies almost
entirely between the forty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels. The winter
temperature at Davos varies from 32° Fahr. down to 22° Fahr., and
that of the park would probably observe nearly the same extremes.
The selection of suitable sites for hotels and sanitary dwellings is, of
course, of the highest importance. The only hotel at present existing —
the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel — is not favorably situated, but, even
in my comparatively limited excursions in the park, I saw numerous
most eligible sites for such establishments — sites sheltered from north-
erly winds, either by abruptly elevated ground or pine-forest, with a

A GREAT AMERICAN WINTER SANITARIUM. 295

wide expanse of prairie to the south. A free horizon southward is of
great advantage to a winter climate, not only because the practically
unlimited surface of snow secures the most perfect reflection of solar
warmth, but also because there is no obstruction to the rays of the
rising and setting sun. I consider the want of a free southern horizon
to be an important defect in the situation of Davos, for it reduces in
winter the daily period of sunshine by more than two hours, or, in
other words, it diminishes the length of day available for patients in
midwinter by more than one fourth. In respect of daily duration of
sunshine, therefore, the advantage of the park over Davos would be
considerable.

In order, however, that it may be fitted for the reception of invalids,
much will have to be done besides the building of hotels. The law-
lessness and extortion which at present prevail throughout the Yellow-
stone National Park must be made to cease, wholesome food must be
substituted for the indigestible material which now does duty for beef
and mutton, and the almost impassable roads must be seriously taken
in hand.

The one drawback to the park is its great distance from the masses
of the American population ; but, in the first place, distances which
are almost prohibitive to travelers in Europe are thought little of in
America ; and, secondly, the comfortable, not to say luxurious, travel-
ing: on American lines would render the transit from the Eastern cities
of the United States scarcely more formidable than that from London
to Davos, the driving portion of the journey being, in fact, much
shorter in the American route.

We are as yet too little acquainted with the chemical composition
of the hot springs, geysers, and mineral waters so profusely distributed
throughout the park, to form any trustworthy opinion of their medici-
nal virtues, but the physical properties of water are much the same
everywhere, and, by a judicious selection of sites, the enormous ad-
vantages of an unlimited supply of natural hot water and steam for
baths and heating purposes could easily be secured, and this without
interfering with the wonders and aesthetic beauties of this most ex-
traordinary and interesting region.

At present, the park, so generously set apart by Congress for the
enjoyment of the American people, is utilized only by a very limited
number of tourists, in the few months of a very short summer, and it
seems a pity that such a magnificent possession should not be much
more extensively used. Dedicated during the winter months to the
purposes I have here advocated, it would constitute a winter sanita-
rium unequaled in the world, restoring to health and vigor not only
thousands of persons suffering from incipient chest-diseases, but also
still greater numbers of the overworked populations of the States and
Canada.

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Br Pbofessor W. LE CONTE STEVENS.

BALLOONING has thus far been a French art : introduced a little
over a century ago by a Frenchman, Montgolfier ; rapidly de-
veloped by another Frenchman, Charles ; more practiced in France
than anywhere else in the world ; and recently improved by French-
men to such an extent that it is quite possible now on any fair day to
go an hour's journey through the air in any desired direction, even
against the wind.

The history of the application of science to art has revealed a
number of cases in which practical success was secured by inventors
entertaining quite erroneous conceptions of the principles they were
applying. Somewhat vague stories are transmitted in regard to Roger
Bacon's suggestion, during the thirteenth century, of employing a
thin hollow globe of copper, " to be filled with ethereal air or liquid
fire and then launched forth from some elevated point into the atmos-
phere, where it will float like a vessel on water." Bacon gave no recipe
for making " liquid fire," nor did he calculate the dimensions of a
globe of copper to be filled with it that would have sufficient ascen-
sive power to lift a human being. He assures us " there is certainly a
flying instrument, not that I ever knew a man that had it, but I am
particularly acquainted with the ingenious person who contrived it."
His conception was never reduced to practice. It was merely a fair
specimen of current science in his time. He believed that the aerial
ocean around our earth had a definite boundary like the liquid ocean,
and that a body of sufficient lightness, if it could only be found, would
easily rise to this surface as a cork rises to the surface of water.

More than three centuries after the time of Bacon, Father Lana
wrote out his idea of a vessel that might be made to rise in the air.
Four hollow globes of copper, each having a diameter of about twenty-
five feet, were to be carefully exhausted and then attached to a car.
Torricelli and Pascal had already proved that the pressure of the
atmosphere was nearly fifteen pounds per square inch at sea-level, and
Lana's proposed method of exhausting his globes was to be an appli-
cation of Torricelli's principle. Each globe was to be filled with water
and lifted to a height of at least thirty-four feet. Beneath it should be
fitted a tube with air-tight connections, which was to dip into water.
On opening this tube the contents of the globe would be emptied into
the vessel below, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above, while the tube
would become a water-barometer. Lana seemed to know nothing
about the specific gravity of gases. His copper globes were to be
made very thin in order to secure lightness, but he failed to make any
correct estimate of the rigidity they must have to sustain either the

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 297

weight of the water they should hold, or the crushing force of the
atmosphere after exhaustion. Unlike the product of Bacon's imagi-
nation, his conception was a correct application of demonstrated physi-
cal laws ; but, had it been tested by experiment, he would at once
have found that there were other laws which he had not taken into
account. In his view, the only obstacle to success was that " the Al-
mighty would never allow an invention to succeed by means of which
civil government could so easily be disturbed." Air-ships floating
beyond the reach of missiles, if only capable of being accurately di-
rected, might well have been thought more terrible than dynamite is
to-day.

Soon after the discovery of hydrogen gas by Cavendish and Watt
in 1766, experiments were made with a view to utilizing it for the pur-
pose of lifting bodies into the air. But, until 1783, nothing more sub-
stantial than a soap-bubble could be made thus to ascend. Joseph Mont-
golfier, who was a successful manufacturer of paper, tried bags of this
material ; but hydrogen was found to diffuse so rapidly through it
that the idea was abandoned by him. Observing that clouds of vapor
and smoke remained floating at various heights, he thought that, if
they could be confined in bags of paper, these might be made to float
in like manner. Since the experiments of Franklin in 1752 had proved
the existence of atmospheric electricity, the idea gained currency that
the lightness of clouds and of smoke was in some way due to electric
charge. A paper bag was made, and, with its opening downward, a
fire was kindled, " as well to increase the layer of electric fluid upon
the vapor in the vessel as to divide the vapors into smaller molecules
and dilate the gas in which they are suspended." The bag was carried
up to a considerable height. Montgolfier seems not to have attributed
the ascension to the effect of heat in diminishing the specific gravity
of the contained air. The first successful experiment in ballooning
was thus based on a misconception.

Montgolfier's first public exhibition of his invention was made on
June 5, 1783. The news of his success was rapidly spread ; and at
Paris a balloon was soon constructed under the superintendence of M.
Charles, who substituted hydrogen for smoke, confining it in a bag of
varnished silk instead of paper and linen. The ascension was success-
fully accomplished on the 27th of August. Charles at once proceeded
to the construction of a new and much larger balloon, in which he
ascended with his colleague, Robert, on the 1st of December, making
a journey of more than twenty-five miles. This balloon was provided
with a safety-valve of Charles's invention, a hoop, to which the car
was attached, and netting intended to equalize the distribution of
weight upon the balloon. It was in all important particulars the same
as the balloon almost universally employed throughout a century after-
ward. Montgolfier made several exhibitions of his hot-air balloons
at Paris, and in one of these, on the 15th of October, M. Pilatre de

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Rozier made the first ascent attempted by a human being. But to
Charles is due the credit of making the balloon a moderately safe
vehicle in which the aeronaut could ascend or descend at will by vary-
ing the relation between the amounts of ballast and of gas retained.
Although many thousands of ascents have been made since 1783, the
total number of lives recorded to have been lost does not exceed fifty.
It is somewhat remarkable that after the ascents made by Pilatre
de Rozier and others at Paris in the latter part of 1783, the first ascent
accomplished elsewhere was in America, a country not only separated
by a broad ocean from France, but at that time young in resources, and
scarcely beginning to recover from the disastrous effects of the strug-
gle for independence. It is true that in November of that year an
Italian, Count Zambeccari, exhibited in London a small hydrogen bal-
loon, which was sent into the air without any living freight ; but no
one rose from English ground in a balloon until a year after Charles
had been successful in France. The news of Montgolfier's experiment
of the 5th of June reached Philadelphia about the last of November,
and the local newspapers of December 24th contained the accounts
just received in regard to Charles's experiment of the 27th of August.
David Rittenhouse, the friend of Franklin, and the most distinguished
American astronomer of his time, was practicing his profession as a
maker of philosophical instruments, and especially of clocks. One of
his most intimate associates was Francis Hopkinson, an eminent jurist,
whose interest in science was almost as great as in law. Both of these
men were members of the American Philosophical Society which had
been organized by Franklin. No sooner was the news from France
received, than they began to test the use of hydrogen for balloons. On
the 28th of December an ascent was made by the first American aero-
naut, the account of which is perhaps best given in the language of an
eye-witness, Francois Simonin, whose letter to the " Journal de Paris"
was published May 13, 1784. In the "Gentleman's Magazine" of the
following month a translation of it appeared, from which the following
is an extract : " Messieurs Ritnose [Rittenhouse] and Opquisne [Hop-
kinson] began their experiments with bladders, and then with larger
machines ; they joined several together and fastened them round a
cage, into which they put animals. The whole ascended, and was
drawn down again by a rope. The next day, which was yesterday, a
man offered to get into the cage, provided the rope was not let go.
He rose about fifteen feet, and would not suffer them to let him go
higher. James Wilcox, a carpenter, engaged to go in it for a little
money. He rose twenty feet or upward before he made a signal to be
drawn down. He then took instructions from Messieurs Ritnose and
Opquisne, and after several repetitions on the ground consented to
have the rope cut for fifty dollars. Dr. Jaune [Jones], the principal
medical person in the city, attended in case of accident. The crowd
was incredible, who shouted after the English fashion when they saw

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 299

Wilcox rise crowded in the cage, surrounded by forty-seven balloons
fastened to it, with astonishing coolness, nodding his head to express
his satisfaction and composure. After all, he could not rise above
ninety-seven feet, according to the measures taken by two other gen-
tlemen of the Philosophical Academy. He was at least five minutes
in the air, but, perceiving the wind to blow from the east and drive
him toward the Scoulquille [Schuylkill], he was frightened, and, agree-
ably to his instructions, made several incisions with a knife in three of
the balloons. This was not sufficient, though we saw him descend a
little. He pierced three more, and, seeing the machine did not come,
his fear increased. He cut five more in the greatest haste, and, unfor-
tunately, all on the same side. He was then seen to tack about (cha-
virer), and, as if he had slid down (coide bas), he fell on the edge of a
ditch and a finse [fence], as they call the inclosures. Dr. Jaune ran
up ; the poor man had sprained his wrist, but received no other
accident."

No sooner was the fact demonstrated that men could safely rise
into the air at will, than inventors began to devise plans for directing
aerial machines. So long as the balloon is completely at the mercy of
the wind, it is practically useless as a means of conveyance. On rising
high above the ground the direction of aerial currents is often found
to differ greatly from that of the surface-currents. Rising above the
clouds, the aeronaut may lose sight of the earth and be carried at a
rate of which he is totally unconscious, there being no means of meas-
uring his speed when borne along with a current to which the balloon
opposes no sensible resistance. By noting the times and places of as-
cent and descent, the rate has been estimated to exceed that of our
fastest railroad-trains ; and more than one aeronaut has lost his life by
being carried out to sea. In the early part of 1784 M. Robert, the
colleague of Charles, attempted the propulsion of a balloon by means
of oars, but in vain. He subsequently tried artificial wings, but with
no better success. M. Blanchard, who crossed the English Channel
in 1785 with Dr. Jeffries, tried a variety of similar devices without
success.

For the directing of balloons one of the first suggestions based on
correct principles was offered by Francis Hopkinson. In a letter to
Franklin, dated at Philadelphia, May 24, 1784, he recommends that
the balloon shall be made oblong instead of spherical, and provided
with a large and light wheel at the stern. " This wheel should consist
of many vanes or fans of canvas, whose planes should be considerably
inclined with respect to the plane of its motion, exactly like the wheel
of a smoke-jack. If the navigator turns this wheel swiftly round by
means of a winch, there is no doubt but it would (in a calm at least)
give the machine a progressive motion, upon the same principle that a
boat is sculled through the water." (Sparks's " Life and Works of Ben-
jamin Franklin," vol. x, p. 93.) This remarkable suggestion by Hop-

3°°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kinson shows that he had quite definite views about the application of
the principle of the screw-propeller to the direction of aerostatic ma-
chines, though in his day screw-propellers had not yet been applied
even to surface navigation.

Hopkinson's suggestion did not then find its way into print. Even
had it been published, the means were wanting for any experiments
on a large scale. It would have been a noteworthy step in the right
direction, but the muscular power of his imaginary aeronaut would
have been far from sufficient to control the propeller. Nearly seventy
years elapsed before his idea, independently evolved by another, was
put to the test ; and during this interval ballooning was but rarely
applied to any other purpose than that of public display. The fruitless
attempts to direct balloons were often made the subject of caricature.

In 1852 a young French engineer, who subsequently won the high-
est distinction, M. Giffard, constructed an elongated balloon (Fig. 1),

Fio. 1.— Giffard's Aerial Steamer, 1852.

pointed at both ends and filled with illuminating gas. Suspended be-
neath it by cords was a longitudinal shaft, at the end of which was a
triangular sail that could be turned about an almost vertical axis and
be made to serve the purpose of a rudder. About twenty feet beneath
the shaft was hung a framework of wood, on which rested a small
steam-engine, whose piston gave motion to a screw-propeller. The
weight of the machine, including furnace, boiler, coal, and water, was
not quite fourteen hundred pounds. On the 24th of September Giffard
ascended with it over Paris to the height of five thousand feet. The
wind was quite strong ; but he was able to make very perceptible head-

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 301

way against this, and by the aid of the rudder to turn the machine into
any desired direction. He thus proved incontestably that the problem
of directing an aerial steamer was by no means insoluble. A second
ascent was accomplished by him in 1855, but under unfavorable con-
ditions. He made no further attempts with this machine, the aban-
donment of these experiments being due chiefly to their danger. A
steam-engine, sending forth sparks beneath a mass of thirty thousand
cubic feet of inflammable gas contained within an envelope of thin
cloth, is a source of peril to which few men would be willing to expose
themselves, even if lofty elevations were not reached. Trouble also
resulted from the fact that the weight of the balloon could not be kept
constant. The loss of the products of combustion and of spent steam
made it difficult to preserve the proper relation between the ascensive
power and the weight to be sustained.

Not quite twenty years after Giffard's experiments the problem
was again attacked by M. Dupuy de Lome. His immense balloon, con-
taining one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of pure hydrogen,
was nearly similar in shape to that of Giffard. The car beneath was
capable of carrying easily fourteen men, seven of whom at a time were
employed in working a capstan which controlled the shaft of the pro-
peller, each of the two blades of this being about ten feet in length.
On February 2, 1872, Dupuy de Lome ascended in this balloon, and
attained a speed estimated at 2*8 metres per second, equivalent to
about six miles per hour. By means of the rudder he changed the
direction through an angle of 12°. Giffard had attained an estimated
speed of four metres per second, or nine miles per hour. Muscular
power was thus shown to be far too uneconomical, while steam was
too dangerous, to be employed in the direction of aerostats.

It was not until 1881, the year of Giffard's death, that electricity
was applied as a motive power in the attempt to solve the difficult
problem with which he had grappled. His pupil, M. Gaston Tissan-
dier,* had early imbibed a passion for aeronautics, and made many
successful ascents with spherical balloons. It was Tissandier who, in
company with two friends, ascended in April, 1875, to the height of
eight thousand six hundred metres, each of the three swooning on ac-
count of the rarefaction of the air, even before this limit was attained.
The same aeronaut, in company with Fonvielle, was borne by the wind,
in February, 1869, in thirty-five minutes, from Paris to Neuilly-Saint-
Front, a distance of fifty miles. Keeping abreast with the progress of
electrial science, Tissandier conceived the idea of employing storage-
batteries instead of steam or hand power, as the immediate source of
energy to actuate the propeller of an elongated balloon. He con-
structed a small experimental balloon, which was filled with hydrogen,

* The writer talyes pleasure in acknowledging his personal indebtedness to M. Tissan-
dier for the full accounts from which the facts set forth in the latter part of this article
were obtained.

302

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the effective ascensional force being two kilogrammes. A motor, of
the Siemens type (Fig. 2), weighing only two hundred and twenty
grammes, was made to turn the propeller, which consisted of a pair of
vanes, each ten centimetres long ; storage-cell, motor, and propeller
being supported on a light platform suspended by netting. This

Jb'lO. 2. -TiSSANDLElt's MINIATURE ELECTRIC JilOTOK AND PROPELLER, 1881.

"dirigeable" aerostat was exhibited at the Electrical Exposition of
1881, and a bronze medal awarded to the inventor. It attained a
speed of about three metres per second.

Encouraged by this success, Tissandier undertook the work of con-
structing an aerostat large enough to lift two or three persons in addi-
tion to the weight of the propelling apparatus and other accessories.

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 303

The task was one which involved a heavy expenditure of money, aside
from the time, labor, and thought bestowed by the inventor. He
sought in vain to organize a company with a capital of two hundred
thousand francs for the purpose of constructing an aerostat of three
thousand cubic metres capacity ; but the plan was not sufficiently
promising of large dividends to be attractive to investors. No for-
tunes have been made thus far by the navigation of the air, and capi-
talists have not generally manifested a self-sacrificing spirit in behalf
of pure science. The persevering aeronaut could find no one but his
brother, M. Albert Tissandier, who was confident enough to join him
in laying out capital for the promotion of what was generally regarded
as a visionary scheme. The two brothers henceforward worked to-
gether, the one continuing to devote himself to the perfection of the
electrical appliances on which reliance was to be placed, while the
other, who is by profession an architect, gave his attention to the me-
chanical construction of the aerostat. M. Gaston Tissandier had found
by experiments with his small aerostat that better results were to be
had from a battery of cells, arranged in series, where a strong acid
solution of potassium bichromate was the exciting liquid, than from a
storage-battery — the energy evolved during the first few hours being
greater in proportion to the weight of the battery. He originated sev-
eral ingenious contrivances by which great lightness was secured, and
the liquid could be conveniently brought into contact with the zinc
and carbon plates, or removed at will without disturbing the plates.

A Siemens electric motor was constructed, weighing but fifty-five
kilogrammes. When excited by the current from a battery of twenty-
four elements weighing one hundred and sixty-eight kilogrammes, this
motor was found capable of doing work equivalent to that of twelve
or fifteen men, that is, from seventy-five to one hundred kilogramme-
metres per second, continued through three hours, the weight of bat-
tery and motor together being but little in excess of the weight of
three men. Tissandier devised also important impi'ovements in the
method of generating pure hydrogen rapidly on a large scale. The
ascensive force of this gas when pure is about seventy-five pounds per
thousand cubic feet, or eleven hundred and eighty grammes per cubic
metre ; while that of coal-gas which has been most generally employed
for ballooning purposes is not more than five eighths as much. By
the substitution of hydrogen, the size, and consequently the expense,
of the balloon is correspondingly diminished.

The aerostat constructed by M. Albert Tissandier is shown in Fig.
3. It is ninety-two feet long, thirty feet in its greatest diameter, with
capacity of about thirty-eight thousand cubic feet, and ascensive power
of twenty-eight hundred pounds. The propeller, nine feet in diam-
eter, is in the rear of the cage. Above it, and farther back, is
a triangular sail, to be manipulated as a rudder. On October 8,
1883, the first ascent was made. The air at the ground was calm, but

3°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

on reaching a height of sixteen hundred feet the wind was blowing at
the rate of rather more than six miles an hour. On putting the pro-
peller into action, with a velocity of three revolutions per second, and
turning the head of the aerostat against the breeze, it was kept mo-
tionless for some minutes ; but the rudder soon proved to be insuffi-
cient to keep the direction constant, flapping like a sail, and at times

I'issandier's Balloon, 18^.

leaving. the aeronauts at the mercy of the wind. After stopping the
propeller and waiting until the direction of the aerostat coincided with
that of the wind, the action was renewed. A marked acceleration in
speed was the immediate result, and deviations from the line of the
wind were secured by very slight motion of the rudder, the aerostat
keeping its stability perfectly. The descent was safely accomplished
after remaining in the air a little more than an hour.

This first experiment in the use of electricity in practical aeronau-
tics was about as successful as that of Giffard with steam in 1852, so
far as relates to the attainment of speed ; but it showed that such
speed could now be secured without clanger and without any uncon-
trollable variation in the weight of the mass propelled. Tissandier
did not expect the attainment of complete success in a single trial ;
such as he did attain was enough to convince not only him but others
that he had opened out a pathway which could be followed with en-
tire confidence. He had not the means at hand sufficient to enable
him to keep his aerostat inflated, so as to repeat his experiment on the
first favorable day after imposing such modifications as were suggested
by the experience of the first ascent. It was not until September 26,
1884, that this opportunity was presented. The velocity of the wind
was about the same as during the first ascent, but the aerostat was
propelled at a rate about one third greater, so as to make at times
very perceptible headway against the wind.

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 305

Meanwhile the success achieved by the Tissandier brothers in 1881
and 1883 had inspired MM. Renard and Krebs, officers of the French
army, who were stationed at Chalais-Meudon, near Paris. They had
for several years been conducting experiments on the conditions requi-
site for directing balloons, being guided in their studies by the pre-
vious work of Dupuy de Lome. An appropriation of one hundred
thousand francs had been granted them, during Gambetta's brief ad-
ministration, and their investigations were conducted with the utmost
secrecy. The pecuniary resources at their command gave them a
great advantage over Tissandier, in the ability to construct a balloon
much larger than that with which Tissandier's success had been
achieved ; and this permitted the application of a motor nearly seven
times as powerful as the one previously employed. Their balloon
(Fig. 4) is one hundred and sixty-six feet long, twenty-eight feet in
greatest diameter, its capacity sixty-seven thousand cubic feet, and
ascensional power nearly five thousand pounds. The ratio of length
to thickness is thus much greater than in Tissandier's balloon. The
details of construction of the battery and motor have not been given
to the public by Captain Renard. The rudder is almost a parallelo-
gram in form, and thickest in the middle, the cloth being tightly
stretched over a light framework so as to present a rigid surface to
the air. The propeller is fixed to the extremity of a long shaft, and
placed at the front, instead of rear, of the balloon. The front end of
the machine is thicker than the rear end. This feature seems rather
unaccountable. The balloon is filled with hydrogen, but within it is
a subsidiary balloon, connected by a tube with the cage, where air
can be pumped in or out at pleasure, thus varying slightly the specific
gravity of the mass as a whole and enabling the aeronauts to vary
their elevation at will.

On August 9, 1884, an ascent was accomplished with this balloon,
the atmosphere being almost perfectly calm. A journey of nearly
two miles was made in a southerly direction, then over a mile west-
ward, after which the balloon was turned northward and eastward.
Very slight motion of the rudder was needed to execute these curves.
Twenty-three minutes after their flight was begun the aeronauts were
immediately over their starting-point, having made a trip of not quite
five miles. In descending it was necessary to move backward and
forward several times in succession, alternately reversing the direction
of rotation of the propeller. The return to the ground was at the
very spot from which the departure had been made. This remarkable
feat was thus accomplished almost exactly one hundred and one years
after the ascent of the first hydrogen balloon, sent up by Charles
from a point but a few miles distant.

A second ascent was made by Renard and Krebs on the 12th of
September, but with only partial success, in consequence of an acci-
dent to the motor. On the 8th of November two successive journeys

VOL. XXVII. — 20

306

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were taken, the balloon returning each time to its point of departure,
and attaining a speed of nearly fifteen miles an hour, independently
of the wind, which was blowing at the rate of five miles an hour.

In their communication to the French Academy of Sciences, on the
18th of August, Renard and Krebs accord to Tissandier the credit of

priority in successfully applying electricity to the propulsion of bal-
loons. Tissandier, on the other hand, equally freely accords to them
the credit of making a pronounced success of what had been developed
to only a limited extent in his hands on account of the want of funds.
To each of the group the world must now give praise for the solution
of a problem which was theoretically solved long ago, but involved
practical difficulties that seemed almost if not quite insurmountable.

RECENT PROGRESS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION. 307

At best, however, the balloon as a means of locomotion is of more
interest from a scientific than commercial standpoint. Increasing ex-
perience will determine the best disposition to be made in relation to
a variety of points that are still open to discussion, such as the best
methods of reducing resistances and increasing the efficiency of the
motor. On the basis of the success already attained, calculations have
been made which indicate that it may be quite possible in the near
future to construct larger balloons that will travel in calm air at the
rate of twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. Such air-ships, capable of
ready direction at safe elevations, may serve important purposes in
time of war. But for the public their use must long continue to be
very limited. The enormous expense attendant upon the construction
and manipulation of an aerostat capable of carrying even so few as
a score of persons forbids competition with railroads and steamships.
The high-tension battery, which is at present the most available source
of energy to give motive power, has an effective life of only a few
hours ; and, even during this time, the cost of zinc and acid is far in
excess of that of coal and water. For special purposes, where surface-
locomotion is impossible, and expenses can be sustained by great cor-
porations or very wealthy individuals, the "dirigeable" balloon may,
perhaps, win for itself an important place. The history of the appli-
cation of science to art, especially during the last half -century, sug-
gests caution in making sweeping denials, merely because our present
knowledge does not enable us to grasp all the details of future develop-
ment. Dr. Lardner's assertion, that no steamship would ever cross the
Atlantic, may well remain fresh in our minds. The present compe-
tition between electricity and coal-gas as illuminating agents could
scarcely have been foreseen in the days when coal-gas was itself com-
paratively a novelty. If we continue, as is probable, to attain cheaper
methods of generating electricity, the balloon may grow in favor as
the electric light has done, but without causing -the least commotion
in the market for railroad stocks.

But, for the development of aeronautics as an art, we must continue
to look to France, its earliest home. If stock companies are formed
for the manufacture of air-ships, it must be first among those to whom
the recent successes have already become a source of pride. Even as
toys and as advertising media, balloons have always been more popu-
lar in France than elsewhere. The city of Paris has for years past
included one or more large establishments devoted exclusively to the
manufacture of them. Should "dirigeable" balloons ever become of
commercial importance, enterprising Americans will be quick to imi-
tate their French neighbors, and put upon our market all that the pub-
lic may demand. The day is perhaps not far distant when at least a
favored few in our own country may enjoy the luxury of summer
afternoon excursions through the air, free from dust and cinders, and
occasionally even vying with the birds in speed.

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS.

By CHAELES C. ABBOTT, M. D.

IT seems rather hard lines that, even if the archaeologist goes per-
sonally into the field, and gathers with his own hands specimens
of stone implements, he is not quite free from the possibility of being
imposed upon.

The cause of this unhappy state of affairs is found in several facts,
all of which are of such character that it is well-nigh impossible to
avoid being misled by them. In the first place, it requires much less
skill and practice than is imagined to artistically shape arrow-heads and
other small objects, from fragments of jasper and other minerals hav-
ing a conchoidal fracture. Many boys, too impatient to gather the
relics of the Indians, which requires considerable labor, often practice
on broken specimens until they can repoint them, and convert others
into handsome examples of scrapers, trimmed flakes, and other forms
with which every archaeologist is familiar. Unfortunately, the newly-
fractured jasper presents a surface scarcely distinguishable from that
of objects made centuries ago, so slowly does the process of weather-
ing dull the surface of this flint-like mineral ; and the eager collector,
who a week before, it may be, charged the boys on various farms to
keep all the relics they could find, receives, in his too great eagerness,
as genuine, every specimen of known shapes, and is in nowise deceived
in the difference in chipping between the ancient and the modern. In-
deed, I greatly doubt if any difference can be detected in such simple
forms as triangular arrow-heads, scrapers, trimmed flakes, and knives.
I have time and again been shown handsome specimens, which I was
assured were made by the exhibitors, and, on expressing some doubt,
have had other specimens made in my presence. The skill with which
one urchin chipped the characteristic beveled edge of a scraper, using
only a small quartz pebble as a hammer or chipper, was marvelous,
and I have good reason to believe I have been victimized more than
once by this same youngster. Still, the prices usually paid for arrow-
heads are not such as to warrant boys generally in undertaking the
necessary preliminary practice of chipping flint, and the number of
modern chipped implements is relatively not large ; and being, in all
cases, imitations of known patterns, they can not mislead. I do not
think any of the Flint Jacks whom I have met ever attempted to de-
sign new forms, or copy those found in distant localities, a knowledge
of which could only be derived from books. If such should become
the case, dire confusion must inevitably arise.

In the case of such implements of stone as were made by pecking
away the surface, and subsequently polishing all or portions of the
surface, but few attempts to counterfeit have come to my notice. This

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS. 309

remark, however, is exclusive of all objects of hematite. So many-
hundreds of these are manufactured in Cincinnati and other cities, that
no object of this material should be admitted into a museum or pri-
vate cabinet unless its history rendered fraud absolutely impossible.
Attempts at making grooved axes have been brought to my notice,
but they were so rudely shaped, and so new in appearance, that de-
ception was impossible. The flat pebbles, with two or four notches,
known as " net-sinkers," are readily made, but are so abundant that to
manufacture them, instead of looking for those made by the Indians,
has not yet become profitable.

The Indians were quick to perceive how readily thin, flat sandstone
pebbles could be perforated, and so become available as ornaments.
Such objects I have gathered by the score from graves and village
sites ; and, as a result of calling the attention of collectors to these
perforated disks, I find that they are now made in large numbers ;
being perforated with flint drills, and the " new " surfaces carefully
polished with leather and emory. This gives the appearance of age,
and such specimens are readily palmed off upon the unwary. Indeed,
detection of the fraud is well-nigh impracticable. A rainy Saturday
means mischief, so far as country school-boys are concerned ; for I
find that they often congregate in some quiet corner to drill pebbles
and repoint arrow-heads ; and then, lying in wait for the professor or
the " 'Gasy (Agassiz) Club " boys, from town, unload upon them the
remarkable "finds" (?) made since their last vist. I do not wish to
discourage archaeological research, but simply to warn enthusiastic
students against dangers to which they are exposed ; for I speak from
sad experience.

Of frauds in mound pottery and striped slate, I need not here make
other mention than to caution the purchaser of specimens ; for there
are abundant counterfeits offered by dealers in curiosities. I do not
mean to imply that these dealers are acquainted with the true history
of the objects exposed for sale, for they, like the archaeologists, are
frequently imposed upon.

Unexaggerated as are the dangers of imposition such as I have
pointed out, they are really insignificant as compared with that attach-
ing to the purchase of steatite implements. It is well known that the
Indians made constant use of this mineral for the manufacture of
cooking-vessels, for smoking-pipes, and, to a limited extent, for small
ornaments ; but probably never for weapons. As the mineral is so
readily worked, the cunning Flint Jacks have long been in the nefarious
business of imitating pots, pipes, and trinkets, without number.

Philadelphia has the honor (?) of being the headquarters of steatite
frauds ; and it is not long since that one hundred beautiful objects,
made by one man, were added to an extensive collection, at a cost of
five hundred dollars. Had not the discovery of their origin been
made in time, it would have resulted in American archaeologists credit-

3io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing the Delaware Indians with far more skill in carving, even steatite,
than they ever possessed. As tobacco-pipes have ever been the rarest
and most costly of Indian relics, special attention was given to their
manufacture, and very remarkable have been some of the specimens
which have found their way into private cabinets and public museums.
The history of some of these pipes is as intricate and fascinating as a
novel, but want of space forbids its publication in this connection.
Suffice it to say that the archaeologist is only safe when he exhumes,
in person, steatite pipes from graves, and finds other objects, either
under like circumstances, or sees them plowed up on ancient village
sites.

So determined, indeed, are some of these fabricators of frauds, that
the following incident is worthy of being published, to show the in-
genuity they exercise in their peculiar calling. To discover an Indian
grave is, of course, a red-letter day for the archaeologist. Now, In-
dian graves are manufactured to order, it would appear. At least
the following recently occurred in New Jersey : A Philadelphia
Flint Jack secured a half -decayed skeleton from a Potter's field in the
vicinity, and placed it in a shallow excavation on the wasting bank of
a creek in New Jersey, where Indian relics were frequently found.
With it he placed a steatite tobacco-pipe of his own make, a steatite
carving of an eagle's head, and beads ; with these were thrown num-
bers of genuine arrow-heads and fragments of pottery. The earth
was blackened with powdered charcoal. This " plant " was made in
November, and, in the following March, during the prevalence of high
waters and local freshets, he announced to an enthusiastic collector
that he knew the location of an Indian grave, and offered to take him
thither for fifty dollars, the money to be paid if the search proved
successful, which of course it did. The cranium of that Philadelphia
pauper passed through several craniologists' hands, and was gravely
remarked upon as of unusual interest, as it was a marked dolicho-
cephalic skull, whereas the Delaware Indians were br achy cephalic !

A word, in conclusion, with reference to that much-vexed question,
the contemporaneity of man and the mastodon in North America.
Constantly objects are being brought to the attention of archaeologists
as having some bearing upon this question. As to whether the " ele-
phant-pipes," of Iowa, or the " Lenap6-stone," of Pennsylvania, be
genuine or not, no opinion is here expressed ; but it is unquestionable
that many of the remains of the mastodon found in New Jersey and
New York are far more recent than some of the relics of man, and it
is simply impossible that even so late a comer as the Indian should not
have seen living mastodons on the Atlantic seaboard of this continent.
Elephant-pipes and carvings should not be condemned, merely because
of an impression still prevalent that the mastodon was a creature of
an earlier geological epoch than the recent. This is but half the truth :
he also shared the forests of the present with the fauna of historic times.

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 311
RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION.

By Hebe C. HEEZOG.

THERE has hardly been a more quiet decade in the political his-
tory of the nineteenth century than the one between 1830 and
1840. Yet that decade was the cradle of a new epoch, in which inven-
tions first came into view, or were brought to practical completion,
which have had a deeper and more permanent influence than any
political event could have upon the shaping of human society. The
first steam-railroad in Europe was built in the beginning of this decade,
after George Stephenson had solved the problem of the locomotive in
1829. In 1833 Gauss and Weber fixed the first telegraph-wire be-
tween the Observatory and the Physical Cabinet in Giittingen, and
thereby laid the foundation of electro-magnetic telegraphy, building
on which Morse in 1836 invented the writing-telegraph. In this year,
1836, also, the first screw-steamer was built in England, and the trans-
atlantic steam-traffic was opened two years later, or in 1838.

Only a few sharp and enlightened minds could have been able at
that time to form a conception of the effects which these discoveries
were destined to exercise upon the world ; but their development from
those feeble beginnings to the present day has immeasurably surpassed
the most sanguine expectations.

The length of the railways, of which three hundred and thirty-two
kilometres were in operation in 1830, had risen in 1883 to more than
444,000 kilometres ; and, if the lines were joined one to another, they
would have gone around the earth in its longest circumference more
than ten times ! Like a net, the meshes of which are continually
drawing closer together, their lines are woven over all the countries of
Europe ; in both Americas, they have made way into the hitherto
pathless wilderness ; they have climbed the Rocky Mountains of the
North and the Cordilleras of Peru, and have broken through the
nation-dividing walls of the Alps ; the largest streams of the earth
wear the yoke of their bridges ; in Southern Africa, in the East Indies,
and in Japan, they are pressing unintermittingly into new regions, and
even in the Chinese Empire trial-surveys are making for advantageous
routes.

Steamship navigation has grown on a similarly grand scale. Nearly
ten thousand steamers, with a capacity of seven million tons, traverse
the ocean, and connect all parts of the earth with one another. Inde-
pendent of wind and tide, they maintain communications with a swift-
ness, security, and regularity rivaling those of the railways, whose
complement they are in providing for the world's trade.

More rapidly and extensively than both of these has the telegraph
taken possession of the world. The conductor which, in 1833, con-

3i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nected the study-rooms of two German scholars, has in fifty years
spread out into a network of wires that incloses the earth. The
length of the telegraph lines is estimated now at nearly a million
kilometres, and the length of the wires at more than double that
number. They stop for no obstacles, but find their way over mount-
ains covered with eternal snow, through deserts, and across rivers.
Even the sea does not stop them. More than seven hundred sub-
marine cables bear messages over the bottom of the ocean with a
speed outstripping that of the thought in which they originated.
Hard as it was fifty years ago even approximately to imagine the
impending development of the young discoveries and their influence,
it is just as hard now to comprehend them in their fullness. The
majority of living people take them for granted, and have no further
thought about them. Railroads and telegraphs have been so much a
matter of course to them from their childhood up that they can hardly
conceive that it was ever different. But he whose memory goes back
more than a generation, or whoever has traveled in countries where
mules or oxen are the only means of transportation, can realize the
difference and appreciate the importance of the progress, and the rela-
tions that exist between numerous phenomena of life and those con-
cerns.

The most important and evident of these phenomena are the
changes which railroads and telegraphs as means of trade have
directly impressed on economical affairs ; their influences have also
made themselves felt, partly as consequences of those changes, in part
directly, in transformations of social conditions, and of manners and
customs.

It is common to the means of transportation moved by steam and
to the telegraph that they effect changes of place, the former of
physical objects and men, and the latter of thoughts, with power,
speed, and security, immeasurably surpassing those of the formerly
known means.

We will first consider the exchange of goods which composes
trade. In his latest "Review of the World's Economy," Dr. Van
Neumann-Spallart estimates the weight of the goods which the rail-
roads collectively carried in 1882 at about 1,200,000,000 tons ; the
freight of the steamers was calculated at about half that weight. By
far the greater part of these masses of goods have been set in motion
by trade in order to place them where they could be made of use. For
this reason, the figure of the weight, although the contemplation of it
overtaxes our limited powers of conception, gives quite as little idea
of the meaning of this enormous movement as does the knowledge of
the weight of the blood circulating in the body, with wdiich it is
customary to compare this trade, an explanation of the effect of
its flow.

The extension of trade may be considered as to space and as to

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 313

variety of articles. In the former respect, all parts of the earth have
been drawn within the circle of exchanges, even those which formerly
lay quite outside of such connections, either because they were thinly
inhabited or too difficult of access ; and the trade resources within civ-
ilized lands have been greatly expanded as the improvement of trans-
portation facilities has compensated for the difference between the
former cost and the present advance. The quantity of the goods used
in trade and the variety are increased, or at least become available for
whole classes of consumers, to whom their use was formerly forbidden
on account of their price. Our daily life affords abundant examples
of such articles. They are exemplified in the variety and prices of our
food resources, in the fashions of our clothing, in our architecture, and
in the warming and lighting of our houses. Coffee, tea, spices, and
other products of the tropics, which were formerly rare among the
wealthy, are now set upon the tables of the people, and are objects of
general use. The European demand for wheat brings into competition
steamers from Northern and "Western America, Chili, the states of the
La Plata, and India.

In clothing, the moderation of price resulting from the cheapened
transportation of the raw materials and the wider distribution of the
fabrics come more into view than the introduction of new or hitherto
unknown or inaccessible materials, of which jute is the only example
we now recollect. That silk, which was formerly a mark of wealth, is
now worn by women of only moderate means, and cotton goods,
which were articles of luxury a hundred years ago, are made into
everybody's shirts and bedclothes, are in no small part due to the
cheapness and speed of freight-carriage as well as to the increased fa-
cilities for manufacturing them afforded by the introduction of steam
machinery.

The improvements which railroads and steamers have made possi-
ble in our buildings are also obvious, in the use of solid materials in
regions far from the quarries. The coals with which we warm our
houses and from which we derive our gas-lights, and the petroleum
which burns in the lamps of the man of small means, articles which
have become indispensable in modern life, but the use of which was
formerly forbidden in all but the narrow regions of their productions,
are now carried into the most remote mountain-valleys and across
oceans, to wherever men live.

As railways and steamers perform the hard, steady, physical work
of trade, so the telegraph assists the mental work of its service. Of
the more than a hundred million telegrams which the electric wires
carry over the earth yearly, by far the greatest part concern affairs of
trade. The telegraph is the medium of all important communications
in wholesale trade, and speculation could hardly exist without it. A
commercial solidarity covering the whole globe has been built upon
it, and the present generation for the first time sees a world-trade.

3 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The connection is most evident in transactions in goods of large con-
sumption, and is manifested in the tendency to equalization in prices
and in the rates of discount. The price of the staple articles of com-
merce is fixed in the market of the world. The price of wheat is de-
termined every day by the telegraphic reports to Chicago of the day's
transactions in the principal places on the globe where wheat is handled,
and the price of cotton in a similar manner at New Orleans and Liver-
pool ; and in all financial transactions the most remote commercial
centers respond to one another with a facility and celerity that can
hardly be excelled by those with which two houses separated only by
the Thames could communicate.

This extension of quick communication over the whole globe has
been attended with the further advantages of making commercial prod-
ucts accessible to the largest possible circle of consumers, of making
capital, which flows where it can be applied with the most profit, easily
available at such spots, and in the acquisition of a number of storage-
points whence goods can be dispatched with but little delay to the
places where there is a demand for them. Conditioned upon these
circumstances are the general decline of interest and the easier
avoidance or quicker relief of the distress which may arise in single
countries or districts from the temporary scarcity of some particular
necessity. Railroads and steamboats have made the prevalence of
real famine and the misery associated with it impossible so long as
any purchasing power exists in a country or a city. Speculation, so
much abused, while it looks out first for its own interests, takes care
to compensate for local failures of crops by sending in timely supplies,
and has in railroads and telegraphs ready and powerful instruments
for its enterprise. That many men still actually suffer from hunger
is not to be denied ; but it nevertheless appears now to be impossible
for the most of the world that a local scarcity of food arising from
dearth or any disaster shall not be immediately remedied from with-
out.

This wide community of interests also has its shadows. The ease
with which large quantities of goods can be carried from countries
where they have accumulated in excess under favoring conditions, to
regions where this production is not equally favored, is fraught with
disadvantages to the local producers by depreciating the prices of
their goods when the circumstances are already hard for them. The
depressing competition of American and Indian wheat in the European
markets, which the home farmers lament with so much reason, is a
striking example of this. Still more serious is the rapidity with which
the effects of a commercial crisis occurring anywhere are felt in all
markets. But these negative effects of solidarity of interests, hard as
they may bear at times upon individuals, are insignificant as compared
with the advantages it brings to the general welfare.

Apace with the widening of the trade in goods, has production

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION 315

reached an unprecedented development, and this as regards quantity
and variety and quality. If Industry knew what it was doing when
in 1829 it offered a prize for a locomotive-engine available as a draught-
power, its knowledge has brought it rich fruits. With that inven-
tion it gained a basis for increased production, and made it possible to
bring together the raw material and the power at points where human
skill and the other favorable conditions for production were found.
The railroad carried coal and lime to the iron-mines, and cotton to the
valleys where men's hands and valuable water-powers were waiting to
be used ; blast-furnaces and forges rose here, spinning and weaving
establishments there. Industry was released from its bondage to the
few spots where all the conditions favorable to its development ex-
isted together: and became mobile. It was enough after that if any
one of those conditions was given in any place ; what was wanting
could be supplied at relatively small expense by means of the railway.
Thus have great industries developed themselves mainly under the
operation of these agencies. The remarkable phenomena in the eco-
nomical field connected with these enterprises are the division of labor
and the tendency to the equalization of wages, both as between differ-
ent places and as against fluctuations in the prices of goods ; the for-
mer prominently exemplified in the confinement of particular enter-
prises to special branches of production ; the latter favored by the
easy migration of laborers from place to place, and the rapid spread of
news of advances in wages, as well as by the possibility of coalitions
against uneven scales.

Just as a community of interest has been produced in the world's
trade by the operation of railroads and telegraphs, so it has been in
industries. Every advance in technics shortly becomes known and
common, while those who are backward in taking it up suffer during
the transition. On the other hand, local crises are felt by related in-
dustries far from the place of their origin, till, in fact, the distance
becomes so great that the market is protected against the effects of the
shock by the cost of transportation. But here, again, the flexibility
and efficiency of the means of communication are of great help in
overcoming such crises and equalizing their mischievous consequences.

The movement of persons has undergone quite as important a growth
as that of goods. In the " Review of the World's Economy," already
named, the number of passengers carried by all the railroads in all
parts of the world, in 1882, is estimated at 2,400,000,000, or an average
of six and half million a day. The absolute number of passengers
carried on steamers is smaller ; but here, as was also the case with
goods, they are carried for longer distances, and more days' journeys,
than on railroads ; so that, estimated by the mile or the day, the
amount both of freight and passenger work the steamers do will ap-
pear to much better advantage.

The significance of the facilitation of passenger transportation is

3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

derived principally from its effects on social conditions, civilization,
and customs. One of the most important of these effects is illustrated
in emigration, which has assumed grand dimensions under the opera-
tion of the new methods of communication. Of the twelve and a half
million emigrants who went to the United States between the recog-
nition of their independence and 1883, not more than a million belong
to the time previous to the establishment of regular passenger commu-
nication by steamer with Europe, about 1844. As a result of the
establishment of this method of communication, and of the building of
the railroads that opened the Mississippi Valley and the western part
of the continent, emigration assumed colossal proportions. Besides
the amelioration of the voyage, which has become an affair of not
more than ten or twelve days for emigrant-vessels, the improved fare,
the cheaper rate of passage, and the punctuality and increased safety
of the transit, may be marked as circumstances contributing to this
result.

The difficulties of the land -journey were formerly hardly less formi-
dable to emigrants seeking the interior of the country than were those
of the sea-voyage. Weeks and even months might be spent in reach-
ing the end of the journey, while the traveler had to do without every-
thing he could not take along with him, or else to procure it at the
expense of great trouble and cost. Now the railroad carries one from
the port of arrival, in as many days as months were formerly required,
to the extreme West ; and, finding himself there, he is no longer
lost in the wilderness, with nothing but his own efforts to depend
upon ; but he has a railroad passing at no very great distance, to
keep him in constant communication with civilization. To these great
impulses may be added the increased facilities for coming and going
within their own country. Formerly the poor man was tied to his
threshold by the impossibility of obtaining the means to get away.
Now, at an expense of time and money relatively trifling, he is able to
go and seek other places where he may find better fields for the exer-
cise of his powers and easier conditions of existence. In this way the
condition of the poorer and the laboring classes has been immeasur-
ably altered. Hence we see a streaming of working-men toward the
centers of great industries, large towns growing up, labor become
scarce in the agricultural districts, and the industrial organizations
undergoing a revolution. The labor market has undergone the same
kind of extension as the market for goods ; and skilled labor has be-
come more and more a thing of merchandise, the price of which is
regulated by the larger conjunctures of business. The personal rela-
tion between laborer and employer, which formerly, at least in handi-
craft work, had somewhat the aspect of a family relation, has been
dissolved or relaxed.

We have also to speak of the services which the post has rendered.
They are by no means limited to the economical field, but they are

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 317

most evident there. Trade and industry, and all economical life, could
hardly be thought of to-day without the co-operation of the post. And
that it has surely, effectively, and abundantly contributed to their
advancement, to a degree that appears wonderful to us, has again been
made possible only by the use of railroads, steamers, and telegraphs.
Neither the relatively small postage rate within a single state nor the
moderate rate of the Postal Union, the establishment of which repre-
sented one of the most remarkable stages in the progress of civiliza-
tion, would have been possible without these vehicles, as the always
ready, cheap, and indefatigable bearers of our correspondence.

So dependent upon one another are all the factors of human life
that we should expect to observe the effects of the agencies we have
been considering upon all, and we do so observe them, most promi-
nently, perhaps, besides the points on which we have remarked, upon
the modern methods of war. The steamer has within the last thirty
years taken the place of the sailing-vessel in the navies of all coun-
tries to such an extent that the latter is only exceptionally used for
warlike purposes. Connected with this change are changes in the
form and handling of the guns, armoring, the introduction of turret-
ships, and modifications of naval tactics.

While the locomotive has not been made a direct arm, railroads
and telegraphs have greatly changed the aspects of war on land. With
their help, the mobilization of the army and the concentration of its
scattered divisions at the point selected for attack or defense are ac-
complished in a space of time that is almost as nothing compared with
what was required to move troops by the old method. The skillful
and energetic use of these helps gives, under some circumstances, an
impetus that may be decisive for the issue of the war. They are no
less important during the progress of the war, in that they are useful
for the forwarding of troops and camp-supplies. The army that con-
trols the railroads is master of the field. It is for the general so to
manage the movements of troops by their aid that his forces shall at
any given time be superior to those of the enemy at an appointed
place, and either compel them to retreat or to fight under unfavorable
circumstances. Modern strategy, therefore, consists no little in having
knowledge and skill enough to operate with the railroads as the most
important factors of movements and the actions, in which, with mod-
ern arms, multitudes of men are of more effect than personal bravery,
as never to strike except where and when he knows that his forces are
superior. It is also an important consideration that provisions and
ammunition and re-enforcements can be steadily supplied to the army
by means of railroads, so as to keep it constantly effective, even in the
enemy's country ; and that the wounded can be carried away from
the neighborhood of the battle-field to hospitals far back, or to their
homes.

While it is true that wars have in these days become more bloody,

3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it can also be said that they are shorter and, in a certain sense, more
humane ; the latter, not only in the fact that the victims of battle re-
ceive better care, but also that the peaceful population of the country
visited by war are, by means of the improved facilities for communi-
cation, spared the burden of maintaining the invading army. The
greater part of the cruelty and barbarity of former wars arose from
the fact that the troops had to be supported by the land in which they
were encamped, and the necessity of their taking care of themselves
excluded all consideration for the people. "War is still a direful
scourge ; but the arrangements for provisioning and foraging and the
system of requisitions which railroads have made possible place the
military administration in a condition to spare the country from ex-
haustive drafts, and to prevent excesses by the soldiers. The influence
of modern means of intercourse may also be seen in the peaceful rela-
tions of states to one another, and in the inner political life of individ-
ual states. We shall make no mistake if we assign to railroads and
telegraphs an important part in the present tendency to form large
states and to give greater consistency to national organizations. Simi-
larity and community of economical interests are not consistent with
separation by arbitrary divisions. Material interests require the widest
possible conformity of legislation and administration and a strong
civil power able to give them external and internal protection, neither
of which can be afforded in the small state. Railroads and telegraphs
are a political force of the first order to promote in nascent states the
accomplishment of their union, in established states the strengthening
of the executive and the growth of the political influence of the gov-
ernment. In all civilized states the telegraph and the railroads together
enable the government to be advised of all important events on the in-
stant of their happening, and immediately to take whatever measures
may be necessary. It is a further consequence that the central power
becomes more concentrated, and the individual prerogative and respon-
sibility of the local officers limited ; while in smaller states the admin-
istrative organization may be simplified by dispensing with intermedi-
ate agents.

The effect of railroads and telegraphs upon the civic structure is
also manifested in the more lively participation of the people in politi-
cal life. This happens both in consequence of the increased ease of
personal intercourse and through the quickening and increased extent
of the exchanges of thought that are furthered by the press and by
correspondence. The freer intercourse of candidates with the people
whose votes they are seeking, and of deputies with their constituents,
has done much to make the people acquainted with public questions in
their varying aspects, and interested in them. Much more is done by
the periodical press, which now scatters its issues in numbers and with
a speed and cheapness that would have been incredible a half -century
ago. Other factors are indeed contributing to this condition, but they

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 319

would be practically of little value in producing these effects were they
not accompanied by correspondingly increased facilities for the diffu-
sion of news. It fails to give an adequate idea of the extent of this
influence, to state that two and a half milliard copies of newspapers
were circulated in 1882 through the Postal Union, and that only an
insignificant proportion of these were carried otherwise than by rail-
road. Most of these journals being political, the part they have in
diffusing political intelligence among the people, who depend almost
entirely upon them, and in forming their political culture, may be con-
ceived but can not be measured.

This feature also is attended with disadvantages. The newspapers
circulating in all classes of society, the number of persons upon whom
the formation of that vague force called public opinion depends has
become multiplied many times, and in it many are included who have
not the previous knowledge requisite to the formation of an intelligent
opinion, or capacity to form a real opinion of their own. Conse-
quently, the quality of public opinion has depreciated. It is more
easily led into error, and harder to set right. Furthermore, the ra-
pidity with which the telegraph makes it possible to convey news of
all important events — and unimportant ones, too — from all parts of
the world to all other parts, has given public opinion a taste and a
preference for mere matters of fact. The pressure to learn the latest
news is stronger than the desire to know events in their order and
connections. Thus interest is rather directed to what is striking and
sensational, and, responding to this, the papers give to news of that
kind space and conspicuousness out of all proportion to its value.
Consequently, we have shallowness of public opinion on the one side,
exaggeration and unreliability on the other.

In another aspect, railroads and telegraphs have contributed to the
increase of knowledge and the expansion of the ideas and conceptions
of the people ; indirectly by assisting in the circulation of journals
that carry knowledge on all kinds of subjects through all the channels
of their circulation, and directly by making it possible for people of
moderate means, and inducing them, to travel and observe for them-
selves things and phenomena abroad. When I was a boy, the journey
of about thirty miles to the capital of the province was an event for
children and parents, which was talked about and prepared for for
weeks beforehand, and required a whole day of traveling. People
seldom went beyond the boundaries of the province, except on busi-
ness, or on the occasion of important festivals, or of death. Now
we can travel to the sea-coast or the mountains in the same time,
and with hardly more expense than it then took to go the thirty miles,
and we eagerly use the opportunity to change our scene, whether it
be to improve the health a shade, for mental relaxation, for instruc-
tion, or for pleasure. The attendance at baths, the rise of summer
resorts and air-cures, and furloughs for all classes of officers, have

320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

become regular institutions, while they were formerly indulged only
in cases of sickness ; and the excursions of school vacations, the pleas-
ure-trains and the extra trains on holidays, long wedding tours,
excursion parties to foreign lands, or around the world, are evidences
of the taste for traveling that modern men feel, and of the ease
with which it is gratified. Then there are the journeys to meet-
ings of men of a common calling, to scientific congresses or social
unions. There is hardly a condition or a professional society that
does not feel the need of bringing its members together, and of hold-
ing at different but always agreeable places social unions. To these
we may add exhibitions, in which fisheries and agriculture, the indus-
tries and the fine arts display and compare their efforts, with their cul-
mination in periodical world's fairs. Without railroads this mobility
and this releasing of men from their soil, which answer a deep longing
©f our nature, would be possible only within the narrowest limits.

It can not be denied that with all this are connected a great enrich-
ment, with new views and feelings, a considerable enlargement of
mental scope, and a strong stimulus to mental activity, even where no
intention of the kind is entertained. Errors are cleared up and preju-
dices are overcome. Deficiencies at home are revealed by comparison
with what is seen abroad, and all that is recognized as better is imi-
tated and improved upon. Habits are also disciplined. Railroads
demand an exact account of time, and require all who use them to
conform to their regulations. They train people in the most efficient
manner to punctuality, to quick decision, and to the omission of for-
malities.

The forms of intercourse and family relations are also not slightly
affected. It can hardly be said that the influence in the former case
is always beneficial. Politeness and regard for fellow-travelers, if
they happen to interfere with one's own comfort, are not exactly cul-
tivated with zest by railroad-passengers. But we frequently meet
polite and interesting traveling-companions, whose intercourse gives
us pleasure. Moreover, railroad-traveling brings persons of different
degrees of cultivation together, and is fitted to smooth the forms of
intercourse, and to have, on the whole, a refining influence, provided
cultivated persons set good examples.

I am uncertain whether heart-connections leading to marriage are
often formed on railway-journeys. If we may trust the novelists and
playwrights, this is the case. At any rate, railway-traveling has an
influence on relations of this kind to the extent that it favors the form-
ing of acquaintances between persons living at a distance from one
another, out of which family relations may grow. Marriages certainly
are negotiated over a much wider scope than formerly, both within the
country of residence and as reaching into foreign countries. Distance
offers no obstacle to the father's informing himself concerning the cir-
cumstances of his daughter's suitor ; and the careful mother can con-

RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 321

sent to let her child go to places which would formerly be considered
out of the world, because she can correspond with her daily ; and it
only requires a journey of a few hours or days, which also promises a
welcome variety to the monotonous life of the parental home, to bring
the separated family together again. A change has also come over
the course of family life, in which habit and tradition had established
fixed customs, whereby the old ways are slowly dissolved and new
forms take their place. The prescription of kin, in which the choice
of a wife was formerly confined, is relaxed ; the old Frankish courting
by the parents for the son is out of fashion ; the wedding-feast is ar-
ranged to suit the railroad-train on which the young couple will begin
their journey ; fresh blood and strange customs are pressing into the
close circle of ancient relationship and stiff usage ; they break up the
pride of neighborhood narrowness, and make it first tolerant, then in-
viting to the foreign better usages, against which it had shut itself up,
and which it had despised, merely because they were strange.

On the other side, if modern facilities for moving about furnish
opportunities for extending our ideas and knowledge, they also lead to
superficiality in observation, which loses in depth and thoroughness
what it gains in extent. We travel far in a day, but we see only by
glances. Between the beginning of the journey and its appointed end
the passenger generally stops only as long as the train, or, at very im-
portant stations, only over till the next train. What lies between passes
before his vision like a scene in a theatre, or is lost while he sleeps. The
guide-books furnish all the information he seeks. For many the num-
ber of miles they have traveled over is the most important point. It
is evident that nothing useful can come from traveling of this kind.
Another undeniable result is the neglect of what is near and around us
for what is distant. Many people know more of foreign countries than
of their own neighborhoods, consequently their attachment for home is
weakened. From indifference to disdain is only a step. On this ground
are explained the disappearance of old customs, which gave fixedness
to social life in the family and the commune, the dissatisfaction with
the narrowness of the home, and a relaxation of regard for persons in
authority and for older persons, whose experiences, gathered in the
narrow home circle, are not allowed to compete with the assumed ver-
satile and superior knowledge of traveled youth. In a wider circle are
thus explained the rapid spread of the fashions and a kind of leveling
in life and customs. The new styles, which formerly went out very
slowly, now spread quickly through all classes, and the differences
between country and city are disappearing.

Returning to the public life of society, we find two features in
which there seems to be a connection between changes that are going
on and the modern conditions of transportation, viz., the democratic
tendencies of society, and the prevalence of materialism. The demo-
cratic tendency, which is peculiar to the times, does not limit itself to

TOL. XXVII. — 21

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

exhibition in state constitutions, but is penetrating the whole social
life. In its wider sense it signifies the mergence of class-differences,
the abolition of transmitted privileges and inherited exclusiveness, and
the assertion of individuality. It is true that this tendency is older
than the railroads and telegraphs, and its origin can not be ascribed to
them ; but it is also true that they have given it a great impulse, to
which compulsory education, universal military obligation, and univer-
sal suffrage, have equally contributed. Railroads treat all their pas-
sengers alike. All must adapt themselves to the same order and regu-
lations. No one can interfere with the time of arrival or departure,
or the speed, or the length of stoppages. Even special trains must not
interfere with the time-table. In the case of cars of different classes,
the only criterion of distinction is that of price ; whoever pays the
charge can travel in the corresponding class, whether it pleases his
fellow-passengers or not, and he receives the same treatment as they.
The ideas suggested by such commingling are very apt to be carried
into other fields of intercourse.

With the democratizing of society is flowing a parallel current of a
practical materialism, which is manifested in a predominance of ma-
terial interests over ideal ones, in the recognition of egoism as a lead-
ing principle in trade, in the estimation of men's deeds, only according
to their visible consequences, and in the rejection of all that transcends
realism. This drift is not new in human civilization ; but it is
a new fact that the masses have been drawn into it, and that they
aim to make it potent after they have destroyed or reformed the old
civil and social order. Its causes are complicated, and are perhaps
only indirectly referable to the expansion of means of communication;
but they are connected with the results of increased traffic and inter-
course, and their operation is re-enforced by them.

It is too soon to speculate as to what will be the end or the ulti-
mate result of these two parallel movements. — Translated for the Pop-
ular Science Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau.

♦ ♦ »

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY.

Br Sir HENEY THOMPSON.

ENOUGH, and more than enough, perhaps, has been uttered con-
cerning the prejudicial effects on the body of habitually using
alcoholic beverages. It is rare now to find any one, well acquainted
with human physiology, and capable of observing and appreciating
the ordinary wants and usages of life around him, who does not be-
lieve that, with few exceptions, men and women are healthier and
stronger, physically, intellectually, and morally, without such drinks

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 323

than with them. And confessedly there is little or nothing new to be
said respecting a conclusion which has been so thoroughly investigated,
discussed, and tested by experience, as this. It is useless, and indeed
impolitic, in the well-intentioned effort to arouse public attention to
the subject, to make exaggerated statements in relation thereto. But
the important truth has still to be preached, repeated, and freshly
illustrated, when possible, in every quarter of society, because a very
natural bias to self-indulgence is always present to obscure's men views
of those things which gratify it. While, in addition to this, an exceed-
inly clever commercial interest of enormous influence and proportions
never ceases to vaunt its power to provide us with ' ' the soundest,"
" purest," and most to be suspected of all with even " medically
certified," forms of spirit, wine, and beer ; apparently rendering alco-
holic products conformable to the requirements of some physiological
law supposed to demand their employment, and thus insinuating the
semblance of a proof that they are generally valuable, or at least
harmless, as an accompaniment of food at our daily meals.

It is not, however, with the evils of " drink " that I propose to deal
here : they are thus alluded to because, in making a few observations
on the kindred subject of food, I desire to commence with a remark
on the comparison, so far as that is possible, between the deleterious
effects on the body of erroneous views and practice in regard of
drinking, and in regard of eating, respectively.

I have for some years past been compelled, by facts which are con-
stantly coming before me, to accept the conclusion that more mischief
in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life,
accrues to civilized man, so far as I have observed in our own country
and throughout Western and Central Europe, from erroneous habits in
eating, than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as
I know the evil of that to be. I am not sure that a similar compari-
son might not be made between the respective influence of those
agencies in regard of moral evil also ; but I have no desire to indulge
in speculative assertion, and suspect that an accurate conclusion on
this subject may be beyond our reach at present.

It was the perception, during many years of opportunity to ob-
serve, of the extreme indifference manifested by the general public to
any study of food, and want of acquaintance with its uses and value,
together with a growing sense on my own part of the vast importance
of diet to the healthy as well as to the sick, which led me in the year
1879 to write two articles in this review entitled " Food and Feeding."
And since that date fresh experience has, I confess, still enhanced
my estimate of the value of such knowledge, which indeed it is im-
possible to exaggerate, when regarding that one object of existence
which I suppose all persons desire to attain, viz., an ample duration
of time for enjoying the healthy exercise of bodily and mental func-
tion. Few would, I presume, consider length of life a boon apart

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from the possession of fairly good health ; but this latter being grant-
ed, the desire for a prolonged term of existence appears to be almost
universal.

I have come to the conclusion that a proportion amounting at
least to more than one half of the disease which imbitters the middle
and latter part of life among the middle and upper classes of the
population is due to avoidable errors in diet. Further, while such
disease renders so much of life, for many, disappointing, unhappy,
and profitless, a term of painful endurance, for not a few it shortens
life considerably. It would not be a difficult task — and its results if
displayed here would be striking — to adduce in support of these views
a numerical statement showing causes which prematurely terminate
life among the classes referred to in this country, based upon the
Registrar-General's reports, or by consulting the records of life-assur-
ance experience. I shall not avail myself of these materials in this
place, although it would be right to do so in the columns of a medical
journal. My object here is to call the attention of the public to cer-
tain facts about diet which are insufficiently known, and therefore in-
adequately appreciated. And I shall assume that ample warrant for
the observations made* here is within my reach, and can be made avail-
able if required.

At the outset of the few and brief remarks which the space at my
disposal permits me to make, I shall intimate, speaking in general
terms, that I have no sympathy with any dietary system which excludes
the present generally recognized sources and varieties of food. It is
possible, indeed, that we may yet add considerably to those we already
possess, and with advantage ; but there appears to be no reason for
dispensing with anyone of them. When we consider how varied are
the races of man, and how dissimilar are the climatic conditions which
affect him, and how in each climate the occupations, the surrounding
circumstances, and even the individual peculiarities of the inhabitants,
largely differ, we shall be constrained to admit that any one of all
the sources of food hitherto known may be made available, may in
its turn become desirable, and even essential to life.

To an inhabitant of the Arctic Circle, for example, a vegetarian
diet would be impracticable, because the elements of it can not be
produced in that region ; and, were it possible to supply him with
them, life could not be supported thereby. Animal food in large
quantity is necessary to sustain existence in the low temperature to
which he is exposed. But I desire to oppose any scheme for circum-
scribing the food resources of the world, and any form of a statute
of limitations to our diet, not merely because it can be proved inappli-
cable, as in the case of the Esquimaux, under certain local and circum-
scribed conditions, but because I hold that the principle of limiting
mankind to the use of any one class of foods among many is in itself
an erroneous one. Thus, for example, while sympathizing to a large

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 325

extent myself with the practice of what is called " vegetarianism " in
diet, and knowing how valuable the exclusive or almost exclusive use
of the products of the vegetable kingdom may be for a considerable
number of the adult population of our own and of other countries in
the temperate zones, and for most of that which inhabits the torrid
zone, I object strongly to a dogmatic assertion that such limitation of
their food is desirable for any class or body of persons whatever.
Moreover, an exclusive or sectarian spirit always creeps in sooner or
later, wherever an " ism " of any kind leads the way, which sooner or
later brings in its train assertions barely supported by fact, the equiv-
ocal use of terms, evasion — in short, untruthfulness, unintended and
unperceived by the well-meaning people who, having adopted the
"ism," at last suffer quite unconsciously from obscurity of vision, and
are in danger of becoming blind partisans.

Thus the term " vegetarian," as used to distinguish a peculiar diet,
has no meaning whatever unless it implies that all the articles of food
so comprised are to be products of the vegetable kingdom ; admitting,
of course, the very widest scope to that term. In that sense the vege-
table kingdom may be held to embrace all the cereals, as wheat, barley,
rye, and oats, maize, rice, and millet ; all the leguminous plants — beans,
peas, and lentils ; all the roots and tubers containing chiefly starch, as
the potato, yam, etc. ; the plants yielding sago and arrowroot ; the
sources of sugar in the cane and beet, etc. ; all the garden herbs and
vegetables ; the nuts, and all the fruits. Then there are the olive and
other plants yielding the important element of oil in great abundance.
An admirable assortment, to which a few minor articles belong, not
necessary to be specified here. An excellent display of foods, which
suffice to support life in certain favorable conditions, and which may
be served in varied and appetizing forms. And to those who find
their dietary within the limits of this list the name of vegetarian is
rightly applicable. But such is by no means the practice of the self-
styled vegetarians we usually meet with. It was only the other even-
ing, in a crowded drawing-room, that a handsome, well-developed, and
manifestly well-nourished girl — "a picture of health" and vigor — in-
formed me with extreme satisfaction that she had been a " vegetarian "
for several months, and how thoroughly that dietary system agreed with
her. She added that she was recommending all her friends (how natu-
ral !) to be vegetarians also, continuing, "And do you not believe I am
right?" On all grounds, one could only assure her that she had the
appearance of admirably illustrating the theory of her daily life,
whatever that might be, adding, "But now will you tell me what your
diet consists of ? " As happens in nineteen cases out of twenty, my
young and blooming vegetarian replied that she took an egg and milk
in quantity, besides butter, not only at breakfast, but again in the
form of pudding, pastry, fritter, or cake, etc., to say nothing of
cheese at each of the two subsequent meals of the day : animal food,

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is unnecessary to say, of a choice, and some of it in a concentrated
form. To call a person thus fed a vegetarian is a palpable error ; to
proclaim one's self so almost requires a stronger term to denote the
departure from accuracy involved. Yet so attractive to some, possess-
ing a moral sense not too punctilious, is the small distinction attained
by becoming sectarian, and partisans of a quasi-novel and somewhat
questioned doctrine, that an equivocal position is accepted in order to
retain if possible the term " vegetarian " as the ensign of a party, the
members of which consume abundantly strong animal food, abjuring
it only in its grosser forms of flesh and fish. And hence it happens,
as I have lately learned, that milk, butter, eggs, and cheese are now
designated in the language of " vegetarianism " by the term " animal
products," an ingenious but evasive expedient to avoid the necessity
for speaking of them as animal food !

Let us, for one moment only, regard milk, with which, on Nature's
plan, we have all been fed for the first year, or thereabout, of our
lives, and during which term we made a larger growth and a more
important development than in any other year among the whole tale
of the life which has passed, however long it may have been. How,
in any sense, can that year of plenty and expansion, which we may
have been happy and fortunate enough to owe — an inextinguishable
debt — to maternal love and bounty, be said to be a year of "vegeta-
rian diet " ! Will any man henceforward dare thus to distinguish the
source from which he drew his early life ? Unhappily, indeed, for
want of wisdom, the natural ration of some infants is occasionally
supplemented at an early period by the addition of vegetable matter ;
but the practice is almost always undesirable, and is generally paid
for by a sad and premature experience of indigestion to the helpless
baby. Poor baby ! who, unlike its progenitors in similar circumstances,
while forced to pay the penalty, has not even had the satisfaction of
enjoying a delightful but naughty dish beforehand.

The vegetarian restaurant at the Health Exhibition last summer
supplied thousands of excellent and nutritious meals at a cheap rate,
to the great advantage of its customers ; but the practice of insist-
ing with emphasis that a "vegetable diet" was supplied was wholly
indefensible, since it contained eggs and milk, butter and cheese in
great abundance.

It is not more than six months since I observed in a well-known
weekly journal a list of some half-dozen receipts for dishes recom-
mended on authority as specimens of vegetarian diet. All were savory
combinations, and every one contained eggs, butter, milk, and cheese
in considerable quantity, the vegetable elements being in comparatively
small proportion !

It is incumbent on the supporters of this system of mixed diet to
find a term which conveys the truth, that truth being that they abjure
the use, as food, of all animal flesh. The words " vegetable " and

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 327

" vegetarian " have not the remotest claim to express that fact, while
they have an express meaning of their own in daily use — namely, the
ohvious one of designating products of the vegetable kingdom. It
may not be easy at once to construct a simple term which differentiates
clearly from the true vegetarian the person who also uses various
foods belonging to the animal kigndom, and who abjures only the
flesh of animals. But it is high time that we should be spared the
obscure language, or rather the inaccurate statement, to which milk
and ee^ consumers are committed, in assuming a title which has for
centuries belonged to that not inconsiderable body of persons whose
habits of life confer the right to use it. And I feel sure that my
friends "the vegetarians," living on a mixed diet, will see the necessity
of seeking a more appropriate designation to distinguish them ; if not,
we must endeavor to invent one for them.

But why should we limit by dogma or otherwise man's liberty to
select his food and drink? I appreciate the reason for abstaining
from alcoholic drinks derived from benevolent motive or religious
principle, and entertain for it the highest respect, although I can not
myself claim the merit of self-denial or the credit of setting an ex-
ample— abstaining, like many others, solely because experience has
taught that to act otherwise is manifestly to do myself an injury.

This brings me to the point which I desire to establish, namely,
that the great practical rule of life in regard of human diet will not
be found in enforcing limitation of the sources of food which Nature
has abundantly provided. On the contrary, that rule is fulfilled in the
perfect development of the art of adapting food of any and every kind
to the needs of the body according to the very varied circumstances
of the individual, at different ages, with different forms of activity, with
different inherent personal peculiarities, and with different environ-
ments. This may read at first sight, perhaps, like a truism ; but how
important is the doctrine, and how completely it is ignored in the
experience of life by most people, it will be my object here to show.

I have already alluded to the fact that the young and rapidly grow-
ing infant, whose structures have to be formed on the soft and slender
lines laid down before birth, whose organs have to be solidified and
expanded at one and the same time, in which tissues of all kinds are
formed with immense rapidity and activity, requires animal food
ready prepared in the most soluble form for digestion and assimila-
tion. Such a food is milk ; and, if the human supply is insufficient,
we obtain in its place that of the cow, chiefly ; and during the first
year of life milk constitutes the best form of food. After that time
other kinds of nourishment, mostly well-cooked wheaten flour in
various shapes, begin to be added to the milk which long continues to
be a staple source of nourishment to the young animal. Eggs, a still
more concentrated form of similar food, follow, and ultimately the
dietary is enlarged by additions of various kinds, as the growing pro-

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cess continues through youth to puberty, when liberty arrives more
or less speedily to do in all such matters " as others do." On reach-
ing manhood, the individual in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
acquires the prevailing habit of his associates, and he feeds after that
uniform prescription of diet which prevails, with little disposition to
question its suitability to himself. A young fellow in the fullness of
health, and habituated to daily active life in the open air, may, under
the stimulus of appetite and enjoyment in gratifying it, often largely
exceed both in quantity and variety of food what is necessary to sup-
ply all the demands of his system, without paying a very exorbitant
price for the indulgence. If the stomach is sensitive or not very
powerful, it sometimes rejects an extravagant ration of food, either at
once or soon after the surfeit has been committed ; but, if the digest-
ive force is considerable, the meals, habitually superabundant as they
may be, are gradually absorbed, and the surplus fund of nutrient ma-
terial unused is stored up in some form. When a certain amount has
been thus disposed of, the capacity for storage varying greatly in dif-
ferent persons, an undesirable balance remains against the feeder, and
in young people is mostly rectified by a "bilious attack," through the
agency of which a few hours of vomiting and misery square the ac-
count. Then the same process of overfeeding recommences with re-
newed appetite and sensations of invigorated digestion, until in two or
three, or five or six weeks, according to the ratio existing between the
amount of food ingested and the habit of expending or eliminating it
from the body, the recurring attack appears and again clears the sys-
tem, and so on during several years of life. If the individual takes
abundant exercise and expends much energy in the business of life, a
large quantity of food can be properly disposed of. Such a person en-
joys the pleasure of satisfying a healthy appetite, and doing so with
ordinary prudence not only takes no harm, but consolidates the frame
and enables it to resist those manifold unseen sources of evil which are
prone to affect injuriously the feeble. On the other hand, if he is in-
active, takes little exercise, spends most of his time in close air and in
a warm temperature, shaping his diet nevertheless on the liberal scheme
just described, the balance of unexpended nutriment soon tells more
or less heavily against him, and must be thrown off in some form or
another.

After the first half or so of life has passed away, instead of periodi-
cal sickness, the unemployed material may be relegated in the form
of fat to be stored on the external surface of the body, or be packed
among the internal organs, and thus he or she may become corpulent
and heavy, if a facility for converting appropriate material into fat is
consistent with the constitution of the individual ; for some constitu-
tions appear to be without the power of storing fat, however rich the
diet or inactive their habits may be. When, therefore, this process can
not take place, and in many instances also when it is in action, the

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 329

oversupply of nutritious elements ingested must go somewhere, more
or less directly", to produce disease in some other form, probably at
first interfering with the action of the liver, and next appearing as gout
or rheumatism, or to cause fluxes and obstructions of various kinds.
Thus recurring attacks of gout perform the same duty, or nearly so,
at this period of life, that the bilious attacks accomplished in youth,
only the former process is far more damaging to the constitution and
materially injures it. In relation to liver derangement and inordinate
fat production, we may see the process rapidly performed before our
eyes, if we so desire, in the cellars of Strasburg. For the unfortunate
goose who is made by force to swallow more nutritive matter than is
good for him in the shape of food which, excellent in appropriate con-
ditions, is noxious to the last degree when not expended by the con-
sumer— I mean good milk and barley-meal — falls a victim in less than
a month of this gluttonous living to that form of fatty liver which
under the name of foie gras offers an irresistible charm to the gour-
met at most well- furnished tables.* The animal being thus fed is kept
in a close, warm temperature and without exercise, a mode of feeding
and a kind of life which one need not after all go to Strasburg to
observe, since it is not difficult to find an approach to it, and to watch
the principle carried out, although only to a less considerable extent,
anywhere and everywhere around us. Numerous individuals of both
sexes, who have no claim by the possession of ornithological character-
istics to consanguinity with the animal just named, may be said never-
less to manifest signs of relation in some sort thereto — not creditable
perhaps — to the goose, the Strasburg dietary being an enforced one —
by their habit of absorbing superfluous quantities of nutriment while
living a life of inactivity, and of course sooner or later become invalid
in body, unhappy in temper, and decrepit in regard of mental power.

For let us observe that there are two forces concerned in this mat-
ter of bountiful feeding which must be considered a little further. I
have said that a hearty, active young fellow may eat, perhaps, almost
twice as much as he requires to replace the expenditure of his life and
repair the loss of the machine in its working without much inconven-
ience. He, being robust and young, has two functions capable of act-
ing at the maximum degree of efficiency. He has a strong digestion,
and can convert a large mass of food into fluid aliment suitable for
absorption into the system : that is function the first. But, besides
this, he has the power of bringing into play an active eliminating force,
which rids him of all the superfluous materials otherwise destined,

* In passing I would strongly commend the condition of those poor beasts to the con-
sideration of the Antivivisection Society, since more disease is artificially produced among
them in order to furnish our tables with the " pdle " than by all the physiologists of Eu-
rope who in the interest, not of the human palate, but of human progress as affected by
therapeutic knowledge, sometimes propagate and observe certain unknown forms of dis-
ease among a few of the lower animals.

33o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as we have seen, to become mischievous in some shape : and that is
function the second. To him it is a matter of indifference for a time
whether the quantity of material which his food supplies to the body
is greater than his ordinary daily expenditure demands, because his
energy and activity furnish unstinted opportunities of eliminating the
surplus at all times. But the neglect to adjust a due relation between
the " income " and the " output " can not go on forever without signs
of mischief in some quarter. A tolerably even correspondence between
the two must by some means be maintained to insure a healthy condi-
tion of the body. It is failure to understand, first, the importance of
preserving a near approach to equality between the supply of nutri-
ment to the body and the expenditure produced by the activity of the
latter, and, secondly, ignorance of the method of attaining this object
in practice, which give rise to various forms of disease calculated to im-
bitter and shorten life after the period of prime has passed.

Let it be understood that in the matters of feeding and bodily activ-
ity a surplus of unexpended sustenance — here referred to as " the bal-
ance " — is by its nature exactly opposite to that which prudent men
desire to hold with their bankers in affairs of finance. In this respect
we desire to augment the income, endeavoring to confine expenditure
within such limits as to maintain a cash balance in our favor to meet
exigencies not perhaps foreseen. But, in order to preserve our health
when that period of blatant, rampant, irrepressible vigor which belongs
to youth has passed away, it is time to see that our income of food
and our expenditure through such activity as we have constitute a
harmonious equality, or nearly so. It is the balance against us of
nutritive material which becomes a source of evil. And it is a balance
which it is so agreeable and so easy to form, and which often so insidi-
ously augments, unless we are on our guard against the danger. The
accumulated stores of aliment, the unspent food, so to speak, which
saturate the system are happily often got rid of by those special exer-
cises to which so large a portion of time and energy is devoted by
some people. It is to this end that men at home use dumb-bells or
heavy clubs, or abroad shoot, hunt, and row, or perform athletic and
pedestrian feats, or sweat in Turkish baths, or undergo a drench at
some foreign watering-place — all useful exercises in their way, but
pursued to an extent unnecessary for any other purpose than to elimi-
nate superfluous nutrient materials, which are occasioning derange-
ments in the svstem, for which these modes of elimination are the most
efficient cure, and are thus often ordered by the medical adviser. But
as we increase in age — when we have spent, say, our first half-century
— less energy and activity remain, and less expenditure can be made ;
less power to eliminate is possible at fifty than at thirty, still less at
sixty and upward. Less nutriment, therefore, must be taken in pro-
portion as age advances, or rather as activity diminishes, or the indi-
vidual will suffer. If he continues to consume the same abundant

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 331

breakfasts, substantial lunches, and heavy dinners, which at the summit
of his power he could dispose of almost with impunity, he will in time
certainly either accumulate fat or become acquainted with gout or
rheumatism, or show signs of unhealthy deposit of some kind in some
part of the body, processes which must inevitably empoison, under-
mine, or shorten his remaining term of life. He must reduce his " in-
take," because a smaller expenditure is an enforced condition of exist-
ence. At seventy the man's power has further diminished, and the
nutriment must correspond thereto if he desires still another term of
comfortable life. And why should he not ? Then at eighty, with less
activity there must be still less " support." And on this principle he
may yet long continue, provided he is not the victim of an inherited
taint or vice of system too powerful to be dominated, or that no
unhappy accident inflicts a lasting injury on the machine, or no unfor-
tunate exposure to insanitary poison has shaken the frame by long,
exhausting fever ; and then with a fair constitution he may remain
free from serious troubles, and active to a right good old age, reach-
ing far beyond the conventional seventy years which were formerly
supposed to represent the full limit of man's fruitful life and work on
earth.

But how opposed is this system to the favorite popular theory!
Have we not all been brought up in the belief that the perfection of
conduct consists, truly enough, in temperate habits in youth and
middle life, such duty, however, being mostly enforced by the pleasant
belief that when age arrived we might indulge in that extra " support "
— seductive term, often fruitful of mischief — which the feebleness of
advancing years is supposed to deserve? The little sensual luxuries,
hitherto forbidden, now suggested by the lips of loving woman, and
tendered in the confidence of well-doing by affectionate hands, are
henceforth to be gratefully accepted, enjoyed, and turned to profit in
the evening of our declining years. The extra glass of cordial, the
superlatively strong extract of food, are now to become delicate and
appropriate aids to the enfeebled frame. Unhappily for this doctrine,
it is, on the contrary, precisely at this period that concentrated ali-
ments are not advantageous or wholesome, but are to be avoided as
sources generally prolific of trouble. If the cordial glass and the rich
food are to be enjoyed at any time, whether prudently or otherwise,
like other pleasures they must be indulged when strength and activity
are great, in other words, when eliminating power is at its maximum,
assuredly not when the circulation is becoming slow and feeble, and
the springs of life are on the ebb. For the flow of blood can not be
driven into any semblance of the youthful torrent by the temporary
force of stimulants, nor is it to be overcharged by the constant addi-
tion of rich elements which can no longer be utilized. And thus
it is impossible to deny that an unsuspected source of discomfort,
which in time may become disease, sometimes threatens the head of

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the household — a source which I would gladly pass over if duty did
not compel me to notice it, owing as it is to the sedulous and tender
care taken by the devoted, anxiou3 partner of his life, who in secret
has long noted and grieved over her lord's declining health and force.
She observes that he is now more fatigued than formerly after the
labors of the day, is less vigorous for business, for exercise, or for
sport, less energetic every way in design and execution. She naturally
desires to see him stronger, to sustain the enfeebled power which age
is necessarily undermining ; and with her there is but one idea, and it
is practically embodied in one method — viz., to increase his force by
augmenting his nourishment ! She remonstrates at every meal at what
she painfully feels is the insufficient portion of food he consumes. He
pleads in excuse, almost with the consciousness of guilt, that he has
really eaten all that appetite permits, but he is besought with plaintive
voice and affectionate entreaty " to try and take a little more," and,
partly to stay the current of gentle complaint, partly to gratify his
companion, and partly, as with a faint internal sigh he may confess to
himself, " for peace and comfort's sake," he assents, and with some
violence to his nature forces his palate to comply, thus adding a slight
burden to the already satiated stomach. Or if, perchance, endowed
with a less compliant nature, he is churlish enough to decline the prof-
fered advice, and even to question the value of a cup of strong beef-
tea, or egg whipped up with sherry, which unsought has pursued him
to his studv, or been sent to his office between eleven and twelve of
the forenoon, and which he knows by experience must if swallowed
inevitably impair an appetite for lunch, then not improbably he will
fall a victim to his solicitous helpmeet's well-meaning designs in some
other shape. There is the tasteless calf's-foot jelly, of which a portion
may be surreptitiously introduced into a bowl of tea with small chance
that its presence will be detected, especially if accompanied by a good
modicum of cream ; or the little cup of cocoa or of coffee masking an
egg well beaten and smoothly blended to tempt the palate — types of
certain small diplomatic exercises, delightful, first, because they are
diplomatic and not direct in execution ; and, secondly, because the
supporting system has been triumphantly maintained, my lord's natural
and instinctive objections thereto notwithstanding.

But the loving wife — for whom my sympathy is not more profound
than is my sorrow for her almost incurable error in relation to this
single department of her duty — is by no means the only source of
fallacious counsel to the man whose strength is slowly declining with
age. We might almost imagine him to be the object of a conspiracy,
so numerous are the temptations which beset him on every side. The
daily and weekly journals display column after column of advertise-
ments, enumerating all manner of edibles and drinkables, and loudly
trumpeting their virtues, the chief of which is always declared to be
the abundance of some quality averred to be at once medicinal and

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 333

nutritious. Is it bread that we are conjured to buy? Then it is
warranted to contain some chemical element ; let it be, for example,
" the phosphates in large proportion " — a mysterious term which the
advertising tradesman has for some time past employed to signify a
precious element, the very elixir of life, which somehow or other he
has led the public to associate with the nutriment of the brain and
nervous system, and vaunts accordingly. He has evidently caught
the notion from the advertising druggist, who loudly declares his
special forms of half-food, half-physic, or his medicated preparations
of beef and mutton, to contain the elements of nutrition in the highest
form of concentration, among which have mostly figured the aforesaid
•' phosphates " — as if they were not among the most common and
generally prevalent of the earthy constituents of all our food ! Then,
lest haply a stomach, unaccustomed to the new and highly concen-
trated materials, should, as is not improbable, find itself unequal to
the task of digesting and absorbing them, a portion of gastric juice,
borrowed for the occasion, mostly from the pig, is associated therewith
to meet, if possible, that difficulty, and so to introduce the nourish-
ment by hook or by crook into the system. I don't say the method
described may not be useful in certain cases, and on the advice of the
experienced physician, for a patient exhausted by disease, whose sal-
vation may depend upon the happy combination referred to. But it
is the popular belief in the impossibility of having too much of that
or of any such good thing, provided only it consists of nutritious food,
that the advertiser appeals to, and appeals successfully, and with such
effect that the credulous public is being gulled to an enormous extent.
Then even our drink must now be nutritious ! Most persons
might naturally be aware that the primary object of drink is to satisfy
thirst, which means a craving for the supply of water to the tissues —
the only fluid they demand and utilize when the sensation in question
is felt. Water is a solvent of solids, and is more powerful to this end
when employed free from admixture with any other solid material.
It may be flavored, as in tea and otherwise, without impairing its
solvent power, but when mixed with any concrete matter, as in choco-
late, thick cocoa, or even with milk, its capacity for dissolving —
the very quality for which it was demanded — is in great part lost. So
plentiful is nutriment in solid food, that the very last place where we
should seek that quality is the drink which accompanies the ordinary
meal. Here at least we might hoj>e to be free from an exhortation
to nourish ourselves, when desirous only to allay thirst or moisten our
solid morsels with a draught of fluid. Not so ; there are even some
persons who must wash down their ample slices of roast beef with
draughts of new milk ! — an unwisely devised combination even for
those of active habit, but for men and women whose lives are little
occupied by exercise it is one of the greatest dietary blunders which
can be perpetrated.

334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

One would think it was generally known that milk is a peculiarly
nutritive fluid, adapted for the fast-growing and fattening young
mammal — admirable for such, for our small children, also serviceable
to those whose muscular exertion is great, and, when it agrees with
the stomach, to those who can not take meat. For us who have long
ago achieved our full growth, and can thrive on solid fare, it is alto-
gether superfluous and mostly mischievous as a drink. — Nineteenth

Century.

[To be continued,]

AN EXPEKIENCE WITH OPIUM.

By S. T. MOETON.

THE subject of the " opium-habit " is one that recurs with ominous
frequency in public print. Whenever touched upon, the inten-
sity of interest elicited in the minds of certain readers (alas ! how
large a number) would be incomprehensible to one not drawn person-
ally to it. That the literature of this subject is mainly very discour-
aging and unhelpful to this class is perhaps not the fault of its authors ;
but such is uniformly the case. Of innumerable articles in periodicals
and books by the dozen which I have read, it must be said that, while
the evils of the "habit" ai'e pictured in burning lines, when the dis-
cussion of treatment is reached, the habitue is left to believe that, in
his case, if it be not impossible of cure, an attempt at total abandon-
ment— with whatever medical skill he could command — would be at-
tended with such hazards, and would inflict such tortures, mental and
physical, as would be beyond the average power of endurance.

Unquestionably but a small portion of the general public — of
those, too, who know something of its blighting evils — have any
adequate idea of the strength of this " habit," and of the great diffi-
culty, or impossibility, in most cases, of unaided cure. The chief re-
sponsibility, indeed, with the habitue lies in his initiation rather than
in his continuance of the " habit." He can not, like the user of alco-
hol or tobacco, by a strong effort of the will shake off his chains.

A pathetic story has lately come to my knowledge of a young man,
an under-graduate in an Eastern college, who had become a victim of
the hypodermic use of morphia. He went with his father, who was
engaged in the lumbering interest, into the primeval forests of Maine,
hoping that during a stay of months with the wood-choppers he would
be able to fight out the battle of gradual abandonment successfully.
Through a strange fatality, when the party had just arrived at their
camping-place, and were transporting their goods across a stream, the
case of morphia was broken by an apparent accident and its contents

AN EXPERIENCE WITH OPIUM. 335

scattered into the water. None but the haggard young man could,
at the moment, comprehend the appalling magnitude of the calamity
— there, as he was, two hundred miles from the nearest settlement !
He survived the terrible ordeal, but no words could express, he has
said, the tortures and agony through which he passed during the suc-
ceeding weeks. He was closely watched, else, at times, he would have
drowned himself or have beaten his brains out upon the rocks. Months
afterward he came back to the world a skeleton, worn and haggard,
from his terrible contest. It was an experience to which he could
never afterward refer without the most painful emotions.

Not the least significant point in this veritable account is the fact
that the young man always believed that his father had purposely
brought about the catastrophe for the sake of bringing matters to a
speedy end ! Has the usual treatment of the disease by physicians at
this day anything to offer that is much better than this man's sum-
mary method? Perhaps no work on the subject has appeared in
recent years more careful and thorough in its scientific intention than
Dr. Levinstein's "Morbid Craving for Morphia." It is evident that
he has brought no common accuracy of observation to bear upon the
subject. His clinical notes on a considerable number of cases of the
disease treated by him are of absorbing interest to the morphia
habitue.

There is a striking parallel between the method of the Maine lum-
berman I have described and that of advanced German science in the
treatment of this disease. In both cases the patient suffers from the
intense cruelty of ignorance ! The best thing to do for the unfortu-
nate victim of morphia, according to this learned work, is to secure
him in rooms under charge of a competent keeper or nurse, his person
and baggage having been searched, and from the rooms " all opportu-
nities for attempting suicide having been removed. Doors and win-
dows must not move on hinges, but on pivots ; must have neither
handles, nor bolts, nor keys ; being so constructed that the patients
can neither open nor shut them. Hooks for looking-glasses, for
clothes, and curtains, must be removed." Certainly these are ominous
preliminaries to a course of scientific medical treatment ! Within this
prison the patient is totally deprived at once of morphia in every
form, and here he must struggle through the terrible weeks succeed-
ing as best he may. So far as appears, he has but the slightest medical
aid. His symptoms are closely watched, however, for the portentous
shadow of one special danger looms ever near his bedside — that of a
sudden collapse of his vital powers. A few moments' delay in such a
contingency may prevent all power of resuscitation ; in any case, the
situation is very critical. Fortunate will it be if morphia, which is
always the immediate resort in such emergencies, have not lost its
potency !

I will not recount the story of the tortures through which the

336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

patient passes — the days and nights of writhing, the sleeplessness,
the restlessness, the thirst, and endless vomitings and purgings ; his
vain pleadings for liberty, for morphia, for anything which will re-
lieve the intolerable anguish ! These clinical notes of Levinstein's, in
form cold and terse as a hardware catalogue, are fairly burning with
their burden of tragedy. But this treatment he offers as the best
known, and its attendant sufferings he evidently believes are inevi-
table in any cure !

It has happened to me to know, through personal experience, that
the unfortunate victim of this " habit " can be freed from his bondage
without passing through such an ordeal.

I had been an habitue ten years, having reached at the end of that
period the daily amount of thirty-six grains of gum-opium, taken only
into the stomach. The "habit" had been begun by a very small
amount, and its increase had been extremely gradual. I knew not
where to turn for help in effecting a cure : one thing seemed certain,
it could not be done without help. At a venture merely, I called
upon the late Dr. George M. Beard, feeling that, at any rate, I should
be free from the risk of charlatanism ; and I shall always remember
him with gratitude, for it was through his recommendation that I
placed myself under the care of another physician, who immediately
undertook the treatment of my case.

The gentleman whom, through the good fortune of Dr. Beard's
introduction, I thus came to know, I found to be a young man in the
prime of good health and spirits, and one who at once inspired me
with that confidence so important in such a case. His residence, it
was manifest, was no ordinary "institute" or "asylum." I was sim-
ply a courteously received guest in a private family. Here were two
bright children quietly pursuing their games when I first entered ; and
I was soon introduced to a pleasant circle embracing the cultivated
ladies of the doctor's family, as well as the three who were to under-
take the new path simultaneously with myself. Among these good
fellows, as I soon found them to be, I was a simple layman in a medi-
cal " ring " as it were, for my comrades were young physicians, each
under the hypodermic spell, doctors though they were, helpless like
myself in the well-riveted chains. In this situation it is in no wise
easy to follow the injunction, "Physician, heal thyself."

Placed in these easy and pleasant relations, with every comfort,
and — a most important material consideration— an appetizing table,
everything outward was calculated to inspire a feeling of freedom and
cheerfulness. I speak particularly of these favorable surroundings,
for they seem to me to form a very important accessory of the treat-
ment.

This treatment differed in important respects from preconceived
ideas, such as are fostered by almost everything written upon the sub-
ject. The patient here, for instance, was under no surveillance and

AN EXPERIENCE WITH OPIUM.

337

restraint. So far from being a prisoner, he was encouraged in taking
walks and drives alone, or, with his fellow-patients, in attending even-
ing amusements, etc. It was the doctor's theory that a person of any
sensitiveness of nature could not rest under constant suspicion with-
out a sense of resentment which would be prejudicial to the cordial
relation which should always exist between physician and patient.
"I ask for and extend confidence," he said, "and believe I largely en-
hance a good result in so doing. Nor do I share in the opinion, largely
held, that no reliance is to be placed upon the word of the opium
habitue." Though he was well aware that this morbid habit in many
cases exerts a baneful influence on the moral character, it is manifest
that — were the doctor's theory of his patient's reliability and truthful-
ness altogether erroneous — any plan of treatment based upon it would
be entirely impracticable, however agreeable to the patients this view
of their character.

Within a week after the beginning of treatment my opiate was all
withdrawn. What I had undergone at the end of that period, and, in-
deed, for a day or two subsequent to the total discontinuance, could
scarcely be called suffering ; it was rather a dull, heavy listlessness, as
little painful as enjoyable. There was no mental or physical elasticity;
exercise was not inviting — nor, indeed, was there the physical ability
for it. It became impossible to read or even to think, except in an
idle way. There was no pain or nervousness ; but principally a feel-
ing of passive discomfort during this period, when the discontinuance
of opium, unaided, would have brought on penal tortures.

Thus " the Rubicon was crossed " — this being the exultant phrase
with which the doctor greeted one after the other of our little band,
as he passed over that hitherto impassable stream. But the few days
succeeding the total deprivation were not so passive. Though I had
landed on the other bank of that classic stream, the tu<r of war was
yet to come. That power in the human system which at times seems
endowed with a personality of its own — that dual existence, as it were,
with its Briarean arms of nerves — revolted. There was a period of
disturbance and prostration of strength, with some restlessness. I was
for a while the prey of illusions of sight and sound. " Materialized
spirits" from the other world seemed at times to hover about my bed,
as visible, if not as palpable, as the furniture of my room. But more
deceptive still was a loud, sharp voice by which I was addressed occa-
sionally, it seemed, by some person concealed behind the head-board
of the bedstead ; no speech of man will ever sound more real to me.
These were illusions of my waking hours. But the period of prostra-
tion which they accompanied was short ; and within a few days I
again took my place at the table with the family.

More or less insomnia is probably inevitable under any circum-
stances after the discontinuance of opium. In my convalescence — and
the experience was parallel with that of my fellow-patients — it was
vol. xxvn. — 22

338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the principal difficulty to overcome. At tbe worst, however, I passed
no night without some sleep. Hypnotics were used at first, but were
very soon altogether discontinued ; for the sooner the system should
discover, so to speak, that no outside aid was to be expected, the
better.

The term of my stay under treatment was just four weeks, and the
latter half of this may be considered the period of convalescence.
There was soon an incoming tide of vitality that transformed the
world. This came while my physical strength was still slight, and
the amount of sleep to be obtained scanty. But the morning star had
arisen above the horizon, and brought an indescribable feeling of re-
newed hope and courage. Perhaps no after-experience of life will
bring again that exquisite sensitiveness to every emotional touch which
lasted for two or three days at this early stage of recovery, when the
soul was bathed in an atmosphere of joy, and the most commonplace
incident would excite a thrill of bliss — when a chance strain of music
would bring tears of rapture. This, of course, was not a normal con-
dition, but was the effect of reaction in the newly awakened powers of
the system. One main symptom thereafter was a peculiar lassitude —
inertia. The will-power seemed to be under some strange thralldom,
and one found himself under the greatest difficulty in bringing himself
to perform some of the simplest actions. Another symptom — which
persisted in some cases much longer than it did in others — was what
may be called a dislocation of ideas, or at least a lack of relation be-
tween thought and its embodiment in language. The patient would
have great difficulty in finding the right expression ; he would use
words with a most ridiculous misapplication, to his intense mortifica-
tion. He could not, for the life of him, " call a spade a spade," but
would call it almost any other implement or thing imaginable. In my
own case, however, this trouble was slight.

At the end of my four weeks' stay I had nearly recovered my
regular hours of sleep, and had gained very materially in general tone
and strength. With the exception noted above, I had been receiving
only tonic treatment ; and after leaving my physician's care the only
medicines taken were quinine, in tonic doses, and cod-liver oil. It is
unnecessary to recount here all the stages of convalescence. Very
soon after leaving I had a period of two or three weeks of wonderful
elasticity — in fact, of the most perfect health. But this was soon suc-
ceeded by a return of the former lassitude and disturbance. There
were many such oscillations in the succeeding months ; there were
periods when the past seemed blotted out in a sense of renewed vigor
and strength, followed by weeks when, without any immediate osten-
sible cause, the tide was at ebb. These were not times of mental
despondency, but rather of physical depression and neuralgic disturb-
ance. But there was all the while a steady improvement in general
health, with an increasing infrequence of reminders of the "old

AN EXPERIENCE WITH OPIUM. 339

enemy." During the first three months I gained over twenty pounds
in weight.

There is one thing which the habitu'e, wishing to be cured would
perhaps anticipate with dread ; that is, an insatiable craving for the
old stimulant, and a consequent prolonged and weary resistance of
temptation. I can only say that, greatly to my surprise, I have felt
no craving for it at any time since the beginning of my treatment.
This may seem a strange statement to any one under the sorcery of the
drug, and conscious of its fearful grip. There is of course the knowl-
edge, from experience, of the marvelous potency of opium in annul-
ling all discomfort and distress of body or mind ; but this is all. The
sense of profound satisfaction, ever present, at the release from its
slavery, as well as a lively appreciation of the great danger of again
tampering with it, is sufficient to leave the temptation — whatever it
may be — from such knowledge, powerless.

The special effect of opium on the system is functional. This fact
is one great encouragement in attempting a cure from the " habit."
The sudden recuperative power manifested, after this paralyzing dead-
weight is removed, is a great surprise to the patient. Difficulties which
had borne to him the grave aspect of serious organic disease vanish as
by magic.

There was no secret about this treatment — there were no wonderful
remedies unknown to the world used. The therapeutics included
bromide of sodium, hot baths, electricity, and other well-known seda-
tive and tonic medicines. The key-stone of the treatment is in prelim-
inary sedation ; that is, while the morphia is being rapidly withdrawn
— during a period varying from seven to ten days — the nervous sys-
tem is, at the same time, as rapidly brought under the influence of an
efficient sedative, which reaches its maximum effect at the time of
complete opiate withdrawal.

Two years have passed since my escape from the thralldom of
opium, and during the far larger portion of that time I could record
an experience of renewed vitality — a condition of vigor and elasticity
that could only have its origin in perfect health. I use no stimulants
whatever, other than tea and coffee ; and my health has now been so
long fully re-established that I feel the better assured in giving some
account of my personal experience. I shall be glad if the narrative be
of encouragement to others in the same strait — those who have here-
tofore believed escape from their situation only possible through
prolonged agonies. The inevitable chasm which must be crossed in
effecting a cure of the opium-disease can be bridged, as I found. One
must know something of the breadth and depth of that chasm, to be
able to appreciate the achievement.

34o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SOME SELF-MADE ASTRONOMEES.

By E. LAGEANGE.

OUR purpose is to inquire briefly, illustrating our research by a
few eminent examples, bow men become astronomers, or, in
general, bow those wbo achieve distinction in that profession are di-
rected to it. No one is destined to astronomy from his childhood.
No fathers in forecasting the future of their sons ever think of pre-
paring them especially for so unpractical a business, one so far from
any of the roads to fortune as the study of the skies. Some particular
conditions, independent of parental views of the career their sons are
to follow, outside of anything that is contemplated in arranging the
course of their studies in school, must contribute to lead a youth to
consecrate his life to this pursuit. How, then, we ask again, does one
become an astronomer? Well, he begins by taking up some other
career — that of watch-maker, for instance, or of writing-master, clergy-
man, revenue officer, carpenter, bookseller, doctor, or perhaps shep-
herd, musician, or tradesman ; and then, some day, if the thing is to
be, some little incident determines it : the die is cast, and he becomes
an astronomer. Nothing in particular is done ; there are no parental
lamentations or reproaches of friends who think you are a fool ; you
go your way, to the university if you can pay the cost, or straight to
the observatory of which you are to become the director, to the dis-
gust of the assiduous students who have been cramming for the ex-
aminations. This is the history of Hansen. He was watch-maker, and
was called in one day to a scientific man's house to repair a clock.
Having to wait a little while in the laboratory till the gentleman came
in, be casually picked up a book, which proved to be a geometry. The
man of science came in, and, finding him interested in the book, lent it
to him. ' Hansen devoured it ; the man lent him other books, and he
gave himself up to them as a miss would to a novel she was forbidden
to read. Two years after this, Hansen, at thirty years of age, was
director of the observatory at Gotha, where he performed his cele-
brated labors on the motions of the moon.

Madler was a writing-master till he was forty-five years old, when
all at once it came into his head to make an astronomer of himself.
He obtained a place at the private observatory of Beer (brother of
Meyerbeer), where he drew a map of the moon. Shortly afterward,
be was placed by the Russian Government at the head of the Dorpat
Observatory, where he continued till his death, at the age of eighty-
three years.

Brunhs, director of the Leipsic Observatory, who died a short time
ago, was found by Humboldt in a locksmith's shop in Berlin, and ob-
tained through his influence a place in the observatory.

SOME SELF-MADE ASTRONOMERS. 341

Leverrier, who died Director of the Paris Observatory, and who
occupied himself more than any other astronomer with calculations
of the motions of the planets, was intended to be an engineer. He
was employed in the excise, when he suddenly discovered that the
science of the skies was his vocation. It is well known that astronomy
owes to him the discovery of the planet Neptune, which was the result
of a mathematical calculation.

Olbers, who contributed so much to the theory for determining
the orbits of comets, was a practicing physician in Bremen. He was
accustomed to spend his evenings at home, after the day's round of
calls, in reading for pleasure works on astronomy, to which science he
rendered considerable services, while as a doctor he was in no way
distinguished from the host of his competitors.

Th. von Oppolzer, to whom science is indebted for some splendid
labors, intended first to embrace the career of his father, who was a
distinguished physician ; but he had hardly got his first case, when he
was seized by the demon of astronomy ; and he forever abandoned his
early profession to devote himself to that science.

The great Herschel was a hautboy-player in a Hanoverian regi-
ment, and the thought of being an astronomer never occurred to him
till he was forty years old. At that time he wanted to get a telescope,
and, as he had no means with which to buy one, he made one himself,
and with it discovered Uranus. He was then made a doctor at Ox-
ford, and entered the service of the English Government, with whose
aid he was able to build his monster telescope. He afterward explored
the sky to very remote depths, discovering nebulas, and studying
double stars and clusters of stars.

The astronomers whose stories have just been told are not excep-
tions. It must rather be admitted, as a general rule, that all the men
who have made epochs in astronomy were deserters, or persons who had
left some other profession to engage in astronomy. The academicians
may confront me, on this point, with the life of the great Gauss. This
celebrated astronomer, one of the greatest of all time, did indeed
follow the direct road, but that was only because of his having, when
he was young, attracted the attention of the Duke Charles William
Ferdinand of Brunswick. It is very probable that, but for this cir-
cumstance, he would have become something very different, perhaps
a mason, or a fountain-builder, or an employe of the burial-ofiice —
three trades which his father carried on together. But it is quite as
certain that Gauss would sooner or later have become an astronomer
as that Raphael, as Lessing says, would have become a painter, even
if he had lost his hands.

Frederick William Bessel, one of the most eminent astronomers of
the nineteenth century, had been destined by his father to become a
merchant, and the young man, who had a strong distaste for Latin
and considerable fondness for mathematics, engaged in his studies

342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with relish, but did not particularly distinguish himself in them.
W hen fifteen years of age, on the 1st of January, 1799, he began his
apprenticeship to the merchant's career in a large commercial house
of Bremen, with a good-will. No one, and himself least of all, would
have dreamed then of his ever becoming celebrated. He was not at
all ambitious, and did not even seem to care to put himself in advance
of his colleagues. The only thing to remark about him was the con-
scientiousness with which he did his work. After this was done,
he would recreate himself by poring over old books, trying to make
himself familiar with all branches of commerce, and studying particu-
larly maritime commerce, in which he was specially interested. He
was thinking about his future, and perceived early that, to make his
fortune, he would have to try his lot across the sea, for he had no
means wherewith to establish himself.

The object of his desire at this time was to be able, as agent of one
of the great houses of Bremen or Hamburg, to direct a commercial
expedition to the Indies or China. With this purpose he diligently
studied English and French, and then bethought himself of what else
might be useful to him in the career he wished to embrace. Till this
time we see in his conduct no evidence of a disposition toward as-
tronomy. He was simply seeking to become a good merchant, and
all his efforts, day and night, were directed to that end. He was in
heart a merchant, and in course of becoming one, and yet we can not
doubt that there was developing in him at the very time the tendency
which was to lead him to the science of the sky.

In the course of the studies of which we have spoken, it occurred
to him that a ship-factor, such as he was going to be, undertaking
long voyages, and playing so prominent a part on the ship, ought to
know a little of the way in which it was to be directed. He had
heard that a new art had been discovered — that of sailing in the open
sea by observation of the stars, the moon, and the sun. Although the
sailors of the period cared to learn nothing of this new art, Bessel
hoped that by becoming master of it he might make himself respected
by his future captain. It was necessary to procure a sextant ; but
that was beyond the means of our clerk, so he made one for himself,
and assiduously took observations of the stars with it. He determined
the latitude and longitude of Bremen, as if he had been on board his
vessel. Thus, at nineteen years of age, he had set foot in the astronom-
ical field. He never left it, but delved in it more and more, though
without neglecting his commercial studies. He made his astronomical
recreations the occupation of his evening hours. It is with astronomy
as with love — the smallest spark is enough to kindle a lasting fire, if
only the subject is inflammable. This was what happened with Bes-
sel, and the flame that was lighted in his spirit was never extin-
guished.

The young man had read in his new book how, from the observa-

SOME SELF-MADE ASTRONOMERS. 343

tion of the stars, one might calculate the geographical position of the
spot where he happened to he. He sought to know why this was so.
For this purpose he had to study mathematics from its rudiments, and
was thus led up rapidly to spherical astronomy. He had to be con-
tinually introducing the elements of the position of the sun and moon
into his calculations, taking them from an astronomical calendar. He
desired to calculate these elements for himself. He was thus led to
study the laws of the motions of the celestial bodies. The net which
astronomical science had cast over him was thus wrapping him closer
every day, and in less than a year after he had begun his astronomical
studies he undertook the computation of the orbit of the comet of
1607, a work that involved three hundred pages of calculations, and
which a skilled astronomer might regard as the task of a year. He
was not a little proud of his calculations when he had completed them,
and he determined to make the acquaintance of Olbers, who was prac-
ticing medicine in Bremen, and was regarded as the first authority in
everything that related to comets. Meeting the famous doctor in the
street, he timidly told him he had calculated the orbit of a comet, and
asked him to have the kindness to examine his work. Olbers granted
the request, supposing that he was about to receive the work of an
amateur, whom he must treat politely, for fear of discouraging him.
But he was greatly surprised when he examined the calculations, and
he immediately wrote to Bessel : " I have read your work on the comet
of 1607 with very great pleasure. It gives me a very high idea of
your astronomical and mathematical knowledge, and of your skill in
the most difficult departments of calculation. If I should criticise you
on any point, it would be only on your having given more time and
care to the ancient observations than they deserve." If we place this
praise of Olbers by the side of the fact that Bessel did not know a
word of mathematics or astronomy a year before, or hardly that
there was such a thing as the mechanics and mathematics of the
sky, and if we also recollect that he was occupied from eight o'clock
in the morning till night with something entirely different, we can
gain a slight idea of the great energy and the rare mental constancy
which he must have displayed, and Avhich afterward carried him
so far.

Bessel's fate was decided. He was recommended by Olbers to
Gauss, who, in the same year, invited him to assist him in the calcu-
lations with which he was occupied. Bessel accepted the invitation
with enthusiasm, and, according to his habit, made the calculations
with more precision than was required. From that time Gauss and
Bessel were connected in a lasting scientific friendship.- Bessel was to
wait another year before giving himself up entirely to astronomy, but
early in 1806, warmly supported by Olbers, he was appointed inspector
of a private observatory at Lilienthal. He remained there four years,
till his reputation brought him a call to the direction of the new ob-

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

servatory at Kdnigsberg. At twenty-six years of age, without ever
having been in a university, he took rank as one of the first professors
in the University of Konigsberg.

We thus see that Bessel was, in the broadest sense of the word, a
self-made man. But it can not be said that he was a genius. Ideas
did not come to him as the manna to the children of Israel in the des-
ert. He acquired all his knowledge solely by his excessive application
and by his indomitable energy in pursuing the end he was aiming at.
I do not think that his natural talent exceeded the mean which Nature
has given to all. We feel, in reading Bessel, not the sense of a sud-
den induction — which is frequently given to the mathematician as well
as to the astronomer — but rather that of a continuous labor, which
draws new and exact conclusions from materials previously accumu-
lated, and knows how to make a practical use of. — Translated for the
Popular Science Monthly from Ciel et Terre.

■♦»»-

ON LEAVES.

Br Sib JOHN LUBBOCK.

I.

MR. RTJSKIN, in one of his most exquisite passages, has told us
that " flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary hu-
manity : children love them ; tender, contented, ordinary people love
them. They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded town
mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the
workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace." I should be un-
grateful indeed did I not fully feel the force of this truth ; but yet it
must be confessed that the beauty of our woods and fields is due at
least as much to foliage as to flowers.

In the words of the same author, " The leaves of the herbage at our
feet take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them.
Star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed,
cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated, in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in
wreaths, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from
footstalk to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness
and take delight in outstripping our wonder."

Now, why is this marvelous variety, this inexhaustible treasury
of beautiful forms ? Does it result from some innate tendency of
each species ? Is it intentionally designed to delight the eye of
man ? or have the form, and size, and texture some reference to the
structure and organization, the habits and requirements, of the whole
plant ?

ON LEAVES. 345

I do not propose now to discuss any of the more unusual and ab-
normal forms of leaves : the pitchers of Nepenthes or Gephalotus, the
pitfalls of Sarracenia or Darlingtonia, the spring -trap leaves of
Dionaza, the scarcely less effective though less striking contrivances
in our own Drosera or Pinguicula, nor the remarkable power of
movement which many leaves present, whether in response to an
external stimulus, as in certain mimosas, oxalises, etc., or as a spon-
taneous periodic movement, such as the "sleep" of many leaves, or
the nearly continuous rotation of the lateral leaflets of Desmodium.
I propose, rather, to ask you to consider with me the structure, and
especially the forms, of the common every-day leaves of our woods
and fields.

In talking the subject over with friends, I have found a widely
prevalent idea that the beauty and variety of leaves are a beneficent
arrangement made specially with reference to the enjoyment and de-
light of man. I have, again, frequently been met by the opinion that
there is some special form, size, and texture of leaf inherently char-
acteristic of each species ; that the cellular tissue tends to " crystallize,"
as it were, into some particular form, quite irrespective of any advan-
tage to the plant itself.

Neither of these will, I think, stand the test of careful examination.

In the first place, let us consider the size of the leaf. On what does
this depend ? In herbs we very often see that the leaves decrease
toward the end of the shoot, while in trees the leaves, though not iden-
tical, are much more uniform, in size.

Again, if we take a twig of hornbeam, we shall find that the six
terminal leaves have together an area of about fourteen square inches,
and the section of the twig has a diameter of *0G of an inch. In the
beech the leaves are rather larger, six of them having an area of per-
haps eighteen inches, and, corresponding with this greater leaf-surface,
we find that the twig is somewhat stouter, say "09 of an inch. Fol-
lowing this up we shall find that, cceteris paribus, the size of the leaf
has relation to the thickness of the stem. This is clearly shown in
the following table :

Impression of Stalk below the Sixth Leaf.

Hornbeam. Beech. Elm. Nut. Sycamore. Lime. Chestnut.

» 9 0 0 G £>

Mountain-ash Elder. Ash. Walnut. Ailantus. Horse-Chestnut

346

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Diameter of
stem in inches.

Approximate
area oi six upper
leaves in inches.

•06
•09
•11
•13
•13
•14
•15
•16
■18
•18
•25
•3
•3

14

18

Elm

34

Nut

55

60
60

72

llountain-asli

60

Elder

93

Ash

100

"Walnut

220

Ailantus

240

300

In the elm the numbers are *11 and 34, in the chestnut "15 and 72,
and in the horse-chestnut the stem has a thickness of *32, and the six
leaves have an area often of three hundred square inches. Of course,
however, these numbers are only approximate. Many things have to
be taken into consideration. Strength, for instance is an important
element. Thus the ailantus, with a stem equal in thickness to that of
the horse-chestnut, carries a smaller area of leaves, perhaps because it is
less compact. Again, the weight of the leaves is doubtless a factor in
the case. Thus in some sprays of ash and elder which I examined of
equal diameter, the former bore the larger expanse of leaves ; but not
only is the stem of the elder less compact, but the elder-leaves, though
not so large, were quite as heavy, if not indeed a little heavier. I was
for some time puzzled by the fact that, while the terminal shoot of the
spruce is somewhat thicker than that of the Scotch fir, the leaves are
not much more than one third as long. May this not perhaps be due
to the fact that they remain on more than twice as long, so that the
total leaf area borne by the branch is greater, though the individual
leaves are shorter? Again, it will be observed that the leaf area of
the mountain-ash is small compared to the stem, and it may, perhaps,
not be unreasonable to suggest that this may be connected with the
habit of the tree to grow in bleak and exposed situations. The posi-
tion of the leaves, the direction of the bough, and many other elements
would have also to be taken into consideration, but still it seems clear
that there is a correspondence between thickness of stem and size
of leaf. This ratio, moreover, when taken in relation with the other
conditions of the problem, has, as we shall see, a considerable bearing
not only on the size, but on the form of the leaf also.

The mountain-ash has been a great puzzle to me ; it is, of course, a
true Pyrus, and is merely called ash from the resemblance of its leaves
to those of the common ash. But the ordinary leaves of a pear are, as
we all know, simple and ovate, or obovate. Why, then, should those
of the mountain-ash be so entirely different ? May not, perhaps, some
light be thrown on this by the arrangement of the leaves ? They are

ON LEAVES.

347

situated some distance apart, and though, as shown in the table, they
are small in comparison to the diameter of the stem, still they attain a
size of fifteen square inches, or even more. Now, if they were of the
same form as the ordinary pear-leaf, they would be about seven inches
long by two to three in breadth. The mountain-ash, as we know, lives
in mountainous and exposed localities, and such a leaf would be unsuit-
able to withstand the force of the wind in such situations. From this
point of view, the division into leaflets seems a manifest advantage.

Perhaps it will be said that in some trees the leaves are much more
uniform in size than in others. This is true. The sycamore, for in-
stance, varies greatly ; in the specimen tabulated, the stem was *13 in
diameter, and the area of the six upper leaves was sixty square inches.
In another, the six upper leaves had an area of rather over one hundred
inches, but in this case the diameter of the stem was *18.

Another point is the length of the internode. In such trees as the
beech, elm, hornbeam, etc., the distance from bud to bud varies com-
paratively little, and bears a tolerably close relation to the size of the
leaf. In the sycamore, maple, etc., on the contrary, the length varies
greatly.

Now, if, instead of looking merely at a single leaf, we consider the
whole bough of any tree, we shall, I think, see the reason of their dif-
ferences of form.

Let us begin, for instance, with the common lime (Fig. 1). The
leaf -stalks are arranged at an angle of about 40° with the branch, and
the upper surfaces of the leaves are in the same plane with it. The

Fig. i.

Fig. 2.

result is, that they are admirably adapted to secure the maximum of
light and air. Let us take, for instance, the second or third leaf in
Fig. 1. They are four and a half inches long and very nearly as broad.
The distance between the two leaves on each side is also just four and
a half inches, so that they exactly fill up the interval. In Tilia par-
vifolia the arrangement is similar, but leaves and internodes are both
less, the leaves, say, one and a half inch, and the internodes *6.

348

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the beech, the general plane of the leaves is again that of the
branch (Fig. 2), but the leaves themselves are ovate in form, and
smaller, being only from two to three inches in length. On the other
hand, the distance between the internodes is also smaller, being, say,
one and a quarter inch against something less than two inches. The
diminution in length of the internode is not, indeed, exactly in propor-
tion to that of the leaf, but, on the other hand, the leaf does not make
so wide an angle with the stem. To this position is probably due the
difference of form. The outline of the basal half of the leaf fits neatly
to the branch, that of the upper half follows the edge of the leaf be-
yond, and the form of the inner edge being thus determined decides
the outer one also.

In the nut ( Corylus), the internodes are longer and the leaves cor-
respondingly broader. In the elm (Ulmns, Fig. 3), the ordinary
branches have leaves resembling, though rather larger than, those of
the beech ; but in vigorous shoots the internodes become longer and
the leaves correspondingly broader and larger, so that they come
nearly to resemble those of the nut.

But it may be said the Spanish chestnut ( Castanea vulgaris, Fig. 4)
also has alternate leaves in a plane parallel to that of the branch, and

Fig. 3.

Fio. 4.

Fio. 5.

with internodes of very nearly the same length as the beech. That is
true ; but, on the other hand, the terminal branches of the Spanish
chestnut are stouter in proportion. Thus, immediately below the
sixth leaf, the chestnut-stalk may be '15 of an inch in thickness, that
of the beech not much more than half as much. Consequently, the
chestnut could, of course supposing the strength of the wood to be
equal, bear a greater weight of leaf ; but, the width of the leaf being
determined by the distance between the internodes, the leaf is, so to

ON LEAVES.

349

say, compelled to draw itself out. In Fig. 5 I have endeavored to
illustrate this by placing a spray of beech over one of Spanish chest-
nut. Moreover, not only do the leaves on a single twig thus admirably
fit in with one another, but they are also adapted to the ramification
of the twigs themselves. Fig. 6 shows a bough of beech seen from
above, and it w7ill be observed that the form of the leaves is such that,
while but little space is lost, there is scarcely any overlapping. Each
fits in perfectly with the rest.

The leaves of the yew (Fig. 7) belong to a type very different
from those which we have hitherto been considering. They are long,
narrow, and arranged all round the stem, but spread right and left,

Fia. 6.

Fia. 7.

Fig. 8>

so that they lie in one plane, parallel to the direction of the branchlet,
and their width bears just such a relation to their distance apart that
when so spread out their edges almost touch. Fig. 8 represents a
sprig of box. It wTill be observed that the increase of width in the
leaves corresponds closely with the greater distance between the
points of attachment.

The leaves of the Scotch pine (JPinus sylvestris) are needle-like,
one and a half inch in length and one twentieth in diameter. They
are arranged in pairs, each pair inclosed at the base in a sheath. One
inch of stem bears about fifteen pairs of leaves. Given this number
of leaves in such a space, they must evidently be long and narrow.
If I am asked why they are longer than those of the yew, I would
suggest that the stem, being thicker, is able to support more weight.
In confirmation of this, we may take for comparison the Weymouth
pine, in which the leaves are much longer and the stalk thicker.

When we pass from the species hitherto considered to the maples
(Fig. 11), sycamores, and horse-chestnuts (Figs. 9 and 10), we come to
a totally different type of arrangement. The leaves are placed at right

35°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

angles to the axis of the branch instead of being parallel to it, have
long petioles, and palmate instead of pinnate veins. In this group the
mode of growth is somewhat stiff ; the main shoots are perpendicular,
and the lateral ones nearly at right angles to them. The buds, also,
are comparatively few, and the internodes, consequently, at greater
distances apart, sometimes as much as a foot, though the two or three
at the end of a branch are often quite short. The general habit is
shown in Figs. 9 and 10. Now, if we were to imagine six beech or

Fig. 9.

Fig. 10.

elm leaves on these three internodes, it is obvious that the leaf surface
would be far smaller than it is at present. Again, if we compare the
thickness of an average sycamore-stem below the sixth leaf with that
of a beech-stem, it is obvious that there would be a considerable waste
of power. Once more, if the leaves were parallel to the branch,
they would, as the branches are arranged, be less well disposed with

reference to light and air. A glance at
Figs. 9, 10, and 11, however, will show
how beautifully the leaves are adapted
to their changed conditions. The blades
of the leaves of the upper pair form an
angle with the leaf-stalks, so as to assume
a horizontal position, or nearly so ; the
leaf-stalks of the second pair decussate
with those of the first, and are just so
much longer as to bring up that pair
nearly, or quite, to a level with the first ;
the third pair decussate with the second,
and are again brought up nearly to the same level, and immediately to
the outside of the first pair. In well-grown shoots there is often a
fourth pair on the outside of the second. If we look at such a cluster
of leaves directly from in front, we shall see that they generally appear

Fig. 11.

ON LEAVES.

35i

somewhat to overlap ; but it must be remembered that in temperate
regions the sun is never vertical. Moreover, while alternate leaves are
more convenient in such an arrangement as that of the beech, where
there would be no room for a second leaf, it is more suitable in such
cases as the sycamores and maples that the leaves should be opposite,
because, if, other things remaining the same, the leaves of the sycamore
were alternate, the sixth leaf would require an inconvenient length of
petiole.

Perhaps it will be said that the plane-tree, which has leaves so
like a maple that one species of the latter genus is named after it
{Acer platanoides), has, nevertheless, alternate leaves. In reality,
however, I think this rather supports my argument, because the
leaves of the plane, instead of being at right angles to the stem, lie
more nearly parallel with it. Moreover, as any one can see, the leaves
are not arranged so successfully with reference to exposure as those of
the species we have hitherto been considering, perhaps because, living
as it does in more southern localities, the economy of sunshine is less
important than in more northern regions.

The shoot of the horse-chestnut is even stouter than that of the
sycamore, and has a diameter below the sixth leaf of no less than three
tenths of an inch. With this increase of strength is, I think, con-
nected the greater size of the leaves, which attain to as much as eight-
een inches in diameter, and this greater size, again, has perhaps led to
the dissection of the leaves into five or seven distinct segments, each
of which has a form somewhat peculiar in itself, but which fits in
admirably with the other leaflets. However this may be, we have in
the horse-chestnut, as in the sycamores and maples, a beautiful dome
of leaves, each standing free from the rest, and expanding to the fresh
air and sunlight a surface of foliage in proportion to the stout, bold
stem on which they are borne.

Now, if we place the leaves of one tree on the branches of another,
we shall at once see how unsuitable they would be. I do not speak
of putting a small leaf such as that of a beech on a large-leaved tree
such as the horse-chestnut ; but if we place, for instance, beech on
lime, or vice versa, the contrast is sufficiently striking.

The lime-leaves would overlap one another, while, on the other
hand, the beech-leaves would leave considerable interspaces. Or let
us in the same way transpose those of the Spanish chestnut ( Castanea)
and those of Acer platanoides, a species of maple. I have taken
specimens in which the six terminal leaves of a shoot of the two
species occupy approximately the same area. Figs. 4 and 11 show the
leaves in their natural position, those of Castanea lying along the stalk,
while those of Acer are ranged round it. In both cases it will be
seen that there is practically no overlapping, and very little waste of
space. In Castanea the stalks are just long enough to give a certain
play to the leaves. In Acer they are much longer, bringing the leaves

352

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

approximately to the same level, and carrying the lower and outer
ones free from the upper and younger ones.

Now, if we arrange the Spanish-chestnut leaves round a center, as
in Fig. 12, it is at once obvious how much space is wasted. On the
other hand, if we attach the leaves of the Acer to the stalk of Castanea
at the points from which the leaves of Castanea came off, as in Fig. 13,

Fig. 12.

Fig. 13.

we shall see that the stalks are useless, and even mischievous, as a cause
of weakness and of waste of space ; while, on the other hand, if we
omit the stalks, or shorten them to the same length as those of Cas-
tanea, as in Fig. 14, the leaves would greatly overlap one another.

Once more, for leaves arranged as in the beech the gentle swell at
the base is admirably suited ; but in a crown of leaves, such as those of

the sycamore, space would be wasted, and it
is better that they should expand at once as
soon as their stalks have borne them free
from those within. Moreover, the spreading
lobes leave a triangular space (Fig. 11) with
the insertion of the stalk at the apex, which
seems as if expressly designed to leave room
for the pointed end of the leaf within.

Hence we see how beautifully the whole
form of these leaves is adapted to the mode
of growth of the trees themselves and the
arrangement of their buds.
Before we proceed to consider the next series of species to which I
wish to direct attention, it will be necessary for me to say a few words
on the microscopical structure of the leaf. Although so thin, the leaf
consists of several layers of cells. Speaking roughly, and as a general
rule, we may say that on each side is a thin membrane, or epidermis,
underneath which on the upper side are one or more layers of elongated

Fig. 14.

ON LEAVES.

353

cells known from their form as " pallisade-cells," beneath which is a
parenchymatous tissue of more or less loose texture. The leaf is
strengthened by ribs of woody tissue. From this general type there
are, of course, numerous variations. For instance, some water-plants
have no epidermis.

If the surface of the leaf be examined with a tolerably high power,
small opaque spots will be observed, resembling a sort of button-hole,
with a thick rim or border composed of two more or less curved
cells, the concavities being turned inward. When dry, they are
nearly straight, and lie side by side ; but when moistened they swell,
become somewhat curved, and gape open.

It is difficult to realize the immense number of these orifices or
" stomata " which a single bush or tree must possess when we remember
that there are sometimes many thousand stomata to a square inch of
surface. In a large proportion of herbs the two sides of the leaf are
under conditions so nearly similar that the stomata are almost equally
numerous on the upper and on the lower side. In trees, however, as
a general rule, they are found exclusively on the under side of the leaf,
which is the most protected ; they are thus less exposed to the direct
rays of the sun, or to be thoroughly wetted by rain, so that their action
is less liable to sudden and violent changes.

There are, however, some exceptions ; for instance, in the black
poplar the stomata are nearly as numerous on one side of the leaf as
on the other. Now, why is this ? If we compare the leaves of the
black and white poplar, we shall be at once
struck by the fact that, though these species
are so nearly allied, the leaves are very different.
In the white poplar (Populus alba), the upper
and under sides are very unlike both in color
and texture, the under side being thickly clothed
with cottony hairs. In the black poplar (P.
nigra, Fig. 15), the upper and under surfaces
are, which is not frequent, very similar in color
and texture. The petioles or leaf -stalks, again,
are unlike ; those of P. nigra presenting the pe-
culiarity of being much flattened at the end
toward the leaf. The effect of the unusual
structure of the petiole is that the leaf, instead
of being horizontal as in the P. alba and most
trees, hangs vertically, and this again explains
the similarity of the two surfaces, because the result is that both sur-
faces are placed under nearly similar conditions as regards light and
air. Again, it will be observed that, if we attempt to arrange the
leaves of the black poplar on one plane, they generally overlap one
another ; the extent is larger than can be displayed without their in-
terfering with one another. In foliage arranged like that, for instance,
vol. xxvii. — 23

Fig. 15.

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the beech, elm, sycamore, or, in fact, of most of our trees, this would
involve a certain amount of waste ; but in the black poplar, as Fig. 15
shows, the leaves when hung in their natural position are quite detached
from one another.

Another interesting case of a species with vertical leaves is the
prickly lettuce {Lactuca scariola), while those of L. muralis and L.
virosa are horizontal. With this position of the leaves is connected
another peculiarity, especially well marked in the so-called " compass "
plant of the American prairies (Silphium laciniatum), a yellow com-
posite not unlike a small sunflower, which is thus named because the
leaves turn their edges north and south. This has long been familiar
to the hunters of the prairies, but was first mentioned by General Al-
vord, who called Longfellow's attention to it, and thus inspired the
lines in " Evangeline " :

" Look at this delicate plant, that lifts its head from the meadow,
See how its leaves are turned north, as true as the magnet;
This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted
Here in the houseless wild to direct the traveler's journey
Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert."

The advantage of this position, and consequently the probable reason
for its adoption, is that in consequence of it the two faces of the leaf
are about equally illuminated by the sun ; and in connection with this
we find that the structure of the leaf is unusual in two respects. The
stomata are about equally abundant on both surfaces, while pallisade-
cells, which are generally characteristic of the upper surface, are in
this species found on the lower one also.

The leaves of the Lactuca scariola have also, when growing in
sunny situations, a tendency to point north and south. Under such
circumstances also they have a layer of pallisade-cells on each side.

Hitherto I have dealt with plants in which one main consideration
appears to be the securing as much light and air as possible. Our Eng-
lish trees may be said as a general rule to be glad of as much sun as
they can get. But a glance at any shrubbery is sufficient to show that
we can not explain all leaves in this manner, and in tropical countries
some plants at any rate find the sun too much for them. I will pres-
ently return to the consideration of the general characteristics of tropi-
cal vegetation. In illustration, however, of the present point, perhaps
the clearest evidence is afforded by some Australian species, especially
the eucalypti and acacias. Here the adaptations which we meet with
are directed, not to the courting, but to the avoidance, of light.

The typical leaves of acacias are pinnate, with a number of leaflets.
On the other hand, many of the Australian acacias have leaves (or, to
speak more correctly, phyllodes) more or less elongated or willow-like.
But if we raise them from seed we find, for instance, in Acacia salicina,
so called from its resemblance to a willow, that the first leaves are pin-

ON LEAVES.

355

nate (Fig. 16), and differ in nothing from those characteristics of the
genus. In the later ones, however, the leaflets are reduced in number,
and the leaf-stalk is slightly compressed laterally. The fifth or sixth
leaf, perhaps, will have the leaflets reduced to a single pair, and the

Fig. 16.

Fig. 11.

leaf-stalk still more flattened, while, when the plant is a little older,
nothing remains except the flattened petiole. This in shape, as already
observed, much resembles a narrow willow-leaf, but flattened laterally,
so that it carries its edge upward, and consequently exposes as little
surface as possible to the overpowering sun. In some species the long
and narrow phyllodes carry this still further by hanging downward,

Fig. 18.

Fig. 19.

and in such cases they often assume a cimeter-like form. This I would
venture to suggest may be in consequence of one side being turned out-
ward, and therefore under more favorable conditions.

In one very interesting species {Acacia melanoxylon, Fig. 17), the

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plant throughout life produces both forms, and on the same bough may
be seen phyllodes interspersed among ordinary pinnate leaves, the re-
spective advantages being, it would appear, so equally balanced that
sometimes the one, sometimes the other, secures the predominance.

In the case of the eucalyptus, every one who has been in the south
of Europe must have noticed that the young trees have a totally dif-
ferent aspect from that which they acquire when older. The leaves of
the young trees (Fig. 18) are tongue-shaped, and horizontal. In older
ones, on the contrary (Fig. 19), they hang more or less vertically, with
one edge toward the tree, and are cimeter-shaped, with the convex
edge outward, perhaps for the same reason as that suggested in the
case of acacia. There are several other cases in which the same plant
bears two kinds of leaves. Thus, in some species of juniper the leaves
are long and pointed, in others rounded and scale-like. Juniperus
chinensis has both.

In the common ivy the leaves on the creeping or climbing stems
are more or less triangular, while those of the flowering stems are
ovate-lanceolate, a difference the cause of which has not, I think, yet
been satisfactorily explained, but into which I will not now enter. —
Contemporary Heview.

-++*-

EAETHQUAKE PHENOMENA.

By EALPH S. TAEE.

AT the present time the earth seems to be in a state of great seis-
mological action. Different parts of the world have recently
been disturbed by earthquakes which have caused wide-spread destruc-
tion. Those in Spain, which began December 24th, and have lasted,
with slight interruption, down to the time of writing, have been among
the most destructive of recent earthquakes. Over two thousand people
have been killed, many more wounded, and thousands of houses de-
stroyed. Such a state of affairs can not help arousing an interest in
this phenomenon.

The earth is constantly quivering, some point on the surface being
the seat of a slight quake neaidy every moment of the day. By far
the larger number of these are of little intensity, being felt only by
delicate instruments, and the majority of cases come from volcanic re-
gions. So few facts are known, that we can neither draw deductions
nor even determine the causes. It is reported, however, that earth-
quakes more commonly occur at night, and that they are more abun-
dant in winter than in summer.

The only settled facts about earthquakes are, that they are the re-
sult of some shock imparted to the rocks at a considerable distance be-
neath the surface, and that this shock reaches the surface in a series

EARTHQUAKE PHENOMENA. 357

of concentric rings, all points on the circumference of each ring receiv-
ing the shock at the same moment, even though they may be hundreds
of miles apart. In other words, all points at equal distances from the
center of the earthquake receive the shock at the same moment. Al-
though this is theoretically the case, according to well-known physical
laws, still, in practice, the facts are somewhat different ; for the shock
is retarded or accelerated according as the rock opposes or favors the
passage of the wave. The seventy of the shock in a given place is
dependent upon a variety of causes. These are : 1. The strength of
the original shock ; 2. The distance from the earthquake center ; and,
3. The kind of rock on which one is standing, loose gravels greatly
diminishing: the force of the shock. The destructiveness of earth-
quakes depends rather upon the suddenness of application than the
amount of motion. In that at Rio Bomba, it is reported for a fact
that a man was hurled across a stream a distance of one hundred feet,
and landed on an elevation fifty feet higher than his original position.
It is an undoubted fact that objects are frequently thrown great dis-
tances. In the Mississippi Valley, during the earthquakes of 1811 to
1814, the tops of trees were twisted and entangled, and strong log-
cabins were thrown to the ground. Rivers are sometimes checked in
their flow, and, in past geological ages, some have been completely
turned from their course by earthquakes.

At least four theories have been seriously advocated by scientists
to explain these phenomena. The first, which is now abandoned, is
based upon the supposition that the earth's interior is in a fluid condi-
tion. This being the case, the combined action of the sun and moon
upon this molten mass beneath the surface causes it to surge and
swing in tides of liquid fire. It is the shock from this that we
feel on the surface. (I dismiss this theory, as one having no value
whatever).

Another theory is, that earthquakes are due to volcanic action.
The passage of the immense quantities of gas which escape from
volcanoes must necessarily cause shock after shock. This gas, under
pressure of thousands of pounds, is contained in a subterranean boiler,
from which it is continually trying to escape. The moment the press-
ure becomes sufficient, the walls in some part give way, and the trans-
mission of this shock reaches us as an earthquake. When the pent-up
gases have broken through successive strata, always coming nearer to
the surface, they finally reach the uppermost stratum, and this, which
has been weakened by previous eruptions, gives way before the press-
ure, and lets the steam out as a volcanic eruption. It is thus, then,
that the continual succession of earthquakes in volcanic regions is
produced. When, however, we study the country about many earth-
quakes, and find no evidence of volcanoes, we are forced to abandon
this theory for those regions, and look further. This is the case with
all New England earthquakes, and with those in Spain.

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Let us look at the next theory. We all know that water is con-
tinually soaking into the ground, and is dissolving out all matter
which it can. Limestone is one of these substances, and it is to this
property that we owe the great caverns of Kentucky. Water not
only works on or near the surface, but it even penetrates thousands of
feet into the earth, and at this depth possesses even greater power of
solution. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that deep down in
the earth's crust vast caverns have been excavated by this erosion of
water, and that in some places, especially limestone regions, these are
numerous. Granting, then, that there are such great holes in the
ground, and supposing that one of them should suddenly collapse, we
can readily imagine a shock which would cause wide-spread devas-
tation. But this theory also will apply merely to certain limited
localities, and we have not yet found a general theory — one for all
regions.

Let us travel for a moment in a mountainous region, and we will
see thousands of feet of rock folded, twisted, and bent in every con-
ceivable manner. Now, it is a well-proved fact that these rocks were
originally deposited in a horizontal layer, and that they have since
undergone contortion. It can be conceived, then, that such rocks must
be in a constant state of strain ready to relieve themselves at any
favorable moment. Let us suppose that we have a long board held
down on each end by a bank of earth. Remove a part of one bank,
and a point will be reached when the board will spring up with con-
siderable force, striking anything above it a severe blow. This is the
condition of our mountain-rocks. Material is constantly being eroded
from some and piled upon others. The time finally comes when they
snap or spring, and, striking the rocks above, send out an earthquake
shock. Quarrymen frequently feel a slight shock, and immediately
after hear a report, showing that the strain in some rock has been
relieved. A most curious instance is reported where a very long col-
umn of granite rock was being split from a quarry by the use of
wedges. At last the mass was split from the bed, and instantly it
expanded itself with such suddenness as to produce a very perceptible
jar ; and when the rock was returned to the place where it originally
lay it no longer fitted, and the drill-holes did not coincide as before.
Here, then, we have an earthquake on a small scale started by artifi-
cial means. Probably many of the slight shocks result from similar
causes, or from the action of frost, or by contraction and expansion
caused by the daily change in temperature.

These, then, are the theories for earthquakes, but neither of the
three can be called general. We can usually tell when volcanic action
is the cause, and are thus limited in our choice to two. In some cases
the cavern theory may apply, but these are rare, and can usually be
determined, so that in any region not volcanic the third theory is the
most probable. This accounts for the fact that earthquakes are much

EARTHQUAKE PHENOMENA. 359

more frequent and violent in mountain-regions of recent origin. The
Appalachian, which are the oldest mountains in America, are, there-
fore, very free from earthquakes, because the rocks have, as a rule,
long since relieved themselves ; while, on the other hand, the compara-
tively new Rockies are the seat of more frequent tremblings.

There is a theory for the cause of earthquakes, which is rather
neglected by scientific men, but which, I think, will explain many
of those phenomena not otherwise accounted for.

At the mouth of the Ohio, and at Newburyport, Massachusetts, both
of which have in times past been the seat of very severe earthquake
shocks, the layers of rocks are not badly bent. And, further, I do
not see how the theory of bent rocks can explain the frequent repeti-
tion of shocks which we have recently seen in Spain, in Newbury-
port in 1727, and near the mouth of the Ohio in 1811. These regions
had been comparatively quiet for years, and suddenly a severe shock
was felt, followed by a series of successive shocks, which, in the case
of Spain, have not yet ceased, although the original shock occurred
December 24, 1884. The theory, which I have spoken of, and which
would explain this, is that there are great quantities of gas accumu-
lated at certain points beneath the surface under great pressure, and
that this gas, in its attempt to free itself, bursts open the rocks, causing
shock after shock, until it has finally relieved itself sufficiently to re-
main quiet. This, one will see, is similar to the volcanic theory, except
that there is no necessity for the presence of a volcano. What this gas
is, does not matter ; it may be accumulations of steam, or it may be
evolved from petroleum, or it may be carbonic-dioxide gas evolved by
acids working on calcareous rocks. In the Newburyport earthquake,
which was the most severe ever recorded in New England, large quan-
tities of gas escaped to the surface; and, on the Ohio, gas also escaped.
This shock, which was at first wide-spread, finally narrowed itself down
to a very limited marshy area and died out.

To sum up, then, it may be said: 1. That in volcanic regions earth-
quakes are a part of an eruption, premonitory warnings ; 2. That in
a limestone country the falling in of the walls of caverns may ac-
count for some ; 3. That in regions of recent mountain-making the
sudden release of tension causes many ; 4. That the pressure of pent-
up gases on the surrounding rocks, which are finally burst, may be
the cause of a large number, more especially those which are followed
by a long-repeated series of shocks ; and, finally, that in any one of
these regions either or all of the other causes may (with the excep-
tion of volcanic in non-volcanic regions) enter into the production of
earthquakes.

360

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CURIOSITIES OF STAR-FISH LIFE.*

By FEEDEEIK A. FEENALD.

FOR a dozen years past, the eminent English zoologist, who has
become so widely known as an investigator of animal intelli-

Fig. 1.— Upper Surface of a Star-fish {Astropecteri). (From CaBselTs "Natural History.")

gence, has spent his summers at the sea-side, studying several common
forms of marine life. He compares a season's work of this kind

to a prolonged picnic, the pleasure of
which is accompanied by a sense that
no time is being profitlessly spent. Sail-
ing about upon the sunny sea to dip
up in muslin nets the creatures at the
surface, steaming away far from shore
to dredge for other material, and carry-
ing on observations among the tanks and
bell-jars of a neat little airy workshop,
all have their charms. Even the neces-
sity of devising makeshift apparatus, and
of teaching unskilled hands how to help,
adds to the enjoyment, as does the over-
coming of similar obstacles in a pleasure-
excursion. Dr. Romanes has devoted his
attention mainly to jelly-fish, star-fish,

Fig. 2.— PedicellarijB (magnified).
(From Cassell's " Natural History.")

* The material and illustrations of this article are drawn from " Jelly-fish, Star-fish and
Sea-urchins," by Dr. G. J. Romanes, the latest issue in the International Scientific Series.

CURIOSITIES OF STAR-FISH LIFE.

361

and sea-urchins, or more particularly to the nervous systems, and the
movements controlled by them, in these creatures.

A star-fish, as we all know, consists of a central disk and five radi-
ating arms (Fig. 1). Upon the whole of the upper surface occur
numerous calcareous nodules imbedded in the soft flesh, and support-
ing short spines. One of these nodules, much larger than the others,
is always found a little to one side of the center, and is called the
madreporic tubercle (Fig. 1, m). With the aid of a lens we may see
also on the upper surface a number of small organs, each consist-
ing of a pair of pincers supported on a flexible stalk, scattered about
among the calcareous nodules, or attached to the spines ; these are
known as pedicellariae (Fig. 2). These organs are provided with mus-
cles' by which the stalk is swayed about, and the pincers are opened
and shut. What it is that these cm-ious organs are adapted to seize,
and therefore of what use they are in the economy of the animal, has
long been a puzzle to naturalists, but Dr. Romanes and his associate,
Professor Ewart, have succeeded in throwing some light on this point.
In some species of star-fish the size of the central disk is increased so
as to fill up the spaces between the rays, the form of the animal thus
becoming a pentagon. In other species the reverse process has taken
place, the rays having become relatively longer, and, being at the same

Fig. 3.— A Brittle-stab. (From Cassell'e " Natural History.")

time very active, they look like five little snakes joined together by a
small circular disk (Fig. 3). Again, in another species the rays branch,
these branches again branch, and so on till the animal looks like a mat.
Turning now the under surface of our star-fish uppermost, we see that
the mouth is in the center of the disk, and that from the mouth radiate

362

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

five grooves, each extending to the tip of one of the five rays (Fig. ?).
On each side of these grooves are many actively moving membranous
tubes, which are used for crawling, and are called the pedicels or feet.
They are closed at the free end, but communicate by a system of tubes
within the body of the animal with the madreporic tubercle. It has
been surmised that this tubercle acts as a filter to the sea-water which,
with some admixture, forms the liquid circulating in the tubes, and
Dr. Romanes has proved the surmise to be correct ;
for colored fluid, injected under pressure into any
part of the system of tubes, found its way to the
madreporic tubercle, and oozed through its porous
substance. The tube-feet are thrust forth or with-
drawn by being distended with liquid or emptied.
With the exception of a few at the tip of each arm,
every tube-foot bears a sucker (Fig. 4) ; these suck-
ers are pressed closely to a flat surface by filling the
tube-feet with liquid ; the pressure within the tubes
is then lessened, and the greater pressure of the sur-
rounding water holds the suckers fast. They are
released by increasing the pressure of the liquid

Fig. 4. -The Terminal within the tube-feet.
Portion op a Tube- rr\^ n i n i • t ±

foot (magnified). lhe common star-nsh usually crawls in a deter-

minate direction, the feet on the tip of the foremost
ray being used as feelers. In a tank, when the star-fish has ascended
the side and reaches the surf ace of the water, it often performs peculiar
movements which may be called acrobatic. The animal does not wish
to leave its native element — in fact, can not do so, because its sucking
feet can act only under water — neither does it wish to descend at once.

Fio. 5— Natural Movements op a Star-pish on reaching the Surface cp Water.

It therefore crawls along the side of the tank, now and then throwing
back its uppermost ray or rays to feel about for rocks or sea-weed
(Fig. 5). If it finds any solid support it will very likely attach its

CURIOSITIES OF STAR-FISH LIFE.

363

uppermost rays to it, and then, letting go its other attachments, swing
from the old support to the new. The activity and co-ordination mani-
fested in these acrobatic movements, says Dr. Romanes, are surprising,
and give to the animal an almost intelligent appearance.

The feet of astropecten are partly rudimentary, having lost their
terminal suckers, and these star-fish assist themselves in locomotion by
the muscular movements of their rays. The brittle-stars are still fur-
ther removed in the same direction from the common star-fish ; their
tubular feet are of no use for crawling, while their rays are so long,
flexible, and muscular, as to enable them to shuffle quite rapidly over
horizontal surfaces. Two opposite arms are used upon the floor with
the motion of swimming, the animal leaping forward about two inches
at each stroke, and, as these leaps follow one another quickly, the star-
fish is able to travel at the rate of six feet a minute. A common star-
fish can crawl only two inches a minute. Some of the Comatulce, in
which the muscularity of the rays has proceeded still further, are able
actually to swim by the co-ordinated movements of their rays.

The sea-urchin, or echi-
nus, is a modification of
the star-fish structure, hav-
ing the form of a flattened
sphere, and is covered with
hard spines (Fig. 6). In
the living animal these
spines are movable in all
directions, each being
mounted on a ball-and-
socket joint, and provided
with muscles at its base.
Like the star-fish, the echi-
nus has a madreporic tu-
bercle, pedicellariae, and
feet. If we shave off the
spines and pedicellariae, we
come down to a hard shell, which is hollow and filled with liquid.
The liquid resembles sea-water, but is richly corpusculated, and co-
agulates when exposed to the air. Five double rows of holes extend
symmetrically from pole to pole of the shell. It is through these
holes that the feet are thrust out, so that in its main features an
echinus is merely a star-fish with its five rays curved into the shape
of a hollow spheroid, and then converted into a rigid box, with
holes left for its feet to come through. The urchin crawls in the
same way as the common star-fish, but makes use of its spines also to
help push itself along. The suckers, moreover, in being protruded
from all sides of a globe instead of from the under side of a flat organ-
ism, are of much more use as feelers than they are in the star-fish. If

Fig. 6.— An Echtntts partly denuded of its Spines.
(From CasseH's "Natural History.")

364

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the animal while walking be turned half round, it will continue its
movements as before, and hence will proceed in a direction opposite
to its former one. When at rest, some of the feet are used as anchors,
and others protruded as feelers.

All species of the Echinodermata, when turned upon their backs,
are able to right themselves. The brittle-stars can easily perform the

Fig. 7.— Natural righting Movements of Common Star-pish.

needful manoeuvre by wriggling some of their snake-like arms under
the inverted disk, and heaving the whole body over by the mere mus-
cularity of these members. The common star-fish, however, experi-
ences more difficulty, and executes the manoeuvre mainly by means of
its suckers. It twists round the tip of one or more of its rays until
the feet there situated are able to get a firm hold of the floor (Fig. 7,

tffllltllllllllllHllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllH^

Fig. 8.

a), then, by successive action of the feet further back in the series, the
whole ray is twisted round (b), so that the under surface of the end is
applied flat against the floor (c). The semi-turn or spiral then travels

CURIOSITIES OF STAR-FISH LIFE.

365

on down the ray. Usually two or three adjacent rays perform this
manoeuvre simultaneously, the spirals of the co-operating rays being
invariably turned in the same direction, and, when they have proceeded
sufficiently far to drag over the remaining rays, these then abandon
their hold on the bottom so as not to offer any resistance to the lifting
action of the active rays. The whole movement does not occupy more
than half a minute.

But it is in the case of echinus that these righting movements
become most interesting, from the fact that they are so much more
difficult to accomplish. Two, or perhaps three, adjacent rows of suck-
ers are chosen out of the five to accomplish the task. As many feet
in these rows as can reach the floor are thrust downward and fastened
firmly to it ; by their combined action, as by the pull of liliputian ropes,
the globe is tilted slightly in their own direction, the anchoring feet in
the opposite rows releasing their hold on the floor to admit of this tilt-
ing (Fig. 8). The next feet in the active rows are thus enabled to
reach the floor, and, when they have established their hold, they assist
in increasing the tilt ; then the next feet in the series lay hold, and so
on, the globe slowly but steadily rising until it stands upon its equa-
tor (Fig. 9). The difficulty of raising such a heavy mass into this

Fig. 9.

position by means of the slender motive power available is manifest
not only from the extreme slowness with which it takes place,
but because specimens not perfectly strong may fail completely to
reach the position of resting on the equator. Moreover, in some
cases when this position has been reached with difficulty, the echinus
gives itself a breathing-space, as it were, before beginning its descent.
It will be perceived that, as soon as the descent begins, gravity is no
longer an obstacle but an aid to the righting movement, and it might
be anticipated that the echinus would now simply let go all its attach-

366

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ments and allow itself to roll over into its natural position. But an
echinus will never let go its attachments without some urgent reason,
seeming to be above all things afraid of being rolled about at the
mercy of currents, and therefore it lets itself down almost as slowly as
it pulled itself up (Fig. 10).

Single rays separated from a star-fish crawl as fast as the entire
animal, and likewise in a determinate direction. They also crawl up

Fig. 10.

perpendicular surfaces, and when inverted right themselves as quickly
as do the unmutilated creatures. A segment of an echinus bearing a
single row of ambulacral feet, when propped up on its ab-oral pole,
(Fig. 11) will right itself after the manner of entire animals (Fig. 12).
It, however, experiences more difficulty in doing so, and very often
fails to complete the manoeuvre. Such a segment is, of course, analo-
gous to a single detached ray of a star-fish ; but on account of the
rigid consistence and awkward shape of the segment — standing erect
instead of lying flat — it presents a much more curious appearance in
locomotion than does the ray of a star-fish.

Dr. Romanes reports observations which show conclusively that
the whole external surface, not only of the soft and fleshy star-fish,
but even of the hard and rigid echinus, is everywhere sensitive to
stimulation. This sensitiveness, moreover, is highly delicate. If any
part of the external surface of an echinus is lightly touched with the
point of a needle, all the feet, spines, and pedicellarise within reach of
that part, and even beyond it, immediately close in upon the needle
and grasp it tightly. This simultaneous movement of such a little
forest of prehensile organs is a very beautiful spectacle to witness.
Here we have proof of the function of the pedicellarife. In climbing
perpendicular or inclined surfaces of rock covered with waving sea-
weeds, it must be of no small advantage to an echinus to be provided
on all sides with a multitude of movable stalks bearing forceps, which
can instantly seize a passing frond. The frond being thus arrested,
the spines come to the assistance of the pedicellarise, and both to-
gether hold the sea- weed steady till the ambulacral feet have time to

CURIOSITIES OF STAR-FISH LIFE.

367

establish their hold upon it with their sucking-disks. This operation
may be witnessed by drawing a piece of sea-weed over a healthy
echinus in the water.

The capability of the spines for co-ordinated action is highly re-
markable and interesting. Thus, for instance, if an urchin be taken

Figs. 11 and 12.— Righting and Ambulachal Movements of several Segments of Echinus.

out of the water and placed upon a table, it is no longer able to use
its feet for walking, as the suckers can act only under water. Yet
the animal is able to progress slowly by means of its spines, which
are used to prop and push the globe-like shell along in some continu-
ous direction. If a lighted match be held in front of the moving ani-
mal, as soon as the echinus comes close enough to feel the heat, all the
spines begin to make the creature move away in the opposite direction.
There is an urchin-like form of echinoderm called spatangus, which
differs from the echinus in having shorter feet and longer spines.
When, therefore, a spatangus is inverted it is unable to right itself

3 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by means of its short feet, but uses its long spines to perform the
manoeuvre. The process is a tedious one, and there are generally
numerous failures ; but the creature perseveres until it eventually
succeeds.

-♦*♦-

ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY.

By GEOEG VON GITZYCKI.

THE question of the bearing of the theory of evolution upon morals
deserves a serious examination. The doctrine of development
breaks at many points with cherished traditional notions, and its op-
ponents have predicted that it would result in a spiritual revolution
which would convulse society to its foundations by destroying the sanc-
tions of conscience and paralyzing the religious sense.

The science of ethics has a theoretical and a practical part ; the
former, founded on the study of the nature of volition and the moral
feelings, the latter having for its object to determine what ought to
be. The latter, the establishment of rules of conduct, is the real ob-
ject of ethics, while the purely theoretical researches have only the
value of means.

Ethics can, it appears to us, learn much out of the theory of devel-
opment, or can at least find a confirmation of single principles hitherto
recognized by only a part of the students of morals. This theory
teaches that the feelings and inclinations, as well as the bodily forms,
are results of the adaptation of the living being to the conditions
of his existence, and are therefore to be recognized as life-maintain-
ing functions ; that, the more complicated are the conditions of life,
the less perfect is this adaptation : therefore, in the human world,
spontaneous feelings and impulses are not safe guides. "We may
learn from it, also, to regard the moral feelings and conceptions
as the most important part of the adapting of man to the conditions
of social existence. It teaches us to bring into special considera-
tion the moral conceptions of the most successful nations in the struggle
for existence ; for, if their views of right and wrong had diverged
greatly from what is really beneficial to society, they would not have
reached their dominant position. But the recognition that, in conse-
quence of the complicated conditions of life, the adaptation is never
complete, must restrain us from ever regarding the " positive morals "
of a people — that is, the sum of their actual moral ideas — as being ab-
solutely perfect.

The development theory, which has made us acquainted, as perhaps
no former generation has been, with the idea of progress, has also ac-
customed us to regard the moral as one of the fields in which progress
takes place ; and, furthermore, to look forward to perfection in the

ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 369

moral nature. Moral progress consists, not in men coming nearer to
their ideals, but in their ideals reaching a higher plane.

This theory shows us how dependent man is upon his race, and
how erroneous it is to separate him from that connection. That the
faculty of conscience is a result of the adaptation of man to the con-
ditions of social existence appears to he doubted by no adherent of the
theory of development ; but the exponents of the doctrine vary greatly
in their views of the manner in which the moral conceptions arise in
individual life. Some regard them as to a greater or less extent in-
stinctive, or transmitted by inheritance from the accumulated experi-
ence of ancestors ; while others are inclined to accord a more promi-
nent agency in the matter to training. We may apparently, however,
presume that that which is practically the most wholesome will endure
in the character, provided the teacher does not trust too much to the
innate moral instincts, but recognizes that, while his child has the
qualities requisite to his becoming a moral man under favorable con-
ditions, this is not sure to be the case if those conditions are wanting,
and therefore exercises extreme care in moral instruction.

"We turn next to the answer to the question, What is the bearing
of the development theory on the practical part of ethics? Man's
place in Nature, as determined by that theory, is very different from
that indicated in the older ideas of men ; just as the Nature in which
man finds himself set is not the Nature that existed in the conceptions
of the past. The new conception of man and his morals again ap-
proaches, in many respects, that which was implied in the ethics of
classical antiquity. Man no longer stands outside of Nature, but within
it, as one of its integral parts. He is subject to the same laws of life
as the animals. All in him, like all around him, is a product of natural,
regular development. Even his moral part is not something laid upon
him from outside of Nature, but something which has been shaped
out of his own nature, molding itself according to the conditions of
his existence. To an ethicist who accepts this view, morals will ap-
pear an affair of humanity and for humanity — for humanity on earth ;
and will give the most comprehensive construction of the saying of
Christ, that man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for
man. We can not perceive that this view involves any practically
destructive tendencies ; and there are not a few distinguished men
who avow the belief that there is no irreconcilable variance between
evolution and religion.

With this view of the place of man in Nature, the ethicist can not
easily oppose the doctrine that the same legality rules in the human
will as in all the other processes of Nature. Even in the matter of the
appearance of new individuals, the development theory admits no void
in the endless chain of causation ; for the dispositions which man
brings into the world are, in consequence of it, nothing else than a
product of the energies of his predecessors. The recognition of the

TOL. XXVII. — 24

370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fact of the transmissibility of mental as well as of physical character-
istics, if not to the children to the children's children — a transmissibil-
ity whose sphere of influence in individual cases is not susceptible of
definition — can not but heighten the feeling of responsibility, because
we are thereby made aware that the consequences of good as well as
of bad conduct extend further than we had supposed.

A few adherents of the development theory, including Darwin
himself, have held that not the good of mankind, but the maintenance
of his existence, is the moral principle resulting from it ; and that
feelings of pleasure and of pain are only the means which Nature uses
to promote the exercise of life-favoring and restraint from life-injuring
conduct ; that the real end of all action is not pleasure and the avoid-
ance of pain, not the greatest possible excess of pleasure over pain for
as many as possible, not the greatest good of the greatest number, but
only the most prolonged existence of the greatest number. The
greatest possible endurance of species, or the mere maintenance of
species, not their welfare, would be according to this view the chief
moral principle. This position appears to us to be a difficult one.

The chief moral principle expresses that from which all of the rules
of right may be derived, and accordingly means the highest rule of
conduct, the highest moral aim of life, or the ethical highest good,
and serves as the highest standard of estimation and judgment. Those
evolutionists of whom we have just spoken start from a teleological
view of the world — from the view that the course of Nature is gov-
erned by some purpose. But the majority of the Darwinians are op-
ponents of teleology, or try to be. Rolph has shown that, in follow-
ing the history of organic development on the earth, we can really
perceive no tendency to an adaptation showing design, to the produc-
tion of forms that may be represented to human conception as higher.
Its result has been only to produce forms better adapted to what is
around them ; and the change just as often consists in a deterioration,
even though some advantage is always gained for the creature. As
not final causes, but efficient causes, working causes, have worn out
the river-bed and determined the course of the stream, as it has formed
its channel not with reference to its final outlet, but to the local con-
ditions, so, as Darwin and his followers have shown, it is with all or-
ganic phenomena. The investigator has to break with teleology in
all its forms ; and, even in ethics, the question of the object, of the
destiny of man, will have to be given up. This idea of a purpose or
design in Nature, when we come to analyze it, of a preconceived and
voluntary operation working to produce determined effects, presumes
by necessary implication the agency of a will behind the causes which
are leading up to those effects. It follows, hence, that there is purpose
in Nature in the domain of man and the higher animals, because men,
and in a certain but very much less degree the animals, form con-
ceptions of processes which they strive to carry through ; but that

ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 371

aside from these one can speak of Nature's purposes, of purposes which
general Nature is pursuing, only if he regards Nature as a thinking and
volitional being, or as the creature of such a being. A teleological
view of the world thus of necessity always includes some kind of a
theological view ; and it seems to be decidedly a non-sequitur to en-
tertain the one without holding to the other.

We men actually make our continued existence an object of fun-
damental importance, because, without realizing it, no other object
is attainable. We are thus justified in calling all our properties that
contribute to the maintenance of life adapted to that purpose. And,
as we refer this same relation to the animal and the whole organic
world, we are accustomed also to designate all their life-maintaining
properties as likewise adapted. But life is never a purpose to animals.
The idea of preserving life does not arise in their consciousness, and
can not therefore be the object of a volition ; while the lower animals
have no ideas, but only sensations and perceptions. They have, there-
fore, no purposes. Still less can we speak of the purposes of plants,
for plants have no consciousness. It is thus clear that, so far as the
sub-human world is concerned, the designation of the life-preserving
attributes of existence as designed, unless we are speaking in a theo-
logical sense, is only metaphorical. For this designation implies the
premise that life is an object ; and this, in a proper, untheological
sense, is true only as respects human consciousness. Thus, a speaker
who would avoid transcendental implications and metaphorical modes
of speech should always avoid the word " designed," and this can be
done without leaving any fact undetermined.

But, if we, regarding our belief in God as a justification for the
introduction of the divine idea into science, and not heeding the
many difficulties which ethics has hitherto encountered in basing its
precepts on the presumed will of God, endeavor to determine what
his will is, we shall have very little, if any, success in convincing
the faithful that it is for the most prolonged existence of the greatest
number.

Even as relating to men, these persons will not believe that self-
preservation as such is the highest good. Bare existence is no good,
much less the highest good ; but it may be, if it is a bad existence,
the highest evil, and this according to the perfectionist doctrine as
well as according to the utilitarian theory of happiness. There is said
to be existence, yes, eternal existence, even in hell ; and, according to
the ancient fathers of the Church, " the most prolonged existence for
the greatest number."

Evolutionists, who recognize that life is valuable only as it is good,
have occasionally fallen into the mistake of considering among the
consequences of conduct only the effects on the condition of soundness,
and of disregarding the pain that may be immediately produced by it ;
and they have not always been mindful that, according to their own

372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

definitions, fullness of life can be valuable only if we include in it full-
ness of happiness or some cause thereof.

Those evolutionists who appeal to the ancient principle of a Nature-
fitted life have apparently not sufficiently considered one thing. Sci-
ence teaches what has been, but not what will be. If the " tendencies "
of Nature which they think they have determined were simply laws of
Nature, conditions of the inevitable occurrence of events, there would
be no reason in seeking to make a moral imperative of them ; for that
can not be a matter of injunction wdrich will without fail happen of
itself. But if those " tendencies " are not a fate to be fulfilled with
irresistible necessity, but can be antagonized, then the question arises,
Why should we act according to them, and not try to counteract
them ? If we were once agreed that the complete working out of
those tendencies would cross all our desires and hopes, would we rec-
ognize the ethic imperative of promoting them ? On the contrary, we
should recognize the obligation of so far as possible preventing their
realization. And we should obey the moral command to make those
tendencies ours, and advance them according to our strength so far as
they appear good to us ; as we also should hold a corresponding con-
duct to be right without this, without regarding it as advancing natural
tendencies. What we should regard as good or evil, as worth striving
for or to be avoided, must present a corresponding character to our
own perception ; and what that is arises out of our own nature, not
out of something different from what that might be. Thus, the final
decision as to what is to be striven for and what to be avoided lies in
us, in our mind and will.

We observe, also, that the aspiration for what is according to Na-
ture is so far from being an obvious ethical object, that the ancient
Chi-istians regarded the natural as something leading to evil. The an-
cient Greeks, on the other hand, premised an agreement of the two ;
and so it came to pass that the former held a pessimistic and the lat-
ter an optimistic view of the world. But the Greeks did not believe
in the natural because it was natural, but because they thought it
good ; as the Christians disbelieved in it because it appeared bad to
them, and seemed to contradict their moral convictions.

We are glad to learn from the evolutionist all he can tell us of the
nature of things, and of the means of reaching the object sought after
by us. Of this object, however, we do not learn from a natural his-
tory of the objective world, but from the study of our own hearts. It
is, therefore, self-evident that the utilitarian or the ethicist, who re-
gards the highest general good as the chief moral standard, will make
use of all knowledge that can cast light on the way to his end. Con-
sequently, he will certainly avail himself of all the facts of biology
and sociology that are of importance in regard to it.

Existence is the condition of happiness. If the happiness of mill-
ions of present and future living men is to be assured, then their exist-

ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 373

ence must be assured first of all things. Everything, therefore, that
is important for the most prolonged existence of the greatest number
is also important for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
The utilitarian will utilize all that the evolutionist can tell him — and
one thing more.

The evolutionist will tell him that there is a correlation, on one
side, between disagreeable and destructive, and on the other side be-
tween pleasurable and advantageous action ; that the "useful," in the
sense of the pleasurable, nearly agrees with the useful in the sense of
the life-maintaining ; and that there is a close connection between
health and happiness and between disease and unhappiness. While
this correlation is far from being perfect, it is, nevertheless, true that
a more certain road to happiness lies through maintaining or improv-
ing the health than through a direct striving after a maximum of pleas-
ure. The same rule prevails in society. The sound health of society
must be the practical end through reaching which alone the real pros-
perity of society can be attained.

The truth that health is a fundamental condition of happiness has,
indeed, not been unknown to any ethicist ; that pattern of ancient
cheerfulness, the philosopher Epicurus, is an emphatic reminder of
this fact. And that the care of one's own health is enjoined also
through regard for others, and that the so-called duties toward one's
self are really duties toward others, and for that reason only duties, is
likewise a doctrine that did not have first to be learned from Darwin
and Spencer. But we have to thank Spencer for having adduced, in
his exposition of the facts of transmission, so potent evidence of this
truth, that no such dictum upon it as Schopenhauer has uttered will
ever again be possible. While, however, he has performed the service
of defining the physical conditions of happiness with greater emphasis
than any of his predecessors, it does not follow that the utilitarian
method founded by Bentham will have to be given up. Evolutionist
writers have reminded us that too little attention has been paid to
health in discipline and in public instruction. This is too true, but it
is not in consequence of the application of utilitarian but of non-utili-
tarian precepts. And if it has been declared to be one of the results
of the doctrine of a correlation between species-maintaining and pleas-
ure-bringing action that family happiness is the highest human happi-
ness, that is only a confirmation of a view expressed long ago by utili-
tarian ethicists, as appeared most plainly a hundred years ago (1785)
in Paley's " Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy."

If, however, by the phrase, " health of society," something else is
understood than a society consisting of healthy individuals, then the
word " health " is only a metaphor, and one the sense of which is not
clear ; and to put this metaphor in the place of the principle of the
happiness of the whole can not be regarded as an improvement. If
Bentham should return now, he would have to censure the evolutionist

374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ethics in no slight measure for its vague generalities and empty decla-
mations, and its playing with phrases, and to combat its lack of cir-
cumspection. The evolutionists have joined generally with the utilita-
rians, but they are not practical ethicists. They could hardly succeed
in actually working with their principle in such a compass as Ben-
tbam worked with his.

We come now to consider what is the bearing of the Darwinian
doctrine of the struggle for existence upon morals. The objection has
been brought against this doctrine, in divers phrases and with a variety
of statement, that it leads to extreme demoralization. It can not be
denied that Darwin's designation of the principle discovered by him as
the " struggle for existence " is not fortunate, and is a metaphor, indi-
cating a conscious hostile contention between living beings, each seek-
ing the other's destruction, that has no real existence as such. And it
will not be disputed that Darwin has been led into errors similar to
those embodied in the theory of Malthus ; or that great mischief has
been done by the use of the phrase " struggle for existence " by per-
sons who have never learned the A B C of ethics, but have still be-
lieved themselves called to offer their crudities to the public. But
those mistakes are not to be alleged against the principle as such.

The principle of the natural selection of those beings whose modi-
fications best adapt them to the conditions of their life is in the first
place only an expression of that which has been, not of that which is
to be. It is a law of Nature, not of morals. We are subject to this
natural law of organic life, just as we are subject to the law of gravita-
tion, or of the persistence of force, wholly without regard to our will.
Natural selection is an agent which has operated as the general regu-
lator of life upon the actual constitution of what is now existing in the
organic world. It is the universal natural force that also regulates hu-
man life. And what do we see in human life ? A fearful amount of
moral and physical evil which is not prevented, but rather in part be-
gotten by that regulator. We make it our task to contend incessantly
by our premeditated action against that evil, while we regard the world,
which is here without our assistance, not as the best possible, but as
something which we must labor to improve and make more rational.
What happens through the operation of the universal forces of Nature
can not be a moral rule for us ; for those forces produce also everything
that is bad. This regulating principle implies that the being which
possesses the most advantageous constitution, that is, which is best
adapted to the conditions of its existence, has the best chances to
maintain itself and to increase ; and it applies to human beings as to
all others. The fittest, or best adapted, survive. We have to distin-
guish among the life-conditions of man, or in his environment, between
the physical and the social factors ; the former regulating in general
his physical, the latter his moral constitution.

What, now, is the moral constitution which enables the individual

ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 375

endowed with it to maintain himself ? The principle of natural selec-
tion is not contradicted by any fact in the history of mankind. The
determination of what of its members shall survive is an affair of the
particular constitution of a society. There are, as Everett * has re-
marked, different kinds and degrees of immorality which are always
important to the result. A certain degree of honor, according to the
proverb, is required for a man to preserve his social standing in a so-
ciety of thieves. But, besides the avoidance of flagrant violations of
the social contract, there is nothing which is universally and always
debarred by the demands of the social environment. The man who
was fitted to succeed in the early days of the Roman Republic would
have failed in the later age of the empire ; and one whom the social
elements of the empire lifted up would have fared badly in the time
of the republic. Indeed, societies in which the highest and noblest
moral attributes are a passport to success are very rare. The "fittest "
in the moral sense, and the " fittest " in the sense of Darwinism, are not
often the same.

And is this the last word that is to be said for Darwinism in its
relation to morals ? Is the judgment that the moral best and the fit-
test in the Darwinian sense are often not the same, of unconditioned
effect ? We believe not.

The principle of natural selection regulates not only the life of
individuals ; it rules also over the lives of generations and of peoples.
It may, indeed, happen to be the means of success in some one common-
wealth to practice the religion of £ s. d. It may be that in a particular
society selfishness, cunning, trickery, overbearing violence or fawning
subserviency, and moral cowardice, or high living and ostentation, will
give good chances for getting on ; men of such characters may have,
in some states, the best opportunity to raise themselves and their
families, while one who despises injustice, lying, and hypocrisy, will
have to go to the wall. But there is, nevertheless, as Matthew Arnold
says, "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness."
Characteristics, it is true, are transmitted ; but not in the same com-
binations as they existed in the father or the mother ; immoral charac-
teristics, like those we have named, never in that which is adapted to
insure success in a certain constitution of society. If we allow, by
transmission or by training, some other peculiar quality to enter into
the composition of the character, or if we let a certain quality be lost,
then that "lucky balance" that brought success will be destroyed.
The chances that the posterity of men possessing such traits of charac-
ter as we have sketched will maintain themselves long, that they will
not, sooner or later, fail, in consequence of collisions with the " physi-
cal, legal, or social sanction," with the laws of health or of the state,
or with the demands of society, are not very great.

But "the eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous-
* C. C. Everett, in " Unitarian Review," October, 1878; "The New Ethics."

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ness," asserts itself in a still more imposing manner. We have hith-
erto considered only the lives of individuals and of single generations,
but we must also regard the lives of peoples. It is manifest in this
collective life, in a vastly higher measure than in individual life, that
" the wages of sin is death." As Everett has remarked, again, one
society may favor the growth of righteousness and honor, another that
of knavery and hypocrisy. In one, drunkenness and sensuality, and
similar vices, may cause a man to sink to the lowest circles of society ;
in another, they may raise him till he reaches the highest. But here,
at last, we have a principle, to which these social conditions are them-
selves responsible. The one society will develop one type of charac-
ter, the other a different one ; but according to the type of character
which it favors will it stand or fall. In this we find in the facts of
history a confirmation of the fundamental difference between right
and wrong. What we call justice is the only enduring basis on which
society can rest. The nations that do wrong and despise justice, which
lose themselves in sensual intoxication, are at last broken up, and a
purer, stronger, and less depraved race takes their place.

If the opinion comes to prevail in a society that the struggle for
existence justifies or demands a reckless pursuit of one's own interests,
the oppression and ruin of the weak by the strong, the destruction of
misery by destroying the miserable, the extirpation of the voice of
compassion, which protests within us against such a course ; if phys-
ical strength and refined cunning and selfishness are carefully cher-
ished as the highest ideal, then the days of that commonwealth are
numbered, for it has worked for its own dissolution by authorizing a
" strife of all against all," which, true to its precepts, may come in at
any moment when a community of interests may not be present. Let
periods of want and danger, or of war, ensue, and we shall see what
will be the fate of a society in which patriotism, devotion, ideal stand-
ards, and regard for truth and justice have been objects of ridicule.

All positive human authorities are subject to the authority of life-
conditions. If they will not adapt themselves to the nature of things
when they deal with the bases of social life, their enterprises will at
last be shattered under the might of that authority.

Two elements, according to Everett, have contributed more than
all else to the success of men in the conflict with animals, and of civil-
ized men in contending with barbarous. One of these elements is
knowledge, or the power of thought, the other is the force of the social
impulse. Ideas on the one side, a self -forgetting resignation on the
other, are what have given the victory to the higher races. Whatever
restricts the course of either mental or moral development strikes the
hardest possible blow against the stability of the social organism.

The distinction between right and wrong, to use an expression of
John Fiske's, has its roots in the deepest foundations of the universe.
The cosraical power of natural selection is not against, but for, morals.

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 377

It sanctions the most exalted ethical ideals, such as the choicest minds
have conceived. It is a judgment-power, because it permits only that
which is right and perfect to endure, and lets the unjust, the base, and
the evil perish.

The knowledge that this world-power supports virtue, and con-
tributes its part in elevating the moral nature, will inspire the moralist
in his efforts in behalf of the good, and in his contention against the
bad. But we must be careful not to mistake the true significance of
this law. There is arising in the newer evolutionist literature a kind of
fatalist optimism or optimistic fatalism, the effects of which may be no
less disastrous than those of an undiscriminating pessimism. If natu-
ral selection is to select the good, then the good must already be there.
It does not contradict this principle, that the human race will die out
as other species have died out ; but it follows directly from the prin-
ciple that the race must die out if it becomes bad. Not without us, but
through us, through our volition, conscious of that purpose, will the
continuous development go on. In our day, says Salter, in his " Re-
ligion of Morals," evolution is sometimes regarded as if it was some-
thing outside of us and above us, and we had only to wait on its
motion. But evolution operates through you and me. It is only an
abstract name for the course which your energy and mine and that of
other beings take. It is for better or for worse, according as we are
better or worse. It goes on rapidly or creeps along painfully, accord-
ing as our thoughts are quick or slow and dead. It is not enough to
perceive that the bad will at last perish and the good persist. We
must wish it to be the good that will triumph. It is still true that the
sources of history are in us. The result of these considerations must
be a heightening of the feeling of responsibility. — Translated for the
Popular Science Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau.

-++*-

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS.

By AUGUSTUS E. GEOTE, A. M.

IT.

TO understand the way in which our North American moths are
distributed (and by North American we mean the territory north
of Mexico and the West Indies), we must study the physical geogra-
phy of the continent. There is a perfect host of species and individu-
als, which depend on special kinds of plants, for the most part, and
their diffusion is, of course, limited by the area of the plant upon which
their caterpillars subsist. But the greater bulk of the species are not
confined in their young stage to one sort of plant, while, from their
activity, these flying flowers, the moths, range farther than the more
slowly traveling blossoms whose honey they extract.

378 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

If we take a map giving a bird's-eye view of the continent, with
the elevations marked, we can understand the problem better. Ranges
of mountains obstruct, valleys and river-channels assist, the dispersion
of moths. They travel on the wings of the wind, and an important
factor is the prevailing seasonal direction of the air-currents. There
is in North America a summer migration of many species from the
South to the North, so that, toward the autumn, several tropical kinds
have crept up along the coast, or inland, up the valley of the Missis-
sippi. The " cotton-worm moth," which, in its caterpillar state, in-
flicts great damage at times upon the plantations, is a case in point.
Individual specimens or flocks of other moths, such as the " great eye-
spot " {Erebus odora), the " blue and green hawk " (Argeus labritscce),
visit us yearly, coming up from the West Indies. They die out in the
winter here, and leave no progeny behind them to continue the species
in our high latitudes.

Rivers assist in the dispersion of insects, and, in a less degree, per-
haps, the particular insects we are here discussing. Nevertheless, upon
leaves and sticks the eggs of moths are floated on the current, while
the commerce of the water-routes brings the cocoons with the vege-
tables and fruits which it carries from place to place in boats and ships.

A bird's-eye view of our continent shows us the elevations of the
Rocky Mountains and parallel spurs in the West, and the Allegha-
nies in the East. Mountain-ranges stand in the way of the spreading
of moths, which perish in the cold atmosphere and the storms which
gather about the rocky summits. Our fauna? can be understood by
studying the formation of the land in this way. Over the vast plain
east of Colorado the same kinds of moths generally prevail. The val-
leys in the West, on the other hand, contain a majority of peculiar
species or kinds, often more local than in the East. In New York we
are cut off, again, by the Alleghanies from many species which are
plentiful in Ohio and Indiana. Our tropical wanderers come to us up
and along the coast. I have met, sailing on the Gulf Stream, flights of
moths, mostly of a few kinds, which fell on the rigging and sides of
the vessel in great numbers. In the autumn, on Staten Island, I have
captured specimens whose true home was Cuba and Jamaica. Although
smaller fauna?, or limits of particular species, are traced by naturalists,
our mountain-ranges are the best general guide as to the changes in
the sorts of moths which we may expect. From Ohio to Louisiana we
meet much the same kind of moths, with a difference in the rarity of
certain species, and in the presence of others dependent on particular
kinds of plants. But, when we get into the valleys of the Rocky
Mountains, we shall have taken leave of the most of our dusty-winged
Eastern friends. Some kinds take the voyage with us completely
across the continent, but these are comparatively few in number, and
are sometimes almost cosmopolitan.

So true is it that one branch of a subject leads to quite different

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 379

questions and to matters apparently foreign to the immediate inquiry,
that here the subject of the range of North American moths leads us
into myth and poetry. For, in finding out that we have species of
moths which are found in other continents, the question arises at once,
How did they get here ? They could not fly over from Europe, nor
could they now cross Behring Strait, with the Arctic climate there
existing. Imaginative persons have supposed a submerged Atlantic
Continent, which bridged the chasm in a remote geological period.
The myth of the Atlantis has been recently furbished up under the
facts supplied by the deep-sea soundings of the English steamer Chal-
lenger, and the discovery of a plateau at the bottom of the ocean, be-
tween North America and Europe. But, if it ever existed, it probably
did so at a time before the ancestors of our present moths came into
being.

For a moment, let us leave this matter and look at the question of
the affinities of our moths. I have shown, in the " American Journal
of Science and Arts," the detailed characters of one family of our
moths, the Sphingidce, and what is true of them is true generally.
Our moths, in regard to their structural relationship with the moths of
the world, fall into three main categories : 1. Those which are peculiar
to North America. 2. Those which have their nearest allies in South
or tropical America. 3. Those which have their nearest allies in Eu-
rope or Northern Asia.

With these last we have here to deal, and to account for their
presence with us. This class falls into two main groups — those which
are absolutely the same, and those which differ more or less, but clearly
reveal their common ancestry. But there exists in these respects every
gradation. Some differ so little that there is much dispute as to whether
they constitute different " species," and some, again, only differ percep-
tibly in certain stages. Others differ a little throughout in all stages,
and form what are called " representative species." So, far off in Ari-
zona, I have found a species ( Copimamestra occidenta) which " repre-
sents " a common European species ( Copimamestra brassicce). What
is this little moth, with its big name, doing in Arizona, and how did it
get there? With regard to those kinds which are absolutely identical
in America and Europe, some have evidently come over through com-
merce in historic times. We have found out almost the particular
voyage which brought the " Avhite-cabbage butterfly " from England
to Quebec, whence the insect has spread over the New England and
Middle States, to the great injury of our market-gardeners and cab-
bage-growers. But of some the distribution is such that this can not
be the explanation of their presence here. Of others it may be doubt-
ful. I am inclined to believe that another cabbage-insect, the moth
called Pluria ni, has been brought over in this manner. But how
about our Arizonian Copimamestra?

We shall have to leave entomology and go into geology to answer

380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this question. Formerly there was a warm climate in the north dur-
ing the Tertiary period. This was a certain measurable time ago,
when the circumpolar regions had a warm average temperature, with
no winter, and the moths of the period were then substantially the
same species from Norway across Siberia to Greenland. During this
happy time — happy, at least, so far as weather was concerned — we
must imagine that no impediment existed to the migrations of animals
across what is now Behring Strait. It is probable, even, that the
Tertiary epoch, as it witnessed the first appearance of man, saw his
first wanderings in North America. He, too, came from Asia by way
of the north and Behring Strait. Evolution had performed sur-
prising work in the mean while with one branch of the human family,
members of which, landing from Scandinavian or Spanish ships, met,
upon American soil, the descendants of a migration from Asia to
America in a former geological period, and to the east ! At the close
of this Tertiary period of the earth's history, cold and snow and ice
set in ; the long winter of the ages made its appearance in the shape
of the Glacial epoch. The circumpolar moths, whose more humble
fortunes we must be content here alone to follow, were forced south-
ward gradually by the change in climate which gathered its frigid
strength in the north. The European, Asiatic, and American faunae
then became separated, the latter the most completely, and by barriers
both of ice and ocean. The American species of moths, which for-
merly lived upon the shores of the Arctic Ocean, were gradually forced
down, year by year, until they reached Mexico, or the elevated por-
tions of the Southern States. When the glaciers subsided, and the
floods of ice which had submerged the continents gradually melted
and slowly drained away, the moths, much changed by the long con-
flict, also retraced their steps northward. As marks of the retreat and
advance, colonies of moths were left on the mountains to tell of the
flood. At this time our " Western clawed cutworm" ( Copimamcstra
occidenta) had been long separated from its present European broth-
ers, and the differences by which we now recognize the two species as
distinct had become slowly established through a long series of suc-
ceeding generations. What miles of land and sea separate the two
to-day ! The descendants of a common circumpolar species find them-
selves partly in Germany, partly in Arizona, and the Southwestern ter-
ritory of the United States !

Let us turn back to the other theory, that of a submerged Atlantic
Continent. Whatever may be finally proved from geology as to the
existence of such an Atlantic bridge, it is clear that the myth of the
Atlantis must be separated from such facts, as being of much more
recent origin. Primitive man existed reons before the notions which
were worked into the poetic and semi-historical myth of the Hesperides
and Atlantidcs. The setting sun was followed by human eyes for un-
told ages, as it bathed itself in the golden flush of evening, and was

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 38 1

at last whelmed by the waters which were held to surround the sup-
posed circular flat earth. The sun was the golden apple of the gar-
den of the Hesperides, the Golden Fleece after which Jason sailed.
The poet transformed the primitive notions into charming myths,
which probably had their origin from the observation of low-lying
clouds floating, like islands, in a sun-flushed western sky. In this
region of imagination and romance it is, perhaps, better — at any rate,
it is excusable — to abandon prose and take to verse. So we shall
quote a modern rhymer for the explanation of " the Atlantis " :

The western sky is all ablaze,

And, floating on that golden sea,
The clouds, like islands in a maze,

Blest dwelling-places seem to be.

When first this sight was viewed by man,
He thought the earth was flat, not round;

That all about its rim there ran

An ocean which the land did bound.

The poet in those early days

Immortalized the sun-flushed seas;
He peopled those far slopes and bays,

And called the isles Atlantides.

And so the legend grew until

The clouds in evening's dreamy light,
"With which the poet showed his skill,

Had vanished from the mental sight ;

Instead, the story true appeared,

And every sailor did his best,
"While straight from port the vessels steered

For those far islands in the west.

But none returned : of all who went,

Who sight of those fair islands caught,
Through the white waves the tempest sent

The barks which shattered home were brought.

o*

And some returned no more — but these
"Were fabled to have reached the strand,

"Where, anchored in luxurious ease,
Their ships will never leave the land.

The crews lie on these sunny slopes,
Purple with fruit, with vintage blest ;

The ships are held by flowery ropes
In sleepy bays content to rest.

The poet steps into his boat,
The sunset makes his starting fair ;

Through the long night with Death he'll float,
And in the morning he'll be there.

3S2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The study of the geographical distribution of moths has led us a
long way back in the history of our own race, to that East whence art
and science sprang. There is only one other fact to be briefly men-
tioned here, and that is the discovery by Louis Agassiz, who accom-
plished so much toward an understanding of our entire fauna, of a
tropical colony of moths inhabiting the southern extremity of the
Peninsula of Florida. I have examined the specimens brought thence,
now in the Museum at Cambridge. Standing in the way of the south
winds and the Gulf Stream, Florida receives constant accessions to its
tropical colony of insects. Not a few of the Florida moths seem to
have changed a little, and the probability is that here also we may
have to do with descendants of a very ancient colonization. Our con-
tinent, in fact, has harbored many immigrants besides the Pilgrim
Fathers, who are distinguished among these by their greater impor-
tance, and the results of their adventurous voyage.

The celebrated receipt of Mrs. Glass, which is of such general ap-
plication and has served so many literary purposes, must be employed
before we can place our specimens of moths in the cabinet. And,
indeed, everything depends upon the catching of them, and their ap-
pearance after being caught. The scales and the little fine fringes
which edge the wings are but delicately fastened to the membrane of
the wing itself, and are lost with the lightest rubbing. Some species
can never be captured on the wing in a really perfect condition.
When the "bee-hawks" {Hemaris sp.) emerge from the chrysalis,
there is a dusting of fine scales over the glassy portions of the wings,
which is scattered by the first fluttering flight of the insect :

" Like gold motes in the air it flies."

Again, several moths are ornamented with patches of looser and
bright-colored scales which are readily lost, the specimens still appear-
ing fresh after they have vanished. Thus the " dark - red under-
whig " ( Catocala cara) has the fore-wings adorned with spots of a
greenish hue when it leaves the pupa, but they are apt to fall and the
wings then appear all of a dark-brown. Not knowing this, the fresh
specimens have been described as a new variety, by an enterprising and
unfortunately somewhat critical writer, under the name Carlssima.

We have the choice of pursuing our entomological prey in each of
its stages of growth — of eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis, or moth. If we
gather them in either of the first three states, we have to nurse them
until they are brought to the last, and, since in this way we can always
obtain bright examples, it is much preferred by moth-fanciers. It
is, indeed, the only way to obtain adequate information about these
insects, and, as they are usually brought through them all with less
difficulty than the other insects in captivity, the breeding of moths
becomes an alluring and profitable pursuit.

Egg-hunting is the least remunerating way of procuring moths,

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 383

from the difficulty of detecting the little objects, like pins' heads, upon
the leaves and flowers where they are laid. Eggs are usually stuck
fast to the under side of the more tender leaves of the plant, though
this rule is not invariable, either as to position or choice of leaf. Usu-
ally the outer leaves are chosen, and by turning them up with care and
running the eye over them, and especially down the midrib, the little
whitish or greenish egg may be seen. It requires good eyes and much
patience, but I have found the eggs of about twenty species in this
way : those of the "bee -hawk" on honeysuckle, of the "Cecropia"
on apple and lilac bushes, the "white-lined-hawk" on purslane, etc.
The " lackey-moths " ( Clisiocampa) and the " deer-moths " (Hemi-
leuca) lay their eggs in circular patches around the smaller branches of
fruit and oak trees. The eggs are found sometimes to have been stung
by a little clear-winged fly, and out of these, instead of the expected
caterpillar, only the tiny but full-grown parasite escapes.

The rearing of larvos or caterpillars may be conducted on a variety
of plans. I have found an upright box, with glass in front, and per-
forated zinc for the sides, or fine wire netting and a solid door at back,
by which the fresh food is introduced, very serviceable. A drawer at
bottom is filled with fine washed sand, over which is placed a layer of
garden-mold, and then a covering of moss. The food is placed in
short water-bottles, to keep it fresh, and the caterpillars are placed on
these. But, when a boy, I reared many species in an empty butter-
tub, covered by common gauze. Almost all caterpillars may be han-
dled with impunity. Some of them are ferocious-looking enough to
inspire a fear of their biting powers, but they are unable to hurt us in
this way. The caterpillars of the " hawk-moths " have a formidable-
looking horn on the last segment or ring of the body. I have noticed
that inexperienced persons often mistake the position of this horn ;
they regard it as being in front, whereas it is attached to the tail-end
of the larva. There is nothing " poisonous " about any of these cater-
pillars, but two kinds cause a painful irritation to the skin when
touched with the hand, by means of the fine hairs which are thus
forced into the pores, and, the tips breaking off, cause fever and pain
as from a bee-sting. These two are the odd-looking caterpillar of
the "brown hag-moth" [Empretia stimulea), and the delicate-green
caterpillar, with pink and white stripe on the side, of the " corn em-
peror" (Hyperchivia so). Other hairy caterpillars may also produce
more or less discomfort when handled, but the frightful stories which
circulate in the newspapers from time to time, of people being stung to
death by the caterpillars they chanced upon, are all false. Caterpil-
lars can not sting, for the simple reason that they have nothing to sting
with, and when an injury of this kind has been really inflicted it will be
found to have been occasioned by something other than a caterpillar.

Hunting for caterpillars is attended usually by more success than
the seeking for eggs of moths. One can readily detect the presence of

3 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these often unwelcome visitors by the damage they do to the treas-
ures of the gardener and farmer. Many kinds feed in clusters, and
make nests into ■which they retire in the daytime, separating usually
before full grown and to make their cocoons. The larger species are
all solitary, and some are the most beautiful objects one can wish to
see. The caterpillar of the " imperial moth," which may be found on
the horse-chestnut, tulip, and gum trees in Central Park every Sep-
tember, when it is full grown, is a thick, green worm, as long as the
thumb, with four beautifully notched horns on the back, behind the
head. Delicate hairs adorn the body, and the fleshy feet behind are
ornamented by a design in black-and-white, looking like bead-work,
and as if the creature wore Indian moccasins. In April and May wre
may find the larvae of species which pass the winter in that state. One
of our handsomest caterpillars is that of the "great Indian moth" (Ec-
pautheria scribonia), black, studded with bristles and with the inci-
sions of the rings of the body marked in scarlet. I have fancied that
this caterpillar is the one noted by the Indians, and sung of by Long-
fellow in " Hiawatha."

It is very interesting, no matter what the species is, to watch it
through all its changes, and be rewarded finally by the moth disclos-
ing all its fresh beauties before our eyes, as it hangs on the side of
the breeding-cage. The caterpillars of the "hawk-moths," and many
" owlet-moths," enter the ground to pupate ; and for this purpose the
sand and soil in the bottom of the breeding-cage must not be kept too
dry, nor suffered to become hard. Those which do not go into the
ground will transform within cocoons spun among the moss, or on the
sides of the breeding-cage.

To collect the perfect moths, an empty quinine-bottle must be pre-
pared by putting a few small lumps of cyanide of potassium on the
bottom, and pouring on sufficient plaster of Paris to cover them per-
fectly. When the plaster is set, the fumes of the decomposing cya-
nide penetrate through the plaster, and the moth introduced into the
bottle is almost instantly killed. Poison-bottles, so prepared, are in-
dispensable to the collector, and they can be recommended on account
of the speedy and probably painless death which they inflict. The
objection to entomology is its apparent cruelty. I think that an un-
necessary number of specimens are sometimes killed by the enthusi-
astic collector, but, after a little, this fault will be corrected by reflec-
tion and experience. When we recollect that insects are the main
store of food to numberless birds and animals, besides falling a prey to
each other, so that the greater proportion meet a violent death in any
case, the comparatively small number which fall a sacrifice to the
pleasure of the collector, or supply the studies of scientists, can not in
reason be objected to. Our aesthetic pleasures are increased by the
contemplation of the lovely colors and delicate patterns which adorn
the wings of moths.

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 385

That man is feral, and a hunter by nature, is an obvious reflection,
even when we step into the shop of an entomologist, such as Cooke's,
in London. Nets, traps, and " fearsome gins " of all sorts and sizes
meet the eye. Boxes, pins, dark-lanterns, in fact an array of imple-
ments too numerous to mention, are there displayed, and, whether we
go a-hunting for game or for moths, the ingenuity of man has in-
vented a large quantity of apparatus, by which the result may be
obtained with the least exertion and the greatest certainty. Simplicity
here as elsewhere is, after all, to be commended. A small folding-net
which may be carried in the breast-pocket and afterward screwed to
the end of a walking-cane, a poison-bottle, and a couple of boxes which
may all be carried in the coat-pocket, are a sufficient outfit, and one
with which great results in the moth line can be reached. The box
for caterpillars should be of tin, and care must be exercised not to place
too many together, since some kinds have strong cannibalistic tenden-
cies and may devour each other before we get them safely home. But
not only by day are moths captured. They fly readily to light in the
evening, and the best results are obtained by spreading a bait, made
of beer and molasses, with a paint-brush, on the trunks of trees stand-
ing free. In the spring and early summer this method of catching
moths may be practiced with almost the certainty of taking many
rarities. After this means the best plan is to watch the flowers which
the moths frequent in the evening in search of natural sweets, and in
which occupation we may fatally surprise them.

Having caught our moth in one way or another, it must be pinned
and set, before placing it in the cabinet. In America the long German
pins are used, especially manufactured for entomological purposes.
The moth must be pinned directly through the center of the thorax,
taking care to displace the scales as little as possible. Setting-boards
are easily made by fastening two strips of soft pine-wood upon a thin
board, near enough together to admit of the free passing of the body
of the moth between them. They must be of several sizes, to corre-
spond with the breadth of wing of the moths, which must be pinned
with the body resting in the groove and the wings lying flat upon the
strips. The board may be ruled across with lead-pencil, at different
intervals, the lines serving as a guide to get the wings straight. With
a bristle fastened to the end of a little stick, the front wings should be
carried forward until their lower margin is about parallel with the
hind edge of the thorax. They may be held in position by small
three-cornered cardboard braces till all the wings are evenly placed,
and then fastened down by strips of smooth paper, kept tightly in
place by pins above and below the wings. It takes from a few days
to a fortnight to properly dry the moths so that they can be placed in
the cabinet.

Various and multiple are the store-boxes, implements, and "traps11
of a moth-catcher. To describe them all would take a moderate-sized
vol. xxvii. — 25

386 ' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hand-book. My experience is, that simplicity is the most necessary
guide for the collector, whether in the field or closet. A few tools
and some cork-lined boxes will accomplish a great deal in the hands of
an expert, while the expensive paraphernalia of the novice will fail of
adequate result. As a rule, the most pleasure and information are
yielded to the student who gradually increases his stores from his own
catching, who follows the moths into their retreats, and by his indus-
try and pertinacity compels Nature to yield to him a measure of her
secrets.

Long ago I remember catching moths one summer night in the
country, back of Newburg, on the Hudson. What a lovely and per-
fect night it was ! A sheen lay over the grass, and the field-daisies
stood tall and pale and spectral in the moonlight. Their white flowers
looked like silver crowns, waiting for some love-sick damsel to pluck
and gather her fate from the number of their petals. They stood in
silver and gold, without envying the yellow and brown daisies of the
meadows which were hardly open yet. The air was traversed by
leather-winged bats, also out after insects, and I felt convicted by
being in their company. A pale-green moon -moth fluttered by the
skirt of the dark wood, the long " tails " to her wings trailing like the
court-dress of a queen. I stayed my hand and let her sweep by, hop-
ing that those marauding bats might not espy her as she floated in the
night-air, heavy with the scent of roses. For aught I saw, she escaped
them, and the peril of having her white body devoured, her green
wings clipped from her shoulders, falling idly, like the petals of dying
flowers, upon the ground.

Painters have not yet learned all they can from the coloring of
moths. Some moths are pale-pink and yellow, only these two colors,
reminding one of apple-blossoms and yellow moonlight. I saw a panel
of C. Colman's once, for the contrast of colors of which it seemed he
must have studied the wings of moths. As the musician can use the
songs of birds, so the painter may copy the colors of the moths for our
greater pleasure and his own benefit. A great deal may be said of the
unconscious schooling we get from Nature.

" All sorts and conditions of men " and not a few talented and ac-
complished women are among the American students and collectors
of moths. Before the last quarter of a century, those who interested
themselves in America with this department of our fauna were few,
and those who published the results of their investigations might be
counted on the fingers of one hand. Harris in Massachusetts, Fitch in
New York, Kirtland in Ohio, Gosse in Canada, were the best known.
Thomas Say, of Philadelphia, published two species in his "American
Entomology." But since that time, Professor Packard, Professor Fer-
nald, Mr. Henry Edwards, Mr. F. Pepper, Mr. Lintner, and a number
of talented writers, have become familiar names to those interested in
the subject in the pages of its literature. The " New York Entomo-

MOTHS AND MOTH-CATCHERS. 387

logical Club" publishes a monthly magazine, entirely devoted to
Lepidoptera. The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences has issued three
handsome volumes chiefly devoted to studies on our moths. In Cam-
bridge, Avhere Harris lived and studied, a very useful journal — " Psy.
che " — appears, while in London, Canada, Mr. Saunders edits " The
Canadian Entomologist " in monthly parts. The various State ento-
mologists publish yearly reports, and the Department of the Interior
has published valuable monographs and papers relating to our moths
in the publications of the geological survey. The great work which has
been done in the United States in science has helped also the increase
of information upon this comparatively small branch of natural his-
tory. I should have mentioned the ladies first, but it is not out of
politeness that the conscientious historian records the services to sci-
ence of Mrs. Eliza Bridgham, of New York ; Mrs. C. H. Fernald, of
Orono, Maine ; and Miss Mary Murtfeldt, of St. Louis, Missouri. Mrs.
Bridgham's extensive collection, commenced under the eye of Agassiz
himself, is a model of useful collecting for scientific purposes. The
species are not represented by single individuals, but the varieties of
each species, and a sufficient number of duplicates to allow of the
study of the structure and changes, are all carefully placed and la-
beled. Years of patient and careful toil have their reward in the
most interesting local collection, from a scientific stand-point, I have
yet seen.

In Europe our moths have been described and studied by two
French scientists, MM. Boisduval and Guenie. In Germany, Professor
Zeller and Dr. Speyer, together with Herr Moeschler and the lamented
and talented Viennese lepidopterist Julius Lederer, have published in-
teresting studies upon our North American fauna. In England, the
late Mr. Walker accomplished less satisfactory work in the precincts
of the British Museum, and is now succeeded by Mr. Arthur G. But-
ler, whose work merits all praise. But our best incentive to the study
of our moths has been afforded by the example of Lord Walsingham.
It is ten years ago since his lordship visited the United States, where,
unlike many of his countrymen who come to hunt buffalo, he went
West to hunt moths. Lord Walsingham visited California and Ore-
gon, and camped out like a true hunter. While his companions took
the rifle, he handled the entomological net, and to such good effect
that science has been the gainer by hundreds of new species, and a
much clearer general knowledge of the subject than before existed.
The delicate operation of setting his tiny captures, Lord Walsingham
accomplished successfully even on horseback, as the camp was shifted
from place to place — quite a feat, when it is recollected that the tiny
specimens, many not a quarter of an inch in expanse of wing, require
a steady hand and the most favorable conditions to be successfully
prepared for the cabinet. This memorable trip of Lord Walsingham's
had the result of directing the attention of our collectors to the rich-

388 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ness of "Western fields for moth-catching. Their cabinets soon pre-
sented new "beauties," vying with Indian and Brazilian species in
varied colors and far surpassing them in general interest.

I said that " all sorts and conditions of men " were among those
interested in forming collections of moths, and it may be inferred that
there are queer specimens among the owners of the cabinets as well
as in the drawers of the cabinets themselves. Moth-catching is a
hobby, and, like other hobbies, it depends upon how it is ridden to
pronounce upon its value from a social or scientific point of view.
Some collectors amass their material from an apparent simple satisfac-
tion in possessing rare or odd specimens. They have no appreciation of
the bearing which the subject has upon general science, and no higher
artistic interest in their possessions than the one that they have some-
thing no one else has got, and which it is difficult to obtain. A sort
of purposeless mania seems to fall upon many of them, and they might
as well get together a lot of old bottles or stones as moths. They
deceive each other as to the locality for their rarities. I have even
heard of one rabid collector, now happily deceased, who destroyed
every specimen he had or could buy up of a certain rare exotic species,
except one pair in his own collection, so that he could say he was the
only one who had it ! Another openly stated in an advertisement that
he " coveted " certain specimens, which he offered to buy ; thus, proba-
bly unintentionally, using a word which expressed his condition ex-
actly, and in this way succeeding in breaking a commandment and
exposing his state of mind at the same time.

While the " brethren of the net," as the moth-catchers are fond
of styling themselves, are, generally speaking, a friendly and useful
class, they necessarily include many who follow the occupation, but
are yet not truly of them. From such the gentler student will soon
turn away, sometimes not detecting them until he has suffered in purse
and cabinet. Like other " confidence operators," they generally take
in uninformed and young collectors, whose rarities are speedily trans-
ferred out of their keeping by the false statements and industrious
letter-writing of these moth-poachers. They are the dark side of a
picture which would be otherwise too bright and happy.

Among the figures of moth-catchers which have crossed my own
path, I finally recall that of a kindly old gentleman, now no more,
who for many years was a visitor to my humble study. His beardless,
wrinkled face, framed in gray hair, had ever such a good and serene
expression as betokened a mind which had caught its serenity from
the countenance of Nature herself. I visited him in turn and not un-
frequently, and I remember on one particular occasion that he showed
me a new capture which he had made on Long Island, a new butterfly,
not then described in the books. As he took it from the box and
placed it on the table before him, pinned, dried, and set, in all its
beauty, a little dog, which was his pet and companion, sprang at his

HYGIENE OF THE AGED. 389

knee and with one blow of his paw broke the butterfly. To the old
gentleman it was as to Sir Isaac Newton — the loss was great, and the
shock must have been intense. Although I had hardly seen the speci-
men, I was profoundly affected by the mischance. But he neither
struck the dog nor spoke loudly. With a trembling hand and flushed
face he set to work at once to gather up carefully the disjointed wings
of his specimen, which was happily accomplished, and, with a little
gum and much patient dexterity, the damage which seemed at first
irreparable was remedied. It taught me a lesson I have never since
forgotten. The butterfly was the rare Papilio Calverleyi, of which
up to the present time but one other specimen has been found. I have
now new faith in that old story, from having witnessed a similar oc-
currence, and fresh belief in the goodness of that human nature which
science and its pursuit often tend to strengthen and confirm.

-+*+-

HYGIENE OF THE AGED.

By L. H. WATSON, M. D.

DIFFERENT epochs in life are marked by the frequency or in-
frequency of certain morbid phenomena constituting that depart-
ure from the normal standard of health which we denominate disease.

What is life ? is the unanswerable question the human race has
ever sought to solve. Bichat called it "the sum of the functions by
which death is resisted." Physiologists of the present day offer little
more that is satisfactory in their definitions, calling it " the aggregate
of the phenomena peculiar to living organisms." The inscrutable
mystery which surrounds the principle of vitality renders any attempt
at definition illogical and unsatisfactory. We have to deal with the
phenomena of life, and the functions through which these phenomena
are manifested. In the child we have an exuberance of life. Man-
hood is the period of repose ; waste and repair seem to neutralize each
other ; and calmness, deliberation, and quietude prevail.

With old age come disturbance, waste without repair, destruction
without building up, action without reaction, decay and death. These
phases of animal life are constantly repeating themselves. In discussing
the diseases of old age, we have to deal with the phenomena of life,
the perversion of functions which have hitherto counterbalanced each
other. The prime of manhood and stability is passed ; internal resist-
ance now fails to maintain itself against external force. Nutritive
action does not respond to the demand to renew effete material. The
equilibrium being destroyed, decay and the products of decomposition
become the most important factors in the study of the diseases which
now threaten to disintegrate this hitherto self-sustaining system.

3Q0 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It will easily be seen that the diseases which disturb the formerly
evenly balanced organism tend toward what pathologists call destruc-
tive metamorphosis. Blood-changes, tissue-changes, and secretory
changes, are subjecting us to constantly varying standards of health.
How to maintain the equipoise as long as possible, and prevent the too
rapid decline of the vital forces, as well as to suggest measures — when
care and forethought can ward off the blow — is the province of the
thoughtful medical man.

Threescore years and ten should certainly be reached by most of
those who attain adult age, provided no inherited taint weakens the
vital forces. It is difficult to determine the exact period of life at
which the decline commences. In fact, there can be no absolute stand-
ard from which we can predict with unvarying certainty the gradual
failure of the physical powers. Some seem to inherit a vitality which
almost defies the ravages of time ; but, although they are apparently
in the full vigor of life, close scrutiny rarely fails to detect the fact
that the scale is tipping downward. We do not grow old in a night,
although we often make the remark that So-and-so has grown ten
years older since the occurrence of some great grief, or some disas-
trous reverse in business. The eye-sight gets poorer, the hair and
beard grayer and thinner ; the form is more bent, the walk more
uncertain, the circus senilis appears in the cornea. After all, this is
not old age; these are all warnings, but the heart is still warm, the eye
still bright, the muscles still firm. The world looks as fair and invit-
ing as it did in early manhood or womanhood — a little larger print
to read, a smoother road to walk on, a few more flannels at night, and
a little less labor during the day, with perhaps a greater disposition
toward quiet, a greater fondness for home-life, and a disinclination to
encourage the enthusiasms which time and experience have so often
proved to them to be illusive.

We are to consider the physiological and pathological conditions
arising during this epoch of life. Many of these are characteristic,
and do not earlier manifest themselves. We have many works upon
the diseases of children and adult life, but almost none pertaiuing to
the diseases incident to age. And yet they are peculiar. The pneu-
monia of a child is not the pneumonia of an aged person. Slight
ailments, unobserved or disregarded in the adult, become positive dis-
ease in advanced life. Our acute fevers, inflammations, fluxes, etc.,
are not met with among the aged.

Congestions, chronic inflammations, tumors of the brain, paralysis,
rupture of blood-vessels, enlargement of the heai-t, chronic bronchial
affections, dropsical effusions, indigestion, diseases of kidneys and
bladder, especially the latter, cancers, etc., are what the physician is
most often called upon to prescribe for in old people. Aside from
actual disease, the conduct of the life of elderly persons is to be
studied and observed. Ordinarily old age brings with it, or should,

HYGIENE OF THE AGED. 391

a certain degree of leisure and immunity from the distressing anxie-
ties which vex and worry the lives of men actively engaged in busi-
ness. The danger of sickness from exposure, as far as the liability
to exposure is concerned, and the danger arising from accidents are
lessened ; old people are careful, and warily thrust themselves into
danger. Calmness, quietness, and a regular habit of life, succeed to
confusion, activity, and an indulgent and irregular method of living.
Life wanes, the descent is easy and gradual, a peg is lost here and a
prop there, the sympathies become blunted, the intellect chilled, the
senses lose their acuteness, and "the play is played out." What more
delightful spectacle than an aged person in full possession of all his
faculties, enjoying life with the zest of manhood's prime, appreciative
of the pleasures of the table, the society of friends, the charm of music,
and the intellectual feast that a good book presents to him !

Hufeland, in his " Art of prolonging Life," advises old people to
eat sparingly. There is a great difference between a "gourmet" or
"gourmand" and a glutton. The pleasures of eating dependent upon
the sense of taste, when eye-sight and hearing are daily becoming more
and more impaired, the possession of leisure in which to cultivate their
gastronomic talents, as well as the quiet necessary for the performance
of the digestive act, combined with the necessity for careful nourish-
ment, prohibit old people from yielding to any mistaken notion that,
because they are old, food is of little consequence to them, and that
the ordinary rules governing assimilation and nutrition do not hold in
their case.

A great deal of the immunity of old people from sickness will de-
pend upon their power of digestion and assimilation.

Food and drink should be partaken of sparingly, and at proper
intervals : an overloaded stomach, or a stomach filled with badly
cooked food, or food taken at an improper time, will occasion much
distress to an old person. At the same time, it may lay the founda-
tion for disease which will cut short a hitherto robust old age.

If actual pain and danger do not follow this gorging, it will prob-
ably entail loss of sleep, and consequent exhaustion, all of which we
seek to shield the old from, as we do the child.

In the normal act of digestion, the consciousness of that act is
wanting. Most persons engaged in active life fail to give the proper
amount of time to eating and digestion ; for this natural and physio-
logical action to be performed with the ease and perfection of detail
which Nature, in her arrangement of the means for such an end, in-
tended, deliberation must accompany the eating, and rest of mind and
. body the digestion of food. Haste when eating, and activity, bodily
or mental, during the digestive process, are fatal to the object for which
food is taken. It is only in old age (I refer particularly to America),
now, that that leisure which is indispensable to the proper perform-
ance of digestion is obtained, and yet, when, after years of toil, we

392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

perchance through the inheritance of a resisting power which has
enabled us to arrive at sixty years of age, and upward, find the time
to rest, our teeth are gone, our stomach, from constant action, is
unable to act with that promptness and energy which early in life
enabled us to digest food on the run, as it were. Then the physician
is called upon to encourage, stimulate, and prop up by his art, Na-
ture's waning forces.

The manifestations of dyspepsia in the aged do not vary materi-
ally from those of adults, but the causes are somewhat different ; the
treatment is conceived on a plan based on the age and life-long habits
of the patient. An aged stomach is not an active stomach. Atony
characterizes its functional action. Acid digestion, gastric catarrh, and
flatulency, are the leading forms of dyspepsia of the aged. Old people
have not in general what we call a healthy appetite. One well-known
writer has said that they eat because no other interesting occupation
is afforded their senses. This may be true of the very aged, and it
undoubtedly is a fact that most people of eighty years and upward
find as much pleasure in eating as in almost any other occupation left
them. The appetite is often lost when no disease can be detected.
There is loss of the sense of taste, and even several days without food
does not provoke hunger. In another form, the breath is somewhat
offensive, the tongue furred, when in the former case it was clean.

Fisher tells us that, if this continues, it leads to senile marasmus
or atrophy of the aged. Some old people suffer from a difficulty in
swallowing, which seems to be the result of a partial paralysis of the
throat ; the pharynx does not respond to the stimulus of food as it
passes over it. Solids pass more easily than liquids. Deglutition is
more difficult in an upright than in a horizontal position. Fisher
speaks of the case of a man sixty years of age who swallowed soft and
mucilaginous preparations with great difficulty, but warm food, salty
or irritating substances gave little trouble. Day has noticed the same
fact, and observes that irritating or highly seasoned foods were the
only ones swallowed easily. Canstatt thinks that the abuse of tea and
coffee leads to the development of this state, which he says is very
common in Holland.

Old people are subject to accumulations of gas in the intestinal
tract, which not only occasion distress from over-distention of the
stomach, causing pressure upward upon the diaphragm, and conse-
quent interference with the heart's action, especially when lying down,
but also from its passage downward into the bowels.

Diarrhoea is one of the consequences of dyspepsia, and it is not
unusual to find old people who have several movements of the bowels
daily, without any of the exhaustion attendant upon ordinary diar-
rhoeas. Another remarkable fact is, that we find, even in very old
people, a diarrhoea which would naturally seem to weaken and pros-
trate even a strong man, but the effects of which are not noticed until

HYGIENE OF THE AGED. m

suddenly we learn that death has taken place. Overfeeding is a fre-
quent cause of these senile diarrhcEas. The pressure of undigested
food in the intestinal canal is followed by a sudden purging, without
pain, hut exceedingly rebellious and difficult to conquer. Before
treating of the methods of cure for dyspepsia and its accompaniments,
such as loss of appetite, difficulty in swallowing, flatuence, constipa-
tion, etc., there remains to be studied the food suitable for old people,
the quantity to be eaten, and the time for eating.

It would be useless to present a dietary list to which one should
be strictly confined. A long life of indulgence in eating and drink-
ing, as well as diversity of taste, would preclude any attempt at regu-
lating the diet of healthy elderly people. To those who have arrived
at an advanced age without any form of indigestion, I would suggest
a cup of coffee and a slice of dry toast before rising in the morning.
The reason why this should be served while one is yet in bed is, that
very old people, even when perfectly well, are often subject to a slight
faintness and nervous tremor before rising, and the exertion necessary
to dress often leaves them too faint to eat. It takes but a few mo-
ments to prepare it, and, as old people like to rise early, it is usually
an hour or two before the family are prepared for the morning meal.

A light luncheon at noon, and dinner not later than five or six
o'clock. If the dinner is taken at noon, and supper at six o'clock, it
will be found to suit the habits of the aged better in one way, as old
people love to retire early. In most countries, among civilized nations,
the practice of crowding three meals into the twelve hours or more of
daylight has grown to be such a habit that it seems a heresy to sug-
gest eating when hungry, day or night ; nevertheless, I would suggest
to the healthy and not too aged person to forget the " bugbear " of
"not eating before retiring," which compels many a person — otherwise
disposed — to pass ten or twelve hours with the stomach in a collapsed
condition, while during the other twelve it is constantly distended
with food. I would say to the aged, eat sparingly and eat frequently.
Let your food be light, and easily digestible, but eat when hungry,
whether it be twelve o'clock at noon or twelve o'clock at night. Aged
people are light sleepers, and often wake up during the night with an
intense craving for food, and a good plan is to have a cup of bouillon
and a cracker on a stand near the bed. The broth can be readily heat-
ed by an alcohol lamp in five minutes. This simple habit will often
procure hours of uninterrupted slumber, which would otherwise be
passed in restless longing for daylight and breakfast.

I have said, eat sparingly and frequently ; eat sparingly, because the
digestive action is not so strong as in earlier life, nor is the demand
for large quantities of food so urgent. Eat frequently, for several
reasons. The digestive organs are not then burdened with large quan-
tities of food, and dispose of it with greater ease. A moderate amount
of food in the stomach gives a feeling of comfort and quiet to a person

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whose sole occupation may be a little reading or knitting, or even
nothing at all, when extreme age is reached.

The kind of food to be eaten varies with the condition : if the old
person needs building up, the more nutritive foods, that is, those con-
taining the greatest amount of nourishment to a given volume, the
greatest proportion of assimilative matter ; if, on the contrary, it is
necessary to encourage the digestive action, we select stimulating food.
In this connection I shall quote from an eminent French authority :
" As age advances, not only is one able to bear with impunity food
which is piquant, pungent, and more exciting, but the use of these
latter foods is necessary to the physiological conditions acquired by the
'organs of digestion.'

"This alimentation becomes especially necessary to individuals
whom residence in great cities, sedentary life, and confining work
separate in a great measure from the natural conditions of life, found
in free air and bodily exercise." With regard to the use of wines
or liquor by the aged, I would say, if there is a proper time in the life
of a man when he should use stimulating drinks, that time is when he
has arrived at a good old age.

A glass of sherry or burgundy during dinner often aids digestion
wonderfully. When the tongue is pale, and the desire for food absent,
a " nip " of brandy will stimulate the stomach into secreting properly.
This condition of atony or sluggishness of action is not at all unusual.
A glass of milk-punch at night often goes, as a very good and exceed-
ingly temperate old lady once said to me, "to the right spot." Coffee
is a natural drink for the aged. Its mildly stimulating, soothing quali-
ties directly indicate it as a beverage for the old. Gasparin tells us
that " coffee has the property of rendering the elements of the body
more stable, and thus, if not affording nourishment, it diminishes the
waste going on."

The origin of many dyspepsias in the old will be found in the lack
of the proper means for the complete mastication of their food. The
loss of their teeth, and the neglect to replace that loss with artificial
ones until a dyspepsia is established, will often entail a long train of
ills. A set of false teeth will sometimes remove dyspeptic troubles of
long standing. The teeth with metal plates (platinum or gold), al-
though more expensive than rubber or celluloid, are to be preferred.
Mastication must be well performed even if the food is not very solid.
The one golden rule is to eat slowly.

Some old people have idiosyncrasies about certain foods, which
must not be overlooked. Milk is one of the most easily digested of
foods, on account of its various constituents, and can be taken when
nothing else is permissible. Eggs, soft-boiled or raw, are easily digest-
ed. Oysters, fish, and lamb, follow in about the order named. Beef,
mutton, and fowls, and wheaten bread, occupy about the same time in
digestion. I have met with two forms of dyspepsia more frequently

THE OLDEST AIR-BREATHERS.

395

than any others in prescribing for old people — the acid form, where
there is an excess of acid found in the stomach, and the atonic form,
where there is sluggish action of the mucous membrane of the stom-
ach, and the time for digestion is greatly lengthened. In acid dyspep-
sia, Dr. Ringer recommends the use of glycerine, stating that an old
gentleman, upon learning that glycerine prevented milk from turning
sour, concluded that it would be just the thing to prevent " himself
from turning sour." I have used glycerine combined with charcoal
with considerable success in remedying this form of dyspepsia.

Dilute nitro-muriatic acid, a half-teaspoonful in a claret-glass of
water, immediately after meals, breaking up the weaker acids and
affording the natural acids of the stomach, is an exceedingly useful
remedy. The atonic form of dyspepsia, combined with loss of appe-
tite, requires quite a different treatment. The stomach is feeble, and
needs stimulating ; two or three grains of capsicum with one half-
grain of aloes in a capsule will excite it to action ; the constipation
which often accompanies this form will be obviated. When there
are accumulations of gas, charcoal tablets au hour or two after meals
generally give great relief ; but it is not a good plan to keep up their
use permanently, as it tends somewhat toward constipation. Electric-
ity is the great tonic for these debilitated, relaxed stomachs. The
sympathetic nervous system is rehabilitated, and the most marvelous
effects are often produced. The apathetic condition of the intestinal
track is dissipated, the liver pours out its bile, and life seems to move
on again. Alkalies taken before meals stimulate the flow of the gas-
tric juices. Slight fatigue often spoils the appetite, and lowers the
digestive power. Nothing so securely revives this as a glass of wine
before meals. While small quantities of alcohol aid digestion, larger
quantities retard it and encourage gastric catarrh. The quantity of
wine or brandy must be small when taken for this purpose.

•»♦»

THE OLDEST AIR-BREATHERS.

WE alluded in the March number of the " Monthly," to the fossil
scorpions recently discovered in the Upper Silurian formations of
Sweden and Scotland, recognizing them as the most ancient specimens
of land or air-breathing animals yet found. The subject has since gained
a new interest through the discovery of a still older fossil of an insect,
and by these our knowledge of the land of the earth and of some of its
inhabitants is carried back by at least two immense geological periods.
We therefore give place to a fuller account of the discoveries, with
portraits of these newly found oldest inhabitants of the solid part
of the globe, collating the facts and borrowing the illustrations from

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the French and English scientific journals. Scorpions had already
been found quite abundantly in the lowest carboniferous strata. The
first palaeozoic specimen that came to light ( Cyclophthalmus senior)
was found in the coal formation of Chombe, Bohemia, and was de-
scribed by Count Sternberg in 1835. Three years later another scor-
pion (31icrolabis) was described from the same locality. The next
discoveries were American, and were made in the coal-measures of
Illinois, of two genera which Meek and Worthen described as Eoscor-
pius (dawn-scorpion) and Mazonia (from Mazon Creek, where they
were found). In 1873 Dr. Henry Woodward showed that Eoscorpius
remains occurred in the coal-measures of England and in the carbon-
iferous limestone of Scotland ; and in 1881 Mr. Benjamin N. Peach
described a considerable number of scorpions which had been obtained
by the officers of the Geological Survey of Scotland from the lowest
carboniferous rocks of the Scottish border. In his paper, which was
published in the " Transactions " of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,
he pointed out the general resemblance and almost equally high or-
ganization of these ancient scorpions and those of the present dajr,
and expressed regret that Messrs. Meek and Worthen had given the
name of Eoscorpius to their specimens, " for the dawn of the scorpion
family must have been at a much earlier period, and we may hope that
their remains wTill yet turn up in the Devonian and Silurian plant-beds
when these come to be thoroughly searched."

This prediction has been verified in the discovery of the Scotch and
the Swedish Silurian fossils. The Scotch scorpion was discovered first,
by Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, who obtained his specimen from Lesma-
hagow, in Lanarkshire, in June, 1883 ; but the Swedish professor, Lind-
strom, although a year later in discovery, anticipated him in announc-
ing it and in publishing the description of his fossil.

In a letter of November 24, 1884, to M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards,
Professor Lindstrom says of his scorpion (Fig. 1) : " The specimen is
in sufficiently good preservation, and shows the chitinous brown or
yellowish-brown cuticle, very thin, compressed, and corrugated by the
pressure of the superposed layers. We can distinguish the cephalo-
thorax, the abdomen, with seven dorsal lamina?, and the tail, consisting
of six segments or rings, the last narrowing and sharpening into the
venomous dart. The sculpture of the surface, consisting of tubercles
and longitudinal keels, entirely corresponds with that of living scor-
pions. One of the stigmata on the right is visible, and clearly demon-
strates that it must have belonged to an air-breathing animal, and the
whole organization indicates that it lived on dry land." Professor
Lindstrom points out, as a feature of great importance in the conforma-
tion of the animal, the existence of four pairs of thoracic feet, large
and pointed, resembling the feet of the embryos of several other tra-
cheates and animals like the Campodea. This form of feet, he re-
marks, " no longer exists in the fossil scorpions of the carboniferous

THE OLDEST AIR-BREATHERS.

397

formation, the appendices belonging to which resemble those found
in the scorpions of our own day." This species has been named Palce-
ophoneus nuncius.

The Scottish specimen (Fig. 2) is described by Mr. Peach in " Na-
ture " as being about an inch and a half long, and lying on its back

on the stone. " Its exposed ventral surface shows almost every ex-
ternal organ that can be seen in that position, and in this way serves
to supplement the evidence supplied by the Swedish specimen. As in
the northern individual, the first and second pair of appendages of the

398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cephalo-thorax in the Scottish example are chelate, but the palpi are
not quite so robust. The walking-limbs, though not so clumpy as in
P. nuncius, also terminate in a single claw-like spike. The arrange-
ment of the sternum shows a large pentagonal plate (metasternite).
against which the wedge-shaped coxae of the fourth pair of walking-
limbs abut. The coxae of the third pair bound the pentagonal plate
along its upper margins, and meet in the mid-line of the body, where
they are firmly united. The coxae of the first two pairs, as well as
the bases of the palpi, are drawn aside from the center line of the
body, showing that, as in recent scorpions, these alone were con-
cerned in manducation, or rather the squeezing out of the juices of
the prey ; from the circumstance of these being drawn aside, the
medial eyes are seen pressed up through the cuticle of the gullet,
and a fleshy labrum (camerostome) appears between the bases of the
chilicerae.

" Behind the pentagonal plate and the coxae of the hindmost limbs
there succeeds a space shaped like an inverted V, where the test is
thin and wrinkled in the line of the long axis of the body. It is just
along this line that the trunk or abdomen most easily separates from
the cephalo-thorax in recent scorpions, and it is at once apparent that
the trunk in this case is as far separated from the cephalo-thorax as it
can well be without being detached. Similar longitudinally wrinkled
skin is seen to unite the dorsal and ventral scutes up the whole right
side of the trunk. At the interior angle of the inverted V there hangs
downward a narrow bifid operculum flanked on each side by the combs,
which have each a broad triangular rachis set along its lower edge
with the usual tooth-like filaments. The combs almost hide the first
of the four ventral sclerites, which bear the breathing apparatus in
recent scorpions, notwithstanding which all four of these exhibit on
their right side undoubted slit-like stigmata at the usual places. The
fifth ventral scute of the trunk suddenly contracts posteriorly, and to
its narrow end is articulated a long tail of five joints and a poison-
gland with a sting. These joints are all constructed on the same
principle as those of recent scorpions, and, as the articular surfaces are
more highly faceted on the dorsal than on the ventral aspect (a por-
tion of the tail of the specimen lying sidewise allowing of these ob-
servations), there can be no doubt that the animal was in the habit of
carrying the tail over the head (so to speak), and stinging in the same
manner as its recent congeners." These characters are shown in the
accompanying illustration (Fig. 2), which is on the same scale as that
of the figure of the Swedish example (Fig. 1), viz., about twice the
natural size.

The animal is supposed to have wandered to the sea-shore in search
of food, and there been imbedded in marine strata. From the com-
pleteness of the remains, it is evident that it can not have been car-
ried far out to sea ; the rocks of the formation in which the fossil was

THE OLDEST AIR-BREATHERS.

399

found abound in Eurypterids, or fossils of a crustacean allied to the
king-crab.

Of the recent discovery of earlier Silurian insects, we have the fol-
lowing account given by M. Charles Brongniai't to the French Acad-
emy of Sciences :

" Fossil insects have been found
in the carboniferous strata. The
coal-beds of Commentry have
furnished some thirteen hundred
specimens, and Mr. Scudder has |H
described six specimens that were
found in the Devonian beds of
New Brunswick ; but, until very
recently, no representative of that
class had been detected in any of
the more ancient formations. M.
Douville, a professor in the School
of Mines, has shown me a piece of
Middle Silurian sandstone from
Jurques, Calvados, bearing a dis-
tinct impression of an insect's
wing (Fig. 3). The state of pres-
ervation is not perfect, but we can
still distinguish most of the ner-
vation. The wing, which is about
thirty-five millimetres long, be-
longed to a blattid, an insect of
the cockroach family. The hu-
meral field is broad, and upon it
may be seen the superior humeral vein ; the inferior humeral vein, bifur-
cated at its extremity ; the vitrean or median vein, likewise divided into

Fig. 3.— Fossil Scorpion, from the upper Silurian
rocks of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland,
found by Dr. Hunter, Carluke. (Magnified two
diameters.)

Fig. 3.— Wing of a Fossil Blatta (Palceo-
blattlna Dovmllei). in a piece of Silurian
sandstone (natural size).

Fig. 4.-

-Restoration or the Fossil
Wing.

two branches ; the upper and lower discoidal veins, with their very
oblique divisions meeting again at the end, just as they may still be

AOO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONT ELY.

seen to do on some living Blattce ; and we can follow the anal vein,
which is nearly straight and extends almost to the end of the wing,
together with the axillary veins parallel to it. The remarkable feature
which distinguishes this impression from the wings of all other blattids,
living and fossil, is the length of the anal nervature and the scant width
of the axillary held. Among the blattids of the coal period, the Prog-
noblattina Fritschii (Heer) and the Gerablattina fascigera (Scudder)
have a nervation a little resembling that of our Silurian wing. We
propose to name this ancestor of the Blattce, Palceoblattina Douvillei,
in honor of Professor Douville.

" Geologists regard as identical the sandstones of May and Jurques

Fig. 5.— Living Blattje, male and female (Bldbera claraziana), from Mexico.

in the Calvados, and place them in the Middle Silurian, while the
schists of the Island of Gottland belong to the Upper Silurian. Our
blatta-wing, then, must be regarded as older than the scorpion described
by Professor Lindstrom and the other similar scorpion from the Upper
Silurian of Lanarkshire."

Besides the engraving of the actual fossil wing in Fig. 3, we give
in Fig. 4 an ideal restoration of the same ; and in Fig. 5, for com-
parison, a representation of a living blatta from Mexico, the venation
of whose wings nearly corresponds with that of the fossil.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LANGLEY. 401
SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LANGLEY.

By EDWAKD S. HOLDEN.

I HAVE been asked to write a sketch of the life of Professor
Langley, to accompany his portrait in this number of " The Popu-
lar Science Monthly."

Something of the life of every scholar and of every public man
belongs to his audience ; while most of that personality which endears
him to his friends is their private possession, not to be set forth,
except within narrow limits.

Professor Langley was born at Roxbury (now Boston), August
22, 1834. Like many another Boston boy, he was sent to the Boston
Latin School, where Latin and Greek and little else was taught.

Latin and Greek was reputed to be the sum and end of learning,
and Harvard College seemed to show dim perspectives of more Latin
and Greek. It was no wonder that young Langley, whose genius lay
in quite another direction, should look about him, after his graduation
from the school, to see if there were not some practicable way in which
he could pursue those mechanical and astronomical studies that already
had fascinated him. He had little inclination to enter college, and the
openings in astronomy proper were very rare in those years, even
rarer than now. Since he was ten years old, he had been reading and
studying astronomy, making small telescopes, using these and others,
with various success, but always with ardor. The practical question
of how to shape his life was one that had to be solved, and a variety
of causes led to his determination not to go to college, but to become
a civil engineer. Here at least was a profession whose basis was
mathematical, and in which mechanical tastes and acquirements would
have scope. So the practice of engineering was begun ; special cir-
cumstances forced him into architecture, and for some years this was
his pursuit. These were dull years, mostly spent in the West, where
at that time there were few opportunities to display any real ability in
this special calling.

There is little doubt but that the long and dreary hours spent over
the drawing-table were an admirable though tedious preparation for
the series of astronomical delineations which have been of so solid a
use to science. But, finally, in the lack of real opportunities, archi-
tecture ceased to be a profession, and became a business, a means to
live simply.

In 1864 Langley felt the need of some marked change in his life,
and he spent the greater part of the years 1864 and 1865 in Europe.

In 1865 he returned to America, then thirty years old, and found
himself entirely free, for the first time in his life, to follow his own
inclinations. So, at thirty, instead of twenty, we find him as one of
vol. xxvii. — 26

+02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the regular assistants at the Harvard College Observatory. From this
time forward he belongs to astronomy, although many an obstacle was
yet to be overcome before he could freely exercise his special and high
talents.

After a few months at Harvard, Langley was offered the position
of Professor of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy at
Annapolis. Before the war, a small observatory had been founded at
Annapolis by Professor Chauvenet. It contained a six-inch equatorial,
and an exquisite meridian circle, by Repsold, with which Chauvenet had
already made some observations. The removal of the Academy to New-
port and the resignation of Professor Chauvenet left these instruments
unused, and it was Langley's first business to remount them and to
place the small observatory on a working basis. The next year was an
apprenticeship in the practice of astronomy. In 1867 Professor Langley
was invited to become the Professor of Astronomy in the Western
University of Pennsylvania (at Pittsburg), and to take charge of its
observatory on one of the high hills across the river (Allegheny
City). The previous history of the observatory had been a check-
ered one, and its equipment was in the last degree inadequate and
incomplete.

It had been built in a good situation ; there was a dilapidated
dwelling-house on the grounds ; the observatory building itself was
there ; an equatorial of thirteen inches aperture was mounted ; but
this was all. Everything was bare ; the equatorial was not provided
with the necessary apparatus ; the observatory was entirely empty,
except for a table and three chairs ; and the professor was expected
to be active there, while at the same time he was to attend to the full
duties of a chair at the college ; no assistants were provided, and the
observatory had no income ! It is hardly possible to conceive a situa-
tion more tantalizing and less hopeful.

A way out soon suggested itself. For the prosperity of the ob-
servatory some definite income was essential, and it was absolutely
requisite to earn this. What has an observatory to sell, that the
business men of Pittsburg — the railways, the iron-masters, the glass-
founders — will buy ? Clearly, the only thing they want is the correct
time. But will they pay for it ? This was what Professor Langley
set himself to provide, and by 1869 the full system was in successful
operation and yielding a fair income to the observatory. For some
years before, certain other observatories had established more or less
complete time-services (at Albany, Washington and elsewhere), but
the system at Allegheny was the most complete and elaborate of any,
and the first which was looked to for an adequate support of an obser-
vatory.

Besides regulating the public time of Pittsburg and of numerous
private offices, the observatory provided the standard time for the
whole system of railways centering in Pittsburg, and daily sent (auto-

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LANGLEY. 403

raatically by electricity) the beats of its standard clock over the tele-
graph lines from New York and Philadelphia west as far as Cincinnati
and Chicago, north to Lake Erie, and south to Washington. This
system is still in full operation, and has always maintained a high
character for accuracy.

The United States Coast Survey organized several parties to ob-
serve the total eclipses of 1869 and 1870, and Professor Langley went
to Oakland, Kentucky, in 1869, as a member of the party of his friend
Professor Winlock, Director of Harvard College Observatory. In
1869 his station was upon the very edge of the shadow, and the
object of his observation was to determine the limit of total eclipse.
In 1870 the station assigned to Professor Langley was at Xeres, in
Spain, where he determined the polarization of the solar corona to
be radial.

During the year 1870 the affairs of the observatory began to as-
sume such a shape that some time for original work in astronomy was
available. The success of the time-service had created a small fund
out of which the more pressing needs of instrumental equipment were
provided ; and Professor Langley now began a period of the most
incessant work on the minute study of the features of the sun's disk.
The situation of his observatory at Pittsburg, where dense clouds of
smoke and dust and dirt obscure the heavens, and the meager state
of his instrumental equipment, almost forced him to take up the
study of the sun, which has light enough to penetrate even a Pitts-
burg fog. Fortunately, this study demanded very few auxiliary pieces
of apparatus : the telescope has to be directed upon the sun, its motor-
clock keeps it constantly pointed upon the same spot, and the observer
has to follow, with infinite diligence and patience, the elusive details
which the moments of best vision may allow him to glimpse. Two
very important and rare qualifications are also necessary. The observer
must be entirely unprejudiced and impartial ; recording that which
he sees, whether it is expected or not, and recording nothing which he
does not see, no matter how firmly he may be convinced that it ought
to be visible. This is the first qualification — one of unusual mental
constitution ; and the second is one of unusual manual skill. The
observer must be able to delineate the most extraordinary and complex
details justly and correctly. Both of these unusual qualifications Pro-
fessor Langley possesses in a marked degree. His well-known and
most beautiful drawing of a " Typical Sun-spot " illustrates this. This
has since been copied in very many places, and it has received the
very highest praises from all competent judges.

Professor Langley's earliest published paper on the sun (February,
1874) may be taken as a type of his best work. It possesses that
hardly-definable quality by which we become aware that it was written
from a full mind. It is only fifteen pages long, yet we are not con-
scious of undue brevity. One has a sense, in reading, that every state-

4°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

_____ — — - - — ,- -*-~— - - ^?^^t^-— r~ if ^^T"-

■'•*"."* — ~~*^

|;i;^"

' 'O

.:■•§-

:-"-4JV*lV

.-^ TT.-.^'. rr^-rW Sri

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A Typical Sun-spot.

ment of fact, or every expression of opinion, is based upon a hundred
single instances like the one which is chosen, or upon a hundred con-
curring judgments. It is not that you are overborne by weight but
convinced by character. This most important paper came at exactly
the right time. It first summarizes the works of other recent observ-
ers, which, though important, had left the subject in an entirely un-
satisfying condition, and then proceeds straight to the subject in
hand.

The minute details, both of the general solar surface and of the
extraordinarily complex spots, are one by one satisfactorily and lucidly
described, with indications of the physical conditions to which they
are due ; and, finally, the general bearings of all this on the received
solar theories are briefly set forth. We may fairly say that this paper
is fundamental. It treats of a subject of which little had been accu-
rately known, and it leaves this subject in a satisfactory and settled

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LANGLEY. 405

condition. Four years of labor on this subject had not failed to sug-
gest many other researches.

A detailed study of the distribution of the heat of the solar sur-
face was begun about this time, by means of the thermopile, and was
quickly rewarded by the discovery of an unknown thermo-chroic ac-
tion in the sun's atmosphere, such that it transmits the light less readi-
ly than the heat, owing to the difference in wave-length. An inter-
esting consequence of this action is that, if, at any time, the sun's
atmosphere should grow thicker, the color of the sun would tend
toward red ; if thinner, then toward blue. These changes, which are
quite possible, suggest interesting explanations of some of the phe-
nomena of the variable stars. The glacial epochs on the earth may be
connected with changes in the solar atmosphere.

In 1877 we find another outcome of the series of measures of the
heat from various parts of the sun's disk, and especially from the
umbrae, etc., of sun-spots. The periodic changes in the spotted area
of the solar disk, which had long been known, induced the inquiry
whether changes in the amount of spotted surface bore any relation to
changes of temperature on the earth's surface.

The result of the extremely delicate measures of Professor Langley
led plainly to the conclusion that the direct effect of sun-spots on
terrestrial temperature is sensible ; that, when the spotted area is a
maximum, the temperature is on that account lower, and the converse ;
but that the total direct effects of the periodic changes in the spotted
area on the earth's mean temperature are extremely small, not more
than a change of three tenths of 1° C. in eleven years, and not less
than one twentieth of 1° C. The indirect effects are not here con-
sidered.

A thermopile used in connection with the most sensitive galvanom-
eters is an extremely delicate instrument ; and Allegheny Observatory
now possessed a most complete outfit of this sort.

But the most important and pressing questions in solar physics
demanded a means of measurement of heat still more delicate. When
it wras a question to measure the heat radiation from the different
parts of the sun's disk, the thermopile was adequate. But if the heat
from one of these parts is spread out into a heat-spectrum several feet
or even yards long, it becomes necessary to devise new means of
measuring the minute differences between the various parts. Such a
device is the bolometer, which consists of two systems of extremely
thin steel or platinum strips. Through these two systems an electric
current passes. A sensitive galvanometer connected with both sys-
tems keeps its needle steady when the currents are equal.

If one system is now exposed to heat radiations while the other is
protected from them, the temperature of the first is raised, its electric
resistance is increased, and the battery-currents through the two sys-
tems and the galvanometer no longer balance. The galvanometer-

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

needle then moves, and the amount of this motion measures the
amount of heat disturbance. The sensitiveness of the instrument is
from ten to thirty times greater than that of the most delicate ther-
mopiles possible, and its constancy specially tits it for its work. The
years 1879 and 1880 were given to perfecting this new and powerful
instrument. Some of its first results were to show, by direct experi-
ment, that the maximum of heat in the normal spectrum was in the
orange, not the infra-red (then an interesting fact) ; and that the
solar-constant,* as determined by previous methods, was decidedly
too small. The most suitable methods of determining this important
constant were pointed out.

In 1881 Professor Langley organized an expedition to the top of
Mount Whitney, in California, for the purpose of applying these new
methods under the most favorable conditions. The expenses of the
expedition were jointly borne by the United States Signal Service
and by the private subscription of a wealthy gentleman in Pittsburg,
who had now for some years taken the greatest interest in the re-
searches of the observatory, and whose liberality had provided many
of its instruments.

His name ought to be here mentioned. He has materially aided
science in the most liberal and thoughtful way ; but, against his ex-
pressed wish that he should be nameless in this connection (as he is
in hundreds of other kind deeds), I have no right to contend.

The most important single result of the previous experiments with
the bolometer had been the establishment of the fact of selective ab-
sorption of the solar rays by the earth's atmosphere. The results of
this action are so important that I may be permitted to quote from
Professor Langley an elementary exposition of them. He says : " Our
observations at Allegheny had appeared to show that the atmosphere
had acted with selective absorption to an unanticipated degree, keep-
ing back an immense proportion of the blue and green, so that what
was originally the strongest had, when it got down to us, become the
weakest of all, and what was originally weak had become relatively
strong, the action of the atmosphere having been just the converse of
that of an ordinary sieve, or like that of a sieve which should keep
back small particles analogous to the short wave-lengths (the blue and
green), and allow freely to pass the large ones (the dark-heat rays).
It seemed from these observations that the atmosphere had not merely
kept back a part of the solar radiation, but had totally changed its
composition in doing so — not by anything it had put in, but by the
selective way in which it had taken out, as if by a capricious intelli-
gence. The residue that had actually come down to us thus changed
in proportion was what we know familiarly as ' white ' light, so that
white is not ' the sum of all the radiations,' as used to be taught, but

* The amount of heat received from the sun's rays, falling perpendicularly on a
square metre of the upper surface of the earth's atmosphere, in a minute of time.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LANGLEY. 407

resembles the pure original sunlight less than the electric beam
which has come to us through reddish-colored glasses resembles the
original brightness. With this visible heat was included the large
amount of invisible heat, and, if there was any law observable in
this 'capricious' action of the atmosphere, it was found to be this,
that, throughout the whole range of the known heat-spectrum the
large wave-lengths passed with greater facility than the shorter ones."

The effect of this selective absorption on the visible rays is to cut
out the shorter wave-lengths proportionally more ; so that to an eye
outside of the earth's atmosphere the sun would be far bluer than to us.
On the heat-rays taken together, the total amount of the absorption is
very great, far greater than had been previously supposed. Professor
Langley's experiments give a very great increase in the amount of
solar heat reaching the earth over previous determinations, so that for
example, according to him, the solar radiation is sufficient to annually
melt an ice-shell one hundred and seventy-nine feet thick all round
the earth. According to previous determinations, one hundred and ten
feet in thickness could be melted. But while Professor Langley finds
a vastly greater amount of heat supplied by the sun, his law of the
selective absorption comes in to profoundly modify its terrestrial
manifestations. Were there no such selective absorption, the temper-
ature of the soil in the tropics, under a vertical sun, would probably
not rise to that of the freezing-point of mercury. "The temperature
of this planet, and with it the existence, not only of the human
race but of all organic life on the globe, appears, from the results
of the Mount Whitney expedition, to depend far less on the direct
solar heat" than on the hitherto neglected quality of selective ab-
sorption.

The bearing of the observations at Mount Whitney on a great
number of important questions, the temperature of the sun, the radia-
tion from the sky, etc., etc., can not be here considered for want of
space. The solar spectrum previously known was but half of that
mapped out by the expedition, and there is good reason to believe that
Professor Langley's observations have now revealed the whole of it
to us.

The partial results of these investigations, published from time to
time in foreign periodicals, have done much to make Professor Lang-
ley honored in other countries than his own. In 1882 he was invited
to address the British Association for the Advancement of Science at
Southampton, and did so. His paper on that occasion reminds one
of that of February, 1874, in the astonishing fullness of experiment,
thought, and judgment which seems to lie just back of the sentences.
It comes from a full mind. In the spring of 1885 Professor Langley
goes to England at the invitation of the Royal Institution to lecture
before it.

There are many other most interesting researches of Professor Lang-

408

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ley's which should be referred to here, were it not for limited space.
His observations on the moon's heat ; on the solar eclipse of 1878 (at
the summit of Pike's Peak) ; his direct comparison of the sun with
the molten metal of a Bessemer converter ; his investigations at Mount
Etna, Pike's Peak, and Mount Whitney, on the conditions of vision at
great altitudes, all deserve more than this brief notice.

His published scientific papers are very numerous. A list of the
more important of these follows this article. There are forty-six sepa-
rate papers in the years from 1869 to 1885. Besides these, the maga-
zines have contained many more popular articles ; and his courses of
lectures at the Lowell Institute, the Peabody Institute, and elsewhere,
have been most successful.

Professor Langley is a member of the National Academy of Sci-
ences and of numerous American and foreign bodies, and has received
the recognition of honorary degrees from various universities.

PEOFESSIONAL AND OTIIER PAPERS BY S. P. LANGLEY, IN CHRONO-
LOGICAL ORDER.

No.
1

2
3
4

5

6

9*

10*
11*
12*
13

14
15
16

17

18*
19

Date.

August, 1869

December, 1869.,
January, 1871 .. .
February, 1871. .

April, 1871

September, 1872.

Title or subject.

August, 1873

February, 1874. .

Aug. & Sept., 1874

September, 1874,
December, 1874..

March, 1875

March, 1875

Eclipse of August, 1869

Proposed Plan of Time-Service . . .

Eclipse Expedition of 1870

A New Form of Solar Eyepiece . . .

Observations on Eclipse of 1870.. .

American System of Electric Sig-
nals

The Solar Photosphere

Minute Structure of Photosphere . .

External Aspects of Sun, with Typi-
cal Sun-Spot Plate

March, 1875

September, 1875.
September, 1875.

November, 1876..

April, 1877.
May, 1877.

Photosphere and Sun-Spots

Transit of Venus

Sources of Solar Heat (lecture). . . .

Comparison of Theory and Obser-
vation

See, also, Memorie degli Spettrosco-
pisti, Typical Sun-Spot Plate with
each Memoir.

Temperature Relative des, etc

Radiations Superficiclles de Soleil. .

The Solar Atmosphere

Effect of Sun-Spots on Terrestrial
Climate

The first " Popular Scientific Trea-
tise"

Nouvelle Methode, etc

See, also, " American Journal of
Science," August, 1877.

Where published.

"United States Coast Survey
Reports."

Pittsburg.

"Nature," January, 1871.

" Franklin Institute Journal,"
February. 1871.

" United States Census Re-
ports."

"American Journal of Sci-
ence," November, 1872.

' Proceedings of the American
Association," 18*73.

"American Journal of Sci-
ence," February, 1874.

"Franklin Institute Journal,"

August, 1874.
" Popular Science," September.
" Popular Science," December.
"New York Tribune," Mar. 10.

"American Journal of Sci-
ence," March.

"ComptesRendus," Mar., 1875.
"ComptesRendus," Sept., 1875.
" American Journal of Sci-
ence," 1875.

"Royal Astronomical Society
Notices," November.

" Popular Science," April, 1877.
" Comptes Rendus," May, 1877.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. P. LAN (1 LEY.

409

No.

Date.

Title or subject.

Where published.

20

91*

July, 1877

April, 1878, , ,
April, 1878

June, 1878

1878-1879

October, 1878. ..

October, 1878. ..

October, 1878. ..

August, 1879. .. .

July, 1880

July, 1880

January, 1881 .. .

March, 1881 , . .

March, 1881,
March, 1881
March, 18S1

September, 1882.
October, 1882...

December, 1882..
March, 1883

June, 1883

March, 1884,

September, 1884

September, 1884.
October, 1884.
December, 1884..
1885

Possibility of Transit Observations
Electric Time-Service

'American Journal of Sci-
ence," July, 1877.

" Harper's Monthly," April.

"American Journal of Sci-
ence," April.

"American Journal of Sci-
ence," June.

" Scientific American."

22

23

04*

Photographs and Optical Studies . .
Transit of Mercury of May 6th. . . .
Six Articles on the Sun

25

Pike's Peak Observations of Eclipse
of 1878

Washington Observatory pub-
lication.

" Proceedings of the American
Academy."

" Proceedings of the American
Academy."

" American Association."

"American Journal of Sci-
ence."

"Atlantic Monthly," July.

" Proceedings of the American
Academy."

"American Journal of Sci-

26

Remarkable Groups in Lower Spec-
trum (A and B lines)

27

Temperature of the Sun (Bessemer

28
29
30*

Saratoga Address as Vice-President
of the American Association. . . .

Wintering on Etna

31

3°,

Tlie Bolometer and Radiant Energy
The Actinic Balance

33

34

Sur la Distribution de l'Energie, etc.
Distribution de l'Energie

ence."
" Comptes Rendus."
" Comptes Rendus."
" Annales de Chimie et de

35

36

37

Observations du Spectre Solaire. . . .
Sunlight and Skylight

Philosophic"
" Comptes Rendus."
" Nature." See, also, " Amer-

RS

Transit of Venus

ican Journal of Science."
1 Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society." See,
also, Ast. Nach.
"American Journal of Sci-
ence."

"Science," June, 1883.
"American Journal of Sci-

39

40
41

Selective Absorption of Solar Energy

See, also, Weidemann's " Annalen,"
" Annales de Chimie et de Phi-
losophic," London edition; and
Dublin "Philosophical Maga-
zine," for republication in full.

The Spectrum of an Argand Burner.

On the Measurement of Wave-

42

See, also, above-cited journals for
republication in full.

Amount of the Atmospheric Ab-
sorption

ence."
"American Journal of Sci-

43*

The New Astronomv

ence." See, also, London edi-
tion, and " Dublin Philo-
sophical Magazine."

" Century Mag.," September.

" Century Mag.," October.

" Century Mag ," December.

" Signal-Service Professional
Papers, No. 13."

44*

45*

The New Astronomv

46

Researches on Solar Heat

Note. — The above list omits numerous minor publications. It includes original con-
tributions to science (the more important in italics), and articles of a popular character
(marked with *).

410

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A PERNICIOUS POLITICAL TENDENCY.

THERE is no more important subject
for consideration in the present
day than that which is involved in the
question whether the powers of govern-
ment ought to be extended or restricted.
The tendency, as every one must be
aware, is toward extension, not restric-
tion, and one of our contemporaries,
the " Christian Union," snubs a corre-
spondent who suggests restriction by
telling him that he is "about half a
century behind the times." The ear-
liest form of government, it proceeds to
say, is military despotism, the next is
one of police regulation ; while the
happy dispensation under which we
now live is one of industrial co-opera-
tion. Government is " organized to do
for the community, by community ac-
tion, whatever it can do better in that
way than in any other." This is a little
enigmatical, suggesting as it does that
"government" might proceed in a
great many other ways than by com-
munity action ; but we may perhaps
assume the meaning to be that govern-
ment is organized to do for the com-
munity whatever can be better done
through its agency than by any form of
private effort or enterprise.

The first objection we make to this
position is, that a great deal of ambi-
guity attaches to the word "better" as
here employed. The resources of the
Government are practically boundless ;
and that the Government, with bound-
less means, should do a particular work
" better " than it would be done by pri-
vate individuals with limited means,
is not quite decisive of the question
whether the Government should under-
take the work or not. Anything can
be done well if money without stint is
applied to it; but the question remains,
Are government methods of doing work

really beneficial to the people ? If the
Government undertook to manage all
the private gardens in the country, on
the understanding that it might levy
whatever taxes were necessary for the
purpose, no doubt there might be a
considerable improvement, on the aver-
age, in the way in which lawns and
flower - beds and vegetable patches
would be kept. It would take time to
organize the necessary army of garden-
ers and laborers ; but the thing could
probably be accomplished in the end.
There would be fat places for the poli-
ticians and clerkships without number,
in addition to the actual outside work-
ers ; but the vast machine would sooner
or later be brought into motion ; and
then no doubt some people, carried
away by their admiration for the great-
er uniformity of government work,
would proclaim that the principle of
state management had scored another
triumph. But meanwhile where would
the money come from? Would the
whole question of expediency be decid-
ed by pointing to the fact, if it were a
fact, that, on the average, gardens were
kept in better shape by the Govern-
ment gardeners than they had been by
the private owners? Would not the
question of economy call loudly for
consideration? And would it not be a
further question whether Government
was not doing more harm by diminish-
ing the power of individual initiative
than it was doing good by keeping
hedges, and borders, and walks in su-
perior trim ?

When, therefore, we hear of Govern-
ment doing this or that thing " better "
than private enterprise would do it, we
should like to go below the surface of
things and examine a little into under-
lying questions, economical and moral.
Every one seems to admit that a be-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

nevolent despotism would do certain
things " better " than they are done by
oar republican Government. "Why is
it, then, that we will not hear of any
kind of despotism — that our repugnance
to a benevolent despotism is scarcely
less than our repugnance to a purely
selfish one? Because we hold that the
word " better," as applied to the work
of a despotism of any kind, is a very
shallow " better " ; and that, while cer-
tain superficial aspects of the national
life might be improved under such a
regime, the deep and abiding interests
of the country would suffer. "Well, what
people have to learn is that something
despotic attaches to all government ac-
tion outside of the sphere which pe-
culiarly belongs to government, the
protection of the community from for-
eign, and of individuals from private,
aggression. All government action is
of a compulsory character; all takes
away something from the liberty of the
individual ; all stands in the way of the
spontaneous development of the agen-
cies for doing what the Government
unnecessarily undertakes. Social bonds
are not knit by what the Government
does, but social bonds are knit by ev-
ery development of private enterprise,
by every spontaneous development of
means to ends for social purposes. If
government managed everything for
us, society in the true organic sense
would cease to exist. The individual
would find himself at every turn face
to face with a great mechanism, and
would no longer have the sense of be-
longing to a living and growing sys-
tem. It is easy to sneer at these ideas
as being "half a century behind the
times"; but whoever does so should
remember that at least one illustrious
name stands associated with them, and
that it is not usual to cite the author of
the " Synthetic Philosophy " as a man
left in the rear of the world's intellect-
ual march. " Democracy," we are told,
has left these notions behind, and will
never take them up again. What de-

mocracy will or will not do in the fu-
ture it is rash to assert ; for our own
part we venture on no predictions. We
should just wish, however, to remark
that it settles no question of right or
wrong, truth or error, to say that "de-
mocracy " has done so and so. De-
mocracy, we presume, is not infallible.
These abstractions, however, are most
misleading. Tell us the exact truth :
that a certain community living under
certain institutions, and at a certain
stage in its intellectual and moral de-
velopment has turned its back on a par-
ticular set of ideas; and we shall not
only know precisely what you mean,
but shall also be able to estimate the
importance and value of your state-
ment. But tell us that the abstraction
" democracy " has done the same thing,
and we are entitled to reply that no
abstraction is capable of any such ac-
tion.

On the principle our contemporary
has laid down, it is impossible to say at
what point state action should cease ;
for the more the state undertakes the
more it is impelled to undertake. To
add one new function to-day is to pre-
pare for the addition of a dozen within
a few years. Take the case of the Eng-
lish Government. Having the post-
office under its control, it was led to
make use of the post-office organization
for the issue and payment of money-
orders. Then followed the establish-
ment of post-office savings-banks ; then
the absorption of the telegraph system ;
then the establishment of a parcel-de-
livery and general express business. On
the Continent the post-office collects
debts, pays newspaper subscriptions, and
carries money in very much the same
way as the express companies do here.
Where is this kind of thing to stop ?
The larger the organization, the greater
the temptation to apply it in some new
way, or to accomplish by means of it
some new object. There are those, no
doubt, who think this increasing influ-
ence and interference of government a

412

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hopeful sign, and who look forward to
the day when government will seize
upon all the great lines of industry and
forever hreak the power of private en-
terprise ; hut few intelligent persons in
this country are of this turn of mind.
We would therefore say to those who
wish to preserve upon this coutinent a
society alive in all its parts and full of
individual initiative and resource, to
heware how they give heed to the
seductive doctrine that government
should undertake whatever it can do
" better " than private individuals. We
might pay too dear for having our gar-
den-walks rolled by government rollers,
and too dear in many other ways for
the alleged benefits of official rule.

BEECHER ON EVOLUTION.

The Eev. Henry Ward Beecher has
worthily crowned his splendid career
as a liberal religious reformer by an-
nouncing and entering upon a series of
discourses to his congregation in expo-
sition and defense of the doctrine of
evolution in its religious aspects and
hearings. The taking of this noble
stand in a formal way at the present
time is undoubtedly the most moment-
ous act of his intellectual and profes-
sional life. At a time when most men
are worn out and ready to retire, when
enthusiasm is usually chilled and opin-
ions become hardened and unadaptive,
Mr, Beecher strikes into a new field
with the fire of youth, and takes the
leadership in a movement of religious
reform of quite incalculable moment.
He commits himself boldly and broadly
to the most comprehensive, far-reach-
ing, and revolutionary truth yet estab-
lished by science, and which carries
with it a total reconstruction of the
relations of science and religion ; and
this he does in opposition to the nar-
row-mindedness and dull indifference
of the community, and more especially
to the organized ignorance, the sacred
traditions, the inveterate prejudices,

the bigotry and the intolerance of the
theological world. We confess to un-
affected admiration for the sagacity,
the independence, the courage, the loy-
alty to conscience and to truth, that
have prompted Mr. Beecher to take
this brave and significant step.

Undoubtedly he has undertaken a
very difficult task, and he is aware that
he has not much child's play before
him. But there are important advan-
tages in his position ; and the first of
these is, his independence of religious
organizations : he has to reckon only
with his congregation. In various re-
spects, no doubt, his audience is but
poorly equipped to appreciate the value
of facts and the force of reasoning on
the subject of evolution. For it must
be remembered that the proof of that
great principle is not of a kind to be
given to an uninstrueted person at a
sitting. It is the diversity, and wide
concurrence, and cumulative confirma-
tion of the evidences that give the over-
whelming force of demonstration to the
theory. It must be assumed that Mr.
Beecher's congregation has not been
very well prepared in the philosophy
of evidence, any more than they are
familiar with the sciences from which
the proofs are derived. It consists of
bright, intelligent people, whose men-
tal cultivation has been chiefly in lit-
erature, politics, and theology; while
in proportion to their proficiency in
these will they rank low in science
knowing little of its facts and less of
its spirit and method.

Nevertheless, Mr. Beecher's congre-
gation has had a very valuable and
important preparation, which will be
pretty sure to carry them with him in
the present movement. Evolution is
by no means a thing of yesterday with
Mr. Beecher; he has long been on the
road to it. The doctrine of progress
has been one of the favorite and most
powerful elements of his preaching for
a quarter of a century. It has been
the key to his theological philosophy,

EDITOR'S TABLE.

413

and his people have been trained into
thorough familiarity with the concep-
tion as an all-interpreting principle in
both theology and politics. Yet evo-
lution is only the expansion and full
scientific elucidation and wider sweep
of application of the idea of progress.
Nor is there anything now in evolu-
tion more fatal to orthodoxy than there
was a generation ago in the first vague
divergence from the old rigid dogmatic
systems in recognizing a progressive ele-
ment in religion. Mr. Beecher and his
people have been themselves evolved
into their present position, and might
furnish an object-lesson in the law of
development. There will probably be
more trouble in accepting the newer
name appropriate to the later stage of
growth than there has been in assimi-
lating the underlying truth.

We congratulate Mr. Beecher on his
intrepid course, and his determination
to bring his pulpit into harmony with
those revelations of science that a rere-
shaping the thought of the age ; and
we commend his example to the nu-
merous clergymen who give their pri-
vate assent to evolution doctrine, and
then go on promulgating the old beliefs
from desks sacred to antiquated error.

SPREADING IT TOO THIN.

At a meeting of the Massachusetts
Teachers1 Association, held a short time
ago, President Eliot, of Harvard, spoke
in strong terms of the unsatisfactory
character of the great majority of the
so-called high-schools of the Common-
wealth. Out of a total of two hundred
and twenty-eight such schools, seventy-
two only had as many as three teach-
ers, and the whole together sent only
one hundred and ninety-nine students
to the colleges of the State during the
year 1884. The simple fact, President
Eliot states, is that the majority of the
schools are not fit to prepare youths for
matriculation at college, though in the
general system of public-school educa-

tion that is a recognized part of their
function. " It has been the policy of
the Board of Education," wo are told,
" to encourage small towns to establish
high-schools in order that as large a
percentage as possible of the popula-
tion may have a school higher than the
grammar-school within easy reach."
That policy has been so far successful
that over ninety per cent of the popu-
lation nominally enjoy the privilege in
question. The result, however, is a
thinning and impoverishing of the edu-
cation just in proportion to its exten-
sion. Seventy-five of the high-schools
are maintained in towns of less than
five hundred families. Nearly half of
the whole number existing have less
than sixty pupils each. President Eliot
naturally calls for such a change in the
law as may enable two or three or four
smaller towns to establish a joint school,
and employ in rendering it really effi-
cient the funds which now are more or
less frittered away upon the mainte-
nance of two or more weak and ineffi-
cient schools. He also suggests that
the colleges should meet the schools
half- way by establishing liberal sys-
tems of options, so that no student need
be debarred from the higher advantages
that the colleges afford by his inability
to pass an entrance-examination in one
or two subjects in which he feels no
interest, and which he has no ulterior
intention of pursuing.

We call attention to this matter be-
cause we have reason to believe that
the practical evil which the President
of Harvard describes is not confined to
the State of Massachusetts, but is wide-
ly prevalent throughout the country at
large. It is a result, no doubt, of our
democratic ideas, and of the local jeal-
ousies which, it will hardly be ques-
tioned, democratic institutions bring in
their train, that we try to bring to every
man's door what we bring to one man's
door. The thing can only be accom-
plished, however, at the expense of a
marked deterioration in the article sup-

4H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plied. A good and well-equipped high-
school can not, as things now are, be
maintained in every village and town-
ship. We may have the name of the
thing, but the reality we can not have.
If the system could be worked at all it
could probably be worked as success-
fully in Massachusetts as in any State
of the Union ; but President Eliot tells
us that it does not work well there at
all, and that, owing to the poverty of
the great majority of the schools, a gap
which ought not to exist, and which is
inconsistent with the theory of the pub-
lic-school system, has established itself
between the so-called high-schools and
the colleges. The schools ought to pre-
pare their students for matriculation at
the colleges ; but the most of them
neither do nor can do anything of the
kind.

What applies to the high-schools ap-
plies also, generally speaking, to the
colleges themselves. They are not what
they ought to be, simply because there
are too many of them. The conse-
quence is, that there is a great deal of
false and shallow culture abroad in the
land. A college ought to be a place
where a youth would be certain to come
into contact with men of an altogether
superior order of thought and attain-
ment. It ought to be the center of a
true intellectual life. Of all our col-
leges, how many answer this descrip-
tion? It is needless to say that the
country does not possess a sufficient
number of men of real intellectual mark
to fill all the chairs in our innumerable
" colleges." If it did, we should in-
deed be exceptionally favored. Now,
the effect of shallow learning tricking
itself out in the garb of real erudition
is to confuse all intellectual perceptions
and standards. We do not say that a
little learning is a dangerous thing, but
we say that a little learning that mis-
takes itself for great learning is apt to
make more or less of a fool or a char-
latan of its possessor. We do not know
whether there is much to be gained by

struggling against what seems to bo
one of the main currents of the time ;
but we are profoundly convinced that
the cause of American culture calls for
concentration not dispersion of effort,
for centralization as opposed to local-
ization, for the sinking of petty rival-
ries in the endeavor to found strong,
permanent, and widely beneficial insti-
tutions. Let our common schools which
penetrate everywhere be placed on as
sound a basis as possible ; let high-
schools be established in centers where
they can be vigorously and generously
sustained ; let our colleges and univer-
sities be proportioned in number to the
need actually existing for the highest
culture, and let them have such sup-
port as national and individual interest
in such culture prompts — and we shall
then have all the necessary means for
making the American people the equals
in education of any other nation in the
world. At present we have a vast but
somewhat disjointed apparatus, and the
results, however soothing they may be
in some respects to democratic pride,
are, from the point of view of national
culture, far from satisfactory.

We call particular attention to the
weighty testimony of Dr.Edward Frank-
land, the eminent English chemist and
sanitarian, to the claims of the Yellow-
stone National Park as a great Ameri-
can health resort in winter for invalids
with chest and pulmonary difficulties.
Dr. Frankland has investigated this sub-
ject long and carefully, and is especially
familiar with the conditions and effects
of the celebrated Engadine Swiss sani-
tarium in the valley of Davos. Dr.
Frankland came to this country last
summer, attended the British Associa-
tion atMontreal,and, having heard much
of the Yellowstone Park, he went there
and spent considerable time in examin-
ing its claims as a great winter sanita-
rium for the American people. He con-
tributes to the " Monthly " a valuable

LITERARY NOTICES.

415

paper, giving the results of his observa-
tions, and the more valuable, as it is a
comparative study of the health-merits
of the two localities ; the marked advan-
tages being in favor of the Yellowstone
Park over the celebrated Swiss valley.
The article is most instructive, and the
subject one of interest and moment to
our people.

LITERARY NOTICES.

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES,
VOLUME L.

The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences.
By William Kingdon Clifford. With
One Hundred Illustrations. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 271. Price, $1.50.

Professor Clifford was applied to in
1871 to prepare a volume for the " Interna-
tional Scientific Series." He was asked if
he would undertake a book to be entitled
"Mathematics for the Non-Mathematical,"
the object of which should be to find out how
far it is possible to go in explaining mathe-
matical ideas to persons of intelligence who
have had none of the higher mathematical
training. This idea had been before pro-
posed to several mathematicians, who agreed
that nothing could be made of it ; but it was
suggested that if anything could be done with
it Clifford's was the genius to do it. Pro-
fessor Clifford was struck with the idea as
novel and interesting, and said he would
make a study of it and see what it promised.
The result was so favorable that he decided
to undertake the book and give such at-
tention to it as his slender health and vari-
ous pre-engagements would allow. There
was but little doubt that the project was
eminently suited to the peculiar character-
istics of Clifford's mind ; and that the sub-
ject was certain to be handled by him with
originality and result in a valuable con-
tribution to mathematical literature. But
it soon became apparent that there was a
serious question about the possibility of his
accomplishing the task at all, on account
of his declining health. He, however, did
considerable work on it, but left it in an
unfinished and fragmentary condition at his
death in 1S79.

In arranging the plan of the work it
was Professor Clifford's intention to treat

the fundamental conceptions of mathematics
in six parts or chapters under the heads of
Number, Space, Quantity, Position, Motion,
and Mass. Of these six subjects he dealt
with but four, dictating the chapters on
Number and Space completely, the first por-
tion of the chapter on Quantity, and nearly
the entire chapter on Motion. Shortly be-
fore his death he expressed a wish that the
book should only be published after very
careful revision ; that the title, The First
Principles of the Mathematical Sciences ex-
plained to the Non-Mathematical, should be
abandoned, and that the volume should be
entitled The Common Sense of the Exact
Sciences.

It was not easy to find a mathematician
who would undertake to finish Professor
Clifford's work. Upon his death, Professor
Rowe, of University College, engaged to do
it ; but he also died before accomplishing
the task, so that the final revision had to
be made by still another hand. There are
parts of this work contributed by Professor
Clifford which answer finely to the original
idea of it, and show what might have been
done if he had lived and adhered to the first
conception. A mistake was made by the
subsequent editors in seeking to finish the
work as they thought Clifford would have
done it, rather than as in their judgment it
might seem best. As it is, the work will
probably be found more attractive to mathe-
maticians than to non-mathematicians.

Annals of the Astronomical Odservatory
of Harvard College. Vol. XIV. Parts
I and II. Observations with the Merid-
ian Photometer during the Years 1879-
'82. By Edward C. Pickering, Director,
aided by Arthur Searle and Oliver C.
Wendell. Cambridge : John Wilson &
Son, University Press. 1885.

Almost the earliest record we have of
astronomical observation is the catalogue of
1 ,028 fixed stars in the " Almagest " of Ptole-
my, the epoch of which is a. d. 138. The chief
value of this catalogue consists in its clas-
sification of the stars into six magnitudes,
which classification, so far as those stars
which are visible to the naked eye are con-
cerned, has been continued to the present
day. Since that time many other astrono-
mers have made systematic observations on
the relative brightness of the stars, the

416

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

comparisons up to the present century hav-
ing been made either by the naked eye, or
with the assistance of an opera-glass only.
About the middle of this century photom-
eters specially adapted for comparing the
light of the stars were first used by German
astronomers. Zollner invented a photom-
eter, consisting of a telescope in which the
light from a kerosene-lamp, admitted through
a very small hole and presenting the ap-
pearance of a star, is compared with the real
star under observation. C. S. Pierce, of the
United States Coast Survey, used such a one
in the construction of a photometric cata-
logue of 494 stars, published in Vol. IX of the
" Annals of Harvard College Observatory."
His description of his difficulties with this
very imperfectly contrived and still more
imperfectly constructed instrument would
be amusing, if it did not excite regret that
so accurate an observer and excellent a
mathematician should have been weighted
with an instrument so poorly adapted to the
work.

Up to within a few years, only about
500 stars had been the subject of photo-
metric observation, and for some time it has
been regarded as highly desirable that sys-
tematic comparisons should be made of the
light of all stars visible to the naked eye.

In Vol. XIV of the "Annals of the Ob-
servatory of Harvard College " we have the
records of the most extensive and complete
photometric observations ever undertaken.
The great attention which Professor Pick-
ering, the director of the observatory, has
given to astro-photometry, and the large
experience he has had with photometers,
both of his own and others' construction,
peculiarly fitted him for such a task.

Part I of the " Annals " opens with a
description of the meridian photometer
devised by Professor Pickering. Having
ascertained by experiment that any change
of position on the part of the observer had
an injurious effect upon the observations,
he constructed his instrument in the form
of a broken transit, in which, the line of
sight being always horizontal, stars at all
altitudes could be observed without moving
the head. Experience with other photom-
eters had also satisfied him that no arti-
ficial light could be a proper standard of
comparison for the light of a star. A real

star was therefore chosen, and the fact that
the pole-star is always visible, and its light,
on account of its very slight changes of alti-
tude, a constant quantity, directed him in
his choice of it as the standard of compari-
son for all stars. To make sure that it was
otherwise suitable, a large number of ob-
servations were made of the pole-star, to
ascertain if its light was subject to any
periodical variation.

A reliable instrument and perfect stand-
ard having been thus obtained, and many
preliminaries settled which it is impossible
to touch upon here, observations were begun
in October, lS^, and continued till Septem-
ber, 1882. During this period seven hun-
dred series of observations were made, in-
cluding 94,4*76 separate comparisons, the
result being that every star not fainter than
the sixth magnitude, between the north
pole and thirty degrees of south declination,
was compared from three to fourteen times
with the pole-star. The whole number of
stars thus compared is 4,260.

The space to which this review is neces-
sarily restricted renders it impossible to
give even a passing notice to the immense
amount of work expended upon the subject
of astro-photometry as recorded in these
"Annals." An idea can be formed from the
statement that there are in all ninety-one
tables, some of which occupy several pages.
The " General Catalogue," constituting
Table XXVII, alone occupies 211 pages,
each line having twenty-six columns, one of
which has fourteen sub-headings.

Part II of the "Annals," the publication
of which has been delayed till the present
year, is largely devoted to a discussion of
the work of those astronomers, from Ptolemy
to the present day, whose estimates of the
relative magnitudes of the stars Professor
Pickering has chosen for comparison with
his own. A very complete list of all known
or suspected variable stars is also given, with
copious notes as to dates and observers.
There is also a chapter on the distribution
of the stars.

Professor Pickering does not close his
work with the advancement of any theories
of his own. But, for whatever purpose an
exact determination of the relative magni-
tudes of the stars may be desired, either
for the discovery of variable stars, or to as-

LITERARY NOTICES.

417

certain the position of the sun in the Galac-
tic Cluster, this volume of the " Annals " fills
a place which no other work yet published
can make any pretense to. Whether we
consider the perfection of the instrument
employed, the plan of observatiop pursued,
the accuracy and care with which the ob-
servations were made, the large number of
stars observed, the completeness of the rec-
ords, or the exhaustive comparisons that
have been made of the observations with
those of other astronomers, we are equally
satisfied that, so far as the photometric ob-
servation of all stars visible to the naked
eye in northern latitudes is concerned, the
work of Professor Pickering and his able
assistants leaves nothing to be desired.

The Chemistry of Cookery. By W. Mat-
tieu Williams. New York: D. Apple-
ton & Co. Pp. 328. Price, $1.50.

Since the publication of Johnston's
" Chemistry of Common Life," thirty years
ago, no book so important has appeared in
this line of inquiry as the volume before us.
Johnston's work was of broader scope, and,
in fact, contributed little to the science of
the culinary preparation of foods, to which
Williams's work is devoted. Much has been
done in this direction in the last generation,
and a work was needed embodying the most
important practical results. This Professor
Williams has now given us in a very satis-
factory form. Of the extent and impor-
tance of the information conveyed in his
pages nothing need be said to the readers of
" The Popular Science Monthly," in which
the successive articles have appeared ; but,
now that they are collected together and
offered as a treatise on the science of cook-
ery, it is proper to state that the work has
been ably done, and is entitled to rank as
a standard upon its subject. Mr. Williams
has given us " the present state of knowl-
edge " on the chemical changes to which
alimentary substances are subjected by cus-
tomary kitchen operations. His facts and
his chemistry are to be relied upon, and his
conclusions are generally made with judg-
ment, but some of his speculations may be
extreme, and will be received with caution.
His work has been criticised as if he had
made too much of the test-tube and analyti-
cal operations, and built unwarrantably upon
vol. xxvii. — 27

their results. There are, of course, many
things about organic substances and their
subtile changes which chemistry can not ex-
plain, and it certainly can not give us a
complete science of foods. But the author
of the present work is quite aware of this,
and we do not think he has unduly strained
the resources of his science in his efforts to
elucidate the subject. His book will prove
invaluable to read, for practical instruction,
for reference in using common cook-books,
and as a text-book for classes wishing to
study the science of cooking in a careful
and thorough manner.

A Text-Book of Hygiene. By George H.
Rohe, M. D., Professor of Hygiene, Col-
lege of Physicians and Surgeons, Bal-
timore. Baltimore: Thomas & Evans.
Pp. 324.

Every important division of the subject
receives some attention in this treatise. It
is intended to present the essential facts
upon which the art of preventive medicine
is based, in such manner as to form a guide
for the American student, practitioner, and
sanitary officer. Beginning with general
considerations in regard to air, water, food,
and soil, the author goes on to the special
hygiene of dwellings, hospitals, and schools,
and takes up also industrial, military, ma-
rine, and prison hygiene. Several chapters
are devoted to personal hygiene. Histories
of the epidemic diseases are given, and the
subjects of disinfectants, quarantine, and
vital statistics are also included. A list of
special works is given with each chapter.
The author makes little claim to originality ;
the qualities which he has especially sought
are comprehensiveness and reliability.

The Microtomist's Vade-Meccm. By Ar-
thur Bolles Lee. Philadelphia: P.
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp.424. Price, $3.

This work — " a hand-book of the meth-
ods of microscopic anatomy" — has been
prepared chiefly with the design of furnish-
ing a complete but concise account of all
the methods of preparation that have been
recommended as useful for the purposes of
microscopic anatomy. In order to make
it also a suitable guide for beginners, a gen-
eral introduction has been added, and intro-
ductory paragraphs have been prefixed,
when needful, to the different chapters,

418

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which, taken all together, go far to make
up a formal treatise on the art. To fur-
nish to instructed anatomists, for whom the
book is primarily designed, information on
points of detail as to which their knowl-
edge or memory may be at fault, a collec-
tion of formulae is given and a number of
special methods are described. For begin-
ners, again, a collection is furnished of ex-
amples, which are not intended for imita-
tion, but as hints suggestive of the most fit-
ting processes.

The Diamond Lens, with other Stories.
By Fitz-James O'Brien. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 337. Price,
paper, 50 cents.

Mr. O'Brien was of Irish birth, a poet
and story-writer of bright genius, whose
contributions to the newspapers and maga-
zines attracted much attention when they
were published, and were generally popular
and widely read, showing distinct originality
and strong powers of penetration and de-
scription ; they deserve to be remembered.
The present series, including a baker's dozen
of the stories, was published in 1881, with
a biography of the author, by Mr. William
Winter, and now appears again in a second
edition.

The Life of Society. By Edmund Wood-
ward Brown. New York : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 270. Price, $2.

This work is intended to present a gen-
eral view of the various factors, in nature
and man, that work upon the structure and
methods of society, and of the influence, in
turn, of society upon man. The author's
object has been, in a systematic study, to
obtain as deep and adequate a general con-
ception of society as possible, " the society
of any township or any country of the world
to-day, or the whole world of society in the
past. ... I wish," he says, " to find an ex-
planation of society that will suit wherever
society is in any country, or has been in any
country or age. I want to get a general
view of the constant part of every society.
I want to evidence and illustrate this by
social and historic facts, drawn from the
wide range of society in the past or the
present." In general, he adds, " I hope,
then, I have shown the real foundation of
social science, though, doubtless, there are

deficiencies." The subject is considered un-
der the head of the effective causes acting
upon society, among which arc the influences
of the body, man's intellect, man's will, hab-
it and usage, disposition and feeling, etc. ;
then are considered various features of so-
ciety, the influence of the parts of society
upon one another, and of the whole upon
the parts ; the growth and progress of so-
ciety ; its incompleteness, imperfection, and
deterioration ; rhythm and epochs in the
life of society ; its laws, restraints, liberties,
forms, and institutions ; and, finally, a gen-
eral view of the spheres of society. The
work bears the marks of laborious thought.

The Limits of Stability of Nebulous Plan-
ets, and the Consequences resulting
from their Mutual Kelations. By Pro-
fessor Daniel Kirk wood. Pp. 110.

This monograph is an inquiry respecting
the extreme limits within which a planet's
atmosphere may exist, as measured by the
distance from the planet's center, at which
gravity and the centrifugal force will be in
equilibrium; and further into the original
or maximum values of the corresponding
distances, which were much greater before
the members of the system had contracted
to their present dimensions. These found,
the author applies the bearing of the an-
swers to the discussion of the question,
"Were the planets formed from nebulous
rings

9»

Third Annual Report of the Ohio Agri-
cultural Experiment Station, for 1884.
By William R. Lazenby, Director. Co-
lumbus, 0. : Myers Brothers, State Print-
ers. Pp. 240.

The theory of the station, it is stated in
the introductory part of the report, " is to tell
the farmers of Ohio what they most need to
know " ; and much of the matter in the vol-
ume appears to answer to that description.
Field experiments were conducted during the
year with grasses, fruit, and garden vegeta-
bles. The primary object of the tests is to
improve upon the best-known methods of cul-
tivation and management. Among practical
questions, earnest attention was given to as-
certaining the comparative value of the best
varieties ; the effects of thick and of thin
seeding; the effects of sowing or planting
at different dates, different distances, and

LITERARY NOTICES.

419

different depths ; the value of different
methods of manuring and applying ferti-
lizers ; and the comparative merits of dif-
ferent systems of culture. In connection
with this work chemical analyses were made ;
experiments were carried on in self- and
cross-fertilization ; investigations were made
in regard to the best treatment of certain
insect enemies and plant-diseases ; the cli-
matic conditions were carefully noted ; and
the work begun in practical forest-tree cult-
ure was extended. The results of the inves-
tigations are intelligently and intelligibly
described. We regard the document as a
good specimen of what such a report shoidd
be.

An Introduction to the Study of the
Compounds of Carbon; or, Organic
Chemistry. By Ira Remsen, Professor
of Chemistry in the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versitv. Boston: Ginn, Heath & Co.
Pp. 364. Price, $1.30.

The arrangement of this book is some-
what different from that commonly adopted
by teachers of organic chemistry. The low-
est two members of the paraffin series are
first considered, then, in order, their halo-
gen, oxygen, sulphur, and nitrogen deriva-
tives, and after these any peculiarities of
higher paraffins and of their derivatives.
Fifty pages are devoted to compounds which
are at the same time alcohols and acids or
aldehydes, etc. Next some account is given
of the series of hydrocarbons homologous
with the paraffins, and of their derivatives.
The benzene series follows, and the various
modifications and combinations of the ring
molecule are described. Only the more im-
portant compounds in each group, and the
more important reactions, receive attention.
General directions are given for eighty-two
experiments, a fair proportion of which the
author advises each student to perform ;
for details in regard to analysis, etc., larger
works are to be consulted. The author has
taken pains to make the student see for
himself the reasons for adopting the preva-
lent views in regard to the structure of the
compounds of carbon, and has aimed to
give a general view of the whole field, leav-
ing minute descriptions to the chemical dic-
tionaries. The book is a welcome addition
to the unsatisfactory list of text-books in
onranic chemistry.

A Reprint of Annual Reports and other
Papers, on the Geology of the Vir-
ginias. By the late William Barton
Rogers. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 832. With Maps.
This republication is made in answer to
requests by geologists and others for the
reports, which have been several years out
of print, or very rare. " Of the value of
the scientific discoveries, the generalizations,
and the descriptions of the geological forma-
tions contained in these reports," says the ed-
itor, "there can be no better evidence than
the frequency with which they are referred
to and quoted by all who are engaged in ex-
ploring the geology of the Virginias, and
the aid they have given to the development
of the industrial resources of these States,
which they foreshadowed, and in fact often
clearly pointed out, at a time when the ge-
ology of the State was unexplored." The
reports are arranged substantially in the or-
der in which they were made, with the pre-
liminary correspondence and the arguments
addressed to the Legislature for the continu-
ance of the appropriations, so that they have
an historical as well as scientific value. The
author himself desired to condense and codi-
fy the reports, and present them with his
special map and sections, as a single whole,
but time and opportunity never came for
doing so. Thus, the editor's work has been
simply to revise the reproduction of the origi-
nal reports and maps. But a number of pa-
pers additional to the reports, relating to
the geology of the Virginias, have 'been em-
bodied in the volume.

An Introduction to Practical Chemistry,
including Analysis. By John E. Bow-
man, F. C. S. Edited by Charles L.
Bloxam, F. C. S. Eighth edition. Phila-
delphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp.
248. Price, $2.

In this manual is laid out a short course
of laboratory work, beginning with general
chemistry, and including something of both
qualitative and quantitative analysis. The
book has been made especially for college
students who have not studied chemistry,
and have time only to gain some familiarity
with chemical operations, without devoting
much attention to chemical philosophy. The
author has avoided the use of complicated
or expensive apparatus, and has aimed to
give clear and full explanatory details of

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the several processes. Quantities are given
in English measures, followed by metric
equivalents. In the part devoted to analy-
sis are included blow-pipe tests and deter-
minations of specific gravity. Several new
examples of quantitative separation have
been added in this edition, and volumetric
analysis has been given a separate chapter.
Ninety cuts illustrate the operations de-
scribed. A dozen pages of technical infor-
mation in regard to reagents are given, also
tables of weights and measures, reactions,
and solubilities, lists of salts for blow-pipe
examination, etc. The uncut edges of the
volume are rather inconsistent with the title,
" Practical Chemistry."

The Fallacy of the Present Theory of
Sound. By Henry A. Mott, Ph. D,
New York (printed for the author):
John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 103. Price, 50
cents.

We are informed on page 7 of this book
that "in 1877 Dr. II. Wilford Hall pub-
lished a work on the ' Evolution of Sound,'
in which he carefully considered, step by
step, the present undulatory theory of
sound, as elucidated by the distinguished
authorities." It is furthermore said that
Dr. Hall has shown that the current
acoustical theory contains numerous fal-
lacies, and, from the language adopted
throughout the book, we should infer that
it is shown to be childish, absurd, and
wholly unworthy of credence. Dr. Mott
avows his agreement with Dr. Hall, and he
gave a lecture before the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences, December 8, 1884, stating
Dr. Hall's objections to the present theory
of sound, and this lecture constitutes the
volume before us. Dr. Mott says that the
work of exploding this theory has already
been pretty well accomplished, and in his
preface he gives the names of divers presi-
dents of colleges, and professors thereof,
from California to New Hampshire and
South America, who have accepted " Dr.
Hall's discovery," and abandoned as base-
less and worthless the hitherto accepted
wave theory of sound.

We can not here state Dr. Hall's case
as re-expounded by Dr. Mott, but discharge
our duty by informing all who are con-
cerned about it where they can get instruc-
tion upon the subject. Nor have we formed

any opinion, from having examined the ar-
guments, whether the wave theory of sound
has been exploded or not. There is getting
to be such a free use of dynamite in these
latter days among the supposed fundament-
als and essentials of science, and long-es-
tablished opinions seem so liable to sudden
overthrow, that we are losing our interest in
the operations. Perhaps the safest rule to
follow in these revolutionary circumstances
is to abide by long-tested principles until
given up by those longest and most pro-
foundly trained in the work of scientific in-
vestigation.

School Bulletin Year-Book of the State
of New York, for 1885. By C. W. Bar-
deen. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardecn.
Pp. 160.

The " Year-Book " is intended to serve
as a convenient educational directory for
the State of New York. It contains sketch-
es of the county superintendents and county
commissioners, and a list of the principals
of village schools and academies arranged by
counties. Every alternate leaf is left blank,
for the insertion of notes, additions, and
corrections.

Obiter Dicta. New York : Charles Scrib-

ner's Sons. Pp. 232.

This is a collection of essays, which may
be called critical or discursive, according to
the mood of the reader, on " Carlyle," " Mr.
Browning's Poetry," " Truth - Hunting,"
" Actors," " A Rogue's Memoirs," " The Via
Media," and " Falstaff." They embody the
" gratuitous opinions " of one who seems to
be an independent thinker, forcibly and
often very pungently expressed. Each es-
say has its own quality; that on "Falstaff"
is a fund of humor; and they are all pleas-
ant reading.

The Sun and his Phenomena. By the Rev.

T. W. Webb. New York: industrial

Publication Company. Pp. 80. Price,

40 cents.

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of
popular treatises on astronomy, the author
has thought there might still be room for a
description of the sun, which, confining it-
self to a brief but careful enumeration of
its phenomena, may be found serviceable
in elementary instruction. The most re-
cent discoveries are taken notice of.

LITERARY NOTICES.

4.21

A Catalogue of Chemical Periodicals.
By II. Carrington Bolton, Ph. D., Pro-
fessor of Chemistry, Trinity College,
Hartford, Conn. Reprint from Annals
New York Academy of Sciences. 1885.
Pp. 58, 8vo.

This bibliography contains the titles of
the chief chemical periodicals of all coun-
tries, from the rise of this literature to the
end of 1884. The titles number 182, and
eight languages occur ; the arrangement is
strictly alphabetical by the first word ; cross-
references are freely introduced, from the
editors' names to the journals published by
them, and from the chemical societies to
their publications. Bibliographical details
are quite full ; the different titles borne
by a periodical at different periods are ar-
ranged in chronological order under the
first or earliest title. At the end of the
paper is a geographical index, arranged by
countries and cities.

The material for this bibliography has
been drawn for the most part from a larger
" Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Pe-
riodicals— 1665-1882," by the same author.
The larger comprises, we understand, over
5,000 titles, and forms a volume of nearly
800 pages; it will be published by the
Smithsonian Institution in a few weeks.

The present catalogue will be useful to
chemists, and especially to librarians.

Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of
Washington. Vol. VII. 1884. Wash-
ington, D. C. : Judd & Detweiler. Pp.
135.

This volume contains the minutes of the
society and of its mathematical section for
1884. The society continues to show a
vigorous growth. The total number of
members enrolled, from the beginning in
1871, is 292. Thirty-five new members
were added during the year, and the present
number of active members is 173. The
annual address of the president, James C.
Welling, delivered December 6, 1884, was
on " The Atomic Philosophy, Physical and
Metaphysical." The " Minutes " include,
besides this address in full, abstracts of the
papers read at the stated meetings of the
society, among which we notice, as of cur-
rent general interest, Mr. Russell's on " The
Existing Glaciers of the High Sierra of Cali-
fornia," Mr. Kerr's on " The Mica-Mines of
North Carolina," Mr. Russell's on the " Vol-

canic Dust of the Great Basin," Mr. Dall's
on the " Volcanic Sand that fell at Unalas-
ka in 1883," with Mr. Diller's on the com-
position of that dust ; and Mr. Dutton's
on " The Volcanoes and Lava-Fields of New
Mexico."

HOW SHOULD I PRONOUNCE ? Or, THE ART

of Correct Pronunciation. By Will-
iam Henry P. Phyfe. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 305. Price,

$1.25.

The author assumes that the subject of
English pronunciation has not, as yet, had
its main facts and principles clearly and
concisely presented ; and that, among exist-
ing books, none consider the question em-
braced in the title of the present one in its
broadest sense, and endeavor to give it an in-
telligent and satisfactory answer. His effort
has been to supply this lack ; to furnish the
reasons for the directions given, and to in-
dicate the means of becoming proficient in
the very important art. After an introduc-
tory chapter presenting general views and
principles, the topics are considered of the
physical nature of sound, the nature and
use of the vocal organs, articulate sounds,
the sounds of the English language, alpha-
bets, and the English alphabet. The last
topic is followed by complete lists of the
various sounds for which each letter in the
English alphabet stands, and of the various
symbols used for each elementary sound,
which are claimed to be the fullest that have
ever appeared. Then come rules and sug-
gestions for becoming proficient in English
pronunciation and the indication of the cor-
rect pronunciations, according to both Web-
ster and Worcester, of more than one thou-
sand words that are frequently mispro-
nounced. Proper names are considered in
another chapter, and a bibliography of the
subject is given in an appendix.

The Lenafe Stone : or, the Indian and
the Mammoth. By H. C. Mercer. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 95.
Price, $1.25.

In 1872 a young farmer in Bucks Coun-
ty, Pennsylvania, turned up in plowing a
"queer" stone, which he took home and
threw into a box with his other "Indian
curiosities." It was a piece of a broken
" gorget-stone," on which could be discerned

422

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

carved lines, describing the outline of a
mammoth. In 1881 he sold it in a lump
with his other specimens to Mr. James
Paxon, for the round sum of $2.50. Short-
ly afterward, a smaller fragment was found,
which, joined to the former one, completed
the gorget, and also the design of a party
of Indians hunting a mammoth. The ques-
tion necessarily arises, Is the stone with its
tracings a genuine aboriginal relic ? It is
a very important one in American archae-
ology. There appears no reason to doubt
the entire honesty of all the persons who
arc known to have handled the specimen.
Unfortunately, the stone itself is not capa-
ble of giving evidence ; for it was not seen,
scientifically, till it had been cleaned two
or three times, and its possessors had
scratched over the lines to make them
plainer. Its occurrence where it was dis-
covered is unaccountable if it is not genu-
ine. It has been submitted to experts in
aboriginal relics, and they have expressed
different opinions respecting it. Three oth-
er carved stones have very recently been
found on the same farm, the examination
of which and their comparison with this one
may throw some light on the subject. Mr.
Mercer presents the evidence on both sides
with seeming impartiality, but evidently be-
lieves in the genuineness of the stone.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Report of the Assistant Director of the U. S.
National Museum, for 1383. Washington : Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. 1SS5. Pp. 200.

The Cooperative Commonwealth. By Laurence
Oronland. Boston : Lee & Shepard. 1834. Pp.
278. Cloth, $1.

"The Museum: An Illustrated Monthly Jour-
nal for Young Naturalists and Collectors." Edwin
A. Barber, Editor. May, 1885. 1220 Sansom Street,
Philadelphia. Pp.16. 15 cents a copy ; $1.50 a year.

"Mind in Nature: A Popular Journal of Psy-
chical Medicine and Scientific Information."
Monthly. Chicago : Cosmic Publishing Company.
March, 1885. Pp. 16. $1 a year.

Experimental Investigation of the Reactions of
Various Copper Salts with Grape-Sugar. By George
Hay, M. D. 1885. Pp. 6.

American Languages, and why we should study
them. Bv Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. Philadelphia :
J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1885. Pp. 23.

The Imported Elm-Leaf Beetle. Bulletin No.
6, U. S. Department of Agriculture. Washington :
Government Printing-Office. 1385. Pp. 13. Illus-
trated.

Revolution in the Practice of Medicine. By
John P. Bonron, M. D. Chicago : Review Print-
ing and Publishing Company. 1885. Pp. 55. 25
cents.

A Cataloeue of Chemical Periodicals. By H.
Carrington Bolton, Ph. D. Author's edition. 1885.
Pp. 5S.

Luck of a Wandering Dane. By Hans Lykke-
jaeger. Philadelphia : Matlack & Harvey, Printers.
1385. Pp. 130. 25 cents.

The Crime of Poverty. An Address delivered at
Burlington, Iowa, April 1, 1S85. By Henry George.
Pp. 15.

Population by Ages. Baltimore. 1885. Pp. 30.

The Life of an Oyster. By Professor Samuel
Lock wood. Ph. D. New York. 1885. Pp.12.

Thirteenth Annual Report of the Directors of
the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. Philadel-
phia. 18&5. Pp. 10.

Address delivered at the Convocation of McGill
University, April 30. 1835. By Professor D. P.
Penhallow, B. Sc. Pp. S.

Bacterial Pathology. A Series of Papers on the
Exhibits at the Biological Laboratory of the Health
Exhibition. Reprint from the London " Lancet."
New York : The Industrial Publication Company.
1885. Pp.43. 25 cents.

"The Sanitary Monitor; a Monthly Journal de-
voted to Individual, Family, and Public Health."
Edited by J. F. Winn, M. D. Richmond, Va. Pp.
14. $1 a year.

Bureau of Education : Planting Trees in School-
Grounds, and the Celebration of Arbor Day, pp.
64 ; and City School Systems in the United States,
pp. 207. Washington: Government Printing-of-
fice. 1885.

Ovulation and Menstruation considered in their
Physiological Relations. By Franklin Townsend,
M. D. Albany: Burdick &, Taylor, printers. 1385.
Pp. 18.

Scarlet Fever. By T. G. Comstock, M. D. New
York. 1885. Pp. 19.

The Taensa Grammar and Dictionary: A De-
ception exposed. By D. G. Brinton, M. D. From
"American Antiquarian." Pp. 4.

Clinical Studies of the Incipient Stages of Ine-
briety. By T. D. Crothers, M. D. 1885. Pp. 12.

On the Acquisition of Atmospheric Nitrogen by
Plants. By W. O. Atwater. Pp. 24.

On the Vanadates and Iodyrite from Lake Val-
ley, New Mexico. By F. A. Genth and Gerhard
von Rath. 1385. Pp. 13.

A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited
by George Grove. Part XX. Macmillan & Co.
18S5. $1.

Recent American Socialism. By Richard F.
Ely, M. D. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity. 1385. Pp. 74.

On the Evidence that the Earth's Interior is
solid. By Dr. M. E. Wadsworth. Pp. 24.

History and Management of the Land Grants
for Education in the Northwest Territory. By
Georga W. Knight, Ph. D. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 1835. Pp. 175. $1.

Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences.
Vol. II, 1883. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. 1SS4.

The Figure of the Earth. By Frank C. Roberts,
C. E. New York : D. Van Nostrand. 1885. Pp.
95. 60 cents.

Photo-Micrography. By A. Cowley Malley.
London : H. K. Lewis. 1885. Pp. 169.

The True and Romantic Love-Story of Colonel
and Mrs. Hutchinson : A Drama in Verse. By J.
Antisell Allen. London, E. C: Elliot Stock. Pp.
88.

The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte.
By Edward Caird, LL. D. New York: Macmil-
lan & Co. 1S85. Pp.249. $1.75.

The Chemistry of Cookery. By W. Mattieu
Williams. New York : D. Applcton & Co. 1S85.
Pp. 328. $1.50.

Outlines of Psychology. By Hermann Lotze.
Translated, with a Chapter on the Anatomy of the
Brain, bv C. L. Herrick. Minneapolis, Minn. : S.
M. Williams. Pp. 15. Illustrated.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

423

Materials for German Prose Composition. By
C. A. Bucheim, F. C. P. Ninth edition. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1885. Pp.252. $1.25.

The Occult World. By A. P. Sinnett. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. Pp. 228. $1.25.

The Philosophic Grammar of the American
Languages, as set forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt.
By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. Philadelphia : Mc-
Calla & Stavely. 1385. Pp. 51.

The Invalids1 Tea-Tray. By Susan A. Brown.
Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co. 1885. Pp. G7.

Russia under the Tzars. By Stepniak. Trans-
lated by William WestalL New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. 1S85. Pp. 8S1. $1.50.

An Inglorious Columbus. By Edward P. Vin-
Ing. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1885. Pp.
788. $5.

Collected Essays in Political and Social Science.
By William G. Sumner. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. 18?5. Pp. 1T3. $1.50.

Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous.
By Julius A. Palmer, Jr. Boston : L. Prang &, Co.
l3i5. Pp. 5, and Twelve Colored Plates.

The Copper-bearing Rocks of Lake Superior.
By Boland Dner Irving. Washington : Govern-
ment Printing Office. 1883. Pp. 464. Illustrated.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The American Association. — The next
meeting of the American Association is ap-
pointed to be held at Ann Arbor, Michigan,
beginning August 20th. The Association at
its last or Philadelphia meeting expressed a
preference for Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, as
the place of its next meeting, if suitable ac-
commodations could be secured there, nam-
ing Ann Arbor as an alternative place. It
has been ascertained that, while hotel-room
is not wanting at Mount Desert in July and
the latter part of September, all possible
accommodations are taken up at the time
the Association would meet, in August. At
Ann Arbor, the university buildings and the
rooms usually occupied by the students will
be at the disposal of the Association.

The British Association. — The arrange-
ments for the coming meeting of the Brit-
ish Association at Aberdeen, Septemoer 9th,
are nearly completed. The president-elect
for the year is Sir Lyon Playfair. The
general secretaries are Captain Gal ton and
Mr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, while Profess-
or Bonny serves for the last time as acting
secretary. The presidents of the various
sections arc : A, Mathematical and Physi-
cal Science, Professor G. Chrystal ; B, Chem-
ical Science, Professor H. E. Armstrong ; C,
Geology, Professor J. W. Judd ; D, Biol-
ogy, Professor W. C. Mcintosh ; E, Geog-
raphy, General J. T. Walker ; F, Economic

Science and Statistics, Professor Henry Sidg-
wick ; G, Mechanical Science, Mr. Benjamin
Baker; II. Anthropology, Mr. Francis Galton.
The lecture to working-men will be deliv-
ered by Mr. Harold B. Dixon, on " The Na-
ture of Explosives." The other lectures
will be by Professor Grylls Adams, subject
not announced, and Mr. John Murray, di-
rector of the Challenger Expedition Com-
mission, on " The Great Ocean Basins."

How Floras are changing. — Professor
C. E. Bessey notices, in the " American
Naturalist," on the subject of " Plant Mi-
grations," a few instances in which certain
plants have disappeared from the flora of a
part of Central Iowa, to have their places
taken by other species coming in from
abroad. Fifteen years ago the Dysodia
chrysanthemoides grew by the road-side in
great abundance ; now it is scarcely to be
found, and is replaced by the introduced
" dog-fennel," or " May- weed " of New Eng-
land (Anlhemis cotula). Then, the small
flea-bane {Erigcron divaricalum) abounded
on dry soils ; now it is rapidly disappearing.
Mulleins have begun to appear, and the
squirrel-tail grass (Hordeunijiibatum), which
had no place in the flora, is very abun-
dant, and has been for ten years. The low
amaranth (Amaranlus bii(oides), which was
rarely found, is now abundant, and has mi-
grated fully one hundred and fifty miles
northeastward. Bur grass, also, a most of-
fensive plant, has come in, and appears to
be rapidly increasing. Professor Bessey is
informed by old settlers that in Nebraska
the buffalo-grasses were formerly abundant
in the eastern part of the State, but have
now retreated for a hundred or a hundred
and fifty miles, while they have been fol-
lowed by the blue-stems {Andropogon and
Chrysopogon), which now grow in great
luxuriance all over the plains, where twenty
years ago the ground was practically bare.
The same is taking place in Dakota.

Color of Arctic Animals. — Mr. Wallace's
theory that the white color of many Arctic
animals is due to protective adaptation or
mimicry has been disputed by Mr. Meldola,
who speaks of some Arctic animals that are
not white, and regards that color as having
some relation to the radiation or absorption

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of heat. 'Mr. Wallace, defending his view,
says that, " if the white coloration of the
Arctic animals stood alone, it might be
thought necessary to supplement the pro-
tective theory by some physical explanation,
but we have to take account of the parallel
cases of the sand-colored desert animals,
and the green-colored denizens of the ever-
verdant tropical forests ; and, though in
both these regions there are numerous ex-
ceptional cases, we can almost always see
the reason of these, either in the absence of
the need of protection, or in the greater im-
portance of conspicuous covering. In the
Arctic regions the exceptions are particu-
larly instructive, because in almost every
case the reason of them is obvious." The
Arctic wolf does not turn white, because he
hunts in packs, and concealment is not ne-
cessary ; the musk-sheep, yak, moose, cari-
bou, and reindeer are able to take care of
themselves, and need no protection or con-
cealment. The glutton and sable are dark-
colored because they live in trees, and must
look like them. The raven, living on car-
rion, requires no concealment, and continues
black. Mr. Wallace is of the opinion that
color has very little to do with the absorp-
tion or radiation of heat, because those mat-
ters are largely determined by the struct-
ure and surface-texture of the colored sub-
stances.

A Mystery of the Growth of Trees ex-
plained.— Mr. John T. Campbell relates in
the "American Naturalist" his discovery of
one of the causes of the phenomenon of
particular tracts of land being covered with
a simultaneous, nearly exclusive, growth of
trees of a particular species. Some have
ascribed the phenomenon to a peculiar fit-
ness of the soil to particular kinds of vege-
tation, which he does not find to exist. His
own explanation is very simple, and is to
the effect that the matter lies wholly or
mainly in the fact of the ground being in a
fit condition to receive the seeds of the va-
rious species when they fall upon it. Seeds
of different kinds fall at various seasons,
and when the ground is in various condi-
tions as to moisture, etc. Those that find
the ground in good condition sprout and
grow, if no accident occurs to remove the
plants when very young. Mr. Campbell has

tested this view in his surveys in the occa-
sionally flooded bottom-lands of the Wa-
bash River, and illustrates it by following
the futures of the seeds of three species
of trees. The balls of the sycamore or but-
ton-wood begin falling early in the spring
months, and, if a flood is receding at the
time, they stick to the soft, moist banks
wherever they touch them, and particularly
along the highest parts of the sand-bars.
Were it not for the subsequent floods in the
same spring, no other trees could grow, for
these would occupy the ground. But they
are easily killed during their infancy by
overflows, and this is what happens to most
of them. The Cottonwood is the next in or-
der of shedding seed, and, if another flood
is receding while this is taking place, it will
have killed all the sycamores which it has
covered, and sprout the cottonwoods. These
in turn may be killed by the next flood. It
is the turn of the maples next to shed their
seed, and try for the ground. If either of
these species succeeds in making wood with-
out a flood, it will hold the ground, and its
rivals will not be able to get a place. Last
spring the edge3 of the successive planta-
tions escaped the next floods after the seeds
fell upon them, and Mr. Campbell could see
along the river-banks three belts of young
trees, and distinguish them by their gen-
eral appearance. The upper belt was of
sycamore, the second (downward) of Cot-
tonwood, and the third of soft maple. In
June a bigger flood came than any that
caused the seeds to sprout, and killed all
the young trees.

Water-Melon Sirnp. — In response to
the inquiry by Dr. H. Carrington Bolton
concerning the manufacture of sugar from
water-melons (see June number, page 287),
Mr. E. A. Gastman, of Decatur, Illinois, writes
as follows: "About 1842 the manufacture
of molasses was carried on here in Central
Illinois from melons. I do not know how
extensive nor how successful it was, but I
remember very clearly when a boy on the
prairies near Bloomington that our neigh-
bors frequently raised large crops of water-
melons, from which they made molasses."
It will be observed that the extract from
Boyle's work communicated by Dr. Bolton
mentions a " sirup," not sugar.

POP ULAR MIS CELL ANY.

4*5

Madness and Crime. — In an address on
"Madness and Crime," delivered some
months ago, Mr. Clark Bell called attention
to a condition of insanity under which crime
is sometimes committed which is not recog-
nized by the law and is not often taken no-
tice of by the courts. It is the condition
that exists when the man is perfectly aware
of the nature of the act he commits, and of
the fact that it is prohibited by the law and
is punishable, but is at the same time in-
incapacitated by mental disease from con-
trolling his own conduct. The most careful
discussion of the question has been made by
Sir James Stephen, who has proposed as a
solution of it the authorizing of juries to
bring in a special form of verdict where the
existence of such conditions has been proved.
It has also doubtless been the element of
the case which has often prompted Ameri-
can juries to bring in some of those singu-
lar verdicts which have caused remark as con-
trary to the law and the facts. In Mr. Bell's
opinion, " the time has come when legisla-
tors must face this question upon its merits.
The able and masterly manner in which Sir
James discusses it, the decisions in many of
the American States recognizing a different
test for responsibility, call for a settled law
both in England and America, which would
be in accord with the principles of justice
and commensurate with the civilization of
our age. . . . There is no doubt whatever
that the uncertainty of verdicts is largely
due to the popular conviction of the injus-
tice of the law as it now exists, and as it is
frequently construed by the courts. ... It
is a legislative and not a judicial question,
and must receive public attention commen-
surate with its great importance in the ad-
ministration of criminal jurisprudence."

Sorghnm and Beet Sngar in the United
States. — Professor H. W. Wiley, chemist of
the Department of Agriculture, in his report
on " Northern Sugar Industry," gives the
amount of sorghum-sugar manufactured at
the principal factories in the United States
during the season of 1883 at 726,711 pounds.
The factories are at Rio Grande, New Jer-
sey; Champaign, Illinois; Sterling, Hutch-
inson, and Ottawa, Kansas ; and the Depart-
ment of Agriculture. The largest and most
successful factory is at Eio Grande, near

Cape May, New Jersey, where the soil and
climate appear favorable to the production
of the crop. A careful calculation leads the
author to estimate that the average amount
of sugar which can be obtained in market-
able form from sorghum is 4-75 per cent by
weight of the expressed juice, or 2'37 per
cent, or 46*4 pounds per ton, of the cane.
Besides this, two other sugars than the crys-
tallizable sucrose are present in the juice,
but they are not separable in solid form, and
enter into the molasses. This yield is pro-
portionately very large, and, if the produc-
tion of sorghum-sugar should be carried on
with success enough to make it a staple
crop, the product of molasses will be greater
than ordinary consumption can dispose of.
The only other uses to which the molasses
can be put will be as food for animals and
for distillation ; and the latter will be the
more money-making. Each gallon of mo-
lasses will give a gallon of commercial alco-
hol. Happily, this kind of alcohol is said
to be only fit for use in the arts. Professor
Wiley remarks that the fact must be ad-
mitted that the present production of sor-
ghum-sugar is not very encouraging after
thirty years of endeavor; but nearly all the
progress that has been made in it has taken
place during the last three years. The out-
look is better for the manufacture of beet-
sugar, which is pronounced an assured suc-
cess on the Pacific coast. The five years'
experience at the Standard Sugar Refinery,
Alvarado, California, is claimed to have
proved that beets raised in that State will
yield as many tons per acre and are as rich
in saccharine matter as any raised in Eu-
rope. During the season of 1883-84 there
were produced at this establishment l,027y-
826 pounds of white refined sugar, whilethere
were still in tanks at the time of making the
report, in process of crystallization, 250,000
pounds more.

Corrupt Legislation. — The causes of the
defective and corrupt legislation which ap-
pears to be one of the crying complaints of
the present time have been reviewed in a
short pamphlet by Mr. Simon Sterne, who
also makes a general suggestion of a rem-
edy for them. The causes lie in the meth-
ods of procedure of our legislative bodies,
which are unsystematic, hasty, and uncon-

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sidered. The public good is often the thing
least thought of. On the other hand, the
predominant general motive is the desire of
the party in power to keep the other party
out ; and each member of the body has some
" axe to grind," either his own, or the axe
of his constituents or of some private or
corporate interest. The same was the case
in England, till the passage in 1848 of the
" standing orders," by which a complete sepa-
ration was effected in the method of treat-
ment of public and of private and local
bills. Public bills are now placed under the
wing of the Cabinet. Private and local bills
are no longer treated as legislation, strictly
speaking, but as petitions to Parliament for
special immunity or privileges which are
conducted by private parties, and are sub-
ject to a strict rule of procedure. They are
tried as a lawsuit, in which the petition and
bill are filed before the beginning of the
session, " and opposed at every step, as a
whole and in detail, by the Board of Trade
and by every private interest which may be
menaced or affected thereby. Counter-peti-
tions, attorneys, counsel, and a trial, a stand-
ing and a day in court to all parties in inter-
est before the bill can become a law, pre-
vent wrong to individuals ; counsel for the
ministry for the public bills, and special
counsel for the private bills, committees to
aid them in the intelligent discharge of their
work, prevent the possibility of working, by
collusion, a public wrong." The details of
these measures, which we have not space to
follow, are carefully adjusted to secure their
successful working. The prohibition of spe-
cial legislation, which has been incorporated
into some of our State Constitutions, is re-
garded by Mr. Sterne as unphilosophical ;
for there must always be exceptional cases
which general legislation can not cover, but
for which special provisions are necessary;
and it is this need which is recognized in
the British system. The prohibition, more-
over, defeats itself, for it is evaded, and
worse measures are passed for special ends,
under the pretense of generality, than could
succeed if they were presented in their real
character. Mr. Sterne has proposed a de-
tailed plan for a system of legislative pro-
cedure, modeled after the British " stand-
ing orders," which deserves at least to be
thought over.

British Hens and Eggs.— By actual count
(for a census has been taken), Great Britain
and Ireland contain thirty million head of
poultry of all kinds, twenty million of which
may be classed under the head of " chick-
ens." The laying hens, which may be esti-
mated to constitute one fourth of the chick-
ens, or five million head, may lay from sev-
enty to two hundred eggs a year. It is safe
to average the number at from eighty to one
hundred for each hen. This would give four
or five hundred million eggs a year. Be-
tween a third and a half of the whole stock
of poultry are consumed every year. Some
of the English cottages derive as much as
twenty-two pounds, or a hundred and ten
dollars a year, from their fowls, half of
which is profit. The poultry are bought up
lean by "higglers" or "hagglers," and are
fattened for the market by " crammers,"
who make this their special business. The
feeding is performed by machinery, by a
rapid process, and the trade is a growing
one. The home supply being estimated at
eight million chickens a year, and the fowls
being valued at two shillings each, we have
an annual market value for this stock of
£800,000, or $4,000,000. This does not in-
clude the turkeys, ducks, and geese, of which
eight million are returned in Great Britain
and Ireland. If the same proportions of
these are brought to market as of chickens,
rating them at five shillings a head, we may,
by adding the proceeds from them, raise our
poultry account to £1,000,000, or $5,000,000.
It is impossible to calculate the number of
eggs that arc consumed in the United King-
dom. If twenty million of the population
eat an egg a week, that would be ten hun-
dred and forty millions a year. It is known,
however, that during 1S83 there were im-
ported nine hundred and forty million four
hundred and thirty-six thousand one hun-
dred and sixty eggs, and they were worth
£2,732,055, or five times as many dollars ;
and up to the end of August, 1884, six hun-
dred and eighty-one million six hundred and
eighty-three thousand and forty had been
received. The home hens are supposed to
furnish five hundred million eggs. Adding
these to the foreign supply, and valuing the
whole at a penny an egg, we have Great
Britain's egg bill, £6,250,000, or $31,250,-
000.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

427

How Yakuts make a Fire— The process
of starting a fire employed by the Yakuts
and Tungmses of Northern Siberia is quite
elaborate, and is thus described by Com-
mander Mellville in his " The Lena Delta " :
" To start the fire, a dry piece of wood is
procured from the high river-banks, many
sticks being cut with the axe and rejected
until one entirely free from moisture and
fit for kindling is found, which is then
carefully split and kept dry. The best of
the drift-wood is next selected and also split
up and chopped into proper lengths. Thus
far, so good : but the natives are ignorant
of matches, and with only their flint and
steel it would seem a difficult matter to start
a fire, since they have no rags, either cotton
or flax, or any highly inflammable material
like sulphur-sticks. But here is where the
Yakut and Tunguse ingenuity asserts it-
self. The buds of the Arctic willow are
forever trying to peep from beneath their
thin blanket of snow, and within these buds
is a light flossy substance in the nature of
thistle-down. Whenever he can, the native
gathers a handful of these, and robs them
of their down, which he then moistens slight-
ly and mixes with ground charcoal, prepared
by cooling a lighted piece of birch-wood in
the ashes of his hearth. The dampened
floss heavily rolled through the charcoal is
next covered up and dried before the fire on
the same board whereon it was pounded and
the charcoal powdered. It is now an excel-
lent tinder, igniting quickly into a hot and
durable point of fire. But, in addition to it,
some light match-stuff is necessary, and, to
supply this need, a bundle of fine soft sticks,
about thirty inches long, is always kept dry-
ing over the fireplace. Before the native
sets out on a journey, or, indeed, as often
as material is required, the old women of
the house take down several of these sticks
and carefully shape them into sword-blades.
They then rest their knives in beveled notches
cut in the flat sides of small pieces of wood,
about three eighths of an inch broad, one
eighth of an inch thick, and one inch and a
half long, and the operation proper begins.
Along the wooden sword, which is held
against the shoulder like a violin, the knife
in its gauge is drawn continuously and rap-
idly, and at each draught a thin coiling
shaving drops to the floor or into the lap of

the operator. A bag full of these fine curls
— which, when matted together, very much
resemble the American manufactured mate-
rial known to upholsterers as ' excelsior ' — is
always ready for the traveling native, pre-
served dry in the huts beneath the sleeping-
skins, and carried in a fish-skin bag on the
journey. So, now, with the materials at
hand, we will start a fire. The native takes
from his skin pouch a bunch of the ' excel-
sior ' about the size of a robin's nest, rolls
it into a ball, punches a hole in it, and then
lays it carefully in the snow. Next, taking
a pinch of tinder from the bag which al-
ways hangs at his hip, he places it on his
flint, and with a quick sharp stroke ignites
and incloses it in the center of his nest of
shavings, which he then lifts up, holding
it lightly with his fingers spread apart for
the passage of air, and whirls rapidly around
his head at arm's length. At first, a faint,
pleasing odor of burning birch steals upon
the air, then a light streak of smoke follows
the revolving arm, and then the heat within
his hand notifies the native that a proper de-
gree of ignition has been attained ; he sud-
denly ceases his gyrations, tears open the
smoking nest, and with a quick puff blows
it into flame. Then depositing the blazing
ball on the snow, he soon piles his fagots
over and around it, and in few seconds his
fire is in full blast."

Religion and Inebriety. — Dr. T. D.

Crothers, considering the question whether
faith and prayer, or honest intention on the
part of the patient, can alone save him from
inebriety, expresses his opinion as in the
negative, and says : " In a study of ten cases
on this point, I found that seven had been,
before and after the beginning of inebriety,
active church - members, had experienced
conversion and led active lives of faith and
prayer for longer or shorter intervals, de-
pending on circumstances. Two of these
were periodical inebriates, and had, during
the free intervals between the attacks, led a
most consistent Christian life of faith and
prayer. One of the seven exhibited the
strange delusion of religious mania when
drinking; at all other times he was a quiet
skeptic and doubter, but, when once under
the influence of alcohol, he was the most
ardent religious devotee, exhorting with

428

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

great enthusiasm, and asking the prayers
of every person he met, to save him. His
mind seemed troubled with intense fear of
failing to get to heaven, and every thought
and exertion seemed directed to this end ;
but secretly he drank constantly, never to
be stupid, but just enough to keep up a de-
gree of excitement. This would last two or
three weeks, then merge into a low form of
nervous fever, from which he would recover
and remain sober for an indefinite time. . . .
The other three had been good church-mem-
bers before inebriety came on, but on be-
coming inebriates left the church." An-
other case was that of a clergyman whose
inebriate fits always began when he was ad-
ministering the wine at the communion.
After quoting a few other cases, pertinent
but of not quite so striking a character, Dr.
Crothers states his conclusions, which are
according to the view he has steadfastly
held, that " inebriety is a physical disease
which must be reached by both physical and
psychical means. All methods of treatment
must be along the line of natural laws, and
include all means, both physical and spirit-
ual, that can build up and strengthen the
entire man. Spiritual means are only valu-
able as they are used with other means, and
where they are effectual alone they are the
exception to the rule, and can not indicate
any direct line of treatment."

Butehcr's-Meat and Headaches. — The

prescription of a diet largely vegetarian
has long been known to be good for per-
sons subject to attacks of headache. Dr.
Alexander Haig relates, in " The Practi-
tioner," a case that came under his treat-
ment which indicates to him that this dis-
ease and its attendant phenomena are large-
ly the result of a poison circulating in the
blood, which poison is a product of the
digestion of certain foods, especially butch-
erVmeat ; and that a cure is best effected
by cutting off entirely the noxious food,
and aiding the elimination of the poison by
the kidneys. The patient was a chronic
sufferer from headache, and the afflictions
that usually accompany it. lie was a hard
student, and was most troubled in winter.
On the adoption of a strict vegetarian diet,
the attacks, which had been severe, ceased
at once, and for six months of the cold half

of the year there were only one or two
slight ones, although they had been recur-
ring weekly. A less strict diet was sub-
sequently allowed, and gave practical im-
munity, provided butcher's-meat was avoid-
ed. It was also found that two or three
tumblers of hot water taken every night at
bed-time gave increased immunity, and en-
abled the patient to take even a little butch-
er's-meat occasionally without fear of an
attack. The disease was evidently caused
by impure blood, and that by imperfection
of the digestive process. The connection
with butcher's-meat was indicated directly
by the facts in the case. It may be ac-
counted for possibly by reference to Dr.
Michael Foster's suggestion that the pan-
creatic digestion of the proteids in excess .
is accompanied by the development of bac-
teria giving rise to fermentative changes;
or by the suggestion made in " Le Progres
Medical," that alkaloids are formed in the
intestines during digestion similar to those
that have been found in the cadaver, and,
if they are absorbed in excess, or are not
excreted by the kidneys, cause disorders.

Another Side to the Clothes Question. —

" An Anthropologist " protests, in the " Pall
Mall Gazette," that, if an attempt is made to
impose European clothing on the natives of
New Guinea, they will all be killed off. It
is clothes, he asserts, and not liquor or im-
morality, that has been fatal to so many na-
tives of tropical countries. The Australi-
ans and Tasmanians have been clothed, and
exterminated, while the North American
Indians have been left in their traditional
costumes, and thrive. This matter of the
natural garb of savages is one " in which
Nature can not be safely tampered with.
Whether tribes are found clothed only with
a loin-cloth, or only with paint, it is the re-
sult of a long evolution, an adaptation to
environment, and no foreigners should go
among such peoples who can not adapt
themselves mentally and morally to customs
representing that environment. ... In the
day that these natives of New Guinea begin
to clothe themselves beyond what has suf-
ficed for their health, ' they will surely die.'
The exact reason for this has not been sat-
isfactorily shown, though I have been told
in several places that clothing checks some

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

429

delicate secretions of the dark skin in warm
countries. . . . The germs of European vices
are carried too often with European clothes.
It is a fact significant of more than female
conservatism, to which Mr. Herbert Spencer
attributes it, that generally the women of a
nude tribe are the last to adopt the fashion
of putting on clothes. They are always re-
luctant, and sometimes show such shame in
their first dress as a European would feel
without clothing. In many parts of India
there is a profound suspicion of the irrelig-
iousness of clothing. The fakir is distressed
even by the regulation rag upon which the
Government modestly insists, and a fully
dressed fakir would be scouted. The late
Brahmo minister, Keshub Chunder Sen, ex-
pressed the belief that India would never
accept a Christ in hat and boots. The mis-
sionary should remember that clothes-mo-
rality is climatic, and that, if a certain de-
gree of covering of the body has gradually
become, in the Northwest, associated with
morality and piety, the traditions of tropical
countries may have equally connected elabo-
rate dress rather with the sensualities of
Solomon in his glory than with the purity
of the lily as clothed by Nature."

Persian Carpets. — According to a report
by Consul-General Benjamin, of Teheran,
the Persian carpets, the manufacture of
which constitutes one of the most important
features of the industries and commerce of
the country, are woven chiefly by the women
and children of the peasantry in the villages.
A countryman will have a rug made in his
own house, and will then take it to the
nearest town and sell it for what it will
bring. The rooms of the peasantry are
small, and hence the rugs are commonly
small. Of late years, a larger carpet has
been manufactured for the foreign market.
Four kinds of carpets are made, large ones
and small ones or rugs, the ghilcems, and
the umad», or felt carpets. Most of the car-
pets intended for the covering of floors, of
whatever size, are produced in the central
province of Irak and in the districts of Sar-
ravend, Garrouste, and Malahir, and are
known by the generic name of pharaghan.
They are more solid and massive than other
Persian carpets, and arc adapted for rooms
of large size. Large Persian carpets, which

deviate from the usual shape, are made to
order, and for an increased price. There
are numerous varieties of Persian rugs. In
some classes, such as Turkoman, there is
general similarity of design, although no two
rutrs are altogether identical. In other
classes, such as the rugs of Kerwan, Dyo-
chegan, or Kurdistan, there is endless va-
riety in design or texture. The colors for-
merly used in the rugs of Persia were imper-
ishable, and rugs a hundred years old show
no deterioration in tint. The introduction
of aniline dyes at one time threatened the
ruin of the manufacture of textile fabrics,
but the use of those dyes has been forbid-
den by law. The ghikcm, which is largely
made in the province of Kurdistan, has a
pattern identical on both sides, with firm
and brilliant colors, and designs often of
extraordinary beauty. Their lightness and
flexibility qualify them for portieres and
table and sofa covers, and render them easy
for transportation. The namids, or felt
carpets, are made by forming a frame of
the thickness required, or by excavating a
space in the ground-floor of a size and depth
corresponding with those of the intended
fabric. The hair is laid in this and beaten
out with mallets, and a design of colored
threads is then beaten into the upper sur-
face. Silk rugs are peculiar to Persia, and
are rare and expensive, although rugs of the
finer types, with silken fringes and some-
times with a woof of silk in the body of the
rug, are not uncommon.

Brazilian Oranges. — Oranges flourish
and are profitable in all parts of Brazil, and
the exportation of them amounts to several
millions annually. The Umbigo, the favor-
ite variety at Bahia, is without seeds, large,
sweet, and delicious, begins to ripen about
May, and lasts till September. The most
common aDd popular kind at Rio Janeiro is
the Siletta, which has a sweet and delicate
flavor. The Tangerina is a smaller variety
than the Siletta, many-seeded and ripening
at about the same time, and has a deep or-
ange-colored skin that breaks easily in peel-
ing, with an aromatic odor. The orange-
orchards are generally situated on low and
sandy land, convenient to transportation by
water. The trees are planted along from
February to May, about fifteen feet apart,

43°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and begin to bear in about five or six years,
yielding then from twenty to thirty oranges
each, and increasing their crop for ten years
till in full bearing, when they produce from
two to three hundred, and, in most favorable
circumstances, one thousand oranges a year.
The trees remain fruitful for more than thirty
years. The cost of cultivating and attending
a thousand orange-trees in Brazil is esti-
mated at about seventy dollars a year.

Climate and Vegetation. — In a paper on
the relations of climate and vegetation, M.
M. Bergsman, of Flushing, reaches the con-
clusion that a mixed climate, with relatively
mild winters and warm, sunny summers, is
the best suited for the vegetation of the
temperate zone. Corn can be cultivated
only as a green vegetable in England ; is
profitable in Western Europe only to 46°,
and in the valley of the Rhine to 49°, but
in certain regions of North America to 51°,
and even under the Polar Circle in Norway,
where it has the sun day and night. Plants
much resembling those of Central Europe
grow in the Amour region of Siberia, where
precipitation occurs only in summer, and
that season is warm, in the face of a winter
temperature much lower than is observed in
the most northern parts of Lapland. Rad-
ishes, turnips, rape, and the potato grow as
far north as there are settlements, but in
the extreme north the potatoes are only as
large as walnuts, and the plant never blos-
soms in Greenland. When comparing ex-
treme continental climates with extreme sea
climates, the continental climate has the ad-
vantage. The extreme southern limit of
phanerogamous plants is in the South Shet-
land Islands, latitude 60° to 63° south, and
the last trace of vegetation, in cryptogams,
is found on Cockburn Island, 64° south. At
the same latitude in Northern Siberia is a
forest of very high coniferous trees. The
chief reason that corn can not be cultivated
in Siberia beyond 62°, at Yakutsk, is on ac-
count of the constantly frozen condition of
the ground at a short distance beneath the
surface. In Europe, even, the climate of
the northern parts of the British Isles is not
suited for many vegetables and other culti-
vated plants. It is in Germany where almost
all the plants of the temperate zone and
those commonly cultivated can be found.

Even in that country the summer tempera-
ture in general is only a few degrees above
that calculated for the latitude. Germany
is crossed in July by the isotherm of 68°,
and Britain by that of 59°, but the differ-
ence in vegetation is not caused by the dif-
ference of 9° in mean temperature, but by
the difference in the amount of sunshine.

Denudation of the Continents. — Mr. T.
Mellaid Reade, addressing the Liverpool
Geological Society on " The Denudation of
the Two Americas," showed that one hundred
and fifty million tons of matter in solution
are annually poured into the Gulf of Mexico
by the Mississippi River. This, it was esti-
mated, would reduce the time for the denu-
dation of one foot of land over the whole ba-
sin— which time has hitherto been calculated
solely from the matter in suspension — from
six thousand years to four thousand years-
Similar calculations were applied to the La
Plata, the Amazon, and the St. Lawrence ;
and Mr. Reade arrived at the result that
an average of one hundred tons per square
mile per annum is removed from the whole
American Continent. This agrees with re-
sults he had previously arrived at for Eu-
rope, from which it was inferred that the
whole of the land draining into the Atlan-
tic Ocean from America, Africa, Europe, and
Asia contributes matter in solution which,
if reduced to rock at two tons to the cubic
yard, would equal one cubic mile every six
years.

Photographing Colors. — Professor H.
W. Vogel has made a report of the final re-
sults of his researches on the means of pho-
tographing colored objects in their natural
shades. Sensitive plates are affected only
by the more refrangible rays, so that they
present totally unnatural and distorted pict-
ures, as to the shading, of colored objects.
Believing that the sensitive collodion is af-
fected only by such colors as are absorbed
by it, Professor Vogel's efforts have been
directed to making his plates sensitive to
less refrangible rays by alloying the silver
coating with a substance capable of absorb-
ing those rays. His experiment succeeded
with the natural colors, but he could not ob-
tain an effect with the duller artificial colors.
He then sought for organic substances pos-

POPULAR MISCELLANY

43i

sessing a power of absorption more intense
and lying nearer to the yellow of the spec-
trum, and obtained in eosine and in various
derivatives coloring substances which hard
ly possess more than a broad absorption
band in the yellow, and with which he ob-
tained the desired result. When these bod-
ies were mixed in due proportions with the
dry gelatine plates, the yellow of the colored
objects appeared quite clear on the photo-
graph, but the blue was still always bright-
er. Professor Vogel then inserted a yellow
glass between the object and the camera,
which partly absorbed the blue rays, leaving
the yellow unimpaired, and obtained photo-
graphs in which the blue, as well as the
green and yellow, and partly even the red,
parts of the colored objects presented to
the observer's eye the same vivid effects as
the original.

The Objects of Bathing.— The object
of bathing, says a writer in the " Saturday
Review," is fourfold : to produce a certain
amount of nervous shock, that should be
followed by reaction and an increased circu-
lation of the blood on the surface, resulting
in a more rapid change of tissues ; to lower
the temperature of the body ; to cleanse the
skin ; and to produce pleasurable feelings,
and, in connection with swimming, the bene-
ficial effects of one of the best forms of
physical exercise. The nervous shock and
the reaction from it, following the first con-
tact with the water, are important points,
and to obtain them the plunge or the
douche is preferable to any other form of
bath. To wade up to the middle and stand
shivering and fearful of the momentary
feeling of discomfort is neither healthy
nor pleasant, and timid persons who dare
not plunge boldly into the water should be
content with the douche-bath. A large
garden hose, with a high pressure of water,
held at a distance of fifteen or twenty
feet from the body, will give an idea of
this most delightful curative and bracing
agent. Sea-bathing differs from out-door
fresh-water bathing in the greater specific
gravity of sea-water and its consequent
greater buoyancy and more uniform tem-
perature, while the pure air, sunshine, and
better sanitary surroundings of sea-side
places contribute largely to the results.

Mineral baths, as such, have no particular
superiority over other baths of the same
density and temperature. In addition to
the greater healthiness and enjoyableness
of out-door bathing, it is probable that the
simple exposure of the body to the sun and
fresh air is of real benefit, and contributes
to the sum total of the good results. Cramps
are considered one of the great dangers of
bathing, but when they are fatal it is proba-
bly the result of syncope or fainting, from
failure of the heart's action. A good swim-
mer in vigorous health would hardly be
wholly disabled by a cramp of only a part
of his limbs.

Structure of the Edible Birds' Nests. —

Mr. Pryer, whose account of his visit to the
Gomantin Caves, in North Borneo, has fur-
nished a fund of information respecting the
edible birds' nests of the Chinese, has pub-
lished in a Japan paper an article correcting
some misapprehensions that he has found
to exist on the subject. That the nests are
made from the saliva of the bird he regards
as a physical impossibility, for a bird could
not secrete in a few days a mass of saliva
more than equal, when dried, to the entire
bulk of its own body, and then do this nine
consecutive times a year. He thinks that
some saliva is used by the birds, the alga?
being worked up in the bird's mouth in the
same manner that mud is worked up by
the Japanese swallow. Mr. Pryer at first
thought that the black nests owed their
color to their being made of the brown out-
sides of the algae, while the white nests are
made of the inside. This is not correct, for
the birds can use only the inside ; the black
nests are simply white nests grown old and
frequently repaired.

How to sleep well. — In sleeping, much
depends on securing a comfortable position.
Lying on the back would seem to give the
most ease, but general experience and prac-
tice prove that it does not, and it is liable
to some definite objections. In a weakly
state of the heart and blood-vessels, and in
certain morbid conditions of the brain, the
blood seems to gravitate to the back of the
head, and to produce troublesome dreams.
Persons who have contracted chests, and
who have had pleurisy and retain adhesions

432

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the lungs, do not sleep well on the back.
Nearly all who are inclined to snore do so
in that position. For these and other rea-
sons, it is therefore better to lie on the
side, and in lung-disease to lie on the weak
side, so as to leave the healthy lung free to
expand. It is well to choose the right side,
because, when the body is thus placed, the
food gravitates more easily out of the stom-
ach into the intestines. Sleeping with the
arm thrown over the head is to be depre-
cated ; but this position is often assumed
during sleep, because circulation is then
free in the extremities and the head and
neck, and the muscles in the chest are
drawn up and fixed by the shoulders, and
thus expansion of the thorax is easy. The
chief objections to this position are that
it creates a tendency to cramp and cold in
the arms, and sometimes seems to cause
headaches and dreams. The best sleep is
obtained when the shutters are closed so as
to make the room dark, and the windows
are adjusted so as to admit plenty of fresh
air. Early rising is not a virtue, unless the
riser has secured sleep enough ; and the
best rising is obtained when the sleeper
wakes naturally.

NOTES.

Thb works of Darwin, Spencer, Agassiz,
Huxley, Adam Smith, and Lewes, are said
to be forbidden to be issued from the circu-
lating libraries of Russia. The writings of
Moleschott, Biichner, Vogt, and Reclus, are
also prohibited.

Doin, of Paris, has begun the publication
of a weekly " Journal des Societes Scienti-
fiques," which will contain brief reports of
the principal scientific societies, in whatever
field, of the great cities of Europe. It costs
fifteen francs, or three dollars, postage paid,
a year.

M. All card has frequently noticed, in
passing from his observatory on the Puy
de Dome, to the city of Clermont-Ferrand,
that, while the air was clear and transparent
to the west of the chain of the Puys, it was
obscured on the east. On investigation,
he found that the obscurity was caused by
the dust which the wind, generally blowing
from the west, swept up from the rocks
over which it passed. This explanation
was confirmed by the fact that the fog-
like appearance disappeared after a rain.

Tiie use of artificial teeth turns out to
be of ancient origin. Two curious speci-

mens of artificial teeth from the Etruscan
tombs, dating from four or five centuries
before the Christian era, may be seen in
the Museum of Corneto, on the coast of
Italy. In the bodies of two young girls, on
the jaw of one are still to be seen two inci-
sors fixed to their neighbors by small gold
rings, while in the other the rings remain,
but the artificial teeth have fallen out.
The teeth, carefully cut, had evidently been
taken from the mouth of some large animal.

IIerr Rudolph Jall, of Saarbrucken,
Prussia, who has made a special study of
volcanic eruptions, states that colliery ex-
plosions coincide with or follow closely
upon earthquakes. He specifies a number
of days during the present season as days
which will be dangerous all over Europe.

Mr. JosEr-H Thomson, in the relation of
his journey through the Masai country in
Africa to the Victoria Nyanza, speaks of
his troop in one of its marches having
"done" little short of seventy miles within
twenty-four hours, without a drop of water
or a bit of food !

A committee has been formed for organ-
izing the celebration of the centenary of the
birth of Arago, which will occur on the 17th
of March next.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Among the deaths of the last few months
in the scientific world is that of John Bir-
mingham, astronomer, of Millbrook, Ire-
land, at the age of seventy-eight years.

In A. S. Uwarrow, who died a few
months ago, Russia has lost one of its
foremost archaeologists and the founder of
the Archaeological Society of Moscow. He
published works on the archaeology of
Southern Russia, the tumuli on the Oka
(Vladimir), and the Finnish people of the
Mesia, who inhabited the country before its
colonization by the Russians.

Major F. J. Sidney Parry, one of the
oldest members of the Entomological So-
ciety of London, died on the 1st day of Feb-
ruary.

Titian Ramsay Peale, the last surviv-
ing son of Charles Wilson Peale, the por-
trait painter of Revolutionary times, died
in Philadelphia, March 13th, in the eight v-
sixth year of his age. He was a naturalist,
and had fine collections of moths and but-
terflies; was one of the founders of the
Philosophical Society of Washington ; was
a member of the United States Exploring
Expedition of Commodore Wilkes ; and was
the only survivor of Colonel Long's Expedi-
tion to the Rocky Mountains.

MICHEL EUO.ENE CHEVREUL.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

AUGUST, 1885.

CONCERNING THE SUPPKESSED BOOK.

By E. L. YOUMANS.

IT will be no news to the readers of this monthly that the volume
entitled " The Nature and Reality of Religion ; a Controversy
between Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison," published by D.
Appleton & Co. last March, has been suppressed by order of Mr.
Spencer. This catastrophe was the result of a public correspondence
carried on between these gentlemen in the columns of the London
"Times." Fragments of the letters were cabled to this country as
they appeared, and were widely disseminated by the newspapers, pro-
ducing some suspense, and giving a confused impression of the affair.
At length came the announcement that the disagreeable difference
was happily composed ; but with it came also a dispatch ordering the
destruction of the book — copies, plates, and all — the damage to be
charged to Mr. Spencer. This seemed a curious way of bringing an
unpleasant difference between two authors to a harmonious termina-
tion ; but, without waiting for explanations, the mandate was obeyed
and the book suppressed. The letters themselves are now before us,
and as they have not all been previously published in this country,
they are herewith submitted to the reader in full :

THE SPENCER-HARRISON CORRESPONDENCE.

[London Times, May 29, 1885.]

A NEW FORM OF LITERARY PIRACY.

Mr. Frederic Harrrison has forwarded to us for publication the inclosed let-
ter which he has addressed to Mr. Herbert Spencer:

" May 28, 1885.
" Deae Mr. Spencer : I can not admit that there is anything to justify you
in being a party to the American reprint of articles of mine, without my knowl-
vol. xxvii. — 28

434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

edge or consent. I learn accidentally that a volume has appeared in New York,
which consists of three recent articles of yours in the Nineteenth Century,
printed alternately with three recent articles of mine, with an introduction,
notes, and appendix. This re-issue of my articles was made without the knowl-
edge of myself, or of the proprietor of the Nineteenth Century, and he tells me
that it is a case of piracy.

" You now avow (in your letter to me of yesterday) that the volume was
issued by your American publishers, and was edited by your friend Professor
Youmans, after consultation with you, with your consent and assistance. You
also avow that you furnished the editor with controversial comments on my arti-
cles, and requested him to append them in his own way — that is to say, you have
abetted a clandestine reprint of three articles of mine, interpolated with notes
supplied by yourself. I regard this, not only as an act of literary piracy, but as
a new and most unworthy form of literary piracy. May I ask if it is proposed
to hand you the profits of a book of which I am (in part) the author, or are
these to be retained by your American publishers and friend ?

" To justify this act you now write that you expected republication in
America by my friends. This expectation rests, I can assure you, on a pure
invention. No friend of mine, nor any person whatever in America or in Eng-
land, has ever suggested to me the republication of my articles, nor have I ever
heard or thought of such a project. You quote to me, as your authority, a letter
from Professor Youmans, who simply says there is danger of its being done by
others, and he adds that I am coming to lecture in America. Again, this is a
pure invention. I have never thought of lecturing in America, or of going there,
nor has any one on either side of the Atlantic suggested to me to do so. Those
who ' convey ' my writings will as readily invent my intentions. Inquiry would
have shown that neither I nor my friends had any intention of reprinting any
articles — much less yours. And I fail to see how an unverified report that they
might be reprinted, coupled with an unverified report that I was going to lecture
in America, coidd justify you in promoting and assisting in the unauthorized
issue and sale of writings of mine.

" This is not a simple case of clandestine reprint. Those of us who do not
take elaborate precautions are exposed to have what they write appearing in
unauthorized American editions. But it does surprise me that an English writer
should connive at this treatment of another English writer, with whom he had
been carrying on an honorable discussion. It is, I think, something new, even
in American piracy, to re-issue an author's writings behind his back, and sell
them interlarded with hostile comment. Reprints, even while they plunder us,
spare us the sight of our sentences broken on the same page with such amenities
as ' he complacently assumes,' ' loose and misleading statements,' etc. You
avow, in your letter of yesterday, that you supplied these comments to my arti-
cles ; and if internal evidence did not show them to be yours, by your offer to
me to republish them now in England, you treat them as yours. I know no
instance of such a practice. It is as if I were piratically to reprint your ' Data
of Ethics,' freely interspersed with a running commentary on your practice of
ethics, and were to justify my act on the ground that I had had a controversy
with you, and that I had heard your friends were about to reprint it.

" There is one minor point which serves to show the kind of publication in
which you have chosen to take part. My articles in this volume are followed
by a cutting from a newspaper account of what the editor calls ' The Little
Bethel of the Comtists.' As the volume bears as its subtitle the words, ' A Con-

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 435

troversy between Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer,' tbat newspaper para-
graph would only be relevant if it referred to practices in which I had some part,
or which I approved. It is well known that I have nothing to do with anything
of the kind, and never countenanced it. Nothing of the sort has ever been heard
in Newton-hall, where for years past I have presented Positivism as I understand
it. The matter is a small bit of polemical mischief ; those who are engaged in
plunder are not likely to be fair. But I think it is quite unworthy of a place in
a volume for which you are responsible, and which you have authorized and
adopt.

" You now propose to me to republish this volume in England, where you
admit it could not appear without the consent of all concerned. After what you
have done I must decline to act with you. I leave your conduct to the judgment

of men of sense and of honor.

" I am faithfully yours,

" Mr. Herbert Spencer. Fkedeeio Harrison."

[7'imes, June 1st.]

MR. FREDERIC HARRISON'S CHARGE.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sir: Will you oblige me by publishing the following letter, which is a copy

of one to Mr. Harrison, referred to by him in his letter contained in The Times

of Friday :

" 38 Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, W., May 27, 1885.

" Dear Sir : Here are my replies to the questions put in your note of yes-
terday.

" Just before the middle of January I received from my American friend,
Professor Youmans, a letter dated January 2, containing, among others, the fol-
lowing paragraphs :

" 'And now we have something of a new embarrassment upon which I must
consult you. There is a pretty sharp demand for the publication of your con-
troversy with Harrison in a separate form, and the publishers favor it. The
question is not simply whether it is desirable, for we can not control it. There
is danger that it will be done by others, and if that should occur it would be
construed as a triumph of the Harrison party — the Spencerians having declined
to go into it.

'"If I thought no one else would print the correspondence (i. e., the
Nineteenth Century articles), I should be in favor of our not doing it. In the
first place, for general effect, rhetoric against reason counts as about ten to one.
The Comtists are reviving — Harrison is coming over to lecture in this country,
and much will be made of his brilliant conduct of the controversy. In the next
place he has this advantage of you. Your main work bearing upon the issue is
to be sought elsewhere, while Harrison had accumulated all the materials of his
assault and gives his whole case, so that the popular effect could not fail to be
much in his favor. To the narrower circle of readers who can really appre-
ciate the discussion, the republication would undoubtedly be an excellent thing,
and I suppose after all it is only these that we should much care for. On the
whole it may be politic to reprint. "What do you think about it ? '

" There was thus raised a quite unexpected problem. I had supposed that
the matter had ended with your letter to the Pall Mall Gazette; and having
expressed (in the Nineteenth Century) my intention not to continue the contro-
versy, I hoped it would drop. Here, however, came the prospect of a revival in

436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

another shape ; and I had to choose between republication by my American
friends or republication by your friends, with the implication that I was averse
to it. Though I should have preferred passivity, yet, under the circumstances
stated, I thought it best to assent to republication. One objection, however,
became manifest. While in my replies to you I had pointed out sundry of your
many misrepresentations, I passed over others — one reason being that I could
not trespass too much on the space of the Nineteenth Century and the attention
of its readers. Now, however, when it was proposed that the statements con-
tained in your articles should be re-diffused, and take a permanent form instead
of a temporary form, I felt that I could not leave unnoticed these other misrep-
resentations. Appearing in a volume issued by my American publishers, and
edited by my American friend, the implication would have been that statements
made by you to which no objection was raised -were correct statements. If
words in quotation marks tacitly ascribed by you to me had not been disowned
by me (p. 112), it would, of course, have been assumed that I had used them,
and that I stood convicted of the absurdity which you allege on the assumption
that I had used them. If it had not been shown that an opinion you debit me
with (p. 129) is wholly at variance with opinions which I have expressed in
three different places, it would naturally have been concluded that I held the
opinion. Hence it was clear that unless I was to authorize the stereotyping of
these and other errors I must take measures to dissipate them. I therefore
pointed out to Professor Youmans the statements which required notice, indi-
cated the needful rectifications, and requested him to append these rectifications
in his own way. At the same time I forwarded him a copy of the letter which
you published in the Pall Mall Gazette, saying that ' if this reprint of the arti-
cles is published without this letter, he (you) will inevitably say that his final
reply has been omitted. It is needful, therefore, that it should be included.'
And along with your letter I sent indications of the points in it which should be
noticed.

" Do you think I was not justified in this course ? Do you think I ought to
have withheld my consent to the republication by my friends, leaving your
friends to republish ? Do you think that, having assented to republication, I
ought to have let pass without correction your misstatements previously uncor-
rected ? If you think either of these things, I imagine that few will agree with
you. There is, however, an easy way of bringing the question to issue. All
the articles are copyright in England, and can not be republished here without
the consent of all concerned. I do not suppose that Mr. Knowles will raise any
difficulty; and if you agree to the re-issue of them here, I am quite willing that
they should be re-issued. If you think that anything said in refutation of your
statements should not have been said, we can easily include an appendix in
which you can point out this; and then, if you wish it, copies of the volume
can be sent round to the press.

"Of course I preserve a copy of this letter with a view to possible future

use.

" Faithfully yours, " Herbert Spencer.

" Frederic Harrison, Esq."

I will add but two comments. Mr. Harrison had this letter before him when
ho wrote his statement. Does the reader find that his statement produced an
impression anything like that which my letter produces? The other comment
is this. Asking whether I have any share in the profits, Mr. Harrison not only
by this, but by his title, " A New Form of Literary Piracy," tacitly suggests that

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 437

I have. Merely stating that the affair is purely the affair of the Messrs. Apple-
ton, and that not even a thought about money ever entered my head concerning
it, I draw attention to the readiness with which Mr. Harrison, without a particle
of evidence, makes grave insinuations. And I do this because it will enable the
reader to judge what need there probably was for taking the measures I did to
prevent the wider and more permanent diffusion of Mr. Harrison's misrepre-
sentations.

Concerning the newspaper extract describing a Comtist service I know
nothing, and greatly regret that it was appended. I will at once ask to have it
withdrawn. If three gentlemen, appointed in the usual way, decide that under
the circumstances, as stated to me by Professor Youmans, I was not justified in
the course I took, I will, if Mr. Harrison wishes it, request Messrs. Appleton to
suppress the book and destroy the stereotype plates, and I will make good their
loss to them.

I am, faithfully yours, HERBERT SPENCER.

May 29.

[Times, June 2d.~\
MR. SPENCER AND MR. HARRISON.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sir : I will not pursue this matter further, nor will I insist on Mr. Spencer's
fair offer to submit it to arbitration. It satisfies me if he will not claim any
absolute and moral right to copyright in America my writings with rectifications
of his own. I am accustomed to unauthorized reprints of what I write ; and as
I hear there is a brisk sale for these essays {quorum pars minima fui) I will only
congratulate the Yankee editor on his 'cuteness. As Mr. Spencer, by his offer,
now admits it to be possible that he made a mistake, I am ready to regard his
share of it as an inadvertence. I know too well his great generosity in money
matters to suppose that any question of profit crossed his mind. But it certainly
crossed some one's mind ; and I referred to it only to convince him that eager
partisans had led him into a mistake. It is not easy at any time to get him to
see this, and to open his eyes I used for once plain words. Conscious that I had
conducted a philosophical debate with an old friend with all the deference and
admiration that I really feel for his genius, it did pain me to find myself treated
as the proverbial dog whom any stick is good enough to beat. The only arbi-
tration I now desire is that of some common friend who may convince him that
I wish nothing more than a return to the position of philosophic friends who
agree to differ about their respective systems.

I am, &c,

June 1. FREDERIC HARRISON.

[Times, June 3d.]
MR. SPENCER AND MR. HARRISON.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sib : Rather than have any further question with Mr. Harrison, and rather
than have it supposed that I intentionally ignored his copyright claim, I have
telegraphed to Messrs. Appleton to stop the sale, destroy the stock and plates,
and debit me with their loss.

I am, faithfully yours,

Clovelly, June 2. HERBERT SPENCER.

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

[ Times, June £lh ]
MR. SPENCER AND MR. HARRISON.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sie : Allow me to supplement my letter telegraphed yesterday, partly to ex-
plain how the thing arose, and partly to correct an impression made by your
leader of to-day. I was wrong in assenting to the re-publication by Messrs. Ap-
pleton. I ought to have borne passively the threatened evils of re-publication by
other publishers, and, as my friend has been connected with publishing in New
York for thirty years, I supposed his impression that these were coming was
correct. But my decision was made in a hurry, without due thought. Believ-
ing there was no time to lose, I telegraphed reply, and by the next post indicated
corrections to be made in the statements of my views. And here I wish to point
out that the notes I indicated were not criticism of Mr. Harrison's opinions, but
corrected versions of my own. Any others, if there are any, are Professor You-
mans's. I go on to explain that my mind was so engrossed with the due presen-
tation of the controversy that the question of copyright never occurred to me ;
and the thought that Mr. Harrison might not like his articles republished was
excluded by the impression given me that others would republish them if the
Appletons did not. Hence my error. But my error does not, I think, excuse
Mr. Harrison's insult. By cancelling the rest of the edition and the plates I
have done all that remains possible to rectify the effects of my mistake.

I am, faithfully yours,

Ilfracombe, June 3. HERBERT SPENCER.

o

[Times, June 6th.~\

MR. HARRISON AND MR. SPENCER.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sir : May I once more trespass on your space by asking you to publish the
following letter from Mr. Harrison ?

I am, faithfully yours, HERBERT SPENCER.

" 38, "Westbourne-terrace, W., June 4, 1885.
Dear Mr. Spencer : As you still appear to think (in spite of my public dis-
claimer) that I have brought against you a charge of desiring money profit out
of this American reprint, I beg to say that I did not intend to make any such
charge, and I do not believe that I have. I regret the use of any words which
produced that impression on you.

" I am, yours faithfully, Frederic Harrison.

" P. S. — You can use this letter as you think fit.
" Herbert Spencer, Esq."

[Standard, June 10th.']

MR. SPENCER AND MR. HARRISON.

To the Editor of the Standard.

Sir : The fact that the information to which it refers came through The
Standard must be my excuse for asking you to publish the following letter, a
copy of which I have inclosed to Mr. Harrison, requesting him to post it after
reading it. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

HERBERT SPENCER.

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 439

" 38, Queen's-gardens, Bayswater, Loudon, W., June 9.

" My dear Youmans : I returned borne last night, and only this morning
learned that in The Standard of Saturday last there was, in a telegram from
New York, a statement to the effect that Messrs. Appleton decline to destroy
the stock and plates of the reprinted controversy (as I had telegraphed them to
do), on the score that the book would be reprinted by some other publisher. In
this expectation they are probably right. But a reprint would necessarily be
without the notes ; since these, as implied in your preface, are your copyright
in America. Now, though these notes — or, at least, those which I pointed out
as needful — are corrections of erroneous statements of my views, yet, rather
than have it supposed that I wished to take any advantage of Mr. Harrison in
making such corrections, I will submit to the evil of re-issue by another pub-
lisher without them ; and I therefore repeat my request that the stock and stereo
plates may be destroyed, and the loss debited to me.

" One word respecting the proposal of the Appletons to share the author's
profits between Mr. Harrison and myself. If any have at present accrued, or if,
in consequence of refusal to do as I have above requested, any should hereafter
accrue, then I wish to say that having been, and being now, absolutely indiffer-
ent to profit in the matter, I shall decline to accept any portion of the returns.

" Ever sincerely yours,

" Herbert Spencer."

Several points in this correspondence, especially in its opening let-
ter, require some notice in this place ; but, before making the critical
corrections that seem to be required, I desire to say a few words on
the peculiar circumstances of American publication which have an im-
portant bearing on the present case.

Mr. Frederic Harrison took offense at the American reprint in
a book of some review articles of his, and pronounces it " a case of
piracy." The organs of English opinion, in commenting upon these
letters, take the same view. The London " Times," after referring to
the graceful and honorable termination of the disagreeable difference
between Mr. Harrison and Mr. Spencer, devotes a leading editorial to
the discussion of American piracy on the basis of the fresh and strik-
ing illustration of it here afforded. Speaking of the effect of the
" tolerably rigid copyright law " of England, the " Times " says :
" But so far as America is concerned it is different. To the English
author that country seems to answer very much to Hobbes's idea of a
state of nature. Foreign authors are fair prey ; for them there is or
need be no selling or buying of copyrights, and a good book is to be
dealt with as a part of the common elements of nature. If any laws
govern the matter, it is only those which regulate the capture and re-
duction into possession of wild animals." The case is certainly bad
enough, but this is an exaggeration.

At the outset I admit that on the question of international copy-
right, or the claims of foreign authors to property in their books, the
English are right and the Americans wrong, so flagrantly wrong as to
justify much of the denunciation we receive. The position of our Gov-

44°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ernment upon the subject I regard as wholly indefensible. Its policy
is an outrage upon a class of men who are public benefactors, a dis-
grace to the country, and a scandal to civilization. Grover Cleve-
land's republic does not recognize that Frederic Harrison and Her-
bert Spencer have any right of property in the products of their brain-
work. Their productions when brought to the United States belong
neither to them nor to anybody else. They are not protected by law,
and may be appropriated by anybody without violation of law. There
are many in this country who realize the vice of this policy quite as
vividly as the foreign victims of it, and who are laboring hard to put
an end to it. But, without offering a word of apology for it, there is
still something to be said in behalf of those who are compelled to act
under a bad state of things which they reprobate, but are for the time
powerless to remedy. It is certainly unjust to involve these in the
indiscriminate condemnation of the vicious system. It is a good deal
easier to denounce it at a distance than to fight it on the spot. Nor is
it possible for authors, living under a government which so stringently
protects them that they acquire the habit of regarding literary prop-
erty as something peculiarly sacred, to fully appreciate the difficulties
of publication and the course which business must take under entirely
opposite circumstances, where literary property is without any legal
protection. With no international copyright it is certainly impossible
to act as if we had one. That the Government does not protect him,
and that if protected at all it must be done by himself, is the first and
vital fact that has to be taken into account when any publisher makes
the venture of reissuing a foreign book in this country. The Gov-
ernment is, in fact, his enemy, and virtually calls upon everybody
to make war upon him. However disposed he may be to treat a
foreign author well, to bring out his work in respectable shape,
and pay him for it fairly, he meets this ugly circumstance at the
threshold of the transaction, that the money he puts into it may
be sunk because anybody can reprint the work in cheaper form and
without paying the author anything. Nor is this all : the more hon-
orable he is, the worse it is for him. Any sense of liberality he may
indulge works directly against him. If he publishes the book in good
form, pays a decent royalty, and makes it properly known by adver-
tising, all this is a temptation to other parties to take advantage of
his outlay, and the reputation the book acquires by means of it, to fill
the market with mean editions that kill the honest publication. The
American publisher is therefore compelled to adopt a policy very dif-
ferent from that in England, where books are vigilantly and effectively
protected by law. He has to conform to the necessities of a lawless
state of things, and must be left to make the best he can of it.

But the indiscriminate charges of the London " Times " are not
true; all American publishers are not freebooters and pirates. Although
it is not possible for them to treat foreign authors with full justice in

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 441

the absence of international copyright, yet it is false that these au-
thors are preyed upon in the unqualified way asserted by the " Times."
There are, of course, American publishers, and plenty of them, who
are thoroughly unscrupulous ; but there are others, and they are not a
few, who do the best they can under the present demoralizing system
to compensate foreign authors for their work. They pay them by
voluntary arrangement, not the rates that they are accustomed to at
home, and not always perhaps as much as they might, but often, as I
happen to know, to their own loss, when books are reprinted by others
and the market supplied by degraded editions on which the author
receives nothing. In the absence of an international copyright law,
this voluntary action of American publishers is the only thing practi-
cable or possible to mitigate the barbarism of the situation. Imper-
fect as it may be, it is an honest procedure in behalf of the foreign
author ; and it is now practiced to an extent that should materially
qualify those wholesale charges of piracy. The present case is to be
regarded in the light of these considerations ; and I think it will be
found that the lesson to be drawn from it is quite different from that
which has been drawn by the English press.

So far as the above correspondence is concerned, the motives that
impelled me to take the share I had in bringing out the suppressed
book are to be gathered only from a scrap in a hurried private letter to
Mr. Spencer ; but, as my act is now branded as piratical, I must be
excused for stating more fully the reasons by which I was actually in-
fluenced in the course taken.

Mr. Harrison had an important controversy with Herbert Spencer
on a grave subject, which was published in the "Nineteenth Century."
In printing their papers I have the right to assume their purpose to be
that they should be read as widely as possible. There was much in-
terest in this country to follow this discussion, and we accordingly
printed the articles in "The Popular Science Monthly."

But, when the controversy was finished, there was a call for its re-
publication in a separate form, more convenient, accessible, and cheaper
than in the pages of a magazine. The demand was reasonable, and I
was anxious to comply with it, that the discussion might be dissemi-
nated as widely as possible. I, moreover, desired the republication for
the same reason that I had urged Mr. Spencer to go on with the con-
troversy with Mr. Harrison. Although knowing the low state of his
working-power, and how important it was that he should not be inter-
rupted by such side-issues in the prosecution of the great philosophi-
cal work upon which he has been engaged for many years, it seemed
to me of greater importance that he should seize the opportunity
offered by Mr. Harrison's attack to develop more fully his fundamental
religious opinions. He had published but little upon that subject for
a long time, his views had been much controverted and much misunder-

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stood, and I knew there was a strong desire on the part of many to
read everything he might say in further interpretation and elucida-
tion of them. His distinctive doctrines were now vigorously and
formally attacked by a sagacious adversary, loDg prepared by his spe-
cial studies to put them to the severest test. For the same reason
that I encouraged Mr. Spencer to give time to the discussion, I desired
that his readers in this country should be put in ready possession of it
when done. I may add that in this I was impelled by the same gen-
eral motives that had prompted me for many years to do what I could
to bring Mr. Spencer's ideas before the American people.

But there were special reasons which made me wish that the publi-
cation should be issued by D. Appleton & Co. This house had printed
all of Spencer's works ; and as a present statement of his religious
views would be an important addition to them, and would naturally
be called for in connection with them, it seemed important that his
controversy with Harrison should be brought out in a reputable and
permanent shape to take its place with his other books. Besides,
there was a high degree of certainty that the discussion would be
published by somebody. The names of the eminent contestants, and
the interest felt by a large number of people in the subject, were
evineed by a strong demand for the publication. The discussion in
its separate form was called for by the friends of Mr. Harrison and
by the friends of Mr. Spencer, and by others who were friends of nei-
ther. It was open to anybody to print it, and there was every proba-
bility that it would be picked up and issued in a cheap, catchpenny
edition, which is now so common with publications of every kind. I
desired, therefore, that the Appletons should bring it out in a respect-
able shape, and at a moderate price, that the book might be had at
any time in a form suitable for preservation.

I protest that these considerations were not vitiated by any covet-
ous desire or purpose whatever. Mr. Harrison says it is a case of
"piracy"; but, so far as this involves the taking of his property
without compensation, there was no thought of it. In his opening
letter he virtually accused Mr. Spencer of collusion in the piracy
of his articles, from a sordid intention. Judged by this extraor-
dinary letter, Mr. Harrison's religion of humanity consists chiefly in
imputing vile motives to his fellow-men. He said, "May I ask if
it is proposed to hand you the profits of a book of which I am (in
part) the author, or are these to be retained by your American pub-
lishers and friend ? " Evidently the pecuniary consideration was up-
permost in his own mind. But he had here gone too far. Every-
body recognized the outrage. The reader will note the striking dif-
ference in tone, amounting to a collapse, between his first and his
second letters. He withdrew the offensive insinuation so far as Mr.
Spencer was concerned, saying, " I know too well his great generos-
ity in money matters to suppose that any question of profit crossed

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 443

his mind." But he knew this no better when he wrote his second let-
ter than when he wrote the first. He sent Mr. Spencer a private
note asking explanations about the book, and this Mr. Spencer an-
swered, but said nothing respecting the copyright ; this did not enter
his mind, probably for the reason that the house which issued it had
published his books for twenty-five years, paying him regularly on all
of them from the first, and he had no care about it, knowing that
the equitable thing would of course be done to all concerned. But
the inadvertence gave Harrison his opportunity.

But while Mr. Harrison exonerates Mr. Spencer from all thought
of making profit out of him, he adds, " But it certainly crossed some
one's mind," referring of course to Mr. Spencer's "American publish-
ers and friend." Yet there was not the slightest wish or design on
the part of the publishers of the book to withhold from Mr. Harrison
his proper share in its copyright proceeds. They have published the
scientific and philosophical works of many English authors, on which
they have paid the customary compensation allowed to American
authors, and if Mr. Harrison doubts it he can satisfy himself by in-
quiring of his neighbors, Tyndall, Lecky, Huxley, Bain, Sully, or the
Darwin s, and there is surely no reason why they should not have com-
pensated Mr. Harrison in the same way ; and this was certainly their
intention.

But perhaps the party who desired to plunder Mr. Harrison (he
uses the significant word twice in his first letter) was Mr. Spencer's
American friend, and that he supposed this " friend " capable of sharp
practice is inferable from his remark, " I will only congratulate the
Yankee editor on his 'cuteness." Yet the 'cute Yankee editor in this
case was the only party to get nothing. Among the several stools
occupied by authors and publishers, it was his fate to sit on the
ground. Neither by stipulation nor expectation was he to have a cent
for his labor in editing the volume, or his efforts in promoting its cir-
culation. The reasons which actuated him have been already stated.
But as the question is here raised of venal motives in the treatment
of foreign authors, and as this transaction has been extensively pa-
raded as a flagitious example of American piracy, the editor of the
suppressed book is entitled to say that he has done his full share in a
practical way toward promoting international equity in the payment of
authors for their books. He gave nearly a year's labor to the organi-
zation of the "International Scientific Series" for the avowed pur-
pose of securing more satisfactory compensation to scientific writers.
The project was based upon the condition of the payment of copy-
right to each of the contributors from all the countries in which the
books were issued. Nothing of the kind had ever been done or at-
tempted before ; and, in regard to its result, Dr. John W. Draper re-
marked, " Although there are international copyright regulations in
Europe, and my various works have been translated into many foreign

444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

languages, I have never received anything from them except upon the
volume I wrote for the ' International Series,' and on that I have been
paid regularly by the English, French, German, and Italian, as well as
by the American publishers." Fifty volumes have now appeared in
that series, and the American publishers have voluntarily paid all the
foreign contributors the same as if they had been citizens of the
United States. And this they have done in spite of the fact that this
honorable arrangement has been disregarded, and various of the vol-
umes have been reprinted in shabby twenty-cent editions, on which,
of course, the authors have received nothing.

This, then, is the way in which Mr. Harrison has been outraged.
He had his articles brought out in good shape for such of his friends
as desired to possess them in a separate form. He has been "plun-
dered " by being protected against plunder on the part of those who
might have issued a trivial and fugitive edition of his controversy, and
allowed him nothing for it. He has been " pirated " by having volun-
tarily secured for him the substantial benefits of an international copy-
right law.

But Mr. Harrison's articles were used without his consent, and that
is what the charge of " piracy" here amounts to. His consent was not
asked, because it would have implied control of that over which he
had no control. If he had refused, that would not have stopped the
publication, but would have simply defeated the purposes of those who
knew better than Mr. Harrison did what required to be done. He was
not consulted for the simple reason, now obvious enough, that he would
be unlikely to make allowance for a state of things utterly different
from that to which he has been accustomed. He was not asked, be-
cause, while his assent would have done no good, his dissent would
have done injury to himself, to Mr. Spencer, and to the public. And
that Mr. Harrison would have withheld his consent is far from im-
probable. That the book was wanted here by many readers was
nothing to him, as is shown by the fact that, when a word would have
saved it from destruction, he declined to utter it. Something is of
course due to courtesy, but I was not at all certain that courtesy
would be met in the same spirit. The feeling of high-toned British
authors toward American " pirates " is not usually vented in gracious
expression. American experience with such authors is apt to en-
gender diffidence in approaching them. Those gentlemanly and
honorable publishers, the Messrs. Putnam, having special reasons re-
cently to make overtures to Mr. Ruskin for the use of one of his arti-
cles (to be paid for, of course), were deterred from doing so because
that author " absolutely declined to come into any relation with an
American publisher." Mr. Harrison is understood to be a particular
and punctilious man, and that he can, upon occasion, pretermit the
requirements of amiable civility, and take to "plain words," is amply
attested by his letter of May 29th to Herbert Spencer.

CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 445

But, in the matter of " piracy," it is Mr. Spencer who comes in for
Harrison's hottest indignation. He accuses him of having invented a
new form of it, and aggravated the offense by its clandestine perpe-
tration. Now, let us see what it was that Spencer did. After finish-
ing the controversy in the "Nineteenth Century," Mr. Harrison trans-
ferred it to the "Pall Mall Gazette," in which he printed an additional
article, addressed to a new audience, and filled with very objectionable
misstatements. It would not do, in editing the volume which was in-
tended to be a full presentation of the discussion, to leave this article
out. But to print it without corrections would be unjust to Spencer,
and to the readers of the book, who wanted and were entitled to the
completest statement of the case. There was no call for anything
more from Mr. Harrison, who had had his last word, and declared that
he should pursue the controversy no further ; but there was a need
that corrections by Spencer should be supplied. He accordingly sent
me the substance of some additions to be appended as notes, and which
I inserted in their appropriate places. I deny the wrongfulness of this
act, and the ado that has been made over it seems to me perfectly
absurd. Mr. Spencer did what it was desirable and entirely proper
that he should do. He had not only the right but it was his duty to
defend himself against the erroneous representations of Mr. Harrison ;
and I insist that, if any apology was due either way, it was from Mr.
Harrison to Spencer for making the misstatements, rather than from
Spencer to Harrison for correcting them.

Mr. Spencer, as will be seen, prints two paragraphs from a private
letter of mine giving reasons which induced him to favor the American
reprint, and Mr. Harrison characterizes them as chiefly " inventions."
I had said, " Harrison is coming over to lecture in this country," and
Mr. Harrison says he never thought of it. I wrote carelessly ; but my
meaning was, that he is expected to come, and in this there was no " in-
vention." It had been talked about, and there was nothing unlikely
in it. The coming of eminent Englishmen to this country to lecture
is certainly no unusual thing. Mr. Harrison is a lecturer, a man of
ideas which he is interested in propagating, and is reputed to have
means and leisure. He has many admirers in the United States, and
a reputation which would be certain to secure him good audiences.
As it turns out, " the wish was father to the thought," but the rumor
was not improbable. I should have referred to it as a contingency,
and I simply meant that it might be worth taking into account, with
reference to the publication of the controversy.

Mr. Harrison says the idea that there was any danger of republica-
tion in this country by his friends rested also upon pure "invention."
But I did not say this. I wrote to Spencer, " There is danger that it
will be done by others, and if that should occur it would be construed
as a triumph of the Harrison party." Mr. Spencer's interpretation of
it was, "I had to choose between republication by my American

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

friends or republication by your friends, with the implication that I
was averse to it." And Mr. Spencer was here substantially right.
Although there may have been no apprehension that Mr. Harrison's
avowed friends would move in reprinting the book, yet, if it had been
done by anybody but the Appletons, the inevitable inference would
have been that their author had been so badly handled that they de-
clined to back him. The book was looked for from Mr. Spencer's
publishers, they had printed it in their magazine, they issued all his
works, there was a demand for the volume which was certain to make
it a safe business venture, and it represented two sides or schools of
thought : if, under all these circumstances, D. Appleton & Co. had left
the work for others to publish, the certain construction would have been
that the book was abandoned to the party opposed to Mr. Spencer.
This is the aspect of the case which he had to meet, and it is not at all
affected by Mr. Harrison's statement that his friends had no idea of
printing the controversy.

Another explanation seems here called for. Those who will refer
to the second paragraph of my letter, quoted by Mr. Sjiencer, will
observe both an indecision and a confusion in the statement. This
was due, not only to hasty writing, but to some perplexity in my own
mind. I said, " If I thought no one else would print the correspond-
ence " (conti'oversy), " I should be in favor of our not doing it " ; and I
then go on to give reasons for this conclusion, ending with the remark,
" On the whole, it may be politic to reprint." Apparently this indif-
ference to publication is inconsistent with the various reasons I have
given for strongly desiring it. But there was a consideration not men-
tioned in the letter which weighed much with me at the time. I was
in very bad health, and was urged by physicians and friends to go
South without delay. It seemed therefore to be impracticable, if not
impossible, for me to give that attention to the editing and publication
of the volume which were prompted by my interest in it. But it will
be noticed that, under this conflict of inclinations, though I gave some
trivial reasons for non-publication, the conclusion favors reprinting.
This shows the predominant feeling, even in a time of depression ;
and I must say, as a matter of fact that, though referring the matter
as I did in a hurried note to Mr. Spencer, I had not for a moment
really relinquished the purpose of bringing out the book. This ex-
planation is necessary, that the responsibility may rest where it prop-
erly belongs. Mr. Harrison lays stress upon Spencer's agency in
" promoting and assisting " in the production of " a volume for which
you are responsible, and which you have authorized and adopt." But
though Mr. Spencer chose to take the responsibility because he had
assented to it, and furnished some notes for it, yet it was neither by his
suggestion, procurement, nor desire that the book was issued ; and truth
requires me here to say that, if he had discouraged or even opposed
it, the book would probably have been reprinted by D. Appleton &

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 447

Co. all the same. Mr. Spencer had, in reality, very little to do with
the edition. For the Introduction, the had taste with which the
notes were embellished, and the newspaper quotation describing the
doings in a branch of the positivist church in London which Mr. Har-
rison does not like, he is not to be held to account.

For his offense in correcting some injurious misrepresentations in a
controversial volume published for the use of a people three thousand
miles away, the London " Times " declares that Mr. Spencer has made
the amende honorable by destroying the book ; and this is the general
English view. The equally general American view is, that this ex-
treme proceeding was ridiculous, that it benefited nobody, and gratui-
tously deprived many readers in this country of a valuable work on
an important subject. It is, at any rate, desirable that the responsi-
bility for this result should be fixed where it justly belongs. Mr.
Spencer made two proposals to Harrison looking to the preservation
of the work, both of which were absolutely fair, but neither of which
was accepted. Mr. Spencer would have been justified in making a
stand upon either of these propositions, and refusing further conces-
sions ; but Mr. Harrison's rejection of his overtures left the matter in
so unsatisfactory a shape that nothing remained for Mr. Spencer but
to cut the knot by ordering the book suppressed.

GENIUS AND INSANITY.

By JAMES SULLY.

THE problems which have so long perplexed the thoughtful mind
in presence of that dark yet fascinating mystery, the nature and
origin of genius, have recently propounded themselves with new stress
and insistence. Whatever may be said against Mr. Froude's neglect
of the pruning-knife in publishing Carlyle's " Journals and Letters,"
the psychologist at least will be grateful to him for what is certainly
an unusually full and direct presentment of the temperament and life
of genius. Here we may study the strange lineaments which stamp a
family likeness on the selected few in whose souls has burned the genu-
ine fire of inspiration. These memoirs disclose with a startling distinct-
ness the pathetic as well as the heroic side of the great man. In Car-
lyle we see the human spirit in its supreme strength jarred and put
out of tune by the suffering incident to preternaturally keen sensi-
bilities and an unalterably gloomy temperament.

In this strange record, too, we find ourselves once more face to
face with what is perhaps the most fascinating of the fascinating prob-
lems surrounding the subject of intellectual greatness, that of its rela-
tion to mental health. Carlyle compels the attentive reader to pro-
pound to himself anew the long-standing puzzle, " Is genius something

448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wholly normal and sane ? " For there is surely a suggestion of tem-
porary mental unsoundness in the idea of that lonely wanderer through
the crowded streets of London suddenly seeing in the figures he met
so many specters, and feeling himself to be but another "ghastly
phantom haunted by demons." And, if all anger is a sort of madness,
it is but natural that one should see something of a momentary mania
in those terrible outbursts of a spirit of revolt against all things which
now and again made desolate the Chelsea home, and wrung from the
sage's wife the humiliating confession that she felt as if she were
" keeper in a madhouse."

The idea that there is an affinity between genius and mental dis-
ease seems at first foreign to our modern habits of thought. In the
one, we have human intellect rejoicing in Titanic strength ; in the
other, that same intellect disordered and pitiably enfeebled. Yet, as
has been hinted, the belief in the connection of the two is an old and
persistent one. In truth, the common opinion has always gravitated
toward this belief. A word or two may make this clear.

To the multitude of men genius wears a double aspect. Superla-
tive intellectual endowment is plainly something very unlike the ordi-
nary type of intelligence. The relation of lofty superiority includes
that of distance, and mediocrity in viewing the advent of some new
spiritual star may adopt either the one or the other manibre de voir.
Which aspect it will select for special contemplation depends on cir-
cumstances. In general it may be said that, since the recognition of
greatness presupposes a power of comprehension not always granted
to mediocrity, the fact of distance is more likely to impress than the
fact of altitude. It is only when supreme wisdom has justified itself,
as in the predictions of the true prophet, that its essential Tightness is
seen by the crowd. Otherwise the great man has had to look for rec-
ognition mainly from his peers and the slightly more numerous com-
pany of those whose heads rise above the mists of contemporary pre-
judice.

It is easy to see that this vulgar way of envisaging genius as marked
divergence from common-sense views of things may lead on to a con-
demnation of it as a thing unnatural and misshapen. For, evidently,
such divergence bears a superficial likeness to eccentricity. Indeed,
' as has been well said, the original teacher has this much in common
with the man mentally deranged, that he " is in a minority of one " ;
and, when pains are not taken to note the direction of the divergence,
originality may readily be confounded with the most stupid singular-
ity ; and, further, a cursory glance at the constitution of genius will
suffice to show that the originator of new and startling ideas is very
apt to shock the sense of common men by eccentricities in his manner
of life. A man whose soul is being consumed by the desire to dis-
cover some new truth, or to give shape to some new artistic idea, is
exceedingly liable to fall below the exactions of conventional society

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 449

in the matter of toilet and other small businesses of life. Among the
many humorously pathetic incidents in the records of great men, there
is perhaps none more touching than the futile attempt of Beethoven
to dress himself with scrupulous conformity to the Viennese pattern
of his day.

In contradistinction to this disparaging view, the admiring contem-
plation of the great man as towering above minds of ordinary stature
seems directly opposed to any approximation of the ideas of genius
and mental disorder. And this has undoubtedly been in the main the
tendency of the more intelligent kind of reverence. At the same time,
by a strange, eddy-like movement in the current of human thought,
the very feeling for the marvelousness of genius has given birth to a
theory of its nature which in another way has associated it with men-
tal aberration. I refer to the ancient doctrine of inspiration as devel-
oped more particularly in Greece.

It may be worth while to review for a moment the general course
of thought on this dark subject.

In the classic world, preternatural intellectual endowments were,
on the whole, greeted with admiration. In Greece more particularly,
the fine esthetic sense for what is noble, and the quenchless thirst for
new ideas, led to a revering appreciation of great original powers.*
The whole manner of viewing such gifts was charged with supernatu-
ralism. As the very words employed clearly indicate, such fine native
endowment was attributed to the superior quality of the protective
spirit (Sai'/xwv, genius) which attended each individual from his birth.
We see this supernaturalism still more plainly in the Greek notion of
the process of intellectual generation. The profound mystery of the
process, hardly less deep than that of physical generation, led to the
grand supposition of a direct action of the Deity on the productive
mind. To the Greeks the conception of new artistic ideas implied a
possession (Karo^) of the individual spirit by the god.

Now, it might naturally occur to one that such an inundation of
the narrow confines of the human mind by the divine fullness would
produce a violent disturbance of its customary processes. It was a
shock which agitated the whole being to its foundation, exciting it to
a pitch of frenzy or mania. The poet was conceived of as infuriated
or driven mad by the god ; and a somewhat analogous effect of di-
vine intoxication was recognized by Plato as constituting the essence
of philosophic intuition. f Hence Greek and Roman literature abounds
with statements and expressions which tend to assimilate the man of
genius to a madman. The " furor poeticus " of Cicero and the " ama-
bilis insania " of Horace answer to the Oela pavta of Plato. And to

* Socrates is perhaps only an apparent exception, for the odium he excited seems to
have been due to the essentially critical and destructive character of his mission.

f See the memorable passage in the " Phadrus," p. 244 a, etc. Plato went so far as
to suggest that the name navris, seer, was derived from ^aipofxai, to rage or be mad.
vol. xxvii. — 29

450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the more scientific mind of Aristotle it appeared certain (according to
Seneca) that there was no great intellect {magnum ingenium) without
some mixture of madness {dementias).

It must be remembered, however, that in the eyes of the ancients
genius was hardly degraded by this companionship with madness.
Men had not yet begun to look on insanity as one of the most pitiable
of maladies. So far from this, it was a common idea that the insane
were themselves inspired by the action of deity. We have a striking
illustration of the absence even among the educated Greeks of the mod-
ern feeling toward madness in the fact that Plato was able to argue,
with no discoverable trace of his playful irony, that certain sorts of
madness are to be esteemed a good rather than an evil.*

The influence of Christianity and of the Church served at first to
brand mental derangement with the mark of degradation. The doc-
trine of possession now assumed a distinctly repellent form by the in-
troduction of the Oriental idea of an evil spirit taking captive the
human frame and using it as an instrument of its foul purposes. The
full development of this idea of demoniacal possession in the middle
ages led, as we know, to many cruelties. And, though Christianity
showed its humane side in making provision for the insane by asylums,
the treatment of mental disease during this period was, on the whole,
marked by much harshness. f

This debasement of the idea of madness had, however, no appre-
ciable effect in dissolving the companionship of the two ideas in popu-
lar thought. For the attitude of the Church was, for the most part,
hostile to new ideas, and so to men of original power. In sooth, we
know that they were again and again branded as heretics, and as
wicked men possessed by the devil. And thus genius was attached to
insanity by a new bond of kinship.

The transition to the modern period introduces us to a new concep-
tion both of genius and of insanity. The impulse of inquisitiveness,
the delight in new ideas, aided by the historical spirit with its deep
sense of indebtedness to the past, have led the later world to extol
intellectual greatness. We have learned to see in it the highest
product of Nature's organic energy, the last and greatest miracle
of evolution. On the other hand, the modern mind has ceased
to see in insanity a supernatural agency, and in assimilating it to
other forms of disease has taken up a humane and helpful attitude
toward it.

Such a change of view might seem at first to necessitate a sharp
severance of the new ideas. For, while it places genius at the apex of

* " Phaedrus," he. cit. Mr. Lecky points out that the Greeks had no asylums for the
insane (" History of European Morals," vol. ii, p. 90). On the other hand, Dr. Maudsley
tells us that Greek scientific opinion on the subject was an anticipation of modern ideas
(" Responsibility in Mental Disease," p. 6).

\ See Lecky, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 92, etc. ; cf. Maudsley, op. cit., p. 10.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 451

evolution, it reduces madness to a form of disintegration and dissolu-
tion. Nevertheless, we meet in modern literature with an unmistak-
able tendency to maintain the old association of ideas. Genius is now
recognized as having a pathological side, or a side related to mental
disease. Among our own writers we have so healthy and serene a
spirit as Shakespeare asserting a degree of affinity between poetic

creation and madness :

*

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

Are of imagination all compact," etc.

Midsummer- Night' 's Dream, act v, sc. 1.

A more serious affirmation of a propinquity is to be found in the well-
known lines of Dryden :

" Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide." *

As might be expected, French writers, with their relish for pun-
gent paradox, have dealt with special fullness on this theme. " Intinis
esprits," writes Montaigne on a visit to Tasso in his asylum, " se
trouvent ruinez par leur propre force et soupplesse." Pascal observes
that " l'extreme esprit est voisin de l'extreme f olie." In a similar strain
Diderot writes : " Oh ! que le genie et la folie se touchent de bien
pres ! " The French writer who most distinctly emphasizes the propo-
sition is Lamartine. "Le genie," he observes in one place, "porte
en lui un principe de destruction, de mort, de folie, comme le fruit
porte le ver " ; and again he speaks of that " maladie mentale " which
is called genius.

In German literature it is Goethe, the perfect ideal, as it would
seem, of healthy genius, who dwells most impressively on this idea.
His drama, "Tasso," is an elaborate attempt to uncover and expose the
morbid growths which are apt to cling parasitically about the tender
plant of genius. "With this must be mentioned, as another striking
literary presentment of the same subject, the two eloquent passages
on the nature of genius in Schopenhauer's opus magnum.

Against this compact consensus of opinion on the one side we have
only a rare protest like that of Charles Lamb on behalf of the radical
sanity of genius, f Such a mass of opinion can not lightly be dismissed
as valueless. It is impossible to set down utterances of men like
Diderot or Goethe to the envy of mediocrity. Nor can we readily
suppose that so many penetrating intellects have been misled by a
passion for startling paradox. We are to remember, moreover, that
this is not a view of the great man ab extra, like that of the vulgar
already referred to ; it is the opinion of members of the distinguished
fraternity themselves who are able to observe and study genius from
the inside.

* "Absalom and Achitophel," part i, line 163.

f See his essay, " Sanity of True Genius," in the " Last Essays of Elia."

452 THE POPULAR SCIENVE MONTHLY.

Still, it may be said, this is, after all, only unscientific opinion.
Has Science, with her more careful method of investigating and prov-
ing, anything to say on this interesting theme ? It is hardly to he
supposed that she would have overlooked so fascinating a subject.
And, as a matter of fact, it has received a considerable amount of
attention from pathologists and psychologists. And here for once
Science appears to support the popular opinion. The writers who have
made the subject their special study agree as to the central fact that
there is a relation between high intellectual endowment and mental
derangement, though they differ in their way of defining this relation.
This conclusion is reached both inductively by a survey of facts, and
deductively by reasoning from the known nature and conditions of
great intellectual achievement on the one hand, and of mental disease
on the other.*

What we require first of all is clearly as many instances as can be
found of men of genius who have exhibited intellectual or moral pe-
culiarities which are distinctly symptomatic of mental disease. Such
a collection of facts, if sufficient, will supply us with a basis for induc-
tion. In making this collection we need not adopt any theory respect-
ing the nature either of genius or of mental disease. It is sufficient to
«ay that we include under the former term all varieties of originative
power, whether in art, science, or practical affairs. And as to the
latter term, it is enough to start with the assumption that fully devel-
oped insanity is recognizable by certain well-known marks ; and that
there are degrees of mental deterioration, and a gradual transition
from mental health to mental disease, the stages of which also can,
roughly at least, be marked off and identified.

In surveying the facts which have been relied on by writers, we
shall lay most stress on mental as distinguished from bodily or nervous
symptoms. And of these we may conveniently begin with the less
serious manifestations :

1. The lowest grade of mental disturbance is seen in that tempo-
rary appearance of irrationality which comes from an extreme state of
" abstraction " or absence of mind. To the vulgar, as already hinted,
all intense preoccupation with ideas, by calling off the attention from
outer things and giving a dream-like appearance to the mental state,
is apt to appear symptomatic of " queerness " in the head. But in
order that it may find a place among distinctly abnormal features this
absence of mind must attain a certain depth and persistence. The
ancient story of Archimedes, and the amusing anecdotes of Newton's

* The principal authoritative utterances on the subject are Moreau, " La Psychologie
morbide," etc. ; Hagen, " Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irresein "
(" Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie," Band 33) ; and Radestock, " Genie und Wahnsinn (Breslau,
1884). This last contains the latest review of the whole question, and is written in a
thoroughly cautious scientific spirit. I have derived much aid from it in preparing this
essay.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 453

fits, if authentic, might be said perhaps to illustrate the border-line
between a normal and an abnormal condition of mind. A more dis-
tinctly pathological case is that of Beethoven, who could not be made
to understand why his standing in his night attire at an open window
should attract the irreverent notice of the street boys. For in this
case we have a temporary incapacity to perceive exterior objects and
their relations ; and a deeper incapacity of a like nature clearly shows
itself in poor Johnson's standing before the town clock vainly trying
to make out the hour.

This same aloofness of mind from the external world betrays itself
in many of the eccentric habits attributed to men and women of
genius. Here, again, Johnson serves as a good instance. His incon-
venient habit of suddenly breaking out with scraps of the Lord's
Prayer in a fashionable assembly marks a distinctly dangerous drift-
ing away of the inner life from the firm anchorage of external
fact.

In the cases just considered we have to do with a kind of mental
blindness to outer circumstances. A further advance along the line
of intellectual degeneration is seen in the persistence of vivid ideas,
commonly anticipations of evil of some kind, which have no basis in
external reality. Johnson's dislike to particular alleys in his London
walks, and Madame de Stael's bizarre idea that she would suffer from
cold when buried, may be taken as examples of these painful delusions
or idees fixes. A more serious stage of such delusions is seen in the
case of Pascal, who is said to have been haunted by the fear of a gulf
yawning just in front of him, which sometimes became so overmaster-
ing that he had to be fastened by a chain to keep him from leaping
forward.

It is plain that in this last case we touch on the confines of sense-
illusion. It is probable that hallucinations may occur as very rare
experiences in the case of normal and healthy minds. Yet, though not
confined to states of insanity, illusions of the senses are commonly, if
not always, indicative of at least a temporary disturbance of the
psycho-physical organism. And we have on record a considerable
number of instances of eminent men who were subject to these decep-
tions. It is not only the religious recluse, with his ill-nourished body,
and his persistent withdrawal from the corrective touch of outer things,
who experiences them. Luther was their victim as well as Loyola.
Auditory hallucinations — that is, the hearing of imaginary voices —
appear to have occurred to Malebranche and Descartes, as they cer-
tainly did to Johnson. The instances of visual hallucinations are per-
haps more numerous still. Pope, Johnson, Byron, Shelley, are said to
have had their visions. Even so strong and well-balanced a mind as
Goethe was not exempted. Nor has the active life of the soldier
always proved a safeguard. The stories of the prognostic visions of
Brutus and other generals of the old world are well known. Among

454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

modern ones, Napoleon is said to have had recurring visits from his
guardian spirit or genius.

In the abnormalities just touched on, disturbance of intellectual
function is the chief circumstance, though an element of emotional
disturbance is commonly observable as well. In another class of cases
this last ingredient becomes the conspicuous feature. By this is meant
such an accession of general emotional excitability, and along with
this such a hypertrophy and absolute ascendency of certain feelings,
as to constitute a distinct approximation to the disorganized psychical
state which has been called moral insanity.

And here reference may first be made to that violence of temper
and that extravagant projection of self and its concerns to the dis-
placement of others' claims and interests which might be termed a kind
of moral hallucination. How many names in the roll of English writ-
ers at once occur to the mind in this connection ! Pope, Johnson,
Swift, Byron, to which list must now be added Carlyle, may be taken
as typical instances of the genus irritabile vatum. And among foreign
deities we have Voltaire and Rousseau, Handel and Beethoven, and
even philosophers like Herder and Schopenhauer.

Other emotional disorders take on more distinctly the aspect of
moral obliquities. And here we have specially to do with poetic
genius. Without adopting the slightly contemptuous opinion that
poets are, as a rule, a " sensuous, erotic race," one must admit that an
untamed wildness of amatory passion has been a not infrequent ac-
companiment of fine poetic imagination.*

For a clear illustration, however, of the morbid tendency of such
irregularities, we must go, not to the comparatively regular life of a
Goethe or a Shelley, but to the wild and lawless career of a Rousseau,
of whom it was well said by a clever woman, " Quand la Nature forma
Rousseau, la sagesse petrit la pate, mais la folie y jeta son levain."

To a tempestuous violence of sexual passion there has too com-
monly joined itself a feverish craving for physical stimulants ; f and so
the pure heavenly flame of genius has again and again had to contend
with the foul, murky vapors which exhale from the lower animal
nature. No need to tell again the gloomy story of splendid power
eaten into and finally destroyed by the cancer of rampant appetite.
In our own literature the names of Ben Jonson, Nat Lee, Burns, and
others at once occur to the student. Edgar Allan Poe represents the
same tragic fatefulness of genius in American letters. Among French-
men we have as conspicuous examples Villon and De Musset. Among
Germans, Giinther, Burger, and numbers of those about Herder and

* Even the spiritual Dante has been found wanting in this matter by no more strait-
laced an authority than Boccaccio.

f These include not only alcoholic drinks but opium, to the use of which Voltaire,
Madame de Stael, Coleridge, and De Quincey, and probably others, were addicted. The
excitement of gambling seemed in Lessing's case to fill the place of physical stimulants.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 455

Goethe in the turbulent times of the Sturm und Drang, and Hoff-
mann, the novelist, suffered the same moral shipwreck.

2. We may now pass to another class of cases in which the patho-
logical character is still more plainly discernible. Outbursts of fierce
passionateness may perhaps be thought by some to be, after all, only
marks of a certain kind of robust vitality. But no one will say this
of the gloomy depression, the melancholy brooding on personal ills,
ending sometimes in distinctly hypochondriac despondency, which have
not unfrequently been the accompaniment of great intellectual power.
It was remarked by Aristotle, who was a long way the shrewdest and
most scientific observer of antiquity, that all men of genius have been
melancholic or atrabilious.* He instances Empedocles, Socrates, and
Plato, and the larger number of the poets. And the page of modern
biographic literature would supply many a striking illustration of the
same temperament. The pessimism of Johnson, Swift, Byron, and
Carlyle, of Schopenhauer and Lenau, of Leopardi and of Lamartine,
may perhaps be taken as a signal manifestation of the gloom which is
apt to encompass great and elevated spirits, like the mists which drift
toward and encircle the highest mountain-peaks.

In some cases this melancholy assumes a more acute form, giving
rise to the thought and even the act of suicide. Among those who
have confessed to have experienced the impulse may be mentioned
Goethe in the Werther days, Beethoven during the depression brought
on by his deafness, Chateaubriand in his youth, and George Sand also
in her early days. The last, writing of her experience, says, " Cette
sensation" (at the sight of water, a precipice, etc.) "fut quelquefois si
vive, si subite, si bizarre, que je pus bien constater que c'etait une
espece de folie dont j'etais atteinte." Johnson's weariness of life was,
it seems certain, only prevented from developing into the idea of
suicide by his strong religious feeling and his extraordinary dread of
death, which was itself, perhaps, a morbid symptom.

In some cases this idea prompted to actual attempts to take away
life. The story of Cowper's trying to hang himself, and afterward
experiencing intense religious remorse, is well known. Another in-
stance is that of Saint-Simon, whose enormous vanity itself looks like
a form of monomania, and who, in a fit of despondency, fired a pistol
at his head, happily with no graver result than the loss of an eye.
Alfieri, who was the victim of the " most horrid melancholy," tried on
one occasion, after being bled by a surgeon, to tear off the bandage in
order to bleed to death. Among those who succeeded in taking away
their life are Chatterton, whose mind had been haunted by the idea
from early life, Kleist the poet, and Beneke the philosopher.

* " Cur homines qui ingenio claruerunt vel in studiis philosophise, vel in republic;!
administranda, vel in carmine pangendo, vel in artibus exercendis, melancolicos omnes
fuisse videamus ? " Prob. xxx. Aristotle's authority on the point is quoted by Cicero,
Tuscul. dlsp., i, 33 ; de divin., i, 88.

456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

3. We may now pass to the most important group of facts —
namely, instances of men of genius who have suffered from fully
developed mental disease.

In certain cases this disruption of the organs of mind shows itself
in old age, and here, it is evident, we have to distinguish what is
known as senile dementia from the impairment of faculty incident
to old age. A clear instance of cerebral disease is afforded by the
botanist Linnaeus, whose faculties gave way after a stroke. The
mental stupor into which the poet Southey finally sank was a similar
phenomenon. Swift's fatal disease, the nature of which has only
recently been cleared up by science, was cerebral disorganization
brought on by peripheral disease in the organ of hearing. Zimmer-
mann, the author of the work on " Solitude," who had been a hypochon-
driac from the age of twenty, ended his life in a state of melancholy
indistinguishable from insanity. The final collapse, under the pressure
of pecuniary anxieties, of Scott's cerebral powers, is too well known to
need more than a bare mention.

Besides these instances of senile collapse, there are several cases
of insanity showing itself in the vigorous period of life. Sometimes,
as in the instance of Richelieu, who had shown himself an erratic
being from his childhood, the madness appeared as a sudden and
transient fit of delirium. In other cases the disorder took a firmer
hold on the patient. Charles Lamb, Handel, and Auguste Comte
suffered from insanity for a time, and had to be put under restraint.
Tasso, whose whole nature was distinctly tinged with the " insane
temperament," had again and again to be confined as a madman.
Donizetti was also for a time insane and confined in an asylum.
Among those who became hopelessly insane were the poets Lenau and
Holderlin and the composer Schumann, the latter of whom had long
been the victim of melancholy and hallucinations, and had before his
confinement attempted to drown himself in the Rhine.

I have preferred to dwell on the physical aspect of the relation be-
tween genius and disease. But no adequate investigation of the sub-
ject is possible which does not consider the physical aspect as well.
No one now, perhaps, really doubts that to every degree of mental dis-
turbance and mental disorganization there corresponds some degree of
deterioration and disorganization of the nerve-centers. Psychical dis-
turbance and disruption proceed pari passu with physical.

This being so, it is pertinent to our study to remark that men of
genius have in a surprising number of cases been affected by forms of
nervous disease which, though not having such well-marked psychical
accompaniments as occur in states of insanity, are known to be allied
to these.

4. To begin with, it seems certain that a number of great men
have died from disease of the nerve-centers. Among other names may
be mentioned Pascal, who had all his life been the victim of nervous

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 457

disorders, and who succumbed, at the early age of thirty-nine, to pa-
ralysis accompanied by convulsions. Two of the greatest scientific
men, Kepler and Cuvier, died, according to Moreau, from disease of
the brain. Rousseau was carried off by an attack of apoplexy. Mo-
zart's early death was due to brain-disease, showing itself in other
ways by morbid delusions, fainting-fits, and convulsions. Another
musician, Mendelssohn, succumbed to an attack of apoplexy. Heine's
fatal malady, which kept him for seven years a prisoner in his " mat-
tress-grave," was disease of the lower nerve-centers in the spinal cord.

Other men of genius have suffered from nervous disorders from
time to time. Moliere was the subject of recurring convulsions, an
attack of which would prevent his working for fifteen days. Alfieri,
to whose morbid mental symptoms reference has already been made,
suffered when young from a disease of the lymphatic system, and was
afterward liable to convulsions. Paganini, the musician, suffered from
an attack of catalepsy when four years old, and later on was the vic-
tim of recurring convulsions ; and Schiller, who was very delicate from
youth, was also the subject of recurring fainting-fits and convulsions.

The lesser forms of nervous disorder — headache, malaise, and re-
curring periods of nervous prostration — are too common among all
brain- workers to call for special notice here. The latest biography of
a woman of genius strikingly illustrates this milder form of the pen-
alty which mortals have to pay for daring to aspire to the ranks of the
immortals. In George Eliot we have one more name added to the
list of great ones to whom, to use the words of a French writer, has
been granted " le funeste privilege d'entendre crier a toute heure les
ressorts de leur machine."

5. One other significant group of facts remains to be touched on.
In a considerable number of cases it has been ascertained that insanity
or other form of nervous disorder has shown itself in the same family
as genius, whether as its forerunner, companion, or successor. Cha-
teaubriand's father is said to have died of apoplexy. Schopenhauer's
grandmother and uncle were imbecile. Several distinguished men had
insane sisters, among others Richelieu, Diderot, Hegel,* and Charles
Lamb. One of Mendelssohn's sons became insane, f

I have endeavored in this brief review of the alleged facts to give
an adequate impression of their variety and range. It now remains to
inquire into their precise evidential value.

The first question that naturally arises here is whether the facts
are well authenticated and accurately presented. A cautious mind
will readily reflect that if genius as such is apt to assume an abnormal
aspect to average common sense, biographers may easily have invent-

* That Hegel's sister was insane and drowned herself is asserted by Moreau, on the
authority of an article in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," and quoted by Radestock.

f Symptoms of insanity are said by Moreau to have shown themselves in the families
of several eminent rulers, including Peter the Great. (See Radestock, p. i,seq.)

458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ed, or at least exaggerated, some of the alleged morbid characteristics
of the great ; and as a matter of fact there is good reason to suppose
that this falsifying of the record of greatness has taken place. I may
refer to the story of the madness and suicide of Lucretius, which is ex-
tremely doubtful, and may have grown out of a religious horror at the
supposed tendency of his writings. The story of Newton's madness,
again, which is given by a French biographer, and which is ably re-
futed by Sir David Brewster, may owe much of its piquancy to what
may be called the unconscious inventiveness of prejudice. Very possi-
bly the stories of the visions of Brutus, Cromwell, and others, have had
a like origin.

Again, it will be said that even medical men — wishing like others
to magnify their office — may have been too ready in spying out the
symptoms of insanity. If they are fallible in dealing with the living
subject, all of whose physical and mental characteristics are accessible
to observation, how much more likely are they to err in diagnosing the
minds of the dead by help of a few fragmentary indications only ! I
think the force of this objection, too, must be allowed. "When, for ex-
ample, a French alienist thinks it worth while to write a book in order
to prove that the belief of Socrates in a controlling divinity {to
SaifjLoviov) was a symptom of mental disease, a layman may be par-
doned for demanding a mode of investigation more in accordance with
the proud claims of science to our absolute and unstinted confidence.
A well-informed and critical reader of M. Moreau's tables of bio-
graphical facts will not fail to challenge more than one statement
of his respecting the morbid characteristics of great men, ancient and
modern.*

Allowing, however, for a margin of error, I do not think any
candid mind will fail to see that such a body of facts as remains is
sufficient to justify us in drawing a conclusion. If men of the highest
intellectual caliber were not more liable to mental and nervous dis-
orders than others, no such list out of the short roll of great names
could have been obtained. No elaborate calculations are needed, I
think, to show that mental malady occurs too often in the history of
genius.f

One might perhaps try to evade the unpalatable conclusion by say-
ing that there is genius and genius ; that it is weakly, one-sided, and
bizarre originality which exhibits these unhealthinesses, whereas the
larger and more vigorous productiveness of an Aristotle, a Shake-
speare, or a Goethe, is free from such blemishes.^ I think, however,

* As when he sees in Swift's witty pamphlet on Ireland a distinct presage of oncom-
ing insanity. In some cases he is inexact in stating his facts, as when he says that Saint-
Simon committed suicide.

f The proportion is the more striking, because it is not known that insanity is par-
ticularly frequent among the more highly educated class of the community.

\ This seems to be the idea of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when he distinguishes
between poets of "great sun-kindled constructive imagination" and those who have "a

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 459

that our facts will compel us to reject this saving clause. There is no
question among competent critics of the splendid quality of genius of
Swift, of Carlyle, or of Beethoven. Nor in cases of so-called healthy
genius can it be said that nothing abnormal ever shows itself. The
above references to Goethe may serve to indicate the liability to ab-
normal deviation even in the strongest and seemingly most stable
type of genius. As for Shakespeare, the instance commonly referred
to by Lamb and others who have come to the defense of genius, it is
enough to say that our knowledge of his personality and life is far too
meager to justify any conclusion on the point.*

And this brings us to another very important consideration. If
too much has been made of the alleged positive instances, too much
has been made also of the apparent contradictions or exceptions. The
record of past greatness is far too scanty for the most plodding stu-
dent to find all cases of morbid symptoms which have presented them-
selves. We who live in an age when a fierce light beats on the throne
of intellect, when the public which genius serves is greedy of every
trivial detail of information respecting its behavior in the curtained
recess of private life, can hardly understand how our ancestors could
have neglected to chronicle and to preserve the words and deeds of
the greatest of men. Yet such is the case, and the further we go
back the scantier the biographic page. Inasmuch, too, as many of the
symptoms of nervous disease in the intellectual heroes themselves or
their families would possess no significance to the ordinary lay mind,
we may feel confident that in many cases where we have a fairly full
record important data are omitted.

Another thought naturally occurs to one in this connection. With-
out indorsing the ancient proverb that the best men die in their
youth, we may find good grounds for conjecturing that many endowed
with the gift of genius have passed away before their powers culmi-
nated in the production of a great monumental work. The early col-
lapse of so many who did attain fame suggests this conclusion. And
among such short-lived and unknown recipients of the divine afflatus
it seems reasonable to infer that there were a considerable number who
succumbed to some of those forms of j)sycho-physical disease which
have so often attacked their survivors.

It seems, then, to be an irresistible conclusion that the foremost
among human intellects have had more than their share of the ills
that flesh is heir to. The possession of genius appears in some way
to be unfavorable to the maintenance of a robust mental health. And
here arises the question how we are to view this connection. Is the

certain kind of moonlight genius given them to compensate them for their imperfection
of nature," and who are invariably " tinged with melancholy " (" Autocrat of the Break-
fast-Table," chap. viii).

* Even the little that we know does not all point one way. Against the fine business
capacity, and so forth, we have to set the youthful excesses of which rumor speaks.

460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

presence of the creative faculty to be regarded as itself an abnormal
excrescence in the human mind ? Or is it that the possession and
fruition of the faculty are apt to be attended with circumstances which
are injurious to perfect mental well-being?

In order to understand the precise relation between two things,
we ought to know all about the nature and causes of each. But this
we are very far from knowing in the present case. Science has, no
doubt, done much to clear up the ancient mystery of madness. We
now know that it has a perfectly natural origin, and we understand
a good deal respecting the more conspicuous agencies, psychical and
physical, predisposing and exciting, which bring about the malady.
Yet so intricate is the subject, so complex and subtile the influences
which may conspire to just disturb the mental balance, that in many
cases, even with a full knowledge of an individual and his antecedents,
the most skillful expert finds himself unable to give a complete and
exhaustive explanation of the phenomenon.

With respect to genius the case is much worse. We may have a
clearer intuition of its organic composition than the ancients ; we may
be able better than they to describe in psychological terms the essen-
tial qualities of the original and creative mind. But we have hardly
advanced a stej) with respect to a knowledge of its genesis and ante-
cedents. We do, no doubt, know some little about its family history.
Mr. Galton, with his characteristic skill in striking out new paths of
experimental research, has brought to light a number of interesting
facts with respect to the hereditary transmission of high intellectual
endowments. But these researches supply no answer to the supremely
interesting question, How does the light of genius happen to flash out
in this particular family at this precise moment ? A preparation there
may be, as Goethe somewhere hints, in the patient building up by the
family of sterling intellectual and moral virtues. But this is hardly
the beginning of an explanation. How much the better are we able
to comprehend Carlyle's wondrous gift of spiritual clairvoyance for
knowing that he came of a thoroughly sound stock, having more than
the average, it may be, of Northern shrewdness ? To trace the family
characteristics in a great man is one thing, to explain the genius which
ennobles and immortalizes these is another.*

In the present state of our knowledge, then, genius must be looked
upon as the most signal and impressive manifestation of that tendency
of Nature to variation and individuation in her organic formations
which modern science is compelled to retain among its unexplained
facts. Why we have a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo, a Goethe here

* Much the same applies to what M. Taine and others hare said about the larger prepa-
ration of the original teacher and the artist by the traditions of the community and the
spirit of the age. See, for a careful treatment of the whole question of the antecedents
of genius, an article by M. H. Joly, " Psychologie des Grands Ilommes" (III) in the " Re-
vue Philosophique," August, 1882.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 461

and now, is a question that can not be answered. Our ignorance
of the many hidden threads that make up the inextricable skein of
causation forces us to regard each new appearance of the lamp of gen-
ius with much of the wonder, if with something less of the supersti-
tion, with which the ancients viewed it.

This being so, we must be content with a very tentative and pro-
visional theory of the relations between genius and mental disease.
We can not, for example, follow M. Moreau in his hardy paradox that
genius has as its material substratum a semi-morbid state of the brain,
a neuropathic constitution which is substantially identical with the
"insane temperament" or "insane neurosis."* For, first of all, the
facts do not support such a generalization. If the "genial tempera-
ment " involved a distinct constitutional disposition to insanity, the
number of great men who had actually become insane would certainly
be much greater than it is. And, in the second place, this proposition
reposes on far too unsubstantial a basis of hypothetical neurology.
We know too little of the variations of nerve structure and function to
pronounce confidently on the essential identity of the nervous organi-
zation in the case of the man of genius and of the insane." f

A more modest and possibly more hopeful way of approaching the
question appears to offer itself in the consideration of the psychical
characteristics of genius. We may inquire into those peculiarities of
sensibility and emotion, as well as of intellect, which are discoverable
in the typical psychical organization of the great man, and may trace
out some of the more important reflex influences of the life of intellect-
ual production on his mind and character. What we all recognize as
genius displays itself in some large original conception, whether artis-
tic, scientific, or practical. And it seems not improbable that by a
closer investigation of the conditions and the results of this large con-
structive activity of mind we may find a clew to the apparent anomaly
that grand intellectual powers are so frequently beset with mental and
moral infirmity. These lurking-places of abnormal tendencies will, we
may expect, betray themselves more readily in the case of artistic and
especially poetic genius, which has, indeed, always been viewed as the
most pronounced form, and as the typical representative of creative
power.

No careful student of genius can fail to see that it has its roots in a
nervous organization of exceptional delicacy. Keenness of sensibility,
both to physical and mental stimuli, is one of the fundamental attri-
butes of the original mind. This preternatural sensitiveness of nerve
has been illustrated in the two latest records of poetic genius. Car-

* Op. cit., p. 463, seq.

\ Dr. Haudsley is more guarded, contenting himself with saying, "It is truly re-
markable how much mankind has been indebted for special displays of talent, if not of
genius, to individuals who themselves, or whose parents, have sprung from families in
which there has been some predisposition to insanity " (" Responsibility in Mental Dis-
ease," p. 47).

462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lyle's lively impressibility to sounds and other sensuous agents is famil-
iar to all.* And of George Eliot it has been well said that " her nerves
were servile to every skyey influence." And what a range and intensity
of emotion are at once suggested by names like Milton, Dante, Shelley,
Heine !

This fineness of the sentient fiber stands in the closest relation to
the intellectual side of genius. It is not so much an accompaniment
of the creative imagination as its vitalizing principle. The wide and
penetrating vision of the poet is the correlative of his quick, delicate,
and many-sided sensibility. And the stimulus which ever urges him
toward the ideal region, which makes him devote his days to the pur-
suit of some ravishing idea, has its origin in his rare, almost superhu-
man, capacity of feeling. The modest limits of the real world fail to
slake his thirst for the delight of beauty, for the raptures of the sub-
lime. Hence the impulse to fashion new worlds of his own. And by
such ideal activities the emotional sensibilities which prompted them
are deepened and intensified.

It is easy to see, from this glance at the fundamental conditions
of imaginative creation, that it has one of its main impulses in un-
common experiences of suffering. The fine nervous organization,
tremulously responsive to every touch, constitutes in itself, in this all
too imperfect world of ours, a special dispensation of sorrow. Ex-
quisite sensibility seems to be connected with a delicate poise of
nervous structure eminently favorable to the experience of jarring
and dislocated shock. And it is this preponderance of rude shock over
smooth, agreeable stimulation — of a sense of dissonance in things
over the joyous consciousness of harmony — which seems to supply
one of the most powerful incitants to the life of imagination. Hence
the dark streak of melancholy which one so often detects in the early
years of the great man.

Such an attitude of mind must entail suffering in other ways,
As the biography of the man of genius often tells us, he is apt to
become aware, at a painfully early date, that his exceptional endow-
ments and the ardent consuming impulses which belong to them col-
lide with the utilities and purposes of ordinary life. The soul intent
on dreaming its secret dream of beauty is unfit for the business which
makes up the common working life of plain, prosaic men. The youth
to whom the 'embodiment of a noble artistic idea or the discovery of
a large, fructifying, moral truth is the one absorbing interest, will be
apt to take a shockingly low view of banking, schoolmastering, and
the other respectable occupations of ordinary citizens.

It follows that the man of genius is, by his very constitution and
vocation, to a considerable extent a solitary. He is apt to offend the
world into which he was born by refusing to bow the knee to its con-
ventional deities. His mood of discontent with things presents itself

* Goethe, Schopenhauer, and other great men, were particularly sensitive to sounds.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 463

as a reflection on their contented view. On the other hand, his pe-
culiar leanings and aspirations are incomprehensible to them, and
stamp him as an alien. "II y a peu de vices," says Chamfort, with a
grim irony, " qui empechent un homme d'avoir beaucoup d'amis,
autant que peuvent le faire de trop grandes qualites." Hence the
profound solitude of so many of the earth's great ones, which even
the companionships of the home have not sufficed to fill up. And it
must be remembered that the ardent emotions of the man of genius
bring their extra need of sympathy. Even the consciousness of in-
tellectual dissent from others may become to a deeply sympathetic
nature an anguish. " I believe you know " (writes Leopardi to a
friend), " but I hope you have not experienced, how thought can
crucify and martyrize any one who thinks somewhat differently from
others."

Such isolation is distinctly unfavorable to mental health. It de-
prives a man of wholesome contact with others' experience and ideas,
and disposes to abnormal eccentricities of thought. It profoundly
affects the emotional nature, breeding melancholy, suspicion of others,
misanthropy, and other unwholesome progeny. The " strange inte-
rior tomb life " of which Carlyle speaks is a striking example of the
influence of this isolation in fostering the minute germs of morbid de-
lusion.

If now we turn to the process of intellectual origination, we shall
find new elements of danger, new forces adverse to the perfect serenity
of mental health. If the rich biographical literature of modern times
teaches us anything, it is that original production is the severest strain
of human faculty, the most violent and exhausting form of cerebral
action. The pleasing fiction that the perfectly-shaped artistic product
occurs to the creative mind as a kind of happy thought is at once dis-
pelled by a little study of great men's recorded experience. All fine
original work, it may be safely said, represents severe intellectual
labor on the part of the producer, not necessarily at the moment of
achievement, but at least in a preparatory collection and partial elabo-
ration of material. The rapidity with which Scott threw off his mas-
terpieces of fiction is only understood by remembering how he had
steeped his imagination for years in the life, the scenery, and the his-
tory of his country.

It is to be remembered, too, that this swift and seemingly facile
mode of creation is by no means an easy play of faculty, akin to the
spontaneous sportiveness of witty talk. It involves the full tension of
the mental powers, the driving of the cerebral machine at full speed.
According to the testimony of more than one man of genius, this
fierce activity is fed and sustained by violent emotional excitement.*

* Byron, Goethe, Dickens, and others attest to this. Compare what George Eliot says
about the way in which the third volume of " Adam Bcde " was produced (" Life," voL
ii, p. 155).

464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The notion of producing a work of high imaginative power in a state
of perfect cold blood is, as Plato long ago pointed out, absurd.
Spiritual generation only takes place when the soul burns and throbs
as with a fever. At the moment of productive inspiration the whole
being is agitated to its depths, and the latent deposits of years of
experience come to the surface. This full spring-tide of imagination,
this cerebral turmoil and clash of currents, makes the severest demands
on the controlling and guiding forces of volition. And it is only
when the mind is capable of the highest effort of sustained concen-
tration that the process of selecting and organizing can keep pace with
the rapid inflow of material. Hence, though the excitement may in
certain cases be intensely j>leasurable, it is nearly always fatiguing and
wearing.

But great artistic works are not always flashed into the world by
this swift electric process. Some books that men will not let die have
been the result of lengthened toil troubled by many a miserable check
and delay. The record of Carlyle's experience sufficiently illustrates
the truth that there is no necessary relation between rapidity of in-
vention and execution and artistic value of result,* Much depends on
the passing mood, more still on the temperament of the individual
artist. There are others besides Carlyle to whom spiritual parturition
has been largely an experience of suffering, the pangs being but rarely
submerged in the large, joyous consciousness that a new idea is born
into the world. And when this is so there is another kind of strain
on the mental machine. The struggle with intellectual obstacle, the
fierce passionate resolve to come iris Heine which every student ex-
periences in a humble way, becomes something for the spectator to
tremble at.

Is it surprising that such states of mental stress and storm should
afterward leave the subject exhausted and prostrate ? The wild
excitement of production is apt to dull the sense still further to the
prosaic enjoyments with which ordinary mortals have to content them-
selves. More than this, the long and intense preoccupation with the
things of the imagination is apt to induce a certain lethargy and
stupor of the senses, in which the sharp outlines of reality are effaced
in a misty, dream-like phantasmagoria. The reader of Carlyle's " Mem-
oirs " need not be reminded how plainly all this appears in his expe-
rience. Even the warm and gladdening ray of dawning prosperity
failed to cheer him in these hours of spiritual collapse. And he ex-
claims in one place that there is no other pleasure and possession for
him but that of feeling himself working and alive, f

* M. Joly illustrates the same fact by the experience of Voltaire, " Revue Philoso-
phiquc," November, 1882, pp. 496, 497.

f "Thomas Carlyle," vol. ii, p. 129. Probably one reason why painters so rarely
show morbid mental traits is that in their case the function of the senses can never be so
completely overborne by the weight of imagination.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 465

In addition to these adverse forces, which have their origin in the
common conditions of the life of genius, there are others which, though
less constant, present themselves very frequently in co-operation with
the first. It has often been remarked that the man of decided origi-
nality of thought, being as it were one born out of due time, has to
bear the strain of production for a while uncheered by the smile of
recognition. And when there is great originality, not only in the
ideas, but in the form of expression, such recognition may come too
slowly to be of any remunerative value. Neglect or ridicule is the
form of greeting which the world has often given to the propounder of
a new truth ; and where, as frequently happens, the want of instant
recognition means the pressure of poverty, which chafes with unusual
severity the delicate fibers of sensitive men, we have a new and con-
siderable force added to the agencies which threaten to undermine
the not too stable edifice of the great man's mental and moral con-
stitution. Johnson, Lessing, Burns, Leopardi, and many another name,
will here occur to those familiar with the lives of modern men of
letters.

In view of this combination of threatening agencies, one begins to
understand the many eloquent things which have been said about the
fatality of great gifts. Thus one finds a meaning in the definition of
poetic genius given by Lamartine when speaking of Byron — " a vibra-
tion of the human fiber as strong as the heart of man can bear without
breaking."

It is not meant here that even when all these destructive elements
are present a distinctly pathological condition of mind must neces-
sai'ily ensue. Their effect may be fully counteracted by other and
resisting agencies. Of these the two most important are bodily energy
and health on the one hand, and strength of will or character on the
other. Where these are both found in a high degree of perfection, as
in Goethe, we have a splendid example of healthy genius. On the
other hand, if either, and still more if both of these are wanting, we
have a state of things which is exceedingly likely to develop a dis-
tinctly pathological state of mind.*

How, it may be asked, does it commonly fare with the world's
intellectual heroes with respect to these means of defense ? As to the
physical defense, it is known that a number of great men have had a
physique fairly adequate to the severe demands made on the nervous
organization. They were men of powerful frame, strong muscles, and
good digestion. But such robustness of bodily health seems by no
means the common rule. The number of puny and ill-formed men
who have achieved marvelous things in intellectual production is a
fact which has often been remarked on. So common an accompani-
ment of great intellectual exertion is defective digestion, that an in-

* That is, quite apart from any inherited physical predisposition to nervous

disease.

vol. xxvii. — 30

466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

genious writer has tried to show that the maladies of genius have
their main source in dyspepsia.* No Englishman, in thinking of this
question, can fail to recollect that the three of his countrywomen who
have given most distinct proof of creative power — Charlotte Bronte,
Mrs. Browning, and George Eliot — were hampered with a physical
frame pitiably unequal to support the cerebral superstructure.!

Coming now to the moral defense, the thought at once suggests
itself that, according to the testimony of more than one writer, genius
consists in preternatural force of will more than in anything else. It
is, we are told, only the man with an infinite capacity to take pains
who is truly great. The prolonged, intense concentration of mind
which precedes the final achievement is a severe exertion and striking
manifestation of will.

At the same time, a moment's thought will show us that this pa-
tient mental incubation is no proof of the higher qualities of will and
moral character. J The appropriateness of the old way of speaking of
creative inspiration as a possession is seen in the fact that the will has
little to do with bringing on the condition. " The author," said Lord
Beaconsfield, on one occasion, " is a being with a predisposition which
with him is irresistible, a bent which he can not in any way avoid,
whether it drags him to the abstruse researches of erudition, or induces
him to mount into the feverish and turbulent atmosphere of imagina-
tion." This sense of a quasi-exterior pressure and compulsion is
attested by more than one child of genius. In some cases, more par-
ticularly, perhaps, among " tone-poets," we find this mastery of the
individual mind by the creative impulse assuming the striking form of
a sudden abstraction of the thoughts from the surroundings of the
moment. And, throughout the whole of the creative process, the will,
though, as we have seen, exercised in a peculiarly severe effort, is not
exercised fully and in its highest form. There is no deliberate choice
of activity here. The man does not feel free to stop or to go on. On
the contrary, the will is in this case pressed into the service of the par-
ticular emotion that strives for utterance, the particular artistic impulse
that is irresistibly bent on self-realization. There is nothing here of
the higher moral effort of will, in choosing what wre are not at the

* R. R. Madden, "On the Infirmities of Genius."

f Schopenhauer, in the passages of his work already referred to, discusses in a cu-
rious and characteristic way the physical basis of genius. Moreau quotes approvingly
the remark of Lccanus, that men of the finest genius were " of a feeble constitution and
often infirm." On the other hand, Mr. Galton, in his " Hereditary Genius," contends
that the heroes of history are at least up to the average of men in physical strength. It
is to be remarked, however, that the reference to university statistics is apt to mislead
here. Senior wranglers can hardly be taken as representative of creative power.

\ It is evident that only speculative, as distinguished from practical genius, is here
referred to. The man of great constructive powers in affairs — the statesman, general,
and so forth — requires will in the higher and fuller sense. And it has been remarked
that these organizing intellects rarely exhibit pathological symptoms.

GENIUS AND INSANITY. 467

moment inclined to, and resisting the seductive force of extraneous
excitants.*

These fragmentary remarks may help us to understand the facts of
the case. A certain proportion of great thinkers and artists have
shown moral as well as intellectual heroism. Men who were able to
take the destruction of a MS. representing long and wearisome research,
as Newton and Carlyle took it, must have had something of the stuff
of which the stoutest character is woven. The patient upbearing
against hardship of men like Johnson and Lessing is what gives the
moral relish to the biography of men of letters. More than one intel-
lectual leader, too, has shown the rare quality of practical wisdom.
Goethe's calm strength of will, displaying itself in a careful ordering
of the daily life, is matter of common knowledge. Beethoven man-
aged just to keep himself right by resolute bodily exercise. In George
Eliot an exceptional feeling of moral responsibility sufficed for a nice
economizing of the fitful supply of physical energy.

At the same time, our slight study of the ways of genius has fa-
miliarized us with illustrations of striking moral weaknesses. We have
seen a meaning in Rochefoucauld's paradox, that " il n'appartient
qu'aux grands hommes d'avoir de grands defauts." The large draught
of mental energy into the channels of imaginative production is apt to
leave the will ill-provided in working out the multifarious tasks of a
temperate and virtuous life.

Our conclusion is, that the possession of genius carries with it
special liabilities to the action of the disintegrating forces which envi-
ron us all. It involves a state of delicate equipoise, of unstable equi-
librium, in the psycho-physical organization. Paradoxical as it may
seem, one may venture to affirm that great original power of mind is
incompatible with nice adjustment to surroundings, and so with per-
fect well-being. And here it is that we see the real qualitative dif-
ference between genius and talent. This last means superior endow-
ment in respect of the common practical intelligence which all men
understand and appraise. The man of talent follows the current
modes of thought, keeps his eye steadily fixed on the popular eye,
produces the kind of thing wThich hits the taste of the moment, and is
never guilty of the folly of abandoning himself to the intoxicating
excitement of production. To the original inventor of ideas and
molder of new forms of art this intoxication is, as we have seen,
everything. He is under a kind of divine behest to make and fashion
something new and great, and at the moment of compliance recks little
of the practical outcome to himself. And such recklessness is clearly
only one form of imprudence, and so of mal-adaptation.

* This fact of tbe absence of choice, and the ordinary co-operation of the personal
will in artistic production, is illustrated further in the rapidity with which the mind casts
off and ignores its offspring. " Est-ce bien moi qui ai fait cela ? " asked Voltaire once,
on seeing one of his dramas acted. George Eliot attests to this strange unmaternal feel-
ing toward her literary .children.

468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But, if improvident, he is improvident in a high cause. Emerson
and others have taught us the uses of the great man. The teacher of
a new truth, the discoverer of a higher and worthier form of artistic
expression, is one in advance of his age, who, by his giant exertions,
enables the community, and even the whole race, to reach forward to
a further point in the line of intellectual evolution. He is a scout who
rides out well in advance of the intellectual army, and who by this
very advance and isolation from the main body is exposed to special
perils. Thus genius, like philanthropy or conscious self-sacrifice for
others, is a mode of variation of human nature which, though unfa-
vorable to the conservation of the individual, aids in the evolution of
the species.

If this be a sound view of the nature and social function of the
man of genius, it may teach more than one practical lesson. Does it
not, for example, suggest that there is room just now for more con-
sideration in dealing with the infirmities of great men ? There is no
need of exonerating intellectual giants from the graver human respon-
sibilities. We do well to remember that genius has its own special
responsibilities, that noblesse oblige here too. At the same time we
shall do well also to keep in mind that the life of intellectual creation
has its own peculiar besetments, and that in the very task of fulfilling
his high and eminently humane mission, and giving the world of his
mind's best, the great man may become unequal to the smaller forti-
tudes of every-day life. To judge of the degree of blameworthiness
of faults of temper is a nice operation, which may even transcend the
ability of a clever and practiced critic. Perhaps the temper most ap-
propriate to the contemplation of genius, and most conducive to fair-
ness of moral judgment, is one in which reverence is softened by per-
sonal gratitude, and this last made more completely human by a touch
of regretful pity. — Nineteenth Century.

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION.

By Dr. MARY PUTNAM-JACOBI.
I.

IN modern times education has been recognized to be something
more than an elegant luxury, designed exclusively for the benefit
of the " upper classes." It is a force, and a potent and indisputable
means, not only for the training but for the evocation of forces. It is
able, not only to convey information, but to increase power. It is not
simply a social convention, but a real means for attaining real ends.
The final ends of education are efficiency and repose. The educated
person is he who knows how to get what he wants, and how to enjoy
it when he has got it.

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 469

When a "higher education " is demanded, for any class of persons
— as women — it means that it has hecome desirable to train their fac-
ulties for more difficult work than that traditionally assigned to them,
and also that it is desirable to enable them to get more enjoyment out
of any work that they do. The necessary correlative of the possession
of powers is the opportunity for their exercise. The existence of a
larger class of effectively educated women must increase their demand
for a larger share in that part of the world's work which requires
trained intelligence. Of this, literature and other art is one and only
one portion. The work of the professions, of the upper regions of in-
dustry, commerce, and finance, the work of scientific and of political
life, is the work appropriate to the intelligences which have proved
themselves equal to a course of training at once complex and severe.
A person destined to receive a superior education is expected to de-
velop more vigorous mental force, to have a larger mental horizon, to
handle moi'e complex masses of ideas, than another. From the be-
ginning, therefore, he must not merely receive useful information,
but be habituated to perform difficult mental operations, for only in
this way can the sum of mental power be increased. The order, ar-
rangement, and sequence of the ideas he acquires must be as carefully
planned as is the selection of the ideas themselves, because upon this
order and internal proportion his mental horizon depends. He must
be trained in feats of sustained attention, and in the collocation and
association of elementary ideas into complex combinations. Since
ideas are abstractions from sense-perceptions, he must be exercised
in the acquisition of accurate, rapid, fai*-reaching, and delicate sense
perceptions, in their memorization, and in the representative imagina-
tion which may recall them at will, and be able to abstract from them,
more or less remotely, ideas. Habits of rich association of ideas
must be formed, and of pleasure in their contemplation. And very
early must be offered to the child problems to be solved, either by
purely mental exertion, or by that combined with manual labor. And
all this care must be taken for girls as well as for boys, so soon as it is
seriously agreed that girls may be admitted to a superior as well as
to a primary education.

The first intellectual faculties to be trained are perception and
memory. The subjects of the child's first studies should therefore be
selected, not on account of their ultimate utility, but on account of
their influence upon the development of these faculties. What sense
is there, then, in beginning education with instruction in the arts of
reading and writing ? If literature were the main business of life, or
if, as was at one time supposed, education meant nothing else but ac-
quaintance with literature, there would be some logic in the extraor-
dinary prominence habitually assigned in education to the study of
modes of literary expression. But, from the modern stand-point, that
education means such an unfolding of the faculties as shall put the

470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mind into the widest and most effective relation with the entire world
of things — spiritual and material — there is an exquisite absurdity in
the time-honored method. To study words before things tends to im-
press the mind with a fatal belief in their superior importance. To
study expression before subjects of thought have been accumulated,
is to cultivate the habit, always prevalent in civilized life, of talking
fluently without having anything to say. To direct attention to sets
of arbitrary signs before attention has been trained by contemplation
of real objects, teaches the mind to place conventional and contingent
facts on the same level with necessary truths. We thus weaken in
advance the power of belief in necessity and reality. Without such
power the mind becomes inevitably the prey to a skepticism generated
much less by contradictions in the outside world, than by the weakness
of its internal organism. What other result should logically be pro-
duced, when, to the opening mind, as it turns eagerly to the wonderful
world in which it awakens and finds itself, we offer for contemplation,
exercise, and earliest sustenance, the alphabet, the abstruse structure
of words to be spelled, the grammar of sentences to be construed, the
complex gymnastics of copies to be written ? When to the reading,
writing, spelling, grammar, and composition in English, we add that
of similar exercises in two or three other languages, we evidently de-
scribe the education, first, of the children in our public schools, then
of those of the so-called " upper classes " ; and show that all is a pro-
longed study of words.

Words are fossils, which, according to the understanding had of
them, are a heap of meaningless stones, or the incarnation of a by-
gone life. When the child has once learned to handle present exist-
ences, he will be prepared to understand the reflections of a past life
in language. When he has had some experience in framing complex
abstractions, he can then appreciate the complex abstractions of speech.
But, until then, language should not be to him an object of thought,
but only an organ of thought. It is not to be driven into him, but
only out of him, through the urgent consciousness that something
must be said. The inflections, intonations, and emphasis of speech,
uttered or written — and which include grammar, rhetoric, punctua-
tion, style — must arise spontaneously, as natural clothing of the idea,
which insists upon making itself understood. An idea which is once
sufficiently vivid in the child's mind can hardly fail to " climb to a
form in the grass and flowers " of picturesque baby-speech.

On this principle it might be useful to precede study of either
spoken or written language by study of gestures and signs. At all
events, in my own experiment, the child was taught algebraic signs
as a means of concisely expressing certain relations, long before any
attempt was made to learn how to write. Thus the important, funda-
mental idea was early conveyed to her mind that all arts of expression
were subordinate in importance to the subject expressed. Deliberate

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 471

study of the arts of expression, which is equivalent to the study of
literature, rhetoric, and style, was reserved until after many years of
study of things should have accumulated impressions and ideas which
spontaneously sought an outlet. Further, the child was taught to
draw in simple combinations of lines for many months before attempt-
ing to write. When this difficult and complex muscular exercise was
approached, she began it with unusual ease, and in a few weeks, at the
age of six, already commanded a firm and legible handwriting. Fur-
ther, and for the same purpose, no set copy-book was used from which
meaningless sentences could be imitated ; but the child proceeded at
once to utilize the art of writing in precisely the same way that hu-
manity has done in passing from barbarism with spoken traditions, to
civilization with a recorded history. She recorded at first with printed,
afterward with script characters, the history of a group of hyacinths,
whose development she watched from birth to death. The writing,
though compelled to be carefully done, was recognized as no end in
itself, but as a means to preserve a connected history of a series of
interesting events, otherwise liable to lapse into oblivion. The art
was thus approached as all arts should be, from the stand-point of its
real genesis, and tended to place itself in the same relative position in
the child's mind that it had occupied in the real history of the world.

Study of the pathological conditions of writer's cramp, and of the
numerous brain-lesions which have so marvelously dissected the fac-
ulty of comprehending verbal and written signs, has revealed a hith-
erto unsuspected complexity in the muscular movements involved in
writing, and of the mental processes necessary to language.* The
discovery has not yet modified the glaring crudity of the educational
methods which persist in beginning mental training with a forced drill
in these complex processes and gymnastics.

Not speech abstractions, the highest conquest of the mind, but the
development of the visual conceptions, which are its earliest sponta-
neous achievement, should be the first object of systematic training.
Forms and colors are the elements of all visual impressions ; and these
are, moreover, susceptible of a scientific classification which can, from
the beginning, be rendered appreciable to the child. It is upon forms
and colors, therefore, that both perception and memory must first be
exercised. The visual impression should be amplified up to the point
at which it is able to fix itself on the mind by its own momentum ;
therefore, without conscious effort. When the mind has accumulated
a stock of reminiscences which can not be forgotten, it will, by so
much, have enriched its structure and enlarged its furniture. It is
then prepared for voluntary efforts at recollection.

The amplification of the impression is effected in two ways : 1. The
impression may be associated with an action on the part of the child,

* See Kussmaul, " Stoerungen der Sprache " ; also, Lichtheim on " Aphasia " (" Brain,"
January, 1885). The literature on these two subjects is already immense.

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as when he arranges building-blocks into definite forms. 2. The
outlines of the object itself may be magnified, and at the same time
roughened, by being copied with sticks, as may be done in the first
attempts at map-drawing. The copy substitutes a schematic outline
for the real one, but by the very fact blends a mental conception with
the simple visual image. This necessity for amplification is very im-
portant, and, as it seems to me, very often overlooked. It is strictly
in accordance with the physiological law in neuro-dynamics, that a
stimulating impression must vary in intensity inversely to the suscepti-
bility of the nerve-element to be impressed. The more developed and
vigorous the mind, the slighter the object that is perceived and re-
membered ; and, as Mr. Froude remarks, men of genius always have
tenacious memories. Conversely, the relatively feeble mind of the
young child requires a large object to awaken its prehensile faculties.
If the memory of children for what has once impressed them is often
remarkable, it is because the infantile period of mental development
bears much analogy with the character of genius.

It seems to me that for several years no abstract statements should
be made to a child, except such as may be, at least schematically, rep-
resented by tangible objects, and at every new point of even advanced
studies recurrence to such schemas may be usefully made.

Perception and memory should be indissolubly associated. There
are two prevalent errors of method wThich I have noticed : to expect
a child to remember what it has never perceived ; and to allow it
to perceive without any systematic representation of the object in
memory. In the earliest training, contemplation of an object is insuf-
ficient to fix its outlines on the mind : it must be handled as well as
seen. In my own experiment with a child of four, Froebel's building-
blocks were used to construct definite models ; but these, once framed,
were repeated from memory. Sometimes the details of an exciting
story, as that of " Blue-Beard," were associated with the different de-
tails of the model, so that these were more vividly remembered.

By building in succession the different rooms in which the various
acts of the tragedy were supposed to have occurred, the child learned,
on the one hand, mathematical outlines ; on the other hand, to remem-
ber history by, in a degree, acting history herself. The principle of
this method is applicable to much more advanced studies.

President Hill, in his eloquent little book on the " True Order of
Studies," emphatically insists on the necessity for a selection of studies
which differ widely from the conventional programme. " We awake
to consciousness," he observes, "through the fact of motion which re-
veals to us an outer world, and a universe of space and time in which
that world of matter moves. These space and time relations are the
earliest objects of distinctly conscious intellection ; the first objects
concerning which our knowledge takes a scientific form. This was
true of the race, and it is true of the individual. Before the child has

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 473

a clearly intellectual life on any other subjects, it attains a very defi-
nite power to distinguish the square, the circle, the oval, the spiral ; and
also to recognize the rhythm of verse and music. Out of space and
time arise through the suggestions of the material world three princi-
pal sciences : geometry, arithmetic, algebra. In considering space we
are led to imitate the act of the Divine Intellect, which has geome-
trized from eternity. Geometry is the earliest and simplest of all pos-
sible sciences." The writer proceeds to point out that " the earliest
abstraction from the idea of form is that of number, and out of this
idea is evolved the earliest of the truly abstract sciences, namely, arith-
metic. But because this science is based upon an abstraction, and not
upon a direct perception, it should be made to follow, and not, as is
usually the case, precede geometry." Again, " the earliest suggestions
of motion reveal to us time as well as space. But space is external to
the mind ; time enters into our spiritual consciousness, and measures
our flow of thought."

To this might be added the anatomical consideration that the for-
mation of space conceptions is the function of the cerebrum, from the
impressions furnished by the optic nerve ; while the conceptions of
time are elaborated in the cerebellum from the experience in succes-
sions of events furnished by the auditory nerve. Space conceptions are
objective, static ; time conceptions, from the beginning subjective, are
at first successive, then become progressive, finally causal, dynamic —
when the conception of cause arises from consideration of the sum of
antecedent events. Thus this second series of conceptions soon im-
pinges upon moral considerations ; the first remains within the sphere
of perceptive intelligence. To space, or optic nerve conceptions, be-
longs symmetry ; to time, or auditory nerve conceptions, belong har-
mony and rhythm.

These ultimate ramifications of the primary psychic phenomenon
must be held in mind at the moment of beginning to systematize the
visual and auditory perceptions which lie at their basis.

All object-teaching may be made useful as a means of training to
independent observation. But the study of ordinary, i. e., of complex
objects, is necessarily empirical, whereas geometric forms can be at
once submitted to scientific generalizations, can therefore at once initi-
ate the child into scientific method. Dr. Hill recommends the study
of geometry to be begun at the age of eight. The child upon which
my own experiment was performed began the study of geometric ele-
ments before she was four. Some details of her education may per-
haps be quoted as the best way of illustrating certain abstract princi-
ples. At the age of four and a half she had learned the following
elements : straight, curved, slanting, and half-slanting lines, also to
distinguish perpendicular and horizontal lines, and to draw either
straight or curved lines parallel to each other. She was well acquainted
with all forms of the triangle, equilateral, isosceles, right angle, and

474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scalene. She knew a rectangle and a square, and the relations to each
of the slanting and half-slanting line. She knew also, and was espe-
cially fond of, the trapezium, ti-apezoid, the pentagon, hexagon, etc.,
the circle and semicircle ; and, in solid figures, knew the cube and its
apparent relations to the square. She did not merely know the names
of these things, but to her eye the whole perceptible universe arranged
itself spontaneously into these fundamental forms ; for she was inces-
santly disentangling them from the complex appearances of surround-
ing objects. Thus a horse-railroad interested her as an illustration of
parallel straight lines which never met, the marks of carriage- wheels
as parallel curved lines, the marks of horseshoes, as " dear little
curves." She learned that the curved line was the line of living things,
and that straight lines belonged exclusively to artificial objects. At
dinner she divided her cake into squares or cubes, and made penta-
gons and octagons with the knives and forks. She learned that by
increasing the number of sides a plane figure gradually progressed
from a triangle to a circle ; and thus, on first seeing a cylinder, at once
comjtared it to a circle, because " it had ever and ever so many sides,"
and not to a prism with which the superficial resemblance might be
supposed to be more striking.

The habit of looking for the forms of things led the child to the
spontaneous observation of the alphabet, which she taught herself by
incessantly copying the letters until she was familiar with them.* It
was at this time that her education devolved upon me, and I began to
effect the transition from a simple descriptive study of geometric
forms toward some conception of their necessary relations. At first
the purely descriptive study of geometric forms was continued, and,
for several months and by the help of wooden models, extended from
plane to solid figures. Later, when she was five and a half, some neces-
sary relations were taught. Thus the child learned that three was the
smallest number of straight lines which could include a space, by build-
ing with colored sticks an imaginary fence around a field in which a
goat was to be inclosed. It was obvious that, when only two sides of
the fence were completed, the goat would be able to run out and
wreak all the destruction in the garden which might be anticipated
from a reckless and unrestrained goat. An indissoluble association of
ideas was thus established between a geometric necessity and the logic
of events.

The second axiom taught was the equality of any two objects
which were demonstrably equal to the same third. This was learned
when the child was five years old ; and illustrated in the first place by
its applicability to the solution of pi'oblems otherwise insoluble. Thus,
if it became necessary to compare the height of two girls, one of
whom lived in Syracuse and the other in Boston, but unable to visit

* This first year of the child's education was carried on in the Kindergarten of Mrs.
Walton.

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 475

each other, a common measure was suggested in the person of a third
girl living in New York, of more peripatetic habits, and able to travel
from one place to another. By the same device the lesser difficulty
was overcome, of comparing the length of a floor and the ceiling of a
room through the medium of the wall. Ultimately the problem was
illustrated by the less conspicuous mechanisms of colored sticks, and
then the first algebraic signs of equality and inequality were taught,
thus preceding all knowledge of writing. When the idea had been
thus copiously illustrated and perfectly grasped, the verbal axiom
(" things equal to the same things," etc.) was, by exception, given, and
learned with ease. This was proved by the child's remark on one
occasion of applying the axiom, " I knew what I was thereforeing."
In a similar way were taught some other axioms — thus, that equals
being added to equals the wholes are equal, and that the whole is
equal to the sum of its parts. The last axiom was illustrated graphi-
cally by observation of a large complex fungus which the child hap-
pened to pick up during a walk. Each part was apparently inde-
pendent, yet so inseparable from the whole in which it inhered, and
the whole was so obviously composed of these aggregated segments,
that the axiom in question seemed to the child simply descriptive of
the object.

Thus the mind was early initiated into the recognition of necessary
truths, however few, lest otherwise it should never acquire that sense
of reality and necessity which is essential to all forcible mental and
moral action.

At the beginning of the year, the child being four and a half, the
study of elementary colors was added to that of form. It was begun
logically with observation of the rainbow. The child was led to notice
and distinguish its colors in their regular order, and subsequently to
reproduce this order exactly by means of colored sticks. As this was
a fundamental observation among those furnished by the universe of
things, it was constantly allowed to recur in different combinations in
the same way as the original theme of a musical symphony. Thus at
first the coloi-ed sticks were laid parallel to each other in a simple
package. Subsequently the study of form and color was combined
by using the same colored sticks to construct angular geometric fig-
ures from the triangle to the decagon. Each figure consisted of seven
of different sizes and colors, placed concentrically to each other, in the
rainbow order. After several months a third complication was in-
troduced, by imagining that each color represented a lineal bed of
flowers, the flowers having been previously gathered by the child and
their colors compared. At this time solid figures would be placed in
the center of the innermost plane figure outlined by the sticks, thus
bringing out clearly the relations of the sides of such solids to certain
planes. Thus a cube would stand in a square, a tetrahedron or pyra-
mid in the center of a triangle. This last case offered the occasion

476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for a somewhat wicle reach of fancy : for pictures were shown ex-
hibiting pyramids in the Egyptian Desert, to imitate which the table
was strewed with sand. Then the different triangles were outlined
with sticks, representing successive beds of flowers breaking the
desolation of the desert — thus, roses and pinks, then marigolds, then
yellow snap-dragons, jonquils, and laburnums, then a bed of green
leaves, another of periwinkles and blue bells, a sixth of hyacinths and
a seventh of violets. Thus the entire exercise embraced conceptions
of form, and of the relations of plane to 6olid geometric figures, con-
ceptions of color, discovery of the origin of these in a grand cosmic
phenomenon, utilization of colors as one means of classification in a
new science, that of botany, impressions of beauty from the actual
color combinations, and from reference, partly actual, partly from
memory, to the lovely flowers suggested ; finally, a large imagination
of a distant land more or less distinctly suggested by the picture.
The exercise was thus both orderly and complex ; it required a pro-
longed effort of sustained attention, and implied the association of
quite a number of different ideas into a single massive conception.
Finally, none of these ideas were represented by a verbal formula, but
each as the scarcely removed abstraction from a tangible object, that
the child could freely handle. The exercise was thus a typical illus-
tration of the methods which I have defined as suited to develop a
higher order of intellectual capacity.

The second step in the study of cosmic phenomena, which had
been begun by observation of the rainbow, consisted in study of the
points of the compass. The child was first taught to construct, from
Kindergarten tablets, figures which might serve to indicate the points
of the compass ; afterward she was obliged to recognize these points
out-of-doors by reference to the rising and setting sun. Every morn-
ing she ascertained the direction of the winds and wraves. She was
then taught the points on a real compass, and how to direct her coun-
try walks by means of this instrument. This was her first initiation
into the use of instruments of precision. It wTas gradually extended
during the year by means of practical experiments with the mathe-
matical compass, ruler, spirit-level, pulley, wedge, and balance. The
use of the last instrument, together with that of measures, greatly
simplified and abridged the labor ordinarily devoted in arithmetic to
learning about weights and measures. The child was taught the met-
ric system first, because it was logical, because it assimilated readily
with American decimal currency, and because the mutual interconver-
sion of weight and capacity practically demonstrated — e. g., by show-
ing that a cubic centimetre of water weighed a gramme — prepared the
way for the great idea, to come later, of scientific correlations. The
English weights and measures were learned afterward, as historical
accidents, not logical, but of some practical convenience, as purely con-
tingent knowledge to be learned practically as the occasion presented

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 477

itself. She was sent to the grocer's to buy a bushel of apples, com-
pared quarts, pecks, etc., together, and was never troubled with the
senseless memorization of tables.

After knowledge of the rainbow and the points of the compass, the
third cosmic notion acquired was that of perspective. This was first
learned by watching ships passing over the water near which the child
was playing, and observing their diminution of size as the distance in-
creased. This observation made a profound impression upon the child ;
it was, perhaps, the first time that she learned that appearances do not
always correspond to the reality of things, and that simple perceptions
must be constantly controlled by an effort of the reasoning intellect.
A year later, thus, when the child was five years old, the subject of
perspective was reviewed in a different connection. She tried to draw
a cube, and was shown the device by which a slanting line is made to
represent a retreat from the foreground to a distance. This new dis-
covery proved as exciting as the first had been, and it was speedily
tested on all the pictures hanging in the room. On the first occasion,
perspective had appeared like a great and astonishing fact of the ex-
ternal universe ; on the second, like an immense achievement of the
human intellect, which had thus contrived to accomplish the appar-
ently impossible — namely, the representation of solid objects on a flat
surface. The lifting of such large horizons makes epochs in the history
of the intellect ! The study was not confined to the form or line, but ex-
tended to observation of the effect of li^ht and shade — the darkness of a
receding surface, the brightness of the nearest point of a spherical sur-
face, etc. Then the child reproduced these effects in her own drawing.

At this time the child began the study of geographical maps, as
another method of emphasizing space conceptions. For so young a
child the dissecting map was much simpler than would have been the
attempt to make actual surveys of familiar localities, as is sometimes
recommended. These were deferred till a little later. By the aid of
the dissecting map, the child learned the outline of each of the United
States, and their exact relations to each other, while still quite unable
to read the names printed upon the models. In putting the map to-
gether, the compass was again brought into requisition, and the table
on which the map was constructed turned until it faced the real north.
The relative situation of places was always learned by reference to the
compass, and not by arbitrary signs.

With so young a child it was impossible to associate much real in-
formation with these unknown states whose geometrical outlines she
studied ; therefore, every facility was offered to establish associations
of fantasy, either with the shape of the pieces or with the names, as-
sociation which the child usually discovered for herself. Thus, she de-
scribed Virginia as a kneeling camel ; Texas, for some reason which I
could not appreciate, as a man leaning on his pipe ; Maine, as a dog's
head ; Tennessee, as a boy's sled, etc.

478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The study of the one dissecting map was pursued uninterruptedly
for six months. In a few weeks the child had learned to identify and
name each piece, either on her model or on other maps, and could put
each in its place. Before she left the map she was able to bound any
State with the models, or verbally ; also to make strips of successive
States, beginning at any point and running in any direction. With
the entrance upon her second year, at the age of five and a half, the
child began the study of maps from " Cornell's Geography." But in
a very little while these were exchanged for a large relief - globe.
From the time the child began the study of this globe it became dif-
ficult for me to understand how any other method could ever be em-
ployed. The picturesque effect of the distinctly outlined continents,
visible at a considerable distance, separated by vast tracts of desolate
ocean, in which, as the child remarked, " one could easily drown," the
mutual relations of parts whose perception need never be disturbed,
as is incessantly done when the pupil passes from map to map — all
these effects and impressions can be obtained from nothing else but
from a globe of adequate size and in relief. The child, when just six,
began to draw maps from this globe. On a single very large piece of
paper would be represented whatever outlines were discoverable at
the maximum distance and at a certain aspect of the globe. The lat-
ter was then revolved somewhat, the child remaining at the same dis-
tance, and a new map outlined as before, and so on until the entire
globe had been, in the major outlines, copied by the child. It was re-
served for months of future study to fill in the details in proportion
to their successive natural, not political, importance.

Four different spheres of thought were prepared for by this study.
First, and most obviously, the foundations were laid for all knowledge
of physical geography. This foundation was laid in vivid sense im-
pressions, and unalloyed with the singular mess of political, historical,
and commercial details, with which even the best geographical text-
books for children are filled, and which are quite irrelevant to the
main issue. When the child could with her finger trace the water-
courses all around the world, she received a large fundamental impres-
sion not easily forgotten. Incidentally in this tracing she learned the
value of canals at the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama. Secondly, a solid
foundation was laid for history. The first map drawn was of Africa,
on account of its simplicity of outline ; but this involved the basin of
the Mediterranean. The second map, passing eastward, took in the
strongly accentuated outlines surrounding the Indian Ocean, and indi-
cated the Himalaya and the high table-lands of Northern India. In
the future it was intended, with these same outlines under the eye, and
the picture of them deeply graven on the brain, to indicate the descent
of Aryan ancestors from these table-lands toward the Mediterranean
basin — the germinal spot of our historical world ; thence the further
spread westward to the new hemisphere. The conception of an histori-

ON LEAVES. 479

cal germinal spot was again prepared for in advance, by showing the
child the cicatricule of a hen's egg, lying like the Mediterranean basin,
on a globe. Thirdly, study of the systematized topography of the
globe constituted the best initiation into the study of all topographi-
cal relations, including those involved in animal anatomy, and there-
fore this consideration was not among the least important. Fourthly,
an important elementary philosophical training was obtained, as the
child learned to analyze into their details the largest pictures offered
by the globe, and to arrange these details into orders of successive
degrees of generalization. Great care was taken that all pictures or
outlines of the same magnitude, and hence visible at the same dis-
tance, should be studied at the same time, and not associated with less
conspicuous details that required more minute attention. This rule of
following successive degrees of generalization in geographical analysis
is most imperfectly observed in text-books. It imposes itself in study
of the relief -globe.

\_To be continued.]

-■♦«»

ON LEA YES.

By Sir JOHN LUBBOCK.

II.

WE have hitherto been considering, for the most part, deciduous
trees. It is generally supposed that in autumn the leaves drop
off because they die. My impression is that most persons would be
very much surprised to hear that this is not altogether the case. In
fact, however, the separation is a vital process, and, if a bough is killed,
the leaves are not thrown off, but remain attached to it. Indeed, the
dead leaves not only remain in situ, but they are still firmly attached.
Being dead and withered, they give the impression that the least shock
would detach them ; on the contrary, however, they will often bear a
weight of as much as two pounds without coming off.

In evergreen species the conditions are in many respects different.
When we have an early fall of snow in autumn, the trees which still
retain their leaves are often very much broken down. Hence, perhaps,
the comparative paucity of evergreens in temperate regions, and the
tendency of evergreens to have smooth and glossy leaves, such as those
of the holly, box, and evergreen-oak. Hairy leaves especially retain
the snow, on which more and more accumulates.

Again, evergreen leaves sometimes remain on the tree for several
years ; for instance, in the Scotch pine three or four years, the spruce
and silver-fir six or even seven, the yew eight, A. pinsapo sixteen or
seventeen, araucaria and others even longer. It is true that during

48o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the later years they gradually dry and wither ; still, under these cir-
cumstances they naturally require special protection. They are, as a
general rule, tough, and even leathery. In many species, again, as is
the case with our holly, they are spinose. This serves as a protection
from browsing animals ; and in this way we can, I think, explain the
curious fact that, while young hollies have spiny leaves, those of older
trees, which are out of the reach of browsing animals, tend to become
quite unarmed.

In confirmation of this I may also adduce the fact that while in the
evergreen-oak the leaves on well-grown trees are entire and smooth-
edged like those of the laurel, specimens which are cropped and kept
low form scrubby brushes with hard prickly leaves.*

Mr. Grindon, in his " Echoes on Plant and Flower Life " (p. 30),
says that "the occurrence of prickles only here and there among plants
shows them to be unconnected with any general and ruling require-
ment of vegetation. We can only fall back upon the principle laid
down at the outset, that they are illustrations of the unity of design in
Nature, leading us away from the earth to Him who is ' the end of
problems and the font of certainties.' " Surely, however, it is obvious
that the existence of spines and prickles serves as a protection.

Another point of much importance in the economy of leaves is the
presence or absence of hairs. I have already observed that most ever-
greens are glossy and smooth, and have suggested that this may be an
advantage, as tending to prevent the adherence of snow, which might
otherwise accumulate and break them down.

The hairs which occur on so many leaves are of several different
types. Thus, leaves are called silky when clothed with long, even,
shining hairs (silver- weed) ; pubescent or downy, when they are
clothed with soft, short hairs (strawberry) ; pilose, when the hairs are
long and scattered (herb-robert) ; villous, when the hairs are rather
long, soft, white, and close (forget-me-not) ; hirsute, when the hairs
are long and numerous (rose-campion) ; hispid, when they are erect
and stiff (borage) ; setose, when they are long, spreading, and bristly
(poppy) ; tomentose, when they are rather short, soft, and matted ;
woolly, when long, appressed, curly, but not matted (corn-centaury) ;
velvety, when the pubescence is short and soft to the touch (fox-
glove) ; cobwebby, when the hairs are long, very fine, and interlaced
like a cobweb (thistle, cobwebby houseleek). The arrangement of
the hairs is also interesting. In some plants there is a double row of
hairs along the stem. In the chickweed only one. This, perhaps,
serves to collect rain and dew, and it is significant that the row of
hairs is always opposite to the flower-stalk, which also has a single
row. Now, the flower-stalk is for a considerable part of its life turned
downward, with the row of hair outward. This, perhaps, may ac-
count for the absence of hairs on that side of the stem.
* Bunbury, " Botanical Fragments," p. 320.

Fig. 20.

ON LEAVES. 481

Many leaves are clothed with woolly hairs while in the bud, which
afterward disappear. Thus, in the rhododendron, horse-chestnut,
and other species, the young leaves are protected by a thick felt, which,
when they expand, becomes detached and drops off. Many leaves are
smooth on the upper side, while underneath they are clothed with a
cottony, often whitish, felt. This probably serves as a protection for
the stomata. In some cases the hairs probably tend to preserve the
leaves from being eaten. In others, as Kerner has suggested, they
serve to keep off insects — apparently with the special object of pre-
venting the flowers from
being robbed of their
honey by insects which
are not adapted to fertil-
ize them. Fritz Miiller,
to whom we are indebted
for so many ingenious
observations, gives an in-
teresting case. The cater-
pillar of Eunomia eagrus,
when about to turn into
the chrysalis (Fig. 20), breaks off its hairs and fastens them to the
twig which it has selected, so as to form on each side of itself about
half a dozen stiff fences, to protect it during its helpless period of
quiescence.

Vaucher long ago observed, though he gave no reason for the fact,
that among the 3falvacem (mallows) the species which produce honey
are hairy, and those which do not are glabrous.

If we make a list of our English plants, marking out which species
have honey and which have hairs, we shall find that we may lay it
down as a general rule that honey and hairs go together. The excep-
tions, indeed, are very numerous, but when we come to examine
them we shall find that they can generally be accounted for. I have
made a rough list of the species in the English flora which have honey
and yet are glabrous. It does not profess to be exactly correct, be-
cause there are some species with reference to which I was unable to
ascertain by personal examination, or by reference to books, whether
they produced honey or not. My list, however, comprised 110 species.

Now, in the first place, of these 110 species, in sixty the entrance
to the honey is so narrow that even an ant could not force its way in ;
twenty are aquatic, and hence more or less protected from the visits
of ants and other creeping insects ; thus we shall frequently find that,
if, in a generally hairy genus, one or more species are aquatic, they
are also glabrous — as, for instance, Viola palustris, Veronica anagallis,
V. beccabunga, and Ranunculus aquatilis. Polygonum amphibium is
peculiarly interesting, because, as Kerner has pointed out, aquatic spe-
cimens are glabrous ; while in those living on land the base of the leaf

TOL. XXVII. — 31

l82

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

produces hairs. Half a dozen are early spring plants which flower
before the ants are roused from their winter sleep ; about the same
number are minute ground-plants to which hairs could be no protec-
tion ; three or four are night flowers ; there still remain a few to be
accounted for, which would have to be considered individually, but
probably the evidence is sufficiently complete to justify the general
inference.

Lastly, I must not omit to mention the hairs which have a glandular
character.

The next point to which I would call attention is the remarkable
manner in which certain forms repeat themselves. In some cases,
there seems much reason to suppose that one plant derives a substan-
tial advantage from resembling another. For instance, Chrysanthe-
mum ijiodorum, the scentless mayweed, very closely resembles the
camomile in leaves, flowers, and general habit. The latter species,
however, has a strong, bitter taste, which probably serves as a protec-
tion to it, and of which also, perhaps, the scentless mayweed may
share the advantage. These two species, however, are nearly allied
to one another, and I prefer, therefore, to take as an example of mim-
icry the stinging-nettle ( Urtica) and the common dead-nettle {Lamium
album). These two species belong to totally different families ; the
flowers are altogether unlike, but the general habit and the form of
the leaves are extremely similar.

How close the similarity is may be seen by the illustration (Fig.

21), taken from an excellent
photograph made for me by Mr.
Harman, of Bromley. The plants
on the right are true stinging-
nettles ; those on the left are the
white dead-nettle, one of which
is in flower. So close was the re-
semblance that, after getting the
photograph, I went back to the
spot on which they were growing
to assure myself that there was no
mistake. It can not be doubted
that the true nettle is protected by
its power of stinging ; and, that
being so, it is scarcely less clear that the dead-nettle must be protected
by its likeness to the other. Moreover, though I was fortunate in light-
ing on so good an illustration as that shown in the figure just when I
had the opportunity of photographing it, still every one must have ob-
served that the two species are very commonly found growing to-
gether. Assuming that the ancestor of the dead-nettle had leaves
possessing a faint resemblance to those of the true nettle, those in
which the likeness was greatest would have the best chance of survival,

Fig. 21.

ON LEAVES. 483

and consequently of ripening seeds. There would be a tendency,
therefore, according to the well-known principles of Mr. Darwin, to a
closer and closer resemblance. I am disposed to suggest whether
these resemblances may not serve as a protection, not only from
browsing quadrupeds, but also from leaf-eating insects. On this part
of the subject we have as yet, however, I think, no sufficient observa-
tions on record.

Ajuga chamcepitys, the yellow bugle, has leaves crowded and
divided into three linear lobes, the lateral ones sometimes again
divided. They differ, therefore, greatly from those of its allies, and
this puzzled me much until one day I found it growing abundantly
on the Riviera among Euphorbia cyparissias, and I was much struck
by the curious likeness. The Euphorbia has the usual acrid juice
of the genus, and it struck me that the yellow ajuga was perhaps
protected by its resemblance.

Leaves which float on the surface of still water tend to be orbicular.
The water-lilies are a well-known illustration. I may also mention
Limnanthenum nymph ceoides, which, indeed, is often taken for a
water-lily, though it really belongs to the family of gentians, and
Alisma natans, a species allied to the plantains. In running water,
on the contrary, leaves tend to become more or less elongated.

Subaqueous leaves of fresh-water plants have a great tendency
either to become long and grass-like or Jo be divided into more or less
hair-like filaments. I might mention, for instance, Myriophyllum ;
Hippuris, or mare's-tail, a genus which among English plants comes
next to Circaea, the enchanter's nightshade ;
Mammculus aquatilis a close ally of the
buttercup ; and many others.

Some, again, which, when mature, have
rounded, floating leaves, have long, narrow
ones when young. Thus in Victoria regia
the first leaves are filiform, then come one
or more which are sagittate, and then fol-
low the great orbicular leaves.

Another interesting case is that in which

Fig 2^

the same species has two forms of leaf (Fig.

22) — namely, more or less rounded ones on the surface, and a second
series which are subaqueous and composed of more or less linear or
finely divided segments.

Mr. Grant Allen has suggested that this tendency to subdivision in
subaqueous leaves is due to the absence or paucity of carbonic acid. I
have ventured to suggest a different explanation. Of course it is im-
portant to expose as large a surface as may be to the action of the
water. We know that the gills of fish consist of a number of thin
plates, which while in water float apart, but have not sufficient consist-
ence to support even their own weight, much less any external force,

484

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and consequently collapse in air. The same thing happens with thin,
finely cut leaves. In still water they afford the greatest possible
extent of surface with the least expenditure of effort in the formation
of skeleton. This is, I believe, the explanation of the prevalence of
this form in subaqueous leaves.

Again, in still air the conditions, except so far as they are modified
by the weight, would approximate to those of water ; but the more
the plant is exposed to wind the more would it require strengthening.
Hence, perhaps, the fact that herbs so much oftener have finely cut
leaves than is the case with trees. In the Umbellifers, for instance,
almost all the species have the leaves much divided — more, I need
hardly say, than is the case with trees. Shrubs and trees are charac-
terized by more or less entire leaves, such as those of the laurel, beech,
hornbeam, lime, or by similarly shaped leaflets, as in the ash, horse-
chestnut, walnut.

There are, however, many groups of plants which, while habitually
herbaceous, contain some shrubby species, or vice versa. Let us take
some groups of this description in which the herbaceous species have
their leaves much cut up, and see what is the character of the foliage
in the shrubby species.

The vast majority of Umbellifers, as I have just observed, are
herbaceous, and with leaves much divided, the common carrot being a
typical example. One European species, however, Eiipleurum fructi-
cosum, is a shrub attaining a height of more than six feet, and has the
leaves (Fig. 23) coriaceous, and oblong -lanceolate.

■flk1

Fig. 23.

The common groundsel (Fig. 24), again, is a low herb writh much
cut leaves. Some species of jSenecio, however, are shrubby, and their
leaves assume a totally different character, Senecio laurifolius and S.
populifolius having, as their specific names denote, leaves respectively
resembling the laurel and poplar. In the genus Oxalis, again, to which
the shamrock belongs, there is a shrubby species, 0. laureola, with
leaves like those of a laurel.

ON LEAVES.

485

I would venture, then, to suggest these considerations as throwing
light on the reason why herbaceous plants so often have their leaves
much cut up.*

Next let me say a few words on the reasons why some plants have
broad and some narrow leaves. Both are often found within the
limits of a single genus. I have ventured to indicate the distance
between the buds as a possible reason in certain cases. It would not,
however, apply to herbaceous genera such as Plantago or Drosera.
Now, Drosera rotundifolia (Fig. 25) has the leaves nearly orbicular,

Fig. 25.

Fig. 26.

vhile in D. anglica (Fig. 26) they are long and narrow. Plantago
media (Fig. 27) has ovate leaves, while in P. lanceolata (Fig. 28) they
are lanceolate, and in P. maritima nearly linear. More or less similar
cases occur in Ranunculus.

These differences depend, I believe, on the attitude of the leaf, for
it will be found that the broad-leaved ones are horizontal, forming a
rosette more or less like that of a daisy, while the species with nar-
rower leaves carry them more or less erect. In the daisy the rosette
lies on the ground, but in other cases, as in Daphne (Fig. 29), it is at
the end of a branch.

Any one who has looked with an observant eye at the vegetation
of hot, dry countries must have noticed how much the general char-
acter of the vegetation differs from that which prevails in a climate
like ours. There is a marked increase of prickly, leathery, and aromatic
species. The first two characteristics evidently tend to protect the
leaves. As regards the third, Mr. Taylor, f in his charming book on

* Mr. Grant Allen, who had been also struck by the fact that herbaceous plants so
often have their leaves much cut up, has suggested a different explanation, and thinks it
is due to " the fierce competition that goes on for the carbon of the air between the
small matted undergrowth of every thicket and hedge-row."

f Page 311.

486

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Flowers," has pointed to the power which, as Tyndall has shown, the
spray of perfume possesses to bar out the passage of heat-rays, and has
suggested that the emission of essential oils from the leaves of many
plants which live in hot climates may serve to protect themselves
against the intensely dry heat of the desert sun.

Fig. 27.

Fig. 28.

I am rather disposed to think that the aromatic character of the
leaves protects them by rendering it less easy for animals to eat them.
In still drier regions, such as the Cape of Good Hope, an unusually
large proportion of species are bulbous. These, moreover, do not be-
long to any single group, but are scattered among a large number of

very different families : the bulbous
condition can not, therefore, be ex-
plained by inheritance, but must
have reference to the surrounding
circumstances. Moreover, in a large
number of species the leaves tend to
become succulent and fleshy. Now,
in organisms of any given form the
surface increases as the square, the
mass as the cube, of the dimensions.
Hence, a spherical form, which is
so common in small animals and
plants, and which in them offers a
sufficient area of surface in propor-
tion to the mass, becomes quite unsuitable in larger creatures, and
we find that both animals and plants have orifices leading from
the outside to the interior, and thus giving an additional amount of
surface. But in plants which inhabit very dry countries it is necessary
that they should be able to absorb moisture when opportunity offers,
and store it up for future use. Hence, under such circumstances fleshy

Fig. ^9.

ON LEAVES.

487

stems and leaves are an advantage, because the surface exposed to
evaporation is smaller in proportion than it would be in leaves of the
ordinary form. This is, I believe, tbe reason why succulent leaves
and stems are an advantage in very dry climates, such as the Canaries,
Cape of Good Hope, etc.

The genus Lathy rus, the wild pea, contains two abnormal and
interesting species, in which the foliaceous organs give the plant an
appearance very unlike its congeners. Fig. 30 represents L. niger,
with leaves of the ordinary type. In the yellow pea (L. aphaca, Fig.
31), the general aspect is very different, but it will be seen on a closer

Fia. 30. Fig. 31.

inspection that the leaves are really absent, or, to speak more correctly,
are reduced to tendrils, while the stipules, on the contrary, are, in
compensation, considerably enlarged. They must not, therefore, be
compared with the leaves, but with the stipules of other species, and
from this point of view they are of a more normal character, the prin-
cipal difference, indeed, being in size.

The grass pea (L. nissolia, Fig. 32) is also a small species. It lives
in meadows and the grassy borders of fields, and has lost altogether,
not only the leaves, but also the tendrils. Instead, however, of en-
larged stipules, the functions of the leaves are assumed by the leaf-
stalks, which are elongated, flattened, linear, ending in a fine point,
and, in fact, so like the leaves of the grasses among which the plant
lives that it is almost impossible to distinguish it except when in
flower. For a weak plant growing among close grass, a long linear
leaf is, perhaps, physically an advantage ; but one may venture to sug-
gest that the leaves would be more likely to be picked out and eaten
if they were more easily distinguishable, and that from this point of
view also the similarity of che plant to the grass among which it grows
may also be an advantage.

488

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fia. 32.

In looking at foliage I have often been much puzzled as to why
the leaves of some species are tongue-shaped, while others are lobed.
Take, for instance, the black bryony ( Tamus communis) and the com-
mon bryony {Bryonia dioica). Again, why are the veins in some

leaves pinnate, like those of the beech and
elm, and others palmate, as in the maple
and sycamore ?

My first idea was that this might have
reference to the arrangement of the woody
fibers in the leaf -stalk. If we make a sec-
tion of the stalk of a leaf, we shall find that
in some cases the woody fibers are collected
in the middle, while in others there are sev-
eral distinct bundles, separated by cellular
parenchyma. My first idea was that each
of the primary ribs of a leaf might repre-
sent a separate woody fiber in the leaf-
stalk, so that leaves with a single bundle
of woody fibers would be pinnate ; those
with several distinct bundles, palmate.

The first species which I examined fa-
vored this view. The melon, geranium, mal-
low, cyclamen, and other species with palmate leaves, had, sure enough,
several woody fibers ; while, on the contrary, the laurel, rhododendron,
privet, beech, box, castanea, arbutus, phillyrea, and other leaves with
pinnate veins, had one central bundle. But I soon came across numer-
ous exceptions, and had to give up the idea.

I then considered whether the difference could be accounted for
by the mode of growth of the leaf, and I am still disposed to think
that it has some bearing on the subject, though this requires further
study.

The next suggestion which occurred to me was that it might be
connected with the " prefoliation " or arrangement of the leaves in the
bud. The first palmate leaves which I examined were what is called
" plicate," or folded up more or less like a fan ; while the leaves with
pinnate veins were generally " conduplicate," or had the one half
applied to the other. But, though this was true in many cases, it was
not a general rule, and I was obliged to give up this idea also.

It then occurred to me to take climbing plants, and see whether I
could find any relation between palmate and tongue-shaped leaves on
the one hand and the mode of growth on the other — whether, for in-
stance, the one turned generally up, the other down ; whether the one
were generally twining and the other clasping, or vice versa. All these
suggestions one by one broke down.

Among monocotyledons, however, the tongue-shaped preponderates
greatly over the palmate form of leaf. With very few exceptions, the

ON LEAVES.

489

Fig. 33.

forms of the leaves of climbing monocotyledons are in fact just such
as would be obtained by widening more or less the linear, grass-like leaf
which is so prevalent in the class.

This, then, raises the question whether the heart-shaped leaf is the
older form from which the palmate type has been gradually evolved.
Let us see whether we can find any evidence
bearing on this question in what may be called
the embryology of plants. The furze, with its
spiny prickles, belongs to a group of plants which,
as a general rule, have trifoliate or pinnate leaves.
Now, if we examine a seedling furze (Fig. 33), we
shall find that the cotyledons are succeeded by sev-
eral trifoliate leaves, with ovate leaflets. These
gradually become narrower, more pointed, and
stiffer, thus passing into spines. Hence, we can
hardly doubt that the present furze is descended
from ancestors with trifoliate leaves. I have al-
ready referred to other cases in which the young
plants throw light on the previous condition of
the species {ante, p. 12).

Now we shall have no difficulty in finding cases
where, while in mature plants the leaves are more
or less lobed and palmate, the first leaves succeed-
ing the cotyledons are heart-shaped. This would seem to point to the
fact that when in any genus we find heart-shaped and lobed leaves, the
former may represent the earlier or ancestral condition.

The advantage of the palmate form may perhaps consist in its
bringing the center of gravity nearer to the point of support. Broad
leaves, however, are of two types : cordate, with veins following the
curvature of the edge ; and palmate or lobed leaves, with veins running
straight to the edge. The veins contain vascular bundles which con-
duct the nourishment sucked up by the roots, and it is clearly better
that they should hold a straight course, rather than wind round in a
curve. As the nourishing fluids pass more rapidly along these vascular
bundles, the leaf naturally grows there more rapidly, and thus assumes
the lobed form, with a vein running to the point of each lobe.

On the whole, we see, I think, that many at any rate of the forms
presented by leaves have reference to the conditions and requirements
of the plant. If there was some definite form told off for each species,
then, surely, a similar rule ought to hold good for each genus. The
species of a genus might well differ more from one another than the
varieties of any particular species ; the generic type might be, so to
say, less closely limited ; but still there ought to be some type charac-
teristic of the genus. Let us see whether this is so. No doubt there
are many genera in which the leaves are more or less uniform, but in
them the general habit is also, as a rule, more or less similar. Is this

49°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the ease in genera where the various species differ greatly in habit ?
I have already incidentally given cases which show that this is not so,
but let us take some group — for instance, the genus Senecio, to which
the common groundsel (Fig. 24) belongs, as a type well known to all
of us — and look at it a little more closely.

The leaves of the common groundsel I need not describe, because
they are familiar to us all. This type occurs in various other species
of more or less similar habit. On the other hand, the fen Senecio (S.

paludosus) and the marsh Senecio (S. palus-
tris), which live in marshy and wet places,
have long, narrow, sword-shaped leaves, like
those of so many other plants which are found
in such localities. The field Senecio (S. cam-
pestris, Fig. 34), which lives in meadows and
pastures, has a small terminal head of flowers
springing from a rosette of leaves much like
those of a common daisy (JSellis perennis) ;

a Madagascar species, as yet I believe un-
named, is even more like a daisy. Senecio
junceus looks much like a rush ; S. hypo-
chcerideus, of South Africa, strikingly resem-
bles a hypochceris, as its name denotes. A
considerable number of species attain to a
larger size and become woody so as to form
regular bushes. S. buxifolius has very much
the general look of a box, S. vagans of a privet, S. laurifolius of a
laurel, ericcefolius of a heath, pinifolius of a fir, or rather a yew.

Again, some species are climbers : S. scandens and S. macroglossus
have leaves like a bryony ; S. araneosus and S. tamoides like a smilax
or (yam) tamus ; S. tropceoUfolius like a tropseolum.

Among the species inhabiting hot, dry regions are some with swol-
len, fleshy leaves, such as S. haworthii, from the Cape of Good Hope,
and S. pteroneura, from Magador. Senecio rosmarinifolius, of the
Cape, is curiously like a rosemary or lavender.

Lastly, some species may almost be called small trees, such as S.
popidifolius, writh leaves like a poplar ; and S. amygdaloides, like an
almond.

I might mention, if space permitted, many other species which, as
their names denote, closely resemble forms belonging to other groups
— such, for instance, as Senecio lobelioides, erysimoides, bupleurioides,
verbascifolius, juniperinus, ilicifolius, acanthifolius, linifolius, platani-
folius, graminifolius, verbenefolius, rosmarinifolius, coronopifolius,
chenopodifolius, lavanderisefolius, salicifolius, mesembryanthemoidee,
digitalifolius, abietinus, arbutifolius, malvsefolius, erodiifolius, halimi-
folius, hakesefolius, resedsefolius, hedertefolius, acerifolius, plantigineus,
castaniaefolius, spiroeifolius, bryonioefolius, primulifolius, and many

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 491

more. These names, however, indicate similarities to over thirty other
perfectly distinct families.

It seems clear, then, that these differences have reference not to
any inherent tendency, but to the structure and organization, the
habits and requirements, of the plant. Of course, it may be that the
present form has reference not to existing, but to ancient, conditions,
which renders the problem all the more difficult. Nor do I at all
intend to maintain that every form of leaf is, or ever has been, neces-
sarily that best adapted to the circumstances, but only that they are
constantly tending to become so, just as water always tends to find its
own level.

But, however this may be, if my main argument is correct, it opens
out a very wide and interesting field of study, for every one of the
almost infinite forms of leaves must have some cause and explanation.
— Contemporary Review.

+»»

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING.

By E. E. LELAND.

THE ever-recurring question as to the methods which should be
adopted for supplying the country with currency promises soon
again to demand attention, and to be beset with all its old-time per-
plexities. It is the riddle which is presented in turn to each civilized
nation, and, although the penalty of default is severe, no satisfactory
answer has as yet been found.

The national banking system, which has frequently been declared
to be the best yet devised, can not be said to offer a solution, for, al-
though it served its temporary purpose very well, it lacks, so far as
its currency is concerned, the essential element of permanency, being
based upon a public debt that, fortunately, is not a perpetuity. Re-
cently grave concern has been felt and expressed over the prospective
contraction, if not total withdrawal, of the national-bank circulation
which is likely to result from the diminished supply of Government
bonds. The prospect is generally deplored. Sundry bills were intro-
duced into the late Congress, looking to a mitigation or postponement
of the consequent evils, but no conclusive action was taken, nor is
there much reason to expect that the subject will receive serious con-
gressional consideration until it compels attention.

It is true that the advocates of a let-alone policy might justify
their course by pointing out that the danger of a currency contrac-
tion does not appear so imminent as it did nine months ago. Owing
to diminished revenue, there have been no recent bond calls, and the
reduction of the debt is for the time arrested. But the prices of
bonds have so enhanced as substantially to rob the business of issuing

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

notes of profit, and, even were the banks willing to keep out their cir-
culation for the small recompense which now comes to them, little reli-
ance can be placed upon a continuance of the present conditions. The
reduction of the Government debt will be resumed, nor is the delay
likely to give more time than will be needed in which to devise
and put into operation some other plan for furnishing a currency
supply.

There are many men — so many as to constitute a party considerable
in number — who have an ever-ready remedy to administer for this or
any similar trouble which threatens our financial system ; that is, an
additional supply of legal-tender notes. It is not intended here to dis-
cuss this proposition. The evils which are certain to attend an un-
limited or largely increased issue of legal tenders have so often been
shown, and the greenback clamor has so far died away, that there are
grounds for the hope, which let us cherish, that a majority will not call
for a Government paper circulation, albeit the United States Supreme
Court has decided that Congress has uncontrolled power to create and
regulate such an issue. For the purpose of this paper, therefore, it
will be assumed that resort will not be had to legal-tender notes for a
supply of paper money when the bond-secured national-bank notes
shall be withdrawn.

There is a school of economists — a title that can not properly be
applied to the greenbackers — who hold that it is radically unsound
and productive of evil for banks to assume the function of furnishing
money ; who maintain that there should be no money other tban a
metallic currency, or one which would in all respects act precisely as
a metallic currency acts, because not only based upon but actually
representing specie of a like amount deposited and held for its redemp-
tion. This school would doubtless regard the time of the retirement
of national-bank notes as presenting an opportunity for inaugurating
their system too good to be lost. Very recently suggestions in this
line have been made and widely considered as, perhaps, offering solu-
tions of both the paper currency and the silver problems ; and, indeed,
if the experiment were a wise one, it never could be made with less
prospect of serious disturbance during the transition period, for the
process is already begun by the issue of gold and silver certificates
which could be increased, if specie were forthcoming, as bank-notes
were withdrawn. If any plan embodying this idea were adopted, we
should then have a system somewhat similar to that by which England
has been supplied with paper money since the adoption of Peel's act
in 1844. Under that act the Bank of England is now authorized to
issue notes to the amount of fifteen million pounds sterling upon Gov-
ernment securities ; beyond this sum the amount of circulation is de-
termined solely by the amount of bullion which the public chooses to
deposit, for the bank is bound to buy gold bullion at the mint price,
whenever offered. The banking department and the issue depart-

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 493

merit are separately managed, and of the latter the directors have no
control. Professor Price says that it is not a department of the hank
in any sense ; that " it is a self-acting institution of the state, work-
ing on the bank's premises, by rules laid down by the state, and abso-
lutely beyond the control of the directors."

If the terms of Peel's act were at all times rigidly adhered to, this
description of the operation of the issue department would be correct.
As a matter of fact, however, they are not adhered to, but are sus-
pended in times of financial stress, and the directors assume control of
the issue department for the relief of the strain upon the banking de-
partment and the business community. Three times since the adop-
tion of the act has its operation been suspended. The supposition that
a " suspension of the act " involves a suspension of specie payments is,
perhaps, still common enough to warrant an explanation of its true
nature.

The Bank of England is the custodian of the principal portion of
the reserve of all the banks and bankers of England, and to it the
latter must look for money to meet the excessive and unusual demands
that are made upon them in time of panic. At such times, therefore,
a rapid inroad is made upon the bank's supply of gold, and, if the act
of 1844 continues in force, a point is soon reached where the directors
are compelled, for self-protection, to cease discounting even upon the
best securities. Whenever the strain becomes unendurable, an appeal
is made to the Government, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
to suspend the act. If granted, the legal restrictions upon the bank's
note-issues are removed, and the directors are authorized largely to
increase their issue without reference to the amount of bullion in their
vaults ; the effect of which is that for the time both departments of the
bank are under the management and control of the directors. They
are not likely to use this privilege recklessly, for the obligation to
redeem their notes in gold on demand remains in full effect. More-
over, for some reason not wholly apparent, it has become a custom — so
far as three instances can make a custom — for the Government to stipu-
late that the bank shall charge a very high rate of interest, say ten or
twelve per cent, upon the extra note-issues, the profit thereon to go to
the state. The result of this is* that prudence and self-interest com-
bine to make the directors use the powers conferred upon them most
sparingly, and they do so. In but one instance has there been an over-
issue. This was in 1857, and to the extent of eight hundred thousand
pounds. In 1847 and in I860 the fact of suspension proved sufficient
to allay the panic and to avert, at least, its worst consequences.

A recent writer recommends the mechanical and local separation
of the issue department from the Bank of England to a Government
office, as tending to the propagation of clearer ideas on the subject of
note currency. No suggestion is offered as to the way in which relief
could be afforded in emergencies similar to those which have hereto-

494

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fore been met by extending the bank's powers, nor is it obvious how
any could be given except through the agency of the bank.

Extending the comparison between the English system and that of
the United States, with the national-bank notes retired, the legal tend-
ers, although much greater in volume, might be likened to the seventy-
five million dollars that the Bank of England issues against its securi-
ties, while the bank's specie-secured issues would find their parallel in
the gold and silver certificates. These now amount to something more
than two hundred and fifty million dollai's. They have not very far
to go before they would equal the national-bank notes outstanding, and
the expediency of largely increasing the issue is freely discussed.

But in the workings of the two systems here compared there would
be an important difference.

When the act of 1844 was being urged, its advocates recognized
that in extreme cases a rigid adherence to its provisions might be
mischievous, and special governmental interference be found neces-
sary. Experience has shown that such compelling emergencies do
arise. Warned by this, Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
introduced into the House of Commons in 1873 a bill providing for
automatic suspension, so to speak. He proposed that the Government
might lawfully suspend the bank act when certain conditions obtained,
conditions presumed to be indicative of a panic ; but the bill was not
received with favor, and was withdrawn. AVhat the effect of a strict
adherence to the act in time of panic would be, it is difficult to pre-
dict— it has never been tried.

It is not easy to see how, even if it were made lawful, relief could
be given in the case of a strictly governmental issue, consisting, for
example, of specie certificates and legal tenders. If additional issues
of the latter were authorized, how, in time of peace, would they be put
.dioat ? Certainly few would be willing to have the Treasury Depart-
ment take up the business of banking and make advances on miscella-
neous securities. But the time would certainly come when the tem-
porary relief given by clearing-house certificates would be found to
be, or at least be thought to be, inadequate, and an increase of currency
be demanded. Could there be any assurance that the power to make
such increase resting in Government officials would be exercised with
the caution shown by the Governor and Company of the Bank of Eng-
land, who are restrained by considerations both of prudence and profit ?
An illustration of the course likely to be pursued was furnished in
1872-73, when forty-four million dollars of legal tenders, which had
been retired by Secretary McCulloch, were dubbed a reserve, the re-
issue of which was demanded and granted to the extent of twenty-six
million dollars. There are ample grounds for the fear that any sys-
tem under which the Government should furnish, in whatever form,
the whole supply of the paper money of the country, would keep
us constantly on the lee -shore of an inconvertible paper currency,

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 495

the capacity of which for working mischief has often been pointed
out.

It is not probable, however, that there will be any wide departure
from existing methods. Outside of the straggling ranks of the
greenbackers the national-bank notes are regarded with favor. It
can not be gainsaid that the period during which they have been in
existence has been a very comfortable one, so far as a good currency
for the people could make it so. Whatever theoretical objections
there may be to the system, it has worked singularly well, is justly
popular, and it is easy to understand why its probable restriction and
ultimate discontinuance should be looked forward to with concern.

There has been little or nothing in the way of suggestion as to
what can be done to perpetuate the national-bank issues. Various
plans have been proposed for prolonging their existence ; but closely
adhering, as all these plans do, to the theory of a bond-secured cur-
rency, they are confined within narrow limits.

Secretary Folger and Secretary McCulloch, Comptrollers Knox
and Cannon, have substantially agreed in their reports for two years
past in recommending — 1. The removal of the tax on bank circulation ;
2. An increase of the percentage of currency which the banks may
issue against bonds deposited ; 3. The conversion of long bonds into
three, or two and a half per cents, the latter being less likely to be
withdrawn for reasons having no reference to the amount of circula-
tion needed ; and bills were introduced in both Houses of the last Con-
gress providing for the practical application of these recommendations.
Their adoption would, however, afford but temporary relief. It would
have the merit, no small one it may be said, of enabling us to travel
along the well-known road for a while longer, but it would only post-
pone the day when a solution of the currency problem must be con-
fronted.

The true solution has, by some of the gentlemen referred to, been
declared to be a reduction of the redundant revenue sufficient to retard
the retirement of bonds, and finally to arrest it when their volume
shall have reached, or closely approached, the amount requisite to
secure the national-bank circulation.

To retard the payment of the public debt by reducing taxation
would probably be expedient, it certainly would be popular ; but
wholly to arrest payment, and, for such a purpose, maintain the debt
at a fixed sum, would be another and a very questionable matter.
Moreover, a currency thus regulated as to volume would lack the
important element of adaptability, or, as it is sometimes called, elas-
ticity, for it is not likely that any one would go so far as to suggest
that the bond debt should be increased and decreased in accordance
with the demands for currency — a method which, if not otherwise
questionable, would be so clumsy and tardy in its operation as to serve
but poorly. Who in such case should decide what amount of cur-

496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rency and consequently of bonds would be needful ? The Secretary
of the Treasury or the congressional committee who should be called
upon to determine this point would require the same degree of omnis-
cience that would be required to fix the proper limit of irredeemable
legal tenders. The objections to any arbitrary regulation of the vol-
ume of currency have been so often pointed out as to make needless
their recital in this connection.

To maintain, for the purposes of bank-note security, a Government
debt anything in excess of the Government's needs, would be, in effect,
to levy a tax upon the community at large for distribution as a bounty
on bank-note circulation. It may be said that the benefits inuring to
the issuers would be slight and incidental — a not undue reward for
the service rendered— and that the real purpose would be the protec-
tion of the note-holder, which protection would be worth more than
its cost. Thus stated, the proposition would be to make the note-
holders a preferred class of creditors, secured at the public cost. It
would be pertinent to ask here, By what logical method is the con-
clusion reached that this preference should be given to the note-hold-
ers alone ? Are there not other classes of creditors with equal claims
for protection ? The depositors in savings-banks, the beneficiaries of
life-insurance policies, and divers other corporate and private trusts,
are now very largely secured by Government bonds, and it is not
easy to see why, if the note-holders are to have special protection,
these can not with perfect justice ask that they too shall continue to
be cared for by the Government. That such demands should be
acceded to few will assert, but it would be quite as proper for the
Government to furnish security for all as for a part. But it is idle
to discuss this proposition at length. Whatever differences of opinion
there may be as to the rate at which reduction of the debt should go
on, there is little difference as to the general principle that it should
be reduced as fast as may be consistent with a proper distribution of
the burden. The proposition that it is a good thing to pay one's
debts, when abundantly able to do so, is sound, and it applies to an
aggregate of individuals — the state — precisely as it does to a single
individual. Public opinion will doubtless demands it certainly would
be right in demanding, that the volume of the public debt shall be
regulated without reference to national-bank-note issues ; the idea
that it should, or might with propriety, be regulated with reference to
their needs, is radically unsound. Nor, it maybe added, are there any
reasons, economic or political, for a resort to such strained methods.

That a paper currency is one of the requirements of a great com-
mercial country is generally admitted. That such a currency can best
be furnished by banks of issue, if not so generally admitted, would
seem to be demonstrated by universal custom among civilized nations.
The issuance of circulating notes is a legitimate, if not necessary, func-
tion of the business of banking. It is one of the forms of the compli-

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 497

cated system of credit which has made commercial growth possible,
nor is there any reason why this particular form of banking obligation,
constituting, as it does, but a minor part of the total, should, when cre-
ated, have other or better safeguards than the remainder. The security
furnished by the capital of the banks, by the ability and integrity of
their management, aided by governmental supervision, which must
needs serve for the greater part of their liabilities, should be adequate
for the whole. The checks and precautions, the discrimination, which
are applied to the use of credit in other branches of banking, the pro-
tection which is found to answer for depositors and holders of checks and
drafts, should also be sufficient for the holders of that particular class
of " memoranda of claims " known as bank-notes. That this protec-
tion can be made practically efficient is amply proved by the history
of the national banking system in the United States. During an ex-
perience of more than twenty years the average annual loss to deposit-
ors has been only one twentieth of one per cent of the total.

The public have become so accustomed to the use of a bond-secured
currency, and have so generally credited the satisfactory results to the
feature of special security, that the suggestion of an unsecured cur-
rency, or, rather, a currency not secured by special deposits, is not
likely, at the outset, to be received with favor. To many it will re-
call the days of wild-cat banking, when the country was flooded with
money that was practically irredeemable, and wide-spread and serious
loss was inflicted on the community, especially upon the poorer classes,
by having worthless issues forced upon them. But there is little dan-
ger and no need of a revival of that vicious system.

The lessons of the past have not been wasted ; nor are we a " na-
tion of rascals," in spite of sundry recent revelations of rascality and
weakness. More and more, as civilization advances, does the tendency
of people to trust each other increase. Yearly the average of pru-
dence and trustworthiness grows larger. If not because of a stronger
sense of moral obligation, then because of a better appreciation of the
necessity therefor in the conduct of business, men show a growing
respect for each other's rights, and place a greater reliance upon the
relations of contract.

Mr. Spencer says, " Given a nation of perfectly honest men, and
nearly all trade among its members may be carried on by memoranda
of claims." We have not, it is needless to say, reached an ideal state
of perfect honesty — far from it. The adoption, therefore, of an abso-
lutely free banking system, without limitations or restrictions, would
be an experiment too hazardous to be tried. There is, however, a de-
gree of honesty which suffices to maintain a credit system of great ex-
tent and complexity, involving the use of enormous sums of promises
to pay, and the extension of that system to cover the use of the partic-
ular form of promises to pay known as bank-notes is logical, natural,
and, with proper restrictions, safe.

TOL. XXVII. — 32

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is true that notes which pass from hand to hand as money are
not scanned as closely as are other evidences of debt, nor can there be
the same discrimination exercised in their use. They must, if circu-
lated in small denominations, of necessity be taken by many who have
no means of forming correct conclusions as to the soundness of the
issues, and who can least afford to suffer loss. But the circulation of
small notes of any sort is to be deprecated. Adam Smith pointed out
the difference in the forms of money required for dealers and for con-
sumers ; that for the uses of the latter, paper money is not fitted, no
matter what its form or security. The soundness of this view has
been largely discussed since his time, but the preponderance of opin-
ion has been in its favor. Mr. McCulloch, in his recent report, recom-
mended the discontinuance of small notes. It would bring out a large
amount of silver and small gold, which furnish the best kind of money
for the smaller transactions of trade, and afford the best possible pro-
tection for the small dealers, the wage-earners — men, women, and
children — who suffer most from a defective currency.* If small notes
were retired, the smaller savings, the stocking-hoards, would consist
of gold and silver, and obviously it is best that this part of the coun-
try's reserve — no inconsiderable part — should be of specie. The ag-
gregate issue of legal-tender and national-bank notes of denominations
under ten dollars is about two hundred and twenty million dollars. It
is probable that nearly this entire amount could be replaced with gold
and silver before the point of specie saturation would be reached. Such
a volume of hard money would supply the best obtainable guarantee
against currency disturbances.

That, if relieved from the function of furnishing wage and pocket
money, a bank currency, suited for the larger operations of trade, and
yet not handicapped with the obligation of special bond deposits, could
be established with safety, may be asserted. That banks of issue can
be safely conducted and furnish a sound currency has been sufficiently
shown under conditions far more unfavorable than now obtain in the
United States. The Scotch banks are examples. So well have they
been conducted that Professor Jevons admitted that their system
would be an excellent one for general adoption, " if we were all
Scotchmen." It may be fairly doubted, however, whether the satis-
factory results in Scotland are wholly due to exceptional integrity,
sagacity, and caution on the part of Scottish managers. May it not
be that the bank-currency system, properly conducted, has had a fairer
trial in Scotland than elsewhere ?

One does not need to be very old to remember when this country,
especially the West, was dependent upon a paper currency that was,
for the most part, of a very trashy kind ; and to remember, also, that

* That the forced circulation of a debased coinage, by this or any other method, is
not intended to be advocated, need hardly be explained ; but a discussion of the silver
question is no part of this paper.

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 499

even then, and in that region, there were notable exceptions. Bank offi-
cials will remember how a stray note of the ugly issues of the State
Bank of Indiana, or the Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Com-
pany, coming in with a pile of gaudy wild-cats, used to " shine out like
a good deed in a naughty world," and was promptly sorted out and laid
away as a part of the reserve. Those banks, with a few others, hav-
ing relatively very large issues, were conducted safely through the
vicissitudes of those days, promptly redeeming their notes on the ad-
vent of the national system without the loss of a dollar to the holders.
But the honestly and prudently conducted banks of that period were
not numerous nor strong enough to redeem the vices nor avert the
evils of paper-money banking as it was then carried on. The story
of recklessness, fraud, and suffering does not need to be retold, and
no one would be willing to see the way opened for a repetition of its
experiences.

The conditions now are very different. The operation of the na-
tional banking system for twenty years has brought to its management
a class of trained and educated bankers, who are, for the most part,
fit custodians of the people's money, and to whom might be intrusted
the work of furnishing paper money for the country with greater
economy and less risk of loss than would attend the adoption of any
other system. The machinery is at hand, is in excellent working or-
der, and would need but slight modifications to fit it to perform its
work after the obligation to deposit Government bonds against note-
issues had been canceled. There are now over twenty-six hundred
national banks in operation. They have been organized and located,
not with reference to issuing currency, but to supply the legitimate
needs of the business community. To guard against the formation of
banks for purposes of circulation only, the right to issue might for the
present be confined to those now in existence, with a permanent pro-
vision that such right should be extended to new banks only after
three or five years of successful operation : no permits to be granted
except under the conditions now imposed as to location, ratio of capi-
tal to population, and of circulation to paid-up capital. A Govern-
ment bureau should continue its supervision, and should engrave,
print, and furnish the note impressions as a precaution against the
possibility of over-issues ; this and any other labor or expense imposed
upon the bureau to be paid for by a continuance of the tax on cur-
rency. Existing regulations as to reports, examinations, and control
in cases of bankruptcy should be maintained, and it might be well to
give preference to the claims of note-holders. Notes should, of course,
be redeemed in coin or legal tenders on demand, with provision for
central redemption. At present there is, practically, no redemption
except of mutilated notes. Under the system suggested redemption
would be real, and the amount of note circulation be, as it should be,
regulated by trade requirements, with no danger of a sudden and un-

5oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

necessary increase, such as has been seen in the former history of free
banking.

The question of the constitutional power of Congress to authorize
such a system can only be alluded to. It would very likely be raised ;
but it may be assumed that it would not prove an insuperable objec-
tion. It might be made a condition of granting charters or licenses to
banks that they should be required to lend a certain percentage of
their capital to the Government whenever called upon, and also under
proper restrictions be made depositories of public moneys ; thus, as has
been suggested, doing away with the expensive and primitive system
of local sub-treasuries.

Bankers to make money on their issues must keep them in circula-
tion, which could be done by the same means, and those only, that are
employed to build up a line of deposits ; that is to say, they must
establish their credit by promptly performing their engagements.
Governmental interference should be exercised solely with reference
to insistence upon such performance.

That in some cases there would be mismanagement, dishonesty,
and consequent loss, in the future as in the past, is certain ; but the con-
trol and supervision of banking should not, any more than that of
other branches of business, be regulated upon the hypothesis of fraud.
The losses which might come would be comparatively small, would
follow quickly upon their causes, would have the advantage of being
directly traceable, and so permit the prompt application of remedial
measures. With the existing means of swift communication, with the
wide distribution of national banks, and the watchfulness which they
employ toward each other, and, finally, with the smaller transactions
carried on by means of specie, the losses upon bank-notes would not
only be small, but would, for the most part, fall upon the banks them-
selves, they being the constant custodians of the greater part of the
currency ; and they could be trusted to see to it that only such circu-
lated as was worthy to have circulation.

This brings us to a suggestion which is put forth with much hesi-
tation, and only as a suggestion, notwithstanding it is believed that it
is sound in principle, and might be made safe in practice. It is simply
that the banks should assume the risk, and, as a whole, undertake to
protect the rest of the community from loss upon note-issues. To
effect this it would only be necessary, so far as legislation is concerned,
to continue in force that provision of the existing law which makes
national-bank notes a legal tender to national banks. It would seem
to be well-nigh certain that the banks could assume this risk of loss,
whatever it might prove to be, and still the business of issuing notes
afford a larger margin of profit than it now does. For this would be
but an application of the insurance principle to one class of the acci-
dents to which the banking business is liable. The banking interest,
as a whole, would undertake to indemnify the public against losses

THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL BANKING. 501

arising from tbe failure of individual banks to redeem their notes. As
to the nature and extent of such losses, they already have a much bet-
ter basis for estimating them than was available to life or fire and ma-
rine insurance companies in their inception. A perfectly trustworthy
" table of experience " is supplied by the record of the losses to deposi-
tors in national banks for the last twenty years ; these, as before
stated, have been only one twentieth of one per cent per annum. This
interval covers two periods of panic and consequent depression, and
may be presumed to have included most, if not all, of the vicissitudes
of the business. If from abundant caution the estimate of probable
loss should be put at tenfold that which past experience with the na-
tional system has shown, and the present Government tax on currency
be added, we should have a total of one and a half per cent on the
volume of currency to cover losses and expenses. The premium out
of which to pay this charge would be the interest on the excess of the
average amount of currency in circulation over the reserve required to
be held against it, or say from three to seven per cent, varying with
the state of the money market and the location of the banks. This
certainly offers an ample margin.

The idea is not altogether novel even in its application. It was
adopted in the case of the various branches of the State Bank of Indi-
ana, and worked satisfactorily. Slightly modified, it is applied by the
guarantee companies, which, for a much smaller premium, guarantee
employers against the fraud and insolvency of their servants. The
suggestion may be somewhat startling to bankers, who, as a class, are
proverbially and properly conservative, but the soundness of the pi*in-
ciple which underlies it has been demonstrated by long experience and
is constantly finding wider application. Bankers daily risk, without
thought of fear, far larger sums than such an insurance of currency
would involve upon guarantees that are much less stable, that is upon
the indemnity furnished by insurance companies, which, both as re-
gards sums at risk and premiums charged, conduct their business on
comparatively small margins. Should the liability seem too great if
extended commonly to all the banks, geographical districts might be
created with redemption centers, the mutual guarantee of the banks
not to extend beyond the limits of their districts.

Objection may be taken that such a system of currency would in-
crease the profits of banking. That it would do so, in some degree, is
probable, but it is not in the interest of that business that the sugges-
tion is made. The public have the deepest interest in the avoidance
of perturbations or disturbance in the currency supply. If the prin-
ciples presented be sound, and their application correct, it would seem
to be clear that the existing banks could continue their present circu-
lation, and guarantee it, with safety to themselves and their note-
holders ; and that thus might be accomplished the desideratum of
paying off the Government bonds, when the time comes, without can-

502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

celing the bank circulation. If, later, need should arise for a greater
volume of currency, arrangements might be devised for increasing the
circulation of existing banks or creating new ones. Obviously, the
banks themselves should, in such event, have a voice in determining
the methods by which this should be done, and in the selection of the
persons or corporations to whom the right of issue should be extended.
Similarly, in regard to examinations ; thoroughness should be assured,
nor need this be difficult. When the banks of a clearing-house are
called upon to care for some embarrassed member, a brief inspection
enables them correctly to determine the real condition of the appli-
cant ; they have a direct interest in getting at the facts. Examin-
ers should be chosen, or at least nominated, by the banks.

The bureau which supervises the other operations of the banks
could, with but little addition of labor or responsibility, conduct the
redemption of the notes of insolvent banks, and levy and collect what-
ever assessments might be needed to make good deficiencies.

But it is needless to enter into an elaboration of details ; they
would present no serious difficulties when, if ever, it became necessary
to deal with them.

It may be said of any suggestions in this connection, that, what-
ever opinion may be held of their worth, they are not premature, nor
without value, if they provoke the attention of men who are able to
do better thinking. The occasional desertion of national banks to the
ranks of state institutions, and the contemplated separation of others,
as well as the prospect of enforced relinquishment of circulation by
all, indicate, plainly enough, that it is none too soon to consider some
modification of the national banking system, if it is to be maintained,
and it has worked too well to be needlessly abandoned.

It would probably be assuming too much to expect that any system
of bank issues without special security, however surrounded by safe-
guards, would find present favor with our national legislators, or in-
deed secure many adherents. A few years ago, some of our ablest
financiers, both in and out of Congress, predicted that free banking
would follow swift upon the resumption of specie payments ; but pres-
ent indications do not point that way. More crude and less scientific
expedients are likely first to be tried — and to fail. But it seems not
over-presumptuous to predict that ultimately resort will be had to
some form of that system. Its convenience and economy are obvious,
and will assert themselves. The evils which it involves are such, and
such only, as are inherent in the general conduct of business, such as
will inhere so long as honesty and mutual confidence are imperfect ;
as these improve, the risks will lessen. While the causes exist, the
losses will fall ; there can be no perfect safeguards, nor of such as are
possible can a paternal government afford the best : they must be
looked for at the hands of the people themselves.

THE MECHANICS OF HANGING. 503

THE MECHANICS OF HANGING.

By JAMES BARR, M. D. '

AS the subject of the mode of carrying out executions has recently
engaged public attention, the present is perhaps an opportune
time for discussing the question in its scientific and humane bearings,
so that some more definite ideas may prevail as to the best method of
hanging, and that the details may not be entirely left to the caprice of
the executioner. When the law requires the death-sentence to be
meted out at the end of a hempen rope, the dictates of humanity de-
mand that all the details should be carried out in " decency and in
order," and with a minimum amount of suffering to the culprit, and
from this stand-point I shall treat the subject.

The mode of carrying out the sentence of the law, " be hanged by
the neck until you are dead," has usually been left to the discretion of
the hangman, the law taking no cognizance as to what is to be the
proximate cause of death. Calcraft invariably adopted the short drop
of about two feet and a half ; and if I may judge from some speci-
mens of his ropes, which are still to be seen at Kirkdale, death must
have been produced by a slow process of asphyxia. Marwood adopted
what is generally known as the long drop, of which he was supposed
by many to be the originator, though it was used long before his
time, both in Paris and in Ireland.

To Professor Haughlon we are indebted for a scientific exposition *
of the rationale of the long drop, and of the mode in which death
takes place. Dr. Haughton also gives an elaborate explanation of
the American method, which is a scientific modification of the old
naval method of running the culprit up to the yard-arm.

Having now briefly referred to the different modes of hanging
which have been adopted in executing criminals, we will be better
able to judge which is the best and most practical method when we
have considered the various causes of death. Professor Tidy f says
that " in hanging, as in drowning, death does not always take place in
exactly the same way. Thus, it may result from — (1) asphyxia ; (2)
cerebral hyperemia ; (3) a combination of asphyxia with apoplexy ;
(4) syncope ; (5) injury to the spinal cord and pneumogastrics (neuro-
paralytic death)."

Professor Hoffmann, \ of Vienna, says that, " in hanging, the noose
does not press directly on the larynx and the trachea, but almost al-
ways slips between the larynx and. the chin. In these cases the basis
of the tongue is pushed upward, and pressed against the posterior wall

* " Principles of Animal Mechanics," 18*73. f " Legal Medicine," part ii, p. 385.
% "British Medical Journal," December 21, 1878, and May 10, 1879.

5°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the pharynx, completely closing it. The most important agent,
however, in this kind of death is the compression of the larger vessels
and the cervical portion of the vagus nerve, the upper portion of the
carotid being pressed against the transverse processes of the cervical
vertebrae before it branches off into the external and internal carotids,
and the inner coat of the vessel being ruptured. The jugular veins
are compressed at the same time, and the brain can neither receive any
more blood nor allow that which it contains already to flow away ; its
irritability is therefore extinct. The very important part which both
the vagus and the vessels take in causing death by hanging is clearly
shown through the following observations : 1. Loss of consciousness
following immediately the compression caused by the rope at the
moment when the noose is drawn tight by the weight of the body.
The truth of this assertion is proved by the fact that no person who
commits suicide by hanging ever attempts to rid himself of the rope
which throttles him, although he might do so easily by standing up-
right, as the body is not always suspended above the surface of the
ground. 2. The rapidity with which death ensues and the beating of
the heart stops. The few struggling respirations which generally
occur in asphyxia shortly before death have not been observed in per-
sons who have been hung. It is also well known how difficult it is to
restore such patients to life. Death by hanging is, then, complex. It
results from the occlusion of the respiratory tubes, from the sudden
interruption of the passage of blood into the brain, and possibly from
arrest of the circulation determined by the compression of the vagi
nerves." These observations of Professor Hoffmann obviously refer to
cases of constriction of the neck without dislocation of the vertebras,
and show how death should take place rather than how it does in
cases of the short drop. The constriction of the neck is not usually
so complete as he has assumed ; the carotids are not completely oblit-
erated, as shown by the pulse in the temporal artery, and by the grad-
ual increasing congestion of the head — owing to the obstruction to
the venous return — until at last the tongue is protruded out of the
mouth ; nor is the vagus much pressed upon, as evidenced by the
long continuance of the heart's beats in manv cases. It shows rather
a paucity of reasoning to infer immediate loss of consciousness because
no suicide " ever attempts to rid himself of the rope which throttles
him." A suicide is a very unlikely individual to change his purpose
during the short period which elapses between suspension and loss of
consciousness.

Dr. Taylor * states that " death from hanging appears to take place
very rapidly, and without causing any suffering to the person. Pro-
fessor Tidy, also, speaks of the painless nature of death from hang-
ing ; while Professor Haughton, in his paper read before the Surgical
Society of Dublin, says that " the old system of taking a convict's life
* "The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence," 1865, p. 651.

THE MECHANICS OF HANGING. 505

by suffocation is inhumanly painful, unnecessarily prolonged, and
revolting to those whose duty it is to be present." Those who speak
of the painless nature of death by strangulation arrive at this conclu-
sion from the fact that many cases of suicide are not completely sus-
pended, and that if they wished they could easily relieve the constric-
tion by assuming the erect posture, and in other cases of recovery
from attempted suicide by hanging there is no recollection of any
suffering. It should be remembered, however, that there is a great
difference between the mental attitude of the suicide and one who is
about to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. In the former case
he is regardless, and perhaps also not very sensitive, of a little suffer-
ing, while in the latter every nerve is braced up to resist the inevitable
result. Moreover, in those cases of recovery the loss of recollection of
suffering does not prove that there was none. It might almost as well
be said that, because in many cases of recovery from meningitis there
was no remembrance of any suffering, therefore there was none. No
doubt, the pain in hanging can under no circumstances be very acute,
yet when we see a culprit heaving his chest and almost raising the
whole body in his struggles for breath we must conclude that there is
at least a considerable amount of mental torture.

While death from asphyxia as ordinarily brought about by the
short drop is a barbarism which should not be tolerated in this humani-
tarian age, yet it might be accomplished without much suffering. If
this mode of death be determined upon, then the constriction should
be complete, and the compression of the blood-vessels, both veins and
arteries, and if possible also the nerves, is of even more importance in
the production of rapid unconsciousness than the occlusion of the
windpipe. In accomplishing this object the position of the noose is of
importance ; it should never be placed over the larynx, as the rigidity
of that organ prevents complete compression and also shields the
blood-vessels. Below the larynx would perhaps be the best position,
but then there would always be the danger of the noose shifting up
to the least desirable spot, therefore the most suitable position would
seem to be between the hyoid bone and lower jaw. The rope should
be thin and pliable, and not very elastic (a silk rope would perhaps be
the best), the ring should be placed under the lower jaw, and the drop
should be long enough to compress windpipe, blood-vessels, and nerves.
If a half -inch silk rope were used I should think a drop of from four
to six feet, according to the weight of the prisoner, would be sufficient.
As to deaths from cerebral hyperemia, and its combination with as-
phyxia, they are merely modifications of the latter form of death, and
result from incomplete constriction, the windpipe not being quite oc-
cluded, while the venous return is obstructed, but not the arterial
supply. They are thus rather slow forms of death, and consequently
not desirable. Death from syncope may be associated with any mode
of hanging, but is perhaps most frequently connected with the long

5o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

drop. It is about the most rapid and least painful, though perhaps
the rarest form of death. In a case of syncope, I have seen the heart's
action cease in two minutes from the time the bolt was drawn. Fear
largely contributes to this mode of death.

It now remains for us to consider death by dislocation or fracture
of the cervical vertebra?, with consequent laceration of the spinal cord.
It is frequently supposed that the injury arises from rupture of the
transverse ligament of the atlas and pressure on the cord by the odon-
toid process, but, if ever this does occur, it must be extremely rare.
Rupture of the transverse ligament could only take place when the
rope was adjusted very high in the neck, with the ring directly in
front or behind. And even then the odontoid process would be more
likely to break than the ligament. The destructive effect occurs at
the point on which the strain is brought to bear, and so the seat of
injury varies in different cases. I have seen it take place in the fol-
lowing situations : Complete separation between the second and third
cervical vertebras and fracture of the odontoid process at its junction
with the body of the axis ; oblique fracture through the body of the
axis, leaving the upper fragment with attached odontoid process in
situ, and fracture of the arch separating it from the body of the axis ;
complete separation between the second and third cervical vertebras
above the intervertebral disk, also slight separation and tearing of
ligaments between the atlas and the axis ; and complete dislocation
between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebras. In this latter case the
ring hitched on the chin, and the opposite part of the noose was low
in the neck, so that the long leverage action determined the low posi-
tion of the injury. In every case the vertebras were separated at the
point of injury for at least an inch, the spinal cord was severed, and
the vertebral arteries and all the ligaments were torn across.

The shock to the nervous system produces an immediate loss of
consciousness, with complete paralysis of all the voluntary muscles.
It takes a body moving under the influence of gravity three quarters
of a second to fall through the space of nine feet ; and, owing to the
velocity acquired, according to the law of uniformly accelerated mo-
tion, the time occupied in the last seven inches — during which the
stretching and tightening of the rope occurs — is only '0225 of a sec-
ond. If to this we add, say, "0275 for the elasticity of the rope, then
the whole time during which the shock could be felt is only *05, or
one twentieth of a second. Even from this we must deduct the time
which it takes for the nervous impression to travel to the sensorium
and back, but, as the nerve-current travels at the rate of one hundred
feet per second, this is so slight that, like the atmospheric resistance
to the falling body, it may be left out of account. Although loss of
consciousness, and it is with this that humanitarians are chiefly con-
cerned, is instantaneous, yet death, as evidenced by the cessation of
the heart's action, does not take place so rapidly. It is possible in

THE MECHANICS OF HANGING. 507

some cases that the cardio-inhibitory center may be stimulated, or the
vagi compressed, so as to immediately arrest the beat of the heart,
yet I am convinced that this is the exception, and not the rule. The
respiratory and vaso-motor centers are at once paralyzed. I have
never seen even the faintest involuntary gasp, and the arteries feel at
once to have lost tone. The excito-motor ganglia of the heart keep
up its action, in the majority of cases, for some minutes independently
of the central nervous system, and its arrest is probably brought
about by a process of asphyxia. The immediate cessation of all respir-
atory movements deprives the heart of all assistance in carrying on
the circulation, and prevents the lungs from becoming surcharged
with blood, as in ordinary cases of asphyxia, but the other signs of
death from that cause are usually present, such as turgescence of the
right side of the heart and general venous system ; great lividity of
the face ; swelling, and perhaps protrusion, of the tongue. It should
be remembered that these latter signs are best observed during sus-
pension, because when the body is taken down hypostasis occurs
quickly owing to the great fluidity of the blood, the tongue recedes
within the mouth, and the general lividity on the upper surface of
the body disappears, to reappear in the most dependent parts. The
right side of the heart soon becomes incapable of driving the unoxi-
dized blood through the lungs ; the left ventricle at first readily pro-
pels the blood into the lax arteries, but soon the supply is diminished
and the contraction becomes feeble, and at the same time the blood is
accumulating in the venous system, and thus tending to equalize the
pressure, and so at last the left ventricle is unable to drive its modicum
of blood through the systemic capillaries. We have thus at the same
time both sides of the heart unable to perform their work, and cessa-
tion of the cardiac action is the result. The time during which I have
observed the heart's action after dislocation of the cervical vertebras
has ranged from two to thirteen minutes. As Professor Haughton
has shown, the destructive effect on the neck of the criminal is in pro-
portion to the vis viva which is acquired by the weight of the culprit
and length of the drop ; and, if the drop be long enough, the vertebras
are certain to be dislocated, no matter what be the position of the ring
or thickness of the rope. The vis viva in any case is equivalent to
half the mass multiplied by the square of the terminal velocity. Let
W represent the weight of the criminal, and S the length of the drop,
then the formula will be :

1 1 W

-MV8 = ^26S = WS,

ii VT til

or the weight of the criminal multiplied by the length of the drop
expresses in foot-pounds the amount of work expended on the neck of
the criminal. I have not complicated the formula with the co-efficient
of the elasticity of the rope — which is very slight — as we will devote
some attention to the character of the rope further on. I would now

5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

modify Dr. Haughton's rules by substituting, say, 1,260 foot-pounds
for 2,240. If the neck of the criminal be small and delicate, or the
rope very fine, then it would be well to calculate on a lower basis —
say, 1,120 foot-pounds. Thus, a man weighing 140 pounds would
require a drop of nine feet (1,260 -J- 140 = 9), and one weighing 120
pounds should have ten feet and a half (1,260 ~ 120 = 10|). The rope
should not be too thick nor too elastic, otherwise the abrupt shock will
be broken, and the advantages of the long drop lost ; but, on the
other hand, it should not be too thin nor too inelastic, as then there
is not merely the risk of the rope breaking, but also of snapping the
head off the culprit. The rope should be of the finest and best
hemp, pliable, and capable of bearing a strain of at least a ton and a
half. About three fourths to seven eighths of an inch in diameter
will be found a convenient thickness, and every rope should be tested
before being used. I have been told by the master of a ship that, if
in the manufacture of the rope the hemp be run through oil, it makes
the rope much more pliable. It would certainly prevent it from be-
coming stiff when exposed during a wet morning. The iron hooks
and couplings to which the rope is attached should be inspected on
each occasion.

There has been a great difference of opinion regarding the position
of the ring ; Professor Haughton recommends that it be placed under
the chin, while Dr. Barker, of Melbourne, would have it on the nape of
the neck. When the ring is placed in the latter position, the chin
naturally falls forward on the sternum, and the rope has no leverage
action whatever to assist in dislocation ; and, moreover, the noose
does not tighten well on the neck, but the ring lies against the occi-
put ; so this position is not only the worst for producing luxation, but
also for strangulation. When the ring is under the jaw or chin there
is a leverage of several inches, the head is thrown back or to one side,
and the noose firmly constricts the neck. In the stretching of the
rope the noose tightens several inches ; if, therefore, the ring be placed
under the angle of the lower jaw on either side, and directed forward,
it will be drawn under the chin in the act of tightening. The noose
should be placed as high in the neck as possible, and drawn just suf-
ficiently tight to prevent it slipping out of position while the body is
falling.

If those in authority would lay down a few simple rules as to the
manner in which executions should be performed, then it would not
require much science to carry them out. These rules might perhaps
also have the effect of relegating the executioner more into obscurity,
and dispel all illusionary ideas as to his being the possessor of a mystic
craft, or one to be feted by the populace and interviewed by the press
in order to satisfy a morbid public taste. — Lancet.

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 509
DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY.

Br Sib HENKY THOMPSON.

[Concluded.]

ANOTHER agent in the combination to maintain for the man of
advancing age his career of flesh-eater is the dentist. Nothing
is more common at this period of life than to hear complaints of indi-
gestion experienced, so it is affirmed, because mastication is imper-
fectly performed for want of teeth. The dentist deftly repairs the
defective implements, and the important function of chewing the
food can be henceforth performed w7ith comfort. But, without any
intention to justify a doctrine of final causes, I would point out the
significant fact that the disappearance of the masticating powers is
mostly coincident with the period of life when that species of food
which most requires their action — viz., solid animal fiber — is little,
if at all, required by the individual. It is during the latter third of
his career that the softer and lighter foods, such as well-cooked
cereals, some light mixed animal and vegetable soups, and also fish,
for which teeth are barely necessary, are particularly valuable and
appropriate. And the man with imperfect teeth who conforms to
Nature's demand for a mild, non-stimulating dietary in advanced years
will mostly be blessed with a better digestion and sounder health
than the man who, thanks to his artificial machinery, can eat and does
eat as much flesh in quantity and variety as he did in the days of
his youth. Far be it from me to undervalue the truly artistic achieve-
ments of a clever and experienced dental surgeon, or the comfort
which he affords. By all means let us have recourse to his aid when
our natural teeth fail, for the purpose of vocal articulation, to say
nothing of their relation to personal appearance : on such grounds
the artificial substitutes rank among the necessaries of life in a civil-
ized community. Only let it be understood that the chief end of
teeth, so far as mastication is concerned, has in advancing age been to
a great extent accomplished, and that they are now mainly useful
for the purposes just named. But I can not help adding that there are
some grounds for the belief that those who have throughout life from
their earliest years consumed little or no flesh, but have lived on a
diet chiefly or wholly vegetarian, will be found to have preserved
their teeth longer than those who have always made flesh a prominent
part of their daily food.

Then there is that occasional visit to the tailor, who, tape in hand,
announces in commercial monotone to the listening clerk the various
measurements of our girth, and congratulates us on the gradual in-
crease thereof. He never in his life saw you looking so well, and
" fancy, sir, you are another inch below your armpits " — a good deal

5io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

below — " since last year ! " insidiously intimating that in another year
or so you will have nearly as fine a chest as Heenan ! And you, poor
deluded victim, are more than half willing to believe that your in-
creasing size is an equivalent to increasing health and strength, espe-
cially as your wife emphatically takes that view, and regards your
augmenting portliness with approval. Ten years have now passed
away since you were forty, and by weight twelve stone and a half — a
fair proportion for your height and build. Now you turn the scale to
one stone more, every ounce of which is fat ; extra weight to be carried
through all the labors of life. If you continue your present dietary
and habits, and live five or seven years more, the burden of fat will
be doubled ; and that insinuating tailor will be still congratulating
you. Meantime you are " running the race of life " — a figure of speech
less appropriate to you at the present moment than it formerly was —
handicapped by a weight which makes active movement difficult, up-
stair ascents troublesome, respiration thick and panting. Not one
man in fifty lives to a good old age in this condition. The typical
man of eighty or ninety years, still retaining a respectable amount
of energy of body and mind, is lean and spare, and lives on slender
rations. Neither your heart nor your lungs can act easily and
healthily, being oppressed by the gradually gathering fat around.
And this because you continue to eat and drink as you did, or even
more luxuriously than you did, when youth and activity disposed of
that moiety of food which was consumed over and above what the body
required for sustenance. Such is the import of that balance of unex-
pended aliment which your tailor and your foolish friends admire, and
the gradual disappearance of which, should you recover your senses
and diminish it, they will still deplore, half frightening you back to
your old habits again by saying, " You are growing thin : what can
be the matter with you?" Insane and mischievous delusion !

It is interesting to observe that the principle I have thus endeav-
ored to illustrate and support, little as it is in accordance with the pre-
cept and practice of modern authority, was clearly enunciated so long
ago as the sixteenth century. The writings of Luigi Cornaro, who was
born of noble family in Venice soon after the middle of the fifteenth
century, and was contemporary for seventy years with Titian, wrote
his first essay on the subject of regimen and diet for the aged when
eighty-three years of age, producing three others during the subse-
quent twelve years.* His object was to show that, with increasing
age and diminished powers, a corresponding decrease in the quantity

* " Discorsi delta Vita Solria, del Signor Luigi Cornaro." An English edition, with
translation, was published by Benjamin White, at Horace's Head, in Fleet Street, Lon-
don, 1768. Cornaro's first work was published in Padua in 1658. In his last, a letter
written to Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, he gives a description of his health and vigor
when ninety-five years old. A paper in the " Spectator " was one of the first notices of
him in this country. See vol. iii, No. 195.

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 511

of food must be taken in order to preserve health. He died at Padua
" without any agony, sitting in an elbow-chair, being above one hun-
dred years old."
Thus he writes :

There are old lovers of feeding who say that it is necessary they should eat
and drink a great deal to keep up their natural heat, which is constantly diminish-
ing as they advance in years ; and that it is, therefore, their duty to eat heartily,
and of such things as please their palate, be they hot, cold, or temperate ; and
that, were they to lead a sober life, it would be a short one. To this I answer
that our kind mother, Nature, in order that old men may live still to a greater
age, has contrived matters so that they should be able to subsist on little, as I
do, for large quantities of food can not be digested by old and feeble stomachs.
... By always eating little the stomach, not being much burdened, need not
wait long to have an appetite. It is for this reason that dry bread relishes so
well with me; and I know it from experience, and can with truth affirm, I find
such sweetness in it that I should be afraid of sinning against temperance, were
it not for my being convinced of the absolute necessity of eating of it, and that
we can not make, use of a more natural food. And thou, kind parent Nature,
who actest so lovingly by thy aged offspring, in order to prolong his days, hast
contrived mattters so in his favor, that he can live upon very little; and, in
order to add to the favor, and do him still greater service, hast made him sensi-
ble, that as in his youth he used to eat twice a day, when he arrives at old age
he ought to divide that food, of which he was accustomed before to make but
two meals, into four; because, thus divided, it will be more easily digested; and,
as in his youth he made but two collations in the day, he should, in his old age,
make four, provided, however, he lessens the quantity as his years increase.

And this is what I do, agreeably to my own experience ; and, therefore, my
spirits, not oppressed by much food, but barely kept up, are always brisk, espe-
cially after eating, so that I am obliged then to sing a song, and afterward to
write.

Nor do I ever find myself the worse for writing immediately after meals,
nor is my understanding ever clearer, nor am I apt to be drowsy, the food I
take being in too small a quantity to send up any fumes to the brain. Oh, how
advantageous it is to an old man to eat but little 1 Accordingly I, who know it,
eat but just enough to keep body and soul together.

Cornaro ate of all kinds of food, animal as well as vegetable, but
in very small quantity, and he drank moderately of the light wine of
his country, diminishing his slender rations as age increased. I am
quite aware that I am reciting a story which must be familiar to some
of the readers of this review. But it is by no means widely known,
and is too apt an example of the value of the law under consideration
not to be referred to here.

It must now be clearly understood, as a general rule for men at all
ages, that the amount of food ingested ought to accord within certain
narrow limits with the amount of force employed for the purposes of
daily life. But there is a certain qualification, apparent but not real,
of the principle thus enunciated which must be referred to here, in
order to prevent misunderstanding or misinterpretation of my mean-

5i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing in relation to one particular. It is right and fitting that a certain
amount of storage material, or balance, should exist as a reserve in
the constitution of every healthy man. Every healthy individual,
indeed, necessarily possesses a stored amount of force, which will
stand him in good stead when a demand arises for prolonged unusual
exertion, or when any period of enforced starvation occurs, as dur-
ing a lingering fever or other exhausting disease. The existence of
this natural and healthy amount of reserved force is of course pre-
supposed throughout all my remarks, and its extreme value is taken
for granted. That undue amount of stored nutriment, that balance
which has been referred to as prejudicial to the individual, is a quan-
tity over and above the natural reserve produced by high health ;
for, when augmented beyond that point, the material takes the form
of diseased deposit, and ceases to be an available source of nutriment.
Even the natural amount of store or reserve is prone to exceed the
necessary limit in those who are healthy or nearly so. Hence it is
that in all systems of training for athletic exploits — which is sim-
ply a process of acquiring the highest degree of health and strength
attainable, in view of great or prolonged exertion — some loss of
weight is almost invariably incurred in developing a perfect condi-
tion. In other words, almost any man who sets himself to acquire by
every means in his power the best health possible for his system does
in the process necessary thereto throw off redundant materials, the
presence of which is not consistent with the high standard of function
required. Thus what is sometimes called " overtraining " is a condi-
tion in which the storage is reduced too much, and some weakening is
incurred thereby ; while " undertraining " implies that the useless
fatty and other matters have not been sufficiently got rid of, so that
the athlete is encumbered by unnecessary weight, and is liable to need-
less embarrassments, telling against his chances in more ways than one.
The exact and precise balance between the two conditions is the aim
of the judicious trainer.

We are thus led to the next important consideration, namely,
that although broad rules or principles of diet may be enunciated as
applicable to different classes of people in general, no accurate adap-
tation to the individual is possible without a knowledge of his daily
habits and life, as well as to some extent of his personal peculiarities.
No man, for example, can tell another what he can or ought to eat,
without knowing what are the habits of life and work — mental and
bodily — of the person to be advised. Notwithstanding which, no
kind of counsel is more frequently tendered in common conversation
by one stranger with another, than that which concerns the choice of
food and drink. The adviser feels himself warranted, by the experi-
ence that some particular combination of nourishment suits his own
stomach, to infer without hesitation that this dish will be therefore
acceptable to the stomachs of all his neighbors. Surely the intelli-

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 513

gence of such a man is as slender as his audacity and presumption
are large. It would not he more preposterous if, having with infinite
pains obtained a last representing precisely the size and the peculiari-
ties in form of his own foot, he forthwith solemnly adjured all other
persons to adopt boots made upon that model, and on none other !
Only it may be assumed that there is probably more difference be-
tween stomachs and their needs among different individuals than
among the inferior extremities referred to for the purpose of illustra-
tion. Thus, in regard of expenditure of food, how great is the dif-
ference between that of a man who spends ten or twelve hours of
the day at the work of a navvy, as an agricultural laborer in harvest-
time, or in draining or trenching land, as a sawyer, a railway porter,
or a bricklayer's laborer, or let me add that of an ardent sportsman,
as compared with the expenditure of a clerk who is seated at the
desk, of individuals engaged in literary and artistic pursuits, demand-
ing a life mostly sedentary and spent in-doors, with no exercise but
that which such persons voluntarily take as a homage to hygienic
duty, and for a short period borrowed at some cost from engagements
which claim most of their time and nearly all their energies ! While
the manual laborers rarely consume more food than they expend,
and are, if not injured by drink, or by undue exposure to the
weather, mostly hale and hearty in consequence, the latter are often
martyrs to continued minor ailments, which gradually increase, and
make work difficult, and life dreary. Few people will believe how
easy it is in most instances to meet the difficulty by adopting appro-
priate food, and that such brain-workers can really enjoy a fair degree
of health and comfort by living on light food, which does not require
much force to digest, and much muscular activity to assimilate — a
diet, moreover, which is important to some of these from another
point of view — the financial one — inasmuch as it is at least less costly
by one half than the conventional meals which habit or custom pre-
scribes alike to large classes of men in varied conditions of life.
But there is another and more important economic gain yet to be
named, as realizable through the use of a light and simple dietary. It
is manifested by the fact that a greater expenditure of nerve-power
is demanded for the digestion of heavy meat meals than for the
lighter repasts which are suitable to the sedentary ; from which fact
it results of course that this precious power is reserved for more useful
and more delightful pursuits than that of mere digestion, especially
when this is not too well performed.

But those who have little time for exercise, and are compelled to
live chiefly within-doors, must endeavor to secure, or should have se-
cured for them as far as possible by employers, by way of compensa-
tion, a regular supply of fresh air without draughts, an atmosphere as
free from dust and other impurities as can be obtained, with a good
supply of light, and some artificial warmth when needed. These ne-
void xxtii. — 33

5 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cessities granted, cereal foods, such as well-made bread in variety, and
vegetable produce, including fruits, should form a great part of the
diet consumed, with a fair addition of eggs and milk if no meat is
taken, and little of other animal food than fish. On such a dietary,
and without alcoholic stimulants, thousands of such workers as I have
briefly indicated may enjoy with very little exercise far better health
and more strength than at present they experience on meat and heavy
puddings, beer, baker's bread, and cheese. Of course there are workers
who belong to neither of the two extreme classes indicated, and whose
habits can not be described as sedentary, but who occupy a middle
place between the two. For such, some corresponding modification of
the dietary is naturally appropriate. But it is a vulgar error to regard
meat in any form as necessary to life ; if for any it is necessary, it is
for the hard-working out-door laborers above referred to, and for these
a certain proportion is no doubt desirable. Animal flesh is useful also
as a concentrated form of nutriment, valuable for its portability ; and,
for the small space it occupies in the stomach, unrivaled in certain
circumstances. Like every other description of food, it is highly useful
in its place, but is by no means necessary for a large proportion of the
population. To many it has become partially desirable only by the
force of habit, and because their digestive organs have thus been
trained to deal with it, and at first resent a change. But, this being
gradually made, adaptation takes place, and the individual who has
consumed two or three meat meals daily with some little discomfort,
chiefly from being often indisposed to make active exertions, becomes,
after sufficient time has elapsed, stronger, lighter, and happier, as well
as better tempered, and manifestly healthier, on the more delicate
dietary sketched. People in general have very inadequate ideas of
the great power of habit alone in forming what they believe to be
innate personal peculiarities, or in creating conditions which are ap-
parently part of a constitutional necessity, laws of their nature and
essential to their existence. Many of these peculiarities are solely due
to habit, that is, to long continuance in a routine of action, adopted it
may be without motive or design ; and people are apt to forget that, if
a routine of a precisely opposite character had been adopted, precisely
opposite conditions would have been established, and opposite pecul-
iarities would have become dominant, as their contraries are now. Al-
terations in the dietary, especially of elderly persons, should be made
gradually and with caution. This condition fulfilled, a considerable
change may be effected with satisfactory results, when circumstances
render it necessary. To revert once more to the question of flesh-eat-
ing, it should be remarked that it appears to be by no means a natural
taste with the young. Few children like that part of the meal which
consists of meat, but prefer the pudding, the fruit, the vegetables, if
well dressed, which unhappily is not often the case. Many children
manifest great repugnance to meat at first, and are coaxed and even

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 515

scolded by anxious mothers until the habit of eating it is acquired.
Adopting the insular creed, which regards beef and mutton as neces-
sary to health and strength, the mother often suffers from groundless
forebodings about the future of a child who rejects flesh, and manifests
what is regarded as an unfortunate partiality for bread and butter and
pudding. Nevertheless, I am satisfied, if the children followed their
own instinct in that matter, the result would be a gain in more ways
than one. Certainly, if meat did not appear in the nursery until the
children sent for it, it would be rarely seen there, and the young ones
would as a rule thrive better on milk and eggs, with the varied produce
of the vegetable kingdom.

A brief allusion must be made to the well-known and obvious fact
that the surrounding temperature influences the demand for food, which
therefore should be determined as regards quantity or kind according
to the climate inhabited, or the season of the year as it affects each
climate. In hot weather, the dietary should be lighter, in the under-
stood sense of the term, than in cold weather. The sultry period of
our summer, although comparatively slight and of short duration, is
nevertheless felt by some persons to be extremely oppressive ; but this
is mainly due to the practice of eating much animal food or fatty mat-
ters, conjoined as it often is with the habit of drinking freely of fluids
containing a small quantity of alcohol. Living on cereals, vegetables,
and fruits, with some proportion of fish, and abstaining from alcoholic
drinks, the same person would probably enjoy the high temperature,
and be free from the thirst which is the natural result of consuming
needlessly substantial and heating food.

There is a very common term, familiar by daily use, conveying un-
mistakably to every one painful impressions regarding those who mani-
fest the discomforts indicated by it — I mean the term indigestion.
The first sign of what is so called may appear even in childhood ; not
being the consequence of any stomach disorder, but solely of some
error in diet, mostly the result of eating too freely of rich compounds
in which sugar and fatty matters are largely present. These elements
would not be objectionable if they formed part of a regular meal,
instead of being consumed as they mostly are between meals, already
abounding in every necessary constituent.

Sugar and fat are elements of value in children's food, and natu-
rally form a considerable portion of it, entering largely into the com-
position of milk, which Nature supplies for the young and growing
animal. The indigestion of the child mostly terminates rapidly by
ejection of the offending matter. But the indigestion of the adult is
less acutely felt and is less readily disposed of. Uneasiness and inca-
pacity for action, persisting for some time after an ordinary meal,
indicate that the stomach is acting imperfectly on the materials which
have been put into it. These signs manifest themselves frequently,
and, if Nature's hints that the food is inappropriate are not taken, they

516 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

become more serious. Temporary relief is easily obtained by medi-
cine ; but if the unfortunate individual continues to blame his stom-
ach, and not the dietary he selects, the chances are that his troubles
will continue, or appear in some other form. At length, if unenlight-
ened on the subject, he becomes " a martyr to indigestion," and resigns
himself to the unhappy fate, as he terms it, of " the confirmed dys-
peptic."

Such a victim may perhaps be surprised to learn that nine out of
ten persons so affected are probably not the subjects of any complaint
whatever, and that the stomach at any rate is by no means necessarily
faulty in its action — in short, that what is popularly termed " indiges-
tion " is rarely a disease in any sense of the word, but merely the nat-
ural result of errors in diet. For most men it is the penalty of
conformity to the eating habits of the majority ; and a want of dis-
position or of enterprise to undertake a trial of simpler foods than
those around them consume probably determines the continuance of
their unhappy troubles. In many instances it must be confessed that
the complaint, if so it must be called, results from error, not in the
quality of the food taken, but in the quantity. Eating is an agreeable
process for most people, and under the influence of very small temp-
tation, or through undue variety furnishing a source of provocation
to the palate, a considerable proportion of nutritious material above
what is required by the system is apt to be swallowed. Then it is
also to be remembered that stomachs which vary greatly in their
capacity and power to digest may all nevertheless be equally healthy
and competent to exercise every necessary function. In like manner
we know that human brains which are equally sound and healthy
often differ vastly in power and in activity. Thus a stomach, which
would be slandered by a charge of incompetence to perform easily all
that it is in duty bound to accomplish, may be completely incapable
of digesting a small excess beyond that natural limit. Hence, with
such an organ an indigestion is inevitable when this limit is only
slightly exceeded. And so when temptations are considerable, and
frequently complied with, the disturbance may be, as it is with some,
very serious in degree. How very powerful a human stomach may
sometimes be, and how large a task in the way of digestion it may
sometimes perform without complaint, is known to those who have
had the opportunity of observing what certain persons with excep-
tional power are accustomed to take as food, and do take for a long
time apparently with impunity. But these are stomachs endowed
with extraordinary energy, and woe be to the individual with a digest-
ive apparatus of moderate power who attempts to emulate the per-
formance of a neighbor at table who perchance may be furnished with
such an effective digestive apparatus !

But, after all, let not the weaker man grieve overmuch at the un-
even lot which the gods seem to have provided for mortals here below

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 517

in regard of this function of digestion. There is a compensation for
him which he has not considered, or perhaps even heard of, although
he is so moderately endowed with peptic force. A delicate stomach
which can just do needful work for the system and no more, by neces-
sity performs the function of a careful door porter at the entrance
of the system, and like a jealous guardian inspects with discernment
all who aspire to enter the interior, rejecting the unfit and the un-
bidden, and all the common herd.

On the other hand, a stomach with superfluous power, of whom its
master boastfully declaims that it can " digest tenpenny nails," and
that he is unaccustomed to consult its likes and its dislikes if it have
any, is like a careless hall porter who admits all comers, every pre-
tender, and among the motley visitors many whose presence is damag-
ing to the interior. These powerful feeders after a time suffer from
the unexpended surplus, and pay for their hardy temerity in becoming
amenable to penalty, often suddenly declared by the onset of some
serious attack, demanding complete change in regimen, a condition
more or less grave. On the other hand, the owner of the delicate
stomach, a man perhaps with a habit of frequently complaining of
slight troubles, and always careful, will probably in the race of life,
as regards the preceding pilgrim, take the place of the tortoise as
against the hare. It is an old proverb that " the creaking wheel lasts
longest," and one that is certainly true as regards a not powerful but
nevertheless healthy stomach which is carefully treated by its owner ;
to whom this fact may be acceptable as a small consolation for the
possession of a delicate organ.

For it is a kind of stomach which not seldom accompanies a fine
organization. The difference is central, not local — a difference in the
nervous system chiefly ; the impressionable mental structure, the in-
strument of strong emotions, must necessarily be allied with a stomach
to which the supply of nerve-power for digestion is sometimes tempo-
rarily deficient and always perhaps capricious. There are more sources
than one of compensation to the owner of an active, impressionable
brain, with a susceptible stomach possessing only moderate digestive
capabilities— sources altogether beyond the imagination of many a
coarse feeder and capable digester.

But it is not correct, and it is on all grounds undesirable, to regard
the less powerful man as a sufferer from indigestion, that is, as liable to
any complaint to be so termed. True indigestion, as a manifestation
of a diseased stomach, is comparatively quite rare, and I have not one
word to say of it here, which would not be the fitting place if I had.
Not one person in a hundred who complains of indigestion has any
morbid affection of the organs engaged in assimilating his food. As
commonly employed, the word " indigestion " denotes, not a disease,
but an admonition. It means that the individual so complaining has
not yet found his appropriate diet ; that he takes food unsuited for

5i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

him, or too much of it. The food may be " wholesome enough in
itself," a popular phrase permitted to appear here, first, because it
conveys a meaning perceived by every one, although the idea is loosely
expressed ; but, secondly and chiefly, for the purpose of pointing out
the fallacy which underlies it. There is no food " wholesome in it-
self," and there is no fact which people in general are more slow to
comprehend. That food only is wholesome which is so to the individ-
ual, and no food can be wholesome to any given number of persons.
Milk, for example, may agree admirably with me, and may as certainly
invariably provoke an indigestion from my neighbor ; and the same
may be said of almost every article of our ordinary dietary. The
wholesomeness of a food consists solely in its adaptability to the indi-
vidual, and this relation is governed mainly by the influences of his
age, activity, surroundings and temperament or personal peculiarities.

Indigestion, therefore, does not necessarily, or indeed often, require
medicine for its removal. Drugs, and especially small portions of
alcoholic spirit, are often used for the purpose of stimulating the
stomach temporarily to perform a larger share of work than by nature
it is qualified to undertake ; a course which is disadvantageous for the
individual if persisted in. The effect on the stomach is that of the
spur on the horse : it accelerates the pace, but " it takes it out " of the
animal, and, if the practice is long continued, shortens his natural
term of efficiency.

It is an erroneous idea that a simple form of dietary, such as the
vegetable kingdom in the largest sense of the term furnishes, in con-
junction with a moderate proportion of the most easily digested forms
of animal food, may not be appetizing and agreeable to the palate.
On the contrary, I am prepared to maintain that it may be easily
served in forms highly attractive, not only to the general but to a
cultivated taste. A preference for the high flavors and stimulating
scents peculiar to the flesh of vertebrate animals mostly subsides after
a fair trial of milder foods when supplied in variety. And it is an ex-
perience almost universally avowed, that the desire for food is keener,
that the satisfaction in gratifying appetite is greater and more enjoy-
able, on the part of the general light feeder than with the almost
exclusively flesh-feeder. For this designation is applicable to almost
all those who compose the middle-class population of this country.
They consume little bread and few vegetables ; all the savory dishes
are of flesh, with decoctions of flesh alone for soup. The sweets are
compounds of suet, lard, butter, eggs and milk, with very small quan-
tities of flour, rice, arrowroot, etc., which comprise all the vegetable
constituents besides some fruit and sugar. Three fourths at least of
the nutrient matters consumed are from the animal kingdom. A re-
versal of the proportions named, that is, a fourth only from the latter
source with three fourths of vegetable produce, would furnish greater
variety for the table, tend to maintain a cleaner palate, increased zest

DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 519

for food, a lighter and more active brain, and a better state of health
for most people not engaged on the most laborious employments of
active life ; while even for the last named, with due choice of mate-
rial, ample sustenance in the proportions named may be supplied. For
some inactive, sedentary, and aged persons the small proportion of
animal food indicated might be advantageously diminished. I am
frequently told by individuals of sixty years and upward that they
have no recollection of any previous period since reaching mature age
at which they have possessed a keener relish for food than that which
they enjoy at least once or twice a day since they have adopted the
dietary thus described. Such appetite at all events as has rarely
offered itself during years preceding, when the choice of food was con-
ventionally limited to the unvarying progression and array of mutton
and beef, in joint, chop, and steak, arriving after a strong meat soup,
with a possible interlude of fish, and followed by puddings of which
the ingredients are chiefly derived from animal sources. The pene-
trating odors of meat cookery which announce their presence by escape
from the kitchen, and will pervade the air of other rooms in any pri-
vate house but a large one, and which are encountered in clubs, restau-
rants, and hotels without stint, alone suffice to blunt the inclination
for food of one who, returning from daily occupation, fatigued and
fastidious, desires food easy of digestion, attractive in appearance, and
unassociated with any element of a repulsive character. The light
feeder knows nothing of the annoyances described, finds on his table
that which is delightful to a palate sensitive to mild impressions, and
indisposed to gross and over-powerful ones. After the meal is over,
his wit is fresher, his temper more cheerful, and he takes his easy-
chair to enjoy fireside talk, and not to sink into a heavy slumber,
which on awakening is but exchanged for a sense of discontent or
stupidity.

The doctrine thus briefly and inadequately expounded in this j>aper
may probably encounter some opposition and adverse criticism. I am
quite content that this should be so. Every proposal which disturbs
the current habits of the time, especially when based on long-prevalent
custom, infallibly encounters that fate. But of the general truth, and
hence of the ultimate reception of the principles I have endeavored to
illustrate, there can not be the faintest doubt. And I know that this
result, whenever it may be accomplished, will largely diminish the
painful affections which unhappily so often appear during the latter
moiety of adult life. And having during the last few years widely
inculcated such general dietetic principles and practice, with abundant
grounds for my growing conviction of their value, it appears to be a
duty to call attention to them somewhat more emphatically than in
preceding contributions already referred to. In so doing I have ex-
pressly limited myself to statements relating to those simple element-
ary facts concerning our every-day life which ought to be within the

520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

knowledge of every man, and therefore such as may most fitly be set
forth in a publication outside of that field of special and technical
record which is devoted to professional observation and experience. —
Nineteenth Century.

♦ «»

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES OF THE

UNITED STATES.

Br GEORGE P. MEEEILL.

WHEN, early in his curatorship in the National Museum, Dr. George
W. Hawes, one of the leading American lithologists, assumed
charge of that branch of the tenth census relating to the quarrying
industry of the United States, it is doubtful if any but himself fully
realized the importance of the undertaking aside from its statistical
bearings. Dr. Hawes was, however, not a man to be satisfied with fig-
ures alone, or one who considered the scope of a census to be merely the
compilation of statistics, and in selecting his assistants he did so with
especial reference to their qualifications in other lines of work as well.
Thus we find upon his list the names of such geologists as Professors
Shaler and Wolff, of Harvard ; Hitchcock, of Dartmouth ; Winchell, of
Minneapolis ; and others of equal note and ability. These assistants, or
special agents as they were called, visited each quarry in person within
their respective districts, and, together with collecting the -necessary
information relative to the amount, kind, and value of stone quarried,
number of men employed, etc., made all possible observations in regard
to the geological age of the stone, its disposition in the quarry, weather-
ing qualities as displayed in those portions of the outcrop that had been
exposed for ages to the action of atmospheric agencies, and, lastly,
selected samples of the rock in the form of blocks of sufficient size to
dress into four-inch cubes and forwarded them bv mail to the National
Museum, at Washington, for further examination.* Here a corps of
assistants was employed who selected samples for chemical and micro-
scopic analysis, and left the block to be handsomely dressed into a
four-inch cube and placed permanently upon exhibition, having mean-
while made careful notes upon its working qualities. Small chips of
each rock were ground into films so thin as to be perfectly transparent,
and submitted to microscopic examination in order not only to deter-
mine what the rock was, but also to ascertain if it contained any min-
eral constituents liable to unfavorable change on exposure to the
weather. Whenever necessary, chemical analysis was resorted to to
further aid in the solution of the problems involved.

* These blocks weighed from six to ten pounds each, but, being Government matter,
were allowed to pass through the mails, though greatly exceeding in weight the limit set
by law.

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 521

Unfortunately, Dr. Hawes did not live to carry out the plans he
had so carefully laid down, hut the vast amount of material he had
been instrumental in bringing together remains to-day in the National
Museum, a lasting monument to the industry of the man, and probably
the most systematic and complete collection of its kind in any museum
in the world. As now being arranged in the museum, the collection
comprises some four thousand specimens of building and ornamental
stone from upward of fifteen hundred quarries in the United States,
together with very many from foreign localities.

The importance of such a collection can not be overestimated.
Here, within the space of an hour, one can see and examine every
variety of stone now quarried, and ascertain its scientific name and
chemical or mineral composition, together with the exact locality
whence it was derived. That such a reference collection will prove of
great advantage to the country at large is evident from the fact that
New England granites have been used in nearly every city of impor-
tance from Maine to California, sometimes to the almost entire exclu-
sion of equally good material close at hand, but of whose existence or
valuable qualities interested parties were ignorant. As an illustration
of this, it may be stated that many of the public and private buildings
of Cincinnati, Ohio, are built of Eastern granite brought by rail and
water a distance of over fifteen hundred miles, while within one tenth
that distance lie rocks in every respect equally good for the purpose,
and that could be furnished at far less cost ! From the published
report of the census as it now appears, there were quarried during the
year ending May 31, 1880, 115,380,113 cubic feet of building and orna-
mental stones, valued in the rough at $18,365,055 ; this being the prod-
uct of 1,525 quarries representing an invested capital of $25,414,497,
and affording employment during the busy season to upward of
40,000 men. The kinds of stone quarried are principally granites,
limestones (including dolomite), sandstone, and slates. In value of total
product, regardless of kinds, the leading States rank as follows : Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Maine, and
Connecticut, each of these producing upward of $1,000,000 worth of
material. Massachusetts and Maine produce the most granite ; Ohio,
New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut the most sandstone ; Ver-
mont, Illinois, Ohio, and New York the most limestone, while Penn-
sylvania leads in the production of slate.

The larger portion of our granites are some shade of gray in color,
though pink and red varieties are not uncommon. They vary in text-
ure from very fine and homogeneous to coarsely porphyritic rocks
in which the individual grains are an inch or more in length. The
largest woi'ks at present in operation are at Vinalhaven, Maine. The
quarries of the Bodwell Granite Company were first opened here in
1850, and the present annual product is some 217,000 cubic feet, val-
ued at $112,000. The capabilities of these quarries may behest illus-

522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

trated by stating that during a visit to the locality in the summer of
1883 the writer was shown the remains of a huge block of granite
three hundred feet long, twenty feet wide, and from six to ten feet
thick, that had been blown out from the quarry in a single piece and
afterward broken up. The largest single block ever quarried and
dressed was the General Wool Monument now in Troy, New York,
which measured, when completed, sixty feet in height by five and a half
feet square at the base, or only nine feet shorter than the Egyptian
Obelisk now in Central Park, New York. The stone is light gray,
often slightly pinkish in color, and corresponds closely with that from
the now abandoned quarries on Dix Island, whence were taken
the granite monoliths, thirty-one feet in height, for the Treasury
Building at Washington. Second only to the quarries at Vinalhaven
are those at Gloucester, Massachusetts — the quarries of the Cape Ann
Granite Company. This rock is coarser in texture than that of Vinal-
haven, and often of a slight greenish color. The new Masonic Tem-
ple at Philadelphia, and the Butler House, on Capitol Hill, Washing-
ton, are good illustrations of the adaptability of this stone for gen-
eral building purjwses.

Closely resembling the Cape Ann granite is that quarried at Quincy
in the same State. Quarries were first regularly opened here in 1803,
though it was from bowlders of this rock that was built in 1749-'54
King's Chapel, still standing on the corner of School and Tremont
Streets, Boston. Quincy granite also was used in the construction of
the Bunker Hill Monument, and it was for the transportation of this
stone from the quarries to Charlestown that was built the first railway
in America. The color of the stone is deep blue gray, and its fitness
for interior decorative work is well shown in the granite stairways
and polished pilasters of the new City Buildings in Philadelphia.

For columns, house-trimmings, and especially monumental work,
the granite from Hallowell, Maine, is used most extensively. This
rock is of fine and even grain, and very light gray, almost white in
color. Its texture is such that it can be carved very readily, and it
has been used in statuary work more than any other of our granites.
The statues on the Pilgrim Monument, at Plymouth, Massachusetts,
are of this stone. An Italian designer, who served his apprenticeship
in Roman studios, is employed by this company, and many of the
workmen at the quarries are said to be Italians who worked in marble
in Italy, but have learned to cut granite since their arrival at Hal-
lowell.

A granite, closely resembling that of Hallowell, is quarried very
extensively near Concord, New Hampshire, and is used for similar pur-
poses. Stones similar to these, but not at present in the market, are
found near Frederickton, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia.

The red and pink granites now in the market are nearly all from
Calais and Jonesboro, in the eastern part of Maine, though others are

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 523

quarried at Mount Desert, in the same State ; Lyme and Stony Creek,
Connecticut ; Westerly, Rhode Island ; and Graniteville, Missouri.
The Calais rock, which is at present the most important of these, is
a light pink in color, of medium coarseness of texture, and acquires
beautiful surface and polish. It is used extensively for door-posts and
the bases of monuments in all our principal cities, competing favorably
with the coarser red granite from Peterhead, Scotland, or that from
St. George, New Brunswick.

Black granites are quarried in but two, and these widely separated,
localities — St. George, Maine, and Penryn, California. Both stones
are fine-grained, and nearly black on a polished surface, their dark
colors being due to the abundance of black mica and hornblende that
they contain. The greater part of the rock quarried and put upon the
market under this name is, however, not granite at all, but diabase, a
rock differing from granite in containing neither quartz, orthoclase,
nor mica, but composed mainly of a triclinic feldspar and augite. The
principal quarries of this rock are at Addison, Maine ; Medford and
Somerville, Massachusetts ; York, Pennsylvania ; and near Jersey City,
New Jersey.

These rocks are all fine-grained and hard, and of a dark-gray color,
that from Addison being nearly black when polished. The colors are
rather too somber for general building purposes, but, when properly
combined with brick or lighter stone, the effect is admirable. The
Addison rock is being used to a considerable extent for cemetery and
other monumental work, for which it seems peculiarly adapted, and
together with the York diabase has been used in the stone- work of the
Capitol-grounds at Washington. Diabase from the near vicinity has
been used in the construction of the Stevens Institute building at Ho-
boken, New Jersey, and the court-house and St. Patrick's Cathedral at
Jersey City. The fronts of many private and business houses in the
last-named city are also of diabase, but the effect is not good, owing
to the somber colors already alluded to.

From the fact that Maine and Massachusetts lead in the granite-
quarrying industry, it does not necessarily follow that these States pro-
duce a greater variety or better quality of material than some others
in which the annual product is far less. The supremacy is due rather
to natural quarrying and transportation facilities. In Maine especial-
ly many of the quarries are situated on hill-sides close by the water's
edge, where no artificial drainage is required, and but little carting of
the stone is necessary prior to loading it upon vessels, by means of
which transportation can be had to all the leading cities of the country
without transhipment, an item of no small importance with material
so bulky and heavy as stone. Added to this is the fact that the great
glacial ice-sheet, that once plowed its way across the whole of New
England, has entirely removed the overlying mass of decayed rock
and other waste material, and left the fresh granite close to the sur-

5 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

face and readily accessible. In regions farther to the south, beyond
the limits of glacial action, the granite-beds are still covered with a
mass of decomposed rock, often many feet in thickness, and which
must be removed before quarrying can commence. It is probably
largely due to these facts that the granites of these two States are en-
abled to compete so favorably in the Washington market with those
from near Richmond, Virginia, a distance of only four or five hours'
ride by rail.

Granite did not come into general use for building purposes in this
country until a comparatively recent date, owing largely to the great
difficulty in working it. According to Mr. J. E. Wolff,* one of the
earliest stone buildings in Boston was the " stone house of Deacon
John Phillips," erected about 1650, and which continued to stand until
1864. It was built chiefly of bowlders from the immediate vicinity.
In 1737 was built of bowlders, of Braintree (Quincy) granite, the old
Hancock house, since torn down. The granite bowlders scattered over
the commons had been very generally used in Quincy for steps, foun-
dations, etc., for some years previous to this, until at last the inhabit-
ants, becoming frightened lest this supply of valuable building mate-
rial should become entirely exhausted, assembled in town-meeting and
voted that "no person shall dig or carry off" any stone "on the said
commons or undivided lands upon any account whatever without license
from the committee, . . . upon penalty of the forfeiture of ten shil-
lings for every and each cart-load so dug and carried away." Little
did they then imagine that, close at their doors, this same stone ex-
isted in such quantities that over half a century of almost constant
quarrying has failed to exhaust the supply. It was not, however,
until the early part of the present century that granite began to be
used at all extensively in and about Boston, when the material was
introduced in considerable quantities by canal from Chelmsford, thirty
miles distant. It was from the Chelmsford stone that was constructed
in 1810 the Boston Court-House, in 1814 the New South Church, and
in 1818-'19 the first stone block in the city, a portion of which is still
standing on Brattle Street. In this year also a considerable quantity
of the stone was shipped to Savannah, Georgia, for the construction
of a church at that place. The greater part of this granite was, how-
ever, obtained from bowlders, and it was not until the opening of
quarries at Quincy, in 1825, that the business assumed any great im-
portance. From this time the use of granite for building material in-
creased in a marked degree, and the history of stone-quarrying in
Massachusetts may properly begin with this date.

Under the head of marbles are here included all those rocks con-
sisting essentially of carbonate of lime (limestone), or carbonate of
lime and magnesia (magnesian limestones and dolomites), which are
susceptible of receiving a good polish, and are suitable for orna-
* " Building-Stone and Quarry Industry of the United States," p. 282.

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 525

mental work. Vermont is at present the chief marble - producing
State of the Union, excelling in this industry all the other States com-
bined, having an invested capital of $3,886,000, and producing annu-
ally $1,340,050 worth of material. Of this the larger part is ordinary
white, veined, or blue marble from Sutherland Falls, Rutland, East
Dorset, and Pittsford. Dark gray, almost black fossiliferous marbles
are, however, quarried at Isle La Motte, while red, mottled, and varie-
gated varieties, used for tilings and wainscotings, are found at Mal-
lett's Bay, in the northern part of Lake Champlain. The only statuary
marble at present quarried in this country is found at West Rutland
and Pittsford, in this State. The rock is of fine and even texture, and
without specks or flaws, but differs from its Italian prototype in being
of a dead-white color, lacking entirely the peculiar waxy luster so
characteristic of the Italian marble. White and bluish marbles are
also quarried at Lee, Massachusetts ; Sing Sing, Tuckahoe, and Pleas-
antville, New York ; in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania ; and in
Texas and Cockeysville, Maryland.

The Montgomery County quarries were first opened upward of one
hundred years ago, and until as late as 1840 the stone continued to be
the general favorite in Philadelphia for all manner of building, although
not well suited for the finer grades of ornamental work. Girard Col-
lege, the United States Custom-House, Mint, and Naval Asylum, are
of this stone, while the seemingly endless rows of red-brick houses,
with white-marble sills and caps, have come to be as characteristic of
Philadelphia as are the brown-stone fronts of New York.

The colored marbles now in the market are brought principally
from Tennessee. The ordinary red and white variegated varieties, so
commonly seen in table-tops, mantels, soda-fountains, and panelings,
are from Rogersville and Knoxville in this State. A fine grade of
pink marble is also found at Cleaveland and Knoxville, while a fossil-
bearing olive-green variety is brought from Calhoun. A peculiar
brecciated stone, which I have not yet seen in the market, is also found
here. It consists of yellowish, rounded, and angular fragments of
varying sizes, imbedded in a fine, grayish ground-mass. So far as I
have yet observed, this stone is entirely distinct from any produced
elsewhere. Two fine varieties of gray fossiliferous marbles are pro-
duced at Chazy and Plattsburg, in Clinton County, New York, and
are known commercially as " Lepanto " and " French gray." The first-
named is gray with pink spots, while the last-named is more uniformly
gray in color. With the exception of the Tennessee marbles, the
Plattsburg stone is more extensively used for furniture and inside
decorative work than any other now in the market. The only first-
quality black marble now produced in this country is also from New
York State quarries at Glens Falls, furnishing a fine grade of this
material.

Other than in the States above mentioned no marbles of conse-

526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quence are now produced east of the Rocky Mountains, though several
States are known to contain material that might be thus utilized if put
upon the market. California, however, produces two varieties worthy
of especial notice. The one is a white, finely crystalline stone, trav-
ersed by a network of fine dark lines, in general appearance very much
like the celebrated bardiglio marble from the Serravezza quarries, but
that the ground-mass is lighter in color. The second variety is the
beautiful stalagmite marble, or so-called onyx, from quarries at San
Luis Obispo. This stone is pearly white in color, translucent, and
traversed by fine, wavy, parallel lines, like the lines of growth upon the
trunk of a tree. It takes a beautiful polish, and is quite extensively
used for small stands and ornaments of various kinds. Excepting in
the matter of color it is identical with the celebrated " Oriental alabas-
ter" (wrongly so called), from Blad Recam, near the Ravine of Oned
Abdallah, Egypt, this last being of a yellowish or amber hue. The
San Luis Obispo rock is the only stalagmite marble of any commer-
cial importance at present found in this country, though a beautiful
variety, known as "Mexican onyx," is quarried at Tecali, State of
Puebla, Mexico.

In the way of true conglomerate or breccia marble there is at pres-
ent nothing quarried, though a beautiful variety occurs in inexhaustible
quantities near Frederickton, Maryland, and in other parts of this State
and Pennsylvania. The stone consists of rounded and angular frag-
ments, of varying colors and all sizes up to several inches in diameter,
of quartz and limestone imbedded in a fine gray ground-mass. This
admixture of hard and soft material renders the dressing of the stone
a matter of great difficulty, since the flinty pebbles break away from
the softer ground-mass in the process of cutting. The large pillars of
the old House of Representatives in the Capitol at Washington are of
this stone.

The rock serpentine, though differing entirely from marble in chem-
ical composition, is used for similar purposes, and may be mentioned
here. The three principal sources of this rock, or of serpentine in
combination with calcite, are Roxbury, Vermont ; Moriah, Essex Coun-
ty, New York ; and Dublin, Harford County, Maryland. The Ver-
mont stone is deep green in color, and traversed by white veins of
calcite. It takes a beautiful polish, and compares very favorably
with the Italian verde antique or verde di Prato from quarries in
Tuscany. The Moriah stone is similar in color, but granular in text-
ure, and spotted, rather than veined. At present it is found in the
market in the form of mantels, table-tops, monuments, etc. The
Maryland stone is more uniformly green in color than either of those
mentioned above, containing very little calcareous matter. It is said
to occur in almost inexhaustible quantities and within easy reach of
the Baltimore market, but for some unexplained reason little, if any,
of it is now in use. A coarse serpentine used for general building

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 527

purposes, but unsuited for any kind of ornamental work, is brought
in considerable quantities from Chester County, Pennsylvania. The
stone is dull-green in color, soft enough to work readily, and is capa-
ble of producing most excellent effects, particularly in rock-faced and
rubble work. So far as the writer has observed, however, it has not
yet been used to advantage, either alone or in combination with other
stone, a majority of the buildings thus far constructed of it being not
only failures from an architectural stand-point, but showing a remark-
able lack of taste in color combination on the part of their designers.
A dull-green building with light, yellowish-gray trimmings can scarce-
ly be considered a success artistically, yet this is the style almost
universally adopted. The stone has been used quite extensively in and
about Philadelphia, and is the one employed in the construction of the
buildings of the University of Pennsylvania and Academy of Natural
Sciences in that city. It has also been used to some extent in the cities
of New York and Washington, though I have not yet observed it
elsewhere.

No marbles are at present quarried in this country similar to the
white blue-veined Parmazo marble from the Miseglia quarries, like the
red-veined from Levanto, like the yellow from Siena, the red " Griotte "
from the French Pyrenees, or the black and gold (Portoro Venere) from
the Spezia quarries. A stone somewhat resembling this last has been
received at the museum from Helena, Montana, but the quarries are not
worked, nor is the extent of the deposit known to the writer. A beauti-
ful bright, flesh-pink marble occurs in abundance in Swain and Chero-
kee Counties, North Carolina, but is not now in the market, owing to
lack of transportation facilities.

Of limestones and dolomites, aside from marbles, large quantities
are quarried in the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illi-
nois, Iowa, and Missouri. These are mostly of a dull-grayish, uninter-
esting color, and their uses are chiefly local. The light-colored oolitic
limestone of Bedford, Indiana, is, however, an exception to this rule.
Not only is the color pleasing and its lasting qualities fair, but its fine
even grain and softness render it admirably adapted for carved work.
Several of the Southern and Western States have an abundance of lime-
stone and sandstones suitable for general building purposes, but so far
as observed few, if any of them, are of such quality as ever to attain
anything more than a local market. Kentucky has limestones in abun-
dance and of good quality. Kansas is pre-eminently a State of lime-
stones. These are, however, for the most part soft and porous, of a
dull color, and must be found lacking in lasting qualities in other than
a very dry climate. A white, chalky limestone is quarried in Trego
County, in this State, and is used in the manufacture of whiting. Oth-
erwise than from the product of this quarry, all the other wrhiting man-
ufactured in the United States is said to be prepared from imported
English chalk. Texas furnishes cretaceous limestones of fine and com-

528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pact texture from the vicinity of Austin. Some of these take a good
polish, and might be used as marbles.

No lithographic limestones that can compare with the imported
stone have as yet been found in this country. Silverville, Indiana ;
Glascow Junction, Kentucky ; and Saverton, Missouri, each produce
fine, even-grained stones of a drab color which have been put upon the
market at various times as lithographic stone, but so far as is known to
the writer the Missouri stone is the only one now used for this purpose.

The total amount of sandstone quarried in the United States dur-
ing the census year was 24,776,930 cubic feet, valued at $4,780,391 ;
the same being the product of 502 quai*ries representing an invested
capital of $6,229,600.

Sandstone-quarrying in the United States doubtless began with the
itinerant working of the extensive Triassic deposits of " brown-stone "
in the vicinity of Portland, Connecticut. Where now are excavations
upward of one hundred feet in depth, were then steep cliffs overhang-
ing the river, and from these the inhabitants of Middletown and
neighboring localities early began to carry away material for general
building purposes as well as for monuments and gravestones. To
such an extent had this system of free quarrying been carried, that as
early as 1665 a resolve was passed similar in purpose to that relative
to the granite bowlders on the Quincy Commons, to the effect "that
no one shall dig or raise stone at the Rocks on the east side of the
river " (now Portland) " but an inhabitant of the town, and that twelve
pence shall be paid to the town for every ton of stone taken." Not
long after this the quarries thus opened passed from the possession
of the town into that of private parties, and what is now known as
Brainard's quarry is said to have been operated since 1700. There are
now three quarries situated in a line along the river's bank at this
place, from which have been taken altogether some 4,300,000 cubic
feet of stone, or enough to build a wall nearly two and a half feet
high, and one foot thick, around the entire State !

Of the same geological age and general appearance as those of
Connecticut, though varying slightly in color and texture, are the
brown and red sandstones quarried in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and Maryland. In all of these the cementing material
that binds together the rounded and angular grains of which they are
composed is largely iron oxide, which gives the color to the stone
and yet leaves it soft enough to be worked at only a very moderate
cost.

On account of their pleasing colors and easy working qualities
these stones have been great favorites for general building purposes,
as the monotonous rows of brown-stone fronts in New York city too
well attest.

Of about equal importance with these brown Triassic stones are
the light-colored subcarboniferous sandstones of Ohio and elsewhere.

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 529

These are all fine-grained stones with but little cementing material,
the individual grains of which they are composed being held together
simply by the cohesion induced by the pressure to which they were
subjected at the time of their consolidation. They therefore work
very readily, especially when newly quarried, and have been used
more extensively for carved work than any other of our sandstones.
They are best represented in the market to-day by the so-called Euclid
" blue-stones " and Berea " grits " of Ohio, the former being deep blue-
gray in color, while the latter is very light. They are well known to
the general public in the form of window stools and caps, door posts
and steps, for which purpose they have been very extensively used in
all our large cities.

Somewhat resembling in general appearance the Euclid blue-stones,
but of greater geological age, are the dark, blue-gray compact "gray-
wackes," or flag-stones, so extensively quarried in Ulster County, New
York, and other parts of this State and Pennsylvania. These stones
are of fine and even texture, and split readily from the quarries in
slabs, usually but a few inches thick. They are therefore eminently
suited for flagging, to which usage they are extensively applied,
though they also used for steps and general trimming purposes. The
rock quarried at Barryvale, in Sullivan County, is of a similar nature.
It was from quarries at this last-named locality that was taken the
monster flag-stone, twenty-five feet two inches long, by fifteen feet
wide and eight inches thick, that now forms a portion of the sidewalk
in front of the Vanderbilt residence on Fifth Avenue, New York. It
should be stated, however, that the size of this block was limited only
by the means of transportation, and much larger could be obtained at
the quarries if desired.

Another very important group of sandstone, but of still greater
geological antiquity, belonging to the Medina period of the Upper
Silurian formations, is quarried extensively at Albion and Medina,
near Rochester, New York. These stones are usually of a reddish
color and contain a larger portion of siliceous cementing material than
any of those yet mentioned ; they are therefoi'e much harder and
much less pervious to moisture. The stones are used for all manner
of building purposes, flagging, and street-paving. A somewhat simi-
lar stone, but of brighter color and Potsdam age, is quarried in the
town of Potsdam, in St. Lawrence County, in the same State. This is
the stone used in the construction of the Columbia College buildings
in New York city.

Sandstones of this nature, i. e., with the larger proportion of sili-
ceous cementing material, are among the most durable of all our build-
ing-stones ; but their extreme hardness, and often poor colors are great
drawbacks to their extensive use. In process of dressing such stone
an exceedingly fine white dust arises and remains for a long time sus-
pended in the air, to the great inconvenience of the workmen, who tell
vol. xxvn. — 34

530 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

marvelous stories of its penetrating powers. They have been known
to assert that, if an empty and hermetically sealed glass bottle be placed
within the sheds where such stones are being cut, it will shortly be
found with a fine white deposit of the dust upon the bottom and on
the inside, and no argument can convince them that it came there
otherwise than through the pores of the seemingly impervious glass !

The quarrying of slate for roofing purposes is an industry of
comparatively recent origin in the United States, few of the quarries
having been operated for a longer period than twenty or thirty
years. The earliest opened and systematically worked are believed
to have been those at West Bangor, Pennsylvania, which date back
to 1835. The abundance of slate tombstones in many of our old
churchyards, however, would seem to prove that for other purposes
than roofing these stones have been quarried from a much earlier pe-
riod. It is stated, moreover, that as early as 1721 a cargo of twenty
tons of split slate was brought into Boston from Hangman's Island in
Braintree Bay, which may have been used wholly or in part for roof-
ing purposes ; but the greater part of the material for this purpose
was imported directly from Wales. It is interesting to note, in this
connection, that, daring the business depression of 1876-'80, almost
the entire product of the American quarries was exported to England,
where it sold for even less than the Welsh slates, though necessarily
at very small profits. The return of more prosperous times, however,
created a local demand, and the export trade hak been largely de-
creased accordingly, though considerable quantities are still sent out
to the West Indies, South America, England, Germany, and even New
Zealand and Australia.

At present not far from $3,328,150 are invested in the slate-quar-
ries of the United States, and the value of the annual product is some
$1,529,985.

Pennsylvania is the leading State in this industry, her quarries be-
ing located in Lehigh, Northampton, and York Counties, in the eastern
part of the State. These slates are all blue-black in color ; as are also
those from Maine, Massachusetts, and Maryland. The Vermont slates
are of a greenish or purple color, while those of New York are mostly
purple and red, the latter color being found in extensive deposits near
Granville, in Washington County.

Besides for roofing purposes, slates are used for billiard-tables,
mantels, floor-tiles, flagging, and in the manufacture of school-slates.
For the last-named purpose a soft, even-grained stone is required, and
almost the entire supply is at present brought from Pennsylvania and
Vermont.

Of late years, the business of marbleizing slates for mantels and
fireplaces has become an important industry. All kinds of stones can
be imitated by this process, but that most commonly seen is the green
verd-antique marble and the variegated marbles of Tennessee. Like

BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. 531

many counterfeits, however, the work is too perfect in execution, and
need deceive none but the most inexperienced.

Concerning the future of the building stone industry little that is
definite can be said. As the population increases and becomes more
fixed in its abode, there naturally arises a demand for a more durable
building material than wood, which is still largely used in the country
towns and smaller cities. As wealth accumulates, too, better and more
substantial buildings are erected, which are often profusely embellished
with the finer grades of ornamental stones. The demand, then, is sure
to increase. In regard to the amount of the supply there can be ques-
tion ; everything would seem to depend on the quality, variety, and
cost of working of yet-to-be-discovered material. Are we to continue
to import as now the finer grades of our ornamental stones, or will
our own quarries, yet perhaps to be opened, produce enough and more
than enough for our own use ? I am inclined to think the latter.

In many of the Eastern and earliest to be settled States very little
is yet known regarding their final resources. In Maine, for instance,
fully one half of the State is as yet an unknown land. Its present
quarries are nearly all immediately upon the coast. What are the
resources of its immense interior can not with certainty be foretold.
In the Southern and Western States and Territories, this condition
of affairs is naturally greatly magnified. The Virginias, North and
South Carolina, and Georgia, all contain excellent material, none of
which is now in our principal markets. Michigan can furnish brown
sandstones in great abundance fully equal to any now quarried in the
more Eastern States, and other sandstones of a beautiful mellow tint
are known to occur in Western Arizona. The Rocky Mountain region
contains an abundance, both in variety and quantity, of granites, sand-
stones, marbles, and the more recent volcanic rocks, as basalts, rhyo-
lites, and trachytes. Some of these are very beautiful, excelling any-
thing in this respect from the Eastern States. Red granites far ex-
celling the red Scottish granites of Peterhead, or the celebrated Egyp-
tian " Syenite," occur in inexhaustible quantities. We have seen a
black-and-white breccia marble from Pitkin, Colorado, which bids fair
to be a formidable rival of the imported Portoro marble from the
Monte d'Arma quarries, if it occurs in sufficient quantities and is
accessible. A fine field for exploration is offered in the extensive
stalagmitic deposits on the floors of the numerous caverns so prevalent
in many parts of the country. These deposits, as is well known, are
identical in composition with the celebrated "onyx" marbles of Cali-
fornia, Mexico, and Egypt, already mentioned. The red and purple
porphyries so abundant in New Hampshire, Eastern Massachusetts,
and other parts of the country, offer an unfailing supply of beautiful
and durable ornamental stones, but which are at present kept out of
the market, owing to the great cost of working.

This leads us, in conclusion, to an important item in this connection

532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that must not be overlooked, which is the fact that, with our present
high rates of labor in this country, many of our finest grades of orna-
mental stones can not compete in the market with the imported article,
even though greatly exceeding them in point of beauty. In the ma-
jority of marbles those lines or spots that give to any stone its peculiar
attractiveness are in reality flaws, and hence their presence must add
greatly to the cost of working. It is safe to say that the beautiful
breccia marble from the French Pyrenees, which has been used for
wall-panels in the cash-room of the Treasury Building at Washington,
would not be worked to any extent from quarries in this country, so
long as the imported article can be obtained at present rates. This
fact is rendered probable by the cases of the Maryland breccia and
the Vermont verd-antique already mentioned. Neither of these is
in the market, simply because the imported marble can be furnished
at lower prices. With improved machinery and methods of workman-
ship there seems, however, no doubt but we may in time compete
with foreign cheap labor not only in our own markets, but foreign ones
as well.

■»»♦•

THE DARWIN MEMORIAL.

THE ADDKESS OF PEOFESSOE HUXLEY, AND THE EEPLY OF THE

PEINCE OF WALES.

IT is not often that the unveiling of a statue is attended with an inter-
est at all comparable with that which characterized this ceremony
as performed last Tuesday [June 9th] in the great hall of the Natural
History Museum. If the greatness of a man is to be estimated by the
measure in which he has influenced the thoughts of men, it is scarcely
open to question that the greatest man of our century is Charles Dar-
win. As Professor Huxley remarked in the course of his singularly
judicious and well-balanced address, Mr. Darwin's work has not only
reconstructed the science of biology, but has spread with an organizing
influence through almost every department of philosophical thought.
Yet it was not merely the greatness of the naturalist which invested
the proceedings in the Natural History Museum with an interest so
unique. It was known to the whole assembly that the man whom
they delighted to honor was one whose moral nature had been cast in
the same lines of simple grandeur as those which belonged to his intel-
lectual nature. It therefore only needed a passing allusion from Pro-
fessor Huxley to enable the whole assembly to reflect that it was due
as much to massiveness of character as to massiveness of work that
within three years of his death Mr. Darwin's name should constitute a
new center of gravity in every system of thought. And it was this
reflection which gave to the ceremony so unusual a measure of inter-
est. Around the statue were congregated the most representative men

THE DARWIN MEMORIAL. 533

of every branch of culture, from the Prince of Wales and the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury to the opposite extremes of radicalism and free
thought. Indeed, it is not too much to say that there can scarcely
ever have been an occasion on which so many illustrious men of oppo-
site ways of thinking have met to express a common agreement upon
a man to whom they have felt that honor is due. The international
memorial could not in any nation have found a more worthy site than
the one in which it has been placed ; but, if anything could have added
to the "solemn gladness " with which the personal friends of Mr. Dar-
win witnessed the presentation of this memorial, it must have been the
evidence which the assembly yielded that, among the innumerable dif-
ferences of opinion which it represented, his memory must henceforth
be always and universally regarded as a changeless monument of all
that is greatest in human nature, as well as of all that is greatest in
human achievement.

Concerning the statue itself, we have only to speak in terms of
almost unqualified praise. It is, in the truest sense of the phrase, a
noble work of art. The attitude is not only easy and dignified, but
also natural and characteristic ; the modeling of the head and face is
unexceptionable, and the portrait is admirable. The only criticism we
have to advance has reference to the hands, which not only do not
bear the smallest resemblance to those of Mr. Darwin, but are of a
kind which, had they been possessed by him, would have rendered im-
possible the accomplishment of much of his work. Although this mis-
representation is a matter to be deplored, it is not one for which the
artist can be justly held responsible. Never having had the advantage
of seeing Mr. Darwin, Mr. Boehm has only to be congratulated upon
the wonderful success which has attended his portraiture of the face
and figure ; the hands were no doubt supplied by guess-work, and
therefore we have only to regret that the guess did not happen to be
more fortunate.

The following is the address made by Professor Huxley, in the
name of the Darwin Memorial Committee, on handing over the statue
to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, as representative of the
Trustees of the British Museum :

Your Royal Highness : It is now three years since the announce-
ment of the death of our famous countryman, Charles Darwin, gave
rise to a manifestation of public feeling, not only in these realms,
but throughout the civilized world, which, if I mistake not, is with-
out precedent in the modest annals of scientific biography.

The causes of this deep and wide outburst of emotion are not far
to seek. We had lost one of those rare ministers and interpreters of
Nature whose names mark epochs in the advance of natural knowl-
edge. For, whatever be the ultimate verdict of posterity upon this or
that opinion which Mr. Darwin had propounded ; whatever adumbra-

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions or anticipations of his doctrines may be found in the writings of
his predecessors ; the broad fact remains that since the publication,
and by reason of the publication, of the " Origin of Species," the fun-
damental conceptions and the aims of the students of living Nature
have been completely changed. From that work has sprung a great
renewal, a true " instauratio magna " of the zoological and botanical
sciences.

But the impulse thus given to scientific thought rapidly spread be-
yond the ordinarily recognized limits of biology. Psychology, Ethics,
Cosmology were stirred to their foundations, and the " Origin of Spe-
cies " proved itself to be the fixed point which the general doctrine of
evolution needed in order to move the woild. " Darwinism," in one
form or another, sometimes strangely distorted and mutilated, became
an every-day topic of men's speech, the object of an abundance both
of vituperation and of praise, more often than of serious study.

It is curious now to remember how largely, at first, the objectors
predominated ; but, considering the usual fate of new views, it is still
more curious to consider for how short a time the phase of vehement
opposition lasted. Before twenty years had passed, not only had the
importance of Mr. Darwin's work been fully recognized, but the world
had discerned the simple, earnest, generous character of the man that
shone through every page of his writings.

I imagine that reflections such as these swept through the minds
alike of loving friends and of honorable antagonists when Mr. Darwin
died ; and that they were at one in the desire to honor the memory
of the man wrho, without fear and without reproach, had successfully
fought the hardest intellectual battle of these days.

It was in satisfaction of these just and generous impulses that our
great naturalist's remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey ; and
that, immediately afterward, a public meeting, presided over by my
lamented predecessor, Mr. Spottiswoode, was held in the rooms of the
Royal Society, for the purpose of considering what further steps should
be taken toward the same end. .

It was resolved to invite subscriptions, with the view of erecting
a statue of Mr. Darwin in some suitable locality ; and to devote any
surplus to the advancement of the biological sciences.

Contributions at once flowed in from Austria, Belgium, Brazil,
Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Rus-
sia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, and the British
colonies, no less than from all parts of the three kingdoms ; and they
came from all classes of the community. To mention one interesting
case, Sweden sent in 2,296 subscriptions " from all sorts of people,"
as the distinguished man of science who transmitted them wrote,
" from the bishop to the seamstress, and in sums from five pounds to
two pence."

The Executive Committee has thus been enabled to carry out the

THE DARWIN MEMORIAL. 535

objects proposed. A " Darwin Fund " has been created, which is to
be held in trust by the Royal Society, and is to be employed in the
promotion of biological research.

The execution of the statue was intrusted to Mr. Boehm ; and I
think that those who had the good fortune to know Mr. Darwin per-
sonally will admire the power of artistic divination which has enabled
the sculptor to place before us so very characteristic a likeness of one
whom he had not seen.

It appeared to the committee that, whether they regarded Mr.
Darwin's career or the requirements of a work of art, no site could be
so appropriate as this great hall, and they applied to the Trustees of
the British Museum for permission to erect it in its present position.

That permission was most cordially granted, and I am desired to
tender the best thanks of the committee to the trustees for their will-
ingness to accede to our wishes.

I also beg leave to offer the expression of our gratitude to your
Royal Highness for kindly consenting to represent the trustees to-day.

It only remains for me, your Royal Highness, my lords and gen-
tlemen, Trustees of the British Museum, in the name of the Darwin
Memorial Committee, to request you to accept this statue of Charles
Darwin.

We do not make this request for the mere sake of perpetuating a
memory ; for, so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of
truth, the name of Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does
that of Copernicus or that of Harvey.

Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its
cynosural position in this entrance-hall of our National Museum of
Natural History as evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received
your official sanction ; for Science does not recognize such sanctions,
and commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

No ; we beg you to cherish this memorial as a symbol by which,
as generation after generation of students of Nature enter yonder
door, they shall be reminded of the ideal according to which they must
shape their lives, if they would turn to the best account the opportuni-
ties offered by the great institution under your charge.

The following reply was made by his Royal Highness the Prince
of Wales :

Professor Huxlet and Gentlemen : I consider it to be a high
privilege to have been deputed by the unanimous wish of my col-
leagues, the Trustees of the British Museum, to accept, in their name,
the gift which you have offered us on behalf of the Committee of the
Darwin Memorial. The committee and subscribers may rest assured
that we have most willingly assigned this honorable place to the statue
of the great Englishman who has exerted so vast an influence upon the

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

progress of those branches of natural knowledge the advancement of
which is the object of the vast collections gathered here. It has given
me much pleasure to learn that the memorial has received so much
support in foreign countries that it may be regarded as cosmopolitan
rather than as simply national ; while the fact that persons of every
condition of life have contributed to it affords remarkable evidence
of the popular interest in the discussion of scientific problems. A
memorial to which all nations and all classes of societv have con-

m

tributed can not be more fitly lodged than in our Museum, which,
though national, is open to all the world, and the resources of which
are at the disposal of every student of Nature, whatever his condition
or his country, who enters our doors. — Nature.

MODERN BRONZES.*

By PEEEY F. NUESEY, C. E.

WE had in the earlier ages of mankind a rough and a polished
stone age, a bronze age, and an age of iron, each distinguished
by the character of the material that was predominantly used by men
for their wsapons and tools, and have now added to those ages one of
steel. In a similar manner we are now entering upon a revival of the
bronze age, in which that substance in its varieties is to be put through
stages of improvement like those that iron and steel have undergone.
Many varieties of bronze have been produced within the last few years
that possess features strongly distinguishing them from the ancient
alloys, and some very remarkable qualities as compared with them, in
view of which they are frequently used in place of even iron and steel,
The bronzes of the ancients were composed of copper and tin, as is
also what is now regarded as bronze pure and simple, mixed in propor-
tions varying according to the purpose for which the compound is
intended. Other substances, however, are often added, without un-
classifying the product, which is still called bronze, provided copper
and tin are the chief constituents. Among these substances are zinc,
lead, phosphorus, manganese, silicium, iron, nickel, arsenic, antimony,
and sulphur. It is the addition of certain proportions of one or other
of such substances that constitutes the modern development of bronze
manufacture, and which has given us some of the most useful and at
the same time some of the most remarkable alloys known. These
comprise no fewer than eleven distinct products, all of which find
their uses in connection with the practice of engineering. They are :
phosphor-bronze, silicium-bronze, manganese-bronze, delta-metal, phos-

* From a paper read before the Society of Engineers.

MODERN BRONZES. 537

phor-copper, phosphor-manganese bronze, phosphor-lead bronze, phos-
phor-tin, aluminum-bronze, silveroid, and cobalt-bronze. There are
also other bronzes which are used as substitutes for gold in cheap imi-
tation jewelry, but they do not come within the scope of the present
paper.

The action of phosphorus on copper alloys is principally due to its
reducing qualities, by virtue of which the oxygen absorbed by the
molten metal is removed, or the oxides formed thereby are eliminated,
and the degree is imparted of homogeneity, strength, and toughness
peculiar to the chemically pure metal. The phosphorus, by producing
these effects, is converted into a cuprous oxide, which floats on the
surface of the molten metal in the shape of a very fluid slag, while the
superfluous quantity combines with the metal. It is not, therefore,
desirable to add to the bronze a larger quantity of phosphorus than
will suffice to reduce the oxide present.

Phosphor-bronze was first prepared by Dr. Kunzel, of Dresden, and
was brought into practical use in England early in 1873. The alloys
of this class are composed of copper, tin, and phosphorus, and other
ingredients in variable proportions, and are made to be either as ductile
as copper, as tough as iron, or as hard as steel, according as the pro-
portions of the constituents are varied. The alloys used for rolling
and drawing have very different proportions from those employed for
castings, bearings, and parts of machinery. The castings of this metal
are perfectly sound and homogeneous. Wherever strength, toughness,
and durability are desired, phosphor-bronze is found to be better
adapted than gun-metal and brass, and in many cases than iron and
steel. Having the advantage of not becoming crystalline under the
action of repeated shocks and bendings, it is well adapted for making
wire-rope, and, not being acted upon by corrosive liquids or the atmos-
phere, its value as a metal remains constant. The principal varieties
of phosphor-bronze, which are produced by slightly varying the pro-
portions of the constituents, are phosphor-bronze duro A, a very dense
metal, adapted for bearings carrying heavy wheels running at great
velocities, and generally for all quick-speed purposes ; and phosphor-
bronze duro B, which is intended for the bearings of hot-neck rolls,
and for all bearings having to withstand great pressure.

Silicium-bronze was invented by M. Lazare Weiller, of Angouleme,
in the search for a material for telegraph-wires, which, together with
all the desirable properties of phosphor-bronze, should have a better
conducting power. In it phosphorus is replaced by a silicious metal-
loid, by the incorporation of which a wire is produced offering the
same resistance to rupture as phosphor-bronze wire, by the use of
which telegraph lines may be furnished with a light, unoxidizable wire,
having all needed electrical efficiency. It is also affirmed of wires of
this bronze that they are of equal strength with ordinary wires, while
not one tenth as heavy ; and that, if broken, they will not fall to the

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ground as ordinary wires do, but, by virtue of their high elasticity,
will spring back and coil up close to the standards.

It has long been known that the hardness of bronze could be in-
creased by adding iron to it, but that quality appears to be acquired
at the expense of ductility and toughness, and for that reason, prob-
ably, such alloys have never come into general use. Mr. Alexander
Parkes, and the late Mr. J. D. Morries Stirling, were probably the first
to propose and carry into practice the use of manganese for improving
the quality of bronze. Mr. Parkes combined manganese alone with
copper, and used this alloy to form improved alloys of brass and yel-
low metal, of which to make sheathing, rods, wire, nails, and tubes.
Mr. Stirling, in 1848, proposed to employ manganese in various brass
alloys in which iron was present ; and a metal introduced by him was
used for some time in railway-carriage bearings. It, however, lacked
strength, hardness, and ductility, and has long since been superseded.

A manganese-bronze having all the requisites of a useful alloy was
introduced in 187G by Mr. P. M. Parsons. It is prepared by mixing
a small proportion of ferro-manganese with copper, after which various
alloys are formed. The ferro-manganese is melted in a separate cru-
cible, and is added to the copper when in a fluid state. The effect of
this combination is similar to that produced by the addition of ferro-
manganese to the decarburized iron in a Bessemer converter. Accord-
ing to Mr. Parsons, while a part of the manganese cleanses the copper
of any oxides it may contain by combining with them and forming a
slag, another part, with the iron, becomes permanently combined with
the copper, whereby the strength, hardness, and toughness of the com-
pound are modified, according as the proportions of the constituents
are varied. Five different qualities of manganese-bronze are made.
In the number one quality the zinc alloyed with the copper is consid-
erably in excess of the tin. It may be worked hot or cold, and has
great tensile strength and elasticity. Manganese-bronze number two
is stronger, and can be cast in sand for special purposes where strength,
hardness, and toughness are required ; but it has to be melted in cru-
cibles. One of its most important applications is to the production of
articles cast in metal molds under pressure ; and the articles thus
made have the strength, toughness, and hardness of cast-steel, without
any of its defects. It is perfectly homogeneous, and, while not pos-
sessing a fibrous texture derived from rolling or hammering, is still
fibrous in character, in all directions alike, and, when broken, shows a
beautiful silky fracture. It can be cast upon any object, on which it
will shrink with a force equal to its elastic limit, and, when released,
will show an amount of resilience about double that of steel. Its hard-
ness is about equal to that of mild steel.

The number three quality is composed chiefly of copper and tin in
about the same proportions as gun-metal, combined with a large per-
centage of ferro-manganese. Its chief characteristics are great trans-

MODERN BRONZES. 539

verse strength, toughness, and hardness, the facility with which it can
he cast, and the soundness and uniformity of the castings produced.
This quality is used for wheel-gearing, supports and connections of
machines, crank-pin brasses, the shells of main and other bearings
of engines, axle-boxes, and parts of locomotive-engines. It is also
adapted for statuary and for large bells. Its most important appli-
cation appears to be for making screw-spellers, for which, in its
qualities of strength, non-corrosiveness, and perfect trueness in cast-
ing, it seems to be superior to any other substance yet found.

The qualities numbers four and five have no particular claim to
strength, but are useful for bearings, slide-valves, slide-blocks, piston-
rings, and other purposes in which friction has to be taken account of.

Delta-metal, the second and latest example of the successful addi-
tion of iron to bronze, was introduced, in 1883, by Mr. Alexander Dick,
who named it with the Greek equivalent for the initial of his surname.
His preliminary experiments were directed to removing the inequalities
in the properties of the iron-bronze alloys previously attempted, and
he found that all depended on getting exactly the right proportion of
iron and preventing its oxidation during the process of remelting.
Delta-metal in color resembles gold alloyed with silver. It can be
worked hot and cold. When melted, it runs freely, and the castings
produced from it are sound and of a fine, close grain. It can not be
welded, but can be brazed, and, when of suitable thickness, " burned."
The varieties designed for working hot are capable of being stamped
or punched, similar to wrought-iron and steel, into a variety of arti-
cles which have hitherto been cast in bronze or brass. This property
is of much importance, for the articles thus turned out are cheaper
and stronger than brass-castings. The iron introduced into the com-
pound by Mr. Dick's process is really chemically combined ; and the
alloy does not rust, and has no action on the magnetic needle. Delta-
metal may be used to replace the best brass and gun-metal, and in
many instances iron and steel also — for parts of rifles, guns, and tor-
pedoes, tools for gunpowder-mills, parts of bicycles, gongs, various
domestic articles, spindles for steam- and water-valves, plungers, pump-
rods, and boats.

Phosphor-copper is a preparation devised by Mr. W. G. Otto, of
Darmstadt, for the purpose of furnishing engineers and founders with
a compound, by adding certain proportions of which to a given bulk of
metal they can obtain a phosphor-bronze suitable for various purposes.

An article called phosphor-manganese-bronze is in the market, but
the manufacturer has not furnished a description of it.

Phosphor-lead bronze, introduced in 1881 by Messrs. K. H. Kuhne
& Co., of Lobau, near Dresden, is regarded as specially adapted for
all purposes where metal is subjected to constant wear or continuous
friction. The introduction of lead into its composition and its homo-
geneousness are said to give it special properties, by reason of which

540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the advantages are claimed for it of self -lubrication, greater wearing
capacity than any other metal or alloy, coolness under friction, great
tensile strength combined with hardness, and non-liability to fracture.

Phosphor-tin is a compound designed to be added to copper for the
making of phosphor-bronze.

The history of the practical manufacture of aluminum does not ex-
tend very far back into the past ; in fact, its commencement dates within
the limits of the present generation. The three International Exhibi-
tions which have been held in Paris since aluminum began to be worked
on a commercial scale form so many landmarks in its progress. In 1855
it was met with for the first time in the Palais d'Industrie, in the form
of a large bar, and was exhibited as silver produced from clay. In
the Exposition of 18G7 it was to be seen in a more advanced stage,
worked up into castings and various kinds of useful and ornamental
articles. There also for the first time was seen the alloy aluminum-
bronze. The Paris Exhibition of 1878 witnessed the maturity of the
aluminum manufacture and its establishment as a current industry,
having a regular demand and supply for certain purposes within the
limits permitted by its somewhat high price. A little more than two
years ago Mr. James Webster perfected his invention for producing
aluminum, which is now being practically worked, and gives, it is
claimed, alumina without a trace of iron, and free from contamina-
tion with other foreign substances. The process is being worked by
the Aluminum Crown Metal Company, and the metal itself combines
strength and lightness with elegance of appearance and general utility.
The bronze is of two kinds — white and yellow — the former being used
for cutlery and other table requisites where silver and plated goods
are now employed, for metallic fittings, and for every purpose where
a non-oxidizing, bright surface, with strength, is desired. The yellow
metal is adapted, and is used for articles and for details of machinery
where gun-metal and other alloys are now employed. It is said to
stand well in engine-bearings, and to give satisfactory results when
used in screw-propellers. The bronze is made in five qualities, and
each quality is made hard or soft as may be required.

Silveroid, a metal introduced to public notice early in 1884, is an
alloy of copper and nickel adjusted with zinc, tin, or lead, in various
proportions, according to the purpose for which it is intended ; but
the secret of success in the manufacture is said to lie in a special
method of treatment at a certain point in the process. This alloy is
a metal of great whiteness, brilliancy, closeness of grain, and tensile
strength.

Cobalt -bronze has been introduced since silveroid, by the same
manufacturers, Messrs. Henry Wiggin & Co., who produced that
metal. It is whiter and slightly more expensive than silveroid, and is
interesting as containing small quantities of cobalt, with the most de-
sirable qualities of that metal, particularly its malleability. It is manu-

MEASURES OF VITAL TENACITY. 541

factured in several qualities, the higher grades of which are eminently
suitable for casting purposes, have a close, steel-like surface, are sus-
ceptible of a high polish, are hard and tough, and possess great tensile
strength.

MEASURES OF VITAL TENACITY.

Br Dr. B. W. RICHARDSON, F. R. S.

IN the observations which I have made on animals passing into
death by the lethal process, nothing has impressed me more than
the curious differences of vitality or vital values of different animals.
The differences are so great they seem almost inexplicable, and in
many respects they are so. To some extent, however, they come
under law, and we may therefore hope that by carefully continued
research what is now difficult and involved may be rendered, in time,
simple and perfectly clear.

The first series of observed facts relate to vital differences in ani-
mals of different species. In illustration I may take the cat and the
dog. Between these animals the distinction of vitality exists irrespect-
ively of age, and of all other conditions and circumstances of which
I can gather information.

Of the cat it is commonly said that it has nine lives. By this say-
ing nothing very definite is meant beyond the opinion that under vari-
ous kinds of death the cat lives much longer than other animals that
have to be killed by violent means. When any question is asked of
the police or of other persons who have to take the lives of lower ani-
mals, they tell you, without exception, according to my experience,
that the cat is the most difficult to destroy of all domestic animals,
and that it endures accidental blows and falls with an impunity that
is quite a distinguishing characteristic.

The general impression conveyed in these views is strictly correct
up to a certain and well-marked degree. By the lethal death, the
value of the life of the cat is found to be, at the least, three times the
worth of the dog. In all the cases I have seen in which the exactest
comparisons were made, the cat outlived the dog. A cat and dog of
the same ages being placed in a lethal chamber, the cat may, with
perfect certainty, be predicted to outlive the dog. The lethal cham-
ber being large enough to hold both the cat and the dog, the vapor
inhaled by the animals being the same, with every other condition
identical, this result, as an experimental truth, may be accepted with-
out cavil.

The differences, always well marked, are sometimes much longer
than would be credible in the absence of the evidence. I have once
seen a cat, falling asleep in a lethal chamber in the same period as a
dog, remain breathing, literally, nine times longer, for the dog died

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

within live minutes, and the cat not only continued to breathe, in
profoundest sleep, for forty-five minutes, but would have been recov-
erable by simple removal from the vapor into fresh air if it had been
removed while yet one act of breathing continued. This, however,
was exceptional, because the cat in the same lethal atmosphere as the
dog does not, as a rule, live more than thrice as long ; i. e., if the dog
ceases to breathe in four minutes, the cat will cease in from ten to
twelve minutes after falling asleep.

The character of the vapor used does not make any difference,
relatively. Carbonic oxide, carbonic acid, chloroform-vapor, carbon-
bisulphide vapoi', yield the same relative results. Pure carbonic oxide
kills with intense rapidity, but it kills the cat less quickly than the
dog. If instead of a lethal vapor prussic acid be used, in administra-
tion by the mouth, the cat dies more slowly than the dog. The same
is true in respect to death by drowning.

Still more curiously, recovery from apparent death is much more
frequent in the cat than in other domestic animals. Mr. Warrington
once observed a cat recover from apparent absolute death by prussic
acid, eight hours after it had lain as if dead. I once saw a young cat
come back to life after two hours of immersion under cold wrater.

I do not know many facts bearing on tenacity of life in other ani-
mals, but I have observed that sheep in a lethal atmosphere die very
rapidly, goats much less rapidly, and pigeons more rapidly than com-
mon fowls. There is, apparently, a specific tenacity in all species.

In animals of the same species there are distinctions determinable
by peculiarities in the animal itself. In one instance where a large
number of dogs were put to sleep in the lethal chamber, one was
found in deepest sleep, but still breathing, side by side and partly
covered by another that was not only dead but cold and rigid. A
similar fact occurred last year in the human subject in a mine. A
father and son killed by fire-damp lay together, the father dead, the
son living, though he, the son, had come first under the influence of
the lethal gas. In all the fatal accidents to the human subject from
the administration of chloroform or other narcotic vapor we see the
same illustration. I doubt whether in any one of these unhappy
events the death has been induced by what would be, under the com-
mon run of administrations, a fatal dose. But some die from a dose
that would not so much as narcotize others. An analogous series of
facts is met with in relation to the effects of physical and mental
shocks and to surgical operations.

The variation of measure of tenacity of life is unquestionable.
What is the reason of it ? What is there in one species of animal
that gives a measure of tenacity over another ? Why, for instance, is
the cat more tenacious of life than the do<j ?

The only answer as yet is, that the cat is endowed with more vital-
ity. But this is no answer as to details. Is the endowment of the

MEASURES OF VITAL TENACITY. 543

greater vitality centered in the nervous system, in the muscular, in the
respiratory, in the blood, in the membranes?

And wherever centered, what is the endowment ?

The difference of tenacity in animals of the same species is more
approachable, because we know certain factors that afford an explana-
tion of it.

Age is a factor. In the young the tenacity is more distinctly marked
than in the old. In a broad sense there is no exception to this rule.

Degenerations of tissues are factors. Fatty degenerations are re-
ducers of tenacity. Lessened arterial tension is a reducer.

Race or breed is another factor. The strong, wiry, muscular ani-
mal of any species is more tenacious of life than the heavier and less
elastic. The terrier outlives the spaniel or retriever. The man of
sanguine temperament outlives the nervous and lymphatic man.

In the operation of tracheotomy for croup or diphtheria in childi-en,
other things being equal, the chances of a successful issue will be as
two to one to a spare, active, wiry subject compared with the chances
of the full-cheeked, full-bodied child with luscious lips and rich flow-
ing curls of pale or golden hue. The first of these will live almost
through the gate of death ; the second will succumb without a strug-
gle for life.

Will is a factor. I have twice seen tenacity of life maintained, as
it were, against all possibilities by what is called the will of the suf-
ferer. Mr. F. Hall, of Jermyn Street, had a patient in the last stage
of pulmonary consumption, whom I had seen with him in what ap-
peared to be a condition of emaciation and exhaustion that precluded
the feeblest effort toward rising from bed. Yet one day, and three
weeks only before actual death, this sick man by a supreme effort of
volition rose, dressed himself, went out of his house, and had to be
sought for by his friends and brought back, with gentle compulsion,
simply to die.

A young authoress of great promise, suffering from the same dis-
ease— pulmonary consumption — in the very last days of her life rose
from bed, and in the most vigorous style was engaged for several
hours in composition on letters and work which had been for months
laid aside. Her friends, bewildered by the phenomenon, could scarcely
accredit that the effort did not presage recovery, until rapid collapse
dispelled the illusion.

This tenacity of life illustrated through volition is the equivalent
of that courageous endurance wrhich some in famine and war have
" miraculously " exhibited.

These examples illustrate the influence of certain factors on te-
nacity of life, and they may, one day, lead up to the prime cause of
the difference of tenacity if they and other facts bearing on the matter
be carefully observed and recorded. But, as yet, the prime cause re-
mains a troubled and troublous question. — The Aselepiad.

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CUEIOSITIES OF TIME-EECKONING.

By M. L. BARKE.

THE natural unities for the measurement of time are three, and are
afforded by the rotation of the earth upon its axis, the revolution
of the moon around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around
the sun ; of which the mean values respectively are 24 hours ; 29 days,
12 hours, 44 minutes, 2*9 seconds ; and 365*2422 days. These num-
bers are incommensurable and wholly independent of one another.
But men have tried to connect them from the most remote ages, and
have devised the lunar-solar year, the duration of which is related to
the movements of the sun and the moon. Although this system may
appear complicated, it is in reality quite simple, for the sun and moon
spare man the trouble of calculating the days, while the years and
months write themselves in large characters in the appearance of the
sky and of vegetation.

The lunar-solar year thus having its origin in Nature, is found in
the most ancient form of the Jewish calendar. The Israelite year was
so regulated that the feast of the Passover was celebrated on the four-
teenth day of the first month, when the barley to be offered in sacri-
fice was ripe at the full moon. This marked the first month of the
year, named Nisan, and served as the point of departure for the
twelve usual months. But, if the ripening of the barley did not occur
during the fortnight following the end of the year, another month
was intercalated, and the new year began with the next new moon.
If we desire an exact and rigorous measure, this form of year is
simply confusing. The Jews have years of twelve lunar months, of
twenty-nine or thirty days, to which is added a thirteenth month,
when the year is embolismic ; and they might contain 353, 354, 355,
383, 384, or 385 days. The Jewish calendar also included a period of
nineteen solar years, or a lunar cycle of 235 months. The years date
from the creation of the world, which is fixed by the Jews at October
7th, b. c. 3761.

The Chinese month begins with the new moon ; the first month
when the sun enters Pisces, the second when it enters Aries, etc. But
if the sun does not enter a new sign of the zodiac with the new
month, an additional month is introduced, which is given the same
name as the preceding one, with a distinctive sign. The months are
of twenty-nine and thirty days, but there is no absolute rule for their
succession, nor for the place of the supplementary month, nor for the
intercalation of complementary years ; and, as the beginnings of the
months and the years are calculated from the movements of the celes-
tial bodies, the whole year is uncertain and changeable. In the diffi-
culty of ascertaining from what tables the ancient Chinese calculated
their astronomical elements, there would be great uncertainty in com-

CURIOSITIES OF TIME-RECKONING. 545

paring a Chinese date with the corresponding date of any other chro-
nology, were it not that the learned from the most ancient times have
used a cycle of sixty days in much the same manner as we use our
week of seven days, without regard to the movements of the sun and
the moon. This calendar has become of prime necessity for fixing the
year in which a particular day may have fallen ; and the preparation
of it is considered a matter of such importance that it is confided to
an imperial mathematical tribunal, and, when the work is completed,
it is ceremoniously presented to the members of the imperial family
and the chief personages of the government.

The Chinese years are designated by two numbers. The first, the
official number, indicates the number of the years of the reign of the
emperor, and is variable ; the second pertains to a cycle of sixty years,
of which each year has a special name. In all Eastern Asia, the sys-
tem employed for the designation of the years is based upon the com-
bination of the name of ten, kan, with one of the denominations of
twelve, chi. The cycle formed by a combination of this character
may be found in Japan, Manchooria, Mongolia, and Thibet. The
Aztec cycle of fifty-two years, formed of two smaller cycles of four
and thirteen years, led Humboldt to suggest that Asiatic ideas might
have penetrated to Mexico. Sometimes, but rarely, the Asiatics count
by cycles of twelve years, each of which has the name of an animal.

The lunar-solar year of the Hindoos was based on a sidereal solar
year of which the twelve months, of unequal length, had a duration
exactly defined. The solar month Chaitra consisted of 30 days, 20
hours, 21 minutes, 2 seconds, and 3G thirds, the day being divided into
sixty hours. The year began with the new moon preceding the be-
ginning of the solar year. When two lunar months began within the
same solar month, the first one was intercalated. If no lunar month
began in the course of a particular solar month, the year lost an ordi-
nary month, but two intermediate months were added. Every Hin-
doo month has a particular name, and the new moons, which serve to
fix the beginnings of the months and the years, are calculated with so
great precision that it is much more easy to identify an ancient date
in India than in China. But some difficulties arise out of the use of
different systems in ancient times, and also from the fact that the
Hindoo day is the thirtieth part of the lunar month, which consists
of twenty-nine days and a half, and is consequently shorter than the
natural day.

The computation of the years begins with zero, the first year count-
ing as 0, the second as 1, and so on. Each year bears a particular name
appertaining to a cycle of sixty years, which is, however, different from
the Chinese cycle, and is based on the course of the planet Jupiter,
which performs its revolution in 11*86 years, or, in round numbers,
twelve years. The Hindoo cycle is therefore equivalent to five Jovian
revolutions and -fa of a year (11 "86 years X 5 = 5930 years); in three
vol. xxvii. — 35

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

periods of sixty years we have to omit two years, one in the first cycle,
and the other in the third ; but in thirty cycles we have to omit 0*7
year X 30 = 21 years, while the preceding correction has omitted only
twenty years ; so a new suppression of a year has to be performed in
each series of thirty cycles.

The Hindoos also employed ages in the computation of time, and
these, too, divided into periods of different durations. The present
age is the kali yuga, or the age of iron ; 4,985 years of it have already
passed, but its total duration is supposed to be 432,000 years. The
succession of the ages, counting back, is given as follows :

Fourth age — Kali yuga, age of iron, or of woe (the present age), to
be of 432,000 years.

Third age — Dvapara yuga, 864,000 years.

Second age — Treta yuga, or age of silver, 1,296,000 years.

First age — Krita yuga, age of gold, or of innocence, 1,728,000 years.

These four ages form the maha yuga, or great age, of 4,320,000
years. The length of a patriarchate is seventy-one maha yugas, or
306,720,000 years, to which is added a twilight period of 1,728,000
years, making in all 308,448,000 years. Fourteen of these patriarchates,
augmented by a dawn of 1,728,000 years, gives 4,320,000,000 years,
which form a halpa, or the ceon of the Hindoo chronology.

A kalpa is only a day in the life of Brahma, whose nights are also of
the same duration. Now, Brahma lives a hundred years of three hun-
dred and sixty days and three hundred and sixty nights. The present
epoch is the kali yuga of the twenty-seventh grand age of the seventh
patriarchate of the first seon of the second half of the life of Brahma,
who is now in his 155,521,972,848,985th spring. Yet the whole life of
Brahma is only a little longer than a single wink of Siva's eye !

The Greeks employed first two years of 12 months each consisting
of 30 days, and a third year of 13 months, giving an average of 370
days to the year ; then the cycle of 19 lunar years, with seven months
intercalated in each cycle to obtain 19 solar years. The months were
of 29 and 30 days, and the time was calculated by Olympiads, of four
years each. Afterward, Calippus introduced the cycle of Meton, 433
years b. c, shorter than the 19 solar years, in consequence of the sup-
pression of a day every 76 years. The era of the Olympiads goes
back to b. c. 776, at which time Corcebus obtained the prize in the
race, from and after which date the names of the victors were inscribed
on the official registers.

The ancient Egyptians reckoned at first 12 months of 30 days, or
360 days ; but they afterward added five supplementary days. The
years were counted from the accession of the kings ; and the canon of
Ptolemy is a chronological table giving the changes of the reigns.
The same form of year was formerly in use among the Persians, with
the difference that they added the five supplementary days to the
eighth month instead of to the twelfth. Their months had particular

CURIOSITIES OF TIME-RECKONING. 547

names, and their years were counted from the accession of Yesdegerd
I, a. d. 399 ; an epoch which is still employed by the Persians in some
parts of India. Five thousand years ago, the heliacal rising of Sirius
announced to the Egyptians an event of prime importance to them —
the overflow of the Nile. They honored the watchful constellation
that includes this star with the name of " The Dog," and worshiped
it under the title of Anubis. Their year consisting of 365 days, they
remarked that the phenomenon took place later, at the rate of a day
every four years, so that after 1,461 years of 365 days (or 1,460 years
of 365£ days) the heliacal risings took place in the original order, after
having successively occurred at very different days and hours. This
period of 1,461 Egyptian years was called the Sothic period, or the
period of the dog. After b. c. 25, the Egyptian year contained 365£
days, or nearly the real value of the year. This was called the Alex-
andrian year. The Copts still employ it, but begin their reckoning
from Martyr's day in the reign of Diocletian, August 29th, a. d. 284,
while the Alexandrian era began with the battle of Actium, September
2d, b. c. 31. Three Egyptian years included 12 months of 30 days each
followed by five epagomenous days ; while the fourth or following
year had a sixth epagomenous day.

The Roman year consisted of 304 days under Romulus, 355 under
Numa, and 366 on the intercalation of the month Mercedonius. The
irregularities of their calendar were so great that the pontijices were
charged with the duty of regulating the number of days in the inter-
calated month. Unfortunately, some of the less scrupulous of these
functionaries fell into a way of " doctoring " the year so as to make
it longer when their friends, or shorter when their enemies, were in
office ! The corruption was carried out so recklessly that the feast
of the Autumnalia was made to come in the spring, and the festival
of Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, was celebrated in the middle of
the winter ! Julius Ccesar put an end to this disorder by introducing
the year of 365^ days, and gave to the months such numbers of days
as made the intercalation of the epagomens unnecessary. The 366th
day of the fourth year was added to the month of February, which
then had 29 days, and as this caused the sixth day of the kalends to be
counted twice (bis sexto calendarwn), the name of bissextile was given
to this year. This reform took place in the year 708 of Rome (46
b. c), which year Julius Caesar ordered to consist of 445 days, so as to
make the civil year and the tropical year agree. Hence that year was
called the year of confusion. Caesar's calendar is the basis of the
calendar which, further corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, is now in
use among the Western nations.

The Mexican year was a peculiar form of the year of 365£ days.
It included 18 months of 20 days each, to which were added five sup-
plementary days ; and, after 52 years, 13 new days made up out of the
neglected quarters of days.

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The ancient Irish year was curiously formed. The unit being the
week of seven days, they computed 12 months of 30 days each, to
which they added four supplementary days to give an even number of
weeks, and then every six or seven years they added a week, so that
the years might be of 52 or 53 weeks.

The last essay in reforming the calendar was made during the
French Revolution, partly with the object of introducing the decimal
system into the calculation of time, and partly to eliminate everything
relating to the Roman Catholic or any other religion. The months,
of thirty days each, were given names, generally typical of some pe-
culiar feature characterizing them. They were divided into three
periods of ten days, or decades, to take the place of the weeks, with six
intercalated days (five in leap-years) at the end of the last month. The
intercalation was not periodic, but was based on exact astronomical
calculations. This calendar was used for thirteen years, beginning with
the proclamation of the republic, on the 22d of September, 1792.

In the lunar year, the months are alternately of 29 and of 30 days,
the moon's synodical revolution taking place in about 29£ days. The
lunar cycle of the Mohammedans comprises a period of thirty lunar
years, during which the seasons begin at all times of the year. If a
Turkish festival now falls in the middle of the winter, it will, fifteen
years hence, be celebrated in the summer. — Translated for the Popular
Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

■*•+■

SKETCH OF M. CHEVREUL.

" ~T~)ERHAPS never in the history of science," said the London
J- "Lancet" a year and a half ago,* "has a distinguished career
equaled in its length that of M. Chevreul ; . . . and it is probably alto-
gether unique for a savant to be able, at one of the most distinguished
scientific societies in the world, to refer to remarks which he made be-
fore the same society more than seventy years previously." The allusion
is to a reference with which the veteran chemist had supplemented a
communication he had read a few days before to the French Academy
of Sciences : " Moreover, gentlemen, the observation is not a new one
to me. I had the honor to mention it here, at the meeting of the Acad-
emy of Sciences, on the 10th of May, 1812." When asked in 1883 if
he had seen a certain piece at one of the theatres, he answered, " No, I
have not been inside the doors of a theatre since Talma's death — in
1824," or fifty-nine years previously. Talking of the weather during a
mild period in the winter of 1883, he said, " The severest winter I ever
experienced was that of 1793," indicating the recollection of a fact
ninety years old. M. Chevreul appears to have come from a long-lived

* December 24, 1883.

SKETCH OF M. CHEVREUL. 549

ancestry. His father, Michel Chevreul, a distinguished physician of
his day, according to Larousse's " Cyclopaedia " (born 1754, died 1845),
was ninety-one years old at the time of his death ; while the " Lan-
cet " finds somewhere nineteen additional years, and makes his age a
hundred and ten years. If discrepancies like this can occur in writing
exact biographies of our own times, why should we be surprised at the
variances in the legends of ancient days ?

Michel Eugene Chevreul was born at Angers, France, where his
father was hospital physician and a professor in the Obstetrical School,
on the 31st of August, 1786. He studied the course of the Central
School of his native city, and then, when seventeen years old, went to
Paris, where he became associated with Vauquelin in the manufacture
of chemicals, and was made director of his laboratory. He was after-
ward, in 1810, selected by Vauquelin as preparator in the course of
Applied Chemistry at the Museum of Natural History. In 1813 he was
given the title of Officer of the University, and was placed in the chair
of Chemistry of the Lycee Charlemagne. In 1824 he was made special
Professor of Chemistry at the Gobelins factory, and director of the dye-
houses connected with that establishment. In 1826 he was admitted
to the Academy of Sciences, in the place of M. Proust, in whose favor
he had retired from the candidacy in 1816, when he had had an oppor-
tunity of being elected. In 1830 he succeeded his former master, Vau-
quelin, in the chair of Applied Chemistry in the Museum of Natural
History. He has been charged with the administration of the Jardin
des Plantes, where he has had occasion to defend the ancient preroga-
tives of the body he represented against the encroachments of the
political administration, and where he made a formal protest during the
siege of Paris against the barbarous bombardment of the buildings of
the institution.

The enumeration of the discoveries that science owes to M. Che-
vreul would far pass the limits which it is possible to assign to this
sketch. The most important of them have been perhaps in the fields
of researches on fatty bodies of animal origin, and of colors, their con-
trasts, their harmonies, and the graduation of their shades. The " Re-
cherches chimiques sur les corps gras d'origine animal " ("Chemical Re-
searches on Fatty Bodies of Animal Origin "), on which the foundation
of his reputation was laid, appeared in 1823. In this work the author
developed his new ideas on the relations of fatty bodies and the ethers,
and propounded the first exact theory of saponification, whether pro-
duced by acids or by bases, by showing that either of those two classes
of bodies tend to speed the decomposition of fat-substances in acids and
in glycerine, through the absorption of a certain number of equivalents
of water. The same decomposition takes place spontaneously but slowly
in the open air, and is the cause of the rancidity of fats. The water
absorbed in the course of the transformation contributes to the forma-
tion of the resultant fat-acid, and the glycerine is separated. When a

550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fatty substance is submitted to the action of a strong acid, the decom-
position takes place instantaneously, because the acid separates the
glycerine and unites with it. If, on the other hand, the action is ac-
complished by means of an energetic base, the base determines the
formation of a fat-acid, and combines with it, so as to leave the gly-
cerine isolated. Glycerine had been discovered by Scheele in 1775,
but, until M. Chevreul's experiments, was regarded as only accidentally
present in some fats ; and to M. Chevreul is due the discovery that it
is always separated in the saponification of fats, and that those bodies
are now regarded as salts, formed of glycerine as a base, combined
with some acid. This theory led up to the invention of star-candles,
a boon to mankind, of the value of which the present generation, with
its gas-lights and petroleum-lamps, can have no conception. For this
discovery M. Chevreul was awarded the grand prize of twelve thou-
sand francs founded by the Marquis d'Argenteuil, in conferring which
the Societe d'Encouragement pour lTndustrie Nationale declared with
justice that it was only registering the opinion of all Europe concern-
ing researches which might serve as models to all chemists. M. Che-
vreul, it may be added, never thought of turning his discoveries to his
personal profit, but gave them freely to the world, and was satisfied
with being a student of science.

M. Chevreul's researches in coloring-matters at the Gobelins fac-
tory and at the Museum gave occasion to the publication of " Le-
90ns de chimie appliquee a la teinture " (" Lessons on the Applica-
tion of Chemistry to Dyeing," 1828-1831) ; of a memoir on the law of
the simultaneous contrast of colors, and on the arrangement of colored
objects according to that law in its relations to painting (" Sur la loi
du contraste simultane des couleurset sur l'assortiment des objets colo-
rees, considere d'apres cette loi dans ses rapports avec la peinture,"
1829), and of a memoir on colors and their application in the indus-
trial arts (" Des couleurs et de leur application aux arts industriels a
l'aide des cercles chromatiques," 1864) ; works embodying novel ideas,
the application of which in manufactories and workshops has been
attended with important results. M. Chevreul was much grieved
when, in his advanced age, the management of the Gobelins factory
placed him on the retired list ; but, in order to appease his feelings,
he was allowed to retain his appointment with the full salary attached
to it. In 1879 he was retired from the directory of the Museum, but
was permitted to retain his chair as professor.

Among the honors that have been accorded to him are membership
of the Royal Society ; President of the Agricultural Society ; Com-
mander, Grand Officer, and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor ; and
other memberships and decorations at home and abroad. He was a
member of the International Juries at the Expositions of London and
Paris. In September, 1872, the French Academy of Sciences pre-
sented him with a medal in anticipatory commemoration of the fiftieth

SKETCH OF M. CHEVREUL. 551

year of his membership. The fiftieth year would not strictly have
occurred till 1876 ; but it was generally understood that he would
have been elected in 1816, had he not urged the Academy to give the
vacant place to M. Proust, who was old and infirm, and could not
afford to wait. M. Dumas, the Permanent Secretary of the Academy,
in a " gracefully-worded speech," recounted the many valuable serv-
ices rendered by M. Chevreul, " the dean of French students," as he
was modestly accustomed to style himself, and at the same time bore
warm testimony to the personal character of the man. M. Elie de
Beaumont, who had been a pupil of M. Chevreul, added a few words
of veneration and respect for his old master, after which the latter,
attempting to respond, could only express his inability to do so. In
1873 the Albert gold medal was awarded him by the English Society
of Arts, for his valuable researches in connection with saponification,
dyeing, agriculture, and natural history. In November, 1876, he was
entertained at dinner by eighty savants in celebration of the fiftieth
anniversary of his professorship and membership of the Academy of
Sciences. The American Association for the Advancement of Science,
at its Boston meeting in 1880, sent him a congratulatory telegram on
his reaching his ninety-fifth year, and expressed the hope that he
might be spared to continue his labors until the end of his century,
which only a few months are lacking to see fulfilled. In the same
year, he completed the fiftieth course of his lectures at the Museum,
on the application of chemistry to organized bodies. Each course
consisted of forty lectures, so that the fifty courses included in all two
thousand lectures.

According to "Nature,'* M. ChevreuPs first important work was
published in 1806. Among his other works than those we have al-
ready named, are one on organic analysis and its applications (1824) ;
" Theorie des effets optiques que presentent les etoffes de soie "
(" Theory of the Optical Effects presented by Silken Cloths," 1848) ;
"De la baguette divinatoire, du pendule, et des tables tournantes"
(" Of the Divining-Rod, the Pendulum, and Turning-Tables," 1854) ;
"The History of Chemical Science," of which the first volume was
published in 1866; "Memoirs of the Academy," completed in 1872,
" a most interesting work, which throws light on many of the most
scientific questions of the day " ; and numerous papers, articles in
encyclopaedias, and books of less general interest than those men-
tioned. A curious illustration of his vigor and activity, lasting into
extreme old age, is afforded by a communication which he made to
the Academy of Sciences on the 4th of February, 1884, which was on
the varying color-effects produced by the glare of a conflagration play-
ing upon a gas-light that stood in front of the Museum, which he ob-
served for an hour. Delicate work that for the eyes of a man ninety-
eight years old ! That vigor still continued till the beginning of the
present year, when M. Chevreul presided at the meeting of the new

552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Association of French Students, the " Scientia " ; and when his name
was mentioned in connection with those of Jamin, Pasteur, De Lesseps,
and Leon Say, as one of the persons whose co-operation was expected
to insure the success of the organization. In his address at this meet-
ing, he declared himself still a student.

On the 4th of January last the students of Paris made a manifesta-
tion before M. Chevreul's house, with their flags flying, in honor —
anticipating the day by a few months — of the one hundredth anniver-
sary of his birth. Twenty delegates from the body were received in
person by M. Chevreul, when M. Delcambre, President of the Asso-
ciation of Students, spoke in eulogy of the great savant by whom
France is honored, and who, reaching his hundredth year, still re-
mained robust and valiant, and preserved all the force of his genius
and his old energy in work. In concluding his address, M. Delcambre
said : " Illustrious and beloved master, the students of all the schools
have joined in this manifestation because you are to us all — I say it
with full assurance — a dean, and, I hope I may be permitted to add, a
comrade. As a savant, you have contributed to the progress of hu-
manity ; as a Frenchman, you have added to the grandeur of France.
The students by my lips transmit to you their good wishes and felici-
tations." M. Chevreul appeared much touched by this demonstration,
and thanked the students with a voice marked by emotion. M. Del-
cambre then presented him a register containing the signatures of all
the participants.

An interesting account of M. Chevreul's habits is given by a writer
who is quoted in the "Lancet" : "He is generally lightly clad, and
wears no hat unless under circumstances in which he is obliged to
appear in one ; indeed, he hardly needs a hat, as he has most luxuri-
ant hair. He is constantly at work, allowing only ten minutes for
each of his meals, of which he has but two a day. He breakfasts at
seven, the repast consisting of a plate of meat and another of vegeta-
bles, which he eats together, the whole being washed down with two
tumblers of water. He is said to have never drunk a glass of wine in
his life. He dines at seven in the evening, and takes nothing between
the two meals except a small loaf at noon, which he eats standing and
by the side of his alembics. The writer who relates this states that on
a visit to M. Chevreul he found him in the attitude just described, and
on expressing his surprise at the frugal manner in which he lived, M.
Chevreul observed, ' I am very old ' (this was in 1874), ' and I have yet
a great deal to do, so I do not wish to lose my time in eating.' " In
his work he is said to follow a motto that he has chosen from a maxim
by Malebranche, and which is regarded by " Nature " as affording a
true key to his life, his works, and his discoveries: "Chercher tou-
jours l'infaillibilite, sans avoir pretention de l'atteindre jamais" ("Al-
ways to seek infallibility, without having the pretension of ever reach-
ing it").

EDITOR'S TABLE.

553

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TEE NEW TYNDALL SCEOLARSEIPS.

THERE are multitudes who still re-
member, with vivid pleasure, the
brilliant course of scientific lectures de-
livered in 1872, in several of our chief
cities, by Professor John Tyndall, of
the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
They made a strong impression at the
time, and impelled many young persons
to give greater prominence to science
in their studies. But there was another
and a more special influence exerted by
these lectures in accordance with the
deeper purpose of Professor Tyndall.
The public mind was favorably affected
by them in regard to the claims of pure
or theoretic science. We plume our-
selves on being very practical in this
country, and by " practical " we gener-
ally mean the opposite of theoretical —
that which issues in tangible and im-
mediate use. Professor Tyndall showed
that this is a mistaken view. He was
not complaisant toward the lower mo-
tives from which science is so generally
pursued ; and insisted strongly upon the
more elevated considerations by which
the students of science should be ani-
mated. He enforced, with much im-
pressiveness, the important lesson that
to yield its noblest results science must
be studied for the simple love of truth
and the extension of our knowledge of
Nature, leaving its utilitarian benefits
to follow as they always will when new
light has been thrown upon any im-
portant group of phenomena. The un-
selfish pursuit of science for these
nobler ends was urged by Professor
Tyndall upon our young men with
great earnestness and something of the
inspiration of religious conviction ; yet
none realized at the time how firm and
far-reaching was his purpose, nor how
lasting was to be the influence of his
work in this direction in this country.

When Professor Tyndall was solicit-
ed to come to America, and told what
a golden harvest he could reap by lect-
uring here, he invariably replied that
no consideration of the kind would
have any weight in inducing him to
accept the invitation. " If I come to
you," he would say, "it must be be-
cause my friends in the United States
desire it, and think that I could be of
service in the cause of American sci-
ence ; but I will not lecture for the
sake of money, nor would I bring away
a dollar of the proceeds of my labor."
And when the lectures closed, true to
his purpose, he left all of the money he
had earned, above expenses incurred, for
the promotion of scientific education
among American youth. But this was
not all : he devoted the money to the
advancement of the distinctive ideas
which he had illustrated in his lectures,
by appropriating it to the assistance of
such young men as desire to devote
themselves to original scientific study
and research. He left it in care of
three trustees, the income to be ex-
pended in aid of American students of
tested ability, who might wish to avail
themselves of the higher opportunities
of scientific culture available in the Eu-
ropean universities.

But there were difficulties attend-
ing the carrying out of this plan which
prevented the full realization of its ad-
vantages. Several students were aided,
and with great satisfaction ; but it was
not so easy to find the young men who
had the proper qualifications to be en-
titled to the benefits of the trust. There
were, of course, plenty of them, but the
finding them out was more of a task
tiian had been anticipated. The trus-
tees were scattered, and were busy men,
having little time for correspondence,
while the employment of a paid secre-

554

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tary was impracticable. As a conse-
quence, the income accrued faster than
it was consumed, and, as the money
had been fortunately invested, it at
length accumulated to so considerable
an amount as to make some change
desirable in the policy to be further
pursued. It became apparent that the
purpose Professor Tyndall had in view
could be better accomplished through
the agency of permanent educational
institutions, having among their objects
the promotion of higher scientific study.
The trustees corresponded with Pro-
fessor Tyndall, who concurred with this
view, and it was then resolved to ter-
minate the existing arrangement by
transferring the Tyndall fund back to
the possession of the donor, to be dis-
tributed to such institutions as he might
select. The original amount — thirteen
thousand dollars — had increased to
thirty-two thousand four hundred dol-
lars ; and Professor Tyndall decided to
divide this sum in three equal amounts,
to be given, one to Columbia College,
of New York ; one to Harvard Uni-
versity, of Cambridge ; and one to the
University of Pennsylvania, at Phila-
delphia, for the foundation of three
permanent scholarships in physical sci-
ence, and for the benefit of students
desiring to prepare themselves for the
work of original research either at
home or abroad, as the authorities of
the respective institutions might decide.
This princely benefaction to Ameri-
can science will thus be memorable in
future times, not only for its magnitude,
but from the impressive circumstances
of its origin. The money represents
the contributions of the American peo-
ple, given for the enjoyment of one
of the most striking and instructive
courses of scientific lectures ever de-
livered in this country. It represents
also the earnings of one of the most
gifted and high-minded scientific men
of this generation, who contributed half
a year's labor to the preparation and
delivery of the lectures. The fund is

consecrated to the perpetual carrying
out of the scientific conceptions and
principles inculcated in these discourses,
so that the intellectual influence so strik-
ingly initiated thirteen years ago will
be an enduring power in the higher
scientific education of this country for
all time. Three of our leading colle-
giate institutions will be in competition
with each other to administer these
scholarships in the spirit in which they
have been founded, to maintain their
high - class character, which will be
evinced by the quality of the men they
turn out, and who, by their accomplish-
ments, will do lasting honor to the illus-
trious scientist whose name and fame
are treasured in the hearts of many
thousands of the American people.

OFFICIALISM IN EDUCATION.

The Boston " Journal of Education "
complains of the persistent assaults
made upon " the graded school system "
of this country, and attributes very
evil motives to those by whom the al-
leged assaults are conducted. It finds
" a considerable class of the clergy of
all sects laced up in the mediaeval Eu-
ropean notion that the priest has a di-
vine right to supervise all schools, over-
riding even the claim of the family,
and resenting the claim of the whole
people to supervise education as a god-
less presumption." It mentions also
" a growing class of scientists, scholars,
and literary people" as "putting on
European airs, and claiming the exclu-
sive right, as educational experts, to con-
trol the schools." Next, there is an
exclusive social class bent on "forcing
its own lines of artificial distinction
into the school-room." The moneyed
class, again, wants to regulate educa-
tion with a view to keeping the " com-
mon herd" out of the poor-house;
while labor-reformers want to have the
interests of the mechanic and operative
classes specially considered.

Now, we must confess that we fail

EDITOR'S TABLE.

555

to see that the account given by our
contemporary — presuming it to be cor-
rect— of the views of the several classes
mentioned bears out the statement that
these classes are persistently assaulting
the graded school system. So long as
the school system belongs to the do-
main of politics, as it does, so long will
it be open to criticism from any and
every quarter. The humblest individual
in the community has a right to ex-
press his opinion as to how public
money should or should not be spent ;
but we are not cognizant of any efforts
that are being made to undermine the
" graded " system as such. That it is
desirable to have educational institu-
tions of every grade, from the lowest
to the highest, no sensible person is
likely to deny; though some might
raise the question as to whether en-
forced taxation is the proper means of
obtaining funds for certain kinds of
education. If our contemporary thinks
that even to raise such a question is to
show hostility to the cause of educa-
tion, we must beg leave to differ from
him. Time was when no one could
imagine that anybody not a foe to
religion could propose to sever church
from state ; but at present the great
majority, in this country at least, hold
that the severance is decidedly in the
interest of religion. It may be said
to be all but universally agreed that
people are quite able to provide them-
selves with religion without any help
from the state ; and, moreover, that the
article they provide for themselves is
likely to be a considerable improvement
on what the state has ever doled out.
Well, it may require a far greater stretch
of radicalism to hold that people could
also provide themselves with intellect-
ual enlightenment without state assist-
ance ; but we are not prepared to say
that he who takes up this position is
necessarily either a "crank " or an ene-
my of society. The fact is, that the
article from which we have quoted
betrays just a soupgon of the bureau-

cratic spirit which naturally develops
itself in connection with all state man-
agement. Those who control the schools
in the name of "the whole people " do
not like the clergy to have any special
views of their own in regard to the
moral aspects of public-school educa-
tion. They do not relish the criticisms
of " scientists, scholars, and literary
people " who venture to find the edu-
cational machine rather too much of a
machine, and its work slightly wanting
in organic variety. They want to be
allowed to run the machine in the
way most convenient to themselves
and most favorable to large visible re-
sults. We do not question for a moment
that much of sincere endeavor after the
best results accompanies the adminis-
tration of the official system ; but we
do mean that, in every official system,
the official or bureaucratic spirit is a
constantly growing force, and must tend
to a stereotyping of methods and to a
more or less barren uniformity in the
minds molded under its influence. The
time may come when it will be seen to
be as much in the interest of true intel-
lectual liberty that education should be
freed from state trammels as it is now
seen to be in the interest of religious
liberty that the state should abstain
from interference in the spiritual con-
cerns of the people. Meantime it is a
clear sign of the development of the
bureaucratic spirit in connection with
education when criticism from any quar-
ter is looked on with an evil eye, and
when " scientists, scholars, and literary
people," and all others who have any
special views of their own on the sub-
ject, are more or less politely warned off
the premises.

CURIOUS EXCUSES FOR WAR.
There is little need of evidence to
show the popularity of war, yet the
reprobation it meets with from the
growing moral sense of the world some-
times puts its advocates upon strange
defenses of it. Though always a dire

556

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

calamity, war is in certain circum-
stances to be defended as a necessity ;
but those who make it a business are
rarely contented to leave it on tliis
ground. The brutal bluntness of the
member of Parliament who advocated
war in a distant English province, and,
upon being pressed for his reasons, re-
plied, " Why, d — n it, I have two sons
in the army ! " is not often emulated ;
even those who are interested in it as a
vocation seek plausible excuses for it.

Lieutenant - Commander Goodrich,
of the United States Navy, for example,
writes, in the "Century Magazine":
" I am not sure, however, that it is not
well once in a while to assert ourselves
as standing on a right because it is
right, and as prepared to maintain it at
any cost." It would seem the dictate
of a wise statesmanship, on a matter of
such supreme importance, to lay down
the principles that should govern a na-
tion, in resorting to war, as an estab-
lished and inflexible policy. But Lieu-
tenant Goodrich seems to think that
war may be desirable, once in a while,
anyhow or on its own account, or as a
display of power, without reference to
its usual provocations.

War is generally regarded as a last
brutal resort, when the higher agencies
of reason and diplomacy have failed,
and the resources of civilization to keep
the peace have broken down; but Von
Moltke maintains that war is itself a
natural and permanent element of civil-
ization, and that the hope of ending it
is equally illusive and undesirable.

But the most curious attempt to
throw a glamour over the intrinsic abom-
inations of war, and make it seem a
thing worthy of admiration, is made by
the " Spectator," which maintains that,
in the systematic and professional kill-
ing of men on a vast scale, which con-
stitutes war, there is a peculiar " intel-
lectual charm." The " Spectator " inti-
mates that Christians of the feminine
type, and sentimental people who viv-
idly realize the horrors of battle, may

shrink from the system ; but it says
that " war, as such, has for cultivated
mankind a distinct intellectual charm."
The terrible fascination is admitted, but
how its charm can be qualified as dis-
tinctly intellectual does not appear.
The " Spectator " expatiates on the tre-
mendous interests staked in war, which
may involve the national fate, and be
of immense moment to citizens ; but,
then, it goes on to say, " Wars which
are not ours interest us nearly as much
as those which are." The truth is, war
appeals not so especially to the intellect
as to the deeper life-instincts of hu-
manity. Men are thrilled by the ex-
citement of war with no regard to their
culture. There is no more " intellectual
charm " in war than in any great crime
or catastrophe or the coming of cholera.
It is probable, indeed, that the " Spec-
tator" has here committed itself to the
very opposite of what is true. It is
impossible to think of the intellectual
classes as such, people of cultivated
sensibilities, except as repelled and
shocked instead of being charmed by
war; while, on the contrary, the dis-
tinctively uncultivated classes are most
profoundly stirred and attracted by it.
The admiration of war is indeed the
deepest among savages and barbarians,
with whose undeveloped natures it is
in harmony. The recent war experi-
ment of the " Century Magazine " is
said to have doubled its circulation ;
will it be claimed that the hundred
thousaud new patrons that have been
found in addition to its former read-
ers, are to be ranked as especially intel-
lectual and cultivated, or are they not
probably quite of the opposite kind ?

LITERARY NOTICES.

Transactions of the New York State
Medical Association for the Year
1884. Edited, for the Association, by
Dr. Austin Flint, Jr. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 654. Price, $5.

The first meeting of the Association was
held in the city of New York on the 18th,

LITERARY NOTICES.

557

19th, and 20th, of November, 1884, and was
attended by two hundred and forty -two fel-
lows. The titles of fifty papers to be read
were entered on the official programme of
the meeting, by members representing fif-
teen counties of the State, besides papers
the titles of which were received after the
programme was published. Of these pa-
pers, seventeen were on topics of surgery,
fifteen on medicine, eleven on obstetrics and
gynaecology, three on ophthalmology, two
on materia medica, one on physiology, and
one on insanity. The present volume con-
tains three papers, with the president's
(Henry D. Didama, M. D., of Onondaga
County) annual address, lists of officers and
council, fellows, etc. ; the " Articles of In-
corporation and Constitution and By-laws " ;
the " Code of Medical Ethics " ; the " Pro-
ceedings of the Annual Meeting" ; and the
" Report and Minutes of the Council."

Representative American Orators. To
illustrate American Political History.
Edited, with Introductions, by Alex-
ander Johnston. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 3 vols. Pp. 282, 314,
405. Price, $3.75.

The present generation of Americans is
far behind the one that preceded it in a
realizing knowledge of the political history
of our country and of the principles on which
our government is founded. The civil war
and its sequences seem to have obscured the
living knowledge of our earlier history, and
left it nearly as colorless as some matter of
a remote age ; while the anomalous meas-
ures that have had to be devised to meet
the unprecedented exigencies of the last
twenty-five years have tended to consign
the safe traditions of our old statesmen to
oblivion, and contributed to the spread of
novel and dangerous heresies. Hence we
regard anything that will help to make liv-
ing again among us the fundamental prin-
ciples of American politics and the debates
of the past, and the ultimate objects which
our statesmen sought to reach, as of public
benefit. We can conceive nothing better
adapted to set these matters vividly before
American youth than the orderly present-
ment of the best and most pertinent words
of the best orators who took part in the
shaping of them, such as Mr. Johnston has
aimed to make in these three volumes. His

compilation is divided into seven parts, il-
lustrating seven epochs in our history:
"Colonialism, to 1789"; "Constitutional
Government, to 1801 " ; " The Rise of De-
mocracy, to 1S15"; "The Rise of Nation-
ality, to 1S40" ; " The Slavery Struggle, to
1860 " ; " Secession and Reconstruction, to
1876 " ; and " Free Trade and Protection " ;
in all of which, except the last, a kind of
chronological order is maintained. In each
of these epochs the orators are presented,
so far as is found practicable, on either
side, whose voices were most potent in put-
ting the issues into shape and molding
opinion upon them. The earlier periods are
represented, among other oraters, by Patrick
Henry, Hamilton, Washington, Fisher Ames,
Jefferson, Randolph, Quincy, Clay, Hayne,
and Webster ; the issues of the antislavery
struggle by Phillips, Clay, Sumner, Douglas,
Preston Brooks, Burlingame, Lincoln, Breck-
inridge, and Seward ; and the periods of se-
cession and reconstruction by other names
equally prominent and representative ; while
the question of " Free Trade and Protec-
tion " is illustrated by Henry Clay's " The
American System," and Frank Hurd'a
"Tariff for Revenue only." Each of the
groups of orations is preceded by an intro-
duction giving the historical thread by which
the speeches were connected, and describing
the condition of the questions to which they
related.

Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dis-
pute. By Theodore F. Rodendough.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
139, with Maps and Illustrations. Price,
50 cents.

This is a convenient hand-book for per-
sons wishing to follow the Afghanistan
question, which is yet, despite the seemingly
smiling aspect of the negotiations, far from
settled. It gives a plain view of the situa-
tion as it was at the moment when the re-
cent passages between England and Russia
began to be lively. It first relates the suc-
cessive steps by which Russia has advanced
during the last century and a half from the
Ural into Central Asia, and to its present
position near the Afghan frontier. Thi3
history is followed by accounts of " the
British forces and routes," and " the Rus-
sian forces and approaches," and by a review
of the military situation.

558

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An Inglorious Columbus ; or, Evidence
that Hwui Shan and a Party of Buddhist
Monks, from Afghanistan, discovered
America in the Fifth Century a. d. By
Edward P. Vining. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 788, with Map.
Price, $5.

The term " inglorious " is not intended
to be applied to our Christopher Columbus,
but, in the sense in which Gray, in his
" Elegy," speaks of " some mute, inglorious
Milton," to the Buddhist monk who, known
only to a few special scholars, has failed
to receive the universality of fame which
should be his due. According to the au-
thor's statement, and as is known to Asiatic
scholars, there is, among the records of
China, an account of a Buddhist priest who,
in the year 499 a. d., reached China, and
stated that he had returned from a trip to
a country lying an immense distance east.
In the case of other travelers, whose narra-
tives are also preserved in ancient Chinese
literature, the accounts which we possess of
their journeys were either written by them-
selves or their followers ; but, in the case
of Hwui Shan, the interest excited in his
story was so great that the imperial histo-
riographer, whose duty it was to record the
principal events of the time, entered upon
his omcial records a digest of the informa-
tion obtained from the traveler as to the
country which he had visited. It is this
official record, or rather a copy of it con-
tained in the writings of Ma Twanlin, which
is discussed in this work. But little doubt,
if any, exists as to the authenticity of the
record, but there are considerable differences
of opinion respecting what country it was
which the monks (who were missionaries of
Buddhism) visited, and described as Fusang.
Some of the critics believe it to have been
Japan, others America. Mr. Vining be-
lieves it was Mexico, and, in adducing the
considerations to support his belief, he tran-
scribes, or makes a summary of, all the pa-
pers that have been written on the subject,
except Mr. Leland's large book, which read-
ers are advised to buy. He believes that
the route followed by the priests, which is
obscurely described in their itinerary, was
from Japan, or the Asiatic mainland, along
the course of the Aleutian Islands — " the
land of the marked bodies " — to Alaska —
"the Great Han" — and thence along the

Pacific coast to the " land of the Fusang-
trce," which plant is not yet identified, and
the " country of women," in Mexico. Among
the arguments relied upon to support this
view, are the correspondences of distances,
which, according to Mr. Vining's computa-
tions, are close enough ; the description of
the country of Fusang, the customs of its
people, and the characteristics of its vege-
tation, which is faithful as to Mexico, and
includes details that would not be true of
any other country ; accounts, in the tradi-
tions of Mexico, of the arrival of a party of
men similar to what the Buddhist party
must have been ; and the state of civiliza-
tion in Mexico at the time of the arrival of
the Spaniards, which was such as might
have grown up from an Asiatic implanta-
tion. On the other hand, the history of
Japan is reviewed, for the purpose of show-
ing that that could not have been the coun-
try visited. The book also contains a
translation of that part of the " Chinese
Classic of Mountains and Seas " which re-
lates to lands east of China — a work which
is thought to be the oldest geography of the
world, and which has never before been
translated into any European language.

Assyriology: Its Use and Abuse in Old
Testament Study. By Francis Brown.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Pp. 96. Price, $1.

The author of this book is Associate
Professor of Biblical Theology in Union
Theological Seminary in this city. The
purpose of the book is to utter a caution
against too hasty and extensive generaliza-
tions upon the discoveries that are made,
one at a time, amid much groping in the
dark, among the ruins of the ancient em-
pires of the East, and which often seem to
have a bearing upon the records given in
the Bible. It is human nature to grasp
eagerly at evidence that seems to favor
what one wants proved, and to reject obsti-
nately what seems of an opposite charac-
ter ; and biblical scholars are prone to the
fault. Professor Brown advises such to
wait in matters of Assyriology for the re-
sults of searching criticism. The discov-
eries in that field, though undoubtedly des-
tined in the end to be of vast importance,
are, many of them — not all — as yet too
fragmentary and uncertain to build any-

LITERARY NOTICES.

559

thing on that must depend upon them. The
cause of truth may be injured by over-
haste ; it can only be benefited by delibera-
tion and careful examination.

Local Institutions in Virginia. By Ed-
ward Ingle. Baltimore : N. Murray.
Pp. 127. Price, 75 cents.

This essay, constituting numbers two
and three of the third series of the " Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical
and Political Science," is not inferior in in-
terest and importance to any of the num-
bers of either series that has preceded it.
Virginia was a " mother of commonwealths,"
and the results of her development and her
policy were impressed, in one shape or an-
other, and to a greater or less extent, in
Kentucky and the States that were formed
out of the Northwest Territory. The pur-
pose of Mr. Ingle's study is to ascertain
from what these results were developed,
and hew. In pursuing it, he considers the
character of the country and its settlers
(" Virginia and the Virginians ") " The Land-
Tenure of the Colony," " The Organization of
the Hundred," " The Fortunes of the English
Parish in America," " The County System of
Colonial Virginia," and " The Town." Un-
der the last head, the curious fact is devel-
oped that towns which in other States ap-
pear variously as the original form of set-
tlement, of spontaneons growth, or as the
ready creatures of speculation, were not nat-
ural to Virginia ; and that the formation of
them was the object of several laborious
efforts, prosecuted against a chronic indis-
position of the people to settle in them or
to favor them at all.

Geology of the Comstock Lode and the
Washoe District. By George F. Beck-
er. Pp. 422, with Plates and an Atlas.
Price, 111. Comstock Mining and Min-
ers. By Eliot Lord. Pp. 451.

The surveys upon which Mr. Becker's
report is based were conducted by him as
aid to Mr. Clarence King, and chiefly in the
lower parts of the lode. Mr. King has al-
ready made the upper part familiar to ge-
ologists. In his work Mr. Becker had the
assistance of Dr. Carl Barus, physicist, who
made researches in the electrical activity of
ore-bodies and in kaolinization, the results
of which are incorporated here. In the re-

port, the general account of the Comstock
mines and the review of previous investiga-
tions of the lode are followed by chapters
on the " Lithology of the Washoe District,"
with detailed descriptions of sections of the
rocks prepared for microscopic examination ;
on the structural results of faulting, the oc-
currence and succession of the rocks, the
heat-phenomena of the lode, and Dr. Barus's
papers on " Kaolinization and on the Electri-
cal Activity of Ore-Bodies." The relations
of the minerals and the changes they have
undergone are discussed very fully in the
chapters on "Lithology" and "Chemistry,"
and the character and causes of the heat-
phenomena of the lode, with the various
theories that have been proposed to account
for them, as fully in the chapter on that sub-
ject. These heat-phenomena are one of the
most famous peculiarities of the Comstock
Lode, and distinguish it from all other mines
and excavations under the earth's surface.
The unusually high temperature was mani-
fested in the upper levels, and has increased
with the depth. The present workings are
intensely hot ; and, during the winter of
1880-'81, the water in one of the levels
reached a temperature of 170° Fahr., at
which food may be cooked, and the human
epidermis is destroyed. The rapidity of the
ventilation required to reduce the tempera-
ture of the air is something unknown else-
where, yet deaths in ventilated workings from
heat alone are common, and there are drifts
which without ventilation the most seasoned
miner can not enter for a moment. The
origin of this high temperature has been at-
tributed to the kaolinization of the feldspar
in the country rock and to residual volcanic
activity. No positive evidence is adduced
that it is due to kaolinization, and the results
of Dr. Barus's experiments on the thermal
effect of the action of aqueous vapor on feld-
spathic rocks, so far as they have been car-
ried out, were wholly negative. No heating
effect due to this cause could be detected with
an apparatus delicate enough to register a
change of temperature of one thousandth of
a degree C. On the other hand, there is
much geological evidence pointing to a deep-
seated source of heat, probably of volcanic
origin, or solfataric. The floods of waters
which have been met in the mines can not
be accounted for by any hypothesis connect-

560

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ed with the rainfall of the district. Mr.
Becker proposes a theory that the Comstock
fissure taps water-ways leading from the
crests of the great range of the Sierra Ne-
vada. Under this theory, if the heat is
conveyed to the lode by water from great
depths, the variations in temperature are
readily explained, by supposing variations in
the distribution of the heated water.

Mr. Lord's volume — " Comstock Mining
and Miners " — is chiefly historical, and has a
peculiar interest in that it describes an epi-
sode in the development of one of the most
important American enterprises, and relates
one of the most wonderful stories in mine-
working that it has ever been given to tell.
The dangers faced by the miners from the
extreme heat and other causes are vividly
sketched. " The service demonstrates anew
how elastic are the limits of human endur-
ance when men are drawn on by some mas-
terful passion. The bounds of possibility
then confine their achievements but not their
attempts. . . . Death alone has the power
to say to miners, ' Thus far shall ye go and
no farther ! ' — for no endurable suffering
will bar their progress ; nor will the loss
of life even make them pause, unless the
scourge of heat shall strike them down like
a pestilence. Of late years heat has killed
strong men in almost every deep mine in
the lode, and in some mines the deaths so
caused have been frequent." The ultimate
effect of this extreme heat on the miner's
constitution, even when it does not result in
immediate death, is also to be considered ;
and, besides this, all the ordinary dangers of
deep mining exist here in aggravated forms.

Contributions to the Fossil Flora of the
Western Territories. Part III. The
Cretaceous and Tertiary Flora. By Leo
Lesquereijx. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 283, with 60 Plates.

This, although published under the di-
rection of Major Powell, is the eighth vol-
ume of the Hayden reports. It contains,
first, descriptions of the cretaceous flora,
including a large number of new species,
some representing rare and very remarkable
plants, accompanied with general remarks
on the geology of the Dakota group, and on
the character of the plants with regard to
climate and their affinities with plants of
succeeding geological periods. The second

part contains a revision of the plants of the
Laramie group. The third part reviews the
floras of the White and Green River regions,
which are separated into two groups. The
relations of these plants with the flora of the
Gypses of Aix, France, which is generally
regarded as of the lowest Miocene or Oli-
gocene, are indicated. The fourth part re-
lates to Miocene plants described from spe-
cimens obtained from the Bad Lands, Cali-
fornia, and Oregon. The plants of the
cretaceous Dakota group, as known mostly
from their detached leaves, are striking from
the beauty, the elegance, and the variety
of their forms, and from their size. The
multiplicity of forms recognized for a single
species is quite as marked as it might be
upon any tree of our forests. In analyzing
the leaves by detail, " we are by-and-by
forcibly impressed by the strangeness of the
characters of some of them, which seem at
variance with any of those recognized any-
where in the floras of our time, and unob-
served also in those of the geological inter-
mediate periods. Not less surprised are we
to see united in a single leaf, or species, char-
acters which are now generally found sep-
arated in far -distant families of plants."
The flora of the Laramie group (Eocene) is
quite distinct from the cretaceous. The
Green River group includes the famous Flo-
rissante Basin, of which we have already
given some account. The Miocene plants,
which are described by groups according to
where they occur, have not been sufficiently
recovered to authorize any reliable conclu-
sion regarding their relative stage in either
group.

Madam Row and Ladt Why. By Charles
Kingsley. New York : Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 321. Price, 50 cents.

Tnis book, which now appears in a con-
venient volume of the series of " Globe
Readings from Standard Authors," is de-
scribed in the title-page as " First Lessons
in Earth-Lore for Children." It presents, in
the form of a pleasing allegory, the work-
ings of the geological agencies that have
contributed to the shaping of the globe, and
the present appearance of its surface, and
their results ; the operations being supposed
to be performed by a " Madam How," under
the direction of a mysterious " Lady Why."

LITERARY NOTICES.

561

Photo-Micrography. By A. Cowley Mal-
ley, F. R. M. S. Second edition. Lon-
don: H. K. Lewis, 136 Gower Street,
Pp. 166.

Drawing can not be wholly relied upon
for the representation of minute microscopic
objects, because of the difficulty of seeing
such delicate things accurately, and of com-
manding the pencil to give a perfectly cor-
rect reproduction of what is seen. At the
best, a drawing is apt to show evidence of
preconceived notions of the structure in the
mind of the observer. Photography, though
not infallible, always accurately returns
what is sent to the plate, and is almost uni-
versally true. In the present work, the
author gives the methods he has himself
adopted, and the most applicable parts of
the methods used by others ; and, by show-
ing the facility of their application, he hopes
to make photo-micrography more popular,
and place it within the reach of all. In this
second edition have been incorporated the
advances that have been made in micros-
copy, and the more recent improvements
in photography. Descriptions of the wet
collodion and gelatino- bromide processes,
and of the best methods of mounting and
preparing microscopic objects for photo-
micrography, are given.

The Occdlt World. By A. P. Sinnett.
Second American, from the fourth English
edition, with the Author's Corrections
and a New Preface. Boston : Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. Pp. 228. $1.25.

The readers of " The Popular Science
Monthly " have already been informed, to
some extent, respecting the doctrines of the
theosophists, of which this may be consid-
ered one of the text-books. Among their
beliefs is that in the existence among some
privileged or specially instructed classes of
persons of mysterious knowledge and power
which are hidden from the mass of man-
kind, to which are referred and by which
may be explained many wonderful things
in ancient and modern lore, the reality of
which appears supported by evidence we
can not despise, but belief in which, so con-
trary are they to our ideas of nature, taxes
the most credulous. The " science " which
represents this knowledge and power has
made some advances since the first edition
of " The Occult World " was published, and
vol. xxvn. — 36

its votaries believe that they have received
additional confirmation of its reality. The
new developments are given in the form of
additional matter and notes, the original
text of the book having been changed but
little.

Russia under the Tzars. By Stepniak,
author of " Underground Russia." New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp.
381. Price, $1.50..

This book is divided into three parts.
In Part I, " The Past," is shown how the
original fundamental principle of the Rus-
sian Government was the sovereignty of the
people, full, free, spontaneous, and indis-
putable in the highest possible degree, as it
still is in the Mir, or the rural communes ;
and how Czarism gained a footing, and
gradually crushed that sovereignty entirely
out within the empire at large, and in all
the great centers. Part II, " Dark Places,"
is made up of the relations of incidents in
the lives of political suspects and their expe-
riences with the police. In Part III " Ad-
ministrative Exiles " are described, a num-
ber of features characterizing the despotism
of the military and the police, and the meas-
ures of administrative repression which the
Government is compelled to adopt in its
struggles against the forces of human na-
ture to which it has set itself in opposition.

Third Annual Report op thh United
States Geological Survey, 1881, 1882.
By J. W. Powell, Director. Washing-
ton: Government Printing-Office. Pp.
564, with Plates.

This volume contains the reports of
progress for the year of the heads of the
divisions of the survey, and six monographs
on special features of the survey. The
administrative reports are, that of Mr. Clar-
ence King, prepared for him in his absence
by Dr. Carl Barus, on the " Determinations
of the Physical Constants of Rocks " ; of Mr.
Arnold Hague, on " Operations in the Divis-
ion of the Pacific" ; of Mr. C. K. Gilbert,
of the " Division of the Great Basin, chiefly
relating to the Survey of the Quaternary
Lake Bonneville " ; of Mr. T. C. Chamber-
lin, on the " Survey of the Glacial Moraine,
from the North Border of Dakota to the
Atlanti'c " ; of Mr. S. F. Emmons, of the "Di-
vision of the Rocky Mountains " ; of Mr. G.

562

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

F. Becker, on the " Comstock Lode and the
Washoe District " ; of Mr. Lester F. Ward, on
" Vegetable Paleontology " ; and of Messrs.
J. Howard Gore and Gilbert Thompson, on
" Triangulations and Topographical Sur-
veys." The " accompanying papers " are
those of Professor 0. C. Marsh, on " Birds
with Teeth " ; of Roland D. Irving, on the
" Copper-bearing Rocks of Lake Superior " ;
of Israel C. Russell, on the " Geological
History of Lake Lahontan " ; of Mr. Arnold
Hague, on the "Geology of the Eureka
District " ; of Mr. T. C. Chamberlin, on the
" Terminal Moraine " ; and of Dr. C. A.
White, on the " Non-Marine Fossil Mollusca
of North America." Mr. Hague's prelimi-
nary report promises much interesting in-
formation when the papers are published in
full, concerning the lithological structure of
the volcanic cones of Mounts Rainier, Hood,
Shasta, and Lassen's Peak, which play so im-
portant a part in the geology of the Sierra
Nevada and Cascade Ranges. Mr. Chamber-
lin's paper reveals the interesting facts that
the glacial moraine formation consists, not
of a single moraine, but of a group of three
or more concentric and rudely parallel ones,
that sometimes coalesce and sometimes
separate, so as to occupy a belt occasion-
ally twenty or thirty miles in width ; that
the individual moraines, instead of being
sharp ridges, consist of a broad belt of ir-
regular, tumultuous hills and hollows, giv-
ing rise to a peculiar knob-and-basin topog-
raphy ; that the massiveness of the moraine
finds its development in great width rather
than in abrupt and conspicuous height ; that
throughout a considerable portion of its
course, instead of pursuing a direct or mod-
erately undulatory line, it is disposed in
great loops, formed at the margins of ice-
tongues, between which re-entrant portions
formed extensive intermediate moraines ;
and that these ice -tongues occupied the
great valleys of the interior, and manifestly
owed their origin to topographical influ-
ences. Mr. Becker mentions the interest-
ing fact that in the caves above the ore-
bodies, on Ruby Ilill, the crystals of ara-
gonite are still in process of rapid forma-
tion ; and Mr. Curtis is conducting accurate
experiments to ascertain the rate of growth
and the physical and chemical conditions
attending their formation.

Tables to facilitate Chemical Calcula-
tions. Compiled by W. Dittmar, F. R. S.
Second edition. London : Williams &
Norgate. Pp. 43, small 4to. Price, 5
shillings.

This little volume contains tables of
atomic weights, analytical factors, loga-
rithms, reciprocals, physical constants of
gases, etc., together with rules for gasome-
try, a chapter on the arithmetic of gas
analysis, and other minor data, of value for
daily reference in the laboratory. Its utility
to the analyst is obvious, although, to a
well-trained chemist, much of the matter
contained in it is too familiar to need quota-
tion in this form. To the elementary stu-
dent, on the other hand, works cf this char-
acter are of questionable value. The pupil
who works out his analysis by the aid of
factors too often fails to learn the principles
upon which they depend, and does not ac-
quire that command of stoichiometry which
every good chemist should have. Of its
kind, however, and in its proper place, the
volume appears to be satisfactory. It is
announced as being preliminary to a forth-
coming work upon chemical arithmetic,
which, when issued, will replace it.

Contributions to North American Eth-
nology. Vol. V. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing-Ofnce. Pp. about 400,
with Plates.

In this volume are bound up the mono-
graphs of Mr. Charles Rau, on " Cup-shaped
and other Lapidarian Sculpture in the Old
World and in America " ; of Dr. Robert
Fletcher, on " Prehistoric Trephining and
Cranial Amulets " ; and of Dr. Cyrus Thom-
as, on the " Manuscript Troano." The last
two works have already been fully noticed
by us. Mr. Rau's paper relates to some curi-
ous kinds of rock-sculptures, which are de-
scribed as "cups" of various sizes, rings
surrounding the " cups," or independent of
them, and other designs, which have been
found on rocks, and on and near megalithic
stones and buildings, in various parts of Eu-
rope, and similar figures which have been
discovered in America. The origin and pur-
pose of these designs have been variously
accounted for. Some persons regard them
as Phoenician Baal sculptures ; some as origi-
nating at a remote period in the history of
the Aryan race ; some as having a phallic

LITERARY NOTICES.

563

significance ; some as direction-marks, etc.
Mr. Rau suggests that some of the smaller
cup-stones may have been used for cracking
nuts, and others as paint-cups. Another
class of American relics coming under this
category consists of stones of larger size, on
which several cup-like cavities are worked
out. They usually occur as flat fragments
of sandstone without definite contours. The
cups are either on one of the flat sur-
faces or on both, and their number on a
surface varies, so far as has been observed,
from two to ten. They are irregularly dis-
tributed, and generally measure an inch and
a half in diameter, but sometimes less. Ac-
cording to Colonel Charles Whittlesey, these
stones occur quite frequently in Northern
Ohio, more particularly in the valley of the
Cuyahoga River, while he is not aware of
any having been found in the mounds. He
believes the holes were sockets in which
spindles were made to revolve, and calls
the stones " spindle-socket stones," but Mr.
Rau does not agree with him. A bowlder
in the rooms of the Society of Natural His-
tory, of Cincinnati, which was found near
Ironton, Ohio, weighing between one thou-
sand and twelve hundred pounds, contains
one hundred and sixteen of these cups. A
bowlder found at Niantic, Connecticut, has
six cups, with a number of lines, which may
be natural. Stones, bearing figures resem-
bling these, appear worked into the walls
of churches, and the designs may be found
even in holy-water fonts. Altogether, the
cup-stones present a curious field of inquiry.
Mr. Rau considers the forms more or less
related, and as having a similar origin and
meaning ; as to what these are, he is in-
clined to agree with M. Rivett-Carnac, in
attributing to them a significance like that
indicated in the Siva figures of India.

The Lenape and their Legends : with the
Complete Text and Symbols of the Wa-
lam Olum. By Daniel G. Brinton. Phil-
adelphia : D. G. Brinton. Pp. 262.

In the present volume, which is the
fifth in 'his " Library of Aboriginal Ameri-
can Literature," Dr. Brinton has grouped
a series of ethnological studies of the In-
dians of Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
and Maryland, around what is asserted to be
one of the most curious records of ancient
American history — the "Walam Olum," or

Red Score. The interest in the subject ex-
cited by his inquiries into the authenticity
of this document prompted him to a gen-
eral review of our knowledge of the Lenap6,
or Delawares, of their history and tradi-
tions, and of their languages and customs.
This study disclosed the existence of manu-
scripts not mentioned in the bibliographies.
Whether the Walam Olum be genuine or
not — concerning which Dr. Brinton does not
express a decisive opinion, though his in-
quiries have resulted favorably to its being
regarded as an oral reproduction of a gen-
uine native work, repeated to some one
indifferently conversant with the Delaware
language, who wrote it down to the best of
his ability — it is believed that there is suf-
ficient in the volume to justify its appear-
ance, apart from that document.

The Philosophic Grammar op American
Languages, as set forth by Wilhelm
von Homboldt. By Danikl G. Brinton,
M. D. Philadelphia : McCalla & Stavely.
Pp. 51.

The philosophy of language owes much
to Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was its sub-
stantial founder. The American languages
occupied his attention for many years, and
he wrote to Alexander von Rennenkampff,
in 1812, that he had selected them as the
special subject of his investigations. He
was often accustomed to draw " illustrations
of his principles from them, and in every
way showed a high appreciation of their
importance. In the present essay, Dr.
Brinton has given a general exposition of
Humboldt's views on these languages, and
studies of them, and has added the trans-
lation of an unpublished memoir by him
on the American verb, which was originally
read before the Berlin Academy of Sci-
ences, and of which only the manuscript is
preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin.

The Protestant Faith; or Salvation by
Belief. By Dwight Hinckley Olm-
stead. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 77. Price, 60 cents.

The author 6tyles this work " An Essay
on the Errors of the Protestant Church,"
those errors consisting, in his vision, princi-
pally in the imposition of an intellectual
belief in certain doctrines as a fundamental
conditionof salvation.

564

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Man's Birthright, or the Higher Law of
Property. By Edward H. G. Clark.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
133. Price, 75 cents.

This work seems to be the result of an
attempt by the author to edit the " Owner-
ship and Sovereignty" of Mr. David Reese
Smith. The theory erf that book was judged
correct, but very inadequately presented ;
hence this attempt to redress, rearrange,
and elaborate it from beginning to end.
Mr. Clark accepts Uenry George's theory of
the right of each generation to own the soil,
but differs from him as to the manner in
which it is to be carried out. He announces
the true law of ownership to be : " Mankind
as a whole own the entire wealth of the
world, natural and fabricated ; but every
individual in the world can command and
control any piece of that wealth according
to his normal purchasing power, which is
the exact index of the value of his labor,
his skill, his pecuniary ability. But, if he
wishes to set aside for his private uses any
portion of the general wealth, whether the
piece of property contains his own labor or
that of some one else, then he must pay on
that piece of property the rest of the peo-
ple's share of value bound up in it ; and, if
every other member of society pays his ap-
propriate share of such values, exact justice
is reached in every respect." This share is
calculated to be an ad valorem tax on the
property of every generation, exactly pro-
portioned to the death-rate of the popula-
tion.

Hegel's ./Esthetics : A Critical Exposition.
By John Steinford Kedney. Chicago :
S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 302. Price,
$1.25.

This is the fourth volume of Messrs.
Griggs & Co.'s series of " German Philosophi-
cal Classics," the design of w hich is to present,
under the editorial supervision of competent
American scholars, the more essential parts
of the important works of the masters of
German thought. Hegel's " ^Esthetics " is
one of the most important works on the
subject in existence, but it is voluminous.
In the present adaptation, the first part,
which gives the fundamental philosophy of
the whole, is reproduced faithfully, but in a
condensed form, with criticisms by the edit-
or interspersed. A translation of the sec-

ond part, which traces the logical and his-
torical development of the art-impulse, be-
ing easily accessible (D. Appleton & Co.),
the editor has substituted for it an original
disquisition having more immediate regard
to present aesthetic problems, but in a line
with Hegel's thought. Of the third part, all
the important definitions and fundamental
ideas are given, but the minute illustrations
and the properly technical part are omitted.

The Invalid's Tea-Tray. By Susan Anna
Brown. Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co.
Pp. 67. Price, 50 cents.

A dainty volume, as becomes a book of
recipes of dishes designed to tempt the
dainty appetite of an invalid. It contains
fifty or more such recipes, of those things
which arc considered best adapted to the
invalid's condition, most nourishing or most
easily digested, according as that condition
may require ; for the serving of which " the
first requisite is absolute neatness." Also,
the author says, " vary the meals as much
as possible, and let each little delicacy be a
surprise. Have the hot things really hot,
and the cold ones perfectly cold ; and offer
only a very small quantity of food at a time,
or you will never be able to tempt the ca-
pricious appetite of an invalid."

Materials for German Prose Composition.
By C. A. Buchheim. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 252. Price, $1.25.

This book consists of selections from
modern English writers, to be translated
into German, to aid in which work gram-
matical notes are furnished, with idiomatic
renderings of difficult passages, a general
introduction, and a grammatical index. It
has been the compiler's purpose to furnish
a practical and theoretical guide to persons
who, having a full knowledge of German
accidence, and of the rules of the order of
words, desire to gain skill in translating
from English into German. The extracts
have been made from the body of the au-
thor's work, with deliberate avoidance of
" hackneyed " passages, and from the more
modern authors. The matter is graduated
into four parts, beginning with easy, de-
tached sentences and minor extracts, and
rising to more difficult passages and those
involving idiomatic construction.

LITERARY NOTICES.

565

On Oxygen as a Remedial Agent. By
Samuel S. Wallian, M. D. New York :
Trow's Company. Pp. 52.

Dr. Wallian holds that oxygen stands
at the head of the list of natural agencies
for the removal of disease, and that " it is
quite time we should practically realize, for
we already theoretically admit, that this
omnipresent, almost omnipotent, and yet
commonplace element, can not be replaced,
scarcely supplemented ; that there is no
known alterative, eliminator, or disinfectant
comparable with it ; . . . and that the origi-
nal, normal, and only unobjectionable and
universally efficient antiseptic is pure oxy-
gen. ... As a therapeutic agent, oxygen is
not yet popular, nor yet the fashion; al-
though for years enterprising quacks have
been gathering a generous harvest, from
honest dupes who have sickened of cruder
quackery, by broadcast heralding of the
magic virtues of some impossible ' com-
pound ' of it. Is it not high time that its
intelligent use should be undertaken at the
hands of legitimate and competent physi-
cians, who have no secret wares to hawk
about the country ? "

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Sanitary Suggestions. How to disinfect our
Homes. By B. W. Palmer, M. D. Detroit, Mich. :
George S. Davis. 1885. Pp.58. 25 cents.

Ethical Culture. Four Lectures. By Samuel
Burns Weston. Philadelphia. 18S5. Pp. 70. 20
cents.

The Abdominal Brain. By Leila G. Bedell, M. D.
Chicago : Gross & Delbridge. 18S5. Pp. 45.

A New Philological Theory. By Professor A. J.
Mogyorosi, Allegany, N. Y. Buffalo : Lockwood&
Ough, Printers. 1885. Pp. 11.

Foul Brood. Its Management and Care. By
D. A. Jones. Press of " Canadian Bee Journal,"
Beeton, Ontario. Pp. 82. 10 cents.

Shall we hang the Insane who commit Homi-
cides? By Clark Bell, Esq., of New York. Re-
printed from the " Medico-Legal Journal." Pp. 40.

Illinois State Board of Health. Sanitary Sched-
ule of the State Sanitary Survey.

The Biogen Series. No. 2. The Demon of Dar-
win. Coues. Pp. 64. No. 3. A Buddhist Cate-
chism. Olcott. Pp. 84. 75 cents each.

The Composition of American Wheat and Corn.
By Clifford Richardson. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. 18S4. Pp.98.

Proceedings of the Modern Language Associa-
tion of America, 1884. Baltimore. 1885. Pp.100.

Actinism. By Professor C. F. Himes, Ph. D.
Reprinted from the " Journnl of the Franklin Insti-
tute," May, 1885. Pp. 22. Illustrated.

The Periodical Cicada. By Charles V. Riley,
Ph. D. Washington : Government Printing-Office,
1885. Pp. 46. Illustrated.

Public Health in Minnesota. The Official Pub-
lication of the State Board of Health. Monthly.
Vol. I, No. 2, April, 1885. Pp. 8.

Remarks upon Chipped Stone Implements. By
F. W. Putnam. Salem, Mass. 1885. Pp. 8. Illus-
trated.

Bulletin of the Brookville Society of Natural His-
tory of Franklin County, Indiana. O. M. Meyncke
&G.F. Goodwin, Editors. No. 1. 1885. Published
by the Society. Pp. 45.

The " Sanitary Monitor." J. T. Winn, M. D.,
Editor. Monthly, Richmond, Va. Vol. I, No. 1,
May, 1885. Pp. 14. $1 a year.

Descriptions of some Peculiar Screw-like Fos-
sils from the Chemung Rocks. By Professor John
8. Newberry. Reprint from the Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences. Pp. 4. Illustrated.

Local Institutions of Maryland. By Lewis W.
Wilhelm, Ph. D. Baltimore : Johns Uopkins Uni-
versity. 1885. Pp.120. $1.

Sixth Annual Report of the Archnpological Insti-
tute of America. Cambridge : John Wilson & Son,
1885. Pp.48.

Proceedings of the Biological Society of Wash-
ington. Smithsonian Institution, 1885. Vol. II. Pp.
195.

Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey,
No. 2. On the Quaternary and Recent Mollusca of
the Great Basin, with Descriptions of New Forms.
By R. Ellsworth Call. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. 1884. Pp. 56. Illustrated.

Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of
Medical Science in Japan. Tokio, May, 1885.

Bulletin of the Des Moines Academy of Science-
Des Moines, la. Published by the Academy. Vol. 1,
No. 1. 1885. Pp. 57.

Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare. By B. Rush
Field, M. D. Easton, Pa. 1885. Pp. 86.

The Ohio State Sanitary Association. Proceed-
ings of the Second Annual Meeting. From "Tho
Sanitarian," May, 1885. Pp. 64.

Architectural Studies, Part I. Twelve Designs
for Low -Cost Houses. New York: William T.
Comstock. 1885.

International Electric Exhibition of 18S4. Re-
ports of the Examiners of Sections V, VI, and VI [I.
Electric Lamps. Carbons for Arc-Lamps. Phila-
delphia : The Franklin Institute. 1885. Pp. 12. Il-
lustrated.

Healthy Foundations for Houses. By Glenn
Brown. New York : D. Van Nostrand. 1885. Pp.
143. 50 cents.

Lectures on the Science and Art of Edncatioti.
By the late Joseph Payne. Syracuse : C. W. Bar-
deen, 1885. Pp. 281. $1.

Practical Botany. By F. O. Bower, and Sidney H.
Vines, with a Preface by W. Thiselton Dyer. Lon-
don : Macmillan &, Co. 1885. $1.50.

Matilda, Princess of England. A Romance of
the Crusades. By Mme. Sophie Cottin. From the
French bv Jennie W. Rann. 2 vols. New York :
W. S. Go'ttsberger. 1885. $1.75.

Talks Afield about Plants and the Science of
Plants. By L. H. Bailey, Jr. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. 1885. Pp. 173. $1.

History of the Surplus Revenue of 1R37. By
Edward G. Bourne. New York : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. 1885. Pp. 161. $1.25.

Forests and Forestry of Poland, Lithuania, the
Ukraine, and the Baltic Provinces of Russia. Com-
piled by John Croumbie Brown, LL D. Edin-
burgh : Oliver & Boyd. 1S85. Pp. 276.

An Elementary Treatise on Hydro-Mechanics.
By Edward A. Bowser, LL. D. New York : D.
Van Nostrand. 1S85. Pp. 298. $2.50.

List of Tests. Bv Hans M. Wilder. New York:
P. W. Bedford. 1885. Pp. 88. $1.

Lessons in Elementary Practical Pbvsics. By
Balfour Stewart, F. R. S , 'and W. W. Haldane Gee.
Vol. I. General Physical Processes. London :
Macmillan & Co. 1885. Pp.291. $1.50.

Properties of Matter. By P. G. Tait, R. S. E.
Edinburgh : A. & C. Black. 1885. Pp. 320. $2.25.

5 66

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Q. P. Index Annual for 1SS4. Bangor: Q.
P. Index, Publisher. 1885. Pp. 78.

The Magnetism of Iron and Steel Ships. By T.
A. Lyons. Washington : Government Printing-
office. 1834. Pp. 181. Illustrated.

A Manual of the Theory and Practice of Topo-
graphical Surveying by Means of the Transit and
fctadia. By J. 11. Johnson, C. K New York. : John
"Wiley & Sons. 1885. Pp.111. $1.25.

Commercial Organic Analysis By Alfred H.
Allen, V. C. S. Vol. I. Philadelphia: P. Blakis-
tou, Son & Co. 1885. Pp. 470. $4.50.

The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe
Taine, D. C. L. Oxon. Translated by John Du-
rand. Vol. III. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
1885. Pp. 509. $2.50.

Christian Thought. Lectures and Papers on Phi-
losophy, Christian Evidence, Biblical Kiucidation.
Second Series. Edited by Charles F. Deems, LL. D.
New York : Phillips & Sons. 1885. Pp. 476.

Contributions to the Knowledge of the Older
Mesozoic Flora of Virginia. By William Morris
Fontaine. Washington : Government Printing-Of-
fice. I8b3. Pp.143. With Fil'iy-lour Piates.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Correction. — This year's meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science will begin Wednesday, August
26th; not on August 20th, as erroneously
stated in the July Monthly.

Fallacies about Mines.— Mr. Albert Will-
iams, of the United States Geological Sur-
vey, has recently exposed, in a brief mono-
graph, some of the popular fallacies which
exist, often to the detriment of miners'
interests, regarding precious-metal depos-
its. First, are local prejudices against cer-
tain formations and in favor of others.
Most of these prejudices have been contra-
dicted in one way or another, and there is
no sufficient reason that any one of the
kinds of country rock prevalent in mining
districts is more likely to contain metal de-
posits than another kind. The supposition
that the richness of mineral veins usually
increases with depth may or may not be jus-
tified in a particular case ; the only way to
find out is to examine. Miners have objec-
tions against " specimen " mines, or mines
that give unusual superficial promise of rich-
ness. Here, again, the only test is by try-
ing, and it is certainly profitable to work the
mines so long as they make a paying return,
while it will be time enough to stop when
they cease to do so. Some miners have fa-
vorite strikes, and prefer to work in no
others. They are as often wrong as right.
One direction of strike may promise best in

one locality, and the opposite direction in
another. Another miner's fallacy is the be-
lief that the appearance of ores is a trust-
worthy index of their value. Such a belief,
Mr. Williams observes, may seem self-evi-
dently absurd to the experienced miner, but
it nevertheless governs many prospectors,
who hastily judge from the looks of the
rock, when they should have waited for an
assay. Notwithstanding the necessity ex-
ists for contradicting these fallacies, it would
be unfair to infer that the whole subject of
precious-metal mining is involved in doubt
and perplexity. On the contrary, a great
deal of solid fact is now established, room
for which has been gained only by clearing
away a mass of misconceptions. Much re-
mains to be learned ; in fact, the study of
precious-metal deposits is only beginning.
But it must be admitted that, on the purely
practical side, great advances have been
made.

Bark Dresses.— The tapa of the South-
Sea Islanders is made from the bark of the
paper mulberry-tree {Bronssonelia papyri-
/era), and the bark clothing of the African
tribes is prepared from trees of the same
family. Dr. Schweinfurth describes one of
these trees ( Urostigma Kotschyana), which
is called rohko in the country of the Niam-
Niams, as standing before every hut, and as
cultivated in Monbuttoland. The bark is
most fit for use when the trunk is of about
the thickness of a man's body. The whole
stem is then peeled for a length of some
four or five feet, and this without destroy-
ing the tree ; for the juicy substance around
the wood immediately granulates and short-
ly begins to form a new bark, which be-
comes fit for use again in about three years.
Thus a tree, properly taken care of, may be
made to furnish several suits of clothing
during its lifetime. The rokko-bark much
resembles that of the bass-wood in quality,
except that the bark is not quite so thin.
By partial maceration and much beating it
is formed into a kind of thick and very pli-
ant cloth. In a crude state it is grayish or
yellowish, but steeped with a dye-wood it
takes a brownish color like that of a com-
mon woolen cloth. It constitutes a valuable
article of trade in the interior of Africa.
The price varies considerably according to

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

567

the color and quality, and the ornamented
cloths are held as fancy articles, without hav-
ing a fixed price. Of the colored goods, a
dark-gray material is commonly worn by the
Witchweri wizards ; a dark-red is fashion-
able among well-to-do people; and a tan-
colored ground with stripes and figures in
black, called mtone, was formerly worn only
in royal families, and is still much affected
by the nobles in Unyoro and Ruhama, while
it has been to a considerable extent sup-
planted in Uganda by goods from Zanzibar.
It can not be bought in the market, but any
one who wishes to get a pattern of it must
go to one of the great chiefs and give him
ample satisfaction in return-presents. The
other goods may be bought at their price in
cows or cowries. The skins of cattle, goats,
sheep and antelopes are also worn in parts
of Africa, while the skins of leopards, monk-
eys, and cats are worn only by privileged
persons of royal or noble families.

Private Encouragement of Research. —

The fact that the recent proceedings of the
Royal Institution acknowledge the gift of
£100 by Mr. Warren De La Rue and £50 by
Sir Frederick Bramwell to the fund for the
promotion of experimental research supports
the view that matters of this kind might
be trusted to prosper as well under the en-
couragement of private interest and enter-
prise as when quartered upon the Govern-
ment for subsidy. Liberal gifts are seldom
wanting to anything that proves worthy of
them ; and in the former case research will be
supported in proportion as it is industriously
prosecuted and is of value ; while under the
Government plan, although enough show of
work may be made to draw the pensions,
it is by no means sure that so much pains
will be taken to make the genuineness and
value of the work demonstrable.

Eskimos in Ancient New Jersey. — Mr.

A. S. Packard, who has been investigating
the history of the Labrador Eskimos, has
come to the conclusion that those people
formerly had a more or less permanent
foothold on the northern shores of the Gulf
of St. Lawrence. If this was so, it seems
not improbable that they may have made,
in very early times, expeditions farther
6outh, to Nova Scotia and New England.

This thought leads the author to Dr. Ab-
bott's theory, that the Eskimos inhabited
the coast of New Jersey during the river-
terrace epoch, which he was at first dis-
posed to reject. Examination, however, has
led him to look with more favor upon it,
and to think it not improbable that, long
after the close of the glacial period, or
after the ice had disappeared, and during
the terrace epoch, when the reindeer and
walrus lived as far south as New Jersey,
the Eskimos, being perhaps the remnants of
the palaeolithic people of Europe, extended
as far as a region defined by the edge of
the great moraine ; and, as the climate as-
sumed its present features, moved north-
ward. This view presented itself while he
was collecting the material for his notes,
and was confirmed by Mr. Tylor's remarks
at the British Association.

The King Country and the Maories. —

The " King Country " is a district of about
ten thousand square miles in extent in the
northern Island of New Zealand, to which
the mass of the wild native population of
the country have retired so as to be out of
the way of the whites, and over which they
claim and exercise exclusive jurisdiction to
the extent of having, till very recently, held
it tapu against white men. Mr. J. H. Kerry
Nicholls, who lately succeeded in making
a running exploration of it, describes it as
one of the best-watered parts of the island,
with many beauties, and offering many natu-
ral advantages for European settlement. In
the west it has an extensive coast-line, and
a capacious harbor. Dense forests cover a
large part of its southern area, and extend
northward to the mountains. Westward of
this division is a considerable area of open
country, while there are vast open table-
lands near the snow-clad mountains in the
south, and other extensive open plains west
of the great Lake Taupo and north of
Titiraupenga. The King Country possesses
all the rock formations in which gold, coal,
iron, and other minerals are found, while
its extensive forests are rich in timber of
the most varied and valuable kind. Geysers
and thermal springs, possessing wonderful
medicinal properties, are found in the vi-
cinity of its many extinct craters ; and,
while it possesses one of the largest active

568

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

volcanoes in the world, its landscape is also
crowned by the snowy peaks of some of the
highest mountains in Australasia. With
these important features, it is endowed
with scenery of the grandest order, and
with a climate unsurpassed for its varie-
ty and healthfulness. According to Mr.
Nicholls, the Maori people in New Zealand
are decreasing ; for, while in Captain Cook's
time they numbered more than 100,000
souls, in 1881 the number had decreased
to 44,099. The three principal diseases con-
ducing to the decay of the race are phthisis,
chronic asthma, and scrofula, the first two
being principally brought about, Mr. Nicholls
believes, by a half-savage, half-civilized mode
of life, and the latter from maladies con-
tracted since the first contact with Euro-
peans. " It is, however, clear that there are
a large number of natives yet distributed
throughout the King Country, and among
them are to be found, as of old, some of
the finest specimens of the human race. A
change of life, however, so different from
that followed by their forefathers, has
brought about a considerable alteration for
the worse among the rising population, and,
although during my journey I met and con-
versed with many tattooed warriors of the
old school, who were invariably both physi-
cally and mentally superior to the younger
natives, it was clear that this splendid type
of savage will soon become a matter of the
past. I found the natives living much in
their primitive style, one of the most per-
nicious innovations, however, of modern
civilization among them being an immod-
erate use of tobacco among both old and
young." At Ruakaka, in the heart of the
mountainous forest region, the Maories
were found living in the same primitive
way as in the time of Cook, and, " when we
questioned them as to their religious prin-
ciples, they told us that they believed in
nothing, and got fat on pork and potatoes."

Water-Pnrificatlon of Sewage. — The

important part played by water in the oxi-
dation of sewage has been tested by experi-
ment, and may be accounted forby the quan-
tity of free oxygen that water usually con-
tains. The quantity that may be dissolved
is increased with reduction of the tempera-
ture. At the summer temperature of 70°

Fahr., water contains 1 -8 cubic inch, and at
the winter temperature of 45°, 2"2 cubic
inches, of oxygen per gallon, which is equiv-
alent to four or five cubic inches per foot.
From calculations based upon these data, it
will be seen that at a temperature of 70°
there are 2'58 tons, and at the temperature
of 45°, 316 tons, of oxygen in every 10,-
000,000 cubic feet of water. This shows a
difference of more than half a ton per cubic
foot between these two temperatures. It
has been calculated that if a volume of wa-
ter containing thirty-five per cent of sewage-
matter be allowed to flow for one mile, ex-
posed to the air, the whole of the sewage
would become oxidized. It has also been
estimated, by experiment, that a closed ves-
sel containing water, with five per cent of
sewage, gives only thirty-two per cent of
aeration on the fourth day, as compared with
eighty-four per cent on the day when it is
introduced into the vessel. The results of
these experiments tend to show that, al-
though the self-purifying power of the water
of the river is sometimes overtaxed, it still
retains the power of oxidizing sewage-mat-
ter ; but the question as to whether it has
the power of freeing itself from living bac-
teria still remains to be solved.

The Identity of American Baces. — J.

W. Powell writes to " Science," pertinently
to its review of the Marquis de Nadaillac's
" Prehistoric America," that, in his opinion,
" there has never been presented one item
of evidence that the mound-builders were a
people of culture superior to that of the
tribes that inhabited the valley of the Mis-
sissippi a hundred years ago. The evidence
is complete that those tribes have built
mounds within the historic period ; and no
mounds or earthworks have been discovered
superior in structure or contents to those
known to have been built in historic times."
Nevertheless, Mr. Powell considers the doc-
trine of " the identity of all peoples that ever
inhabited the American Continent up to the
advent of Europeans " one that is not and
can not be held by any intelligent anthro-
pologist, except in some very broad sense,
as, for example, that they belonged to the
human race, or that they inhabited one conti-
nent. In respect to mythologies, languages,
and institutions, there are, and have been,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

569

many distinct peoples ; and, in respect to
arts, there is much diversity, though arts
travel from people to people with the great-
est ease. At the present time we can not
have fewer than seventy distinct peoples
among the tribes of North America, and
in antiquity the number may have been
greater."

Savage Sharp - Shooting. — Concerning
the manners and customs of the savages of
Mount Sylvia, Formosa, Mr. E. Colborne
Baber related in the Royal Geographical
Society : " A party of English officers from
a man-of-war landed on the island, and,
meeting a company of natives armed with
matchlocks, challenged them to a trial of
skill in shooting. Affixing a mark to a tree
about a hundred yards distant, the officers
made what they considered pretty fair prac-
tice, without, however, astonishing the na-
tives, who, when it came their turn to fire, dis-
appeared into the jungle like one man, and
crawled on their bellies through the under-
growth to about three yards from the tar-
get, which, of course, they all hit exactly
in the center. When the Englishmen pro-
tested that such a method of conducting the
competition was hardly fair, the natives re-
plied, ' We do not understand what you
mean by fair, but, anyhow, that is the way
we shoot Chinamen.' "

Emigration from the Old World.— The

migrations of European population, says
" The Spectator," were never so general,
so extensive, and so complex as they are
at present. By reason of railways and the
cheapening of travel, movements that in
any former age would have occupied years
are now accomplished in a twelvemonth.
The greatest wanderers are perhaps Italians,
for the struggle for existence is keener in
Italy than in any other European land ; the
working-classes there have to labor more
hours and for less pay than anywhere else.
The natural result is an enormous migra-
tion of Italian artisans and laborers into
neighboring countries ; and with them nei-
ther Germans, Austrians, nor Swiss can
compete. "They are better skilled in their
calling and more sober in their habits ; and,
though they begin by working for lower
pay, many of them earn, because they de-

serve, higher wages than their native com-
petitors. They excel in all sorts of stone-
work ; and at Zurich and some other places
architects are in the habit of stipulating
that none but Italian masons shall be em-
ployed on a job. They built the St. Gothard
Railway. They are found as far north as
Dresden and Berlin, and the greater part of
the engineering work in France is performed
by Italian navvies. The Germans, Austri-
ans, and Swiss, displaced by the Italians, push
north and west. Many come to England,
more go to the United States. ... It is
found in Austria that emigration is most
rife in districts where two races are in con-
flict, and that those most prone to emigrate
are of the German race. This is especially
the case in Bohemia and Moravia, where the
Slav and Teutonic elements are struggling
for supremacy ; in the north of Hungary,
where the Germans have the upper hand ;
and in Galicia, where the population is
Polish and German, and the Jewish element
is being increased by immigration from Rus-
sia. It would, however, be unsafe to lay
down any general law on the subject." It is
not probable, for instance, that the Ger-
mans emigrate because they are worsted in
the struggle for existence, but perhaps be-
cause they are more enterprising and far-
seeing than their Slavic neighbors and are
better able to go. In some instances, the
emigration is by masses, as in the district
of Wisowitz, in Moravia, which has lost
nearly half its population, and in the re-
gions of Tabor and Kuttenberg, where " a
veritable emigration fever has prevailed."
Austria is making a use of the wandering
disposition of its discontented subjects some-
what to its own advantage, by inducing
them to colonize in the annexed district of
Bosnia.

The Mystery of Eels. — Naturalists are
generally agreed that at least three distinct
sorts of eels are indigenous to British wa-
ters : the silver-bellied or sharp-nosed eel —
the one that migrates in the fall — a firm,
fine-flavored fish, with an almost black back,
a silvery belly, and a fine, sharp head ; the
grig or snig, a yellowish eel, with a project-
ing under jaw ; and the broad-nosed eel, an
uglier-looking animal with a broader head,
fierce and voracious in its habits, and of

57°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

base tastes. To these a Norfolk fisherman
adds a fourth, the " hooking " eel or " gloat,"
of blackish color and medium size, which is
taken by anglers and habbers and on night-
lines, and does not migrate. The annual
migration seaward of the sharp-nosed eels
gives rise to the valuable eel-fisheries of the
English rivers, in which the fish are inter-
cepted by wicker traps or eel-sets placed
across the river, and in one of which 70,000
have been caught in one night. The mov-
ing of the fish is done in the night and al-
ways in a dark night ; and it is liable to be
interrupted by a change of wind, a clap of
thunder, or a clearing away of the clouds.
What becomes of the immense numbers of
eels that descend to the sea every season
has never been found out. They are hardly
missed from the haunts they have left ; yet
no one has ever seen any of them returning.
In the spring, however, the young eels come
up the rivers by millions, keeping close to
the banks and swimming in almost solid col-
umns. They will surmount almost any ob-
stacle, creeping wherever there is any moist-
ure, through grass, and over stones and tim-
ber. These "eel-fairs" last through sev-
eral days ; and the tiny elvers, about as large
as darning-needle?, used to be scooped out by
the bucketful and applied to the land for
manure, baked into cakes for men, or used
as food for pigs, until an act was passed
prohibiting their destruction. The fact that
eels that have once gone down the rivers
never return is asserted positively by all
who have observed them. The question is
then in order, How is the supply in the riv-
ers kept up ; and how is it that the eels
found in the rivers are of a large size ? The
answer is, that young eels are produced in
the rivers, and that eels are so numerous
that, although immense numbers leave the
rivers every year, yet equally immense num-
bers remain. The migrations have been
generally supposed to be for breeding-pur-
poses ; but there are reasons for believing
that breeding takes place in the rivers as
well as in the sea, so that this alone can not
explain them; and it has been suggested
that they are a kind of swarming, like that
of bees, impelled by excess of numbers.
Naturalists affirm that the eel is an ovipa-
rous animal, and that it deposits its spawn
as other fish do, and point to the presence

of spawn and milt in it as revealed by the
microscope ; but the eel-fishers and eel-set-
ters declare that it is viviparous ; " that
they have constantly opened eels in Febru-
ary which have been full of minute living
eels (not parasites), and that in a tub of eels
young ones have been found in the morning
that were not there overnight. ... To use
their own words, there are thousands and
thousands of eel-fry all alive in the bodies
of eels cut open in February."

Dangers from Industrial Dusts. — A pa-
per was read by Dr. Henri Napias before
the Congress of Industrial Hygiene, held at
Rouen in July, 1884, on the dusts developed
in industries and the methods of guarding
against injury from them. Dusts in the air
call for especial consideration, from the fact
that, besides vitiating the atmosphere in the
way that gaseous impurities also do, they
exert a mechanical action when brought in
contact with the respiratory and digestive
system. Even when they are wholly with-
out toxic or essentially irritant effects, they
are foreign bodies and obstructive, and are
always in danger of exerting a traumatic
action or causing abrasions. They are,
therefore, all dangerous, while the dangers
arising from them may be various in char-
acter. Mineral dusts, whether of stones or
of metals, are the most dangerous, because,
besides being hard and sharp and liable to
cut the tissues, very many of them are also
poisonous or caustic. Dusts of organic ori-
gin are less dangerous, but they vitiate the
air, communicate unpleasant qualities to it
if they are of an animal nature, and are
frequently vehicles for the conveyance of
infectious germs. Various inconvenient af-
fections of the lungs are caused by breathing
these dusts, among which may be counted
phthisis, not as produced directly by them,
but as often ultimately induced by the abra-
sions or deterioration of the tissues which
they immediately occasion. The readiest
and most available means of removing dusts
is by ventilation, and, when this can be so
directed as to take them away as soon as
they are formed, it is almost sovereign. It
will not do, however, to rely upon general
ventilation, for that will at most remove
the dusts but imperfectly, while its usual
operation will be more likely to distribute

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

57i

them more widely among the operatives.
The remedy should be applied to light dusts
by means of chimneys or draught-flues ; and
to the heavier ones by means of blasts to
drive them away. In cases where the dust
itself is the object of the manufacture, or is
to be applied in the manufacture, the remedy
is to conduct the processes in closed appa-
ratus. When either method is practicable,
the dust may be kept down or removed by
water, or the articles may be worked in a
moist condition. Some workmen employ
masks or respirators as means of individ-
ual protection, and they may in some pro-
cesses be the only efficient means avail-
able. They are liable to the objection that
they are always cumbrous and inconvenient ;
and frequently the workmen will become
careless about them, or refuse to be both-
ered with them, and will leave them off.
They should not be depended upon when
any practicable means of keeping down or
removing the dust can be employed.

Gambling at Mente Carlo. — Dr. J. H.

Bennett gives in the "Pall Mall Gazette"
some impressive illustrations of the enor-
mous influence for evil of the gambling es-
tablishment at Monte Carlo, Monaco. The
extent of it may be best understood by a
simple calculation which the author owes to
a professional gambler. The chances of the
table are one in thirty-six in favor of the
bank, and its annual gains, after all its ex-
penses are paid, are $3,500,000. Hence
$126,000,000— and thirty-six times its ex-
penses in addition — have to be staked in it,
won and lost, every year. " It is this fact
of the gambler dealing with large masses of
money that partly accounts for the strange
fascination exercised by gambling. A care-
ful player, who begins with, say, a thousand
pounds capital, may have fingered, accord-
ing to the doctrine of chances, thirty-six
thousand pounds before he loses his capital.
If he play long enough, the bank royalty of
one in thirty-six is sure to swallow up his
capital ; and then he has had all the emo-
tion of having been alternately successful
or the reverse, rich or poor. He regrets
when he has at last lost his initial capital
that he did not stop when successful, which
he never does, vows that he will be more
prudent next time, and, in order to have the

chance, sells, borrows, raises money any-
how." These facts destroy the argument
brought forward by the patrons of the pub-
lic tables, that playing at them is more
straightforward and fairer than private club
gambling, and that, as long as the latter is
allowed, the former should not be interfered
with. " At a public gaming table the bank
royalty must inevitably ruin all who play
constantly long enough to have risked their
capital thirty-six times, even if the playing
is carried on honestly, if such a term can
be used. . . . Regular gamblers find this out
in the long run, and learn to avoid the pub-
lic establishment," resorting to the gaming
clubs or forming them ; and this is the ex-
planation of the brood of gambling clubs,
casinos, etc., which rise up, as at Nice, in
proximity with the public gambling estab-
lishment. " They proceed from it, are created
by it, would not exist without it. . . . When
I first inhabited the Riviera" (in 1859), con-
tinues Dr. Bennett, " the Monaco gambling-
house was a mere gambling club or casino,
which excited but little notice. Now it has
become the great attraction, the great fact.
Half the people one meets are going or
have been to Monte Carlo."

« Anti-fonling " Paint for Ships.— Be-
cause iron and steel are peculiarly liable to
corrosion when immersed in salt-water, ves-
sels made of them require special protec-
tion. This can be given by covering the
metal with some alkaline or basic substance,
or the oxide of some metal electro-positive
to it. Caustic lime and soda are very effi-
cient for this purpose, and act equally well
when made into a paint with oil. But their
efficiency is destroyed when they cease to be
caustic, or when they are saturated with car-
bonic acid, which they absorb freely from
the air. Magnesia is equally efficient, and
does not absorb carbonic acid. It therefore
makes as good a material for a paint as
could be desired, and, moreover, forms an
excellent basis on which to lay an anti-foul-
ing paint, which it protects from the galvanic
action of the iron by isolating it, while it
does not affect its anti-fouling qualities.
Without the protection thus afforded, the
iron not only effects the decomposition of
the anti-fouling paint, but it also by contact
takes away the anti-fouling qualities of that

572

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

part of the paint which it does not decom-
pose. All of the best anti-fouling paints
depend for their efficacy on some compound
of mercury or copper, while the action of
iron is very strong in contact with both these
metals ; hence perfect isolation of the paint
from the iron is necessary to make them of
any value. Besides paints of magnesia and
alumina, spirit and benzoline varnishes,
powdered coke, anthracite or coal, lime, ce-
ment, and various kinds of silicates, mixed
or suspended in oils, have been found good
in greater or less degrees for these purposes-
Zinc oxide also has some slight merits, while
red lead paint, which has been used, is " out
of the question. It is bound to give out
after a certain time ; and, besides, the metal
beneath is corroded."

The Teak-Tree and its Timber.— The

teak-tree is found growing in various places
in the East Indies, through a region reaching
from the eighth degree of south latitude in
Java to about the Tropic of Cancer, and
of undefined extent in longitude, but not
farther west than 72° east. Its vertical habi-
tat is about 3,000 feet above the level of
the sea, but seldom below 2,000 feet. Its
northern limit is in Bundelcund, where it
is found in specimens not tall, at elevations
rising as high as 4,000 feet. It grows in
groups, a circumstance which is very con-
venient in trade. The wood is held in the
highest esteem by ship-builders, and is pre-
ferred to any other for the backing of iron-
clad vessels. It shrinks hardly any, is
considered the strongest and most durable
timber of India, or perhaps of the world,
and resists the attacks of white ants. The
qualities of the timber vary greatly accord-
ing to the character of the soil on which it
grows, sometimes so much as to induce the
belief in different species ; but close exam-
ination has shown that, though varieties
may exist, there is but one species. In
Java, the Government have control of 1,-
650,000 acres of teak, besides new planta-
tions. The planting and raising the trees,
and mode of felling, classing, and measuring
the timber are carefully regulated. Forest
reserves of considerable extent exist in va-
rious parts of India, from some of which
specimens have been shown more than 100
feet lorn', and 93 and 100 inches in cir-

cumference at the base. One of the chief
sources of supply is British Burmah, where
the total area of the reserve forests is 3,2*74
square miles, and 836 square miles were
added during 1881-82. Nineteen thousand
teak-trees were girdled, and 130,000 tons
or 6,500,000 cubic feet of the timber were
exported during this year from Rangoon
and Maulmain. The principal forests are
near the Irrawaddy River, where water con-
veyance is easy and ship-building is pros-
perous. A very fine plantation has been
established at Nilambur, on the river Bey-
pore, in Malabar, where 100 acres are
planted each year, and there are now about
1,800,000 trees. An increasing source of
supply is also being developed in Siam.
According to Colonel Beddome, the growth
of teak is very rapid, compared to that of
the oak. The growth in the sapling state
may be calculated at about one or two cubic
feet a year ; but after thirty years it is im-
mensely accelerated, and an increase of five
cubic feet has sometimes been remarked in
a year. Several other trees, but little known
as yet, are mentioned as nearly equal in
value to the teak. The takieng, besides be-
ing a rival to it in size and quality, pos-
sesses the advantage of being easily bent
by artificial means. Sir Robert Schom-
burgk saw a log of it measuring 135 feet,
perfectly sound, in the building-sheds of
the King of Siam. The red peema of Bur-
mah and Tenasserim is considered equally
useful with teak, as is also the touk-kyan,
with its dark-brown wood. Angely is well
suited for the floors and bottom-planking of
ships, but has to be used with copper, as it
corrodes iron. Jackwood, a tree of the
same family (Artocarpus), furnishes an ex-
cellent fancy and furniture wood, and is
admirably adapted for boat-building. An
Australian timber called tuart is believed by
Mr. Simpson to be superior to all others for
the backing of armor-plated vessels, as it
can not be split by any possible means. —
From a paper read by Mr. P. L. Simmons
before the Society of Arts.

The Dnk-dnk. — According to Mr. Wil-
fred Powell's "Among the Cannibals of
New Britain," affairs in the Duke of York
Islands are regulated by an officer called
the duk-duk, who appears to combine in

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

573

himself the functions of judge, police offi-
cer, and executioner. He is distinguished
by his peculiar dress, and by his helmet,
which, reaching down to his shoulders, quite
conceals his face. It is made of basket-
work, so that the wearer can breathe freely,
and is painted in front as a terrible face.
When any person is accused by his neigh-
bor or otherwise blamed, he must pay the
duk-duk a sum of money as damage, and
this officer goes in person to the house of
the accused to see that all is made right.
If the accused will not settle, his house is
burned or he is speared. Women and
children dare not look at the duk-duk, for
fear they will die on the spot, and there-
fore run away and hide, whenever they know,
from the peculiar cry he utters to give no-
tice of his approach, that he is coming.
Men may be initiated into the mystery of
this office when they reach a certain age, on
payment of a prescribed sum, and, if they
do not do this, they must keep out of the
way of the duk-duk. The initiated must
never speak of the secrets of the mystery
out of the spot that is consecrated to it,
and the uninitiated must not go to that
spot.

Temperature of the Glacial Period. —

Some geologists hold that the glacial phe-
nomena were the result of warmer, not of
colder, conditions of climate than now
exist. Their views are briefly summarized
by M. Millot, of the scientific faculty of
Nancy, France. For the production of
glaciers in temperate latitudes an active
evaporation at the equator, to furnish moist-
ure to be condensed into snow on the mount-
ains, is ahove all things necessary. Thus,
the quantity of ice produced will be within
certain limits proportioned to the heat re-
ceived at the equator. No heat, no evapo-
ration ; no snow, no glaciers ; on the other
hand, there will be no glaciers if it is too
hot for the snow to be deposited on the
mountain-tops. This was probably the case
before the glaciers appeared. Then, as the
heat of the sun gradually diminished, as it
is supposed to be doing regularly, the gla-
ciers begun on the mountains, small, but
growing, for the evaporation at the equator
was still infinitely greater than it is now.
So it may have continued for ages, the snow

condensing on the mountain-tops, and the
sun lifting up immense quantities of water
to be condensed. This was a period of
maximum favorable conditions for glacia-
tion. Then, the sun still cooling, the
amount of evaporation fell off, till it
ceased to afford the excessive supply, and
the glaciers became stationary, then retro-
grade till they were reduced to the relatively
insignificant proportions in which they now
appear. This theory explains the deposi-
tion of glacial moraines in the midst of tree-
ferns and a Mediterranean vegetation ; for,
while the glaciers were extensive in conse-
quence of the immense precipitation every-
where but immediately upon them, a warmer
climate prevailed than is now enjoyed in the
same regions. This theory explains also how
Arctic animals, finding suitable conditions of
existence in the glaciated districts, came to
be mixed up, as is shown by their remains,
with the herbivorous animals of milder cli-
mates, which were separated from them only
by a line. This theory, unlike all other the-
ories of the glacial period, does not require
the supposition of any interruption of the
regular, normal order of climatic develop-
ment and events.

Arts and Customs in New Guinea. — Mr.

Coutts Trotter, in an address before the
Royal Geographical Society, stated that
while the people of New Guinea are still
in the "Stone age," their artistic faculty
is strongly marked, especially among the
western tribes. This is shown conspicuous-
ly in the carved ornamentation of their
canoes, houses, implements, and weapons.
Their tastes are further seen in the habit
of adorning themselves with flowers and
leaves — of crotons, dracaenas, coleus, be-
gonias, scarlet hibiscus, and the anise -
scented clausena. They are also alive to
the advantages of trade, the tribes on the
western coast having for centuries been ex-
changing the varied products of the coun-
try with the Malays, Bughis, Chinese, and
others, for cotton cloths, iron and copper
wares, knives, beads, mirrors, indigo, and
arrack. In conducting their inland trade
among themselves, they assume that inter-
tribal war is the normal condition of man,
and adopt ingenious devices to mitigate
inconveniences. But even the plan of set-

574

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ting apart for each hill-tribe its allotted
station on the coast is not always sover-
eign for the avoidance of collisions. The
people of the southeast peninsula make
long voyages to the west of the Gulf of
Papua for sago, in strange craft composed
of several canoes lashed together, with a
house at each end. Each village or district
often has its trade-specialty, as, for exam-
ple, for pottery, or for canoes, or shell or
other ornaments. Salt is in great demand,
especially in the interior, whither sea-water
is sometimes carried in hollowed bamboos ;
or salt is obtained by burning the roots of
trees which have grown in the salt water.
The people in most parts are skilled agri-
culturists, and grow, generally with the
help of artificial irrigation, all the usual
plants of tropical Pacific culture, most of
which — with probably the traditions of sci-
entific agriculture — seem to be of Asiatic
origin. Any one may clear and cultivate a
piece of land within the territory of his
tribe, but they have a strong sense of pro-
prietorship, even of the fruit-trees in the
forest, and of the fish in their own streams,
or their own tract of coast. The social and
political organization of the people is quite
rudimentary. The chiefs have but little
power. Important matters are settled by
the assembly, and, otherwise, every man,
beyond conforming to certain established
customs, is a law to himself.

How to live One Hundred Tears. — How

to live a century and grow old gracefully are
discussed in a pamphlet under that title
recently published by Dr. J. M. Peebles,
who appears to have faith in the practi-
cability of both his propositions. Success
depends upon many elements, among the
most tangible of which are air, sleep, food
and drinks, and clothing. We must breathe
pure air, and breathe deeply ; not be afraid
of night-air, and get as much of our air out-
of-doors as we can. As to sleep, " I say,"
says Dr. Peebles, " to my friends and pa-
tients, ' get up ; get up at five o'clock in the
morning ' ; and I set them the example. If
they want more sleep I say, ' take it ; take
all you want ; take eight hours ; take nine
hours ; take ten hours, if you choose ; but
take them in the early hours of night rather
than by daylight. Don't insult Nature.' If

you get angry, take a bath and go to bed
and sleep ; if the world abuses you, take
extra sleep ; if you are dyspeptic and dis-
contented, take a long, sound sleep, and,
waking, you will find that all the world
is smiling." For diet, the vegetarian and
farinaceous system is recommended. For
drink, water, which should also be applied
freely and frequently outside, while intoxi-
cating liquors, tea, coffee, etc., are best left
alone. The clothing should always be ar-
ranged with a view to protection against
variations of heat and cold, and with no
other, and should not be allowed to impede
any of the functions or movements of the
body. Dr. Peebles thinks that there may
be good in medicines, notwithstanding all
that is urged against their use by many
writers on hygiene, and says : " If there
were no pre-natal weaknesses, no transmit-
ted blood-poisons or hereditary tendencies ;
if there were no sudden climatic changes ;
if there were no violations of the physical,
mental, and moral laws of God, medicines
would be quite unnecessary. But, as ra-
tional, practical men, we must take human
beings precisely as we find them ; and we
find many of them wretchedly begotten,
badly cared for in infancy, unwisely trained
in childhood, wickedly tempted in youth, and
in manhood frequently exposed to winds,
pelting storms, and the low malarial lands
of the Western prairies. Thus conditioned,
human ills, aches and pains and diseases
are absolutely unavoidable, and accordingly
remedies — medicinal remedies — carefully
selected and wisely administered, are posi-
tive necessities." Finally : " Exercise char-
ity toward all, control your passions, govern
your appetites. Develop and manifest a
sweet and peaceful spirit. Carefully observe
the rules of health ; . . . and, with a fair
constitution to start with on the journey of
life, you may easily live a full century."

Do Insulated Conductors attract Light-
ning ? — A house in Neufchatel, Switzerland,
was struck by lightning and burned last sum-
mer ; and it was suggested that the electric
stroke had been invited by a lot of old iron
that was stored in the attic. M. Calladon,
speaking in the French Academy of Sciences
of this suggestion, remarked that the mere
presence of metal, without communication

NOTES.

575

with the earth, could not have any material
influence in attracting the lightning from
the clouds ; if it had, then the houses with
tin roofs, many of them without lightning-
rods, now so common, would be in great
danger, whereas they are not struck often-
er than houses with tile roofs. The pres-
ence of iron, however, might increase the
danger of fire after the house had been
struck ; for, if we place a combustible sub-
stance between two conducting surfaces, it
is generally sure to take fire when an elec-
tric current is passed through it from one
of the conducting surfaces to the other. So,
if lightning should strike a house, it would
find its way to any masses of metal within
the building and ignite whatever combusti-
ble matters it passed. In view of this fact,
and of the present very extensive use of
metal in house-construction, the provision
of suitable conductors to divert electrical
currents from the combustible parts of the
building has become more important than
ever.

Was it Volcanic or Cosmic Dust ? — Mr.

W. Mattieu Williams is of the opinion that
the long continuance of the glowing twi-
lights tells against the validity of the vol-
canic-dust theory ; for that dust must have
settled by this time, or, if so much of it has
continued to float in the atmosphere, it
should have shown its presence more pal-
pably than it has done. The two alterna-
tive hypotheses to this one, worthy of seri-
ous consideration, are : 1. That the earth,
and possibly the whole or a large portion
of the solar system, has, in the course of
its journey through space, passed through a
region unusually rich in meteoric dust ; or,
2. That an unusually large amount of aque-
ous vapor has been raised to the upper re-
gions of our atmosphere by increased solar
activity. Apparently in favor of the mete-
oric theory is the statement of F. Mangini,
that on three days in February and March,
1885, when the glows, accompanied by rain,
were especially remarkable, he collected at
Reggio, in Calabria, some new-fallen red
dust, which, when examined under the micro-
scope, seemed to consist of mica, quartz,
and irregular polyhedric crystals. Analysis
brought out magnetic iron oxide, sulphuric
and phosphoric acids, silica, calcium, mag-

nesium, aluminum, nickel, and arscnious,
ferric, and manganous oxides. The dust
did not come from Etna, because the wind
was blowing in the opposite direction, and
Etna dusts are black ; nor from the Sahara,
because Sahara dusts contain no iron.

Oranges in Palestine. — The climate and
soil of Palestine are well adapted to the cul-
tivation of the orange, which, according to
Consul Merrill, there suffers from no diseases
or parasites of any kind. The trees appear
to flourish best near the sea, and the orange-
groves are for the most part near Jaffa and
Gaza. In Jaffa there are five hundred gar-
dens, of which one hundred and fifty are
ranked as first class, all the gardens together
containing about 800,000 trees. The trees
are set about fifteen feet apart, while the
ground between them is planted with small
fruits or vegetables. The sweet lemon is
used as the stock, and the variety of orange
desired is grafted upon it. The trees are
watered every week in the summer, at a cost
per season of about one fifth the value of
the crop in gardens of the first class. The
Jaffa oranges proper, the only kind export-
ed, are oval, or lemon-shaped.

NOTES.

M. Domeyko has summarized the results
of forty-six years of observations on earth-
quakes in Chili. They are more frequent
in the northern part of the country, where
there are no volcanoes, and the Andes are
fifteen thousand feet high, than in the
southern part, where there are volcanoes,
and the mountains are only a third as high.
The effects of the shocks on buildings de-
pend more on the nature of the soil than on
the violence of the spasms. The sea-phe-
nomena are of two kinds : local, or oscillat-
ing, when the waters retire to beyond the
lowest-water mark, to return in waves a hun-
dred feet high beating upon the coast and
destroying everything they reach ; or, when
the shocks occur at a distance, the water
runs along the coast in a grand wave with-
out previously retiring. In the more severe
earthquakes, when there are several shocks
in the same day, it is generally the second
or third one that produces the greatest
destruction. The destructive effects of an
earthquake are never as considerable in the
interior of a mine as at the surface.

M. Qukntin Paul Desains, of the Physi-
cal Section of the French Academy of Sci-
ences, died after a very short illness, about

576

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the 1st of May. He was born in 1817, and
had been a professor in the Colleges of Ca-
en, Stanislas, and Bourbon, and a member
of the Academy since 1873. He was the
author of several valuable papers on the
laws of radiant heat, the polarization of the
calorific rays, the latent heat of aqueous va-
por, etc.

M. Jamin attributes the cold nights usual
in April and May to the fact, which he de-
duces from the experiments of Mr. Glaisher
and others, that the minimum of vapor in
the atmosphere prevails then, the maximum
being in August.

M. Edouard Heckel, of Marseilles, has
called attention to a new prospective source
of gutta-percha in the fiuti/iospermum Par-
Hi, or Barsia Parkii, of the interior of Af-
rica, from the seeds of which the natives
already extract a kind of butter. The plant
possesses many advantages. It is very wide-
ly diffused ; it will grow apparently in the
most desert, gravelly soil ; it matures in
four years ; and it is available to a certain
extent, to native taste, as a food-plant.

M. Dieulefait has been inquiring why
there is so much sulphur in stone-coal, and
why there is so little of free alkaline car-
bonates in the ashes. For that purpose he
has analyzed the surviving species of the
families of the coal-plants, particularly the
Equisclacea?., and has found in them a greater
than the usual proportion of sulphuric acid.
Hence he deduces, as the answers to his
questions, that the coal-plants were more
highly charged with sulphur than most exist-
ing plants; and that, for that reason, their
alkaline constituents assumed the forms of
sulphates instead of carbonates.

The chimney of a manufactory in Bres-
lau, about fifty feet high, is made of pressed
paper, a substance which, it is remarked,
has almost perfect powers of resistance to
fire.

M. Admiral Mouchez has taken, at the
Paris Observatory, distinguishable photo-
graphs of stars of the fourteenth magni-
tude. On a plate about ten inches square
he has photographed a field of about five
degrees square on which are shown 2,790
stars of between the fifth and fourteenth
magnitudes, equally clear in the edges and
the center of the picture. Stars of the fif-
teenth magnitude can be discerned in the
negatives, but they were not clear enough
to be transferred to the paper. It is esti-
mated that, if the stars are distributed over
the whole sky as thickly as over these five
degrees, then the total number of them is
20,500,000.

A commission of inquiry respecting the
earthquake in Ischia of July, 1883, appoint-
ed by the Italian Government, has reported

that the number of victims of the catas-
trophe, not counting mere contusions, was
3,075, of whom 2,313 were killed or died in
the hospitals, and 762 were wounded. Of
the 672 dwellings in Casamicciola, 537 were
wholly destroyed, and only one wholly es-
caped injury ; of the 4,300 inhabitants of the
town, 1,784 were killed. At Ischia town the
shocks were strong, but no serious harm was
done. Accommodation was provided after
the disaster for 9,500 unhoused inhabitants
of the island, in 700 temporary barracks of
corrugated iron.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Professor Fleeming Jenkin, of the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh, died June 12th, in the
fifty-third year of his age. He was distin-
guished in locomotive and constructive en-
gineering art, and in connection with the
laying of cables, including the first trans-
atlantic one, and general telegraphy. He
was made Professor of Engineering in Uni-
versity College, London, in 1865, and in the
University of Edinburgh three years later.
He has written several papers in engineer-
ing and electrical science, and was the au-
thor of the article on " Bridges " in the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica."

Lieutenant Tilly, the leader of one of
the German West African exploring expe-
ditions, has recently died in the Cameroons.

Mr. Alexander Croall, Curator of the
Smith Institute, Stirling, Scotland, is dead,
in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He
was the author and illustrator of "Nature-
printed British Sea-weeds."

Mr. Alexander Murray, formerly of the
Canadian Geological Survey, died in the
early part of this year. He was born in
Scotland in 1811, and, after serving in the
British Navy for several years, went to Can-
ada about 1837. He was invited by Mr. W.
E. Logan to join the geological survey of the
province, which was about to be begun, and,
having no previous knowledge of the sci-
ence, qualified himself for the work by spe-
cial studies. On the survey he was able
and efficient, and superintended a large part
of the work for twenty years. He had
charge, from 1863 to 1883, of the geological
surveys of Newfoundland, the collated re-
ports of which, published in 1881, are our
chief sources of information on that sub-
ject.

The Rev. T. W. Webb, of Hereford,
England, author of "Celestial Objects for
Common Telescopes," and of numerous arti-
cles on observational astronomy, died May
19th.

The anatomist, Professor Henle, of Got-
tingen, died on the 13th of May last.

GUSTAV NACHTIGAL.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

SEPTEMBER, 1885.

THE RELATIONS OF RAILWAY MANAGERS AND

EMPLOYES.

By Dr. W. T. BARNARD.
I.

THE problem how to secure the most effective and harmonious
relationship with their employes is one of rapidly growing im-
portance in the minds of those managers whose duties bring them
into close contact with the rank and file of railway service, and is also
beginning to force itself upon the attention of investors in this coun-
try, as it has already largely done in Europe. Though quite generally
the real underlying cause of strikes and labor agitations, among rail-
way people especially, is unequal enforcement of discipline, irregularity
in or unequal distribution of work, debts incurred through the mis-
fortunes— rather than, as a rule, through the fault — of the operatives,
inducing restlessness, etc., their discontent usually forces itself upon the
attention of the railway director in the first instance as a wages ques-
tion. As the successful and economical operation of a railway re-
quires a certain number of reliable servants thoroughly trained for
and skilled in their respective positions, considering the rapid exten-
sion of our railways, many years must elapse before the surplusage
so cheapens this class of skilled labor as, on the one hand, to induce
managers to relieve overburdened servants in busy seasons by dividing
their duties among a larger number than will barely suffice for current
needs, or, on the other, affords them security from strikes and unjust
demands through the presence of unemployed skilled artisans eager to
supplant the discontented. Meanwhile the necessity of meeting com-
petition and reduced earnings by improved machinery and increased
technical efficiency will constantly enhance the importance and value
of a permanent and zealous corps of employes with whom fair wages,
vol. xxvii. — 37

573 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

while important, are overshadowed hy other considerations personal to
their service. In its simplest aspects the subject of the wisest form of
adjustment between labor and capital is enough ; but, when considered
in relation to our American railways, so many and complicated ques-
tions of management and economies arise, and the possible conse-
quences of innovations are so great and serious, that few officials pos-
sessing sufficient influence with their directors and stockholders to
make their advocacy effective have time or courage to take the initia-
tive in an intelligent reform, which, under the most favorable cir-
cumstances, could only be established by overcoming the timidity
of capital and the obstinate opposition of the ignorant and prejudiced.
At first blush the proposition that intelligent beings would not wel-
come with hearty support and co-operation any measure whose patent
object was the improvement of their welfare seems untenable, but the
student of history will recall few instances where the violent opposi-
tion of the masses has not followed all general efforts to ameliorate
their condition, since and before the day when the founder of the
Christian religion suffered crucifixion for his temerity in a kindred
cause. It is generally recognized at home and abroad that only through
the betterment of their present physical condition and surroundings
can a body of permanent, satisfied railway servants be secured ; yet
the path to success in such an enterprise is strewed with many diffi-
culties, the primary one in this country arising from the absentee own-
ership of our great railroads, and the difficulty which a body of stock-
holders, or their representative directors, have in recognizing the needs
and feelings of the rank and file operating their properties — living, as
they do, far from their lines, or, if near, immersed in pursuits that do
not bring them together. The ownership half of the railroad world —
in the United States, at least — certainly knows little, and recks less,
of how the employe half lives. True, no difficulty would probably be
experienced in getting investors in railroad securities to admit, in glit-
tering generalities, the desirability — even necessity — of bettering the
condition of those upon whose energy, honesty, and fidelity they rely
for dividends ; but when confronted with any systematic measure for
the accomplishment of this result, which apparently involves a consid-
erable expenditure, they " back water " with alacrity. Philanthropy
and benevolence find no resting-place in the bosoms of the average
railroad shareholders ; at least few think of beginning their charities
among the homes of their people ; therefore, to enlist their pecuniary
support of any costly plan for helping railroad operatives, it must be
shown to pay the shareholder. Treating the subject from a purely
business stand-point, let us see if it pays our great corporations to rest
their connection with their employes upon the mere payment of cur-
rent wages.

At the close of the year 1884, 125,000 miles of railroad * were in
* These figures arc quoted as the nearest estimates obtainable from the best authorities.

BAIL WAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 579

operation in the United States and 9,949 in Canada ; the estimat-
ed gross earnings of which were, in round numbers : United States,
$770,684,908 ; Canada, $33,421,767 ; and the net profits : United States,
$268,064,496 ; Canada, $7,826,872. The year's freight traffic over
those lines was : United States, 390,074,749 tons ; Canada, 13,716,462 ;
while the passengers carried a mile were estimated at : United
States, 8,778,581,061. In Canada it is not given ; but the total
number of passengers carried was 9,984,354, against 334,570,766 in
the United States. The business transacted over the lines was han-
dled by an estimated force of 1,600,000 employes,* whose combined
earnings, while unobtainable with accuracy, must have been enormous.
Considering the magnitude of the interests involved — not only the
value of the property operated, but the vast number of human beings
who freely intrust their lives to the railroads — and the growing de-
mand for increased speed in transportation, it needs little illustration
to show that their responsibilities as common carriers are such as make
it of paramount importance to their managements to secure and retain
the services of the most experienced and reliable citizens obtainable ;
thereby obviating, as far as possible, the often fearful consequences of
inexperience and negligence, and promoting public confidence by the
knowledge that the lives and property of their patrons will not be sub-
jected to unnecessary hazard. There are few employments in the
country more onerous and exacting, and not any where negligence, in-
experience, or absent-mindedness has more fatal consequences than
those embraced in the operating departments of railways ; hence the
necessity of protecting themselves against the depressing influences
to which most men, struggling against present or impending pecuniary
difficulties, are susceptible, must be readily apparent.

In periods of activity such classes of labor are frequently over-
tasked, while in times of depressed trade their earnings are generally
decreased by actual reduction of wages, or variable employment, to a
bare subsistence. Then, when disability or old age overtakes them,
few possess reserve earnings from which to draw for the necessaries of
life.

In the report of the English Select Committee on Civil-Service Su-
perannuation, it was stated that the dread of poverty had a very inju-
rious effect on the minds and health of business-men, artisans, etc.
The celebrated Dr. Farr, of England, when consulted upon the advan-
tages of remuneration, partly by salaries and partly by provision for
old age, thus sums up the evidence and arguments in favor of such an
arrangement :

" In the first place, superannuation is a guarantee of fidelity ; in the
second place, it encourages efficient officers ; in the third place, it re-
tains good men in the service ; in the fourth place, it induces men

* Estimate of United States Kailroad Commissioner as to employes in the United

States.

58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to retire when they become old or inefficient from any cause ; and, in
the fifth place, it prevents old servants from falling into disgraceful
dependence, or distressing destitution, which would be a public scan-
dal, and would deter desirable persons from entering the service."

It is not always true, in the history of railroads or other corpora-
tions, that the one paying the highest wages is best served. The com-
pany that is most forward in caring for the general welfare of its
employes, particularly in the matter of providing support for those
disabled, aged, and of long service ; that holds all its officials to a
rigid responsibility for arbitrary or tyrannical exercise of power ; that
convinces its lowest servants that they will be protected against injus-
tice, even at the hands of their highest official superiors — will soon ob-
tain such prominence among the masses as will bring to its service the
best material the market affords, though it give no more than — nor
often quite so much as — others, who regard their employes only as
so much material to be utilized or expended in the interests they
serve.

The writer has for a considerable time studied the relationship
existing between the managers and employes of many of our large
corporations, and his observations seem to justify the conclusion that,
whereas, in no other business employing large bodies of labor is there
a wider field for cultivating cordiality and reciprocity of interests be-
tween owners and employes than in railroading, also in no other busi-
ness (except, perhaps, mining) have such opportunities been more neg-
lected. The admirable results he has observed following even a partial
recognition of the equities between the executives and the rank and
file of one or two railroads affords a glimpse of the great possibilities —
easily made certainties by proper cultivation — of community of inter-
ests and aspirations between the two, that in unsettled times must
prove invaluable.

It is unnecessary here to analyze the causes which produce the dis-
content and lack of unity between managers and employes, painful to
observe, but too generally prevalent in this country, where the fascina-
tions and the esprit de corps of railroading are so great as to give pow-
erful support to any systematic and liberal efforts to reach a better
understanding. One prominent origin of the lack of attachment to
corporate interests here alluded to may be cited by way of parenthesis,
namely, the system prevalent on most railways under which subordi-
nate officials may discharge those under them without explanation or
question. Where rigid accountability has been substituted for such
irresponsibility the happiest results have uniformly followed, for
thereby the lowest as well as the highest individual in the service
became assured that, while he might be suspended for a short time by
the exercise of arbitrary authority, a full hearing and exact justice
would ultimately be had from an unprejudiced tribunal ; while such
supervision over those vested with limited authority naturally made

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 581

them careful and discreet in exercising it. By uniform and consistent
dealing with misdemeanors, not only is discipline preserved, but the
culprits and all others concerned are made to understand that justice
only will be administered, while harsh criticism and complaints of in-
justice receive no sympathy ; the standard of service is elevated and
its efficiency increased ; and all fear of personally incurring the dis-
pleasure of superior officials, and the consequent currying of favor —
generally to the company's disadvantage — are obviated.

Railroad companies not only need men sound in body, but in this
country they frequently need the moral and political support of their
employes. This, a mere wage quid pro quo will never develop. Why
not, in addition, identify the interests of their employes with their
own, either by that most potent of all bonds, pecuniary advantage,
or otherwise engender personal devotion to those officials who are
responsible for the conduct of the service ?

As a rule the operatives of railroads reside in those counties and
districts in which they work, and are more or less influential political
factors. "With us majorities rule, and as employes necessarily out-
number their employers, who are constantly compelled to seek conces-
sions from political bodies, therefore, for their own welfare and safety,
the latter should pursue such a policy as will enable them to count
upon the support and friendship of their masters.

Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., some years ago published in " The
Nation " a communication from a correspondent who concluded some
suggestions on promoting identity of interests between railroad man-
agers and operatives with the following language : " The railroad man
who makes suggestions of this character from the Western end of the
line renders himself liable to have his ideas ranked as ' Utopian,' ' vis-
ionary,' etc. I have, however, been through the mill, and believe that
a little attention to these matters would give our owners a more zealous
and earnest service ; would foster and preserve a higher esprit de corps;
would develop a strong attachment to the line and its owners ; would
remove the possibility of strikes and riots ; and would lead to the
securing of a better grade of men, which means increased efficiency and
increased net earnings ; and all this can be secured at small cost and
with little trouble to the local management."

That such views are not "Utopian" is proved by the fact that
many of the principal English and Continental railway companies
have on various occasions, and with considerable expenditure of time
and money, inaugurated for their employes (and devoted large sums to
sustaining) benevolent societies for promoting one or more of the ob-
jects the writer quoted outlined. Such action by financiers and railroad
directors, whose keen business perceptions, stimulated by close compe-
tition, are not apt to be misdirected or clouded by philanthropical or
sentimental ideas, shows how important they regard the cultivation of
bonds of sympathy and fellowship with their armies of operatives —

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

susceptible as they are of an organization and discipline as perfect and
efficient as distinguished the greatest armies of history.

If further proof of the utility of such action is desired, it can be
had by observing the result attained by one of our Eastern trunk lines
— the management of which has made itself prominent in organizing
for its employes protection against financial distress resulting from
sickness, accidents, old age, and other vicissitudes of life and death
— which will be noticed further on — as also in the fact that such
measures have actually and uniformly been found to compensate for
material differences in wages ; to put the service offering them at a
premium, and ultimately to secure it the best and steadiest men at
relatively insignificant outlay.

But it has often been asserted that corporations, no more than in-
dividuals, should enter into the philanthropy business, and that rail-
road companies are not more than other employers interested in the
personal welfare of their people. Such assertions convict their authors
of ignorance of social science and lack of forethought unpardonable
in this advanced age in those intrusted with the overshadowing inter-
ests of our great American railways. In defense of such assertions it
is alleged that individuals and classes of men are in the market repre-
senting labor, and other individuals or combinations of men represent-
ing capital are likewise in the market ; that the one is perfectly justi-
fiable in purchasing the other at its market value, and, when capital
ceases to be able to pay the market value of labor, the other will nat-
urally seek other purchasers, and that there the claims of one upon the
other cease ; that as labor is never held bound to maintain its connec-
tion with capital to the laborer's disadvantage, so, when labor ceases
to make profit for capital, the latter must be allowed to exercise the
same right to sever their associations.

While as a broad proposition this must be admitted to be true,
railroads are, more than most other employers, interested in the pros-
perity of their employes, and, like all other corporations whose work
is dangerous, are partly answerable for the misfortunes of their em-
ployes, and peculiarly interested in providing means for lessening lia-
bilities to accident, and in relieving the suffering and hardships caused
by injuries received in their service. In partial recognition of this
principle, many individuals and corporations employing small bodies
of labor continue the pay of their men when sick, but where large
masses are to be dealt with such a course would entail an expenditure
beyond all reason. As an illustration of this, on one of our Eastern
trunk lines, the employes of which number something over twenty
thousand (and several of its rivals have more than double this force),
the sick and disabled from all causes have, within the writer's knowl-
edge, numbered continuously more than six hundred per annum for at
least four consecutive years. Increased remuneration for labor will
not alone solve the problem under discussion, for railroad men are pro-

BAIL WAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 583

verbially improvident as a class, and under certain conditions increased
payment means only greater extravagance. Therefore, a wise policy,
if not higher considerations than those of self-interest, should prompt
the managements of large corporations to provide, even at considerable
expense or financial risk, not only for the protection of their employes
from, or indemnity for the effects of, injuries, but also for their physi-
cal, mental, and moral improvement, so as to render them contented,
zealous, and forbearing.

An admirable illustration of this fact is found in an inspection of
the cotton-spinning factories of Windisch, near Zurich, the most ex-
tensive of this character on the Continent. Educated in England in
all the technicalities and ramifications of his business, its present head,
Mr. Hans Wonderly, has evidently imbibed and has put into practice
many of the most advanced ideas respecting community of interests
between employer and employe there prevalent. On the way to the
mills one passes the hospital built by the firm, a pretty building healthi-
ly situated on a hill-side, near a sharp bend in the river Reuss, surround-
ed by flower-gardens and containing accommodations for thirty beds.
At present it serves as a dispensary in which the district doctor dis-
penses medicines and advice at the expense of the firm. This firm
provides neat cottages for over one hundred families of its workmen,
conveniently located at short distances from their factories. Though
it employs over a thousand operatives, and though it rents these
cottages for only four pounds per annum, more than one half of its
employes own their own houses, the surroundings of which are mar-
velous in beauty and neatness. The work-people remain in the firm's
employ from generation to generation, and great kindness is shown
their disabled and superannuated. Though at times embarrassment is
experienced in providing employment for all who look with natural
dependence upon it, this firm uniformly maintains its fatherly protec-
tion over all permanent employes. All its overlookers are trained on
the spot, and the principle of giving its high positions to its own de-
serving people, which is strictly enforced, encourages aspiring young
men to look for promotion at home rather than elsewhere. Thus a
feeling of clannishness has been established which has kept its work-
people united and satisfied, when at neighboring places all sorts of
disputes and agitations have been in progress, and a strike has never
occurred at any of its factories. This exemption from all labor trou-
bles is attributed by the firm not alone to good management and
satisfactory wages, but mainly to the great consideration and for-
bearance shown by the work-people themselves in times of financial
depression. Time-breaking through drunkenness is unheard of in
these factories. Well-organized schools for the young people are
operated under the auspices of the firm, and there are also excellent
night-schools wherein subjects interesting or advantageous to the
operatives are taught free by instruction and lectures. The operatives

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are supplied with food, clothing, and other necessaries, and with luxu-
ries, through excellently organized co-operative stores, and a savings-
bank and building association are also in operation under guarantee
of the firm. The work-people are reported to be remarkably cleanly
and well dressed, and to show in a high degree the effects of comfort
and civilization, which, considering that, as compared with the English
and American standards, their incomes are very small, is gratifying
evidence of the beneficial effects of such a system (vide vol. i, " Sec-
ond Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Education ").

Another exemplification of the practical wisdom of what would
by some be classed as Utopian ideas can to-day be found nearer home
in the town of Pullman, near Chicago, where proper provision for the
comfort and welfare of the attaches of the great works there located
has secured for this manufacturing company the most skillful work-
men in their respective departments probably to be found in the
country ; that without any marked increase of current wages has made
a most satisfactory return for invested capital, and built up a town
surrounded with influences that refine and elevate the minds and
character, and permanently benefit alike the company and its work-
men. Abundant evidence is furnished by manufacturing and other
corporations abroad that paternal care and solicitude for their opera-
tives are not thrown away, but tend in no small degree to establish
good feeling and community of interest, and that, instead of conflict-
ing with the cold calculations of business economy, such care is in
reality the prompting of self-interest best understood. While rail-
roads nor other corporations employing large masses of labor can with-
hold their employes altogether from improvidence and recklessness,
from the consequences of which the employer must generally suffer,
they can, by means kindred to those above suggested, compel their
people to provide for their future welfare, and in other ways elevate
their standard of efficiency ; and neither the lukewarmness nor oppo-
sition of the servant releases the employer from an obvious duty to
himself, his ward, and the public. Railroad corps especially are, like
armies, amenable to rigid discipline judiciously applied, and where the
necessity for self -protection is so obvious the justice of the employer
inaugurating and enforcing measures promotive of their mutual inter-
ests will always be early recognized, and opposition will be sporadic
and short-lived. Arguments and statements illustrative of the great
necessity for the employer securing a closer affiliation, if not copart-
nership, between his interests and those of his employes through other
and additional means than are now operating among our American
railways, manufactories, etc., might be multiplied ad nauseam • but, on
the assumption that the foregoing, if not within itself convincing,
will at least suggest what will be conclusive upon this point, let us
consider the manner in which substantial gain may be effected at
least cost and wTith less risk to capital, premising the discussion with a

RAILWAY MAN AGUES AND EMPLOYES. 585

few remarks as to some of the troubles that are constantly arising
under current methods :

By the laws of many of our States, railroads are held legally liable
for physical damage to their employes, though resulting from causes
beyond the reasonable control of executive management ; and the dis-
bursements of those railroads whose lines traverse States in which pub-
lic sentiment or the laws are at all hostile, on account of donations,
judgments, costs, etc., for injuries to employes, form heavy and ever-
increasing items in their operating expenses. In England a workman
(in railroad or other hazardous service), when injured, or his legal per-
sonal representative in case the injury results in death, has the same
right of compensation and remedies against the employer as if he had
not been a workman, nor engaged in the service of the employer,
though there the law is carefully discriminating, and is effective only
when the injury is caused :

1. By reason of any defect in the condition of the ways, works,
machinery, or plant connected with or used in the business of the em-
ployer ; or

2. By reason of the negligence of any person in the service of the
employer who has any superintendence intrusted to him while in the
exercise of such superintendence ; or

3. By reason of the negligence of any person in the service of the
employer to whose orders or directions the workman at the time of
the injury was bound to conform, and did conform, where such injury
resulted from his having so conformed ; or

4. By reason of the act or omission of any person in the service of
the employer done or made in obedience to the rules or by-laws of
the employer, or in obedience to particular instructions given by
any person delegated with the authority of the employer in that be-
half ; or

5. By reason of the negligence of any person in the service of the
employer who has the charge or control of any signal, points, locomo-
tive-engine, or train upon a railway.

The workman has not the right of compensation nor any remedy
against the employer :

1. Unless the defect causing the accident arose from, or had not
been discovered or remedied owing to, the negligence of the employer,
or of some person in the service of the employer, and intrusted by him
with the duty of seeing that the Avays, works, machinery, or plant were
in proper condition.

2. Unless the injury resulted from some impropriety or defect in
the rules, by-laws, or instructions of the employer.

3. In no case where the workman. knew of the defect or negligence
which caused his injury, and failed within a reasonable time to give
or cause to be given information thereof to the employer or some per-
son superior to himself, in the service of the employer, unless he was

586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aware that the employer or such superior already knew of the said de-
fect or negligence.

The amount of compensation recoverable under this act may not
exceed such sum as may be found to be equivalent to the estimated
earnings, during the three years preceding the injury, of a person in
the same grade employed during those years in the like employment
and in the district in which the workman is employed at the time of
the injury ; but under our various State laws, when interpreted by ju-
ries, the measure of damages is usually severely onerous, if the em-
ployer be a railroad corporation, and, even when such cases are appealed
to higher judicial tribunals, the tax costs are very heavy. In Ger-
many, railroads — whether owned or controlled by the Government, or
owned and managed by corporations — are not only legally compelled
to assess their employes for the benefit of authorized relief funds, but
are required to contribute thereto from their corporate funds — gener-
ally in amounts equaling the premiums collected from their members ;
and conformity to this regulation is invariably required in all the work-
ing departments of the roads.

In Great Britain, it has become quite general for employers to seek
release from personal liability, or from costs for damages or partial in-
demnity, by either subscribing to the several employes' liability insur-
ance companies or by wide-spread attempts to evade their responsi-
bilities under the law by inducing the workmen to contract themselves
out of the act. Several other methods of securing release from liabil-
ity have been devised, the most prominent of which, perhaps, is the
length to which defendants go in the appeal courts.

The employes of most American railroads are incessantly con-
fronted with petitions for charitable contributions in aid of their fel-
low-workmen and companions overtaken by misfortunes, which almost
always involve others dependent upon them for the necessities and
comforts of existence. Such appeals to people too generally living in
the presence and under the dread of the embarrassments and evils
incident to interrupted wages can seldom be ignored, though often
their alms frequently materially encroach upon the previously mort-
gaged incomes of men engaged in pursuits than which few are more
exacting, and that taxed their abilities and time to such an extent as
precluded the possibility of supplementing through extra labor wages
reduced by competition to barely living rates. The higher officials of
the company are constantly importuned in the same direction, and the
contributions they feel constrained to make sometimes reach consid-
erable sums. The recipients of such charity naturally experience a
sense of humiliation ; their self-respect is lowered, and upon recovery
from sickness or injuries they too frequently resume their occupations
handicapped by the discontent and restlessness of debtors, to whom
such condition is too novel and harassing to be borne with equanimity.
From this results constant anxiety to better their condition, and it

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 587

prepares them for any and all alliances or changes that promise in-
creased wages, and makes them easy dupes of the designing and tur-
bulent.

One result of the indifference of railroad managements toward their
subordinates has been to array against them agencies most potent in
fermenting discontent — secret societies, brotherhoods, and similar or-
ganizations ; for it is a notorious fact that these mainly owe their
success and strength to the assistance and relief they hold out to
their members and their families in sickness, disablement, and death.
Thrown upon his own resources, the man who has constantly before
him the perils of his vocation and the misfortunes that would result
from inability to earn wages, naturally enrolls himself in any organi-
zation that promises the needed protection. Constantly confronted
with the history and with comparisons of the grievances of his fellow-
members, and without motive or cause for attachment to his employ-
ers ; perhaps, unconsciously, feelings of discontent and ill-will arise,
and naturally he meets any reduction of wages or suspension from
labor with outraged feeling, and often with violent actions born of
long though secret hostility, where there should have been but frater-
nity and good-fellowship of affiliated interests. That this is no senti-
, mental picture, many of the actors of the great labor-strike of 1877
testify. On more than one line was the statement afterward repeat-
edly made by railroad men, that had it not been for the protection
from want afforded by the Locomotive Brotherhood and other kindred
organizations, whose influence in antagonism to capital was so potently
felt in that struggle, and which protection they had repeatedly be-
sought their officers to inaugurate for them, they would never have
joined or been influenced by those organizations.

To recapitulate the many serious disadvantages and losses, direct
and indirect, suffered by our railroads through strained relations with
their employes, though recognized and felt with anxious solicitude by
their executive and administrative officers, would little interest the
general public ; nor, indeed, as a rule are railroad investors apt to
give serious attention to what they consider matters of administrative
detail beneath their notice, until, at last, they force themselves into
prominence by threatening their profits or speculations. But the unpar-
alleled rapidity with which railway, mining, and manufacturing indus-
tries dependent thereupon have sprung into existence in America in the
last three decades, calling for an ever-increasing supply of labor skilled
in the manipulation of coals and metals, and their products, has had
the effect of directing the attention not only of those immediately or
by contiguity interested, but also of the general public, to all that per-
tains to the welfare of workers in that field. While labor agitations
and strikes do not now, perhaps, exercise graver influences for good or
ill over those pecuniarily interested than they have always done, the
publicity given to such movements by a press eager for news and ex-

5 83 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

citing incidents, and the avidity with which political manipulators
seize upon opportunities afforded by the agitation of bodies of men,
wisely or unwisely, eager to secure material advantages through any
immediately effective agency, unitedly operate in bringing into promi-
nence those accidents and losses of life and property inseparably con-
nected with mining and railroading. In the United States the opera-
tives of railroads have, as already stated, been too generally left to
their own resources, though now public opinion is gradually forcing
upon employer and employe a recognition of the duty of securing both
the laborer and his dependents from the consequences incident to his
occupations. Where humanitarian considerations are not governing,
those of self-interest are more potential, and the increasing frequency
of successful suits for damages on the one hand, and on the other the
constantly accumulating difficulties of earning a livelihood without
steady, uninterrupted occupation incident to increasing population,
are unitedly forcing this question to the front.

Recurring to the inquiry, by what means within reach substantial
improvement can be effected in the condition of railroad servants at
least cost, and with a minimum risk to capital and a maximum of de-
votion to the service, we have seen, by means of an illustration, by
what simple and inexpensive means partnerships, almost ideal, have
been effected by private enterprise in Europe, and such illustrations
might be multiplied indefinitely.

Further study of the methods of foreign railroads in dealing with
this subject will show that their efforts (which must be successful, for
labor disturbances are very exceptional abroad) have almost uniformly
taken the form of benevolent societies, organized, or contributed to
and fostered, by the railway managements.

The practical utility of such organizations has there been exem-
plified for many years. In their various forms (when established un-
der the auspices of responsible authority) they meet many of the
necessities of the railroad employe : they provide means for avoiding
insurance organizations unworthy of confidence ; lessen the risk of
insolvency and loss of premiums paid ; offer convenience, certainty,
and regularity in making payments, and give a fixed and definite rate
of assessment and compensation, in place of the uncertainties of co-
operative associations, lodges, or brotherhoods, in which many mem-
bers, though taxable on the death of a fellow-member, evade or refuse
to respond to assessment.

Among such associations may be instanced the London and North-
western Railway Insurance Society and Superannuation Savings-Bank ;
the Friendly or Providence Society and Mutual Guarantee Fund ; the
Great Northern Railway Benevolent Institution ; the Great Western
Railway Superannuation Society — all of England; the benevolent
institutions of the Chemins de Fer du Midi of France ; and a host of
other Continental societies, all having for their objects the succor of

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. 589

railroad employes and their families in sickness or grave infirmities, or
wounds entailing incapacity for work, old age, death, and the promo-
tion of culture and habits of thrift and industry. Many of these so-
cieties reach further than mere relief, and provide for the moral and
intellectual training and entertainment of their members and their
children ; aid them in acquiring and embellishing properties, and ex-
ercising a controlling influence in the councils of the nation in all
matters of legislation affecting the working-men ; they have elevated
their members' conditions from servitude and poverty to independence
and prosperity, and in other ways have exercised a paternal care and
supervision over their interests. Early recognizing in such societies
an agency potent to improve alike the secular estate and the moral,
physical, and intellectual condition of their employes, and also under-
standing that easy circumstances and contentment develop increased
usefulness in all walks of life — in none more so than in railroad serv-
ice— the English railways, by liberal and judicious encouragement of
such enterprises, have practically relieved themselves from many oner-
ous burdens under which nearly all our companies are still suffering.

[To be continued.]

■+•+■

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION.

Br WILLIAM GILMAN THOMPSON, M. D.

THERE is no branch of education which attracts so little public
interest and support as proper medical instruction, yet no one
would gainsay the necessity that, if there are to be physicians at all,
the community should be guaranteed that they have been most thor-
oughly trained.

It is not so very long since an air of mystery, which no laymen
would attempt to penetrate, enveloped the art of medicine. It re-
quired generations to separate medical practice from alchemy, as-
trology, and the search for the elixir of life. The traditions and
influence of Hippocrates and of Sydenham lasted well into the past
century, and down to 1750 almost all of the scanty medical literature
was in Latin, and the gradually accumulating facts of observation
were still too little systemized to be weaned from an admixture of the
most unreasonable speculation and pseudo-philosophic discussion. As
late as 1784 the condition of medical education in the United States
was most rudimentary, and for some time thereafter dissections of the
human body could only be made by stealth.* The functions of physi-
cian, nurse, apothecary,f and often, too, of pastor, farmer, dentist, and

* See McMaster's "History of the People of the United States," vol. i, pp. 27-31.
f " Life of Dr. John Warren," p. 314.

59o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

veterinary surgeon, were frequently combined in one person in the
early part of the present century.

What a contrast appears to-day ! Popular medicine and hygiene
are becoming everywhere the fashion. Public sentiment and action
are aroused in regard to all manner of sanitary and curative measures.
When men of distinction are ill, the conditions of their pulse, temper-
ature, and respirations are telegraphed all over the civilized world, to
be read at the breakfast-table in the morning newspaper. Their medi-
cines and their doses are minutely described ; diagrams of the course
of a bullet, or startling pictures of microscopic sections of tumors, or
views of cholera-germs, appear in our daily papers ; and in the most
popular family magazines we read articles upon the " anatomy of the
brain," or " how to trap a soil-pipe." We have a mother's magazine
devoted to improvements in baby-feeding and the scientific develop-
ment of the infant mind. The book-stores abound in popular works
upon every medical topic, from the subject of singers' sore throats to
the treatment of sea-sickness, consumption, or the opium-habit. A
great deal of all this, especially the newspaper medicine, is fostered
by a maudlin craving for every detail of that which is exciting or
horrible. It is to cater to the same kind of feeling that newspapers
describe how many lumps of sugar a condemned murderer took in his
coffee on the morning of his hanging. The germ-theory, too, has
given a great impetus to popular medicine.

The germ appeals to the average mind : it is something tangible ;
it may be hunted down, captured, colored, and looked at through a
microscope, and then, in all its varieties, it can be held directly respon-
sible for so much damage. There is scarcely a farmer in the country
who has not read of the germ-theory. A cow-boy in Arizona was shot
dead in the saddle recently by a comrade for the insult implied by
calling him a " d d microbe " !

Still, a great deal of this popular medical talk and instruction is
the outcome of an earnest desire to learn to alleviate the growing
evils of heredity and environment, especially in overcrowded cities.
The importance of a universal knowledge of, and attention to, the
laws of physiology and hygiene is becoming more and more appreci-
ated,* and the elements of these subjects are taught in the public and
private schools. The mental training to be acquired through the ob-
servation of biological and physiological facts is recognized as being
of the greatest importance, and laboratory courses of instruction in
these studies are already introduced in many of our colleges and uni-
versities side by side with the classics. There is a wide-spread popu-
lar interest in the thorough training of nurses for the sick, and in such
practical and beneficial work as the establishment of diet-kitchens for
the sick poor, and sanitary reforms of all kinds. We have "Sanitary
Protective Leagues " and " Sanitary Aid Societies," composed princi-

* See Spencer on "Education," chap, i, p. 76, "What Knowledge is most worth."

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. 591

pally of laymen, and instruction in "First Aid to the Injured "is
given to policemen, firemen, and enthusiastic young ladies ! Very
many laymen also interest themselves most liberally in the establish-
ment and management of hospitals and dispensaries.

All these activities, directed toward improving the public health
and alleviating sickness and suffering, are most gratifying and com-
mendable, and call for increasing thoroughness in methods of educat-
ing physicians, for, without the co-operation of the public with scien-
tific men who devote their lives to the study of these subjects, much
benevolent energy as well as time and expense are wasted or misap-
plied. Is it not clearly of vital moment that the public for its own
protection should see to it, by legislation or other means, that the
medical schools of this country are of the highest order ? A dozen
well-trained and properly qualified physicians will be of vastly more
benefit anywhere than a hundred " M. D.'s " who have slipped through
some of our so-called medical " colleges " in the easy manner that is
still quite possible. It is disgraceful, and yet it happens constantly,
that men are graduated by prominent medical schools or colleges in
this country without ever having listened to an abnormal heart-
sound, seen a case of measles, or been present at a confinement.
" But," it is asked, " why should the general public take any interest
in medical education ? Why not let doctors manage their own
* shops,' as they always have done, unaided by public support ? "

The answer is that, so long as a medical college is dependent en-
tirely upon the fees of its students for support, the highest educational
good can not be attained. The question concerns endowment. A
review of a few facts and statistics will demonstrate this need.

The medical profession in the United States, like many branches
of industry, is at present suffering severely from over-repletion. There
are more doctors, in proportion to the population, than in any other
country in the world. The laws of supply and demand tend to lead
many men toward those schools where they can soonest secure their
diplomas with least expenditure of time and money (and too often of
energy). The schools become overcrowded, and new ones spring up
with alarming rapidity. A century ago, with a population of 3,000,000,
there were two medical schools. To-day, with a population of 50,000,-
000, we have eighty-seven medical schools,* distributed through twen-
ty-eight States and the District of Columbia. Of these schools, thirty-
nine have been opened within fifteen years, and twenty-one (or about
twenty-six per cent) within five years past. With them are associated
over 1,300 instructors (many of whom offer their services gratuitous-
ly) and over 10,000 students, while about 3,600 new doctors are annu-
ally " turned loose upon the community," as the daily press courteously
expresses it. Forty-six per cent of the schools offer only a two-years

* The writer would be understood as referring only to " regular " schools in this arti-
cle ; there are very many others.

592

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

course of instruction, three of them offer a four-years course, and the
remainder offer, although only few require, a three-years course.
The inaugurators of the reform of prolonging the course of study
were the Chicago Medical College and the schools at Harvard and the
University of Pennsylvania. At but few schools is the instruction
graded for different years, and students are usually compelled to pay
for hearing twice over the same course of lectures in two years. This,
with a little dissection, a thesis, and examinations upon the lectures, is
frequently all that is required of them before receiving a diploma.
Almost all practical work is optional, and, instead of each student be-
ing obliged to secure a hospital experience, he is lucky if he obtains an
appointment as interne after an additional competitive examination
for which he has crammed himself full during months of toil over text-
books and lecture-notes.

The better class of students feel the inefficiency of this system and
so far as possible supplement it by attending small " quiz classes " for
recitations and practical work, which are, however, entirely independent
of the colleges, and are in no sense obligatory. The success of these
small voluntary classes (often conducted by men who are without any
official connection with the colleges) in drawing students, who thus
incur considerable additional expense, is in itself a severe commentary
upon the poverty of the colleges which restricts them from making
their own advantages all that they should be.

Such is the system in vogue to-day at a large number of our medi-
cal colleges. There are, fortunately, a few where a much higher stand-
ard is not only encouraged but required. No wonder that our students,
immediately after graduating, go by the hundred to Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, etc., where the Government encourages professional schools,
laboratories, and scientific bureaus by substantial support and thorough
system. They go abroad, partly because it is the fashion, and gives
them a sort of advertisement as having done the proper thing, and
partly to learn a new and useful language, and study foreign methods
of life. But the fundamental reason of their going is that, instead of
sitting in a huge lecture-hall with two or three hundred other men, to
take notes verbatim of a lecture which often might be read in a text-
book at home, they can join small classes in which they practically
demonstrate every fact for themselves, under the guidance of an in-
structor.

Lectures have their value, certainly, but it is a relative value which
is greatly enhanced by practical teaching. A gigantic picture of a
sore throat, hung on the wall of a lecture-hall, is after all far less in-
structive for a student than looking into the real throat, telling what
he sees there, and then looking again, while what he at first omitted
is pointed out to him.

There are many demonstrations which can be better made, and
many theories which can be more conveniently discussed, in a lecture ;

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICAL EDUCATION. 593

still, it is well to bring a student face to face with at least one patient
before intrusting him with a diploma and license to practice at large.

But practical work, at its commencement at least, means increased
expense. There must be separate and well-appointed laboratories for
chemical, physiological, anatomical, and pathological research, rooms
for photography, germ-culture, delicate electrical apparatus, for hygi-
enic and therapeutic demonstrations, for libraries, and for the recep-
tion and treatment of many classes of patients at clinics. Moreover,
assistant instructors and demonstrators are needed, in order that each
student may receive a fair share of personal attention. (At present
the classes are so large that candidates for graduation are often un-
known by sight even to a majority of their instructors.)

Suppose for a moment that the professors of a medical college put
their hands in their own pockets and provide these improvements, as
they have already done in some instances to a limited extent. Many
students will leave for cheaper and easier colleges, and the fees are
likely to fall off so much that professorships having no endowments to
rely upon must be abandoned. Thus the lack of endowment is a vir-
tual check upon all growth. Division of labor with a new assistant
instructor means division of personal income with him. The expense
of maintaining a new laboratory means a further reduction of the pro-
fessor's income. As Dr. O. W. Holmes wittily says, " A school which
depends for its existence on the number of its students, can not be ex-
pected to commit suicide in order to satisfy an ideal demand for per-
fection."* General Eaton (to whose admirable report on medical
education f the writer is indebted for many of the statistics of this
article) strongly advises that every medical school or college be re-
quired by law to procure forthwith an endowment of not less than
$300,000.

Strangely enough, in some instances the professors themselves ob-
ject to the endowment of their chairs, because they fear a sacrifice of
their independent methods, or because it seems impossible to secure
endowments which would yield as fair incomes as they at present
derive from the students' fees. But there is no reason why the stu-
dents should not continue to pay as they do now, and a certain
amount of endowment, required by law, would prevent half a dozen
men from forming a new medical college without proper laboratories,
apparatus, or facilities of any kind. The experience of the past ten
years proves this danger to be a real and increasing one.

The professorships and laboratories once endowed, the professors
can be trusted to elevate the standard of medical education very rap-
idly throughout the country. But there should also be separate State
or National Boards of Examiners who alone should have the power
of granting licenses to practice medicine, based upon proofs of prac-

* " Boston Medical and Surgical Journal," January 19, 1882.
f "Report of the Commissioner of Education," 1882-'83, clxiii-clxxxiv, 660-672.
vol. xxvn. — 38

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tical laboratory and hospital work, and upon the diplomas of only
first-class colleges, which latter should be raised to a uniform high
standard of merit. Applicants for licenses should be examined, not as
to what theories they hold, to what " pathy " they conform, or what
text-books and lectures they have crammed, but as to what evidence
they can give of personal examination of the human body and per-
sonal observation of its ailments and witness of the influence of reme-
dies.* Laymen can render great assistance in these matters (and the
gain is ultimately their own) by furthering appropriate legislation,
frowning upon quackery and cheap diplomas, as well as by co-oper-
ating with the medical colleges in offering freely the use for clinical
instruction of all the hospitals and dispensaries which the public sup-
port and control. Most valuable opportunities for clinical observation
are at present needlessly wasted through lack of this system. To-day
the value of income-bearing funds of the eighty-seven medical col-
leges does not exceed $350,000, which yield an annual income of only
about $20,000. It is instructive to contrast with this statement the
fact that the one hundred and forty-five theological schools and col-
leges of the United States have a productive property of $9,500,000,
and an annual income therefrom of nearly $600,000 !

Of our eighty-seven medical schools, forty-two are associated with
general colleges or " universities," but the connection is usually merely
nominal, and no means of support are derived from the parent college.
The precarious footing upon which many of these institutions stand
is to be inferred from the fact that no fewer than fifty-one other medi-
cal colleges founded in the United States within a century have col-
lapsed and vanished. f

It is a grave misfortune to have so many medical colleges as now
exist, for it is a farce to attempt to educate medical students away
from the hospitals and dispensaries which only the largest cities fur-
nish in abundance. The tendency to-day in all branches of education
— from the Frobel Kindergarten system to the study of engineering —
is more and more toward placing practical work and personal obser-
vation before tradition and theoretical instruction. Surely medical
education must not be left behind in facilities.

There are many encouraging signs of speedy improvement in this
matter. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the old system. The
percentage of medical students who are graduates in letters or science
is constantly increasing. At present they number nine per cent, and
they have frequently had the advantage of a year or two of biological,
physiological, and chemical practice before entering the professional
school. The number of such students at the Medical College of the
University of Pennsylvania has doubled in the past six years. The

* The State Board of Health of Illinois is a praiseworthy pioneer in this field,
t "Conspectus of the Medical Colleges of America," 1884, 1885. Illinois State
Board of Health.

INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS. 595

number of medical schools which require some sort of preliminary ex-
amination for admission is also increasing. A great deal is expected
of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical College (which are hand-
somely endowed) when they shall be in operation. Several chairs have
been endowed in the Medical College of the University of Pennsyl-
vania. Mr. Vanderbilt's recent magnificent gift was for a lot and
building and not for endowment, but the donor set the excellent ex-
ample of aiding an already tried institution instead of launching a new
one among the many which are at present struggling to float. The
work accomplished in the past ten years by physicians themselves
through their various societies and organizations in exposing quackery,
injurious patent medicines, malpractice, and bargaining in diplomas for
which no study has ever been expended, has revealed and corrected an
enormous amount of abuse and crime, notwithstanding the very tardy
legal and popular support which has attended these efforts. Our great
need is a little more system and concentration of energy, or a diversion
of some of the wide-spread public interest in general medical topics
toward securing and demanding the most thorough medical education
for every one who seeks to become a physician. This will be of incal-
culable service to the entire country ; and endowments, whether by
State legislation or private bequests and subscriptions, combined with
State or national supervision of licenses to practice, will so far advance
the thoroughness of work at home by making it independent of large
or small classes of students, that we may hope before long to invite
foreign students to learn from us how to take the lead in medical
education.

♦♦♦

INSECT FEKTILIZATKM OF FLOWEKS *

By Dr. W. J. BEHRENS.

OF insects the Coleoptera, the Lepidoptera, the Diptera, and the
Hymenoptera are the orders most concerned in the fertilization
of flowers. More rarely, fertilization is effected by one or other spe-
cies of Hemiptera, Neuroptera, and Orthoptera, but these are not of
sufficient importance to demand further attention here. We shall
therefore confine our remarks to the orders constituting the former
group, and consider the various physical peculiarities by which insects
belonging to them are enabled to effect the end in question. Such
peculiarities chiefly take the form of special structures (invariably con-
fined to the head), by means of which the insects are enabled to reach
and abstract the honey contained in the flower. We shall also have to
consider the organs concerned in the transport of the pollen.

* From " Text-Book of General Botany," by Dr. W. J. Behrens, of Gottiugen. Trans-
lation from the second German edition. Revised by Patrick Geddes, F. R. S. E. Edinburgh :
Young J. Pentland, 1885.

596

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The order Lepidoptera comprises many species of great importance
in effecting the process of fertilization. Their large wings are well
adapted for rapid flight from flower to flower, and their long proboscis
enables them to reach the honey even when the nectary lies at the bot-
tom of a very long and narrow corolla-tube.

The position assumed by the butterflies when engaged in abstract-
ing the honey deserves notice. The wings, which during flight flutter

to and fro with a rapid motion, are folded
together perpendicularly over the body, in
which position they are maintained so long
as the insect remains poised on the flower
(Fig. 1). The butterfly is thus enabled
more readily to escape detection by its
many enemies (e. g., birds) than if, when
resting, its brilliant wings were outspread.
The under surface of the wings is usually
of a much less striking color than the up-
per, and consequently does not prove so
attractive. It even happens in many in-
stances that butterflies only visit such flow-
ers as are of the same color as their own
wings, this precaution, of course, rendering
detection extremely difficult. Many blue
butterflies show a marked preference for
blue meadow-flowers, while in the Alps the
scarlet lilies and many of the orange-colored
Composites are visited almost exclusively by
butterflies of like hue. The moths, while
extracting honey, do not assume a position similar to that of the but-
terflies, but hover over the flowers, their wings rapidly vibrating mean-
while.

The butterflies are excellent honey-hunters, because, as already said,
their proboscis is very highly developed. It arises from the head mid-
way between the eyes (A, Fig. 2), and frequently exceeds the entire
body of the insect in length. When not in use, it is kept coiled up
like a watch-spring (I, II), but can be uncoiled at will, and thrust
deep down into the nectary of a flower. The proboscis is hollow, and
the honey is sucked up by the extreme tip.

In the butterfly the proboscis is the only part of the mouth that is
fully developed. In many insects the mouth is very complicated in
structure ; but in the butterfly a number of the parts are almost en-
tirely suppressed. The labial palpi (I, II, III), however, are usually
pretty well marked. They are long and narrow, and are densely cov-
ered with hairs. To these hairs the pollen adheres, while the butterfly
is engaged in sucking the honey, and by them it is carried to the stigma
of the next flower the insect enters.

Fig. 1. — A Butterfly (Hipparchia
Janira) at rest on a cluster of
flowers ; natural size.

INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS.

597

Fig. 2

Head of Pierisrap^e (cabbage-butterfly),
four times enlarged. I, side view, showing the
proboscis coiled up. II, front view of the same.
Ill, side view, showing proboscis uncoiled. R,
proboscis ; P, labial palpi ; A, eyes ; F, antennae.

The proboscis is usually from three to seven centimetres long, but
in many tropical moths it attains a length of over twenty centimetres.
It is by the great length of their
proboscis that many butterflies
are enabled to suck the honey
from flowers having very long
and narrow corolla-tubes, where
it would be quite inaccessible to
other insects. We need scarcely
say that this feature is a great
advantage to the butterfly order,
for it means that they have the
monopoly of the honey of flow-
ers with a long, tubular corol-
la. The honeysuckle (Lonicera
JPericlymenum, see Fig. 3) is a
good native example of a flower
with a tubular corolla, in which the nectary, a, is so situated as to be
beyond the reach of the various bees and butterflies with short pro-
boscides, likely to be attracted by it in the daytime. In this case the
honey is entirely reserved for
one of the evening moths
(Sphinx ligustri) which pos-
sess a proboscis of almost ex-
actly the same length as the
corolla of the flower — i. e.,
about forty millimetres. At-
tracted by their fragrance,
the insect will hover over a
cluster of flowers for a time.
Finally selecting one, it uncoils its long proboscis, thrusts it deep into
the innermost recesses of the corolla, and, at its leisure, sucks the sweets
denied to less fortunate members of its kind.

As fertilizers the beetles are not so important as the butterflies and
moths. Only a small proportion pay regular visits to flowers, the
greater number deriving their food from quite other sources. Many
species which do frequent flowers only effect injury, devouring, as they
do, some of their most important organs — e. g., the stamens or the
ovary. Others, however, and especially those whose small size admits
of their creeping into the interior of the flower, frequently promote
cross-fertilization, the viscid pollen adhering to the general surface of
their body, from which it is brushed off by the stigma of the next
flower they enter. Such flower-beetles as Anthrenus, Meligethes, Ma-
lachias, and certain smaller sorts, are extremely useful in this way.

In other species certain parts of the tody are specially adapted for
obtaining food from flowers. Thus, in the crown-beetle (Cerocoma

Fig. 3.— Flower op Honeysuckle {Lonicera ■peridyme-
num), frequented by privet hawk-moth (Sphinx
ligustri), natural size. A, nectary; B, entrance to
the throat of the corolla.

598

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Schmfferi, Fig. 4, I, II), the middle of the antennae are characterized
by very strong and well-defined expansions, and are partly covered
with hair. The palpi are very long, and the tongue is provided with
two tufts of hair. These form together a large yellow crest on the
anterior portion of the head (Fig. 4, II). In midsummer this beetle
is occasionally to be met with on the flower of the milfoil and corn
marigold. If one of these beetles be caught and examined with a
lens, the crest is usually found to be covered with a multitude of little
yellow pollen-grains.

Among the long-horned beetles the Lepturidce, are specially well
adapted for procuring food from flowers. The anterior part of the

Fig. 4. Fig. 5

Fig. 4. — Crown Beetle (Cerocoma Scheefferi). I, beetle, natural size, n, head, ten times en-
larged. Fig. 5.— Longicorn Beetles : L Pachyta octornaculata, three times enlarged. II. Lep-
tut a livida : a, head, natural size; b, labium.

body (head and thorax) is narrow and elongated, so as to enable the
insect to push its way pretty deeply into the interior of the flower.
The mouth-parts are well developed, and stand straight forward from
the head. The labium is usually hairy, and is thus extremely useful
in extracting honey (Fig. 5, I, II).*

Compared with the beetles, Diptera or flies take a very prominent
position as promoters of cross-fertilization. One great advantage which
they have over the former class is their power of free and rapid mo-
tion. While the beetles are almost without exception compelled to
adopt a slow mode of locomotion, the movements of the flies are among
the most rapid known in the insect world. The number of native spe-
cies of Diptera is very large ; of those which frequent flowers we shall
here consider but a few (Figs. 6-10). One of the largest and most
rapid flying of the Diptera is the humble-bee fly (Bombylius major,
Fig. 6). In this species the proboscis, which is situated on the ante-
rior portion of the head, is of considerable length, so that the in-
sect can reach the honey even when it is secreted some way down the

* The rest of the Lepturidce live for the most part in or on wood. In contrast to the
species just described, the thorax is broad, the mouth situated toward the under side of
the head, and the maxillue either very slightly hairy or totally destitute of hairs.

INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS.

599

corolla-tube. The manner in which Bombylius hovers over a flower
while extracting the honey closely resembles that already described
as characteristic of the moths among the Lepidoptera.

The Empidos, (Fig. 7) are easily distinguished by the peculiar for-
mation of the head and proboscis. The latter is not directed forward,
but almost perpendicularly downward, and the head itself is round ;
the whole thus bearing some resemblance to the long-beaked head of a
crane. Many of the Syrphidce are also honey-suckers. In structure
they resemble the common house-fly more than the Diptera we have

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.

Fig. 8.

Fig. 6.— Humble-bee Fly {Bombylius major), natural size. Fig. T.—Empis livida (after Meigen),
four times enlarged. Fig. %.—Syrphus, natural size.

just considered. The posterior part of the body is mostly distinguished
by a number of bright and dark colored bands and specks. As typical
examples we may mention the large Syrjokus (Fig. 8), the allied Eris-
talis tenax and arbustorum (Fig. 10), and the cone-fly (Mhingia ros-
trata, Fig. 9). The latter may easily be recognized by its peculiar
proboscis, which is kept coiled up under a small conical projection on
the anterior part of its head. The sucking apparatus of the Diptera
consists of a suctorial proboscis, re-
sembling in a general way that of
the common house-fly. It is tubular,
short and thickened at its extremity,
so as to form a disk, upon which are
furrows and hairs. It is by means
of this disk that the honey is taken
up. The proboscis of the Diptera
being almost always short and blunt, they can only extract honey
from such flowers as have an open corolla. Insects of this order,
then, need only be sought for on flat flowers, and there indeed they
may be seen on any sunny day, rapidly creeping about, and greedily
imbibing the nectar. The UmbelUferce are special favorites with them,
the nectar being found on the disk in the center of the flower, which
can very easily be reached. The Diptera are never found on flowers
with long corolla-tubes. Only such forms as the humble-bee flies,
Syrphidce, Empidce, and a few others, have a proboscis large enough
to enable them to obtain honey from flowers of slightly tubular form.
The proboscis of Bombylius (Fig. 11, I) is about one centimetre long.
It is strong and stiff, cleft at the extremity, B, and thickly beset with

Fig. 9. Fig. 10.

Fig. 9.— Cone-fly {Rhingia roslrata), natural
size. Fig. 10.— Eristalis arbustorum, nat-
ural size.

6oo

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hairs. Certain other structures entering into the formation of the
mouth (e. g., the lip, A, the mandible, D, and the maxillae, C C) almost
equal it in length. The cone-fly (Rhingia rostrata), in common with

many other broad-headed flies, pos-
sesses the power of coiling up its
proboscis, the length of which is
about twelve millimetres (Fig. 11,
II-IV). That anterior portion of
the cone-fly's head (II) is prolonged
forward so as to form a sort of beak
(S). When not in use, the proboscis
is kept coiled up beneath this pro-
Fig. 11.— structure or the Mouth of the lonsration. When required, the ex-

Difteka. I, humble-bee fly ; II-IV, cone- ° . • . ' .

fly. II, aide view of head, with the pro- tremity of the proboscis IB III) IS
bxscis coiled; III, do., the proboscis be- • t -i -i -i -ii

ginning to uncoil; rv, do., completely un- hrst inclined downward, and tne

coiled. U, eye; F, antennae; S, beak ; . , , , ,

T r, palpi ; b, extremity of proboscis ; organ is next suddenly snot out to

A, lip ; D, mandible ; 67 (7, maxillae. .^ f ^ ^^ ^^ f nUy extend_

ed the proboscis projects far beyond the beak-like anterior portion
of the head (IV). The extraction of the honey is effected by means
of the cleft tip (B). The cleft extremity is used in sucking.

We have already seen that many flowers are exclusively visited by
Lepidoptera, their honey not being within the reach of insects belong-
ing to any other order. Such, for instance, are honeysuckle and privet.
Very few flowers, however, are frequented solely by Diptera ; for the
length of the proboscis, even in those Diptera in which it is best de-
veloped, is attained, if not surpassed, by many of the Hymenoptera
(humble-bees, honey-bees, etc.). The latter class, therefore, share with
the Diptera the privilege of frequenting certain species of flowers. We
shall now pass on to consider them for a little.

Of all insects the Hymenoptera (bees and wasps) are, on account
both of their physical structure and their peculiar instincts, the best
adapted for the task of extracting and collecting honey from flowers.
The species comprised in this order, and more especially the bees, are
all characterized by a superior share of intelligence, not only as honey-
hunters, but in many other respects. Their mode of living together
in large, well-ordered communities, presided over by a queen, has long
been a subject of marvel and of study. Out of the wax, which exudes
at the joints of the abdominal segments of their bodies, they construct
a " comb," consisting of a number of united cells. The cells when fin-
ished are filled with honey or "bee-bread," a substance composed of a
mixture of honey and pollen. This bee-bread forms the food upon
which the young larvae are reared.

The bees are the greatest promoters of cross-fertilization, not only
among the Hymenoptera, but among all insects whatsoever.

Over two hundred species of our native bees (Apida}) are known
as frequenting flowers, the most familiar being the common honey-bee

INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS.

601

(Fig. 12). The task of collecting and storing honey is performed ex-
clusively by the neuters (workers). The humble-bees do not fall far
short of the honey-bees in the assiduity with which they frequent
flowers, and they surpass the latter in size and in length of proboscis.
Our most common species are the earth humble-bee (Bombus terres-
tris, Fig. 15), the garden humble-bee (Bombus hortorum), the moss-bee
(Bombus muscorwn), and the stone-bee (Bombus lapidarius). Very

Fig. 12.

Fig. 13. Fig. 14. Fig. 15.

Hymenoptera.—'FiQ. 12.— Honey-bee (Apis mellifica), queen, natural size. Fig. 13.— Hairy-bee
(Anthaphora retusa). Fig. 14.— Eabth-bee (Andrena Schrankella). Fig. 15.— Humble-bee
(Bombus terrestris).

similar to the humble-bees in appearance and structure are the hairy-
bees, one of which is shown in Fig. 13. They are readily distin-
guished, however, as we shall presently see, by the formation of the
hind-legs. In Fig. 14 we have a sand-bee (Andrena Schrankella, a
species representing one of the largest genera), which may be seen in
early spring on catkins and other spring flowers.

We have already said that, over and above their high intelligence,
bees are remarkable for having certain parts of their body specially
modified in connection with the acquiring of honey and pollen. We
must therefore further consider the structures concerned in effecting
this end, viz., the suctorial apparatus and the apparatus for collecting
pollen.

The suctorial apparatus is in most bees developed in very great
perfection. In many (Figs. 13-15) the proboscis is of considerable

Fig. 16.— Head of Anthophoba Retusa ; ten times enlarged. I, side view ; n, top view. B,
tongue ; K, maxilloe : T, labial palpi ; 0, mandibles ; T, antenna; ; A, eyes.

length, in some cases being as long as the body. It consists (Fig. 16)
of the long vermiform tongue (R) (as in the butterflies), the upper

602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

surface of which is mostly well provided with oblique rows of long
bristles. The maxillae (K) and part of the labial palpi (T) are modi-
fied into flat, leaf-like, linear processes, which are arranged around the
tongue (R), and thus complete the suctorial proboscis. While, there-
fore, the suctorial apparatus of the butterfly consists simply of a coil-
ing or suctorial tongue, it must be noted that in the bee other parts
are concerned in the formation of the tubular sucking apparatus. In
many bees, besides, the tip of the tongue is peculiarly modified, so
as to enable the insect to taste the honey before beginning to col-
lect it, an arrangement by which honey of unpleasant taste can be
rejected.

Apparatus foe collecting Pollen. — Of all insects the bees alone
have certain parts of their body specialized for the collection of pollen.
The structures developed for this end are in their way perfect. They
may be found either on the ventral surface of the posterior portion of
the body or on the legs. Accordingly, bees may thus be divided into
two groups : 1. Bees having structures for the collection of pollen on
the ventral surface of the body ; and, 2. Bees having such structures
on their legs. To the first group belong the mason-bees ( Osmia) and
the leaf-cutter bees (Megachile). In these species the ventral surface
of the abdomen is furnished with long, stiff, retroverted hairs, by means
of which the pollen is brushed from the anthers as the insect passes in
or out of the flower. The grains get entangled among the hairs, from
among which the bee afterward dislodges them by means of its legs.

This contrivance is admirably adapted for obtaining pollen from
flowers having a flat corolla, but not for such as have the anthers con-
cealed in a deep tube. Our most highly developed bees (humble-bees,
honey-bees, etc.) have therefore apparatus suitable for collecting pollen
from flowers of all shapes.

The most highly developed bees collect the pollen on the hind-legs,
but all do not possess the structures adapted to this purpose in like per-
fection. Fig. 17 represents one of the hind-legs of the hairy-bee (An-
thophora retusa, compare Fig. 13) ; we here see the trochanter (R), the
femur (S), the tibia (T), the tarsus (P), the four other joints of the
foot (F), and, finally, the two claws (K). The tarsus (P) and the tibia
(T) bear the structures by which the pollen is collected ; both are seen
to be laden with many grains of pollen (left white in the illustration).
The tibia and tarsus are broad and flat, and are thickly covered with
hairs. The pollen is brushed from the anthers by means of the hairs
on the tarsus (P), and is afterward transferred to those of the tibia (T),
where they are suffered to remain until the hive is reached. In the
humble-bee (Fig. 18, Bombus terrestris) the same arrangements are
carried out in yet greater perfection. The tibia (T) is smooth on the
outer surface, while the inner surface is covered with long, stiff hairs,
which form with the surface of the tibia a little depression, into which
the pollen is brushed by the short hairs of the tarsus. In the honey-

INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS.

603

bee the arrangements are similar to those just deseribed, but the hairs
of the tarsus are much better adapted to their purpose (Fig. 19). They
are disposed in eight or nine rows, while in the humble-bee they are
distributed irregularly. By this regularity of arrangement the honey-
bees are enabled to brush the pollen from the anthers far more effect-

Fig. 17. Fig. 1?. Fig. 19.

Hind-Legs op Bees, showing structures for collecting pollen. Fig. 17.— Hairy -bee, four times
enlarged. Fig. 18.— Humble-bee, four times enlarged. Fig. 19.— Honey-bee, five times en-
larged, i?, trochanter; S, femur; T, tibia; A, prickles on tibia; P, tarsus (polleu-brush) ; F,
other segments of the foot ; K, claws.

ually. The pollen, once removed from the antlers, is next transferred
to the hairs, or to the surface of the tibia, to which, being viscid, it
readily adheres. After the process of collecting has been carried on
for some time, the pollen forms thick yellow masses, which completely
envelop the legs. Laden with the fruits of its toil, the insect wings
its way homeward, and deposits them in the bee-hive.

While our native flowers are many of them entirely dependent on
insects for the transference of pollen, the process of cross-fertilization
is, in many tropical species, always effected by birds, which visit the
flowers on account of their nectar.

In America the humming-birds (Trochilidce, Figs. 20-22) and in
Africa the honey-eaters ( Cinnyridce) are the great promoters of cross-
fertilization.

The honey-birds are found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia,
and Australia, while the humming-birds belong to tropical and South
America. The former suck the honey with their long, tubular tongue,
which is brush-like at the tip. Their relations to flowers have not yet
been sufficiently investigated, but a good deal is known respecting
those of humming-birds.

The humming-birds are small (the largest species attaining to about
the size of a swallow, the smallest not much larger than a humble-bee)
and of delicate structure. They are famed for their magnificent plum-
age, which almost always displays metallic tints. Their flight does

604

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not resemble that of any of our native birds, being maintained by rapid
vibrations of the wings, which enable them to remain apparently mo-
tionless in one spot for a considerable time. Their passage from place
to j)lace is effected by a series of rapid darts, almost too swift for the
eye to follow. Their flight might perhaps be best compared to that
of a moth. Like these insects, the humming-birds hover for long over
a flower, sipping the honey with their long, thin bill, and in other par-
ticulars also — in color and form, for example — humming-birds and
moths offer some remarkable parallels. Representatives of each may
be found, to distinguish between which needs a close scrutiny, and
which, when on the wing, might perplex the best observer. To all
outward appearance the humming-birds are birds when at rest, insects
when in motion.

The tongue of the humming-bird is admirably adapted for extract-
ing the honey from flowers, being really a suctorial tongue in the truest
sense of the expression. Long and tubular, often bifid and hairy at the
tip, this organ serves to catch the insects that may be concealed in the
flower (Fig. 22, I). The beak is long, thin, and pointed ; the upper

Fig. 20. Fig. 21.

Fig. 22.
Humming-birds. Fig. W.—Hdiothrix aurita, three fourths natural size. Fig. 31.— Hettactinw cor-
nutus, three fourths natural size. Fig. 22.— I, Sword-beak (Bocimmtes ensifer). II, A flower
visited by it for its honey (Datura) ; three fourths natural size. (After Brehm.)

jaw closes over the edges of the lower jaw, thus forming a kind of tube
incasing the tongue. In almost all species the beak is straight or very
slightly curved (Figs. 20-22) ; in the sickle-beak alone (the Eutoxeres
aquila of the equator, for example) it is sickle-shaped. The length
of the beak varies in accordance with the length of the corolla-tube of
the flowers habitually visited by the different species. In the Heliac-
tinus cornutus of Brazil (Fig. 21) it is 1*5 centimetre long, in the
Heliothrix aurita of Minas-Geraes in Brazil (Fig. 20) about two centi-
metres. The longest beak among the humming-birds is that of the

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 605

Docimastes ensifer of Venezuela (Fig. 22, I), that of the female being
eight, of the male ten centimetres long. Fig. 22, II, shows a flower
of the datura species freqented by the last-named ; we here see how
the length of the beak and that of the corolla correspond.

We thus see that in the tropics there are not only wind and insect
fertilized flowers, as with us, but also certain which are bird-fertilized,
i. e., plants in which the transference of the pollen is effected by hum-
ming-birds.

-♦■•♦-

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES.

By Professor EDWAED D. COPE.

THE early part of this century saw the establishment of most of
the fundamental principles of the science of physics, especially
as applied to astronomy. A few decades later saw the science of
chemistry emerge from the empirical and enter the jjhilosophical stage.
It has been reserved for the second half of the century to witness the
discovery of the facts and principles of the history of life on the
earth. The public mind is gradually awakening to the fact that the
grandest truths of creation are being placed within their reach by
the researches of contemporary science, and that the knowledge of
the manner of the origin of the human race is no longer withheld
from us.

The study of the fossil remains of animals has revealed an immense
number of forms of life which in former ages have peopled the world.
The study of geology has shown that the history of our planet is
marked by successive deposits in water, which have become beds of
rocks. The relation of these beds to each other gives us the relations
of the animals and plants whose fossil remains they contain. Thus
we have obtained a consecutive history of life from its early appear-
ance to the present day. Before the doctrine of evolution was under-
stood, the successive populations that filled the successive periods
were supposed to have been the products of special creations. Now
it is believed, with the best of reason, that all forms of life have been
produced by changes of structure which arose in the course of descent,
the one species coming from the other ; and that interruptions in the
series of species from older to later periods are simply due to the
absence of the means of preserving their remains at certain times
during the course of the history of the world. These interruptions
indicate periods of dry land, since fossils are not preserved unless
they are excluded from the air by a covering of water or of mud.

It is one of the peculiar advantages of the North American Con-
tinent to the scientist that the geological structure of its great interior
is comparatively simple, so that its history can be easily read. It fol-

606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lows that the history of the succession of life is recorded with the
same regularity, and may be read by those who will bestow the neces-
sary labor upon it. Those who have, during the last ten years, devoted
themselves to this study have been rewarded by the discovery of the
course of development of many lines of animals, so that it is now
possible to show the kind of changes in structure which have resulted
in the species of animals with which we are familiar as living on the
surface of the earth at the present time. Not that this continent has
given us the parentage of all forms of animal life, or all forms of ani-
mals with skeletons, or vertebrata, but it has given us many of them.
To take the vertebrata, we have obtained the long-since extinct ances-
tor of the very lowest vertebrates. Then we have discovered the an-
cestor of the true fishes. We have the ancestor of all the reptiles,
of the birds, and of the mammals. If we considered the mammals,
or milk-givers, separately, we have traced up a great many lines to
their points of departure from very primitive things. Thus we have
obtained the genealogical trees of the deer, the camels, the musk, the
horse, the tapir, and the rhinoceros, of the cats and dogs, of the
lemurs and monkeys, and have important evidence as to the origin of
man. We have the primitive mammals from which all these kinds
that I have mentioned drew their descent, and from which, no doubt,
many other lines were derived which we have not yet discovered in
North America. Such are the lines of the elephants, the hyenas, the
bears, the hogs, and the oxen. The ancestors of the strange, pouch-
bearing marsupialia, have been found in part. These creatures, now
confined (except the opossums) to Australia and the adjacent islands,
were, at an early period, widely distributed over the earth. Some of
these are found in the fossiliferous deposits of our plains and Rocky
Mountains.

So soon as the possibility of learning the manner of creation of
animals is admitted, curiosity and speculation are awakened. Many
alternatives naturally occur to the mind. Were any of the living
kinds of animals descended from any other living species, or have the
ancestral animals all disappeared from the earth ? Have the giants of
ancient periods become reduced in size and strength, or have the giants
of to-day grown from weak and insignificant beginnings ? Have
things grown more and more perfect with the lapse of the ages, or
have they degenerated from more perfect ancestors ? Have these
changes advanced alike in all continents, or have they proceeded differ-
ently in different parts of the earth ? Such are the questions that
confronted the student of North American vertebrate paleontology
fifteen years ago, and some of them could only be answered by North
American material, not only because its record is the most complete,
but because, as the second continent studied, it furnished the first
opportunity in the history of the science for a comparison with the
record already placed before us by the paleontologists of Europe.

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 607

Answering the last question first, it has been conclusively proved
that there has been a general correspondence in the progress of verte-
brate life in the two continents of the northern hemisphere. The dif-
ferences, though numerous, are of minor importance. Some families
of vertebrata have existed on the one continent, which were absent
from the other, but the number of such is not large. Even the same
genus occasionally existed on both continents.

The other questions must be answered by reference to the gene-
alogies themselves, or pbylogenies, as they are called.

In tracing back all the lines to which we have yet had access, the
same kind of changes is found to have taken place in all of them. Let
us take, for instance, the animals with hoofs. These embrace the cloven-
footed and odd-toed orders, with their many species and families, which
are represented by the ox, deer, camel, hog, and hippopotamus, for the
cloven-footed ; and the horse, tapir, and rhinoceros, for the odd-toed.
Most of these creatures walk on their toes. Many of the first-named
group have but two toes, more or less united together, while the horses,
of the second group, have but one toe. The bones of the two rows
which form both the palm and the sole alternate with each other ; and
the ankle-joint is a well-constructed tongue-and-groove arrangement.
The teeth in many of them are highly complicated by the infolding of
the enamel of the crowns of the molars, and this special development
of the molars has been accompanied by a corresponding reduction in
their number, and in the number of the incisors. In tracing the lines
of these animals backward in time we have made the following discov-
eries : First, the infoldings of the enamel of the molars become shal-
lower, and are finally represented by the valleys between four hills or
tubercles, which stand to each other so as to be inclosed by a square
figure. The number of the molar teeth increases. If incisor teeth
were absent, they appear. The toes increase in number, becoming five
on all the feet. The step becomes plantigrade or flat-footed, the heel
reaching the ground. The tongue and groove disappear from the ankle-
joint, which becomes flat. The bones of the two rows of the carpus
and tarsus no longer alternate with each other, but rest, each one of
the first on each one of the second row only. In 1874 I foretold that
the ancestor of all the mammals above mentioned would prove to be a
" pentadactyle, plantigrade bunodont "; that is, a five-toed sole-walker,
with tubercular molar teeth. In 1881, seven years later, I obtained
evidence that such a type of mammals abounded in North America
during the early Eocene Tertiary period, and the prophecy was ful-
filled. The best-known genus of this division has been called Phena-
codus, and the figures of it will be found in the " American Natural-
ist " for 1884. In a still earlier formation of the Eocene, nearly all the
hoofed mammalia were found to be of this type, showing conclusively
that this group, which is known as the Condylarthra, was the ancestor
of all hoofed mammals (Fig. 1).

6o8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 609

But the Condylarthra were also ancestors of a still more important
line of mammals. A remarkable type of quadrupeds known as lemurs
at present inhabits Madagascar and some parts of Africa and Ma-
laysia. These creatures, known by the Germans as Halbaffen, or half-
apes, present a curious combination of the characters of monkeys and
carnivora of the raccoon pattern. They could easily have stood in the
position of parents to the monkeys in general ; and suspicions to this
effect have been abundantly confirmed by the discovery of numerous
representatives of the sub-order Lemuroidea in the Eocene beds of
both Europe and North America. And these again have been traced
as certainly to the Condylarthra as ancestors, so that this group is
again proved to be the ancestor of man as well as of the hoofed animals.
And here was fulfilled another prophecy made by the writer, along
with the one already mentioned, viz., that the ancestor of man also,
would be found to be a " pentadactyle plantigrade bunodont."

An especial point of interest in the phylogeny of man has been
brought to light in our North American beds. There are some things
in the structure of man and his nearest relatives, the chimpanzee,
orang, etc., that lead us to suspect that they have not descended
directly from true monkeys, but that they have rather come from
some extinct type of lemurs. Lemurs, which fulfill this anticipation,
have been found in our Eocene beds, and belong to a peculiar genus
which bears the name of Anaptomorphus. These creatures have a
dentition more like that of the anthropoid apes than any living lemur

Fig. 2.— Skull op the Primitive Lemur (Anar>tomorphn$ hornunculus} (Conel. Natural size,
except Fig. d, which is four thirds natural size. (Prom the Eocene of Wyoming.)

exhibits. They had the most acute senses of sight and hearing, if we
may judge from the bony parts which surrounded those organs. They
also had larger brains than those of any other mammal of their period,
though they did not differ much in this respect from the existing
vol. xxvn. — 39

610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lemurs. Both of the two species known are small, not probably ex-
ceeding a gray squirrel in size. Only the skulls and jaws are known
(Fig. 2).

But the Condylarthra prove to be the ancestors of a still greater
population of descendants. We have traced all forms of grinding
teeth up to a pattern which consists of four tubercles or cones arranged
within a square. But it has been possible to show that one of the four
tubercles appeared after the other three, as an addition to them, so
that the earliest form, of molar or grinding tooth was tritubercular,
and that the quadritubercular was an outgrowth from it. Now, one
of the three families of the Condylarthra has tritubercular molars, and
there is little doubt that it was the ancestor of the two other families.
The principal genus of this family is called Periptychus. From this
family came an order of hoofed mammals, which never rose to the
possession of four tubercular grinders, although the crowns became
crested by the modification of the three which they possess. This or-
der, the Amblypoda, had a short life in geological time, and did not
grow in the dimensions of the brain, but developed huge skeletons
with skulls that sprouted into horns and strange processes.

The Condylarthra with three tubercles are probably also the ances-
tors of the carnivorous orders. The lions, tigers, wolves, and bears of
to-day can be shown to be descendants of animals absolutely interme-
diate between themselves and the animals just mentioned. These
half -carnivores, or Creodonta, have, like the ancient hoofed mam-
mals, more numerous teeth than their modern representatives, and dif-
fer from the true carnivora in just the ways, in limbs and feet, that
we have seen that the ancient hoofed mammals differ from their mod-
ern descendants. Creodonta were not such dangerous animals as the
carnivora, with some possible exceptions, because, although they were
as large, they generally had shorter legs, less acute claws, and smaller
and more simple brains.

This genealogy, it will be seen, does not show us the ancestors of
the Condylarthra. This remains for future discovery. It is, however,
probable that they will be found in the earlier geological periods,
among some of the marsupial mammals only known thus far from the
jaws and teeth. It must also be noted that a number of these ances-
tral groups are represented in the existing fauna by a few genera. Of
the Condylarthra, a near relative exists in the Hyrax, or cony, which
now inhabits Africa and Western Asia. Of the Creodonta, several
genera exist in Madagascar, West Africa, and the northern hemi-
sphere. The mastodons are late representatives of an ancient type,
and their phylogeny has not yet been fully made out. But they cer-
tainly also came from the Condylarthra.

There is a remarkable likeness between the history of the develop-
ment of the reptiles and that of the higher mammals, in one respect,
and that is, that they have apparently all been derived from a single

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 611

order, which occupied the earth at one (an early geological) period.
As reptiles are inferior to mammals in the scale, so they are of earlier
origin. The primitive reptilian order first appeared in force on the
earth during the Permian epoch — that populous time which immedi-
ately followed the age of the true coal. If it existed during the coal-
measures proper, it has not yet been found in them in North America.
This order has been named the Theromorpha. Its representatives
have been found in Russia, Germany, South Africa, Illinois, Texas,
and France. I give the names in the historic order of discovery. It
embraced both carnivorous and herbivorous forms, and species of sizes
from that of the Malayan tapir downward. Those with piercing teeth
occur everywhere, and those with grinding teeth in North America
only. South Africa furnishes us with genera with leaf -shaped teeth,
and others with no teeth at all. This order represents the first air-
breathing land-population of vertebrates, and they evidently fulfilled
most of the functions of the mammalia of to-day, though none of them
were fliers, so far as known. Many of them had strange physiogno-
mies, with blunt noses and large nostrils, and long teeth mingled with
other smaller ones. Besides having given origin to most of the rep-
tilia, this order presents many points of resemblance to the mammalia.
Some of the bones resemble very closely those of the duck-bill or Pla-
typus of Australia, and some of the bones of the skull are more mam-
malian than the corresponding parts of any other reptiles. It is prob-
able that the lowest order of mammalia, which is to-day represented
by the duck-bill (the Monotremata), were derived from the Thero-
morpha. (See " Proceedings " of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science for 1884.)

The different lines of reptiles have been traced less completely
than those of the mammalia, partly because their history is more
ancient, and the formations where their remains are preserved have
suffered greater disasters. The changes that have appeared with ad-
vancing time have been in the bones of the shoulder-girdle and pel-
vis, in the limbs, vertebra?, and skull. Certain changes in these parts
resulted in the appearance, in the period immediately following the
Permian (the Triassic), of the orders of the sea-saurians, the flying
saurians, and the land-saurians or Dinosauria. In the next period,
the Jurassic, we have the first certain knowledge of the tortoises and
lizards ; while, in the following ages of the Cretaceous, we get the
pythonomorphg and the snakes. All of the existing orders were in
the world by the beginning of Tertiary time, but the great monsters
that characterized the middle period of the earth's history were only
represented by the crocodile branch of the Dinosauria.

The changes of structure which these several lines underwent in
the course of the ages were quite different from those which the his-
tory of the mammalia exhibits. Instead of becoming more perfect
organs of locomotion, the limbs, if we except those of the flying rep-

612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tiles, lost some of their special characters, becoming more remote from
the mammalian type. The pelvis became weaker and more open.
The shoulder-girdle lost parts in sqme orders, and gained some expan-
sion in others. The vertebras became more perfectly articulated by
the bodies, and in the case of the snakes by the arches also. Finally,
the ribs lost one of their points of articulation with the vertebra?, and
the jaws became looser and more open, and especially adapted to
swallowing large bodies whole. The history consists of a successive
departure from the mammalian type, and a running into a specializa-
tion, which, in some cases, means degeneration.

A curious specialization which supervened on the reptilan type is
that of the birds. Various saurians exhibit unmistakable approxima-
tions to the birds. The land-saurians include types that walked on
the hind legs and had many bird-like characters of the hinder feet
and of the pelvis. The flying saurians present affinities in the same
direction. The class of birds presents many perfections both general
and special. Their brains are larger than those of reptiles, and they
acquired warm blood. In their own specialty of flight they display
wonderful power, while the highest orders add that vocal skill which
makes them so pleasing to man. Here is a good example of advance
in evolution. Cases of degenerate evolution are to be found in birds,
but they are few.

The next lowest class, that of the Batrachians, prevailed during the
coal-measure period. They expanded enormously during the Permian,
and were worthy contemporaries in size and numbers of the theromorph
reptiles. Their numbers diminished subsequently, as the record now
stands, though some of the species maintained their bulk during the
Triassic period. In modern times they are comparatively insignificant ;
frogs, toads, salamanders, sirens, and coecilias not playing an import-
ant part in the existing fauna. In tracing the successive changes of
structure of these creatures, one is forced to believe that degeneracy
has played an important part. The bones of the skull have so dimin-
ished in number as to leave it in some cases in a condition comparable
to that of the primitive fishes. In not a few modern types the meta-
morphosis is never completed, the animals remaining permanently
breathers in the water. Whatever we may call such changes, they are
plainly a specialization which has carried them further and further
away from their starting-point ; and, as in the case of the reptiles,
this starting-point has been near to orders higher than itself. The
Permian Batrachia are nearer in structure to the Permian reptiles
(Theromorpha) than any subsequent form of Batrachia has been
(Fig. 3).

Professor Agassiz pointed out that the early fishes presented rela-
tions to other vertebrata, as I have since shown to be true of the Ba-
trachia and Reptilia. Some of the primitive fishes he called "sauroid "
or " reptilian " fishes. Batrachian fishes would have been a more accu-

ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE OTHER VERTEBRATES. 613

rate designation, for it is highly probable that it was from one of the
early orders of fishes that the Batrachia took their rise. Omitting from
consideration the lowest vertebrata, the sand -lances and lampreys,
which are not fishes, we have remaining a body of animals which pre-

Fig. 3.— Skull of Eetofs megacephalus. (Cope.) A Batrachian of the Permian period. One
fifth natural size, upper side. (Prom Texas.)

sent great varieties of structure. Of the four great sub-classes into
which they naturally fall, but one can be called true fishes. The others
embrace the sharks, the chimaeras, and the lepidosirens. It is interest-
ing to note that these four divisions are more closely approximated
during the Permian period than at any later time. An order tech-
nically referred to the sharks, and known as the Ichthyotomi, com-
bines many of the characters found separately in three of the sub-
classes. The creatures which especially deserve the name of batrachian
fishes, the ceratodonts, etc., also abounded during the Permian period.
From this time the true fishes began to run their course. They have
peopled all waters, and have branched into a greater diversity of form

6 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

than any of the other divisions of vertebrata. And paleontology and
zoology show that they have pursued a course which is in its essential
principle the same as that displayed by the Batrachia, and in a less de-
gree by the Reptilia. They have diverged further and further away
from the batrachians, which they once resembled, and in so doing have
left behind them the general ascending line that led some of the land
animals to become Mammalia. They have become specialized into
types which have special modes of life adapted to special localities.
Some of the lines of descent are clearly degenerate, as indicated by a
loss of parts. Some of these degenerate lines inhabit the deep sea ;
others have become movably sessile, attaching themselves to fixed
bodies. Others have found protection in an external armor of bony
plates rather than in activity and sensibility. But many fishes are in
their especial way wonderful exemplars of animal energy, though none
of them rise high in the scale of intelligence.

In review of the results obtained from the recent study of verte-
brate paleontology, certain principles may be clearly discerned. These
are as follows : 1. The earlier types were more generalized, the later
ones more specialized. 2. The specialization is sometimes upward or
progressive, and sometimes downward or retrogressive. 3. The retro-
gressive development has been more general in early geological pe-
riods, the progressive more general in the later geological periods.
For a more detailed exposition of these principles, see "American
Naturalist " for February, March, and April, 1885.

It is not my intention in this article to do more than to display the
facts of the case. The exposition of the hypotheses of evolution which
explain these facts must be reserved for another article. Suffice it to
say here, that the study of the changes of structure displayed by the
lines of evolution, has brought to light some very definite exhibitions
of the application of energy. The illustration of the modus operandi
of this creative energy is a very important chapter of evolution, and
one that interests mankind practically, even more than as food for his
intellectual activity.

-♦♦♦-

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION.

Br Db. MARY PUTNAM-JACOBI.

II.

ONLY one attempt was made during this year to teach the child the
meaning of words. It was done through a simple generalization
which had become indispensable in the study of geometry, when she
passed from plane to solid figures. By means of wooden models she
learned, in addition to the cube — the sphere, ovoid, oblate, cylinder,
prism, tetrahedron, octahedron, and dodecahedron. She then was led

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 615

to make parallel lines of plane and solid figures with a corresponding
number of sides or angles, then to abstract the Greek numerals tri,
tetra, penta, hexa, etc., found to belong to both columns, and set this
in the center, with the syllable gon on one side, and hedron on the
other. An hour was required to complete the setting out of these
figures, and arranging these titles with movable letters, which for
the first time the child learned to use for spelling. The exercise was,
of course, repeated again and again, until every step was perfectly
familiar. From the beginning the child had no difficulty in connect-
ing the plane and solid figures, nor in learning the numerals appropri-
ate to each. The new effort at abstraction and classification was at
first somewhat hard, but soon became easy. The facility with which
the impression of forms may be made upon a child's mind, when this
is as yet uncrowded by notions on the other qualities of objects, was
shown by a little incident at this period. A few weeks after having
made her first acquaintance with the oblate, she saw at dinner for the
first time some small stewed onions. " Oh ! " she exclaimed, " they
have brought us some oblates for dinner." Another day, when she
accidentally pulled the cord of a window-shade in a certain position
she observed that she had thus made "two scalene triangles." Look-
ing at the ceiling above a lamp, she called to me to notice how the
light made three " beautiful concentric circles."

One other study during the year was made upon the intrinsic
meaning of words. In the course of some observations on plants
the child had learned to recognize the ovary and ovule, and to her-
self dissect them out of a flower. When this had been done, the
analogy between the vegetable ovule and chicken-egg or ovum was
easily pointed out, and the relation of the latter to the geometric
ovoid. The four objects were then placed in a row on the table, the
names of each spelled with movable letters, and then the common root
ov described and taken out. The important and fundamental idea
was thus grasped that there was an intrinsic meaning to at least some
words, and also that objects associated by a common name, whose
specific variations were of subordinate importance, must be classed
together as deeply related, notwithstanding superficial difference of
aspect. But this idea, once distinctly enunciated and understood, was
then set aside for a season. That the idea was understood, I tested in
the following way : At table the child remarked that a particular
potato was "shaped like an egg." "What shall we then call it?" I
asked. "An ovoid," was the reply. "Very good. Do you know
what I thought you might call it ? " " An ovum," she answered, with
an air of mischievous triumph. " And why did you not ? " " Because
it is not an egg, but only shaped like an egg" I tempted the child
with the suggestion that she should tease the waiter by asking him to
bring us some ovules instead of eggs ; but the instinctive modesty of
childhood recoiled from the pedantic proposition.

616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The necessity for precision in the use of terms, thus initiation into
scientific terminology, was enforced incidentally on another occasion.
A playfellow much older than the child picked up a piece of mica and
called it isinglass. This conventional inaccuracy I strongly rebuked,
and, procuring a piece of real isinglass, led the child to note its differ-
ence, and to condemn in private and without malice the slovenly lan-
guage of her presumably untaught comrade. Now, the child had a doll
called Rosa, and was in the habit of illustrating any absurdity by pre-
tending that Rosa was guilty of it. Some time after the conversation
on the isinglass she was watching a stream of water falling in the sun-
light from a hose. She exclaimed : " See the beautiful silver water
coming from the old gray hose. Rosa would have called that mica ! "

When the box of wooden geometric models was thoroughly mas-
tered, after about six months' study, I procured for the child a set of
models of crystals, such as are used for studying mineralogy. About
half of these proved too complex for study, but the child easily learned
to recognize and distinguish twenty-six, partly simple, partly compound
forms. As each face of the crystal showed some plane figure which
she had already learned, and as she was also familiar with the Greek
numerals from three to twelve, it was generally easy for the child to
devise the name of the crystal, even when apparently so repelling as a
scalenhedron, rhombic dodecahedron, right rhombic pyramid, etc. It
was interesting to notice her capacity to discern the general outline of
a crystal and thus its generic features, and afterward to distinguish
the secondary divisions of its sides, or the specific characters ; thus in
a four-faced cube, a three- or six-faced tetrahedron, a three-faced octa-
hedron, etc. The forms in the four systems of crystallization were
learned by repeated handling of the models, until the child's percep-
tions had become saturated with them, and she could, for instance,
discover for herself four-faced cubes in the curved molding on stair-
cases. Then, at the beginning of the second year, the crystals began
to be copied in clay, and opportunity then afforded for studying their
axes, or the basis of their classification, by means of long pins thrust
through the soft model in appropriate direction.

Arithmetic, the second science in Dr. Hill's category, was begun
several months after the first studies of form and outline. Instead of
the beans so frequently recommended, the child used sticks of differ-
ent sizes and colors. For two or three months she studied such num-
bers as seem almost to form natural complex entities, and hence have
often been sacred numbers, thus : four, nine, ten, twelve, twenty-four,
thirty-six. The child was exercised in dividing these up into symmet-
rical groups, whose resemblances she was trained to tell at a glance by
the eye, before enumeration. Thus she learned to form groups of
threes, fours, and sixes, and to unite them in as many fantastic combi-
nations as could be invented. The object was to effect the transition
from the perception of form to the conception of number by a series

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 617

of visual impressions as vivid as possible. The breaking up of a
whole into parts really precedes in facility the additioning of parts
into a whole, for the reason that the power of destruction in a child
obviously precedes the power of construction. Froebel's fifth gift of
cubical blocks has its first application on this fact, since the entire
mass forming a cube may be broken up into twenty-seven smaller
cubes. When we reached the number twenty-seven, I told the child
it was the smallest cube that existed. But she having a year pre-
viously, when only four years old, learned to handle these same cubes,
corrected my error, and demonstrated triumphantly that eight blocks
would make a still smaller cube. The incident shows the tenacity of
ideas once implanted in the right way and at the right time.

It is much more difficult to teach a child to subtract than to add,
a fact upon which Warren Colburn sagaciously comments. In the
discussion of practical problems, a hitch often occurs in the child's
mind which may be quite unsuspected by the teacher. Thus, if Henry
and Arthur go to buy a ball which costs sixteen cents, and one boy
had six cents and the other seven, I found the child unable to solve
the problem as to how many more cents were needed, because, as she
said, she could not take thirteen from sixteen, since the very trouble
was that the boys did not have sixteen cents. It was necessary to use
sticks, and with the distinct formal agreement that those of one color
should be known to represent an imaginary number, those of another
color the number of actual things manipulated. But what a stride for
a young child's mind to make, into a sphere neither real nor imagi-
nary, but where the existent and the non-existent are indissolubly as-
sociated in an ordinary practical affair of every-day life !

From the beginning the decimal system imposed itself spontane-
ously upon the child's mind, on account of the facility of visibly recog-
nizing groups of five and ten sticks, and of verbally recognizing their
successive additions. In this way the multiplication-table — the fa-
mous despair of little Mai-jorie Fleming — was mastered with great
ease by this far less gifted child. Every one remembers the fierce vehe-
mence of Pet Marjorie's protest, " But 7 times 9 is devilish, and what
Nature itself can't endure ! " It is so, if presented as an isolated fact.
The child I taught, however, discovered of herself that the successive
addition of tens was as easy as that of ones. After that, when she
came to add (or multiply by) nines, she would say, first add ten, then
say, and nine was one less. If it were eight, it was two less, etc.
After a fortnight of these exercises, she was asked one day out of study-
hours what was the sum of 14 and 19, and answered immediately 33.
Upon being asked to explain the process, she said, " 10 and 19 makes
29, then I must add 4 more, and 1 and 29 are 30, and 3 more are
33." When three decimals were reached, a somewhat laborious ex-
ercise was performed. Thus, to operate with 138, the number 100
was constructed out of ten packages of purple sticks, each package

618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

containing ten sticks. These packages were placed in a row ; un-
derneath was a second row, containing, to represent the number 30,
three packages of yellow sticks, each containing ten ; finally, a third
row of eight units was made with green sticks in a single series. In
this exercise the sticks were all of the same size ; in another, later, a
hundred was represented by a single long stick, usually purple, a ten
by a yellow stick next in size, a unit by a stick still smaller and green.
Thus the original and clumsier representation was condensed by the
substitution of an expressive sign for the literal numbers, and as soon
as the sticks became used as signs, and not as the objects really to
be counted, the mutual relation of their respective sizes also ceased
to be literally exact, and became merely schematic. Thus was gradu-
ally managed a transition to the use of pure written signs or symbols.
The transition initiated and enlarged the condensation of Roman into
Arabic numerals. Knowledge of the process of subtraction, especially
in three and more decimals, was essentially facilitated by this device
with sticks, and the terrible difficulty of borrowing ten quite over-
come. Thus, if the number 288 were to be taken from 362, the larger
number would be represented by three long purple sticks, six shorter
yellow sticks, and two green sticks, the shortest of all. These colors
were always selected because harmonizing so well with each other.
Then, similarly, the 288 was represented by two purple, eight yellow,
and eight green sticks. It was easily recognized by the child, that
one of the yellow sticks could be removed from the ten sections of
the 362, and ten green sticks substituted, bringing the entire number
of units up to twelve, from which the eight of the lower figures could
be taken. It was also obvious that, when one yellow stick had been
taken away, only seven remained. There was no need, therefore, to
employ the usual confusing statement that a ten must be borrowed
from the upper figures, and later restored to a different place in the
lower.

The study of abstract numbers, with Colburn's arithmetic, was
begun when the child was five and a half years. At the end of a year
she had thoroughly mastered the first four rules, including both
"short" and "long" division, and was considerably advanced in the
study of fractions, proper and improper.

The last study entered upon during this year was that of natural
objects, and, for obvious reasons, plants were chosen for this purpose.
I suppose that most persons seriously interested in education are ac-
quainted with Miss Youmans's admirable little " First Lessons in Bot-
any," and the plea she makes for this science as a typical means of
training the observing powers of children. According to her plan, the
first object studied is the leaf — and the pupil is taught at once, not
only to draw the leaf, but to fill out a schedule of description of it.
Much may be said in favor of this method, which proceeds from the
simple to the complex form, but it is by no means the only possible

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 619

one ; the writing part of the scheme is, moreover, impossible for a
child who has not yet learned how to write. There is another method
which consists in seizing at once upon the most striking aspect of the
subject, and which shall make the most vivid impression upon the im-
agination. For this purpose the leaf is the least useful, the flower the
most so. The earliest botanical classifications are based upon the corol-
la, and, in accordance with a principle already enunciated, a child may
often best approach a science through the series of ideas that attended
its genesis. The conditions are different for an adult, who requires to
get the latest results ; the child's mind is always remote from these,
but often singularly near to the conceptions entertained by the first
observers. Again, it is unnatural to enter upon the beautiful world of
plants by the study of forms and outlines — which is much better pur-
sued when abstracted from all other circumstances, as in models of
pure mathematical figures. But with plants comes a new idea — that
of life, of change, of evolution. It is fitting that this tremendous idea
make a profound impression on the child's mind ; and this impression
may be best secured by watching the continuous growth of a plant
from the seed. The study of life is a study of events, of dynamics, of
catastrophes. The earliest observation perceives the extraordinary
influence of the surrounding medium upon the destinies of the living
organism. It is not difficult to surround these destinies with such a
halo of imagination as shall impress on the mind a sense of the mys-
tery, sanctity — I may add, the necessary calamities of life — before it
has become absorbed in the consideration of living personalities.

I trust it will not seem a piece of bathos when I add that I initiated
the pursuit of these objects by making the child watch the growth of
seven beans on a saucer of cotton-wool. A specimen bean was first
dissected, and its principal parts named — the cotyledons, the embryo
with its radicle and plumula, the episperm. The daily reference to
these terms speedily rendered the child quite familiar with them. To
seven other beans were given appropriate names, as of a band of broth-
ers, and they were then planted on cotton-wool by the child. A daily
journal of events was opened, in which I wrote each day or two, at the
child's dictation. As she had learned the Arabic numerals, she in-
serted these herself in the protocol whenever necessary. The entire
history of each bean was thus written out, and the successive steps
of its development, from the thrilling moment when the radicle first
peeped out, to the time when, after transplantation to a flower-pot, the
plumula had developed to a long, trailing vine. The rate of growth
of this vine was measured day by day exactly, with a rule, the num-
ber of leaves counted, etc. But the mathematical considerations were
here subordinated to a larger idea, that of the succession of events.
Some of the beans molded early in their career, and the relations of this
catastrophe to the accidental differences of position, moisture, etc., were
carefully studied. On one occasion the child dictated to me the follow-

62o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing entry for the journal : "The episperm, on the under surface of Ter-
tius, is all black, and has split, leaving a space the shape of an equilateral
triangle, with the apex pointing to the convex edge of the cotyledons."
In the summer, when flowers could be obtained from the woods in
abundance, the child made collections of ovaries and ovules, and was
never tired of finding the latter asleep in their beds, in so many differ-
ently shaped houses. At this time the static considerations were al-
lowed to predominate, and the child rather forgot the function of the
embryo seeds — so much so that, upon seeing some small pieces of ice ly-
ing in half a musk-melon, she said that these were like the ovules in an
ovary. At the beginning of the second year, the study of plant-growth
was resumed with seven hyacinths, that received appropriate names,
as seven sisters. The first lessons in written expression coincided with
the beginning of this new study ; for now the child was allowed to
write the plant-journal herself. The exercise was complex. The child
first examined the hyacinths, and noted whether anything had trans-
pired since the last observation. She then framed a spoken sentence,
in which such an event was accurately described. She then dictated
the writing of this sentence as a whole, which she was afterward to
copy. During this dictation, some knowledge of spelling was inci-
dentally acquired ; for the child was led to spell by sound, and without
reference to silent letters. The words she had not yet seen. Finally,
when fairly at work at the writing, the meaning of the sentence was
temporai-ily ignored, and attention closely concentrated upon the forms
of the letters, and no mercy shown to inaccurate imitation of them.
Thus, one day she entered the observation that Blanche, in a blue
glass, had grown much more vigorously than Aura, in a dark one ;
and a blue glass was given to the less favored sister, in the hope that
she would improve. She noted that the tips of the white roots were
gray and conoid in shape (making the observation herself independ-
ently), and was allowed to demonstrate the function of these tips by
cutting one off and seeing the growth of that root arrested. On another
day she first discovered, then described, then wrote down, that the first
broad leaves of Blanche had split open, showing two others at right
angles to them. This was her first perception of this remarkable law
of phyllotaxy, and she herself illustrated it by making two loops with
the thumb and finger of each hand, and making them intersect each
other. The previous acquisition of mathematical conceptions was con-
stantly shown to facilitate and render precise her observations of com-
plex objects.

It was rather as a concession to a prevailing prejudice that at this
time the child was taught to read. This study, usually made of the
most importance, was held for this child to be quite subordinate and
easy, and little stress laid upon it. The child was allowed to follow
her own inclination, to divine the subject of the chapter from the pict-
ure at the head of it, and, to a considerable extent, the words in each

AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 621

sentence from the context ; when the wrong word was thus suggested,
she was obliged to spell out the real word by sounds, always seek-
ing first the central or predominant sound, and building up the word
around it, instead of enumerating the letters in order. Thus in the
word scratch she took out the letters a t, as the central nucleus, pre-
ceding the first by the sound of r, then of c, then of 5 ; then, when the
sound scrat was complete, adding that of ch. She was made to read as
much and as rapidly as possible, relying upon constant repetition and
association of ideas to secure familiarity. Thus unconsciously the
conception was continued, that written as well as spoken language
was an outgrowth of thought before the attempt was made to study
it as an object of thought. This method is like that of learning to
walk before studying the laws of Weber on locomotion.

This method may seem slovenly, but, after all, it is both the natural
and scientific method of studying an unknown tongue, which must be
deciphered by the context. How else did Champollion read the Ro-
setta stone, or Eliot find a written language for his Indian Bible ?
Throughout this period the task of reading was treated as something
so easy as to be insignificant, and was so regarded by the child her-
self.* The main intellectual work of the day's lessons (whose duration
was never more than an hour and a half) was concentrated upon the
arithmetic, map-drawing, analysis of flowers, and the geometrical
studies, that she now pursued by the help of Hill's " First Lessons,"
and Spencer's " Inventional Geometry." She studied angles, vertical
and adjacent, the relations of angles and circles, and the measurement
of the former by the latter. Exercises in these were practiced daily
with compass and ruler ; and, when lines drawn with the pencil failed
to give a large enough visual impression, they were designed with
colored sticks. This enlargement of the material illustration never
failed to clear up any obscurities. At the time these notes cease, the
child was six and a half years old.

I have tried to make clear in these few notes the outlines of a
(single) experiment, which seems to me to show that the mental edu-
cation of even a very young child may be imbued with scientific
methods and even ideas which should furnish suitable preparation for
advanced scientific studies. It can not be a matter of indifference that
'such habits of mind are acquired from the beginning, or only after
much previous faulty training. What comes first will always remain
the most important, will always dominate the rest. Experience in the
medical education of women has repeatedly brought home to me the
difficulty of teaching such an art as medicine to persons who come to
it through the prevailing systems of school discipline, especially those
which are applied to girls. Experience with one little girl at least con-
vinces me that the aptitude for vivid and accurate perception, and for

* What is easy, when taken instinctively, may be incredibly difficult when itself be-
comes the object of thought and study.

6zz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scientific method in ideas, often exists where unsuspected, and only-
demanding proper cultivation.

As an illustration of the method described in the text, when carried into
more complete studies, I insert an exercise written by the child when six and a
quarter years old. It is a description of a wild Iris, which she analyzed herself
on successive days, writing down the results from memory on the next day.
She was never told anything, but obliged to discover for herself each fact, to
compose the sentence describing it, and to spell by ear the words of the sentence
without copy. She was allowed to insert in her description whatever fancies
occurred to her. The headings and order of evolution of the subject were alone
dictated. With nearly all the technical terms she was, however, already famil-
iar; two only were told — "perianth," as opposed to corolla, and "blade." Be-
fore analyzing the Iris she was obliged to take a long walk to the woods for it,
and first to draw a map showing the way, and by means of the compass. Two
intersecting lines from sight-objects were dictated by me, and the fact learned
by this and another previous experiment which had failed, that to locate an
object in space at least two lines are required. The final description, whose
writing occupied two or three weeks, was as follows:

The Rainbow Family. — (This name was given as a literal translation of Iri-
dacece, and as a return in a spiral to the first natural object studied eighteen
months before, the rainbow. The way was also prepared for the future histori-
cal study of the myth of Iris.)

Iris Tricolor. — (The numeral was already familiar.)

Perianth = 6 Petals. (The algebraic signs and numbers were used to in-
dicate that in a scientific document, not a flowing style, but the fewest words
and most concise expressions were required.)

These stand on top of a long tube in which the style is locked in. There are
two kinds of petals : 1. Three which are the biggest, and have three colors.
There are two parts to each — the upper broad part called the blade, and the
lower long narrow part. (The term " blade " was here taught for the first
time.) The blade is first purple ; in the middle is a gold stripe which runs into
the narrow part. (At this point, the child drew and painted from memory, on
the margin of her protocol, a picture of the petal.) Between the purple and
gold the blade is white. These petals curve outward and downward, so that the
gold stripe comes on top. The bees see it and come for the pollen. (First in-
troduction of a Darwinian law.) 2. Three petals, which are entirely purple,
are vertical, smaller, and stand between the others. (The child made another
drawing by opening the flower on the page and tracing its outlines.) It is as if
six girls were standing in a circle (here was introduced a botanical outline of
the whorl, instinctively devised by the child, the circle being drawn accurately,
with compasses). Every other one leans back and stretches her arms out hori-
zontally, as if to show her gold bracelet. The three others lean forward, and
hold their arms up above their heads. (Prolonged contemplation of this lovely
group tended to evoke such instinctive aesthetic conceptions as are at the basis
of many pieces of statuary, notably Thorwaldsen's Graces.) The gold stripe is
like the orange feathers on the head of the bee-martin. The bees think it is a
flower, and come and settle on the bird's head ; then he catches them. (This
illustration was suggested by the child, shortly after having seen such a bird
which bad been shot. She thus learned to step from one section of natural
history to another, and also to seek analogies of organs in their functions.)
Mamma says (here knowledge by testimony is distinguished from that obtained

THE FAUNA OF THE SEA- SHORE. 623

by personal observation, which has not yet reached so far) that all flowers that
want the bees to visit them have bright colors. This is like ladies who want
the gentlemen to visit them, and then put on their finest clothes.

The Great Mistake. — We thought there were three more petals in the middle
of the corolla. These were smaller than the others, and divided at the top like
a funny M. (The child then made a drawing in illustration.) Each stands in-
side a gold-striped petal, and has a groove on the outer side like a bath-tub. In
this a princess is bathing. She is a stamen, with a long, whitish anther like a
veil over her head. So there were three stamens inserted with the petals.

How we found out the Truth. — (This process is introduced with some solem-
nity, as befits its importance.) 1. We looked to see how the pollen got on the
stigma. (Introduction to the biological method of studying structure in asso-
ciation with function.) 2. We noticed that the pollen could slip down the
groove into the tube leading to the ovary. 8. We saw that the petal-like pieces
were fastened together in the middle of the perianth, making a solid white
cylinder which passed into the green tube. (Another drawing from memory
illustrated this.) 4. It was plain that the white cylinder was the style, because
it went to the ovary. 5. Then mamma said (recognition of authority and testi-
mony again) that the petal-like pieces were the stigma, immensely big. (The in-
cident showed the function of the reason in unraveling the deceptions imposed
by the senses and the superficial aspect of things.)

Ovary — at the bottom of the tube (ovary inferior) — has three lodges and a
great many ovules.

(Thus the botanical analysis was rigidly accurate and complete. But, in-
stead of being a dry schedule, it comprised a mass of vivid, glowing impressions
destined to remain forever as a typical group of ideas in the child's mind. The
prolonged, patient, sympathetic study of the individual preceded the abstract
study of a class of flowers. In the future it was intended that the child should
construct her own classes from among the botanical individuals she should
really learn to know.)

♦*♦

THE FAUNA OF THE SEA-SHOKE.

By Professor H. N. MOSELEY, F. E. S.

THE marine fauna of the globe may be divided into the littoral, the
deep-sea, and the pelagic faunas. Of the three regions inhabited
by these faunas, the littoral is the one in which the conditions are most
favorable for the development of new forms through the working of
the principle of natural selection. As Professor Loven writes, " The
littoral region comprises the favored zones of the sea where light and
shade, a genial temperature, currents changeable in power and direc-
tion, a rich vegetation spread over extensive areas, abundance of food,
of prey to allure, of enemies to withstand or evade, represent an infini-
tude of agents competent to call into play the tendencies to vary which
are embodied in each species, and always ready by modifying its parts
to respond to the influences of external conditions." It is consequently
in this littoral zone, where the water is more than elsewhere favorable

624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for respiration, and where constant variation of conditions is produced
by the tides, that all the main groups of the animal kingdom first came
into existence ; and here also, probably, where the first attached and
branching plants were developed, thus establishing a supply of food
for the colonization of the region by animals.

The animals inhabiting the littoral zone are most variously modi-
fied, to enable them to withstand the peculiar physical conditions which
they encounter there. Hence the origin of all hard shells and skele-
tons of marine invertebrata, various adaptations for boring in sand,
the adoption of the stationary fixed condition, and similar arrange-
ments. Almost all the shore forms of animals, however inert in the
adult condition, pass through, in embryological development, free-
swimming larval stages which are closely alike in form for very widely
different groups of animals. Thus the oyster and. most other mollusca
of all varieties and shapes when adult, develop from a free-swimming
pelagic trochosphere larva, and so do many annelids. Such larva? can
not be of subsequent origin to the adults of which they are phases. If
such were the case, they would not have become so closely alike in
structure. In reality they represent the common ancestors from which
all the forms in which they occur were derived, and, as all these larvae
are pelagic in habits and structure, it follows that the inhabitants of
the shores were derived from pelagic ancestors. The earliest plants
were also probably free-swimming.

In the case of the cirripedia there can be no doubt, from the history
of their development, that they were originally pelagic, and have be-
come specially modified for coast-life ; and in the case of the echino-
derms the only possible explanation of the remarkable similarity of
the larval forms of the various groups of widely differing adults is
that these pelagic larvae represent a common ancestor of the group.
The madreporarian corals all spring from a pelagic larva. The colonial
forms probably owe their origin and that of their skeletons to the ad-
vantage gained by them in the formation of reefs, and the increase in
facilities of respiration consequent on the production of surf. In the
deep sea they are very scarce.

The vertebrata are sprung from a very simple free-swimming an-
cestor, as shown by the ciliated gastrula stage of Amphioxus. The
ascidians afford another evident instance of the extreme modification
of pelagic forms for littoral existence.

The peculiar mode of respiration of vertebrata by means of gill-
slits occurs in no other animal group except in Balanoglossus, which
will probably shortly be included among vertebrata. Possibly gill-
slits as a respiratory apparatus first arose in a littoral form, such as
Balanoglossus, and hence their presence at the anterior end of the
body, that nearest to the surface in an animal buried in sand. The
connection of Balanoglossus with the echinoderms through Tornaria
is very remarkable. Possibly Amphioxus once had a Tornaria stage,

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 625

and has lost it just as one species of Balanoglossus has lost it, as Mr.
Bateson has lately discovered.

The littoral zone has given off colonists to the other three faunal
regions. The entire terrestrial fauna has sprung from colonists con-
tributed by the littoral zone. Every terrestrial vertebrate bears in its
early stages the gill-slits of its aquatic ancestor. All organs of aerial
respiration are mere modifications of apparatus previously connected
with aquatic respiration, excepting, perhaps, in the case of Tracheata,
trachese being most likely modifications of skin-glands, as appears prob-
able from their condition in Peripatus. The oldest known air-breath-
ing animals are insects and scorpions, which have lately been found in
Silurian strata. Professor Ray Lankester believes the lungs of scor-
pions to be homogeneous with the gill-plates of Limulus. Birds were
possibly originally developed in connection with the sea-shore, and
were fish-eaters like the tooth-bearing Hesperornis.

The fauna of the coast has not only given rise to the terrestrial
and fresh-water fauna ; it has from time to time given additions to
the pelagic fauna in return for having thence derived its own starting-
points. It has also received some of these pelagic forms back again,
to assume a fresh littoral existence.

The deep-sea fauna has probably been formed almost entirely from
the littoral, not in the remotest antiquity, but only after food derived
from the debris of the littoral and terrestrial faunas and floras became
abundant.

It is because all terrestrial and deep-sea animal forms have passed
through a littoral phase of existence, and that the littoral animals re-
tain far better than those of any other faunal region the recapitulative
larval phases by means of which alone the true histories of their origins
can be recovered, that marine zoological laboratories on the coast have
made so many brilliant discoveries in zoology during late years.

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES.

By Dr. ALFEED E. BEEHM.

WHOEVER associates with the name of Siberia the idea of a vast
prison is involved in as great an error as the person who con-
ceives the country as an icy desert or an interminable tundra. The
tundras, whose icy fields form a prominent feature in the polar regions,
with the stunted vegetation of their southern parts, are no myths, nor
is it a fiction that the Russian Government, following the example of
France and England, has adopted a system of penal colonies, and has
planted them in Siberia. But by far the larger part of this immense
territory has been spared the presence of convicts ; and the districts
VOL. xxyii. — 40

6z6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in which the residence of persons of that class will justify the ap-
plication of such a designation occupy a relatively small space in the
country. It can not be denied that the transported persons, so far
as they do not work in the mines, are subjected to a very strong re-
straint, but it is in no respect more severe than that which is im-
posed in the houses of correction of our highly civilized lands. Sibe-
ria is regarded by the mass of readers as a country full of discomfort
and misery, and it is very hard to controvert that view. It is too
much the fashion to consider the Russians as barbarians, and to accuse
them of inhumanity. I feel compelled to enter a decided protest
against so unjust a condemnation, and to assert as a fact that there are
greater barbarians in Europe than the Russians. We shall have to
apologize for the whole human race, before we can describe the Rus-
sians as the greatest barbarians. I myself formerly believed that one
had only to scratch Russians to bring out their barbarism, but I have
more recently had occasion to form my judgment from my own
unprejudiced observations on the spot, and I consider it my duty, and
the duty of every just and truthful man, to bear witness to the in-
controvertible truth, and give an energetic protest against such sys-
tematic a priori depreciation of a people I have learned to respect. It
is true that there are, in the great Russian Empire, as well as in other
countries, men who might, should, and ought to be better, but we curi-
ously see only the shady side of Russian conditions, and then per-
versely suppose that there is nothing good on the other side of the
Muscovite lines. I can readily and with perfect conviction declare
that, among the educated Russians of Russia, there are manifest a
spirit of progress and a striving after better and higher things such as
exist nowhere else, and that many of them afford rare examples of
magnanimity and generosity. If we consider it from a purely geo-
graphical point of view, we shall find that Siberia is in no way, as a
whole, a land of misery and terror. It is true that away up in the
north are the immense ice-fields and the high moors, and the short,
insignificant vegetation of the tundra does not offer an attractive pict-
ure ; but there is also a larger Southern Siberia, where there is room
for all kinds of enterprise, reward for every kind of work, and good
living for every industrious man. Material suffering can not be spoken
of in this [part of the land ; but in an intellectual sense there is much
lacking without which we can hardly think of life. Thus, it seems to
us something to be lamented that the people are four or five weeks
behind the current events of the world. But if the question is one
of making a living by means of hard work and a rugged constitution,
and particularly of making a new start in life, then Siberia is to be
preferred to nearly every other country. Yes, a new era has dawned
over Siberia, and along the highways famous for " sighs, where night
and day, with the frightful clang of chains, with lamentations, groans,
and agony, the prisoners were driven on by the cruel knout," are now

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 627

wending free men, joyous with hope, with their families and goods,
going to huild up a more comfortable home than the old one in the
rich fields of the Southeast. And all those who give themselves ear-
nestly to it see their enterprise crowned with success. The false rep-
resentations which are so widely spread respecting Siberia originate
in the numerous maliciously colored descriptions of the country, and
judgments of its condition, that flow from the pens of famous con-
victs. I can not exactly pronounce these reports unjust, but they
should not be taken as wholly correct. It is a recognized fact that
misery and wickedness pain the eye and the heart and provoke erroj
neous and unjust statements ; particularly when, as is the case with the
majority of the exiles in question, the conditions are complicated with
politics. The situation of the ordinary exiles in the mines and of the
settled convicts is relatively much better than that of the miners who
are laboring under the despotism of capital in Germany. If one has
no especial backsets in Siberia, if he can and will work, he will be
able under all ordinary circumstances to earn a most comfortable living
there. When I crossed the Ural the first time, I had only the ethno-
graphic side of my journey in view, and thought little or nothing of
the ethical side, which bore no relation to the object I was then seek-
ing. I was not concerned with the exiles, nor in general could any
man who stood in open conflict with the laws, not even a political
dynamiter or murderer, have aroused any interest in me. But, from
the moment when I found myself in the heart of Siberia and came in
contact with its exiles, I felt it my duty to examine the ethical ques-
tion more closely. I have gone down into the dens of vice, and made
the acquaintance of the most common criminals — of thieves, robbers,
and murderers ; I have associated with political exiles ; I have sought
information everywhere ; have made inquiries of officers and private
persons, have visited prisons, collected statistics, taken down numer-
ous biographies as given by the exiles from their own mouths, or as
recorded by impartial persons ; in short, I have become a regular phi-
lanthropist. I am aware of one thing, that I have taken all pains to
discover the truth, and, if I have not been successful in it, the want of
success must not be attributed to lack of good-will, but to the defects
of my sources of information.

To make possible an impartial view of the condition of the exiles
and prisoners in Siberia, we must first try to learn what the free-born
Siberians may attain ; and it is therefore incumbent on me to describe
the general conditions before proceeding to the illustration and esti-
mation of the situation of the convicts.

It is the region of the mines of the Altai, which, like most of Sibe-
ria, is an imperial crown-land, that should more especially be brought
under view, for thither are sent those offenders whose sentences to
death have been commuted ; and the district plays an important part
in the more or less romantically tinged accounts of affairs that are

628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sent out. The region, which comprises 8,200 geographical miles, is
rich, immensely rich, in subterranean treasures. It is penetrated by
veins of silver and gold. Up to the year 1861, seven hundred and
thirty mines were opened, and two hundred and sixty abandoned.
The precious metals are not the principal treasure ; the region also
contains copper, tin, antimony, lead, and iron, and includes an im-
mense coal-field. The surface of the land is correspondingly produc-
tive, and will compare well in agricultural capacity with the best parts
of Germany. The climate is generally mild. During four months a
hot summer prevails, which is followed by two months of autumn,
four of winter, and two of spring. The mean temperature is not high
enough perfectly to ripen grapes, but oranges grow well in the south-
ern parts. The fact that the people live to be very old is the best
testimony to the good qualities of the climate. When I traveled over
the country, in 1876, I was assured that only four doctors were settled
within the whole of the vast territory, and they did not live in very
great luxury. Men die here of old age without the help of medicine,
and live long and happily without doctors.

Since the house of Romanoff has taken possession of the country,
any one can settle there, cultivate such land as suits him, and erect
factories, on the single condition of paying an annual rent of thirty
copeks — about seventeen cents — per acre ; but the fee of the land re-
mains the Czar's ; the tenant can cut the wood, but the soil belongs to
the imperial domain. He can not mine for gold and silver, or other
metals, for these go with the title to the land. As it always has been
and is now generally in the Russian Empire, the old ways are en-
croached upon in every direction. The Romanoffs had for the ex-
ploitation of the mines mingled a number of their serfs from Russia
with the men already there, and no one could enter upon a systematic
or regular cultivation of the soil. The serf -laborers, with their wives
and children, received as much as was necessary to satisfy their wants.
Till 1861 the population consisted, with rare exceptions, of imperial
officers and socage-laborers, mining experts, and superintendents, who
were always trained men, and contributed much to the amelioration of
the manners of their underlings, who, in other respects, had much to
complain of in their treatment. On the 1st of March, 1861, there
were living on the crown-lands 145,630 souls, or, in round numbers,
350,000 persons — for in Russia women and minors are not enumerated
in the statistical reports. In the mines alone more than 25,000 men
were employed, when Czar Alexander, with a stroke of the pen, abol-
ished serfdom, not out of humanity, but in order to weaken the politi-
cal power of the Staroste.

The serfs in the mines represented only about half of the 25,000
miners — or 12,000 men — and became free peasants without owning
any property in the real sense of that word, all lands belonging to
the Czar ; but they received as much land as they needed, on the

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 629

usual terms of a ground-rent of thirty copecks per acre. The other
half of the miners continued at their old employment, and are now
efficient laborers, who accomplish more in freedom than they formerly
did in servitude, so that the mines are becoming more profitable every
year. Up to the year 1861 the return in most cases did not cover the
outlay. In order to cover the deficiency of laboring forces, persons
condemned to death and then pardoned were added to the free miners.

From this time agriculture improved rapidly, and in the year 1876
half of Siberia was already settled. A free peasantry was formed,
such as we might desire to see in the whole of the country. There
are no servile persons like the Russian peasants, and, when I occasion-
ally by inadvertence called them " Russians," they would immediately
inform me that I was mistaken, they were " Siberians." " There is no
servitude here," they would add ; " we are all free men. Heaven is
high and the Czar rich, but we have nothing to fear, for we are in Si-
beria." Not the farmers alone, but the officers also, are inflated with
this air of freedom, and not unfrequently may we hear from the mouth
of one of the latter such words as, " If you want to see slaves, you must
go back over the Ural into Russia, where their home is." And these
people speak with truth, for, although serfdom is legally abolished
in Russia, it continues to exist in fact, even among the mercantile
classes.

I had already been told in Russia that prosperity was generally
prevailing in Siberia, and shone in strong contrast with Russian pov-
erty, and I am again obliged to say here that even Russian poverty is
not so repulsively conspicuous as the misery in the German factory
and mining districts. I do not go too far in asserting that the Sibe-
rians lead a happy life ; and the best evidence in confirmation of this
opinion is found in the fact that the idea of an independent Siberia,
not attached to Russia, has already begun to dawn in a few speculative
minds. I must guard myself against the suspicion that I am falling
into a merely subjective judgment. My opinion is founded on careful
observations and conscientious inquiries. It is generally known that
in all countries and governments the farmers are always complaining
of hard times and high taxes, and I therefore took special pains to
compare these peculiar complaints with the representations of the
officers. I had arranged a kind of informal catechism in my head,
and used it on every suitable opportunity. The answers were, in all
cases, if not literally, substantially alike, and I can not forbear repeat-
ing one set of them here. My conductor and myself were staying a
short time in a little mountain-town, and in one of my excursions I
overtook an old peasant who I afterward learned was the head-man of
a small village. I invited him to take a seat in my carriage, and at
once opened my catechism upon him :

" How is it with you here ? " said I.

" God bears with our sins," he replied.

630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Yes, he is very merciful, but bow are affairs otherwise ? "

" We are contented."

" How are the wife and daughters ? "

" They are contented."

" And the other children ? "

" They are all contented."

This peasant answered my first three questions with the words
" We are contented." I was born among farmers, and believe that I
know them well, as I have had much to do with them, but no German
farmer ever told me he was contented.

I next turned from the family to the live-stock, and asked, " How
many horses have you ?

" Thirty or thirty-five."

" Don't you know exactly ? "

"No, there may be some new colts, and some may have been stolen
or eaten by wolves. I sometimes use six, sometimes eight, and some-
times fourteen."

" Then you have twenty more than you use. You will sell them ? "

" That may be."

" But what will you do with so many extra beasts ? "

" That's nothing to you."

I would remark that the last answer is a polite form of expression
among Siberian farmers. I continued :

" And how many head of cattle have you ? "

" That is my wife's affair."

" And how many hogs ? "

" Nobody knows."

" How large crops do your fields return ? "

" I am satisfied if I get ten times as much as I sow."

" Are your taxes heavy ? "

" We are satisfied with them."

" Have you farmers nothing to complain of ? "

" Oh, yes, we are getting crowded here ; there are beginning to be
too many people in the country. If I were not so old, I should move
farther east."

" But," I replied, in surprise, " where are the villages ? I don't see
any."

My village-chief was silent, and shook his head doubtfully. The
fact was, the nearest village was ten miles away. The man was sat-
isfied with himself and his family, satisfied with his live-stock and his
crops, and satisfied with his taxes, and over-population was apparently
the only thing which he and his peers conceived needed to be set right.
On this point we should remember that not nearly all the land is yet
taken up, and that many of the farms are as large as, and sometimes
larger than, the most extensive German manors. Even a spoiled
American farmer would be satisfied with such an area. In the midst

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 631

of these extensive estates stands the spacious log-house, surrounded
with barns and sheds, which, possibly, are not large enough. Hardly
anything is large enough for the Siberian. I have made personal con-
firmation of this greed for extension and space in the towns, where it
is often carried to excess ; thus I have seen parlors where the mirrors
and sofas could be counted by the dozen. In bright contrast with the
stereotyped complaints of the farmers concerning the too thick popu-
lation is the fact that they are all proud of having a numerous progeny.
The farmer loves his land, his cattle, his summer and fall, but he loves
above everything a large family, while, notwithstanding his prejudice
against strangers, he lives in the perfect conviction that the country
needs men, and he governs his conduct accordingly. In every other
country in the world there are foundling-hospitals ; in Russia they are
numerous, but in Siberia there are none. If a mother is not able to take
care of her child, she will offer it to the nearest farmer, and he will be
as glad to have such an increase in his family as if it were a fine colt
foaled to him. Till 1856, marriage of free persons was permitted at
any age ; now the marriageable age is fixed by law at eighteen years.
To show how little in earnest the people are in their deprecation of
over-population, they as a rule marry immediately after they have
passed the legal age, and their families increase, with mathematical
regularity, by at least one member every year. It may sound strange
if I mention the fact that, notwithstanding the low marriageable age
fixed by law, elopements are common. It is true they are of a quite
peculiar sort, and they might be divided into elopements with and
elopements without the consent of the parents on either side. This
custom so illustrates the character of the peasantry of all regions, that
I must not dismiss it with too brief a mention. Elopement with con-
sent is an important matter. The young pair are agreed, and have
the full acquiescence of the parents on both sides. But every marriage
calls for a wedding, and a farmer's wedding is, under ordinary circum-
stances, no child's play. The relatives and friends must be invited
from distances extending to fifty or a hundred miles. The substantial
part of the feast is rather a secondary affair to the farmer richly pro-
vided with farm products and cattle, but then drink must be furnished,
and the national drink is dear, and will be consumed on such occasions
in immense quantities. In order to escape the expense of this provis-
ion, which would be borne equally by both families, the parents of the
bridegroom advise him to elope with his beloved, and her parents ad-
vise her to consent to the elopement. After receiving the blessings of
the crafty parents, the young people steal away into the bush. On the
next day the friends set up a cry as of murder, beat around for a while,
and laugh in their sleeves. The young couple must of course come
back after a little while and receive forgiveness, but there can be no
wedding-feast after such a " scandal." The latter is confined to a nar-
row circle, and the brandy is saved. The second kind of elopement is

632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of a more serious nature, but in it also thrift and brandy play the chief
parts, the latter that of a propitiator. The custom prevails for the
bridegroom to pay to his future mother-in-law before she will give
her acquiescence a definite sum of "bride-money," the amount of
which is regulated according to the standing of the parties. The Si-
berian youth, having thus made things all right for his future, escapes
with his beloved by night and under favor of darkness, and with the
scandal of the abduction of the daughter a second matrimonial can-
didate is out of the question. The mother screams and curses the
couple for a little while, but the storm soon ceases. The bridegroom
knows the people he is dealing with, and, after the first spurt of vexa-
tion is over, returns with a stout brandy-flask, from which he pours out
to the angry mother-in-law till she is propitiated. Then the ruined
daughter appears, and a general forgiveness follows, with a family
wedding-feast, in which immense quantities of brandy are consumed.

The young pair go right to housekeeping, and in the course of ten
years the former abductor will be able to stretch himself before the
door of his own unencumbered residence. In the reception-room will
hang waving tapestries, and in the bedrooms will rustle silken cur-
tains and canopies. I have seen hundreds of such cheerful family
pictures and rejoiced over them. The people form a splendid race,
and are happy. "lama Siberian ! " sounds from the mouth of one of
them like a shout of exultation ; " I have nothing more to desire."

A similar happy future awaits the convict-exile, if long life and
success are given him, and he is endowed with courage and energy.
"He is consigned to the mines, and will die there by inches with
chains on his hands and feet," is the current expression when speaking
or writing of a Siberian convict. But here, too, as in other cases, the
colors are too darkly painted. I do not feel called upon to deplore the
excessive harshness of Russian justice, or to indulge in general criti-
cism, but it is true that not only criminals, but also disagreeable per-
sons, vagrants, and political oppositionists, are sent to Siberia under
cover of judicial proceedings. What is now imposed in Russia as a
punishment was also administered not so very long ago in Germany
and even in free Switzerland.

Whoever, by a judicial sentence, or by an administrative measure,
is exiled to Siberia, is first lodged in a district prison, whence he is
transferred to a government prison. The transportation to Siberia is
carried on by railroad and boats to Tobolsk, where a division of the
gang takes place, and destinations are appointed for the prisoners
according to the character of their offenses. Those who have been
condemned to death, and had their sentences commuted to exile, are
bound with chains and all sent together to the mines of the Altai.
Formerly the convicts were driven in gangs, chained about two feet
apart. So at least I have read and heard it generally believed. I
was once myself a witness of a spectacle of this kind, but it was not

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 633

in Russia nor in Siberia, but in Olmutz, in Austria, in the year of
grace 1872. The worst part of the journey is when the steamers come
into requisition. They are long boats with a high deck, designed to
carry six hundred persons at once. The deck is inclosed and covered
with strong grating, in order to prevent any attempts to escape. Fore
and aft of these are the kitchens and hospitals, while the six hundred
convicts are confined in a mass under the deck in a space which is far
too narrow, and where, for lack of efficient ventilation, a stifling at-
mosphere always prevails. The Russian law allows a divorce to the
wives of convicts sentenced to exile, but the communes, on the other
hand, are anxious to cast off the burden of their possibly pauper fami-
lies, and the government encourages this disposition by permitting the
wives and children of the exiles to go with them. In most cases, the
families are ready to share the fate of the father ; the Jewish wife
always goes with her husband. The relatives are also sent off with
the prisoner. This measure has evil consequences on the vessels,
where, as we have said, six hundred persons, including those of the
worst character, are crowded into a single apartment, and can see,
hear, and talk with one another at every hour of the day and night.
When we consider that many children are mingled with the crowd, we
can easily conceive what horrible scenes besides the physical torments
are enacted there, and how brutalizing must be the impression they
make upon young and old. In such cases the reproach of inhumanity
against the government is fully justified, and it is not spared, for I
have frequently heard the officers condemn the decrees of the courts.
The journey by steamer requires ten times less time, but it is also ten
times worse, more degrading, and more barbarous than the march on
foot. When the change is made from the steamer to the railroad the
situation assumes a little better shape. The prisoners, with their wives
and children around them, cling to the benches along the bare walls,
and the chains clink weirdly in the confusion of screaming, moaning,
and cursing voices. Here also is a deficiency of space and air, and the
conditions are hardly endurable. But the few observations of stran-
gers are contradicted by the stereotyped view. " The farmers do not
travel differently, and what they freely endure for themselves certainly
ought to be good enough for criminals." Gangs on foot are still usual,
but only the strongest men are taken in them, and the treatment is
more humane than it was. The average day's journey is about seven
geographical miles, and every third day is a rest-day. Complaints
may be heard that seven miles a day is too much, but it seems to be
forgotten that the soldier has to perform the same march, and he is
encumbered with his baggage. At the present time the deportation
takes place only in the summer, and the exiles are settled before the
approach of winter.

At the beginning of the journey, each prisoner is given a gray
cloak, and he receives daily for his maintenance from ten to fifteen

634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

copecks, about from five and two thirds to eight and a half cents. This
may seem very little in our conception, but it must not be forgotten
that the men are permitted to beg on the way and to work on the
rest-days, whereby each one may, if he will, obtain a considerable
addition to his allowance. Great sympathy is felt in Siberia with the
prisoners, who are never called by any other name than " unfortunates."
Every one gives readily, and recollects that he himself, perhaps, or
his father or grandfather, may have made the journey thither under
similar circumstances. On the whole, transportation on foot is now
quite well conducted. Such a journey can not be called a pleasure-
trip, but it does not in any way bear the stamp of inhumanity and
the terrible character which the sensational reports would impute
to it.

Finally, the prisoner has reached his destination, either alone or
with his wife and children, and is allotted accordingly a larger or small-
er hut for a dwelling — I am speaking particularly of those who had
been condemned to death. The chains are not taken off from his hands
and feet, but he must work Avith them on. It often happens that he
<- dies shortly — that is his luck ; or that he will not accommodate him-
self to the situation, and leads a wretched existence, and finally goes
to ruin, unless he has energy enough left to escape. He is himself
committed to the most arduous exertions to better his fate, but, of the
thousands and thousands who arrive there, only a very small per cent
have the earnest will to do it. The great majority brood over their
lot, and think and dream only about the ways and means of bringing
about their escape. The convicts are mingled in work with the free
laborers, go in and out with them, and do not have to exert them-
selves any more or do any harder work than they. The mine is not a
prison as we are accustomed to regard prisons. The convict lives
free and un watched, alone or with his family, and the only limitation
of freedom imposed upon him consists in his being always shackled
with chains, whether at work or at recreation, by day and by night,
and in his never being allowed to go out of the bounds that are as-
signed to him. In a district of six thousand square versts (about
eight hundred and sixty geographical square miles), there are only a
hundred soldiers stationed to watch the thousands of convicts. Escape
under these circumstances is easy, and is a daily event. No one runs
away alone ; they generally go in pairs, and after careful preparation.
The mine-smith is always ready, for a fee of ten copecks, to be a help
in time of need and take off the chains. The fugitives gather up
whatever seems useful to them, and travel under cover of darkness
on their hazardous journey. On the next morning the director men-
tions the fact that A and B have disappeared. "No matter," he
coolly remarks, and with that the affair is over for him. The fugi-
tives spend the first three or four days in the woods, traveling at
night, when they can pass on the highways undisturbed, and will

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 635

rarely have to take the trouble to hide themselves. More than once
have we met such desperadoes on the road, been begged from and
given, in regular Siberian style. If a police-officer casually comes in
the way, he will offer his mite very quietly, without asking a ques-
tion. " Let them go, it's no matter," is the refrain of the officers.
The farmers take the best of care of the fugitives, and that quite sys-
tematically. At night, before bedtime, provisions for any passing
" unfortunates " are placed at the windows in all the villages on the
roads leading to Russia. When a pair of such men come into the
village, they go around from house to house, take the food tbey find
set out, as much as they want, with a little provision for the road, and
proceed to the bath-house, at the end of the village, where it is always
pleasantly warm, to sleep ; and this they do with the greatest security,
for they know that, in case of danger from the military patrol, the
nearest farmer will send his son or a servant to the bath-house to
warn any " unfortunates " that may be lodging there. The farmer is
the providence of these people.

After the fugitives have put a distance of one hundred and fifty or
two hundred miles between themselves and the mines, the journey be-
comes easier and they appear more openly. They can venture to ask
for a lodging from any of the farmers, and to take horses from the
back of the village and ride on them to the next village. There they
will unbridle the beasts and start them back toward where they came
from, mount fresh horses, and so on for hundreds and hundreds of
miles. But the horses are every time carefully started back to their
homes. Everything goes smoothly, and the sympathy of the people is
inexhaustible, so long as the " unfortunate " does not steal. As soon
as he appropriates the smallest portion of strange goods, he seals his
fate. The whole village turns out and pursues the thief, who is beaten
down like a dog, wherever and whenever he is found ; and he is always
found. The result of this inexorable popular justice is, that hardly any
thieves are to be found in Siberia, and that no country enjoys greater
security than this colony of criminals. But, one may ask, "Are not the
people punished who execute this lynch-law ?" It must be remembered
that the mining district embraces an area at least five times as large as
that of the State of New York, that the population is relatively small,
and that in most cases no one cares for slain fugitives. If the officers
are informed of the occurrence, they will simply remark that no harm
has been done. The report is sent to St. Petersburg, and is lost in the
flood of similar documents. The escape of convicts is, as we have re-
marked, a daily event, and it is of little consequence to the magistrates
whether one more or less has been captured or killed. Of the fifteen
thousand prisoners annually brought into the district, an average of
five thousand escape. These are the desperate ones who stake every-
thing to obtain freedom again. If they are brought back, they flee
again. The number of those who escape two or three or more times,

636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and are brought back as often, is great ; and many " unfortunates "
spend the last days of their lives in trying to get back to Russia, and
being retransported to the colony.

This is the shadow-side of the convict's existence : I will now briefly
sketch the bright side. A convict, who has become skilled in mining,
repents of his offense, submits to his fate, works industriously, and con-
ducts himself well in every respect, and ventures in time to open his
heart to the director and ask to have his situation improved. The offi-
cer encourages him, gives him good advice, and permits him, after he
has suffered three, four, or five years of punishment, to have his chains
replaced by lighter ones, and, when he is convinced that the man is
really reformed, grants him a settlement. Thus the prisoner has be-
come a free man, except that he is never permitted to leave the district
to which he is assigned. Now, the advantage of the system that per-
mits the family of the prisoner to go with him to the place of punish-
ment is manifested. The man has, during his long years of hard labor,
been with his wife and children, has gained courage and strength in
this family life, and has become a good man. The presence of his
family has been a blessing to him. When in other countries the doors
of the prison close upon a condemned man, the world is no more to
him — all connection between him and his is severed ; while to the Rus-
sian prisoner is left the comfort of his family, a strong anchor that
holds his heart fast against the tumult of his sufferings. The re-
leased miner goes with his family to the settlement which has been
designated for him. He has nothing but the bare land, his own strong
will, and his energy inured to suffering. The village must extend a
hand to him and advance the means for setting up an independent
establishment. He is furnished a house — of course a very poor one —
farming-tools, seed-corn, and a start in live-stock. Now, he begins a
new life. After the first harvest is gathered, and what is necessary for
his bare support has been reserved, he goes bravely to work to dis-
charge his obligations to the commune. After ten years at latest, he
will have made good to the last grain of corn, and he then becomes
the owner of an estate free of debt, for which he has only to pay a
small ground-rent, and has the satisfaction of knowing that after his
death his children will be free men in a home founded by him.

Now, how does the condition of a person discharged from prison
in one of the so-called civilized countries compare with that of this
Siberian ? The last spark of self-respect that may be left in him is
extinguished by the reception society gives him. Contempt, suspicion,
and scorn meet him at every step. Neither Government nor society
will give him the means of rehabilitating himself by labor and of
founding a new existence, and he sinks deeper and deeper, with no
way of escape open to him, into crime and ever again into crime.

Pardoned convicts or their children are living in nearly every
town and village of the Altai region, and this fact is the origin of the

SIBERIA AND THE EXILES. 637

most curious relations. I sojourned for a short time at an inn in
Tomsk. The host and his wife made an unfavorable, I might say a
repulsive, impression upon me. I could not refrain from expressing
my suspicions to the chief of police, to whom I had been introduced.
To my edification I learned that the host had been condemned to
twenty-five years in prison for fraudulent bankruptcy, and his wife to
twenty years as his accessory ; that the porter was an old house-breaker,
and the four butlers had been compelled to take the involuntary tour
to the East for thefts ; the two maids were child-murderers ! Such is
the environment in which the people of that district constantly live.
On the next day I dined by invitation with a merchant. I met a
polite, cultivated company, and learned afterward from my friend
the police-officer that the apothecary, who sat next to me, had been
transported for poisoning, that three of the guests were fraudulent
directors of exploded banks, and two were counterfeiters ! The last
two had made a bad impression on me from the beginning, and I
could not afterward repress the thought that they were continuing in
Siberia to increase as much as they could the circulation of cash in
the Russian Empire. If one expresses surprise at such social condi-
tions, the answer is, " Oh, please remember that we are in Siberia ! "
It is, moreover, not considered necessary to avoid speaking of these
matters with reference to any one. The party concerned himself will
converse on the subject with the greatest ease, and his frankness re-
specting it is really astonishing. I inquired one day in a matter-of-
course-way of a Jew named Ephraim, who carried on a small banker's
business, a very prepossessing man socially, how he came to settle there.
He replied jestingly, and with a wink : " Circumstances are to blame
for that ; they compelled me to establish my business here some two-
and-twenty years ago."

Real prisons with locks and walls are comparatively rare in Siberia,
and form in all cases, unless the positively evil disposition of the con-
vict prolongs his stay, a transitional abode between the unlimited free-
dom he enjoyed before his offense and the limited freedom that fol-
lows his sentence. Offenders are not cast into narrow cells for the
full term of their punishment, but go around free after a short con-
finement, and are supported by the contributions of their former
colleagues, while they are afforded full opportunity to found a new
existence. The contrasts between the positions which released pris-
oners may attain in Siberia and the offense which led to their exile
are frequently quite comical. The child-murderer becomes a trusted
nurse, the burglar an overseer, the thief a confidential servant ! But
a practical Christianity is exercised toward the fallen one. The Gov-
ernment and private persons rival one another in pointing out and
clearing the way of reform for the wanderer. In Kazmetak, we
visited the local prison, which is unique in its way. It was of im-
mense capacity, and was so arranged as to permit a complete separa-

638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion of the several confessions — Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians.
All the prisoners assured us that they had no complaints to make.
The few political prisoners confirmed these statements, so that their
condition, too, must certainly have been endurable ; for it is well
known that the political prisoners are the most discontented. A
school is connected with the prison, in which a young priest was
serving as teacher ; the only text-book was a Russian catechism,
which was used by Mohammedans and Jews as well as by Christians.
The great point was that all learned to read and write. The priest
received no pay, but was performing a work of mercy. In the same
place are a hospital for the sick and an orphan-house for the children
of those convicts whose imprisonment is prolonged. The foundation
of this institution was the work of a lady who gave her whole fortune
to it, and then devoted herself to the solicitation of means for its sup-
port.

When one has studied these conditions on the spot, and has sat-
isfied himself that while the situation of the prisoner condemned to
death and pardoned to the mines is hard, it nevertheless depends
upon himself whether he shall improve it and make his children free,
independent, and prosperous citizens ; when one sees how the oppor-
tunity is given to all convicts, without distinction as to what their
crime may have been, to found by their own exertions a new and
honorable career, and that the Government aids the earnest efforts of
such persons with counsel and act ; when one, finally, contrasts the
magnanimity, fidelity, and touching sympathy, existing among private
persons, with the sad lot of convicts in Europe and America, he will
have to admit that there may be worse countries than Siberia.

■»»»■

HOW SPELLING DAMAGES THE MIND.

By FEEDEEIK A. FEENALD.

LEARNING to read the English language is one of the worst
mind-stunting processes that has formed a part of the general
education of any people. Its evil influence arises from the partly
phonetic, partly lawless character of English spelling. Although
each letter represents some sound oftener than any other, there is
hardly a letter in the alphabet that does not represent more than
one sound, and hardly a sound in the language that is not repre-
sented in several ways, while many words are written with as many
silent letters as significant ones. There is nothing in any word to
indicate in which of these ways its component sounds are represent-
ed, nothing in the written group of letters to show which sounds
they stand for, and which of them, if any, are silent, so that a learner

HOW SPELLING DAMAGES THE MIND. 639

can never be sure of pronouncing rightly an English word that he
has not heard spoken, nor of spelling correctly one that he has never
seen written. The spelling of each word must be learned by sheer
force of memory. In this work the pupil's reasoning powers can not
be utilized, but must be subdued, while his memory is sadly over-
worked. In the affairs of the child's daily life, the logical follow-
ing out of rules is rewarded ; in learning to spell, it brings him only
discomfiture and bewilderment. He is taught that b-o-n-e stands for
bon (not bo-ne), and t-o-n-e for ton, but that d-o-n-e stands for dun,
that g-o-n-e spells gdn, m-o-v-e spells moov, and b-r-o-n-z-e bronz. Now
when he comes in reading to another similar word, as none, he has no
means of telling whether to call it non, nun, non, noon, or non ; he
can only look up at his teacher and wait to be told. The influence of
the spelling-class quickly drives him to repress any inclination to
reason, and he gives himself up to a blind following of authority.
No child learns English spelling without getting the pernicious no-
tion that cram is better than thinking, and that common sense is a
treacherous guide. The child who can take what he is told with-
out asking why, who can repeat a rule without troubling himself
about its meaning, gets along best. On the other hand, the child
who has difficulty in learning to spell may be expected to develop
strong logical faculties. He is constantly trying to spell according
to some principle, and, of course, constantly coming to grief. Thus
a boy who had long been at the foot of his spelling-class was one
day given the word ghost, and, making a desperate attempt at the sort
of spelling he had oftenest heard succeed, he spelled it g-h-o-g-h-j-s-t.
This bringing upon him shouts of laughter, he said, with clinched
fist and tearful eyes : "You needn't laugh ; you all spell homelier 'n
that ! " So much attention is given to spelling that children obtain
false ideas of its importance. The spelling, or representation, be-
comes to them the word, while the real word is called the pronun-
ciation, and is thought of as an appendage. They learn to despise
the poor speller, a prejudice which is never outgrown, and above
all they become so absorbed in the manipulation of words that they
have little chance to grasp the ideas which the words stand for.

If our notation of numbers were as irregular as our notation of
speech, so that the numbers from forty to forty-five, for instance,
should be written, say as follows : 40, 741, 420, 43, 414, 225 ; and if
no one could tell at sight whether a number like 7,243,812 contained
several figures which were " silent," or had exceptional values, who
can doubt that the study of arithmetic, instead of being a valuable
discipline, would be mere mentally enervating drudgery ? If it were
proposed that children should learn a style of writing music which
gave different values to the same characters, similarly placed, in differ-
ent pieces, and added a host of " silent " notes, the evils of learning
such a system would be plainly seen. Yet many people, who have

640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

forgotten their own sufferings in the spelling-class, can not see that
children are so very much perplexed in learning to spell, or perhaps
maintain that the struggle involved is "good for them."

" I know," says Max Mtiller, " there are persons who can defend
anything, and who hold that it is due to this very discipline that the
English character is what it is ; that it retains respect for authority ;
that it does not require a reason for everything ; and that it does not
admit that what is inconceivable is therefore impossible. Even Eng-
lish orthodoxy has been traced back to that hidden source, because
a child accustomed to believe that t-h-o-u-g-h is though, and that
t-h-r-o-u-g-h is through, would afterward believe anything. It may
be so ; still I doubt whether even such objects would justify such
means. Lord Ly tton says : ' A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed
delusion than that by which we confuse the clear instincts of truth in
our accursed system of spelling was never concocted by the father of
falsehood. . . . How can a system of education flourish that begins
by so monstrous a falsehood, which the sense of hearing suffices to
contradict ? ' "

Here is a chief source o£ the incapacity for thinking which acade-
my and college students bring into the science laboratories. This irra-
tional process, taken up when the child enters school, occupying a
large share of his time, and continued for six or eight years, has a
powerful influence in shaping his plastic mind. When at last he is
allowed to take up the study of nature, at the wrong end of his school
course, what wonder that he sits with folded hands, waiting to be told
facts to commit to memory, that he can not realize what a law is, and
does not know how to use his reason in obtaining knowledge ? Ra-
tional education will never flourish as it should till a reformation in the
teaching of reading and spelling has been accomplished. Further, Mr.
J. H. Gladstone, member of the English School Board for London, has
computed the number of hours spent by children in learning to read
and spell English to be 2,320, while, in gaining an equal knowledge of
their native language, Italian children spend only 945 hours. The dif-
ference amounts to nearly two school years, and shows under what a
disadvantage English-speaking children labor. Can any one believe
that 4,923,451, or 13-4 per cent, of our population over ten years of
age would be illiterate if learning to read were not so formidable an
undertaking ? In Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and some
German states, there are hardly any illiterates.

The most striking testimony to the irregularity of our spelling is
the adoption by some teachers of a sort of Chinese mode of teaching
reading. The children are not taught that letters represent constitu-
ent sounds of words, but they learn to recognize each group of letters
as an arbitrary compound symbol standing for a word. This is more
of a dead drag on the memory than even the A-B-C method, and, if it
could be completely carried out, would be a vastly longer process.

HOW SPELLING DAMAGES THE MIND. 64 1

The effect on the mind is certainly no better. The Chinese have to
memorize a compound symbol for each word in learning to read, but
the patient endurance of such a burden is not consistent with the char-
acter of any other people than the submissive, imitative, unprogressive
Chinese. The Japanese, who have long been clogged by the same
system, have recently taken measures to throw it off.

"But what can be done ? " will be asked ; "shall children grow up
without learning to spell ? " No, but the memorizing of these anomalies
and contradictions can be, at least, put off till the pupils' minds are
in little danger of being perverted by it. Enough of the enormous
amount of time spent in this drudgery can be saved to make possible
the introduction of the study of things into the primary schools, and
many of the one hundred millions of dollars which we spend each year
for public education can be turned to imparting real knowledge instead
of the mere tools of knowledge. These ends may be attained by the
use of phonetic spelling as an introduction to the customary spelling.
Children can and do learn to read English spelled phonetically in a very
few lessons, and learn the traditional spelling so quickly afterward
that much less time is required for the whole process than is commonly
devoted to memorizing the current spelling alone. Classes taught to
read in this way, in Massachusetts, so early as 1851, proved the advan-
tage of the method to the satisfaction of that able educator, Horace
Mann, and the method has been successfully employed in many
places in this country and in the British Isles. The following ex-
tract from a letter written by Mr. William Colbourne, manager of
the Dorset Bank, at Sturminster, England, since deceased, furnishes
a special example, though it may be conceded to be exceptionally fa-
vorable :

" My little Sidney, who is now a few months more than four
years old, will read any phonetic book without the slightest hesita-
tion ; the hardest names or the longest words in the Old or New
Testament form no obstacle to him. And how long do you think it
took me — for I am his teacher — to impart to him this power ? Why,
something less than eight hours ! You may believe it or not as you
like, but I am confident that not more than that amount of time was
spent on him, and that was in snatches of five minutes at a time, while
tea was getting ready. I know you will be inclined to say : * All that
is very well, but what is the use of reading phonetic books ? He is
still as far off, and may be farther, from reading romanic books.' But
in this you are mistaken. Take another example. His next elder
brother, a boy of six years, has had a phonetic education so far.
What is the consequence ? Why, reading in the first stage was so
delightful and easy a thing to him, that he taught himself to read
romanically, and it womld be a difficult matter to find one boy in
twenty, of a corresponding age, that could read half so well as he can
in any book. Again, my oldest boy has written more phonetic short-

TOL. XXVII. — 41

642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hand and long-hand, perhaps, than any hoy of his age (eleven years) in
the kingdom ; and no one I dare say has had less to do with that ab-
surdity of absurdities, the spelling-book ! He is now at a first-rate
school in Wiltshire, and in the half-year preceding Christmas he car-
ried off the prize for orthography in a contest with boys, some of
them his senior by years ! "

Mrs. E. B. Burnz, of New York, says, in regard to her experience
at Nashville, soon after the civil war : " The phonetic teaching in the
Fisk School, as elsewhere, proved beyond all cavil that with phonetic
books as much could be accomplished in four months in teaching to
read as by a year with the common method. And, moreover, it showed
that there is no difficulty experienced by children in passing from the
phonetic to the ordinary printed books. After going through the
phonetic primer and First and Second Reader, the children passed at
once into the Second Reader in common print, and from the phonetic
Gospel into the common New Testament." Successful experiments in
common schools are on record in sufficient numbers to prove the prac-
ticability of the method.

Several phonetic primers have been published and are used in
some American and English schools, for teaching English in the schools
of Paris, and by missionaries among the Indians and other peoples.
With one of these books, parents will find it a light task to teach
their children to read at home in a few lessons. Since there are only
twenty-six (or, counting m and oe, twenty-eight) letters in our alpha-
bet, while for phonetic printing means of representing forty sounds
are needed, each of these books uses an extended form of the alphabet.
Unfortunately, no one alphabet for the phonetic printing of English
has yet been agreed upon ; still, any of these systems can be adopted
for the schools of a city or town, with the certainty of good results.
The alphabet devised by the American Philological Association may
be said to be the most authoritative ; it has also the merit of employ-
ing only three new letters. I am not unaware of the efforts being
made to replace the current spelling by a phonetic system for all pur-
poses, but that is a matter quite distinct from the subject of this arti-
cle ; and all who believe that the orderly and vigorous development of
the mental faculties should be the chief end in education, whether
they favor or oppose the spelling reform, can work together for the
spread of the phonetic method of teaching reading.

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 643
SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE.*

By Professor S. P. LANGLEY.

THERE is, we may remember, a passage in which Plato inquires
what would be the thoughts of a man who, having lived from
infancy under the roof of a cavern, where the light outside was inferred
only by its shadows, was brought for the first time into the full splen-
dors of the sun.

We may have enjoyed the metaphor without thinking that it has
any physical application to ourselves, who appear to have no roof over
our heads, and to see the sun's face daily ; while the fact is, that if we
do not see that we have a roof over our heads in our atmosphere, and
do not think of 'it as one, it is because it seems so transparent and
colorless.

Now, I wish to ask your attention to-night to considerations in
some degree novel, which appear to me to show that it is not transpar-
ent as it appears, and that this seeming colorlessness is a sort of delusion
of our senses, owing to which we have never in all our lives seen the
true color of the sun, which is in reality blue rather than white, as it
looks, so that this air all about and above us is acting like a colored
glass roof over our heads, or a sort of optical sieve, holding back the
excess of blue in the original sunlight, and letting only the white sift
down to us.

I will first ask you, then, to consider that this seeming colorlessness
of the air may be a delusion of our senses, due to habit, which has never
given us anything else to compare it with.

If that cave had been lit by sunshine coming through a reddish
glass in its roof, would the perpetual dweller in it ever have had an
idea but that the sun was red ? How is he to know that the glass
is " colored " if he has never in his life anything to compare it with ?
How can he have any idea but that this is the sum of all the sun's
radiations (corresponding to our idea of white or colorless light) ; will
not the habit of his life confirm him in the idea that the sun is red ;
and will he not think that there is no color in the glass so long as he
can not go outside to see ? Has this any suggestion for us, who have
none of us ever been outside our crystal roof to see ?

We must all acknowledge, in the abstract, that habit is equally
strong in us, whether we dwell in a cave or under the sky ; that what
we have thought from infancy will probably appear the sole possible
explanation ; and that, if we want to break its chain, we should put
ourselves, at least in imagination, under conditions where it no longer
binds us.

* A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Friday evening, April
17, 1885.

64+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Challenger has dredged from the bottom of the ocean fishes
which live habitually at great depths, and whose enormous eyes tell
of the correspondingly faint light which must have descended to them
through the seemingly transparent water. It will not be as futile a
speculation as it may at first seem, to put ourselves in imagination in
the condition of creatures under the sea, and ask what the sun may
appear to be to them ; for, if the fish who had never risen above the
ocean-floor were an intelligent being, might he not plausibly reason
that the dim greenish light of his heaven — which is all he has ever
known — was the full splendor of the sun shining through a medium
which all his experience shows is transparent ?

We ourselves are, in very fact, living at the floor of a great aerial
sea, whose billows roll hundreds of miles above our heads. Is it not
at any rate conceivable that we may have been led into a like fallacy
from judging only by what we see at the bottom ? May we not, that
is, have been led into the fallacy of assuming that the intervening
medium above us is colorless because the light which comes through it
is so ?

I freely admit that all men, educated or ignorant, appear to have
the evidence of their senses that the air is colorless, and that pure sun-
light is white, so that if I venture to ask you to listen to considerations
which have lately been brought forward to show that it is the sun
which is blue, and the air really acts like an orange veil or like a sieve
which picks out the blue and leaves the white, I do so in the confidence
that I may appeal to you on other grounds than those I could submit
to the primitive man who has his senses alone to trust to ; for the edu-
cated intelligence possesses those senses equally, and in addition the
ability to interpret them by the light of reason, and before this audi-
ence it is to that interpretation that I address myself.

Permit me a material illustration. You see through this glass,
which may typify the intervening medium of air or water, a circle of
white light, which may represent the enfeebled disk of the sun when
so viewed. Is this intervening glass colored or not ? It seems nearly
colorless ; but have we any right to conclude that it is so because it
seems so ? Are we not taking it for granted that the original light
which we see through it is white, and that the glass is colorless, be-
cause the light seems unaltered ; and is not an appeal to be made here
from sense to reason, which, in the educated observer, recalls that white
light is made of various colors, and that whether the original light is
really white and the glass transparent, or the glass really colored and
so making the white, is to be decided only by experiment, by taking
away the possibly deceptive medium ? I can take away this glass,
which was not colorless, but of a deep orange, and you see that the
original light was not white, but intensely blue. If we could take the
atmosphere away between us and the sun, how can we say that the
same result might not follow ? To mak« the meaning of our illustra-

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 645

tion clearer, observe that this blueness is not a pure spectral blue. It
has in it red, yellow, blue, and all the colors which make up white, but
blue in superabundance ; so that, though the white is, so to say, latent
there, the dominant effect is blue. The glass colored veil does not put
anything in, but acts I repeat like a sieve straining out the blue, and
letting through to us the white light which was there in the bluishness,
and so may not our air do so too ?

I think we already begin to see that it is at any rate conceivable
that we may have been hitherto under a delusion about the true color
of the sun, though of course this is not proving that we have been so,
and it will at any rate, I hope, be evident that here is a question
raised which ought to be settled, for the blueness of the sun, if proved,
evidently affects our present knowledge in many ways, and will modi-
fy our present views in optics, in meteorology, and in numerous other
things. In optics, because we should find that white light is not the
sum of the sun's radiations, but only of those dregs of them which
have filtered down to us ; in meteorology, because it is suggested that
the temperature of the globe and the condition of man on it depend
in part on a curious selective action of our air, which picks out parts
of the solar heat (for instance, that connected with its blue light), and
holds them back, letting other selected portions come to us, and so
altering the conditions on which this heat by which we live depends ;
in other ways, innumerable, because, as we know, the sun's heat and
light are facts of such central importance that they affect almost every
part of scientific knowledge.

It may be asked, What suggested the idea that the sun may be blue
rather than any other color ?

My own attention was first directed this way many years ago when
measuring the heat and light from different parts of the sun's disk.
It is known that the sun has an atmosphere of its own which tempers
its heat, and, by cutting off certain radiations and not others, produces
the spectral lines we are all familiar with. These lines we customarily
study in connection with the absorbing vapors of sodium, iron, and so
forth, which produce them ; but my own attention was particularly
given to the regions of absorption, or to the color it caused, and I
found that the sun's body must be deeply bluish, and that it would
shed blue light except for this apparently colorless solar atmosphere,
which really plays the part of a reddish veil, letting a little of the
blue appear on the center of the sun's disk where it is thinnest, and
staining the edge red, so that to delicate tests the center of the sun is
a pale aqua-marine, and its edge a garnet. The effect I found to be
so important, that if this all but invisible solar atmosphere were dimin-
ished by but a third part, the temperature of the British Islands would
rise above that of the torrid zone, and this directed my attention to
the great practical importance of studying the action of our own ter-
restrial atmosphere on the sun, and the antecedent probability that our

646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own air was also and independently making the really blue sun into
an apparently white one. We actually know, then, beyond conjecture,
by a comparison of the sun's atmosphere, where it is thickest and
where it is thinnest, that an apparently colorless atmosphere can hare
such an effect, and analogous observations which I have carried on for
many years, but do not now detail, show that the atmosphere of our
own planet, this seemingly clear air in which we exist like creatures at
the bottom of the sea, does do so.

We look up through our own air as through something so limpid
in its purity that it appears scarcely matter at all, and we are apt to
forget the enormous mass of what seems of such lightness, but which
really presses with nearly a ton to each square foot, so that the weight
of all the buildings in this great city, for instance, is less than that of
the air above them.

I hope to shortly describe the method of proof that it too has been
acting like an optical sieve, holding back the blue ; but it may natu-
Tally be asked, " Can our senses have so entirely deceived us that they
give no hint of this truth, if it be one ? is the appeal wholly to recon-
dite scientific methods, and are there no indications, at least, which
we may gather for ourselves ? " I think there are, even to our un-
aided eyes, indications that the seemingly transparent air really acts
as an orange medium, and keeps the blue light back in the upper sky.

If I hold this piece of glass before my eyes, it seems colorless and
transparent, but it is proved not to be so by looking through it edge-
wise, when the light, by traversing a greater extent, brings out its
true color, which is yellow. Every one knows this in every-day expe-
rience. We shall not get the color of the ocean by looking at it in a
wine-glass, but by gazing through a great depth of it ; and so it
is with the air. If we look directly up, we look through where it is
thinnest ; but, if we look horizontally through it toward the horizon,
through great thicknesses, as at sunrise or sunset, is it not true that
this air, where we see its real color most plainly, makes the sun look
very plainly yellow or orange ?

We not only see here, in humid English skies, the " orange sunset
waning slow," but most of us in these days of travel can perfectly tes-
tify that the clearest heavens the earth affords, the rosy tint on the
snows of Mont Blanc, forerunning the dawn, or the warm glow of the
sun as he sets in Egyptian skies, show this most clearly — show that
the atmosphere holds back the blue rays by preference, and lets the
orange through.

If, next, we ask, " What has become of the blue that it has stopped?"
does not that very blue of the midday sky relate the rest of the story
— that blue which Professor Tyndall has told us is due to the presence
of innumerable fine particles in the air, which act selectively on the
solar waves, diffusing the blue light toward us ? I hope it will be un-
derstood that Professor Tyndall is in no way responsible for my own

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 647

inferences ; but I think it is safe at least to say that the sky is not self-
luminous, and that, since it can only be shining blue at the expense of
the sun, all the light this sky sends us has been taken by our atmos-
phere away from the direct solar beam, which would grow both brighter
and bluer if this were restored to it.

If all that has been said so far renders it possible that the sun may
be blue, you will still have a right to say that " possibilities " and
" may-bes " are not evidence, and that no chain of mere hypotheses
will draw Truth out of her well. We are all of one mind here, and I
desire next to call your attention to what I think is evidence.

Remembering that the case of our supposed dweller in the cave
who could not get outside, or that of the inhabitants of the ocean-floor
who can not rise to the surface, is really like our own, over whose heads
is a crystalline roof which no man from the beginning of time has ever>
got outside of, an upper sea to whose surface we have never risen — we
recognize that if we could rise to the surface, leaving the medium
whose effect is in dispute wholly beneath us, we should see the sun as
it is, and get proof of an incontrovertible kind ; and that, if we can
not entirely do this, we shall get nearest to proof under our real cir-
cumstances by going as high as we can in a balloon, or by ascending
a very high mountain. The balloon will not do, because we have to
use heavy apparatus requiring a solid foundation. The proof to which
I ask your kind attention, then, is that derived from the actual ascent
of a remarkable mountain by an expedition undertaken for that pur-
pose, which carried a whole physical laboratory up to a point where
nearly one half the whole atmosphere lay below us. I wish to describe
the difference we found in the sun's energy at the bottom of the mount-
ain and at the top, and then the means we took to allow for the effect
of that part of the earth's atmosphere still over our heads even here,
so that we may be said to have virtually got outside it altogether.

Before we begin our ascent, let me explain more clearly what we
are going to seek. We need not expect to find that the original sun-
light is a pure monochromatic blue by any means, but that, though its
rays contain red, orange, blue, and all the other spectral colors, the
blue, the violet, and the allied tints were originally there in dispropor-
tionate amounts, so that, though all which make white were present
from the first, the refrangible end of the spectrum had such an excess
of color that the dominant effect was that of a bluish sun. In the
same way, when I say briefly that our atmosphere has absorbed this
excess of blue and let the white reach us, I mean, more strictly speak-
ing, that this atmosphere has absorbed all the colors, but, selectively,
taking out more orange than red, more green than orange, more blue
than green ; so that its action is wholly a taking out — an action like
that which you now see going on with this sieve, sifting a mixture of
blue and white beads, and holding back the blue while letting the
white fall down.

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This experiment only rudely typifies the action of the atmosphere,
which is discriminating and selective in an amazing degree, and, as
there are really an infinite number of shades of color in the spectrum,
it would take forever to describe the action in detail. It is merely
for brevity, then, that we now unite the more refrangible colors under
the general word " blue," and the others under the corresponding terms
" orange " or " red."

All that I have the honor to lay before you is less an announcement
of absolute novelty than an appeal to your already acquired knowledge,
and to your reason as superior to the delusions of sense. I have, then,
no novel experiment to offer, but to ask you to look at some familiar
ones in a new light.

We are most of us familiar, for instance, with that devised by Sir
Isaac Newton to show that white light is compounded of blue, red,
and other colors, where, by turning a colored wheel rapidly, all blend
into a grayish white. Here you see the " seven colors " on the screen ;
but, though all are here, I have intentionally arranged them so that
there is too much blue, and the combined result is a very bluish white
which may roughly stand for that of the original sun-ray. I now alter
the proportion of the colors so as to virtually take out the excess of
blue, and the result is colorless or white light. White, then, is not
necessarily made by combining the " seven colors," or any number of
them, unless they are there in just proportion (which is in effect what
Newton himself says) ; and white, then, may be made out of such a
bluish light as we have described, not by putting anything to it, but
by taking away the excess which is there already.

Here, again, are two sectors — one blue, one orange-yellow with the
blue in excess, making a bluish disk where they are revolved. I take
out the excess of blue, and now what remains is white.

Here is the spectrum itself on the screen, but a spectrum which has
been artificially modified so that the blue end is relatively too strong.
I recombine the colors (by Professor Rood's ingenious device of an
elastic mirror), and they do not make a pure white, but one tinted with
blue. I take out the original excess of blue, and what remains com-
bines into a pure white. Please bear in mind that, when we " put in "
blue here, we have to do so by straining out other light through some
obscuring medium, which makes the spectrum darker ; but that, in the
case of the actual sunlight, introducing more blue introduces more
light and makes the spectrum brighter.

The spectrum on the screen ought to be made still brighter in the
blue than it is — far, far brighter — and then it might represent to us
the original solar spectrum before it has suffered any absorption either
in the sun's atmosphere or our own. The Fraunhofer lines do not
appear in it, for these, when found in the solar spectrum, show that
certain individual rays have been stopped, or selected for absorption
by the intervening atmospheres ; and, though even the few yards of

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 649

atmosphere between the lamp and the screen absorb, it is not enough
to show.

Our spectrum, as it appears before absorption, might be compared
to an army divided into numerous brigades, each wearing a distinct
uniform, one red, one green, one blue, so that all the colors are repre-
sented each by its own body. If, to represent the light absorbed as it
progresses, we supposed that the army advances under a fire which
thins its numbers, we should have to consider that (to give the case of
nature) this destructive fire was directed chiefly against those divisions
which were dressed in blue, or allied colors, so that the army was
thinned out unequally, many men in blue being killed off for one in
red, and that by the time it has advanced a certain distance under fire
the proportion of the men in each brigade has been altered, the red
being comparatively unhurt. Almost all absorption is thus selective
in its action, and often in an astonishing degree, killing off, so to speak,
certain rays in preference to others, as though by an intelligent choice,
and destroying most, not only of certain divisions (to continue our illus-
tration), but even picking out certain files in each company. Every
ray, then, has its own individuality, and on this I can not too strongly
insist ; for just as two men retain their personalities under the same
red uniform, and one may fall and the other survive, though they
touch shoulders in the ranks, so in the spectrum certain parts will be
blotted out by absorption, while others next to them may escape.

To illustrate this selective absorption, I put a piece of didymium
glass in the path of the ray. It will, of course, absorb some of the
light, but, instead of dimming the whole spectrum, we might almost
say it has arbitrarily chosen to select one narrow part for action, in
this particular case choosing a narrow file near the orange, and letting
all the rest go unharmed. In this arbitrary way our atmosphere
operates, but in a far more complex manner, taking out a narrow file
here and another there, in hundreds of places, all through the spec-
trum, but on the whole much the most in the blue, the Fraunhofer
lines being merely part of the evidence of this wonderful quasi-mtelli-
gent action which bears the name of selective absorption.

Before we leave this spectrum, let us recall one most important
matter. We know that here beyond the red is solar energy in the
form of heat which we can not see, but not on that account any less
important. More than half the whole power of the sun is here invisi-
ble, and, if we are to study completely the action of our atmosphere,
we shall have to pay great attention to this part, and find out some
way of determining the loss in it, which will be difficult, for the ultra-
red end is not only invisible, but compressed, the red end being shut
up like the closed pages of a book, as you may notice by comparing
the narrowness of the red with the width of the blue.

Now, refraction by a prism is not the only way of forming a spec-
trum. Nature furnishes us color not only from the rainbow, but from

6 So THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Bon-transparent substances like mother-of-pearl, where the iridescent
hues are due to microscopically fine lines. Art has lately surpassed
Nature in these wonderful "gratings," consisting of pieces of polished
metal, in which we see at first nothing to account for the splendid
play of color apparently pouring out from them like light from an
opal, but which, on examination with a powerful microscope, show
lines so narrow that there are from fifty to one hundred in the thick-
ness of a fine human hair, and all spaced with wonderful precision.

This grating is equal in defining power to many such prisms as
we have just been looking at, but its light does not show well upon
the screen. Tou will see, however, that its spectrum differs from that
of the prism, in that in this case the red end is expanded, as compared
with the violet, and the invisible ultra-red is expanded still more, so
that this will be the best means for us to use in exploring that " dark
continent " of invisible heat found not only in the spectrum of the
sun, but of the electric light, and of all incandescent bodies, and of
whose existence we already know from Herschel and Tyndall.

Now, we can not reproduce the actual solar spectrum on the screen
without the sun itself, but here are photographs of it, which show
parts of the losses the different colors have suffered on their way to
us. "We have before us the well-known Fraunhofer lines, due, you
remember, not only to absorption in the sun's atmosphere, but also to
absorption in our own. We have been used to think of them in con-
nection with their cause, one being due to the absorption of iron-
vapor in the sun, another to that of water-vapor in our own air, and
so forth ; but now I ask you to think of them only in connection with
the fact that each is clue to the absorption of some part of the original
light, and that collectively they tell much of the story of what has
happened to that light on its way down to us. Observe, for instance,
how much thicker they lie in the blue end than in the red — another
evidence of the great proportionate loss in the blue.

If we could restore all the lost light in these lines, we should get
back partly to the original condition of things at the very fount, and,
so far as our own air is concerned, that is what we are to ascend the
mountain for — to see, by going up through nearly half of the atmos-
phere, what the rate of loss is in each ray by actual trial ; then,
knowing this rate, to be able to allow for the loss in the other part
still above the mountain-top ; and, finally, by recombining these rays,
to get the loss as a whole. Remember, however, always, that the
most important part of the solar energy is in the dark spectrum which
we do not see, but which, if we could see, we should probably find to
have numerous absorption-spaces in it corresponding to the Fraun-
hofer lines, but where heat has been stopped out rather than light.
To make our research thorough, then, we ought not to trust to the
eye only, or even chiefly, but have some way of investigating the
whole spectrum ; the invisible in which the sun's power chiefly lies,

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 651

as well as the visible, and both with an instrument that would dis-
criminate the energy in these very narrow spaces, like an eye to see
in the dark ; and if science possesses no such instrument, then it may
be necessary to invent one.

The linear thermopile is nearest to it of any, and we all here know
what good work it has done, but even that is not sensitive enough to
measure in the grating spectrum, in some parts of which the heat is
four hundred times weaker than in that of a prism, and we want to
observe this invisible heat in very narrow spaces. Something like this
has been provided since by Captain Abney's most valuable researches,
but these did not at the time go low enough for my purpose, and I
spent nearly a year before ascending the mountain in inventing and
perfecting the new instrument for measuring these, which I have
called the "bolometer" or "ray-measurer." The principle on which
it is founded is the same as that employed by my late friend, Sir
William Siemens, for measuring temperatures at the bottom of the
sea, which is that a smaller electric current flows through a warm wire
than through a cold one.

One great difficulty was to make the conducting wire very thin,
and yet continuous, and for this purpose almost endless experiments
,were made, among other substances pure gold having been obtained
by chemical means in a plate so thin that it transmitted a sea-green
light through the solid substance of the metal. This proving unsuit-
able, I learned that iron had been rolled of extraordinary thinness in a
contest of skill between some English and American iron- masters, and,
procuring some, I found that fifteen thousand of the iron plates they
had rolled, laid one on the other, would make but one English inch.
Here is some of it, rolled between the same rolls which turn out plates
for an ironclad, but so thin that, as I let it drop, the iron plate flut-
ters down like a dead leaf. Out of this the first bolometers were
made, and I may mention that the cost of these earlier experiments
was met from a legacy by the founder of the Royal Institution, Count
Rumford. The iron is now replaced by platinum, in wires or rather
tapes from 2()i06 to g0^60 of an inch thick, one of which is' within
this button, where it is all but invisible, being far finer than a human
hair. I will project it on the screen, placing a common small pin be-
side it as a standard of comparison. This button is placed in this
ebonite case, and the thread is moved by this micrometer-screw, by
which it can be set like the spider line of a reticule ; but by means
of this cable, connecting it to the galvanometer, this thread acts as
though sensitive, like a nerve laid bare to every indication of heat and
cold. It is then a sort of sentient thing : what the eye sees as light
it feels as heat, and what the eye sees as a narrow band of darkness
(the Fraunhofer line) this feels as a narrow belt of cold, so that when
moved parallel to itself and the Fraunhofer lines down the spectrum
it registers their presence.

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is true we can see these in the visible spectrum, but you remem-
ber we propose to explore the invisible also, and since to this the dark
is the same as the light, it will feel absorption lines in the infra-red
which might remain otherwise unknown.

I have spent a long time in these preliminary researches ; in indi-
rect methods for determining the absorption of our atmosphere, and
in experiments and calculations which I do not detail, but it is so
often supposed that scientific investigation is a sort of happy guessing,
and so little is realized of the labor of preparation and proof, that I
have been somewhat particular in describing the essential parts of the
apparatus finally employed, and now we must pass to the scene of their
use.

We have been compared to creatures living at the bottom of the
sea, who frame their deceptive traditional notions of what the sun is
like from the feeble changed rays which sift down to them. Though
such creatures could not rise to the surface, they might swim up to-
ward it ; and, if these rays grew hotter, brighter, and bluer as they
ascended, it would be almost within the capacity of a fish's mind to
guess that they are still brighter and bluer at the top.

Since we children of the earth, while dwelling on it, are always at
the bottom of the sea, though of another sort, the most direct method
of proof I spoke of is merely to group as far as we can and observe
what happens, though as we are men, and not fishes, something more
may fairly be expected of our intelligence than of theirs.

We will not only guess, but measure and reason, and in particular
we will first, while still at the bottom of the mountain, draw the light
and heat out into a spectrum, and analyze every part of it by some
method that will enable us to explore the invisible as well as record
the visible. Then we will ascend many miles into the air, meeting the
rays on the way down, before the sifting process has done its whole
work, and there analyze the light all over again, so as to be able to
learn the different proportions in which the different rays have been
absorbed, and, by studying the action on each separate ray, to prove
the state of things which must have existed before this sifting— this
selective absorption — began.

It may seem at first that we can not ascend far enough to do much
good, since the surface of our aerial ocean is hundreds of miles over-
head ; but we must remember that the air grows thinner as we ascend,
the lower atmosphere being so much denser that about one half the
whole substance or mass of it lies within the first four miles, which is
a less height than the tops of some mountains. Every high mountain,
however, will not do, for ours must not only be very high but very
steep, so that the station we choose at the bottom may be almost
under the station we are afterward to occupy at the top.

Besides, we are not going to climb a lofty, lonely summit like
tourists to spend an hour, but to spend weeks ; so that we must have

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 653

fire and shelter, and above all we must have dry air to get clear
skies. First I thought of the Peak of Teneriffe, but afterward some
point in the Territories of the United States seemed preferable, par-
ticularly as the Government offered to give the expedition, through
the Signal Service, and under the direction of its head, General Hazen,
material help in transportation and a military escort, if needed, any-
where in its own dominions. No summit in the eastern part of the
United States rises much over seven thousand feet ; and, though the
great Rocky Mountains reach double this, their tops are the home of
fog and mist, so that the desired conditions, if met at all, could only
be found on the other side of the continent in Southern California,
where the summits of the Sierra Nevadas rise precipitously out of the
dry air of the great wastes in lonely peaks, which look eastward down
from a height of nearly fifteen thousand feet upon the desert lands.

This remote region was, at the time I speak of, almost unexplored,
and its highest peak, Mount Whitney, had been but once or twice
ascended, but was represented to be all we desired could we once climb
it. As there was great doubt whether our apparatus, weighing sev-
eral thousand pounds, could possibly be taken to the top, and we had
to travel three thousand miles even to get where the chief difficulties
would begin and make a desert journey of one hundred and fifty miles
after leaving the cars, it may be asked why we committed ourselves
to such an immense journey to face such unknown risks of failure.
The answer must be that mountains of easy ascent and fifteen thousand
feet high are not to be found at our doors, and that these risks were
involved in the nature of our novel experiment, so that we started out
from no love of mere adventure, but from necessity, much into the
unknown. The liberality of a citizen of Pittsburg, to whose encour-
agement the enterprise was due, had furnished the costly and delicate
apparatus for the expedition, and that of the transcontinental rail-
roads enabled us to take this precious freight along in a private
car, which carried a kitchen, a steward, a cook, and an ample larder
besides.

In this we crossed the entire continent from ocean to ocean, stopped
at San Francisco for the military escort, went three hundred miles
south so as to get below the mountains, and then turned eastward again
on to the desert, with the Sierras to the north of us, after a journey
which would have been unalloyed pleasure except for the anticipation
of what was coming as soon as we left our car. I do not indeed know
that one feels the triumphs of civilization over the opposing forces of
Nature anywhere more than by the sharp contrasts which the marvel-
ous luxury of recent railroad accommodation gives to the life of the
desert. When one is in the center of one of the great barren regions
of the globe, and, after looking out from the windows of the flying
train on its scorched wastes for lonely leagues of habitless desolation,
turns to his well-furnished dinner-table, and the fruit and ices of his

654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dessert, he need not envy the heroes of Oriental story, who were car-
ried across dreadful solitudes in a single night on the backs of flying
genii. Ours brought us over three thousand miles to the Mohave Des-
ert. It was growing hotter and hotter when the train stopped in the
midst of vast sand wastes a little after midnight. Roused from our
sleep, we stepped on to the brown sand, and saw our luxurious car roll
away in the distance, experiencing a transition from the conditions of
civilization to those almost of barbarism, as sharp as could well be im-
agined. We commenced our slow toil northward with a thermometer
at 110° in the shade, if any shade there be in the shadeless desert,
which seemed to be chiefly inhabited by rattlesnakes of an ashen-gray
color, and a peculiarly venomous bite. There is no water save at the
rarest intervals, and the soil at a distance seems as though strewed
with sheets of salt, which aids the delusive show of the mirage. These
are, in fact, the ancient beds of dried-up salt lakes or dead seas, some
of them being below the level of the ocean ; and such a one on our
right, though only about twenty miles wide, has earned the name of
" Death Valley," from the number of human beings who have perished
in it. Formerly an emigrant train, when emigrants crossed the con-
tinent in caravans, had passed through the great Arizona deserts in
safety until, after their half-year's journey, their eyes were gladdened
by the snowy peaks of the Sierras looking delusively near. The goal
of their long toil seemed before them ; only this one more valley lay
between, and into this they descended, thinking to cross it in a day —
but they never crossed it. Afterward the long line of wagons was
found with the skeletons of the animals in the harness, and by them
those of men, women, and little children dead of thirst, and some relics
of the tragedy remained at the time of our journey. I cite this as an
indirect evidence of the phenomenal dryness of the region — a dryness
which, so far, served our object, which was, in part, to get rid as much
as possible of that water vapor which is so well known to be a power-
ful absorber of the solar heat.

Everything has an end, and so had that journey, which finally
brought us to the goal of our long travel, at the foot of the highest peak
of the Sierras, Mount Whitney, which rose above us in tremendous
precipices, that looked hopelessly insurmountable and wonderfully near.
The whole savage mountain-region, in its slow rises from the west and
its descent to the desert plains in the east, is more like the chain called
the Apennines, in the moon, than anything I know on the earth. The
summits are jagged peaks like Alpine "needles," looking in the thin
air so delusively near that, coming on such a scene unprepared, one
would almost say they were large gray stones a few fields off, with an
occasional little white patch on the top, that might be a handkerchief
or a sheet of paper dropped there. But the telescope showed that the
seeming stones were of the height of many Snowdons piled on one
another, and the white patches occasional snow-fields, looking how

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 655

invitingly cool, from the torrid heat of the desert, where we were
encamped by a little rivulet that ran down from some unseen ice-lake
in that upper air. Here we pitched our tents and fell to work (for
you remember we must have two stations, a low and a high one, to com-
pare the results), and here we labored three weeks in almost intoler-
able heat, the instruments having to be constantly swept clear of the
red desert dust which the hot wind brought. Close by these tents a
thermometer covered by a single sheet of glass, and surrounded by
wool, rose to 237° in the sun, and sometimes in the tent, which was
darkened for the study of separate rays, the heat was absolutely beyond
human endurance. Finally, our apparatus was taken apart and packed
in small pieces on the backs of mules, who were to carry it by a ten
days' journey through the mountains to the other side of the rocky
wall which, though only ten or twelve miles distant, arose miles above
our heads ; and, leaving these mule-trains to go with the escort by this
longer route, I started with a guide by a nearer way to those white
gleams in the upper skies, that had daily tantalized us below in the
desert with suggestions of delicious, unattainable cold. That desert
sun had tanned our faces to a leather-like brown, and the change to
the cooler air as we ascended was at first delightful. At an altitude
of five thousand feet we came to a wretched band of nearly naked
savages, crouched around their camp-fire, and at six thousand found
the first scattered trees ; and here the feeble suggestion of a path
stopped, and we descended a ravine to the bed of a mountain-stream,
up which we forced our way, cutting through the fallen trees with an
axe, fighting for every foot of advance, and finally passing what seemed
impassable. It was interesting to speculate as to the fate of our side-
rostat mirrors and other precious freight, now somewhere on a similar
road, but quite useless. We were committed now, and had to make
the best of it — and, besides, I had begun to have my attention directed
to a more personal subject. This was that the colder it grew the more
the sun burned the skin — quite literally burned I may say, so that by the
end of the third day my face and hands, case-hardened, as I thought,
in the desert, began to look as if they had been seared with red-hot
irons, here in the cold where the thermometer had fallen to freezing at
night ; and still as we ascended the paradoxical effect increased ; the
colder it grew about us, the hotter the sun blazed above.

We have all heard probably of this curious effect of burning in
the midst of cold, and some of us may have experienced it in the Alps,
where it may be aided by reflection from the snow, which we did not
have about us at any time except in scattered patches, but here by
the end of the fourth day my face was scarcely recognizable, and it
almost seemed as though sunbeams up here were different things, and
contained something which the air filters out before they reach us in
our customary abodes. Radiation here is increased by the absence of
water vapor too, and on the whole this intimate personal experience

656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fell in almost too well with our anticipations that the air is an even
more elaborate trap to catch the sunbeams than had been surmised,
and that this effect of selective absorption and radiation was inti-
mately connected with that change of the primal energies and primal
color of the sun which we had climbed toward it to study.

On the fourth day, after break-neck ascents and descents, we finally
ascended by a ravine, down which leaped a cataract, till, at nightfall,
we reached our upper camp, which was pitched by a little lake, one of
the sources of the waterfall, at a height of about twelve thousand
feet, but where we seemed in the bottom of a valley, nearly surrounded
as we were by an amphitheatre of rocky walls which rose perpen-
dicularly to the height of Gibraltar from the sea, and cut off all view
of the desert below or even of the peak above us.

The air was wonderfully clear, so that the sun set in a yellow
rather than an orange sky, which was reflected in the little ice-rimmed
lakes and from occasional snow-fields on the distant waste of lonely
mountain-summits on the west.

The mule-train sent off before by another route had not arrived
when we got to the mountain-camp, and we realized that we were far
from the appliances of civilization by our inability to learn about our
chief apparatus, for here, without post or telegraph, we were as com-
pletely cut off from all knowledge of what might be going on with it
in the next mountain ravine as a ship at sea is of the fate of a vessel
that sailed before from the same port. During the enforced idleness we
ascended the peak nearly three thousand feet above us, with our lighter
apparatus, leaving the question of the ultimate use of the heavy ones
to be settled later. There seemed little prospect of carrying it up,
as we climbed where the granite walls had been split by the earth-
quakes, letting a stream of great rocks, like a stone river, flow down
through the interstices by which we ascended, and, in fact, the heav-
ier apparatus was not carried above the mountain-camp.

The view from the very summit was over numberless peaks on the
west to an horizon fifty miles away, of unknown mountain-tops, for,
with the exception of the vast ridge of Mount Tyndall, and one or
two less conspicuous ones, these summits are not known to fame, and,
wonderful as the view may be, all the charm of association with human
interest which we find in the mountain landscape of older lands is
here lacking.

It was impossible not to be impressed with the savage solitude of
this desert of the upper air, and our remoteness from man and his
works, but I turned to the study of the special things connected with
my mission. Down far below the air seemed filled with reddish dust
that looked like an ocean. This dust is really present everywhere (I
have found it in the clear air of Etna), and, though we do not realize
its presence in looking up through it, to one who looks down on it the
dwellers on the earth seem indeed like creatures at the bottom of a

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 657

troubled ocean. We had certainly risen toward the surface, for about
us the air was of exquisite purity, and above us the sky was of such a
deep violet blue as I have never seen in Egypt or Sicily, and yet even
this was not absolutely pure, for, separately invisible, the existence of
fine particles could yet be inferred from their action on the light near
the sun's edge, so that even here we had not got absolutely above that
dust-shell which seems to encircle our whole planet. But we certainly
felt ourselves not only in an upper, but a different region. We were
on the ridge of the continent, and the winds which tore by had little
in common with the air below, and were bearing past us (according
to the geologists) dust which had once formed part of the soil of
China, and been carried across the Pacific Ocean ; for here we were
lifted into the great encircling currents of the globe, and, " near to
the sun in lonely lands," were in the right conditions to study the
differences between his rays at the surface and at the bottom of that
turbid sea where we had left the rest of mankind. We descended the
peak and hailed with joy the first arrival of our mule-trains with the
requisite apparatus at the mountain-camp, and found that it had suf-
fered less than might be expected, considering the pathless character
of the wilderness. We went to work to build piers and mount tele-
scopes and siderostats, in the scene shown by the next illustration on
the screen, taken from a sketch of my own, where these rocks in the
immediate foreground rise to thrice the height of St. Paul's. We
suffered from cold (the ice forming three inches deep in the tents at
night) and from mountain-sickness, but we were too busy to pay much
attention to bodily comfort, and worked with desperate energy to
utilize the remaining autumn days, which were all too short.

Here, as below, the sunlight entered a darkened tent, and was spread
into a spectrum, which was explored throughout by the bolometer,
measuring, on the same separate rays which we had studied below
in the desert, all of which were different up here, all having grown
stronger, but in very different proportions. On the screen is the spec-
trum as seen in the desert, drawn on a conventional scale, neither pris-
matic nor normal, but such that the intensity of the energy shall be
the same in each part, as it is represented here by these equal perpen-
diculars in every color. Fix your attention on these three as types,
and you will see better what we found on the mountain, and what we
inferred as to the state of things still higher up, at the surface of the
aerial sea.

You will obtain, perhaps, a clearer idea, however, from the follow-
ing statement, where I use, not the exact figures used in calculation,
but round numbers, to illustrate the process employed. I may premise
that the visible spectrum extends from H (in the extreme blue) to A
(in the deepest red), or from near 40 (the ray of yjnf.ow of a millimetre
in wave-length) to near 80. All below 80, to the right, is the invisible
infra-red spectrum.

VOL. XXVII. — 42

658

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Now, the shaded curve above the spectrum represents the amount
of energy in the sun's rays at the foot of the mountain, and was ob-
tained in this way : Fix your attention for a moment on any single
part of the spectrum, for instance, that whose wave-length is 60. If
the heat in this ray, as represented by the
bolometer at the foot of the mountain, was
(let us suppose) 2°, on any arbitrary scale
we draw a vertical line, two inches, or two
feet high over that part of the spectrum.
If the heat at another point, such as 40,
were but \°, a line would be drawn there
a quarter of an inch high, and so on, till
these vertical lines mark out the shaded
parts of the drawing, the gaps and depres-
sions in whose outline correspond to the
" cold bands " already spoken of. Again,
if on top of the mountain we measure all
these over once more, we shall find all are
hotter, so that we must up there make all
our lines higher, but in very different pro-
portions. At 60, for instance, the heat
(and light) may have grown from 2° to 3°,
or increased one half, while above 40 the / /

heat (and light) may have grown from

or increased

times.

mountain measurements give another spec

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trum, the energies in each part of which are defined by the middle
dotted line, which we see indicates very much greater energy whether
heat or light in the blue end than below. Next, the light or heat
which would be observed at the surface of the atmosphere is found
in this way. If the mountain-top rises through one half the absorbing
mass of this terrestrial atmosphere (it does not quite do so, in fact),
and, by getting rid of that lower half, the ray 60 has grown in bright-

SUNLIGHT AND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE. 659

ness from two to three, or half as much again, in going up to the top
it would gain half as much more, or become 4£, while the ray near 40,
which has already increased to five times what it was, would increase
five times more, or to 25. Each separate ray increasing thus nearly
in some geocentric progression (though the heat, as a whole, does not),
you see how we are able, by repeating this process at every point, to
build up our outer or highest curve, which represents the light and
heat at the surface of the atmosphere. These have grown out of all
proportion at the blue end, as you see by the outer dotted curve, and
now we have attained, by actual measurement, that evidence which we
sought, and by thus reproducing the spectrum outside the atmosphere,
and then recombining the colors by like methods to those you have
seen on the screen, we finally get the true color of the sun, which tends,
broadly speaking, to blue.

It is so seldom that the physical investigator meets any novel fact
quite unawares, or finds anything except that in the field where he is
seeking, that he must count it an unusual experience to come unex-
pectedly on even the smallest discovery. This experience I had on
one of the last days of work on the spectrum on the mountain. I was
engaged in exploring that great invisible heat-region, still but so par-
tially known, or, rather, I was mapping in that great " dark continent "
of the spectrum, and by the aid of the exquisite sky and the new in-
strument (the bolometer) found I could carry the survey further than
any had been before. I substituted the prism for the grating, and
measured on in that unknown region till I had passed the ultima Thule
of previous travelers, and finally came to what seemed the very end of
the invisible heat-spectrum beyond what had previously been known.
This was in itself a return for much trouble, and I was about rising
from my task, when it occurred to me to advance the bolometer still
farther, and I shall not forget the surprise and emotion with which I
found new and yet unrecognized regions below — a new invisible spec-
trum beyond the farthest limits of the old one.

I will anticipate here by saying that after we got down to lower
earth again the explorations and mapping of this new region were con-
tinued. The amount of solar energy included in this new extension of
the invisible region is much less than that of the visible spectrum, while
its length upon the wave-length scale is equal to all that previously
known, visible and invisible, as you will see better by this view, having
the same thing on the normal as well as the prismatic scale. If it be
asked which of these is correct, the answer is, " Both of them." Both
rightly interpreted mean just the same thing, but in the lower one we
can more conveniently compare the ground of the researches of others
with these. These great gaps I was at first in doubt about, but more
recent researches at Allegheny make it probable that they are caused
by absorption in our own atmosphere, and not in that of the sun.

We would gladly have stayed longer, in spite of physical discom-

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fort, but the formidable descent and the ensuing desert journey were
before us, and certainly the reign of perpetual winter around us grew
as hard to bear as the heats of the desert summer had been. On
September 10th we sent our instruments and the escort back by the
former route, and, ourselves unencumbered, started on the adventurous
descent of the eastern precipices by a downward climb, which, if suc-
cessful, would carry us to the plains in a single day. I at least shall
never forget that day, nor the scenery of more than Alpine grandeur
which we passed in our descent, after first climbing by frozen lakes
in the northern shadow of the great peak, till we crossed the eastern
ridges, through a door so narrow that only one could pass it at a time,
by clinging with hands and feet as he swung round the shoulder of
the rocks — to find that he had passed in a single minute from the view
of winter to summer, the prospect of the snowy peaks behind shut
out, and instantly exchanged for that below of the glowing valley
and the little oasis where the tents of the lower camp were still
pitched, the tents themselves invisible, but the oasis looking like a
green scarf dropped on the broad floor of the desert. We climbed
still downward by scenery unique in my recollection. This view of
the ravine on the screen is little more than a memorandum made by
one of the party in a few minutes' halt part-way down, as we followed
the ice-stream between the tremendous walls of the defile which rose
two thousand feet, and between which we still descended, till, toward
night, the ice-brook had grown into a mountain-torrent, and, looking
up the long vista of our day's descent, we saw it terminated by the
Peak of Whitney, once more lonely in the fading light of the upper sky.

This site, in some respects unequaled for a physical observatory,
is likely, I am glad to say, to be utilized, the President of the United
States having, on the proper representation of its value to science,
ordered the reservation for such purposes of an area of one hundred
square miles about and inclusive of Mount Whitney.

There is little more to add about the journey back to civilization,
where we began to gather the results of our observation, and to reduce
them — to smelt, so to speak, the metal from the ore we had brought
home — a slow but necessary process, which has occupied a large part
of two years.

The results stated in the broadest way mean that the sun is blue —
but mean a great deal more than that ; this blueness in itself being per-
haps a curious fact only, but, in what it implies, of practical moment.

We deduce m connection with it a new value of the solar heat, so
far altering the old estimates that we now find it capable of melting a
shell of ice sixty yards thick annually over the whole earth, or, what
may seem more intelligible on its practical bearings, of exerting over
one horse-power for each square yard of the normally exposed surface.
We have studied the distribution of this heat in a spectrum whose
limits on the normal scale our explorations have carried to an extent

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 661

of rather more than twice what was previously known, and we have
found that the total loss by absorption from atmosphere is nearly
double what it has been heretofore supposed.

We have found it probable that the human race owes its existence
and preservation even more to the heat-storing action of the atmos-
phere than has been believed.

The direct determination of the effect of water-vapor in this did
not come within our scope ; but that the importance of the blanketing
action of our atmospheric constituents has been in no way overstated
may be inferred when I add that we have found by our experiments
that, if the planet were allowed to radiate freely into space without
any protecting veil, its sunlit surface would probably fall, even in the
tropics, below the temperature of freezing mercury.

I will not go on enumerating the results of these investigations,
but they all flow from the fact, which they in turn confirm, that this
apparently limpid sea above our head, and about us,, is carrying on a
wonderfully intricate work on the sunbeam, and on the heat returned
from the soil, picking out selected parts in hundreds of places, sorting
out incessantly at a task which would keep the sorting demons of Max-
well busy, and, as one result, changing the sunbeam on its way down
to us in the way we have seen.

I have alluded to the practical utilities of these researches, but,
practical or not, I hope we may feel that such facts as we have been
considering about sunlight and the earth's atmosphere may be stones
useful in the future edifice of science, and that if not in our own
hands then in those of others, when our day is over, they may find
the best justification for the trouble of their search, in the fact that
they prove of some use to man.

May I add an expression of my personal gratification in the oppor-
tunity with which you have honored me of bringing these researches
before the Royal Institution, and of my thanks for the kindness with
which you have associated yourselves for an hour, in retrospect at
least, with that climb toward the stars which we have made together,
to find, from light in its fullness, what unsuspected agencies are at
work to produce for us the light of common day ?

■»»»

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.

By SELIM M. FEANKLIN.

BY morals, or the science of morality, is meant that body of prin-
ciples and laws, relating to conduct, which are conducive to the
well-being of humanity. Morality, or, more accurately, the art of
morality, is the carrying out in practice the laws which the science has
established.

662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

To understand clearly the definition of the science, it is necessary
to ascertain what the well-being of humanity is. This can be done
only by tracing all motives and feelings to their ultimate cause. This
ultimate cause is the most powerful instinct implanted in human na-
ture— the preservation of life, which includes our own life and that of
our offspring. We live and we want to live. Unconsciously we will
flee from danger. We will fight frantically against death. In the
presence of great danger we lose our reason, and yet, though volition
is powerless, reflex action makes us struggle for safety. Why we
want to live, why we were ever endowed with life, is more than man
can know ; but of this he is certain, that he does not want to die.
The fact that a mother will sacrifice herself for her child ; that the
man who suffers the tortures of the rack, or of incurable disease, or of
great mental affliction, will prefer oblivion to existence, does not alter
the truth that the love of life is the most powerful instinct implanted
in animals and in man. These exceptions, like many apparent ex-
ceptions to the law of gravitation, can be satisfactorily explained
away.

By the phrase " conducive to the well-being of humanity " is meant
not merely the bare preservation of life, but includes all that which
makes life itself more pleasant and happy, which will insure a more
complete and rounded existence.

All those actions which are conducive to the well-being of humani-
ty, we call good or right ; all those actions which are not so conducive,
we call bad or wrong. Thus there is an absolute standard of right
and wrong.

Already, long, ages ago, it was discovered by experience that a tribe
or nation, and every member thereof, would better serve his own pros-
perity and success by generally telling the truth than by telling false-
hoods ; so nine times out of ten he would tell the truth. The confu-
sion that would arise were every one to tell nine falsehoods to one
truth is inconceivable. The man who had been placed on sentinel
duty, when asked whether he had seen the enemy, would answer no,
although he knew the enemy to be within the hearing of his voice.
The mother would tell her child that certain herbs, which she knew to
be poisonous, were good to eat ; the child would eat, and die. The
father would deny his ability to provide food for his family, although
but an hour before he had slain a buffalo or a deer. Telling the truth
sometimes, and most of the time, is an absolute necessity, depending
not on theological injunctions, but on the very existence of life. Our
rude forefathers of the prehistoric age were aware of this fact, and
they enunciated the general principle that it is wrong to lie. This is
a scientific generalization. It is a law deduced by experience and ob-
servation from a great number of facts, and it is as justly entitled to
be considered a generalization as Newton's law of gravitation or Pas-
cal's principle of hydrostatics. The experience of nations and of ages

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 663

has firmly established this principle ; it is incorporated into all codes
of morals.

In the physical sciences we explain any particular phenomenon by
laws already established. We explain the reason why any particular
candle burns and gives off light, by laws already discovered of oxida-
tion and incandescence. So in the science of morality we deter-
mine whether any particular action is right or wrong, by referring
the action under consideration to laws that have eebn already estab-
lished.

Certain laws conduce more to the well-being of humanity than oth-
ers. Thus, the law, It is wrong to murder, is of vastly more impor-
tance than the law, It is wrong to lie. Because, if we all committed
murder, the world would be depopulated ; while, if we all told lies,
there would be a sad confusion, yet some of us would manage to exist.
Hence, to commit murder is a greater wrong than to tell a lie, and a
man would be perfectly justified in telling a lie in order to escape
either becoming a murderer or being himself murdered. In this man-
ner we can test the relative importance of moral laws.

As the attraction of gravitation differs under different circum-
stances, although the law of gravitation always remains the same, so
can a falsehood, according to circumstances, be a greater or lesser
wrong — be a so-called white lie of society, be the business lie of the
dishonest tradesman, or the criminal lie of the perjurer — and still the
law, It is wrong to lie, would remain unassailed. We determine by
deduction whether any particular action is right or wrong : If the act
is in conflict with a law of morality, it is wrong ; if not in conflict, it
is right.

The laws of morality are not all of the same relative importance.
Those laws which are more vital to the well-being of humanity are
more important than those laws which are less vital. Hence, occasions
can arise when we are justified in breaking one law, in order that we
may escape breaking another of greater importance.

The thinking mind of to-day asks, Is there a scientific basis for mo-
rality ? I think there is. The modified doctrine of utility, or, as I
have expressed it, conducive to the well-being of humanity, is the basis
which science seeks. We deduce, from the experience of races and
nations for centuries and for ages, the laws in regard to conduct which
are for man's best welfare. These laws, systematically arranged, would
constitute the science of morality or morals. As yet such a science
does not exist. The material is all at hand ; it but awaits the master-
workman to fashion it into shape.

An incidental question here arises. Had we a most complete sci-
ence of morality, would it affect, either for better or for worse, the
morality of the masses ? At present the dictates of morality are en-
forced in three ways : By the so-called criminal or penal laws of the
land ; by public opinion, or the opinion of society ; by the teachings of

66± THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

punishment after death. These three sanctions must always exist.
The science of morality might not have any effect in compelling its
laws to he observed, hut it undoubtedly would explain to many minds
which now are groping in darkness and disbelief the why and where-
fore of moral codes.

EECENT PEOGEESS IN BIOLOGY.

By E. EAY LANKESTEE.

THE English universities have at various times in their history been
remarkable as centers of scientific investigation and progress.
The Eoyal Society took its origin in Oxford about two hundred and
forty years ago, and from time to time there have been brilliant groups
of scientific investigators in either university who have, though sepa-
rated by intervals of darkness, sufficed to maintain the character of
these institutions as something more than schools of classical training
or mathematical gymnastic. At the present moment the energy of
the Biological school, which has grown up in Cambridge within the
last fifteen years, forms one of the most remarkable features among
the many recent evidences of healthy life and of capacity for the per-
formance of its great national duties which that time-honored institu-
tion has afforded.

One of the most fascinating problems of biology is that involved
in the attempt to trace out the pedigrees of the immense variety of
living plants and animals according to the teachings of Charles Dar-
win. Every animal grows from a perfectly simple homogeneous egg
to the more or less complicated form which it presents when adult,
and we have reason to believe that the changes through which the
growing developing " embryo " passes correspond to a large extent,
according to certain definite laws, with the changes through which its
ancestors have passed in the greater evolution of the world. Accord-
ingly, these embryonic changes, if rightly understood, can furnish us
with the most important evidence as to the ancestry, and therewith
the pedigree and family relationships, of the various kinds of existing
animals. The study of embryology, from this point of view, was fol-
lowed with great success by the late Professor Frank Balfour (whose
early death has caused incalculable loss to science), and is being prose-
cuted in Germany and America, but nowhere more energetically than
by Balfour's pupils. It will be readily understood that if the history
of growth from the egg can furnish a clew to the ancestral relation-
ships of various animals, then the discovery of this history in the case
of curious and abnormal animals must be especially important. The
histories of whole groups of common animals will necessarily be very
much alike, and there is no likelihood of one differing from another in

RECENT PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY. 665

essential respects. Thus the facts with regard to the growth of birds
from the egg are, in regard to large features, the same which have
been carefully ascertained with regard to the common fowl. The
growth from the egg of ordinary hairy quadrupeds presents the same
characters as that of the rabbit, the dog, and man. The history of
the changes of the eggs of fish on their way from simple homogeneity
to the rich complexity of adult life is practically the same for all fish
truly so called ; and so we may say of insects — that one insect fur-
nishes the history which is true of all. This, be it remembered, re-
lates only to large and general features. But naturalists are acquainted
with a number of strangely abnormal animals which will not enter into
large groups and even defy classification, being neither " flesh, fowl,
nor good red herring." These recalcitrant animals are not objection-
able to the zoologist ; on the contrary, they are his favorites. It is
these which he is most eager to study, and it is from them that he ex-
pects to obtain information which will clear up doubtful points in the
scheme of relationships or pedigree which he has provisionally con-
structed on the basis of his acquaintance with less isolated forms.
These exceptional forms of animal life are found in various parts of
the world, and are often difficult of access. Nevertheless, if the nat-
uralist is to study the growth from the egg of these animals, he must
follow them to their native homes. Botanists have a great advantage
over zoologists in the fact that most plants are readily transported
from one locality to another, and can be cultivated in artificial climates
produced in glass houses. We have at present no such skill in the
treatment of animals, and accordingly the energetic Cambridge natu-
ralists have risen to the necessities of the case. Within the last three
years special journeys have been undertaken from Cambridge by mem-
bers of its biological school to the uttermost parts of the earth, with
the sole purpose of studying the growth from the egg of strange and
interesting animals, only to be obtained in the remote regions thus
visited. Mr. Caldwell, Fellow of Caius College, has gone to Austra-
lia, and is still there, for the purpose of studying the history of the
growth from the egg of the duck-billed Platypus or duck-mole ( Or-
nithorhynchus) and the spiny ant-eater (Echidna), as well as of the
extraordinary lung-bearing, and therefore air-breathing, fish of Queens-
land known as the Barra-munda ( Ceratodus Forsteri). Mr. Adam
Sedgwick, Fellow of Trinity College, went in 1883 to the Cape of
Good Hope expressly for the purpose of collecting live specimens and,
if possible, eggs and young, of a creature very much like a caterpillar
in appearance, and known as Peripatus. He obtained the most com-
plete success, brought home to England three hundred living speci-
mens of the extraordinary Peripatus, and has obtained from them since
they have been in England young in all stages of development, which
will enable him very soon to give a most valuable account of the
growth from the egg of this strange form. A third member of the

666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Cambridge school — Mr. "William Bateson, of Pembroke College — has
been twice across the Atlantic, in 1883 and 1884, to the coast of Mary-
land, U. S. A., in order to study the growth from the egg of Balano-
glossus, the most important and (to the zoologist) entertaining of all
worms, since it has gill-slits like a fish and rudiments of a backbone.
Mr. Bateson has made and already published (in a special supplement
of the " Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science," 1885) a complete
study of the development of this worm. It is perhaps as well briefly
to mention here that a " complete study " in these questions means the
preparation and preservation in alcohol of hundreds of specimens of
different stages of growth (often very minute) of the animal under
investigation, and the subsequent cutting into series of consecutive
slices, each about ^oir or> an mcn thick, of a sample of each of these
stages ; the scrutiny of these sections wi#th the microscope, and the
reconstruction or building up of the actual structure of the animal at
each stage by a mental combination of the sections.

The expedition undertaken by Mr. Caldwell (who was aided in his
equipment by funds from the Government Grant Committee of the
Royal Society) is perhaps the most interesting, because the animals
which he has gone to study are of large size and already more or less
familial. The Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna are hairy quad-
rupeds (mammals) peculiar to Australasia, which differ from all other
hairy quadrupeds in having, like birds, but a single aperture to the
exterior for the intestine and the urino-genital canals, and in having
the skeleton of the shoulder-girdle and some other features of struct-
ure similar to those of reptiles. Like those of reptiles, their bodies
are comparatively cold, instead of being kept to a definite "blood-
heat " (100° Fahr.) as are those of all other mammals. It had often
been reported, and some kind of evidence had been given to support
the statement, that these strange beasts lay their eggs like birds and
reptiles, instead of retaining the egg-like structure within the body
and allowing it there to develop to a certain condition of maturity as
do all other hairy quadrupeds. One of Mr. Caldwell's objects was
definitely to ascertain whether these animals lay eggs or not, and, of
more importance than that, to examine minutely the whole history of
the growth in the egg, and to compare it on the one hand with the
corresponding development of birds and reptiles, on the other with
that of ordinary hairy quadrupeds or mammals.

Mr. Caldwell has found out all about the eggs of these animals
and collected them in quantities. The Echidna lays a single eggy
which she then carries about with her in a pouch formed by a fold of
skin on the ventral surface of the body, similar to the kangaroo's
pouch.

The duck-mole, on the other hand, lays two eggs at a time and
does not carry them about, but deposits them in her nest, an under-
ground burrow like that of the mole. Naturalists are awaiting with

RECENT PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY. 667

great interest Mr. Caldwell's account of what goes on inside these
eggs while the young one is growing there ; that is to say, an account
of the differences and resemblances between the structures which
gradually arise in these mammals' eggs and those which are familiar
to us as occurring in the case of the common fowl.

With regard to the strange fish, Ceratodus, Mr. Caldwell has been
no less successful, after much disappointment and persevering search.
He has lately sent home a series of photographs showing groups of
the black men and women whom he employed to catch the fish, stand-
ing by the river-side and holding each one in his arms a newly capt-
ured specimen, while some twenty or thirty more of the fish are
heaped on the ground. Four years ago, zoologists were glad to buy
spirit-preserved specimens of this fish in London for twenty pounds
apiece. Mr. Caldwell has as yet sent home so few reports of his
doings in Australia, that every one will be interested in the following
letter written from New South Wales in February last :

I shall give you a short account of my doings without apologizing for talking
about myself, because you asked for this. When I wrote you last I was just
beginning my camp-life on the Burnett River, and was very much concerned
about my failure in the search for Oeratodus-eggs. I had invested in an Ameri-
can trap and horses and all the necessaries for camping out. I remained under
canvas from the end of July to the end of November. Roget, my Belgian ser-
vant, was the only white man with me, but the blacks kept continually coming
and adding to the number of my retainers. I had in the end about fifty of all
ages — men, women, and children. I have sent you some photographs which I
took during these months. I carried my camera everywhere, and the pictures
will give you a fine idea of bush scenery and the roads (?) we had to traverse.
I became very expert with my four-in-hand. It is a very different thing from
driving a team along good roads; but I was fortunate in never having a serious
smash. The blacks were more than useful : I could have done little or nothing
without them. They found over five hundred Echidna in four weeks, while the
"gins" searched the weeds of the river for Ceratodus-eggs. Let me tell you
how I found Oeratodus-spawn. From the 24th of April (1884), when I found
males ready to spawn, I had a pair, male and female, under constant observa-
tion in a small water-hole. Up to the beginning of September, though I was
constantly dredging and turning up the river, I got no clew to the spawning-
ground. I determined to give up the search for the year, as further stay on the
Burnett interfered with my plans for collecting the eggs of the duck -mole. All
August I had been getting the eggs of the duck-mole, containing very early
stages of the young; but with September the eggs had all been laid, and my
plan was to shift my camp south to the colder district of New England, where,
as I found in 1883, the duck-mole is a month or six weeks later in breeding.
One evening early in September I was shooting duck-moles as usual, when I
came to a place on the bank of the river where I could see several Ceratodus
swimming about backward and forward in shallow water. It was too dark to
look for anything that night, so I marked the place and described to the blacks
what I expected. They were down at the river by daylight, and shortly after-
ward returned with Ceratodus-eggs. The egg is like that of a newt, and is laid
in the water-weed, every egg separately. This changed my plans. I hoped

668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

then to get all stages in the growth of Ceratodus in a few weeks, and to try for
the duck-moles again in December about the Snowy River in the extreme south
of New South Wales. But it was not until the end of November that I got
away. I could not succeed for a long time in rearing the larvae (tadpoles) of
the Ceratodus after they were hatched. At last I succeeded, and have now I
believe every stage preserved. I have now in my laboratory in Sydney some
young living specimens reared from the eggs under my eyes.

Is it not extraordinary that Echidna has not learned to contain her egg in
the uterus a little longer? The plan of laying it only to carry it in a pouch is
an awkward habit that might be so easily reformed. The dnck-mole has two
eggs at a time. The papers here have copied from " Nature " a notice about my
work, and mention an old paper by Geoffroy St.-Hilaire where Platypus (duck-
mole) eggs are figured. These eggs, however, happen not to be duck-mole's
eggs at all. St.-llilaire obtained them from bushmen who found them in the
Hawkesbury River. They were eggs of the common river-turtle, as is clear from
the figures. The duck-mole's egg is one quarter of their size. ... I am at
present in the northwestern district of New South Wales — up the Mclntyre
Eiver — collecting the embryos of marsupials (kangaroos, etc.). I have bought
a light buggy, and move about from station to station in search of kangaroo-
drives. The kangaroos have decreased in number, owing to the drought in the
last few years, and the place I am in now is, I believe, almost the only one
where it is still possible to get a thousand kangaroos into a "yard " in one day.
"Yarding" has been generally superseded by shooting. A camp of kangaroo-
shooters will travel about on a run for months, being paid so much a scalp. It
is very slow work collecting embryos with these shooting-parties, and, besides
this, the embryos are too delicate to be carried on horseback. Accordingly, I
have tried hard to get to a yarding-drive where I could put up a table and do
all the preserving in one place. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday next
week the whole district is going to muster to drive kangaroos into a pit, and we
hope to get five thousand. My plans after this are pretty well settled. I have
made up my mind to stay out until another season is over. I go after "native
cats" in March and April, opossums in April and May in the south of New
South Wales. In June I shall get emu on the western downs of Queensland,
two hundred miles west of Roma. In July and August I shall have a camp of
one or two hundred blacks on the Burnett Eiver. At the end of August and
September I shall camp with some white shooters on the rivers near where I
am now (the Dumeresq, Mclntyre, Mole, and Severn). In November I shall
see you in London. I shall send you a description of some of the important
features in the early growth of the young in the egg of the duck-mole and
the Echidna when I get down to Sydney. I shall have no time to make
sections until I have brought my material safely home to England. — Nine-
teenth Century.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS.

By JAMES G. FEAZEK.

N his " Roman Questions," that delightful storehouse of old-world
lore, Plutarch asks, " When a man who has been falsely reported
to have died abroad returns home alive, why is he not admitted by
the door, but gets up on the tiles, and so lets himself down into the

I

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 669

house ? " The curious custom to which Plutarch here refers prevails
in modern Persia, for we read in "Hajji Baba" (c. 18) of the man who
went through " the ceremony of making his entrance over the roof,
instead of through the door ; for such is the custom, when a man who
has been thought dead returns home alive." From a passage in Aga-
thias (ii, 23) we may, perhaps, infer that the custom in Persia is at
least as old as the sixth century of our era. A custom so remote from
our modern ways must necessarily have its roots far back in the his-
tory of our race. Imagine a modern Englishman, whom his friends
had given up for dead, rejoining the home circle by coming down the
chimney instead of entering by the front door ! In this paper I propose
to show that the custom originated in certain primitive beliefs and
observances touching the dead — beliefs and observances by no means
confined to Greece and Rome, but occurring in similar if not identical
forms in many parts of the world.

The importance attached by the Romans in common with most
other nations to the due performance of burial rites is well known, and
need not be insisted on. For the sake of my argument, however, it is
necessary to point out that the attentions bestowed on the dead sprang
not so much from the affections as from the fears of the survivors.
For, as every one knows, ghosts of the unburied dead haunt the earth
and make themselves exceedingly disagreeable, especially to their
undutiful relatives. Instances would be superfluous ; it is the way of
ghosts all the world over, from Brittany to Samoa.* But burial by
itself was by no means a sufficient safeguard against the return of the
ghost ; many other precautions were taken by primitive man for the
purpose of excluding or barring the importunate dead. Some of these
precautions I wTill now enumerate. They exhibit an ingenuity and fer-
tility of resource worthy of a better cause.

In the first place, an appeal was made to the better feelings of the
ghost. He was requested to go quietly to the grave, and at the grave
he was requested to stay there.f

But to meet the possible case of hardened ghosts, upon whom moral
persuasion would be thrown away, more energetic measures were
resorted to. Thus among the South Slavonians and Bohemians, the
bereaved family, returning from the grave, pelted the ghost of their
deceased relative with sticks, stones, and hot coals.J The Tschuwas-
che, a tribe in Finland, had not even the decency to wait till he was
fairly in the grave, but opened fire on him as soon as the coffin was
outside the house.*

Again, heavy stones were piled on his grave to keep him down, on

* Sebillot, " Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne," i, p. 238 ; Turner,
" Nineteen Years in Polynesia," p. 233.

f Gray, " China," i, pp. 300, 304.

% Ralston, " Songs of the Russian People," p. 319 ; Bastian, " Mensch," ii, p. 329.

* Castren, "Finnische Mythologie," p. 120.

670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the principle of "sit tibi terra gravis.'''' This is the origin of funeral
cairns and tombstones. As the ghosts of murderers and their victims
are especially restless, every one who passes their graves in Arabia, in
Germany, and in Spain, is bound to add a stone to the pile. In Old-
enburg (and no doubt elsewhere) if the grave is shallow the ghost will
certainly walk.*

One of the most striking ways of keeping down the dead man is to
divert the course of a river, bury him in its bed, and then allow the
river to resume its course. It was thus that Alaric was buried, and
Commander Cameron found the same mode of burial still in vogue for
chieftains among a tribe in Central Africa, f

The expedient of inclosing the grave with a fence too high for the
ghost to " take " it, especially without a run, is common to Finland
and the South Seas. J

Another simple but effectual plan was to nail the dead man to the
coffin (the Tschuwasche again),* or to tie his feet together (among the
Arabs), or his neck to his legs (among the Troglodytes, Damaras, and
New-Zealanders).| The Wallachians drive a long nail through the
skull and lay the thorny stem of a wild rose-bush on the corpse.A The
Calif ornians clinched matters by breaking his spine. () The corpses of
suicides and vampires had stakes run through them. J

Other mutilations of the dead were intended not so much to keep
the dead man in his grave as to render his ghost harmless. Thus the
Australians cut off the right thumb of a slain enemy, that his ghost
might not be able to draw the bow,| and Greek murderers used to hack
off the extremities of their victims with a similar object.^

Again, various steps were taken to chase away the lingering ghost
from the home he loved too well. Thus the New-Zealanders thrash
the corpse in order to hasten the departure of the soul ; ** the Algon-
quinsff beat the walls of the death-chamber with sticks to drive out the
ghost ; the Chinese knock on the floor with a hammer ; \\ and the Ger-

*Sonntag, " Todtenbestattung," p. 197; Brand's "Popular Antiquities," ii, p. 809 ;
Wuttke, "Deutsche Aberglaube," § 754, cp. 739, 748, 756, 753, 761 ; Klemra, "Cultur-
geschichte," ii, p. 225 ; Waitz, " Anthropologic der Naturvolker," ii, pp. 195, 324, 325,
524 ; Id., iii, p. 202.

f "Across Africa," i, p. 110.

% Castren, op. cit., 121 ; Bastian, ii, p. 368.

* Bastian, ii, pp. 337, 365.

fl Strabo, xvi, 17 ; Diodorus, iii, 33 ; "Wood, " Natural History of Man," i, p. 348 ;
Yates, " New Zealand," p. 136.

A H. F. Tozer, " Researches in the Highlands of Turkey," ii, p. 92.

Q Bastian, ii, p. 331.

$ Bastian, ii, p. 365 ; Ralston, p. 413 ; heads of vampires cut off (Wuttke, § 765 ; Top-
pen, " Aberglauben aus Masurcn," p. 114; Tettau u. Temme, " Volkssagen," p. 275).

X Tylor, "Primitive Culture," i, p. 451.

J Suidas, s. /uctcrxaAicrflTJvai, fj.airxo-\i<TfxaTa.

** Klemm, iv, p. 325 ; Yates, "New Zealand," p. 136.

ft Brinton, " Myths of the New World," p. 255. \% Gray, " China," i, p. 280.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 671

mans wave towels about, or sweep the ghost out with a besom,* just
as in old Rome the heir solemnly swept out the ghost of his predeces-
sor with a broom made specially for the purpose, f In ancient Mexico
professional " chuckers-out " were employed, who searched the house
diligently till they found the lurking ghost of the late proprietor, whom
they there and then summarily ejected.^

The favorite " beat " of the ghost is usually the spot where he died.
Hence, in order to keep him at least from the house, the Caffres carry
a sick man out into the open air to die, and the Maoris used to remove
the sick into sheds. If a Caffre or Maori died before he could be car-
ried out, the house was tabooed and deserted.* There are traces in
Greece, Rome, and China of this custom of carrying dying persons
into the open air. ||

But in case the ghost should, despite all precautions, make his
way back from the grave, steps were taken to barricade the house
against him. Thus, in some parts of Russia and East Prussia an axe
or a lock is laid on the threshold, or a knife is hung over the door,A
and in Germany as soon as the coffin is carried out of the house all the
doors and windows are shut, whereas, so long as the body is still in the
house, the windows (and sometimes the doors) are left constantly open
to allow the soul to escape.^ In some parts of England every bolt and
lock in the house is unfastened, that the ghost of the dying man may
fly freely away. J

But, if primitive man knew how to bully, he also knew how to out-
wit the ghost. For example, a ghost can only find his way back to
the house by the way by which he left it. This little weakness did
not escape the vigilance of our ancestors, and they took their meas-
ures accordingly. The coffin was carried out of the house, not by the
door, but by a hole made for the purpose in the wall, and this hole
was carefully stopped up as soon as the body had been passed through
it ; so that, when the ghost strolled quietly back from the grave, he
found to his surprise that there was no thoroughfare. The credit of
this ingenious device is shared equally by Greenlanders, Hottentots,

* Wuttke, §§ 725, 737 ; F. Schmidt, Sitten u. Gebraiiche in Thiiringen," p. 85 ; Kohler,
" Volksbrauch," p. 254.

f Festus, s. v. everriator ; cf. Gray, " China," i, p. 287.
\ Bancroft, "Native Races of the Pacific States," i, p. 641.

* Lichtenstein, "Travels in Southern Africa," i, pp. 258, 259; J. Campbell, "South
Africa," p. 515, sq. ; Taylor, "New Zealand," p. 170 ; Yates, "New Zealand," p. 86.

| Euripides, " Alcestis," v, 234 sqq., cf. 205 ; Scholiast on Aristophanes, " Lysistrata,"
v, 611 ; Seneca, Epist. I, xii, 3 ; Gray, " China," i, p. 279. In modern Greece, as soon as
the corpse is out of the house, the whole house is scoured (C. Wachsmuth, " Das alte
Griechenland im neuem," p. 120).

A Ralston, p. 318; Wuttke, §§ 736, 766.

0 Sonntag, p- 169 ; Wuttke, §§ 737, 725 ; Gubernatis, " Usi funebri," p. 47 ; Lammert,
" Volksmedezin," pp. 103, 105, 106.

X Dyer, "English Folk-lore," p. 230; Brand, "Popular Antiquities," ii, p. 231.

672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Bechuanas, Samoieds, Ojibways, Algonquins, Laosians, Hindoos, Thibe-
tans, Siamese, Chinese, and Feejeeans. These special openings, or "doors
of the dead," are still to be seen in a village near Amsterdam, and they
were common in some towns of central Italy, as Perugia and Assisi.*
A trace of the same custom survives in Thiiringen, where it was thought
that the ghost of a man who has been hanged will return to tbe house
if the body be not taken out by a window instead of the door.f

The Siamese, not content with carrying the dead man out by a
special opening, endeavor to make assurance doubly sure by hurrying
him three times round the house at full speed — a proceeding well cal-
culated to bewilder the poor soul in the coffin.J

The Araucanians adopt the plan of strewing ashes behind the coffin
as it is being borne to the grave, in order that the ghost may not be
able to find his way back.*

The very general practice of closing the eyes of the dead appears
to have originated with a similar object ; it was a mode of blindfold-
ing the dead, that he might not see the way by which he was carried to
his last home. At the grave, where he was to rest forever, there was
of course no motive for concealment ; hence the Romans,| and ap-
parently the Siamese,A opened the eyes of the dead man at the funeral
pyre, just as we should unbandage the eyes of an enemy after conduct-
ing him to his destination. The notion that, if the eyes of the dead
be not closed, his ghost will return to fetch away another of the house-
hold, still exists in Germany, Bohemia, and England. Q In some parts
of Russia they place a coin on each of the dead man's eyes. J

With a similar object, the corpse is carried out of the house feet
foremost, for if he were carried out head foremost his eyes would be
turned toward the door, and he might therefore find his way back.
This custom is observed, and this reason is assigned for it, in many
parts of Germany and among the Indians of Chili4 Conversely, in

* Yule on Marco Polo, i, p. 188 ; Crantz, " Greenland," i, p. 237 ; ' Tylor, " Prim. Cult.,"
ii, p. 26; Waitz, " Anthropologic," iii, p. 199; Williams and Calvert, "Feejee," p. 168
Sonntag, p. 51 ; Bastian, "Mensch," ii, p. 322; Klemm, ii, pp. 221, 225; id., iii, p. 293
C. Bock, " Temples and Elephants," p. 262 ; Pallegoix, " Siam," i, p. 245 ; Bowring, " Siam,'
i, p. 222 ; Gubernatis, p. 52 ; C. J. Anderson, " Lake Ngami," 466. A dead pope is car-
ried out by a special door, which is then blocked up till the next pope dies.

f Wuttke, § 756.

% Pallegoix, " Siam," i, p. 245 ; Bowring, " Siam," i, p. 222. In some parts of Scot-
land the body used to be carried three times round the church (C. Rogers, " Social Life in
Scotland," i, p. 167).

* Klemm, v, p. 51 ; "Wood, " Natural History of Man," ii, p. 565.
1 Pliny, N. II., xi, 150.

A C. Bock saw that the eyes of a dead man at the pyre were open (in Siam), and he
says that in Lao it was the custom to close the eyes of the dead (" Temples and Elephants,"
pp. 58, 261).

0 Wuttke, § 725 ; Dyer, " English Folk-lore," p. 230; Grohmann, "Aberglauben," p. 188.

% Gubernatis, " Usi funebri," p. 50.

X Wuttke, § 736 ; Klemm, ii, p. 101.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 673

Persia, when a man is setting out on a journey, he steps out of the
house with his face turned toward the door, hoping thereby to secure
a safe return.* In Thtiringen and some parts of the north of England
it used to be the custom to carry the body to the grave by a round-
about way.f

I venture to conjecture that the old Roman usage of burying by
night I may have originally been intended, like the customs I have
mentioned, to keep the way to the grave a secret from the dead, and
it is possible that the same idea gave rise to the practice of masking
the dead — a practice common to the prehistoric inhabitants of Greece
and to the Aleutian-Islanders.*

To a desire to deceive the dead man I would also refer the curious
custom among the Bohemians of putting on masks and behaving in a
strange way as they returned from a burial. | They hoped, in fact, so
to disguise themselves that the dead man might not know and there-
fore might not follow them. Whether the wide-spread mourning cus-
toms of smearing the body with mud or paint, mutilating it by gashes,
cutting off the hair or letting it grow, and putting on beggarly attire
or clothes of an unusual color (black, white, or otherwise), may not
have also originated in the desire to disguise and therefore to protect
the living from the dead, I can not here attempt to determine. This
much is certain, that mourning customs are always as far as possible
the reverse of those of ordinary life. Thus, at a Roman funeral, the
sons of the deceased walked with their heads covered, the daughters
with their heads uncovered, thus exactly reversing the ordinary usage,
which was that women wore coverings on their heads, while men did
not. Plutarch, who notes this, observes that in like manner in Greece
men and women during a period of mourning exactly inverted their
usual habits of wearing the hair — the ordinary practice of men being
to cut it short, that of women to leave it long.A

The objection, deeply rooted in many races, to utter the names of
deceased persons,^ sprang no doubt from a fear that the dead might
hear and answer to his name. In East Prussia, if the deceased is
called thrice by his name, he appears. J This reluctance to mention
the names of the dead has modified whole languages. Thus among

* "Hajji Baba," c. \,fin.
f F. Schmidt, p. 94.

I Servius on Virg. Mn., i, 186. Night burial was sometimes practiced in Scotland
(C. Rogers, " Social Life in Scotland," i, p. 161), and commonly in Thiiringen (F. Schmidt,
p. 96). Cf. Mungo Park, " Travels," p. 414.

* Schliemann, "Mycenae," pp. 198, 219-223, 311 sq. ; Bancroft, "Native Races," i, p.
93. The Aztecs masked their dead kings (Bancroft, ii, 606), and the Siamese do so still
(Pallegoix, "Royaume de Siam," i, p. 247).

| Bastian, ii, p. 328.

A Plutarch, " Rom. Quaest.," 14.

() Tylor, " Early History of Mankind," p. 142.

X Wuttke, § 754.

vol. xxvii— 43

674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Australians, Tasmanians, and Abipones, if the name of a deceased
person happened to be a common name — e. g., the name of an animal,
or plant — this name was abolished, and a new one substituted for it.*
During the residence of the Jesuit missionary Dobritzhoffer among
the Abipones, the name for tiger was thus changed three times.f
Among the Indians of Columbia near relatives of a deceased person
often change their names, under the impression that the ghost will
return if he hears the familiar names. J

I must pass lightly over the kindlier modes of barring the dead by
providing for the personal comforts of the poor ghost in his long
home. One instance, however, of the minute care with which the
survivors will provide for the wants of the dead, in order that he may
have no possible excuse for returning, I can not refrain from mention-
ing. In the German district of Voigtland,** with its inclement sky, they
never forget to place in the coffin an umbrella and a pair of goloshes.
Whether these utensils are intended for use in heaven, or elsewhere,
is a question which I must leave to theologians.

A pathetic example is afforded by some Indian tribes of New
Mexico, who drop milk from the mother's breast on the lips of her
dead babe.||

The nearly universal practice of leaving food on the tomb, or of
actually passing it into the grave by means of an aperture or tube, is
too well known to need illustration. Like the habit of dressing the
dead or dying in his best clothes, A it probably originated in the
selfish but not unkindly desire to induce the perturbed spirit to rest in
the grave, and not come plaguing the survivors for food and raiment.

Merely mentioning the customs of building a little house for the
accommodation of the soul either on the grave or on the way to
it,^ and of leaving straw on the road, in the hope that the weary ghost
would sit down on it and never get as far as the house,| I now come
to two modes of barring the ghost, which from their importance I
have reserved to the last — I mean the methods of barring the ghost
by fire and water.

First, by fire. After a funeral certain heathen Siberians, who
greatly fear the dead, seek to get rid of the ghost of the departed by
leaping over a fire.J Similarly at Rome, mourners returning from a

* Tylor, ibid., p. 144 sqq.

\ Klemm, ii, p. 99 ; Dobritzhoffer, " The Abipones," ii, p. 208 sqq.
\ Bancroft, " Native Races," i. p. 248.

* Wuttke, § 734.

| Bancroft, i, p. 360.

A Gray, "China," i, pp. 278-280; Klemm, ii, pp. 104, 221, 225; id. iv, p. 38; Mar-
shall, "Travels among the Todas," p. 171.

Q Klemm, ii, p. 297 ; Bastian, ii, p. 328 ; Marco Polo, i, c. 40 ; Waitz, " Anthropolo-
gic," ii, p. 195; id., iii, p. 202; Chalmers and Gill, "New Guinea," p. 56.

X Wuttke, § 739 ; Toppen, p. 109.

X Meiners, " Geschichte der Religionen," ii, p. 303.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 675

funeral stepped over fire,* and in China they sometimes do so to this
day.f Taken in connection with the Siberian custom, the original in-
tention of this ceremony of stepping over fire at Rome and in China
can hardly have been other than that of placing a barrier of fire be-
tween the living and the dead. But, as has been the case with so
many other ceremonies, this particular ceremony may well have been
practiced long after its original intention was forgotten. For customs
often live on for ages after the circumstances and modes of thought
which gave rise to them have disappeared, and in their new environ-
ment new motives are invented to explain them. As might have been
expected, the custom itself of stepping over fire often dwindled into a
mere shadow of its former self. Thus the South Slavonians returning
from a funeral are met by an old woman carrying a vessel of live
coals. On these they pour water, or else they take a live coal from
the hearth and fling it over their heads. J The Brahmans contented
themselves with simply touching fire,* and in Ruthenia the mourn-
ers merely look steadfastly at the stove or place their hands on it.||

So much for the barrier by fire. Next for the barrier by water.
" The Lusatian Wends," says Ralston,A " still make a point of plac-
ing water between themselves and the dead as they return from a
burial, even breaking ice for the purpose if necessary." In many parts
of Germany, in modern Greece, and in Cyprus, water is poured out
behind the corpse when it is carried from the house, in the belief that,
if the ghost returns, he will not be able to cross it.Q Sometimes by
night they pour holy water before the door ; the ghost is then thought
to stand and whimper on the farther side.J The inability of spirits
to cross water might be further illustrated from the Bagman's ghastly
story in Apuleius,^ from Paulus's " History of the Lombards," f
from Giraldus Cambrensis's lt Topography of Ireland," ** and from
other sources, ff

Another way of enforcing the water barrier was for the mourners
to plunge into a stream in the hope of drowning, or at least shaking
off, the ghost. Thus, among the Matamba negroes, a widow is bound

* Festus, s. v. aqua et igne.

f Gray, " China," i, pp. 287, 305.
% Ralston, "Songs," p. 319.

* Monier Williams, " Religious Life and Thought in India," pp. 283, 288.
U Ralston, I. c.

A " Songs of the Russian People," p. 320.

0 Wuttke, § 737 ; A. Kuhn, " Markische Sagen," p. 368 ; Temme, " Volkssagen der
Altmark," p. 77 ; Lammert, p. 105 ; Panzer, " Beitrag," i, p. 257 ; " Folk-lore Journal,"
ii, p. 170; Toppen, "Aberglauben aus Masuren," p. 108; C. Wachsmuth, "Das Alte
Griechenland im neuem," p. 119.

$ Wuttke, § 748. $ " Metamorphoses," i, 19, cf. 13.

J iii, c. 34. ** Ch. 19.

f \ Grimm, " Deutsche Mythologie," iii, p. 434 ; Theocritus, 24, 92, 93 ; Homer, " Odyss,"
xi, 26 sqq., Ovid, "Fasti," v, 441; Brent, "The Cyclades," pp. 441, 442; Dennys,
" Folk lore of China," p. 24 ; Lammert, " Volksmedezin," p. 103.

676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hand and foot by the priest, who flings her into the water several
times over, with the intention of drowning her husband's ghost, who
may be supposed to be clinging to his unfeeling spouse.* In Angola,
for a similar purpose, widows adopt the less inconvenient practice of
ducking their late husbands, f In New Zealand all who have attended
a funeral betake themselves to the nearest stream and plunge several
times, head under, in the water. \ In Feejee the sextons always washed
themselves after a burial.* In Tahiti all who assisted at a burial fled
precipitately and plunged into the sea, casting also into the sea the
garments they had worn.|| In some parts of West Africa, after the
corpse has been deposited in the grave, "all the bearers rush to the
water-side and undergo a thorough ablution before they are permitted
to return to the town." A

But the barrier by water, like the barrier by fire, often dwindled
into a mere stunted survival. Thus, after a Roman funeral it was
enough to carry water three times round the persons who had been
engaged in it and to sprinkle them with the water. Q In China, on
the fifth day after a death, the mourners merely wash their eyes and
sprinkle their faces three times with water.J In Cappadocia and
Crete persons returning from a funeral wash their hands.$ In Samoa
they wash their faces and hands with hot water.J In ancient India
it was enough merely to touch water.** In Greece, so long as a dead
body was in the house, a vessel of water stood before the street-door
that all who left the house might sprinkle themselves with it.ff Note
that in this case the water had to be fetched from another house —
water taken from the house in which the corpse lay would not do.
The significance of this fact I shall have occasion to point out pres-
ently.

When considered along with the facts I have mentioned, it can
hardly be doubted that the original intention of this sprinkling with
water was to wash off the ghost who might be following from the
house of death ; and in general I think we may lay down the rule
that, wherever we find a so-called purification by fire or water from
pollution contracted by contact with the dead, we may assume with
much probability that the original intention was to place a physical

* Sonntag, p. 113. \ Id., p. 115.
X Yates, "New Zealand," p. 137 ; Klemm, iv, p. 305.

* Williams and Culvert, "Feejee," p. 163, ed. 1870.
I Ellis, " Polynesian Researches," i, p. 403.

A Wilson, quoted by Gardner, " Faiths of the World," i, p. 938 ; cf. Brinton, " Myths
of the New World," p. 133 ; Ellis, "History of Madagascar," i, p. 238.

0 Virgil, "iEn.," vi, 228, where Servius speaks of carrying /re round similarly.

i Gray, " China," i, p. 305.

% Wachsmuth, p. 120.

j Turner, " Polynesia," p. 228.

** Monier Williams, " Religious Thought and Life in India," pp. 283, 288.

ft Pollux, viii, 65 ; Hesychius and Suidas, s.v., apSdvwv. Cf. Wachsmuth, ibid., p. 109.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 677

barrier of fire or water between the living and the dead, and that
the conceptions of pollution and purification are merely the fictions
of a later age, invented to explain the purpose of a ceremony of which
the original intention was forgotten. Time forbids me to enter into
the wider question whether all forms of so-called ceremonial purifica-
tion may not admit of a similar explanation. I may say, however,
that there is evidence that some at least of these forms are best ex-
plained on this hypothesis. To one of the most important of these
forms of purification — that of mothers after childbirth — reference
will be made in the course of this paper.

Such, then, are some of the modes adopted for the purpose of
excluding or barring the ghost. Before quitting the subject, how-
ever, I wish to observe that, as the essence of these proceedings was
simply the erection of a barrier against the disembodied spirit, they
might be, and actually were, employed for barring spirits in other
connections. Thus, for example, since to early man death means
the departure of the soul out of the body, it is obvious that the very
same proceedings which serve to exclude the soul after it has left the
body — i. e., to bar the ghost, may equally well be employed to bar the
soul in the body — i. e., to prevent it escaping ; in other words, they
may be employed to prevent a sick man from dying — in fact, they
may be used as cures. Thus the Chinese attempt to frighten back
the soul of a dying man into his body by the utterance of wild cries
and the explosion of crackers, while they rush about with extended
arms to arrest its progress.* The use of water as a means of inter-
cepting the flying soul is perhaps best illustrated by the Circassian
treatment of the sick. It is well known that according to primitive
man the soul of a sleeper departs from his body to wander far away
in dreamland ; in fact, the only distinction which early man makes
between sleep and death is that sleep is a temporary, while death
is a permanent, absence of the soul. Obviously, then, on this view,
sleep is highly dangerous to a sick man, for if in sleep his soul de-
parts, how can we be sure that it will come back again ? Hence,
in order to insure the recovery of a sick man, one of the first
requisites is to keep him from sleeping. With this intention the
Circassians will dance, sing, play, and tell stories to a sick man by
the hour. Fifteen to twenty young fellows, naturally selected for
the strength of their lungs, will seat themselves round his bed and
make night hideous by singing in chorus at the top of their voices,
while from time to time one of their number will create an agreeable
variety by banging with a hammer on a plowshare which has been
thoughtfully placed for the purpose by the sick man's bed. But if, in
spite of these unremitting attentions, the sick man should have the
misfortune to fall asleep — mark what follows — they immediately dash

* Hue, " L'Empire Chinois," ii, p. 241.

678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

water over his face.* The intention of this latter proceeding can
hardly be doubtful — it is a last effort to stop the soul about to take
flight forever. So among the Abipones, a dying man is surrounded
by a crowd of old crones brandishing rattles, stamping and yelling,
while every now and then one of them flings water over his face so
long as there is breath left in his body.f The same practice of throw-
ing water over the sick is observed also in China, Siam, Siberia, and
Hungary.^

By analogy, the origin of the Caffre custom of kindling a fire beside
a sick person,* the Russian practice of fumigating him,|| and the Per-
sian practice of lighting a fire on the roof of a house where any one is
ill,A may perhaps be found in the intention of interposing a barrier of
fire to prevent the escape of the soul. For, with regard to the custom
of lighting a fire on the roof, it is a common belief that spirits pass
out and in through a hole in the roof.Q In the same way I would
explain the extraordinary custom in Lao and Siam of surrounding a
mother after childbirth with a blazing fire, within which she has regu-
larly to stay for weeks after the birth of the child.J The object, I
take it, is to hem in the fluttering soul at this critical period with an
impassable girdle of fire. Conversely, among the Caffres a widow
must stay by herself beside a blazing fire for a month after her hus-
band's death — no doubt in order to get rid of his ghost. $ If any con-
firmation of this interpretation of the Siamese practice were needed, it

* Klemm, iv, p. 34.

•j- Dobritzhoffer, " Account of the Abipones," ii, p. 266. Among the Indians of Lower
California, if a sick man falls asleep, they knock him about the head till he wakes, with
the sincere intention of saving his life (Bancroft, i, p. 569). Similarly, Caffres when cir-
cumcised at the age of fourteen are not allowed to sleep till the wound is healed (Camp-
bell, " Travels in South Africa," p. 514).

% Gray, i, p. 278 ; Pallegoix, i, p. 294 ; Bowring, i, p. 121 ; Klemm, x, 254 : " Folk-
lore Journal," ii, p. 102. In Tiree a wet shirt is put on the patient, id., i, p. 16*7.

* Lichtenstein, i, p. 258.

|| Ralston, " Songs of the Russian People, p. 380.

A Klemm, vii, p. 142.

0 Wuttke, §§ 725, 755 ; Bastian, " Mensch," ii, pp. 319, 323 ; id., " Die Seele," p. 15 ;
Ralston, " Songs," p. 314 ; J. T. Brent, "The Cyclades," p. 437 ; Dennys, " Folk-lore of
China," p. 22 ; Lammert, " Folksmedezin," p. 103.

% Carl Bock, " Temples and Elephants," p. 259 ; Bowring, i, p. 120 ; Pallegoix, i, p.
223. Cf. Forbes, " British Burmah," p. 46 ; Darmesteter, " Zend-Avesta," i, p. xciii ; Ellis,
" History of Madagascar," i, p. 151. A relic of this custom is seen in the old Scotch
practice of whirling a fir-candle three times round the bed on which the mother and child
lay (C. Rogers, " Social Life in Scotland," i, p. 135). Among the Albanians a fire is kept
constantly burning in the room for forty days after birth ; the mother is not allowed to
leave the house all this time, and at night she may not even leave the room ; and any
one during this time who enters the house by night is obliged to leap over a burning
brand (Hahn, " Albanesische Studien," p. 149). In the Cyclades, for many days after a
birth, no one may enter the house by night. The mother does not go to church for
forty days after the birth (Brent, pp. 180, 181).

% Lichtenstein, i, p. 259.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 679

would seem to be found in the fact that, during her imprisonment
within the fiery circle, the woman washes herself daily for a week
with a mixture of salt and water,* for salt and water, as we know
from Theocritus,f is a regular specific against spirits.

Of course it is possible that these fiery barriers may also be intended
to keep off evil spirits, and this is the second supplementary use to
which the proceedings for barring ghosts may be turned. This would
appear to have been the object with which, in Siberia, women after
childbirth cleansed themselves by leaping several times over a fire,
exactly as we saw that in Siberia mourners returning from a funeral
leap over a fire for the express purpose of shaking off the spirit of the
dead.J

In China, the streets along which a funeral is to pass are previously
sprinkled with holy water, and even the houses and warehouses along
the street come in for their share, in case some artful demon might be
lurking in a shop, ready to pounce out on the dead man as he passed.4*
Special precautions are also taken by the Chinese during the actual
passage of the funeral ; in addition to the usual banging of gongs and
popping of crackers, an attempt is made to work on the cupidity of
the demons. With this view bank-notes are scattered, regardless of
expense, all along the road to the grave. The notes, I need hardly
observe, are bad, but they serve the purpose, and, while the ingenuous
demons are engaged in the pursuit of these deceitful riches, the soul
of the dead man, profiting by their distraction, pursues his way tran-
quilly behind the coffin to the grave. ||

In the Hervey Islands, in the South Pacific, after a death the ghosts
or demons are fought and soundly pummeled by bodies of armed men,
just as the Samogitians and old Prussians used to repel the ghostly
squadrons by sword-cuts in the air.A

In Christian times bells have been used for a like purpose ; this,
of course, was the intention of the passing-bell. Q The idea that the
sound of brass or iron had power to put spirits to flight prevailed also
in classical antiquity, % from which it was perhaps inherited by me-
diaeval Christianity.

I have still one observation to make on the means employed to bar
ghosts, and it is this. The very same proceedings which were resorted

* Bock, op. cit., p. 260. f xxiv, 95, 96.
\ Meiners, " Geschichte der Religionen," ii, p. 107.

# Gray, " China," i, p. 299.

J Hue, " L'Empire Chinois," ii, p. 249 ; Gray, I. c. ; Doolittle, " Social Life of the
Chinese," p. 153 (ed. Paxton Hood).

A Gill, " Myths and Songs from the South Pacific," p. 269 ; Bastian, ii, p. 341. Cf.
Wood, " Nat. Hist, of Man," ii, p. 562.

t) Brand, " Popular Antiquities," ii, p. 202 ; Forbes Leslie, " Early Races of Scotland,"
ii, p. 503.

% Lucian, " Philopseudes," c. 15; Ovid, "Fasti," v, 441; cf. Professor Robertson
Smith in " Journal of Philology," vol. xiii, No. 26, p. 283, note.

680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to after the burial for the purpose of barring the ghost were avoided
so long as the corpse was in the house, from fear no doubt of hurt-
ing and offending the ghost. Thus we saw that an axe laid on the
threshold or a knife hung over the door after the coffin has been car-
ried out, has power to exclude the ghost, who could not enter with-
out cutting himself. Conversely, so long as the corpse is still in the
house, the use of sharp-edged instruments should be avoided in case
they might wound the ghost. Thus for seven days after a death, the
corpse being still in the house, the Chinese refrain from the use of
knives and needles and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their
fingers.* So at the memorial feasts to which they invited the dead,
the Russians ate without using knives.f In Germany a knife should
not be left edge-upward, lest it hurt the ghosts or the angels. \ They
even say that if you see a child in the fire and a knife on its back, you
should run to the knife before the child.* Again, we saw that the
Romans and the Germans swept the ghost, without more ado, out of
his own house. On the other hand, the more considerate negroes on
the Congo abstain for a whole year from sweeping the house where a
man has died, lest the dust should annoy the ghost. |) Again, we have
seen the repugnance of ghosts to water. Hence, when a death took
place, the Jews used to empty all the water in the house into the
street, lest the ghost should fall in and be drowned. A In Burmah, when
the coffin is being carried out, every vessel in the house containing
water is emptied. Q In some parts of Bohemia, after a death, they
turn the water-butt upside down, because, if the ghost happened to
bathe in it and any one drank of it afterward, he would be a dead man
within the year. \ We can now appreciate the significance of the fact
mentioned above, that in Greece the lustral water before the door of a
house where a dead body lay had always to be fetched from a neigh-
boring house. For, if the water had been taken from the house of
death, who could tell but that the ghost might be disporting himself
in it ? % In Pomerania, even after a burial, no washing is done in the
house for some time, lest the dead man should be wet in his grave. %
Among the old Iranians no moisture was allowed to rest on the bread

* Gray, " China," i, p. 283.

f Ralston, "Songs of the Russian People," p. 321.

% Grimm, " Deutsche Mythologie," iii, pp. 441, 454 ; Tettau u. Temme, p. 285 ; Groh-
mann, p. 198.

* Grimm, ibid., p. 469.

f Bastian, " Mensch," ii, p. 323. On the day of the funeral the Albanians refrain from
sweeping the place on which the corpse lay. Ilahn, " Albanesische Studien," p. 152.

A Gardner, " Faiths of the World," i, p. 676.

0 Forbes, " British Burmah," p. 95.

\ Grohmann, § 198.

% Hence among the Jews all open vessels in the chamber of death were " unclean "
Numbers xix, 15).

% Wuttke, § 737.

THE PRIMITIVE GHOST AND HIS RELATIONS. 681

offered to the dead, for, of course, if the bread was damp, the ghost
could not get at it.*

Once more, we saw that fire was a great stumbling-block to ghosts.
Hence in the Highlands of Scotland and in Burmah the fires in a house
used always to be extinguished when a death took place, no doubt lest
they should burn the ghost, f So in old Iran no fire was allowed to
be used in the house for nine days after a death,! and in later times
every fire in the Persian Empire was extinguished in the interval
between the death and burial of a king.*

It might perhaps be thought that the common practice of fasting
after a death was a direct consequence of this disuse of fire ; and there
are facts which appear at first sight to show that it was so. Thus the
Chinese, though they are not allowed to cook in the house for seven
days after a death, are not prohibited from eating food which has been
prepared elsewhere ; indeed, during this period of mourning their
wants are regularly supplied by their neighbors.! From this it would
appear that the prohibition only extends to food cooked in the house
of mourning. But this explanation will not suit the German supersti-
tion, that while the passing-bell is tolling no one within hearing should
eat.A For here the prohibition evidently extends to all the food in
the neighborhood. The key to the solution of this problem will per-
haps be found in the Saraoan usage. Q We are told that in Samoa,
" while a dead body is in the house, no food is eaten under the same
roof ; the family have their meals outside or in another house. Those
who attended the deceased were formerly most careful not to handle
food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants."
Observe here, firstly, that the objection is not to all eating, but only
to eating under the same roof with the dead ; and, secondly, that those
who have been in contact with the dead may eat but may not touch
their food. Now, considering that the ghost could be cut, burned,
drowned, bruised with stones, and squeezed in a door (for it is a rule
in Germany not to slam a door on Saturday for fear of jamming a
ghost), J it seems not unreasonable to suppose that a ghost could be

* Spiegel, " Eranische Alterthumskunde," iii, p. 705.

f Brand, ii, p. 235 ; James Logan, "The Scottish Gael,'' ii, p. 387 ; Forbes, "British
Burmah," p. 94.

% Spiegel, ibid., p. 706.

* Diodorus, xvii, c. 114.

| Gray, " China," i, pp. 287, 288. Cf. Apuleius, " Metam.," ii, c. 24. Similarly among
the Albanians there is no cooking in the house for three days after a death, and the fam-
ily is supported by the food brought by friends. Hahn, " Albanesische Studien," p. 151.
So among the Cyclades, Brent, "The Cyclades," p. 221.

A W. Sonntag, " Todtenbestattung," p. 175. Similar superstition in New England
(" Folk-lore Journal," ii, p. 24).

Q Turner, "Nineteen Years in Polynesia," p. 228 ; cf. Taylor, "New Zealand," p. 163;
"Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori," p. 124 sqq. ; Ellis, "Polynesian Researches," i,
p. 402.

X Wuttke, § 752.

682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eaten, and if we make this supposition I venture to think that we have
a clew to the origin of fasting after a death. People in fact originally
refrained from eating just in those circumstances in which they con-
sidered that they might possibly in eating have devoured a ghost.
This supposition explains why, so long as the corpse is in the house,
the mourners may eat outside of the house but not in it. Again, it
explains why those who have been in contact with the dead and have
not yet purified themselves (i. e., have not yet placed a barrier between
themselves and the ghost) are not allowed to touch the food they eat ;
obviously the ghost might be clinging to them and might be trans-
ferred from their person to the food, and so eaten.

This theory further explains the German superstition mentioned
above, that no one within hearing must eat while the passing-bell is
tolling. For the passing-bell is rung when a soul is issuing for the
last time from its mortal tabernacle, and, if any one in the neighbor-
hood were at this moment to eat, who knows but that his teeth might
close on the passing soul ? This explanation is confirmed by the com-
panion superstition that no one should sleep while the passing-bell is
tolling, else will his sleep be the sleep of death.* Put into primitive
language, this means that, as the soul quits the body in sleep, if it
chanced in this, its temporary absence, to fall in with a soul that was
taking its eternal flight, it might, perhaps, be coaxed or bullied into
accompanying it, and might thus convert what had been intended to
be merely a ramble, into a journey to that bourn from which no trav-
eler returns.

All this time, however, Plutarch has been waiting for his answer ;
but, perhaps, as he has already waited two thousand years, he will not
object to be kept in suspense a very little longer. For the sake of
brevity in what remains, I will omit all mention of the particular
usages upon a comparison of which my answer is based, and will con-
fine myself to stating in the briefest way their general result.

We have seen the various devices which the ingenuity of early
man struck out for the purpose of giving an "iron welcome to the
dead." In all of them, however, it was presupposed that the body
was in the hands of the survivors, and had been by them securely
buried ; that was the first and most essential condition, and, if it was
not fulfilled, no amount of secondary precautions would avail to bar
the ghost.

But what happened when the body could not be found, as when the
man died at sea or abroad? Here the all-important question was,
What could be done to lay the wandering ghost ? For wander he
would, till his body was safe under the sod, and, by supposition, his
body was not to be found. The case was a difficult one, but early man

* Sonntag, ibid. ; cf. Wuttke, § 726. In Scotland it was an old custom not to allow
any one to sleep in the house where a sick person was at the point of death (C. Rogers,
" Social Life in Scotland," i, p. 152).

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. 683

was equal to it. He buried the missing man in effigy* and, according
to all the laws of primitive logic, an effigy is every bit as good as its
original.! Therefore, when a man is buried in effigy with all due for-
mality, that man is dead and buried beyond a doubt, and his ghost is
as harmless as it is in the nature of ghosts to be.

But it occasionally happened that this burial by proxy was prema-
ture— that, in fact, the man was not really dead, and, if he came home
in person and positively declined to consider himself as dead, the
question naturally arose, Was he alive, or was he dead ? It was a deli-
cate question, and the solution was ingenious. The man was dead,
certainly — that was past praying for. But then he might be born
again ; he might take a new lease of life. And so it was.; he was put
out to nurse, he was dressed in long-clothes — in short, he went through
all the stages of a second childhood. \ But, before he was eligible even
for this pleasing experience, he had to overcome the initial difficulty
of getting into his own house. For the door was as ghost-proof as
fire and water could make it, and he was a ghost. As such, he had to
do as ghosts do : in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had to
come down the chimney.* And down the chimney he came — and this
is an English answer to a Roman question. — The Contemporary Re-
view.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. ||

By M. E. MASCAKT.

ALIGHT is defined by two qualities, brightness and color. The
comparison of two lights of the same color can be made without
the assistance of our eyes, and by physical means alone, but it is im-
possible to compare different colors without bringing in the interven-
tion of the physiological impression. It has been known since New-
ton's experiments that white light, or, to be more precise, the light of
the sun, is formed of a large number of different colors, and that the
union of all these in equal proportion, acting upon the eye, either

* The practice of burial in effigy prevailed in ancient Greece, Mexico, and Samoa, and
it prevails to this day in modern Greece, Albania, India, and China. See Chariton, iv, c.
1 ; Bancroft, "Native Races of the Pacific States," ii, p. 616; Turner, "Samoa," p. 150;
C. Wachsmuth, "Das Alte Griechenland im neuem," p. 113; Hahn, " Albanesische Stu-
dien," p. 152 ; Monier Williams, " Religious Thought and Life in India," p. 300; Gray,
"China," i, p. 295. Compare Doolittle, "Social Life of the Chinese," p. 164; Apuleius,
"Metam.,"i, c. 6; Brent, "The Cyclades," pp. 223, 224; Servius on Virgil, "^En.,"
vi, 366.

f For evidence see Tylor's "Early History of Mankind," p. 116 sqq.
% Plutarch, " Rom. Quaest.," v.

# See the passages cited in note ** to p. 678.

|| An address before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Translated from the
French for " The Popular Science Monthly."

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

simultaneously or at very close intervals, produces the impression of
white. Starting from a preconceived analogy with the notes of the
gamut, Newton divided the solar spectrum, or the image obtained by
decomposing white light with a refracting prism, into seven different
colors. This division is really arbitrary, for the colors pass from one
to another by insensible transitions, and each of them may be charac-
terized either by the degree of its refraction in the prism, or by the
length of the undulations to which it corresponds.

When we collect a part of the spectral rays in one point, we obtain
either one of the primitive colors in a greater or less state of purity,
or a new tint. If we divide the spectrum arbitrarily into two parts
and collect the rays of these parts separately, we obtain two distinct
colors, the superposition of one of which on the other gives white light.
The experiment can be performed with an ordinary spectrum divided
arbitrarily into two parts ; and it is effected, we might say naturally,
in the phenomena of rotatory polarization in which the most brilliant
hues are shown.

We mention these properties to deduce two conclusions from them.
We remark, first, that the mixture of simple or homogeneous lights in
any proportion always produces upon the eye a single impression, that
of one color. While the ear can distinguish all the notes that go to
make up a harmony, the eye can grasp only one color, without being
able to distinguish whether it is really simple, or is formed of different
lights.

In the second place, the mixture of colors provokes only one new
impression, that of purple, for example, which we may obtain by mix-
ing red and violet, while the varieties of rose are nothing but mixtures
of purple and white. White may be produced by two simple colors
alone, as by red and green ; more generally, if we isolate three suita-
bly chosen colors in the spectrum, such as particular shades of red,
green, and violet, we may, by mixing them in different proportions,
imitate the impressions produced by all the colors. Artificial colors,
formed, for example, of rays selected from the spectrum, may be sim-
ple or compound, without the eye being informed of the difference,
except, perhaps, when they have a shade of purple or of rose, for we
know then that those colors do not exist in a simple state.

The same is the case with the colors of nature, or of industry. An
object appears colored to us because it sends us only a part of the
light it borrows from the general illumination. The sorting out is
made either by transmission, as in colored glasses, or by reflection, as
in the case of the metals, or by diffraction, as in the wings of some
butterflies, or in the coronas which we sometimes perceive around the
moon ; the portion of the light that does not reach the eye having
been absorbed or sent off in a different direction. Leaving out of the
account the effects of fluorescence, we perceive that objects do not
have colors of themselves, but simply borrow from the general light-

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. 685

ing the tint that is suited to them, and present very different aspects
according to the mode in which they are lighted. A red rihbon, for
example, placed successively in the different colors of the spectrum,
appears black, except in the red region ; it therefore returns by reflec-
tion an almost homogeneous light. A rose ribbon appears very un-
equally luminous in different parts of the spectrum. The light which
it reflects is, therefore, complex.

We may ask, then, What would be the condition of nature if the
light that shines upon us were absolutely homogeneous ? Some bodies
would absorb it completely, and would appear dark like black velvet ;
others would reflect it more or less actively, and would have a corre-
sponding degree of brilliancy. As there would be no criterion for com-
parison, the eye would have only the sensations of white, black, and
the intermediate rays.

Pascal said that nothing better enabled him to comprehend the
properties of the air than what took place where there was none. So,
nothing better enables us to comprehend the properties of colors than
the appearance of the world under an illumination of homogeneous
light. The volatilization of a salt of soda in the flame of a Bunsen
burner almost perfectly fulfills this condition. With such a light, cloths
dyed in the richest colors show only white, black, and gray, and the
art of painting has no place.

The estimation of color being connected with the impression pro-
duced upon the retina, it is readily to be seen that the human eye will
not always equally well perform that function. The different points of
the retina are not alike ready to appreciate colors. To distinguish the
details of au object, it is necessary to direct the look toward it, or, in
other words, to produce an image upon the central region of the
retina, where the acuteness of physiological perception is much the
greatest. The same is the case for colors. When we keep the look
in a determined direction, and put a colored body in the visual field
in such a way that its image is produced laterally, we remark that the
notion of color is more and more weakened as we remove from central
vision, and disappears at the limits of the field. But the most impor-
tant fact is, that in the different views the colors are not distinguished
from one another with equal facility, and that we sometimes come to
the point of confounding colors which really seem to be most discord-
ant, as green and red. The discovery of this particular form of in-
firmity is due to Dalton, who was very strongly affected by it, and
who carefully analyzed the errors of his judgment. This fault, which
remained unperceived for so long a time, is in reality quite frequent.
About ten persons in a hundred make mistakes in the comparison of
colors marked enough to be detected by an attentive examination.
Generally the imperfection is not accompanied with grave inconven-
iences, and is corrected unconsciously by the operation of habit, the
recollection of objects, and the judgments of others. But the annoy-

686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ance becomes extreme when one can not distinguish, for example, red
from green, a cherry or a ripe strawberry amid the foliage, or a
green from a red light in railway or ship signals. Artists sometimes
have marked predilections for certain colors. Lesueur put a profusion
of blue into all his paintings, and Turner seems to have sought and
found red everywhere. It might be worth while to investigate
whether the choice of their favorite colors by some painters is wholly
intentional, or is a consequence of a physiological state. Color-blind
persons are generally so by birth, but the affection may sometimes be
the result of an accident. In some nervous affections it is occasionally
manifested temporarily and under the strangest forms. The sight
may thus, more than the other senses, be the victim of numerous errors
and illusions. To speak only of those which have relation to colors, I
notice the effects of contrast of two neighboring colors, or those which
follow the impression of an image, or the subjective colors we see with
our eyes shut, the result of a mechanical action on the eye, and I
shall limit myself to describing some experiments relative to the appar-
ent relief of colors. When we examine on a screen the image of a
spectrum produced by a direct-vision prism, the successive colors
appear as if situated on the same plane ; but, if we slowly turn the slit
or the prism, we shall have the illusion of a colored blade in relief
with the red extremity forward. The effect is more sensible when the
slit is V-shaped, in which case the spectrum resembles a groove. If
we substitute for the slit the word DAVY in transparent letters, there
will appear to be produced on the screen an exaggerated form of
letters in relief like those we see on some shop-signs.

Outside of the colors we are accustomed to see, the solar spectrum
includes other rays, some less refrangible than the red, which make
themselves manifest by their calorific properties, and others more
refrangible than the violet, which are remarked by their photographic
effects, and by the action they exercise on fluorescent substances. The
solar ultra-violet spectrum produced in the prism occupies an extent
nearly equal to that of the luminous spectrum ; while Mr. Stokes has
shown that the electric arc gives an ultra-violet spectrum five or six
times more extended.

We may be surprised that the sight of man is restricted to so small
a part of the rays emitted by a luminous source. We have to re-
mark on this point that the case is the same with the other senses.
The touch can give an idea of the temperature of bodies only within
very narrow limits ; the ear can perceive neither extremely grave nor
extremely acute tones, and the highest sounds it can hear produce a
painful impression. On the side of the infra-red, the visible spec-
trum stops very abruptly, and the efforts of Brewster extended the
range of the rays that the eye can perceive only slightly. Visibility,
on the other side of the spectrum, persists in a remarkable manner.
Helmholtz had already discovered that with certain precautions he

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. 687

could perceive the whole ultra-violet spectrum as it is revealed by-
photography. Having had occasion to study the light emitted by
metallic vapors, I have ascertained that, with a prism of Iceland spar,
an ordinary sight can distinguish an ultra-violet spectrum three or
four times as extended as the luminous spectrum ; one of my co-labor-
ers saw much farther still, and pointed out in advance all the rays
which it was possible for me to photograph. If instead of regarding
the refraction of these rays, which varies with the nature of the sub-
stances, we define them by their wave-lengths or by the duration of
their undulations, we may say that the ordinary luminous spectrum
comprises the interval of an octave, and that it is possible to perceive
a second higher or more acute octave.

Sir William Thomson has expressed surprise that Nature has for-
gotten to give us a special sense for perceiving the magnetic phenom-
ena amid which we are living. In the case of light, we are in the
presence of rays that are not luminous in sunlight, or at least are
not seen by us, which are energetically absorbed by most transparent
media and especially by the humors of the eye, for which we give our-
selves no concern whatever in current life, and which nevertheless act
upon the retina. Does it not seem as if we possessed in this respect a
superfluous sensibility, and as if there were a lack of harmony between
the structure of the organ and the wants to which it should respond ?
A question has been raised on this subject that presents a very great
interest in the philosophical point of view, as to whether man is sus-
ceptible of an organic development, and if it is possible to detect a
trace of any progress that may have been accomplished in the vision
of colors, and consequently in the structure of the eye. An eminent
Englishman has not disdained to engage himself with this question.
Mr. Gladstone has summed up all the expressions used by Homer to
designate the color of objects, from which it appears that the great
poet was accustomed to apply the terms in a very uncertain manner,
and confounded green with yellow and blue with black. Before con-
cluding, from this curious observation, that the sense of color was but
little developed in Homer's age, we should, perhaps, remark that the
interval that separates us from him is but a short time in the history
of mankind ; that the Greeks afterward made much use of colors in
their pictures and in the painted statuettes of which we possess nu-
merous specimens ; that the frescoes of Pompeii exhibit the most vari-
ous colors ; and that a careful examination of modern authors might
lead us to draw the same conclusions with respect to their time as
would be drawn from the Homeric writings. Is it not singular that
in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Lesueur was using
blue extensively in painting, that emphatically naturalistic poet, La
Fontaine, did not once employ the term blue to designate any colored
object or the color of the sky ?

Even if mankind were capable of a rapid progress toward perfec-

688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion, it might be supposed that peoples who have continued in the con-
ditions of the Stone age, like the natives of Cape Horn, should not
have participated in the general progress. The French expedition,
that recently spent a year at Terra del Fuego, made a special study of
the natives in respect to this point. The Fuegian language has terms
for only two colors, one for red and analogous tints, the other for blue
and green. But it is thus poor only because colors do not play an im-
portant part in Fuegian life, for it was fcund that with a little prac-
tice the people learned to distinguish and classify colors and their dif-
ferent shades with all the exactness of the most civilized European.
The organic development of their visual apparatus, therefore, leaves
nothing to be desired. The question whether the vision of animals is
the same as that of man, or whether some of them may noo have the
faculty of perceiving rays to which we are insensible, has been taken
up by M. Paul Bert. He placed in a glass vessel a number of fresh-
water crustaceans of the family of Daphnece. When light was cast
upon a point in the vessel, the Daphnias precipitated themselves upon
it and arranged themselves along the beam. Most animals show a
similar disposition, and seek the light when it is not too glaring. When
a spectrum was thrown upon the vessel, the Daphnias still spread them-
selves over the illuminated region, but with some quite remarkable
peculiarities of arrangement. The smallest ones were scattered through
the whole spectrum, being rare in the red, abundant in the yellow and
green, and more numerous in the blue and violet, while some of them
fixed themselves in the ultra-violet. The largest ones, however, were
almost exclusively localized upon a narrow band situated between the
green and the blue. These animals, then, see the same rays as we, not-
withstanding the distance that separates them from us in the zoological
scale, and even seem to share our infirmities, for some of them behaved
as if they were affected by color-blindness. Sir John Lubbock has
made a series of brilliant researches, in the laboratory of the Royal
Institution, on the vision of ants, bees, and wasps, from which the
curious result has been deduced that the ultra-violet rays appear
brighter to ants than the ordinary luminous spectrum. The history
of animals regarding this point would therefore be of the highest
interest.

We have, so far, considered colors only as one of Nature's decora-
tions, but their influence on the development of living beings is exer-
cised under the most various conditions. Without doubt, light and
colors act upon the condition of our mind, and the moral impression
thus produced can be nothing but the translation of a physiological
action. In some sanitary establishments, where mental disorders are
treated, patients are sometimes kept in a yellow light, which seems to
exercise a happy influence on their disposition, and to promote calmer
feelings. It. is not the yellow light of soda that produces this result,
but a kind of white light, in which the extreme blue and red rays have

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. 689

been softened so as to cause a predominance of the rose and yellow
tones.

The predilection of animals for particular colors is not the result
of an artistic preference. If the Daphnias seek the green light and the
ants the ultra-violet, it is, doubtless, because they find better condi-
tions of existence in them. Plants yield themselves more conven-
iently to studies of this kind. A common plant, like those we have
habitually under our eyes, increases, develops itself in every quality,
adds to its weight, produces leaves, flowers, and fruits, and respires,
or keeps up a constant exchange between the elements it contains and
the gases of the atmosphere. These different acts of vegetable life
are very unequally affected by the various luminous or calorific radia-
tions. The growth of plants, by the elongation and multiplication of
cells, takes place mostly under the influence of the calorific rays, and
there is for each plant a preferred temperature. If a plant receives
heat only from one side, it is more developed on that side, and forms
a curve in the opposite direction. This is the phenomenon of thermo-
tropism. A plant grows less rapidly in the light than in the darkness,
but with good effect on its general nutrition and transverse develop-
ment. In this case the different colors have a very marked specific ac-
tion. With a good light, the retarding action, insensible in the duller
rays, exhibits a first maximum toward the red end, a minimum in the
yellow, where the light is most intense, and a grand maximum in the
violet. The rays of greater wave-length are, therefore, the more
active ones. Hence results a very simple explanation of heliotropism,
or of the marked tendency of plants to bend toward the light. When
a plant is exposed to a lateral light, the illuminated parts lengthen less
rapidly than those which remain in the shade, and the plant bends its
head toward the light. We are able to go still further into the mech-
anism of nutrition. Besides the loss of water by evaporation, plants
have two kinds of respiration — one which is continuous day and night,
disengaging carbonic acid, a kind of combustion correlative with life
and quite analogous to the respiration of animals ; and the other inter-
mittent, and taking place only in the light, the result of which is to
borrow from the cai'bonic acid of the atmosphere the carbon from
which the plant makes sugar and wood, and to disengage oxygen.
The coloring-matter of the leaves, chlorophyl, plays the principal
part in this nutritive respiration. Now, chlorophyl has to be made
first, and then to perform its respiratory functions ; and in this, again,
the different colors act very unequally.

If we examine the formation of chlorophyl in the plant with a
moderate light, we shall find that it takes place through the whole
extent of the solar spectrum, very weakly in the infra-red, reaching a
maximum in the deep yellow, and undergoing a regular diminution to
the ultra-violet. The curve of this action takes a direction analo-
gous to that which Fraunhofer has given for the distribution of lumi-

TOL. XXTII. — 44

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nous intensity in the spectrum, but is more prolonged toward the more
refrangible rays. Here, again, is a preferred intensity, beyond which
chlorophyl is formed less easily. Experiment has also shown that
the production of oxygen takes place only where there are grains of
chlorophyl. If we resolve with a prism a ray of white light that we
have passed through a solution of chlorophyl, we will remark a strong
absorption-band in the red, and two others in the blue and violet.
These represent the rays that have been absorbed by the green sub-
stance, and which effect the reduction of carbonic acid.

In his experiments on fermentations, M. Pasteur distinguished the
minute microscopic beings into aerobes and anaerobes ; the former
respire and are developed in the presence of the oxygen of the air,
while the others are killed by oxygen. If we examine the aerobes of
a liquid with the microscope, we will find them collected around bub-
bles of an*, where they can find oxygen. If the liquid is deprived of
air-bubbles and incloses a filament of a green alga, the bacteria will
distribute themselves indifferently in the medium so long as it is illu-
minated with a very weak light, or, which is better, with a light that
has been filtered through a solution of chlorophyl. In white light,
the bacteria will be seen to precipitate themselves upon the grains of
chlorophyl, to get the oxygen disengaged from them. They thus
constitute a very delicate reagent. To witness the effect of the dif-
ferent colors, we let the microscopic spectrum fall upon a filament of
conferva, or a transverse leaf-section. The bacteria will collect upon
the plant in the red, at the point of maximum absorption, next in the
blue, and the density of the population will nearly follow the absorp-
tion-curve of the coloring-matter.

I will not insist too long upon these facts in natural history ; but I
must add that great specific differences exist in the proper color of
different plants, resulting from unequal absorption by their coloring-
matters. One example of this kind will be enough. The color of sea-
water varies according to the thickness through which we observe it,
on account of the unequal absorption of the different rays ; hence a
marine plant will find itself in a condition more or less favorable, and
be better or less equipped for the struggle for existence, according to
the depth of the soil on which it rests. If we examine a bottom which
the tide has just left, we will find blue sea-weeds on the edges of the
deepest waters, farther down green sea-weeds, beyond these brown
ones, and, lastly, red plants in the places which are least frequently
uncovered. From the top of a bank we may thus perceive a series of
concentric bands of different colors defining the limits within which
each species, better fitted to the physical conditions, has overcome and
eliminated the neighboring species. This is not a question of depth,
because we find red sea-weeds at the water-level in sheltered places,
the hollows of rocks, and deep caves, like the one at Capri, where the
light comes in weakened.

SKETCH OF BR. GUSTAV NACHTIGAL. 691

Light, then, is an inexhaustible source from which living beings
obtain energy under all forms and in the most unforeseen conditions ;
or, as Lavoisier has said, we might believe prophetically, considering
the time when he spoke : " Organization, feeling, spontaneous move-
ment, and life exist only at the surface of the earth, and in places ex-
posed to the light. We might say that the fable of the torch of Pro-
metheus was the expression of a philosophical truth that did not escape
the ancients. Without light, nature would be bereft of life, dead, in-
animate. A beneficent God in giving light has spread organization,
feeling, and thought over the surface of the earth."

SKETCH OF DR. GUSTAV NACHTIGAL.

THE name of Dr. Gustav Nachtigal is associated with some of the
most arduous achievements of African research, which were also
not of inferior importance ; and in the last year of his life he was
prominent, as the designated servant of his Government, in those
transactions which had for their object the establishment of German
colonies and influence at commanding positions in the " Dark Con-
tinent."

Dr. Nachtigal was born on the 23d of February, 1834, at Eich-
stadt, near Stendal, in the former Prussian province of Altmark,
where his father was a clergyman. He lost his father at an early age,
and the burden of the support of himself and his little sister, as he
used afterward to relate with grateful admiration of her heroic devo-
tion, fell hard upon his poor widowed mother. Having received the
usual primary education and completed his course at the gymnasium,
he studied medicine at the schools in Berlin, Halle, Wiirzburg, and
Greifswald. At the last place he was a pupil of the famous pathol-
ogist Niemeyer, and contracted from him, as he afterward told a
friend, much of his enthusiasm for science. He received his doctor's
degree here in the fall of 1857, passed the state examination during the
ensuing winter, and was appointed under-physician to the thirtieth
infantry regiment, which was stationed at Cologne. In 1859, he was
promoted to be assistant-surgeon of the thirty-third regiment, also in
Cologne. Two years later, when he received his furlough from active
service, his superiors could say of him : " A thoroughly scientifically
taught physician, Nachtigal is full of energy, and shows great devo-
tion to his profession. His quiet self-possession, and his clear under-
standing, together with great tact in demeanor, attest that he is
peculiarly well fitted to the higher positions of the military medical
service."

In 1862, having been attacked with a disease of the lungs, which

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the North-German climate promised only to aggravate, Nachtigal was
compelled to seek a milder atmosphere in the south, and removed to
Algiers, and afterward to Tunis, where he found a lucrative practice,
and obtained a knowledge of the Arabic language, and of the man-
ners and customs of the j>eople, that proved useful to him in his
future explorations. At Tunis he became physician to the Bey,
whom he accompanied upon a campaign against some of his rebel-
lious subjects.

Toward the end of 1868 Gerhard Rohlfs came to Tripoli, charged
with a commission by the King of Prussia to dispatch an assortment
of presents to Sultan Omar, of Bornoo, in acknowledgment of the
hospitality he had given and the valuable services he had rendered
to the German travelers Earth, Vogel, Overweg, Von Beurmann, and
Rohlfs, who had at various times visited his capital, and in return for
a silver-mounted harness which he had sent to his Majesty. King
William was sending, in response to these favors, a fine collection of
European manufactured goods, a throne-chair, and a portrait of him-
self. The occasion of this visit was the decisive point in Nachtigal's
life. Rohlfs found in him just the man to carry the gifts to their
destination, and he, the choice having been approved by Bismarck,
left Tripoli, with his caravan of eight camels, on the 18th of February,
1869, on his long southern journey, traveling under the name of Edris
Effendi. The first stopping-place was at Moorzook, the capital of Fez-
zan, where Nachtigal found that the country beyond was in so un-
settled a condition, and the roads were so infested, that it would be
futile to attempt to continue the journey at that time. Probably a
year would have to pass before he could go on. He would not wait
idly, and he resolved to use the occasion to make an excursion to the
highland country of Tibesti, southeast of Fezzan, the ancient land of
the Troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, which had long excited the interest
of European travelers, but which no one had ever been able to reach.
Its people, the Tibbu, had the worst reputation for robbery and treach-
ery of all the Africans. Nachtigal attempted and made the journey
from which all others had shrunk. He was smuggled secretly into
the country by his guides. The party lost their way and wandered
for many days through the desert without food or water, making a
near approach to death by thirst. This, as a German biographer de-
scribes it, condensing from Nachtigal's own account, in the midst of
summer in the burning wilderness, where two days without water
meant death. Amid stones and sand, through barren ravines and over
rocks, marched the travelers, their parched tongues cleaving to their
mouths, and the half skin of water which they still had having to suf-
fice for ten persons. The guide went upon a knoll to look around,
while the rest of the party hung anxiously upon his eyes as he made
his report, " None yet." The exhausted camels lay down, and Nachti-
gal by the side of one of them, to die, while the Mohammedan servants

SKETCH OF DR. GUSTAV NACHTIGAL. 693

prayed to be received into paradise. At last a few Tibbus attached
to the caravan succeeded toward evening in getting some water and
saved the lives of the party. Such was his manner of entering this
forbidding land, while the savage inhabitants regarded him with sus-
picious hostility, believing that no good, only evil, could be in his in-
tention. Nachtigal bought the protection of one of the chiefs at the
expense of all he had, and was able to travel over the country and
stay a month at the capital. Thence he returned, without guide or
beast, with scant provision of food and a water-bag slung over his
shoulders, and reached Moorzook, literally naked, at the end of October.

He was able, in the spring of 1870, to resume his journey to Bornoo,
with the presents, which had remained at Moorzook while he was in
Tibesti. He reached Kuka, the capital of Bornoo, on the 6th of June,
and was received by Sultan Omar with a hospitality which would have
been as marked had he brought no gifts, and with many expressions
of appreciation of the presents. His mission here having been ful-
filled, he availed himself of the friendship of the Sultan to make a
journey of exploration to Berktl, Kanew, and Bagirmi, on Lake Chad.
He spent a wretched life of nine months among highwaymen, but was
able to accomplish much for science. He showed that the Bahr-el-
Ghazul is an outlet from Lake Chad to the northeast during the rainy
season, and made the acquaintance of the southern Tibbu, among whose
northern relatives he had faced so many dangers a few months before.

Sultan Omar would not allow him to go to Wadai, east of Bornoo,
for it was too dangerous a land ; but he readily gave him a letter to
the Sultan of Bagirmi, in the south, although a war was then raging
there. With a hundred and fifty Maria-Theresa thalers, which he
borrowed from a Tripolitan merchant on a note for double the amount,
he bought goods and fitted out a caravan, and started on his journey
early in 1872. He was well received by the Sultan, but came very
near being debarred intercourse with the court on a question of cere-
mony. Every one who sought audience with his Majesty had to come
barefooted. Nachtigal was willing to take off his shoes, but insisted
on keeping his stockings on. There was considerable discussion over
the matter, but the traveler carried his point and introduced a novelty
at the court, for no one there had ever seen a man in stockings before.
The Sultan was about to start on a campaign against a rival chief,
and Nachtigal embraced the opportunity to go with him and see a
country which had not been explored. The gain to science was pur-
chased at great expense in the witnessing of cruelties, without power
to protest against them, inflicted upon all adversaries who came in the
way, and others — murders, torture, capture of slaves, and barbarities
indescribable. In one of the battles Nachtigal was in great peril dur-
ing a temporary rout of the Sultan's forces, from which they after-
ward recovered, and for which they paid their customary vengeance.
Yet he was able to render some aid to humanity by surgical treatment

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the wounded, and be did what he could ; but a large proportion of
the cases, having received wounds in their vital parts, were past re-
covery. Having taken his leave of the Sultan of Bagirmi, Nachtigal,
suffering a part of tbe time from fever, made bis way through a
flooded country, in which he had to wade or swim the rivers which
he had before crossed almost dry, back to Kuka, in Bornoo, where he
enjoyed another hospitable reception from Sultan Omar.

Nachtigal next undertook, in the face of what was considered ex-
treme danger, to visit Wadai, on the eastern side of Lake Chad. It
was a country of very bad repute. The only European who had ever
reached it, Eduard Vogel, had been put to death by the command of
the Sultan in 1856. Moritz von Beurmann, who had been sent out to
learn Vogel's fate, had been murdered on the borders of the land. It
took much courage even to think of a journey there, but Nachtigal
had hope in the fact that a new Sultan, a more intelligent man than
his predecessors, had come into power. He proceeded cautiously, in
doubt as to what kind of a reception he might expect, but gradually
found the way cleared, and was finally admitted to an audience from
which he came away with a satisfaction he could not, he said in a let-
ter to a friend, fully express. "I found Sultan Ali the most intelli-
gent prince that reigns in all the Soudan, and was charmed with the
friendly greeting he gave me. This was all the more remarkable, be-
cause, as I knew, be had at first hesitated to receive me, and was not
at all glad that I had come." The murder of Vogel, eighteen years
before, had been forgotten by most of the people, and the search for
the papers he left was fruitless.

Nachtigal had by this time become quite exhausted with his five
years of arduous travel and dangers, and early in 1874 started home-
ward. He went through Darfoor to Kordofan, where, meeting the
Egyptian garrison, he almost felt as though he were in Europe. Khe-
dive Ismail sent a steamer to bring him to Cairo, and was the first to
receive him there. He stayed a year in Cairo to recover a degree of
health, and then proceeded to Berlin, where he intended to make his
home.

Here he at once assumed an active position among the scientific
men interested in the promotion of geographical research. He was
elected President of the German-African Society ; was consulted by
the King of the Belgians in the proceedings that have led to the
formation of the Congo state, and was a most useful member of the
Executive Committee of the " Association Internationale Africaine " ;
and was for three years in succession elected President of the German
" Gesellschaft f iir Erdkunde," and was its representative at the Inter-
national Congresses in Paris in 1875 and 1878, and in Venice in 1881.
The Paris Geographical Society voted him its golden medal, and the
other similar societies of the world gave him medals or diplomas of
honor. He dwelt in Berlin till 1882, busily engaged most of the

SKETCH OF DR. GUSTAV NACHTIGAL. 695

time in performing the duties of his scientific commissions, and in pre-
paring the narrative of his travels, his great work, " Sahara und Su-
dan," or " Experiences of Six Years of Travel in Africa " of which the
first volume was published in 1879, and the second, bringing up the
story to his departure from Bagirmi, in 1881 ; while the third is un-
finished. In 1882 Germany needed a diplomatic representative in
Tunis : Dr. Nachtisral was chosen as the most suitable man in the
nation to fill the position. After remaining there three years as con-
sul-general, a more important duty fell upon him — also by the desig-
nation of the great Chancellor of the Empire — that of going to the
west coast of Africa to superintend the planting of the German colo-
nies in the Togo country and the Cameroons. This was in May, 1884.
He was there attacked by the fever which seems to be the inevitable
doom of all white men who stay long on the Guinea coast. To get him
away, if possible, from this scourge, he was put upon the German cor-
vette Move and sent to sea. On board this vessel, a few miles out
from Cape Palmas, he died on the 20th of April of this year. His
body was brought ashore and buried at Cape Palmas.

Dr. Nachtigal, says one of his German biographers, was one of the
"strong and enthusiastic representatives of German learning, uniting
with complete devotion to science a heart warmly inspired with the
idea of spreading abroad the power and civilization of the Fatherland ;
and he regarded it an object of life to press forward into unexplored
lands and ever to be adding new objects to scientific cognizance."

" With Nachtigal," says Dr. Karl Mailer, in " Die Natur," " has
passed away one of the brightest stars of the literature of travel ; a
man who, treading in the footsteps of a Barth, was, like him, so happy
as to come back and contribute no little in his turn to our knowledge
of Central Africa. . . . With fifty-one years upon him, he still bore
the expectancy of a longer life, even though the old chest-disease he
had suffered from at home had not entirely passed away. For we had
learned to know and esteem him all the more highly because in spite
of his disease he was among the most active and most lively. His
fate," Dr. Miiller adds, " is a sad answer from West African Nature to
German colonizing ambitions."

Everything living, said his friend Dr. Paul Gussfeldt, in a memo-
rial address, " seemed to arouse his sympathy. His love for animals
was particularly touching. I can hardly avoid a sorrowful laugh to-
day when I think of his contracted house in Berlin, which he shared
with a parrot and three little dogs as companions having equal rights.
. . . What to others seemed a legitimate hunter's shot, to him, who
himself had barely a hold on life, was murder. It is well known
that Nachtigal, during the whole course of his travels, never fired a
gun. The fact points out one of his strong characteristics. It shows
that neither necessity nor fearful peril, such as he was exposed to in
Bagirmi, could disturb the delicate stringing of his soul."

696

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Messrs. Editors :

SIR : The writer of the paper in the July
Monthly on aerial navigation is certainly
mild in nis predictions of success, and still
he is much too sanguine, as it seems to me.
Besides the employment of a new motor, the
recent French experiments have accom-
plished nothing not done before. If any-
thing, they have emphasized the difficulties
long recognized by aeronauts, without be-
stowing an iota of anything valuable toward
their solution.

An enormous gas-bag is employed to en-
counter atmospheric resistance, and then to
overcome that resistance a motive power is
employed. It is the old way. One would
think that effort would stop in this direction.
It seems to be an infatuation similar to the
" perpetual-motion " craze, just as persistent
and just as hopeless.

As long as atmospheric resistance on
any sort of a gas-bag is so much greater
than the power developed by any known
motor it is capable of carrying, the task of
making a practical air-traveling machine is
an impossible one.

It is the humming-bird process, and
seems unfitted to man's use. Why not try
the albatross or condor method, where grav-
ity is the motive power, all active mechan-
ism being dispensed with, and shape and
position brought into prominence as the
factors of success ? Respectfully,

I. Lancaster.

335 WABASn A VENUE, )

Chicago, June 29, 1885. j

HOW THE LOCUST LAYS ITS EGGS.

Messrs. Editors :

Dear Sir : During the appearance of
the so-called seventeen-year " locust " (Ci-
cada septendceim) at this place in 1868, the
commonly accepted account of the manner

in which the female deposited her eggs in
the twigs of trees included the statement that
a transverse incision was made by the insect
below the place where the eggs were depos-
ited, causing the twig to break off and hang
by the bark only. This was supposed to
serve an important purpose in the hatching
of the eggs, and was regarded as a remark-
able exhibition of instinct on the part of
the insect. The fact that the whole woods
became brown with dead twigs seemed to
give color to the statement. But, having
carefully observed the process during the
present appearance, it is very clear that the
breaking is accidental, and disastrous to the
eggs, rather than premeditated and benefi-
cial. No incision is made, other than those
in which the eggs are placed. Only a small
part of the twigs break, and they without
any regularity as to the place of fracture.

Another erroneous statement, which is
frequently made, is that the eggs are laid
in parallel furrows. The incisions in the
wood are V-shaped, starting from a single
small hole through the bark at the angle of
the V. The furrows are sunk deeply into
the hardest part of the wood, the eggs
placed in the bottom, and left thickly cov-
ered with the hair-like fibers of the wood
displaced in making the trench, and left
attached at one end. The form of the in-
cision seems to be due to the necessity of
placing the eggs in solid wood, avoiding the
pith. In a number of instances where the
incision had accidentally penetrated the
pith, the furrow was left incomplete, and no
eggs were deposited.

As may be supposed, ovipositing is at-
tended with great labor on the part of the
female. Each thrust of the ovipositor re-
quires a severe and prolonged struggle ; each
furrow, judging by the number of displaced
fibers, must require from twenty-five to
forty thrusts ; and each female makes many
separate furrows. Charles B. Palmer.
Yellow Spkings, Ohio, July 7, 1885.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SCIENCE VERSUS IMMORALITY.

SELDOM has the moral sentiment of
the civilized world received so se-
vere a shock as it has done in connection
with the revelations which a prominent
London newspaper has made, within the
last couple of months, of the gross and

inhuman vices practiced in the metropo-
lis of the British Empire. One of the
worst features in the case is the fact
that the enormities referred to have
been committed, not by the " dregs of
the population," as that expression is
commonly understood, but by men of

EDITOR'S TABLE.

697

wealth and social station. " Gentle-
men " (!) of education (save the mark ! )
and leisure have employed, annually, in
the corruption of female youth and
childhood, sums that would have af-
forded decent maintenance to numbers
of poor families. Men whose own con-
dition of life had been made in every
way desirable, so far as money could ac-
complish that object, have found noth-
ing better to do than to employ their
means in spreading moral contagion
and destruction among the families of
the poor. Men who boast the name of
Englishmen have thought it not be-
neath them to trade in the souls and
bodies of unfortunate children. Eng-
land, as a nation, struck the manacles
from the hands of her negro slaves
over fifty years ago ; but some English-
men to-day, belonging to the most fa-
vored social class, do not hesitate to
practice, upon weaker members of their
own race, crimes worse than those
which made slavery a hissing and an
abomination among the civilized races
of mankind.

It is needless, however, to dwell fur-
ther on the facts. Words can but feebly
express the shame and horror that they
involve. "What we may do with ad-
vantage is to consider whence such
evils spring, and what is their most
effectual remedy.

As regards the unhappy victims of
the rich man's lust, there is an eco-
nomic side to the problem which is
doubtless difficult to deal with. That
the pressure of life should be so hard
upon some, as to render the path of
virtue one almost impossible to tread,
is in itself an evil of the first magni-
tude, and one which a more fully de-
veloped economic science must some
day grapple with. The efforts at pres-
ent being made, under the guidance of
a purely sentimental impulse, to pro-
vide improved dwellings for the poor,
and in other ways to force on them
higher modes of living, we do not, we
must confess, regard as very hopeful.
It is seldom that the state succeeds in

paying Peter without robbing Paul, or
in closing the door to one social abuse
without opening it to another and per-
chance a greater. The economic prob-
lem, however, is not the only one to
consider, nor is it perhaps the most im-
portant. The educational problem de-
mands equal and more immediate atten-
tion, seeing that the knowledge neces-
sary for its solution is immediately
available. As every one is aware, a
vast amount has been done for popular
education in England within the last
fifteen years; yet it is precisely the
children who have been growing up
during the last fifteen years who are
furnishing prey for the "Minotaurs"
and other scoundrels of the metropolis.
The theory of state education is that
the state is bound to see that its juve-
nile members do not grow up ignorant,
and, as a result of ignorance, prone to
vice. It is also held that the state owes
it to every youthful citizen to furnish him
or her with such elements of education
as may be needed to fit them for employ-
ments requiring a knowledge of reading
and writing. From the latter point of
view reading and writing are looked
upon in the light of tools ; but why the
state should be required to furnish men-
tal tools rather than material ones — to
furnish the child's head with the multi-
plication-table, but not to provide his
hands with saw, axe, or hammer — has
never, to our mind, been entirely evi-
dent. It seems to us that if the state
is to educate, the whole strain and stress
of its effort should be to produce good
citizens ; not to fit this boy for a count-
ing-house or that girl for a position as
" salesdndy," but to impart to both that
knowledge and imbue both with those
principles that make for the right order-
ing of life and for the good of society.
The multiplication-table and the rules
of grammar may be found valuable aids
to these all-important objects — we do
not say they are not — but we insist that
they should be looked upon and treated
as means always, as ends never ; and as
means to no other objects than the ones

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mentioned. It should be distinctly un-
derstood and continually repeated that
the state has nothing to do with this or
that individual's success in life, so far as
that may be a matter of competition ;
that the only "success" the state can
undertake to prepare any one for is the
success of good conduct and of social
adaptation.

Now it is evident that if State edu-
cation were dominated by this idea, it
wrould have to assume an essentially
scientific character. For the conduct
of life, what is wanted is not accom-
plishment of any kind whatever, but
knowledge of what life is and a sense
of its realities. A true education will,
therefore, find its basis in the laws of
life — physical, intellectual, and moral
— and will aim at bringing each indi-
vidual face to face with the great re-
alities upon which happiness depends.
From such an education all false prudery
would be banished. No child would be
allowed to grow up in an ignorance
which might expose it to the gravest
physical perils ; on the contrary, the
way of physical salvation would be
clearly and plainly indicated, and the
perils of every kind which wait upon
violations of law would be faithfully
exhibited. The chief impression, how-
ever, would be produced by the con-
stant reference of all instruction to the
grand aim of promoting integrity, puri-
ty, and harmony of life. Every branch
of knowledge would be considered and
treated in its bearing upon this aim,
and not, as is now generally the case,
in its bearing upon individual success
in the competition of life. " Do so and
so," children are now told, "and you
will rise to positions of distinction in
society." Yes, provided others fail to
act with equal wisdom ; but, supposing
all to conduct themselves wisely and
well, where is the distinction to come
from ? No doubt it may safely be pre-
dicted that all will not ; but is it well to
assume this in the appeals we make to
the young, and so to accustom them to
thought of profiting by the errors or

weakness of others? The educator, we
hold, should use only such modes of
appeal as are applicable to all ; and a
promise of eminence, of distinction, of
wealth, of power, is not applicable to
all, but only to a few. To all it may
be said : " Do so and so, and your life
will rest upon solid foundations ; you
will be a healthful and helpful member
of society, and, whatever your lot in
life may be, you will have an inward
fund of happiness and self-respect that
will be secure against all vicissitude.
Moreover, the world is so constituted
that you can not give without receiv-
ing, and whatever you sow for others
you will reap the same yourself."

We believe that were education
dominated by these ideas, and by the
one main purpose we have indicated,
the result would soon be seen in quick-
ened intelligences and improved dis-
positions; and at least the gross ig-
norance would be removed which at
present is answerable for so large an
amount of juvenile depravity.

There is, however, another aspect
to the question with which we are now
specially concerned. What shall be
said of the " education " of the men of
wealth and leisure, who find their high-
est pleasure in the most criminal and
ruthless forms of vice? These men
have passed through public schools,
perchance through universities; some
are said to be doctors of medicine;
others to be eminent at the bar or on
the bench ; and some even to wear the
livery of the Church. In what shape
can life have been presented to such
men? What sense can they ever have
gained of the organic unity of society ?
What respect can they ever have been
taught for the temple of their bodies,
or for the cardinal institutes of nature
and of society ? What regard for others
can ever have been inculcated upon
them when they think that money can
atone for the utter degradation of a
fellow-creature? Surely it is time to
cry aloud and spare not, when men can
pass for " educated " to whom the very

EDITOR'S TABLE.

699

elements of a true science of life are I
unknown, and who, with all their lit-
erary, professional, and social acquire-
ments, are willing to descend in their
daily practice to the lowest depths of
infamy. Think of the two things —
" education " and hrutal, merciless vice
— going hand in handl Alas! it is not
education ; it is that wretched, sophis-
tical veneering of accomplishments
which usurps the name of education.
It may embrace — in the case of medi-
cal men must embrace — a certain
amount of scientific instruction; but
what it lacks is the true scientific grasp
of life as a whole. We are no fanatical
believers in the saving efficacy of a lit-
tle smattering, nor even of much spe-
cial knowledge, of physics and chemis-
try ; but we are firm believers in the
moralizing effects of a true philosophy
of life, supported and illustrated by
constant reference to verifiable facts.
All sciences are but parts of one great
science, and the highest function of
universal science is to teach us how to
live. The state, in so far as it under-
takes to fit the young for " positions in
life," acts upon the old sophistical idea
of education as a tiling of accomplish-
ments designed to promote individual
success. Such education can not of
itself have any moralizing effect, and
may have a demoralizing. The change
that is needed is to abandon that view,
and to make education a preparation
for life in the broadest sense. Whether
the state can adopt the latter principle,
and bring its teaching up to the proper
level, remains to be seen. If it can
not, its condemnation is definitively
pronounced, for no other conception of
education will meet the requirements
of the future.

THE STUDY OF FACTS.

The subject of education has been
treated from many points of view, but
we do not know that it can be more
profitably considered than in its bearing
upon the power of recognizing and deal-
ing with facts. The educated man, ac-

cording to our conception, is he who
knows a fact when he sees it and knows
what to do with it. The educated man
is the man who has an instinct for facts,
who searches for them as for hidden
treasure, and, having got them, knows
how to set them in logical and lumi-
nous order. It is the man who knows
and feels that facts make up the very
backbone of human life and of every-
thing else, and that to ignore them, or
to play fast and loose with them, is
simply to court failure and loss.

The true fact corresponds with the
true idea ; and the man of facts is there-
fore a man of ideas. He constantly
seeks to see the relations of things, and
only when he discerns relations does he
feel himself to be in the presence of
facts. To have an appetite for unre-
lated facts is as unwholesome as to have
an appetite for slate-pencils. " Grad-
grind" is not the type of the man of
facts: he is rather the type of a man
who does not know what a fact is, who
is all unconscious that our knowledge
in regard to anything has to round itself
to some completeness and symmetry
before we can claim to possess facts.
A true fact is a living, not a dead, thing;
and it proves that it is alive by bearing
fruit: it produces something, and, like
wisdom, it is justified of its children.

What we have in view, however, on
the present occasion is, not to pronounce
a eulogium on facts — after all, they can
take pretty good care of themselves —
but to draw attention to the extent to
wrhich, in spite of all that has been done
for " education," an inability to discern
and do justice to facts still prevails in
the world. Ask any intelligent business
man what the chief trouble is that he
encounters among his employes, or what
it is that impairs the usefulness of most
of them ; and he will tell you, not in
so many words, but in substance, that
it is their imperfect apprehension of
facts, and consequent inability to draw
conclusions that common sense itself
dictates. He will say, perhaps, " Out
of a score of men I can only find one

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or two who can be trusted to put that
and that together." Well, "putting that
and that together" simply means men-
tally recognizing a fact and perceiving
its significance. It is not the science
of logic that is required in every-day
affairs ; it is the faculty or habit of seiz-
ing main points and holding them as
long as may be necessary. The truly
superior man, the man who counts, is
he who is thus able to take a grip of
things, of that which is substantial, vi-
tal, pertinent, organic.

Self-interest is supposed to be a great
sharpener of the mental faculties; but
nothing is commoner than to find peo-
ple ignoring the very facts on which
their happiness chiefly depends. They
live according to the impulse and humor
of the moment, in a hind of disjoint-
red, inconsequent fashion. They do not
know the great facts of life; and the
truth that their life, as a whole, should
present a certain organic unity, and
should then itself become a great fact,
has never been revealed to them. Here
is a man who is " all out of sorts." He
wants change, he says; the desperate
monotony of his existence is killing
him. He can not understand how it
is that he should have to be always
running to the doctor and dosing him-
self with tonics and alteratives. He
likes to throw the blame on circum-
stances ; he likes to think there is some-
thing mysterious or at least altogether
special in his case ; the last thing he
wants to hear is that probably his con-
dition is due to the neglect of certain
important facts of his physical, per-
chance, also, of his moral, nature. He
willingly lends himself to the nostrums
of the quack; but a simple account of
the general principles upon which Na-
ture works is nowise to his taste. He
does not like to think that certain pen-
alties are irrevocable, or that the only
course by which partial relief can be
obtained is one of careful submission to
law for the future.

"We see substantially the same con-
dition of mind in many a man whose

business career has been one of failure.
He likes to think that success in this
world is mainly a matter of accident,
and that " luck " was against him. That
one word, "luck," is the whole phi-
losophy of some men : it does not ex-
plain anything, but it does what is more
pleasing to persons of their disposition,
enables them to dispense with explana-
tions. We may say in general that
there is a fatal disposition in most men
not to recognize facts, not to perceive
that things are woven together in the
iron bands of law, and that nothing
stands wholly out of relation to any
other thing. This is the tendency
which it should be the chief object of
education to combat. What we require
to do is to build up in the mind, little
by little, but with undeviating purpose,
the belief that things hang together,
and that the business of the intellect is
to discover the laws or principles of
their association. We should teach that
there is order in the universe, which
should and must — unless our lives are
to be marred by failure — be responded
to by a certain order in our thoughts.
We should teach on every occasion,
and with every possible variety of il-
lustration, that nothing can be done
wisely or well that is not done upon
system; that random words are vain ;
that random thoughts are vain ; that
no mental effort is worth anything that
is not dominated by some clear pur-
pose, and that does not connect itself
with previously acquired knowledge.

We find ourselves here face to face
with the principle of evolution. If evo-
lution means anything, it means the
unity of the universe ; it means the con-
struction of a path along which thought
can travel from the infinitely small to
the infinitely great, from forms of the
last degree of simplicity to forms of the
highest degree of complexity ; it means,
finally, the blending of subject and ob-
ject in one all - embracing synthesis.
Well, this, according to the measure of
our opportunities, is what we have to
teach to the young. It will be ac-

LITERARY NOTICES.

701

knowledged that intelligence is only
stimulated by the perception of general
truths, or, in other words, of laws,
which again are the great facts of the
universe; but the object in education
should distinctly be to show that things
only exist in relation to one another,
and that things out of relation are vir-
tually out of existence. Let a man — to
take an illustration — introduce irrele-
vant matter into his argument: that
matter relatively to the object of the
argument has no existence. The case
is even worse ; for, in the place where
it is found, such matter is a burden and
a nuisance; we must put a minus-sign
before it. Now, a teacher who is thor-
oughly imbued with these ideas, and
who neither regards nor accepts any-
thing as work that does not show prog-
ress in the comprehension of them, will,
with an inferior subject, accomplish
better results than another man will
who, with a superior subject, contents
himself with more perfunctory methods.
The reason why the teaching of science
has so often been comparatively barren
is that it has not been broadly taught,
and has not, therefore, awakened the
true scientific spirit. The reason why
language - studies have sometimes ap-
peared to produce superior intellectual
results is that they have, in these cases,
been taught by earnest men who, by
dint of their own extensive culture,
have connected these studies with wide
areas of literature and history, and so
obtained a sufficient field for the illus-
tration of law ; in other words, for the
presentation of their subject in a scien-
tific manner. Science, in the true sense,
is vindicated as much by success in the
one case as by failure in the other.

This is a matter, it is needless to say,
to which too much attention can not
be given. The whole progress of socie-
ty depends upon the intelligence of its
members. But intelligence is formed
in the earlier years of life; the habit
of taking rational views, and of being
alive to the teachings of experience, is

one which, if not acquired while the
intellect is fresh, will probably never
be acquired at all. We would therefore
urge upon all who are interested in the
education of the young to see to it, as
far as they possibly can, that by educa-
tion is understood the development of
the habit of seeking the true relations
of things, and of conceiving of human
life as a network of relations. Let us
banish from education the unrelated
word, the unrelated thought; let us
proceed according to the principle of
evolution, linking step with step, while
tending always to a higher unity ; and
the intellectual progress of the race
will proceed with all the rapidity that
is desirable or possible.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Scientific Culture and other Essays. By
Josiah Parsons Cookk, LL. D., Profess-
or of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Har-
vard College. Second edition, with ad-
ditions. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 293. Price, $1.

We had carefully read the first edition
of this volume of essays, and have now re-
read it in its expanded form with renewed
pleasure. There are but few scientific writ-
ers so trained in the skillful use of English
as Professor Cooke. Aside from the value
and instructiveness of their contents, his
essays are a treat to all who appreciate
clearness, vigor, and precision in style,
while yet the admirable expression is kept
subordinate to intense and weighty thought.
The work, however, is to be mainly prized
as a contribution to the great educational
movement of our time, which aims to give
larger recognition to science in our higher
schemes of study. This new edition must
be taken as representing with a high de-
gree of authority the broad and solid claims
of scientific education. It does not deal
with the subject technically, or formally, or
even systematically, but is simply a collec-
tion of essays " written for special occa-
sions without reference to each other," but
all having a bearing upon one subject, with
which the author has been long occupied
both as a philosophic thinker and a prac-

702

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tical teacher. The first essay, "Scientific
Culture," and the eleventh, " Scientific Cul-
ture ; its Spirit, its Aims, and its Methods,"
present directly the predominant idea of
the book; but the various other papers
present the view taken in an instructive
and impressive manner. The several bio-
graphical articles are of extreme interest in
illustrating the mental training and develop-
ment of scientific men ; while the papers on
the Greek question are designed to meet
immediate issues in relation to collegiate
reform. The article on "The Elementary
Teaching of Physical Science " is of especial
value, for, although Professor Cooke has
not devoted himself practically to this field
of work, his statement of the scientific prin-
ciples it involves is forcible and timely.

But, while the volume is full of sound
suggestions on the general subject of sci-
ence-teaching, yet its leading title, " Sci-
entific Culture," embodies the fundamental
conception which it is designed to bring
out ; and this is nothing less than an un-
qualified avowal of the extremest claim put
forth in behalf of science as a new educa-
tional basis. The adherents of the old
traditional system of scholarship are ready
enough to admit that there is a certain use-
fulness and importance in scientific studies,
which entitle them to a place in the col-
legiate curriculum ; but they strenuously
resist the idea that science is to give rise
to a new "culture." Ilere they make a
stand, and here the battle of progressive
education is to be fought, with heavy odds,
it must be confessed, against the reformers.
For " culture " has come to be a very potent
word, representing, as it does, all that is
most excellent, dignified, and revered in a
system of education that has prevailed for
centuries in the leading civilized countries.
In fact, the chief capital of the classical
party to-day, in their struggle against the
new education, is the powerful spell of a
single term, which has come mainly to im-
ply a critical knowledge of the dead lan-
guages, because, by all our scholastic tradi-
tions, no man can lay claim to " culture "
who is not familiar with Latin and Greek.
The term has no doubt become widened in
recent times, so as to embrace other lan-
guages and the general subject of litera-
ture, but the party of tradition is sharply

jealous of any extension of it that will
make the term " culture " applicable to
proficiency in distinctively modern studies.

Professor Cooke takes no narrow view
of his subject. He concedes the value of
that genuine mental culture, whatever the
instruments employed to attain it, which
confers intellectual power by the vigorous
and systematic exercise of the intellectual
faculties ; and he recognizes that this may
be secured by the thorough study of lan-
guages, and the literatures they contain.
He draws a distinction between erudition
and scholarship, the former implying the
simple accumulation of stores of learning,
and the latter a discipline of the intel-
lect and an enlargement of mental power
through the process of independent inquiry.
The same thing holds in science. The
cramming of books — the erudition of sci-
ence— is of but little worth ; while the in-
dependent exercise of the mind upon the
problems of science — the assimilation of
acquisitions into a real knowledge — is the
true scholarship of science, and the highest
form of mental cultivation. Professor Cooke
shows conclusively that the " culture " of
science is a broader conception, and in-
volves a more varied and a completer men-
tal training, than can be obtained from the
exclusive study of language and of litera-
ture, because science has for its object the
study of nature, and the whole scheme of
phenomena and law in the midst of which
human life is carried on.

The Religious Aspect of Philosophy: A
Critique of the Bases of Conduct and of
Faith. By Josiah Royce, Ph. D., In-
structor in Philosophy in Harvard Col-
lege. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Pp. 484. Price, $2.

If the test of a system of philosophy is,
as Fcrrier says, that it must be " reasoned,"
then is Dr. Royce's work entitled to this
rank, for it is undoubtedly an ably " rea-
soned " system. He has written an inde-
pendent and suggestive book, lively and
vigorous in style, and which is certain to be
appreciated by those who have a taste for
metaphysical inquiries.

In his preface the author describes the
work better than we can : " This book
sketches the basis of a system of philosophy,
while applying the principles of this sys-

LITERARY NOTICES.

703

tem to religious problems. The form and
order of the treatment depend upon the na-
ture of these latter problems themselves,
and are not such as a system of philosophy,
expounded solely for its own sake, would be
free to take. The religious problems have
been chosen for the present study because
they first drove the author to philosophy,
and because they, of all human interests,
deserve our best efforts and our utmost loy-
alty."

It seems, therefore, that our author was
driven to philosophy by some sort of relig-
ious disquiet or perplexity. We gather
from what follows that he had lost his faith,
or was fearful of losing it, and went to phi-
losophy for relief. What he found it is the
office of the book to tell, but it is evidently
something very different from that which
had left him at first. He says : " As he has
no present connection with any visible relig-
ious body, and no sort of desire for any
such connection, he can not be expected to
write an apology for a popular creed. This
confession is made frankly, but not for the
sake of provoking a quarrel, and with all
due reverence for the faith of other men.
If the fox who had lost his tail was foolish
to be proud of his loss, he would have been
yet more foolish to hide it by wearing a false
tail, stolen mayhap from a dead fox. The
full application of the moral of the fable to
the present case is, moreover, willingly ac-
cepted. Not as the fox invited his friends
to imitate his loss, would the present writer
aim to make other men lose their faiths.
Rather is it his aim not to arouse fruitless
quarrels, but to come to some peaceful un-
derstanding with his fellows touching the
ultimate meaning and value and foundation
of this noteworthy custom, so widely preva-
lent among us, the custom of having a re-
ligion."

Nevertheless, the philosophy he sought
seems to have answered the author's pur-
pose, as it showed him that the skepticism
he dreaded was not so bad a thing after all.
Again he says : " As to the relation of this
book to what is called modern doubt, it
is a relation neither to blind obedience nor
of unsympathetic rejection. The doctrine
of philosophic idealism here propounded is
not what in these days is popularly called
agnosticism. Yet doubting everything is

once for all a necessary element in the or-
ganism of philosophic reflection. What is
here dwelt upon over and over again is,
however, the consideration that the doubts
of our time are not to be apologetically ' re-
futed,' in the old-fashioned sense, but that,
taken just as they are, fully and cordially
received, they are upon analysis found to
contain and imply a positive and important
religious creed, bearing both upon conduct
and upon reality. Not to have once thor-
oughly accepted as necessary the great phil-
osophic doubts and problems of our day, is
simply not to have philosophized as a man
of this age. But to have accepted these
doubts without in time coming to accept the
positive truth that is concealed in them, is
to treat them as the innocent favorite of
fortune in a fairy tale always at first treats
his magic gift. It is something common and
dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his
empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But
see : handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills
your transfigured home with a wealth of
gems and gold, and spreads for you a won-
drous banquet. To the author has come the
fancy that modern doubt may be some such
fairy gift as this, and he would like to sug'
gest to some reader what may possibly prove
the right fashion of using the talisman."

More light is thrown upon the author's
position by a passage from his introductory
chapter, where he remarks : " The short and
easy agnostic method is not enough — you
must supplement skepticism by philosophy ;
and when you do so, you will find yourself
forced to accept, not indeed the old theology
of your childhood, but something that satis-
fies oddly enough certain religious longings
that, as skeptic, you had carefully tried to
forget. Then you'll find yourself with what
you may have to call a religious doctrine ;
and then you may have to state it as we are
here going to do, not in an easy or fascinat-
ing way, such as the pure skeptic can so
well follow, but at all events with some ap-
proach to a serious and sustained effort to
consider hard questions from many sides.
The skeptical method is not only a good but
also a necessary beginning of religious phi-
losophy. But we are bound to go deeper
than mere superficial agnosticism."

From these quotations the reader will
be able to form some tolerable conception

7°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the scope and purpose of Dr. Royce's
work. Of its value as a contribution to
speculative thought we are not qualified to
speak. Cut, turning to Chapter I, in which
the author puts the grave question, " What,
then, is religion ? " we do not find the an-
swer so clear and satisfactory as seems
required in stating the fundamental idea of
a religio-philosophical system. Religion, ac-
cording to our author, is something impor-
tant, vaguely associated with ethics. He
says : " So much, at all events, seems sure
about religion. It has to do with action. It
is impossible without some appearance of
moral purpose." Again : " A religion adds
something to the moral code, and what it
adds is, first, enthusiasm." And again : "But
in fact religion always adds another element.
Not only does religion teach devotion to a
moral code, but the means that it uses to
this end include a more or less complex
theory of things. Religion says not merely,
do and feel, but also believe. . . . These three
elements then go to constitute any religion."
On this basis, which is at any rate suffi-
ciently comprehensive, and by the help of
the great lights of German philosophy —
Kant, Ilegel, Schopenhauer, Lotze, and oth-
ers— Dr. Royce builds his system, and in
the opinion of able critics he has built to ex-
cellent purpose.

The French Revolution. By IIippolyte
Adolphe Taine. Translated by John
Durand. Vol. III. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. Pp. 509. Price, $2.50.

The present volume gives the history
of the revolutionary government, including
the Reign of Terror. The author expresses
himself in his preface as regarding the lead-
ers in the movements of the time in the
same light as he would the crocodiles of
the ancient Egyptian temples — dangerous
animals, brutes rolling about on a purple
carpet, but worshiped in their day. Of his
own kinds of "crocodiles" he has studied
the details of the structure, the play of the
organs, their habits, their modes of living,
their faculties, and their appetites. Of the
thousands of specimens he had at hand, he
has selected a few for special treatment, of
which the three largest seem, «« of their kind,
truly remarkable, and those in which the
divinity of the day might well incarnate

himself. The bills of butchers, as well as
housekeeping accounts, authentic and regu-
larly kept, throw sufficient light on the cost
of this cult. We can estimate how much
the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years,
we know their bills of fare daily, tbeir fa-
vorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected
the fattest victims, but his voracity was so
great that he likewise bolted down, and
blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater
number than the fattest. Moreover, by vir-
tue of his instincts, and an unfailing effect
of the situation, he ate his equals once or
twice a year, except when they succeeded in
eating him. This cult certainly is instruc-
tive, at least to historians and men of pure
science." We are told also that " this vol-
ume, like the others that have gone before
it, is written solely for amateurs of moral
zoology, for naturalists of the understand-
ing, for seekers of texts and of proofs — for
these and not for the public, whose mind is
made up, and which has its own opinion on
the Revolution."

The Morals of Christ. By Austin Bier-
bower. Chicago ; Colcgrove Book Com-
pany. Pp. 200. Price, 50 cents.

" In announcing his morality," says the
author, " Christ took three departures from
other systems — one from the Mosaic, one
from the Pharisaic, and one from the Graeco-
Roman. ... In departing from the Mosaic
morality, he sought to develop morality from
its primitive rudeness and simplicity ; in
departing from the Pharisaic morality, he
sought to recall it from a ritualistic diver-
gence to the proper subjects of morality ;
and, in departing fiom the Graeco-Roman
morality, he sought to substitute the tender
for the heroic virtues." The author's pur-
pose in this essay is declared to be to set
forth the morality of Christ as a departure
from these three representative types, " it
being this triple departure, more than any-
thing absolute, on which he put his chief
emphasis, and which, more than anything
original, characterized his system."

The History of the Present Tariff. 1860-
1883. By F. W. Taussig. New York :
G. P. Putnam's Sons, Pp.111. Price,

75 cents.

This volume is intended to give a nar-
rative of the growth of the protective sys-

LITERARY NOTICES.

705

tem which now exists in the United States.
It endeavors to state the circumstances un-
der which the various tariff acts were passed,
the causes which made their enactment pos-
sible, and the changes of duty which they
brought about — facts which may be familiar
enough to old citizens who have not shut
their eyes to them, but which can hardly be
known to the younger Americans who have
been taught that the protective policy is an
essential part of our institutions and pros-
perity. The author has opinions of his own
on the subject, which he has not concealed,
but which he has tried not to allow to dis-
tort his statements of facts.

The History op the Surplus Revenue of
1837. By Edward G. Bourne. New
York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Pp. 161. Price, $1.25.

The proposition has been made within
the past two years, instead of reducing our
revenue, now too large for the legitimate
needs of the Government, to continue col-
lecting the surplus to form a fund for dis-
tribution among the States. A similar
experiment was tried onoe before in the
history of our country, with disastrous re-
sults ; but men's memories are short in po-
litical and financial history, and the story
has been forgotten except by students. Mr.
Bourne's book appears opportunely to bring
the lesson back to mind, and warn such
persons as need the warning and would heed
it. In the main it is a relation of facts,
showing how the surplus was disposed of in
the several States which shared in the dis-
tribution, and what came of the dispositions.

Proceedings op the Colorado Scientific
Society. Vol. I, 1883 and 1884. Den-
ver: Published by the Society, Whit-
man Cross, Secretary. Pp. 147, with
Plate.

The Colorado Scientific Society was
formed in December, 1882, "for tjhe promo-
tion of scientific intercourse, observation,
and record in the State of Colorado." From
the twelve original members it increased
during the first year to a body of thirty-
one members. The contents of the present
volume of its proceedings are well described
by Mr. S. F. Emmons, its first year's presi-
dent, in his retiring address, as " interesting
and instructive papers upon new methods
vol. xxvii. — 45

in the chemical investigation of metals ;
on the geology and manner of occurrence
of ores in Colorado mining districts, and
the discovery of minerals not only new in
this part of the world, but some new to
science ; upon glacial phenomena in Colo-
rado ; upon the geology and volcanic phe-
nomena of the far-distant Dutch possessions
in the East Indies ; and suggestions with re-
gard to the home question of the supply of
water from artesian wells to be expected in
Denver."

The Museum, Vol. I, Nos. 1 and 2, May and
June, 1885. Philadelphia: William F.
Fell & Co. Pp. 16 each number. Price,
15 cents ; $1.50 a year.

The " Museum " is an illustrated month-
ly journal for collectors of all classes and
young naturalists. The numbers before us
bear the marks of good editing and efforts
to secure original contributions from men
whose names carry authority in their re-
spective departments of research.

Symbolism and Science. By Lloyd P..
Smith. Philadelphia : Privately printed.
Pp. 23.

This essay was originally read as a pa-
per before the Germantown Science and
Art Club. The author's purpose was t»'
call attention, " rather by way of suggestion
than otherwise," to the subject of the eso-
teric or symbolical method of teaching pur-
sued originally in the East, and the perni-
cious effects it has had on the progress of
true knowledge even down to our own time.

Lessons in Hygiene. By John C. Cutter,
M. D. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippinoott
Company. Pp. 180. Price, 50 cents.

This is an elementary text-book, adapt-
ed for common schools, on the maintenance
of health, with the rudiments of anatomy
and physiology, and the treatment of emer-
gent cases, and lessons on the action of
stimulants and sedatives on the brain and
nervous system. It presents the essential
facts concerning bathing, clothing, air, water,
food, cooking, home - construction, mental
work, physical exercise, eye-work, conta-
gious disease, filth-disease, disinfection, tea,
tobacco, chloral, alcoholics, ete., as bearing
upon the maintenance of health and the
prevention of disease. The practical is
prominent throughout.

706

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Christian Thought. Second Series. Edit-
ed by Charles F. Deems, LL. D., Presi-
dent of the American Institute of Chris-
tian Philosophy. New York : Phillips
& Sons, 80 Fourth Avenue. Pp. 476.

The " Institute of Christian Philosophy "
is a society which holds stated meetings for
the discussion of questions bearing upon the
relations of science and the Christian re-
ligion, together with annual assemblies on
the Chautauqua plan at some place of sum-
mer resort, where the same questions are
formally considered with carefully prepared
addresses before as large audiences as will
attend. The present volume represents the
sum of the year's work of the institution as
embodied in the more important lectures
and papers on philosophy, Christian evi-
dence, and biblical elucidation, spoken at
the monthly and annual meetings. These,
as they appeared in the monthly numbers
of the periodical " Christian Thought," were
r varied with editorial remarks, briefer arti-
cles, paragraphs, and squib3, all having
some bearing on the main question, which
are also incorporated in the volume.

An Account of the Progress in Zoology

in the Year 1883. By Theodore Gill.

Washington : Government Printing-Of-

fice. Pp. 53.

Though no startling discoveries in zo-
ology were recorded during 1883, the prog-
ress of the science was real. The two im-
portant events deemed worthy of special
notice were the International Fisheries Ex-
hibition in London, and the publication of
Jordan and Gilbert's " Synopsis of the
Fishes of North America." Mr. Gill's " ac-
count" is composed of synopses of the
several papers and reports of the investi-
gations of naturalists in the various coun-
tries in which science is systematically pur-
sued.

Archaeological Institute of America.
Sixth Annual Report, 1884-'85. Cam-
bridge, Mass. : John Wilson & Son. Pp.
48.

A new departure has been taken by the
institute, in order to give it wider national
scope and interest, in the division into
affiliated societies, of which there are now
three, those of Boston, Baltimore, and New
York, each with its own roll of members
and set of officers. Progress is reported in

the exploration of New Mexico and Arizona
by M. Bandelier, in the collation of the
results of the excavations at Assos, Asia
Minor, and in the publication of papers.
An expedition was sent out last fall to
Babylonia, under the charge of Dr. W.
Hayes Ward, for the purpose of looking
over the field and finding a favorable site
for future thorough investigation. It has
not yet made a report for publication. The
institute collected and expended $46,150 be-
tween May, 1879, and May, 1885.

Proceedings of the Modern Language
Association of America, 1884, Pro-
fessor A. M. Elliott, Baltimore, Md.,
Secretary. Pp. 100.

The "Modern Language Association"
was organized in the city of New York in
December, 1883. Its object is the " ad-
vancement of the study of the modern lan-
guages and their literatures." The second
meeting, of which this pamphlet contains
the report, was held at Columbia College,
New York, on the 29th and 30th of Decem-
ber last. A considerable number of pa-
pers, abstracts of which are here given, all
instructive and suggestive, were read, bear-
ing on the value of modern languages, the
desirability of giving more attention to
them and of putting them on an equal foot-
ing with the ancient languages, and the best
methods of teaching them. A resolution
was adopted expressing the opinion of the
convention that the establishment of a clas-
sical course in modern languages, with spe-
cial view to disciplinary methods, alongside
the ancient classical course in our colleges
is not only desirable but practicable.

Notes on thh Literature of Explosives.
By Professor Charles E. Munroe, U. S.
N. A., Annapolis, Md. Pp. 32.

The title well describes the scope of the
book. It is a collection of " notes," derived
from various sources, covering the chief
points of interest concerning explosives,
their manufacture, the preparation and ap-
plication of new ones, their use, and the
precautions observed in their manufacture
and transportation. It is a continuous pub-
lication, appearing in installments from time
to time, as new information is brought to
light and collected by the compiler.

LITERARY NOTICES.

707

Elephant Pipes in the Museum of the
Academy of Natural Sciences, Daven-
port, Iowa. By Charles E. Putnam.
Pp. 40.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of
Davenport has two pipes in the shape of
elephants, and three inscribed tablets, which
are claimed to have been found among abo-
riginal relics. Their genuineness has been
doubted by some, and has been attacked by
Mr. Henry W. Henshaw, in the report of
the Bureau of Ethnology. This essay is a
vindication of their authenticity by a mem-
ber of the academy. Behind the question
immediately at issue lies the controversy
respecting the origin of the mound-build-
ers, on which archaeologists are dividing.

Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poi-
sonous. Edited by Julius A. Palmer,
Sr. Boston : L. Prang & Co. Pp. 4 of
Text, with Twelve Chromo-lithographic
Plates.

Regarding the edible mushrooms as sup-
plying most valuable and delicious food, the
author seeks to furnish a guide in the selec-
tion of species that shall admit of no mis-
take being made. The letterpress pages
furnish general directions for recognizing
and gathering the useful species and avoid-
ing the dangerous ones ; and the plates give
exact portraits of both kinds, in their natu-
ral sizes and colors, with botanical descrip-
tions, and directions for preparing them for
the table. The same information is given
in a cheaper form in two charts, one con-
taining the useful, the other the dangerous
kinds. Mr. Palmer's qualifications for the
description of these plants are attested by
the fact that he has for more than ten years
directed his attention and experiments to
ascertaining the edible or noxious qualities
of the various species of mushrooms abound-
ing in our fields and woods.

A Course of Practical Instruction in
Botany. By F. 0. Bower and Sidney H.
Vines. London : Macmillan & Co. Pp.
226. Price, $1.50.

This work has grown out of the course
of botanical instruction which was begun in
1873 by Mr. W. Thistleton Dyer in the Nor-
mal School of Science at South Kensington,
in which the same plan was adopted as Pro-
fessor Huxley had found convenient for the

animal side of morphology. Mr. Dyer's pur-
pose, to put the results of his experience in
teaching methods in the form of a hand-book,
which he has not been able personally to
carry out, has been fulfilled by his success-
or, Mr. Bower, in the matter of laboratory
instruction for the types selected, and by
Dr. Vines in the matter of method and the
morphology of the cells. The plan of the
teaching is — typical specimens having been
selected of well-known or easily identified
plants — to give the pupil directions for
making careful and minute examinations of
all their parts, their structure, and their
visible qualities. This volume, which is
designated as Part I, is devoted to the
phanerogams and the pteridophyta.

The Basic Pathology and Specific Treat-
ment of Diphtheria, Typhoid, Zymot-
ic, Septic, Scorbutic, and Putrescent
Diseases generally. By George J. Zieg-
ler, M. D. Philadelphia : George J. Zieg-
ler, M. D. Pp. 225. Price, $2.

The author's treatise is based upon and
unfolds the theory that the diseases in ques-
tion are "dependent upon, or complicated
with, one common basic, alkaline, pathoge-
nic factor, mostly the volatile alkali ammo-
nia, incidental to all forms of life, and dif-
fering only in quantity and the constitu-
tional and local manifestations and compli-
cations arising from diverse etiological and
pathological conditions, yet underlying and
intensifying them all."

A Manual of the Theory and Practice
of Topographical Surveying by Means
of the Transit and Stadia. By J. B.
Johnson, C. E. New York : John Wi-
ley & Sons. Pp. 113. Price, $1.25.

The author is Professor of Civil Engi-
neering in Washington University, and was
formerly Engineer of the United States
Lake and Mississippi River Surveys. The
system which he explains is well adapted to
preliminary railroad and canal surveys;
surveys of drainage-basins, reservoir, dam,
and bridge sites ; the location of ditches
and pipe-lines ; and, in fact, to surveys of
any kind demanding a knowledge of the
topographical features or of the contours of
the ground. He has had, as objects in view
in preparing the work, to make a manual
useful to students and in the work in the

708

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

field ; to explain the methods of field-work
so clearly and minutely that an engineer in
practice could, without other instruction,
prepare his instruments, and do the work in
good shape; and to furnish means of re-
ducing the field-notes and methods of plot-
ting, the results of many years' experience
of many engineers.

The Lineal Measures of the Semi-civil-
ized Nations of Mexico and Central
America. By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D.
Philadelphia. Pp. 14.

Dr. Brinton is devoted to the study of
the history and civilization of the aborigines
of the Americas, and pursues it with indus-
try in all its branches. In the present mon-
ograph he gives the results of his analyses
of the words for weights and measures in
the Maya, Cakchiquel, and Nahuatl or Az-
tec languages, instituted to ascertain, if
possible, what units, if any, were employed
by the peoples who spoke them. The meas-
ures of these nations seem to have been de-
rived from the body, and some of them were
curious. A unit of land-measure among
the Cakchiquels was the circumference of
the human figure. A man stood erect, his
feet together, and both arms extended. The
end of a rope was placed nnder his feet and
its slack placed over one hand, then on
top of his head, then over the other hand,
and was finally brought to touch the begin-
ning. This gave somewhat less than three
times the height. The Aztecs had four
measures from the point of the elbow : one
to the wrist of the same arm, a second to
the wrist of the opposite arm, a third to the
ends of the fingers of the same arm, and the
fourth to the ends of the fingers of the op-
posite arm. Neither of the three nations
was acquainted with a system of estimation
by weight, or with the use of the plumb-
line, nor with an accurate measure of long
distances.

The Magnetism of Iron and Steel Ships.
An Explanation of the Various Ways in
which it affects the Compass. By T. A.
Lyons. Washington : Government Print-
ing-Office. Pp. 124, with Plates.

This volume is the seventeenth of the
series of " Naval Professional Papers." Its
purpose is to exhibit in a concise form the
principal phenomena of the deviations of

the compass on iron ships. First are de-
scribed the characteristics of a steel mag-
net, the method of determining those char-
acteristics for any particular one, and the
reciprocal action of two magnets. Next, the
similitude of the magnetism in an iron or
steel ship to that of an ordinary bar magnet
is established, and the inquiry is made ap-
plicable to the ship, whereby we may be-
come acquainted with her magnetic pecul-
iarities. These observations are comple-
mented by a number of experiments, all
helping to complete the investigation, and
to bring out a more satisfactory elucidation
of the subject.

The Religion of Philosophy ; or, The Uni-
fication of Knowledge. A Comparison
of the Chief Philosophical and Religious
Systems of the World, made with a View
to reducing the Categories of Thought,
or the most General Terms of Existence,
to a Single Principle, thereby establishing
a True Conception of God. By Raymond
S. Perrin. New York : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 566. Price, $4.
The purpose and character of this elabo-
rate volume are admirably summed up in its
comprehensive title-page. The author has
taken to metaphysics from the most modern
point of view, and labored with great assi-
duity, much learning, and no little analytic
and constructive skill, to work out the grand
conception of unity in the world of philo-
sophical thought. Firmly accepting that
important principle of science, that the few-
er assumptions we make in the explanation
of things the better, he has labored to re-
duce the number of principles hitherto postu-
lated as the primary elements of existence,
and to show that there is but one final and
universal principle, of which all others are
but derivative expressions. Part I, consist-
ing of eight chapters, is an epitome of the
history of philosophy from the dawn of spec-
ulation among the Greeks down to the eclec-
ticism and positive philosophy of France and
the Scotch school. The contributions of the
most illustrious philosophers embraced in
that long period are sifted and estimated
with a view to their bearings upon the fun-
damental proposition which the author finds
himself called upon to establish. Part II
consists of eight chapters, devoted to " The
Nature of Perception," four of which are
given to Herbert Spencer and four to G. H.

LITERARY NOTICES.

709

Lewes. In Part III we reach the subject in-
dicated by the title of the book, " The Re-
ligion of Philosophy." We have here eight
further chapters, six of which are devoted
to an account of the leading religious sys-
tems of the world, with reference to the
fundamental thesis of the author's book.
The seventh of these considers " The Sci-
ence of Morality," and the last is an " Ap-
peal to the Women of America in Behalf
of the Religion of Philosophy."

We can do no more than give this brief
outline of a portly book which has cost the
author immense labor, and will, no doubt,
prove helpful to students interested in the
various questions it discusses. Of the va-
lidity of the work as an original contribu-
tion to philosophic thought we can not
speak, as we have not had time to give it
critical attention. Appealing to the scholar-
ship of the time, it must abide its verdict
on the claims of the performance to live in
the future.

Proceedings of the Biological Society of
Washington. Vol. II, July 1, 1882, to
July 1, 1884. Washington: Smithso-
nian Institution. Pp. 127.

The volume contains, with lists of mem-
bers, etc., abstracts of the proceedings of
the stated meetings of the society, and men-
tion by name of the papers read at each,
two presidential addresses, and sixteen spe-
cial papers. The presidential address of
Mr. Theodore Gill, January 19, 1883, was
on ' • Zoogeography," and gave an elaborate
review of the faunal regions or " realms "
into which naturalists have divided the
earth. The presidential address of Mr.
Charles A. White, January 25, 1884, was
on " Certain Phases in the Geological His-
tory of the North American Continent, bio-
logically considered." ;>.

Sanitary Suggestions on how to Disin-
fect our Homes. By B. W. Palmer,
M. D. Detroit, Mich. : George S. Davis.
Pp. 58. Price, 25 cents.

This is a handbook for popular perusal,
containing the latest and best information
on the household use of disinfectants, de-
odorants, and antiseptics, and practical pre-
cautions for the prevention of cholera, diph-
theria, scarlet fever, and other infectious
diseases.

The Filth Power. By J. B. Olcott. Pp. 41.
This is a paper from the report of the
Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Agri-
culture, having been made originally, ap-
parently, in the form of an address at one
of the meetings of the board. Its purpose
is to present the system of removal of sew-
age by water as the great evil that now
threatens the health and morals of our com-
munities. Sewage irrigation is also con-
demned as an evil hardly, if any, less dan-
gerous. Making allowance for the speak-
er's great intensity of statement, there can
be no doubt that a truth is here held up
to view. Pollution of streams and the
ground by turning the nastiness of towns
upon them is a dire evil, which, threatening
to become almost universal, can not be
combated and remedied too soon. For a
remedy, the author proposes systematic
treatment of all refuse matter with earth.

Mind in Nature. Vol. I, Nos. 1 and 3-
March and May, 1885. Chicago: Cos,
mic Publishing Company. Monthly. Pp.
16 each number. Price, 10 cents a num-
ber, $1 a year.

This is a popular journal of " Psychical,
Medical, and Scientific Information," and
gives especial attention to what has come to
be called " Psychical Research." It has a
large list of special contributors, among
whom clergymen and students of the nerv-
ous system are well represented.

Remarks upon Chipped Stone Implements.
By F. W. Putnam. Salem, Mass. : Sa-
lem Press. Pp. 8, with Nine Plates.

The "remarks" were made at a meet-
ing of the Essex Institute, and relate to
the method of manufacture, the character,
and use of the implements in question. The
plates represent various implements, with
and without handles, from Trenton, New
Jersey, Mexican localities, the Navajo and
Pah-Ute Indians, and Tierra del Fuego.

Facts serving to prove the Contagious-
ness of Tuberculosis. Bv W. H. Webb,
M. D. Philadelphia. Pp. 28.

The author cites a number of cases that
occurred in his own practice where a wife
appeared to contract consumption from her
husband, and husbands from their wives,
and refers to many other cases of which he

710

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

has notes which prove, he says, "conclu-
sively," the contagiousness of phthisis. He
also publishes a note from Surgeon-General
von Lauer, of the Royal Prussian War De-
partment, supporting the same view, and
describes his apparatus for catching tuber-
cle-bacilli in the air near victims of tuber-
culosis, and some of the results of using it.

Foul Brood : Its Management and Cure.
By D. A. Jones. Beeton, Ont. : " Cana-
dian Bee Journal." Pp. 24.

" Foul brood " is a disease of bees,
which, in order that the treatment may not
be misapplied, the author carefully distin-
guishes from " chilled," " neglected," " over-
heated," " drowned," and " dead " brood.
It is a germ-disease, and lurks in the honey,
whence the bees contract it. The author's
remedy is to cause the bees to fast till all
the diseased honey is eliminated from their
' systems. The process has to be very care-
fully performed, and the cautions to be ob-
served are particularly insisted upon in the
directions.

Bulletins of the United States Geologi-
cal Survey. No. 2, pp. 8 ; No. 3, pp.
36 ; No. 4, pp. 34, with Nine Plates ; No.
5, pp. 325; No. 6, pp. 43; No. 11, pp.
66, with Six Plates. Washington : Gov-
ernment Printing-Office.

The bulletins are numbered in a con-
tinuous series, and will be bound in volumes
of convenient size. The first six numbers
constitute Vol. I, which will contain 493
pages, with eleven plates. Of the present
list, No. 2 consists of " Gold and Silver Con-
version Tables," which give the coining
values of troy ounces of fine metal, and the
weights of fine metal represented by given
sums of United States money. In No. 3
are described the fossil faunas of the Upper
Devonian along the meridian of 76° 30',
from Tompkins County, New York, to Brad-
ford County, Pennsylvania. Number 4 gives
accounts by Charles A. White of mesozoic
fossils, including descriptions of certain
aberrant forms of the Chamidce from the
cretaceous rocks of Texas ; of a small col-
lection gathered in Alaska by Mr. W. H.
Dall ; and of the Nautiloid genus Enclima-
toceras Hyatt. No. 5 is a " Dictionary of
Altitudes" in the United States, arranged
by States and alphabetically by places, com-

piled by Mr. Henry Gannett. The data are
derived from special, railroad, State, and
municipal surveys, and generally from baro-
metric or trigonometrical determinations.
No. 6 is a list of elevations in the Dominion
of Canada, derived generally from railroad
and canal surveys. No. 11 is a paper on
the quaternary and recent mollusca of the
Great Basin, with descriptions of new forms,
by Pi. Ellsworth Call, for which an introduc-
tory sketch of the quaternary lakes of the
Great Basin is furnished by Mr. G. K. Gil-
bert.

Ethical Culture. Four Lectures. By
Samuel Burns Weston. Philadelphia.
Pp. 70. Price, 20 cents.

The Society for Ethical Culture, whose
views are partly set forth in these lectures,
regards the moral reason as the soul's sov-
ereign authority, and holds that in yielding
obedience to that authority, in living true
to the dictates of our moral and rational
nature, we are on the path that leads to the
heights of religion. The present lectures
were delivered to the society in Philadel-
phia. The special subjects are: "The Need
of an Ethical Religion " ; " Why Christiani-
ty does not satisfy us " ; " The Success and
Failure of Liberalism " ; and " The Meaning
of a Society for Ethical Culture."

The Sanitary Monitor. A Monthly Jour-
nal. Vol. I, Nos. 1 and 2, May and
June, 1885. J. F. Winn, M. D., Editor
and Proprietor. Pp. 14 each number.
Price, 10 cents; $1 a year.

The "Monitor" is devoted to "Indi-
vidual, Family, and Public Health," and
gives contributions, addresses, editorial ar-
ticles, reports, and items bearing upon these
important subjects. It is not a medical
journal, but is designed especially for the
instruction of the laity in matters pertain-
ing to the preservation of health.

Architectural Studies. Part I. Twelve
Designs for Low-Cost Houses. New
York: William T. Comstock, 6 Astor
Place. Price, $1. .

The designs are shown on a large scale,
with full details, and include prize designs
from " building competition," with specifica-
tions, bills of materials, and estimates of
oost. The costs of the buildings are estimat-
ed at $2,600 and less.

LITERARY NOTICES.

711

The Abdominal Brain. By Leila G. Be-
dell, M. D. Chicago: Gross & Del-
bridge. Pp. 45.

The name of the book is taken from
Bichat, who first used the term. The pur-
pose is to maintain that not the brain and
spinal cord alone, but the whole nervous
system, particularly that part of it called
the sympathetic, is concerned in the opera-
tions of mind. The author refers,"in her
introduction, to a paper by Dr. W. A. Ham-
mond, which was published in " The Popu-
lar Science Monthly " after her essay was
read in her society, the " Woman's Physio-
logical Institute of Chicago," as bearing on
her subject, and indicating that there is a
place in science for her views,

A New Philological Theory. By Profess-
or A. J. Mogyorosi. Alleghany, N. Y.
Pp. 11.

Professor Mogyorosi believes that those
writers on languages are wrong who regard
the Aryan and Shemitic families as present-
ing the most perfect types of structure, and
ignore the Turanian family, which is, he sug-
gests, to the others as the center to the right
and left wings. He illustrates his position
by several examples of word-roots as they
appear in the several families, in which the
Magyar serves as the type of the Turanian.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

The Iroquois Sacrifice of the White Doer. Pp.
8. On Some Doubtful or Intermediate Articula-
tions: au Experiment in Phonetics. Pp. 12. By
Horatio Hale.

Notes on the Literature of Explosives. No. VI II.
By Professor Charles E. Munroe, U. S. Naval Acad-
emy, Annapolis, Md. Pp. 18.

The Soaring Birds. A Mechanical Problem. By
I. Lancaster. Chicago. Pp. 22.

Woman, a Poem. By Logan E. Bleckley. Clarks-
ville, Ga. Pp. 23.

A Study of Thermometers, etc. By O. T. Sher-
man. Pp. 4.

A Plea for the Medicinal Use of Pure Alco-
hol, etc. By Henry Leffmann, M. D. Philadelphia.
Pp. 10.

The Spirit of Scientific Progress. By Harvey W.
Wiley, Ph. D. Pp. 20.

Quarterly Report of the Chief of the Bureau of
Statistics, to March 31, 1885. Washington : Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 144.

Crop Report (Georgia) for July. 1883. J. T.
Henderson, Commissioner of Agriculture, Atlanta.
Pp. 28.

International Electrical Exhibition (Philadelphia)
Reports. Carbons for Arc Lamps. Pp.16. Steam-
Boilers. Pp. 39. General Report of the Chairman of
the Committee on Exhibitions. Pp. 54.

The Western Society for Psychical Research.
Chicago. Constitution and Rules. Pp. 8.

The Terraces of Rotomahana. a Poem . By Frank
Cowan. To which is prefixed a Paper on Geyser
Eruptions and Terrace Formations. By Josiah Mar-
tin, F. G. S. Auckland, N. Z. Pp. 61.

Marginal Kamea. By H. Carvill Lewis. Phila-
delphia. Pp. 26.

Report of Proceedings of the Illinois State Board
of Health, July Meeting. 18S5. Pp.26.

Teachers' Institutes (Bureau of Education Circu-
lar). Washington : Government Printing - Office.
Pp. 206.

The Missouri Coteau and its Moraine*. By Pro-
fessor J. E. Todd, Tabor, Iowa. Salem, Mass.
Salem Press. Pp. 12, with Plate.

Cocaine Hydrochloride. New York : Druggists'
Circular Press. Pp. 97.

" Dio Lewis's Nuggets. " Dio Lewis, Editor.
Monthly. August, 1885. New York : Dio Lewis
Publishing Company. Pp. 38. 10 cents a number,
$1 a year.

Minnesota. Its Resources and Possibilities. By
Professor C. W. Hall, Mr. D. C. Bell, and Rev. J. H.
Morley. Minneapolis. Pp. 32.

A New Physical Truth. By E. J. Goodwin, M.
D., Solitude, Ind. Pp. 32.

Hydatid Tumors in the Brain. By R. Harvsy
Reed, M. D. Mansfield, Ohio. Pp. 16.

Account of the Progress of Chemistry in 1884.
by H. Carrington Bolton. Washington : Govern-
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 52.

Observations of Comets. By J. G. Porter and H.
C.Wilson. Cincinnati. Pp. 29, with 13 Plates.

The Latest Systems of Medicine. By J. G.
Reeve, M. D. Dayton, Ohio. Pp. 33.

"Man. A Semi - Monthly Journal." Ottawa,
Canada. Pp. 8. 5 cents a number, $1 a year.

Cholera, etc. By J. B. McConDell, M. D. Mont-
real : Robert Miller, Son & Co. Pp. 40.

Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. Biographieal Notice.
By George W. Maynard. New York. Pp. 7.

Trichina Spiralis. Including an Examination of
Indiana Hogs. By Thomas B. Redding, F. R. M. S.
Newcastle, Ind. Pp. 44

Universal or Cosmic Time. By Sanford Flem-
ing. Toronto, Ont. : Copp, Clark <& Co.

Fodder Analyses. Blue-Joint Grass Hay. Mas-
sachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station, Am-
herst.

" The Massachusetts Magazine." Conducted by
John N. McClintock. Boston : J. A. Cline & Co.
Monthly, August, 1S85. Pp. 64. 25 cents a num-
ber, $2.50 a year.

United States Hay -Fever Association. 1885.
Portland, Me. : Hoyt, Fogg & Dunham. Pp. 39.

State Board of Health of Wisconsin. Eighth
Report. Madison, Wis. Pp. 160.

Truth, a Poem. By Edwin N. Kingsley. Pp.
57. 25 cents.

Bible Fabrications refuted. By O. B. Whitford.
Pp. 47. 15 cents. And St. Matthew before the
Court. Pp. 88. New Yorkt Truth-seeker Company.
10 cents.

Smithsonian Institution. Report of Professor
Spencer F. Baird, Secretary. Washington : Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 98.

Accounts of Progress. 18S4. Geography. By
Commander F. M. Green, U. S. Navy. Pp. 19.
North American Paleontology. By J. B. Marcon.
Pp.20. Meteorology. By Professor Cleveland Abbe.
Pp.176. Phvsics. By Professor G. F. Barker. Pp.
57. Chemistry. By B. H. Carrington Bolton. Pp.
52. Mineralogy. By Professor E S. Dana. Pp.
19. Anthropology. By Professor O. T. Mason. Pp.
41. All Smithsonian Reports. Washington : Gov-
ernment Printing-Office.

Lectures on Teaching. By J. G. Fitch, M. A.
New edition, with a Preface. By an American Nor-
malTeacher. New York : Macmlllan & Co. 1885.
Pp. 393. $1.

712

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Students' Songs. Compiled and edited by W.
N. Hills. Cambridge, Mass. : Moses King. Pp.60.
50 cents.

Tornado Studies for 1884. By John P. Finley.
(Signal-Service Paper.) Washington: Government
Prioting-Office. Text and Plates.

Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals.
1666 to 1852. By H. Carrington Bolton. Washing-
ton : Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 778.

Theory and Practice of Teaching. By Rev.
Edward Thring, M. A. New and revised edition.
Cambridge: University Press. 1885. Pp.262. $1.

The Manual of Phonography. By Benn Pitman
and Jerome B. Howard. Cincinnati : Phonographic
Institute. 1885. Pp. 144.

The Devil's Portrait. By Anton Giulio Barrili.
From the Italian. By Evelyn Wodehouse. New
York: W. 8. Gottsberger. l»8o. Pp.312. 75eents.

On Teaching : Its Ends and Means. By Henry
Calderwood, LL. D., F. K. 8. E. Third edition.
New York : Macmillan & Co. 1885. Pp. 126. 50
eents.

The Treatment of Opium Addiction. By J. B.
Mattison, M. D. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
1SS5. Pp. 49. 50 cents.

Cholera. Its Origin, History, Causation, Symp-
toms, Lesions, Prevention, and Treatment. By Al-
fred Stille, M. D. Philadelphia : Lea, Brothers &
Co. 1885. Pp. 164.

Magneto- and Dyamo-EIectric Machines. From

the German of G laser De Cew. By V. Krohn; and

^specially edited, with many Additions, by Paget

Higgs, LL. D. London : Symons & Co. 1884. New

York : D. Van Nostrand. Pp.301.

The Windmill as a Prime Mover. By Alfred R.
Wolff, M. E. New York : John Wiley & Sons.
1885. Pp. 159. $3.

Life of Frank Buckland. By George C. Bom-
pas. With a Portrait. London : Smith, Elder & Co.
Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Company. 18s5. Pp.
433. $2.

Annual Report of the Operations of the Life-
Saving Service for the Fiscal Year ending June 30,

1884. Washington: Government Printing - Office.

1885. Pp.476.

Proceedings of the United States National Mu-
seum. Vol. VII. 1S84. Washington : Government
Printing-Office. 1885. Pp. 661.

Silver -Lead Deposits of Eureka. Nevada. By
Joseph Story Curtis. (Monographs of the U. S. Geo-
logical Survey. Vol. VII.) Washington : Govern-
ment Printing - Office. 1885. Pp. 200. 16 Plates.
$1.10.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

I nil ust rial Education in Common Schools.

— Mr. B. B. Huntoon recently read a paper
before the " Conversation Club " of Louis-
ville, Kentucky, on " Industrial Education,"
in which he advocated the introduction of
the Russian system into the public schools.
This system does not aim to teach the prac-
tical exercise of particular arts, but only so
to train the eye and hand to the execution
of designs and the use of tools that the pu-
pil may be qualified to take up readily what-
ever art he may afterward choose to fol-
low. The system, in its most essential feat-
ures, has already been tried successfully in
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ;

Washington University, at St. Louis ; Pur-
due University ; Illinois University ; Tulane
University, New Orleans ; and in industrial
schools in Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
and New York city ; and in Boston and Glou-
cester, Massachusetts, and Montclair, New
Jersey, the experiment has been tried of in-
corporating a course of industrial training
upon the city schools. Mr. Huntoon be-
lieves that the people are ready to be taxed
for such a purpose ; that there will be no
difficulty in finding teachers ; and that the
scheme is entirely practicable.

The Pittsburg. Natural Gas-Wells.— Ac-
cording to the account recently given by Mr.
Andrew Carnegie to the Iron and Steel Insti-
tute, the principal district in which the natu-
ral gas-wells near Pittsburg are found, the
Murraysville field, lies to the northeast of
that city, running southward from it toward
the Pennsylvania Railroad. Nine wells had
been sunk there last fall, and were yielding
gas in large quantities. Gas has been found
in a belt averaging about half a mile in
width for a distance of between four and
five miles. Beyond this a point is reached
where salt-water flows into the wells and
drowns the gas. The gas-fields of Wash-
ington County are about twenty miles from
the city, swinging round toward the south-
west. Four wells are now yielding gas in
this district, but are not, perhaps, so strong-
ly charged as those of the Murraysville dis-
trict, and others are being drilled. Still
farther to the west is another gas territory,
from which manufacturing works in Beaver
Falls and Rochester receive their supply.
Next is the Butler gas-field, as far from
Pittsburg on the northwest as are the Wash-
ington County wells on the southwest. Next,
on the Allegheny River, is the Tarentum
district, still about twenty miles from Pitts-
burg, which is supplying a considerable por-
tion of the gas used. Thus, within a circle
around Pittsburg having a radius of fifteen
or twenty miles, there are four distinct gas-
producing districts. Several wells have been
bored within the city ; but, though they all
yielded gas, it has been drowned out by the
rush of salt-water. While the largest well
known yields about 30,000,000 cubic feet
of gas in twenty-four hours, the average
product of a good well may be set at about

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

7l3

half of this. The pressure of the gas as it
issues at the mouth of the well is nearly or
quite two hundred pounds per square inch.
Even at the works of the company repre-
sented by Mr. Carnegie, nine miles from the
well, the pressure is seventy-five pounds per
square inch. Eleven lines of pipe are con-
veying gas from the various wells to the
manufacturing establishments in and around
Pittsburg. Although it is only two years
since gas has been used in Pittsburg, it has
already displaced 40,000 bushels of coal
per day in the mills that have used it,
and about an equal amount has been dis-
placed in the works beyond the city limits.
Contracts are now made to supply houses
with gas at a cost equal to that of the coal
bill for the preceding year. In many houses,
no other fuel than this gas is used ; and
everybody who has applied it to domestic
purposes is delighted with the change from
the smoky and dirty bituminous coal. It
is, therefore, Mr. Carnegie suggests, quite
within the region of probability that the
eity, now so black, may become so revolu-
tionized as to be the cleanest manufacturing
city in the world.

English Board-School Science. — Dr. An-
drew Wilson's "Health" has been struck
with some of the answers in the school-
children's examination-papers in popular
science, and gives a few specimens of them.
Among them are — " the humerus (or upper
arm-bone) is known as the ' numerous,' and
is often called ' the funny-bone.' " " The
sweet -bread is otherwise called the pan-
eras (for pancreas), which is so named from
the Midland Railway Station in London."
" A thermometer is an instrument used to
let out the heat when it is going to be cold."
" When roasting a piece of beef, put it in
front of a brisk fire, so as to congratulate
the outside." " Sugar is an amyloid. If
you were to eat much sugar and nothing
else, you would not live, because sugar has
not got no carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitro-
gen. Potatoes is another amyloids." Very
interesting is the description of digestion
given by one of the pupils : " Food is di-
gested by the action of the lungs ; digestion
is brought on by the lungs having some-
thing the matter with them. The food then
passes through your windpipe into the pores,

and thus passes off you by evaporation,
through a lot of little holes in your skin
called capillaries. The food is nourished
in the stomach. If you were to eat any-
thing hard you would not be able to digest
it, and the consequence would be you would
have indigestion. The gall-bladder throws
off juice from the food which passes through
it. We call the kidneys the bread-basket,
because it is where all the bread goes to.
They lay concealed up by the heart."

A Story of Two Rats. — A correspondent
of " Land and Water " tells a story of two
white rats which he had adopted as pets.
The male was a quiet, commonplace sort of
rat, acquaintance with whom afforded few
incidents of particular interest. The fe-
male was a great coquette, and a regular
domestic tyrant, exercising absolute control
of her spouse and household. Always
pleased with the gift of some dainty, she
was " rapturously delighted " if allowed to
think she had stolen it. If the master
would have a piece of sugar on the table,
she would creep up and take it, retreating
behind a book to devour it, as she hoped,
unobserved. She was a relentless enemy
to mice ; and, when one of these animals
was put into her cage, " she flew at it and
slew it with a single bite, leaving it instant-
ly, as a well-trained terrier does the rat it
has killed." The first occasion of Anna
Maria having little ones was quite an event.
" When I went to the box, as usual, to give
my little rodents a scrap of whatever I might
have had, I found Augustus (the male) sit-
ting out in the cold and looking terribly
sheepish. On opening the sleeping com-
partment, there was Anna Maria, with some-
thing like a smile upon her shrewish little
countenance, keeping watch and ward over
nine ridiculously naked little offspring. On
these occasions Augustus was completely
effaced. He shirked the slightest responsi-
bility ; and I always had to make him up a
separate bed, for sleep with his children he
would not. If by chance he was forced to
walk among them, he did so with an anxiety
that would have done credit to an elephant
stepping between eggs. As they grew up,
assumed hair, and began to run about, he
would allow them to take liberties with him,
and even rob him of tidbits." The master

7H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thought the hay the naked little fellows
were lying upon too rough for their tender
skins, and put wadding in its place. " But,
with a sneer of contempt for the stupidity of
men in such matters, Anna Maria promptly
cast out the wadding and bumped her pro-
geny upon the hay again." In washing them,
" she would roll them over and over with
her paws, and lick them till the sparks
flew, [and they would utter plaintive little
squeaks." But they throve splendidly. "Ev-
ery night this graceful couple gamboled
about my table while I read or wrote. It
was a delight to me to watch them at
their toilet or eating the food which they
held in their delicate little paws. . . . When
tired of play, they would clamber up to my
shoulder and slumber, huddled together like
two love-birds." Anna Maria at last died
of a cold, and her place was supplied by a
new female, whose chief peculiarity was
frhat as soon as she had a family she would
bite off her babies' heads."

Cannibalism among Rats. — Mr. W. Mat-
tieu Williams believes that rats are, upon
occasion, voracious cannibals, devouring one
another by wholesale and without mercy.
Being troubled beyond endurance by these
pests, and getting no relief from dogs, fer-
rets, and cats, and fearing poison, he tried
the effects of stuffing the holes with broken
glass. " This was successful, and some cu-
rious results accompanied the clearance. At
first, there were streaks of blood on the
kitchen-floor in considerable quantity, and
distributed all over it. These appeared on
several mornings. At about the same time,
and subsequently, much scampering and
sereaming was heard beneath. This was
followed by a rapid reduction of the num-
ber of the enemy. My theory," says Mr.
Williams, " is, that when any one rat was
wounded by the glass, the scent of blood
excited the voracity of the others, and a
cannibal struggle occurred ; that this con-
tinued till extirpation followed — the more
fighting, the more bloodshed and the more
cannibalism." Mr. F. W. Halfpenny partly
confirms this view in " Science Gossip,"
wkere he says that the black rat is still to
be met with at most of the London docks ;
that the Norway or sewer rat not only
kills its victim, but devours it. He de-

scribes skins of freshly killed black rats
turned inside out, and found in various
drawers, boxes, etc., and states that this
treatment of their victims is usual with rats.
As an experiment, Mr. Halfpenny gave the
carcass of a white rat to one of the black
and white variety. It was eaten, only a few
bones of the head remaining attached to
the everted skin.

Coal-Dnst in Fire-Damp Explosions. —

The Royal Prussian Fire-damp Commission
has carried out a series of experiments in
the Royal Coal-Mine near Neunkirchen, the
results of which g«o far to confirm Mr. W.
Galloway's theory of the agency of coal-
dust alone, and in conjunction with fire-
damp, in propagating explosions in mines.
At the mine in question is a blower of fire-
damp at a depth of 131 yards below the
surface, which gives off 09 cubic foot of
gas a minute. For the experiments cannon
were planted at the closed end of a horizon-
tal gallery 167 feet long, having a branch 38
feet long, starting at a distance of 93 feet
from its closed end. The branch gallery
was closed at both ends with two-inch plank-
ing. One gun was fired when the gallery
was free from fire-damp and from coal-dust ;
the flame of the shot was a little over 13 feet
long. In a second experiment the floor of
the gallery was strewed with coal-dust 1*17
inch thick for a length of 65 feet. The
shot gave rise to a loud detonation, and the
resulting flame filled the gallery to a dis-
tance of 88 J- feet. The inner planking of the
branch gallery was broken. In the third ex-
periment the gallery-floor was strewed with
coal-dust for a length of 130 feet. The
flame traversed the whole length of the gal-
lery with great velocity, and came out at the
open end to a distance of 16 feet, or 183
feet in all. It also emerged from the branch
gallery to a distance of several yards. The
outer partition of this gallery was broken
into small fragments. For the fourth ex-
periment, the partitions in the branch gal-
lery were replaced, coal-dust was strewed
on the floor for a distance of 65 feet, and a
volume of 35^ cubic feet of fire-damp was
introduced and completely diffused. The
firing of the shot produced a flame 190
feet long, accompanied by a report like a
thunder-clap. The inner brettice of the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

715

branch gallery was broken and drawn sev-
eral yards into the main gallery, but the
outer one remained intact. The incidental
effects of the last two shots also indicated
how tremendous a force had been let loose
when coal-dust formed one of the elements
of the explosion. These experiments were
typical of two hundred similar ones that
had been made with from one to seven guns,
all marked by results sustaining the coal-
dust theory.

Medical Virtues of Dog's Tongnes. —

M. Reimach having called attention to the
mention, in the recently discovered inscrip-
tions at the Temple of Esculapius, in Epi-
daurus, of children having been cured of
blindness at that sanctuary by having their
eyes licked by the sacred dogs, M. Henri
Gai'doz states that he has discovered the
faith and practices of the dog-cure among
several peoples and in a number of relig-
ions. The Hindoos believe that the Eng-
lish kill dogs to obtain possession of a
sovereign remedy which is found in their
tongues. In a. Venetian legend, St. Roch
was cured by a balsam distilled from the
tongue of his dog. Dogs' tongues are con-
sidered to have medical virtue by many peo-
ple in Portugal, France, and Scotland. In
Bohemia they let dogs lick the faces of
new-born children for " good luck." A be-
lief in the existence of divinities issuing
from dogs, whose office it was to lick the
bruises of the wounded, once prevailed in
Armenia. In a scene in one of Aristopha-
nes's plays, Plutus recovers his sight in
the Temple of Esculapius after being licked
by two serpents which the god sent for that
purpose in answer to his prayer.

Observations in the Sahara. — Dr. Oscar
Lenz, whose account of his journey through
Morocco, the Sahara, and the Soudan, to
Timbuctoo, has been recently published,
is the fourth European traveler who has
reached the famous " Queen of the Wil-
derness," as the desert metropolis is called,
during" the present century. Having en-
tered the city from the north, and then
going from it westward and down the Sene-
gal to the Atlantic coast at St. Louis, he has
demonstrated the accessibility of Timbuctoo
from both directions. One of the results of

the surveys he made on his journey will
probably be the death of the theory that the
region of the Sahara has ever been a ma-
rine basin, at least since the early Tertiary
epoch. The whole of the western section
of the desert traversed by him was proved
not to be a depression, as has been assumed,
but an irregular plateau ; standing in the
north at a mean elevation of from eight
hundred to one thousand feet, and even at
Tandeni, its lowest level, still maintaining
an altitude of four or five hundred feet
above the Atlantic. The surface forma-
tions have nothing in common with ma-
rine sedimentary deposits, but are all evi-
dently the results of weathering. The nu-
merous dried-up water-courses, whose deep
channels are distinctly the effect of erosion,
also show that this part of the desert has
been dry land for many ages. These wadies
radiate from the central highland north and
northeast to the Mediterranean, east to the
Nile, south to Lake Chad and the Niger,
and west to the Atlantic, and have been in
their day full of water. Hence, it appears
that, down to comparatively recent times, the
Sahara was a well watered and wooded retrion,
thickly inhabited by agricultural and pas-
toral communities. What has caused this
change in climate ? Dr. Lenz attributes it,
not as Peschel has supposed, to the dry
northeast polar winds (for these in the Sa-
hara yield to the northern and northwest-
ern atmospheric currents), but largely to the
reckless destruction of the woodlands which
once covered extensive tracts in the region.

Value of Fruit as Food.— The " Lancet"
regards the increased use of fruit in ordina-
ry diet as one of the most salutary tenden-
cies of domestic management in our day.
The starchy and saccharine components of
fruit, while they are not equal in accumu-
lated force to the more solid ingredients of
meat and fat, are similarly useful in their
own degree, and have the advantage of
greater digestibility. Other advantages are
the locally stimulant action of many sub-
acid fruits, its control of a too active peptic
secretion, and its influence of attraction
upon the alkaline and aperient intestinal
juice, to which further effects that aid the
maintenance of a pure and vigorous circula-
tion are indirectly due. " Thus it follows,

716

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the simplest principles of physiology, that
other essential organs, such as the skin and
kidneys, are relieved by the transference of
part of their excretory function to the bowel
and act with greater ease, the general vas-
cular system is lightened by this regulating
drain, and its faculty of absorbing the waste
products of food and work is encouraged in
proportion." Only persons of gouty and
rheumatic habit, or of tendencies to diar-
rhoea, dysentery, or saccharine diabetes, will
be likely to find fruit in any moderate quan-
tities to disagree with them, while dyspeptic
persons will find it almost wholly beneficial.

Formation of Peat. — For the growth and
formation of peat — which is vegetable mat-
ter in a semi-decomposed state — is required
a climate sufficiently moist to foster the
growth of the plants of the remains of
which it is composed, and at the same time
oool enough to retard, under certain condi-
tions, the decomposition, beyond a certain
point, of successive generations of those
plants. Accordingly, we find it most abun-
dantly distributed in latitudes above 45° in
either hemisphere. In Ireland, the peat-
bogs cover about one seventh of the surface.
Peat-bogs are classified as those which have
ceased to grow and those which are still
growing. Some of the former class must
be of enormous age. In many bogs in Ire-
land the deposit is from fifteen to thirty feet
deep, and in Scotland this depth is frequent-
ly exceeded. Each year's growth, accord-
ing to Mr. Kinahan, is represented by a
layer of lamina, and these lamina are, on an
average, in white turf one hundred, in
brown turf two to three hundred, in black
turf from six to eight hundred to the
foot. It is easy with these data to compute
approximately the probable age of the
bogs ; but the result of the calculation is
liable to variations according to the manner
in which the bog was formed ; for the rate
of growth is subject to many fluctua-
tions, not only in different bogs, but in dif-
ferent parts of the same bog. When two
layers of wood are found in peat, the lower
forest usually proves to have consisted of
oak, and the upper one of pine. Remains
of the great Irish deer are very common in
the bogs of Ireland, and human relics are
often found. No chronological estimates

can, however, be based upon the presence
of such relics, for articles having weight
will easily sink through the soft mass. In
districts where peat is plentiful it is exten-
sively used for fuel, for which purpose the
turf is cut from the bogs in narrow rectan-
gular masses a foot or eighteen inches long,
and prepared by drying. It is not well
adapted for use in manufactures, for its heat-
ing power is low. Peat-charcoal has, how-
ever, been used with advantage in smelting
iron, and it possesses very powerful antisep-
tic and deodorizing properties. Consider-
able quantities of peat-land have been re-
claimed and brought under cultivation. In
its natural state the soil is sour and unfit to
promote plant-growth, but when drained and
treated with lime it may be brought to a high
degree of fertility. When the peat-bog is
situated near to limestone, the process of
reclaiming the land is cheap and the result
is profitable.

A Scientific Commonplace-Book. — The

purpose of " The Scientific Roll," a new
serial kind of encyclopaedia, or common-
place-book, projected and begun by Mr.
Alexander Ramsay, is to cull, classify, and
embody in a shape conveniently accessible,
all the important statements of fact and
theory that now lie scattered and substan-
tially out of reach to any one man in the
six thousand scientific periodicals of the
day. The systematization of notes on this
plan results in a most compendious classi-
fication of all that is wanted in scientific
literature, in such a way that lines of
thought are suggested to the reader, and
facilities are offered for following them out
which books, as a whole, do not afford.
No correction is given, or comment upon
the views of the several authors, but each
one speaks for himself, and the reader is
left to choose to what he will hold. The
first volume, just published by Swan, Son-
nenschein & Co., London, includes the lit-
erature of climate, in which a prominent
place is given to a very interesting bibliog-
raphy. One of the oldest works catalogued
is said to have been written in the thirteenth
century, and was printed by Caxton, under
the title of " Image or Mirror of the World."
But, as an English journal admits in its
review of the publication, " it is not till

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

7l7

we reach the year 1789 that we find the
germ of the science, in a paper by Benjamin
Franklin, under the somewhat timid title,
for so bold a meteorologist, of " Meteorologi-
cal Imaginations and Conjectures." This
is followed by contributions from Lamarck,
Saussure, Playfair, and Ilumboldt. The
number of references to the year 1800,
when Humboldt's name is first mentioned,
is only three, while iu 1880 the number has
increased to eighty-four. America, as the
country affording most facilities for system-
atic observations, has the leading place in
the list all the way through.

Enlargement of the Sun and Moon in
the Horizon. — Various hypotheses have
been proposed to explain the apparent en-
largement of the tun and moon in the hori-
zon over the size they seem to present at
the zenith. Experiments recently made by
M. Stroobant, in Belgium, indicate that the
cause of the phenomenon is a physiological
one. In a darkened room, M. Stroobant
had fixed to the ceiling two electric stars
about eight inches apart, and on the level
of his eye two similar stars, the distance
between which could be varied at pleasure,
while the observer's eyes were at an equal
distance from either pair. When the pair
of stars on the level of his eye were so ad-
justed as to appear at the same distance as
the pair in the ceiling, they were proved
on measurement to be only six and a half
inches apart. He then transferred his ob-
servations to the- actual stars, selecting
pairs at sensibly equal distances apart in
the horizon and in the zenith, and after-
ward measuring their real angular separa-
tion as marked on the celestial globe. The
apparent separation of the stars in the
horizon was increased in almost precisely
the same degree, the ratio of the real dis-
tances, which seemed to the eye to be the
same, being as 100 in the zenith to from
795 to 8T5 in the horizon.

The Vegetation of Cntter-Stones.— Dr.

Hugo Winnacker, who devoted eleven full
months to the study of the subject, has
published a paper on the " Vegetation of
Gutter-Stones and its Relation to Infectious
Diseases." The subject is one of no little
importance, for, if the gutters of our streets

really harbor infectious plants or germs,
they are capable of being very dangerous
agents for the spread of disease. Parts of
them are exposed to being dried every day,
and when they are in that condition the
germs might be taken up by the wind
and scattered everywhere, to become active
whenever they are supplied with moisture.
Dr. Winnacker has found that the vegeta-
tion of the gutter-stones consists of green
algae and fungoids. The alga; are harmless
and even beneficial, for they grow over the
fungoids and at their expense, and help to
keep them down. They should therefore be
encouraged by not removing them, and by
flushing the gutters, so as to supply them
with the elements favorable to their nutri
tion. Most of the fungoids likewise appear
to be harmless, but some of them may be
dangerous, and, as it is hard to distinguish
their qualities, it is well to be on the watch
against them. Two of the fungoid forms,
quite abundant at Gottingen, are especially
described. One, a micrococcus and ferment,
grows in a reddish-brown coating from early
in the spring till late in the fall. Another,
a mold, grows in thick masses all the year
round. The character of the vegetation
may be different in different cities.

Difficulties of Underground Telephony.

— The difficulties in the way of at once lay-
ing the telegraph and telephone wires un-
derground in London are succinctly stated
in the " Saturday Review." The inductive
effects in the telephone wires are already
annoying enough, when there is room to
spread the wires in the air. They would be
greatly multiplied if the conductors were
bunched together, as they would have to be,
to be put in a tube underground. The retarda-
tive effects would also be largely increased,
to a serious extent, in fact, in the case of
the telephones, for they depend upon abrupt
and rapid changes in the strength of the
current, and these would be so far nulli-
fied as seriously to impair the clearness of
the articulation if the line were of any con-
siderable length. The expense of construc-
tion would be largely increased by the ne-
cessity of coating the wires ; while the coat-
ing, mainly composed of gutta-percha, is
perishable, and constantly giving rise to
" faults." A system of sub-ways, like the

7i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sewers of Paris, or the underground ave-
nues, that might be made by connecting
the sidewalk vaults of New York, seems to
be an indispensable prerequisite to any
practicable general location of electric tele-
graphic and other wires under the ground.
Nevertheless, the overhead electric-light
wires are a nuisance, and fitly entitled to
the epithet, " a Damocletian terror," which
the London " Lancet " applies to them.

Food-Value of "Whole-Wheat" Flonr.

— Dr. Campbell Morfitt, who has been largely
instrumental in introducing improved forms
of bread and new methods of bread-making,
has reported an experiment he has made to
ascertain the relative value of common flour
and of his " whole- wheat " flour. The ob-
jections to the old Graham flour, that its
coarse bran was irritating to the digestive or-
gans, were well founded. The "whole-wheat"
flour is free from this fault, for the bran is
not coarse or sharp-edged. Dr. Morfitt
makes three kinds of flour : the crude, rep-
resenting the entire grain ; a standard re-
fined granular meal, representing ninety-
three or ninety-four per cent of the cleaned
grain ; and a pearl-white meal representing
all the farina of the grain with some cereal-
ine, about eighty-three per cent of the whole.
Given weights of each of these were care-
fully brushed over a fine wire-cloth till all
the farinaceous portions had gone through.
That which was left on the sieve — called
proximate bran — amounted, in the mean, to
1S*28 per cent of the crude, and 12*19 per
cent of the standard meal. Therefore, wheat
may be said, generally, to consist of 81*72
per cent farina and 18'28 of branny matter.
The proximate brans were next inclosed in
fine cloths and kneaded under relays of cool
water till the latter ceased to become cloudy,
and by this treatment were reduced in weight
rather more than one half. The residue left
from this treatment was called absolute bran.
It exists in a fixed ratio to the meal in all
the wheats indifferently of 9'65 per cent
from the crude, and 5*80 per cent from the
standard meal. Thus, the total of actual
bran in any wheat does not exceed ten per
cent. The proximate bran was then sub-
jected to an artificial digestive process, to
discover how much more of its substance it
would yield in that way. The quantity of

"ultimate" bran left after this experiment
was reduced by 18 "44 per cent, or to V'87
per cent for the crude meals, and by 21-88
per cent, or to 4*56 per cent for the stand-
ard meals. The more powerful natural di-
gestion of the stomach must certainly ex-
tract still more from the meals. " Results
could not be more impressive than these,"
says Dr. Morfitt, " as to the superior nour-
ishing value of whole-wheat meal, for they
prove that the separation and rejection of
the bran must inevitably impoverish the re-
sidual farina of the flour."

Foisonons and Medicinal Herbs in In-
dia.— No country is better supplied with
medicinal as well as poisonous herbs than
India. The waysides and ditches abound in
plants that possess some strange, and some
the most deadly qualities. One of the most
common of these plants is the datoora, with
its large white flower, and leaves resembling
those of the hollyhock. It is well known
as a remedy for asthma, and its leaves are
used in the shape of cigars or " tobacco,"
but its seeds are a subtile and powerful poi-
son, in small quantities causing temporary
insanity, and in large either permanent in-
jury to the brain or death. The natives
believe that it is used by robbers to aid
them in their operations. The mad&r grows
from two to four feet high in isolated groups
along road-sides and in open, sunny places.
It is soft and branching, with broad, thick,
dark-green leaves covered with down, and
large white waxen flowers tinged with pink
toward the center. The application of the
leaf is a sovereign remedy for sprains,
swellings, and pains. The strangest and
most powerful property of the madar re-
sides in the milk, which exudes abundantly
on the slightest scratch of its succulent leaf
or stem. The natives profess to use it for
any obstinate sore, especially in the nostril,
but when swallowed it produces spasms of
hilarious intoxication of which the patient
recollects nothing after they are over. The
natives say that if a probe is formed from a
mixture of the maddr-mi\k with a pounded
ruttce-seed, dried and hardened in the sun,
and if the skin is pricked with this and the
point left, death will follow imperceptibly
and painlessly in two or three days, leaving
no trace of the cause but the faintest speck

NOTES.

719

like a mosquito - bite where the skin was
probed. The wild ganja — to which the
hasheesh-plant corresponds as a cultivated
species — has similar intoxicating effects, ex-
cept that it is less injurious to the system.
The natives chiefly use it spiced for the
hookah, or as an infusion for drinking.
From long continuance or excess it is a fre-
quent cause of insanity ; and this may pass
away on discontinuing the use, or result in
more or less permanent imbecility. It is
used sometimes as a medicine for cattle.
The number of herbs considered medicinal
by the natives is endless. Hardly a weed
grows but they find some virtue in it for
some ailment or another. The large leaf of
the castor-oil plant, heated and applied ex-
ternally, is used for allaying local inflam-
mation and pain. The leaf and bark of the
neem-tree are similarly applied. A small
weed like clover, gathered among the grass,
is applied to the temples to allay headaches,
or otherwise as a counter-irritant, as we use
mustard. The cherita is a well-known tonic
and fever preventive ; and the milk of the
chutwan-tree is used for stuffing what few
Hindoo teeth come to be in need of that
process.

NOTES.

Professor John S. Newberry has de-
scribed, in the " Annals " of the New York
Academy of Sciences, some peculiar screw-
like fossils from the Chemung rocks of
Northern Pennsylvania and Southern New
York, which at first sight suggest a resem-
blance that is not real to the fossil fruit Spi-
rangium. Two species are identified, of ono
of which only one specimen has been found.
They consist of a cylindrical or fusiform
body traversed by double spiral revolving
ridges, which make them look very much
like common screws. The generic name of
Spiraxis hasa been given to them, with the
specific names of major and Randalli. Pro-
fessor Newberry regards them as casts of
sea-weed stems.

In a paper on " The First Notice of the
Pine-Grove or Forest River Shell-heap," Mr.
F. W. Putnam reprints the report made by
John Lewis Russell in 1840 to the Essex
County Natural History Society. Up to this
time it had hardly been doubted that these
heaps were of natural origin, and Mr. Rus-
sell does not appear to have suggested any
other view.

Helen C. De S. Abbott has published
an analysis of the bark of Fouquieria splen-
dens, or the ocotilla-tree, a thorny plant,
of the order Tamariscinece, native to tho
region of the Mexican boundary-line, which
grows in the shape of a low fan, from eight
to twelve feet high, bearing foot-long scar-
let, trumpet-shaped flowers, and which the
people find useful for making fences. The
bark supplies a wax which differs generally
in its properties from known vegetable waxes,
and is evidently a new wax peculiar to this
plant. Tbe name ocotilla-wax is proposed
for it.

Dr. Giles, of the Indian Government's
surveying steamer Investigator, has obtained
some animals from the Bay of Bengal which
appear to be new, and has proved that " the
Swatch," at the mouth of the Hoogly, is a
deep, submerged valley, forming part of the
original depression of the bay.

An interesting new feature of this year's
May-day celebrations in London was a pro-
cession of cart-horses, similar to those which
have been regularly held in some of the
towns of the United Kingdom. About a
hundred teams participated. No prizes were
offered, but each driver received an illumi-
nated card commemorative of the occasion,
and acknowledging the evidences afforded of
" care, attention, and kindness to animals."
A regular observance of this kind might be
made the means of greatly encouraging prop-
er treatment of beasts of burden.

M. Witz states, as the result of observa-
tions he has been making for some time on
atmospheric ozone, that the proportion of
ozone in the air of Paris last year was in-
verse to the mortality from cholera.

According to a Moscow paper, only 21
per cent of the children attending school in
Russia are girls. The proportion varies with
the religion, being greatest among Protes-
tants, 45-4 per cent ; next among Jews, 34'1
per cent; next among Roman Catholics,
14-4 per cent ; and lowest among Greek
Catholics, 12'3 per cent.

M. Stanislas Meunier has described
some silicious pebbles which are quite nu-
merous in the quaternary gravels of the val-
ley of the Loing, France, that are remark-
able for being hollow and inclosing, together
frequently with a loose stony nucleus, liquid
water. They are about forty-five millime-
tres in diameter, and the water may be heard
to strike against the walls of the cavity
when the stones are shaken. The only way
M. Meunier can account for the water get-
ting into the pebbles is by its seeping
through the pores, for not a sign of a crack
can be seen with the eye or by the aid of a
strong glass.

JZO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Several cyclopaedias contain the state-
ment, in substance, that no land in Connect-
icut rises above a thousand feet in height.
Professor Asaph Hall writes to "Science"
that, according to Mr. G. M. Bradford's sur-
veys, several points in the northwest part
of the State are higher than this, and men-
tions six mountains that exceed 1,600 feet.
They are : Ivy Mount, Goshen, 1,642 ; Hay-
stack Mount, Norfolk, 1,672 ; Bald Mount,
Norfolk, 1,770 ; Bradford Mount, Canaan,
1,910; Bear Mount, Salisbury, 2,100; and
Bruce Mount, Salisbury, 2,300 feet.

Under the promptings of the universal
recognition of the truth that, for Japan to
take the rank she should hold among civil-
ized nations, her literary and educational
work must be freed from the trammels of
the Chinese ideographs, a society — the Ro-
maji Kai — has been formed to promote the
general adoption of the Roman letters. Its
committee, composed of native and foreign
scholars, has drawn up a scheme of trans-
literation, and a monthly journal — the "Ro-
maji Zasshi," which, besides this subject,
will discuss general topics and publish clas-
sical and original literary papers — has been
begun, to introduce the new system to the
people.

Dr. Cornish, a student of cholera, pro-
poses that a certain proportion of the per-
sons who are condemned to death every year
in India be used, their own consent having
been obtained, as subjects for experiments
on the transmission of cholera; further
punishment to be remitted if they survive
the tests.

A division of economic ornithology has
been established in the Entomological Bu-
reau of the Office of Commissioner of Agri-
culture, and Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Secretary
of the American Ornithologists' Union, has
been appointed to take charge of it. Its
special field of investigation will be the
inter-relation of birds and agriculture, and
will include the relations of birds and in-
sects, the food and habits of birds, and the
collection of data bearing on the migration
and geographical distribution of North
American birds.

M. J. J. Martinez proposes a universal
subscriptien for the purpose of boring a
hole, thirty by one hundred and fifty feet in
diameter, down into the earth, at which con-
venient stations may be fixed for the obser-
vation of all kinds of subterranean phe-
nomena.

Lieutenant Van Gele, of the French
Equatorial Station, gives the following list,
with the weights, of the various articles of
costume of a Congo negro lady : A copper
riug on each ankle, \ kilogramme ; brass-wire
leglets on each calf, 1 kilogramme each ; a

petticoat of banana-fiber cloth, twenty inches
long and nine inches wide, j/,- kilogramme ;
a bell fastened with a belt, \ kilogramme ; a
copper collar around the neck — the most
important garment of the dress — 27 kilo-
grammes. The total weight is 29210 kilo-
grammes, or nearly 75 pounds — about the
load of aEnropean infantry-soldier — of which
less than half an ounce is devoted to the
purpose of real dress.

The French Association for the Advance-
ment of the Sciences was to meet at Greno-
ble on the 12th of August, under the presi-
dency of Professor Verneuil. The meetings
would continue till the 20th, after which a
series of excursions was projected, to last
till the 24th. Two conferences were ap-
pointed : " On the Alimentary Resources of
France," by Dr. Jules Rochard ; and " On
the New Paleontological Gallery of the Mu-
seum," by M. G. Cotteau.

Experiments reported by M. Guignet to
the French Academy of Sciences confirm
the views of M. Fr6my that the behavior of
chlorophyl, or the coloring-matter of leaves,
is usually like that of an acid. M. Guignet
has obtained chlorophyllate.of [soda, and
from it, by double decomposition, salts of
lime, baryta, and lead.

MM. Muntz and Marcano have observed
that nitrification of the soil is going on in
the equatorial regions of South America on
an extraordinary scale. At some points the
constituents of the mold are cemented to-
gether in a kind of paste by enormous pro-
portions— sometimes forty per cent — of ni-
trate of lime. The origin of these condi-
tions is traced to the numerous mountain-
caves, which are inhabited by legions of
birds and bats, whence the streams carry
the guano over extensive areas.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Dr. Henri Milne-Edwards, the eminent
French naturalist, and the successor of
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire in the chair of Zoology
at the Museum of the Academy of Sciences,
died in Paris, July 29th, in the eighty-fifth
year of his age. A portrait and sketch of
his life and works were published in " The
Popular Science Monthly " for February,
1883.

Robert von Schlagintweit, Professor
of Geography and Ethnology at the Univer-
sity of Giessen, has recently died, at the
age of fifty-two. He was the youngest of
three brothers who were commissioned by
the British East India Company, on the rec-
ommendation of Humboldt, to explore In-
dia and the mountain-regions of the north-
west.

HUBERT ANSON NEWTON.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1885.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE,

LATE PRESIDENT OP CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

I. THE DOCTRINE OF COMETS.

IN all the development of astronomy few things are more interest-
ing than the growth of a true doctrine of comets. Hardly any-
thing throws a more vivid light upon the danger of using isolated
texts of Scripture to preserve beliefs which observation and thought
have superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power
against scientific discovery.

Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding
comets, meteors, and eclipses ; these were universally held to be por-
tents sent directly from heaven for the warning of mankind. As to
stars and meteors, they were generally thought to presage happy
events, especially births of gods, heroes, and great men. So firmly
rooted was this idea that we constantly find among the ancient nations
notices of lights in the heavens heralding the birth of persons of note.
The sacred books of India show that the births of Crishna* and of
Buddha f were announced by such heavenly lights. The sacred books
of China reveal similar appearances at the births of Yu, the founder
of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage Lao-tse.J In the Jew-

* For stars at the birth of Crishna, see Maurice's " History of Hindostan," vol. ii, p.
336 ; also Cox's "Aryan Mythology" (London, 1870), vol. ii, p. 133; also "Vishnu Pu-
rana," Wilson's translation, b. v, chap. iii.

f For lights at the birth, or rather conception, of Buddha, see Bunsen's " Angel
Messiah," pp. 22, 23-33 ; also, Alabaster, " Wheel of the Law," illustrations of Bud-
dhism (London, 1871), p. 102; also, Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia " (London, 1881),
p. 3 ; also, " Life of Gaudama, the Burmese Buddha," by Bishop Bigandet (London,
1880), p. 30; also, Oldenberg's "Buddha," English translation, part i, chap. i.

\ For Chinese legends regarding stars at the births of Lao-tse and Yu, see Horton's
"History of China," i, 137.
vol. xxvii. — 46

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ish legends a star appeared at the birth of Moses,* and was seen by
the Magi of Egypt,f who informed the king ; and when Abraham was
born an unusual star aj>peared in the east. The Greeks and Romans
held similar traditions. \ A heavenly light accompanied the birth of
^sculapius, and the births of various Csesars were heralded in like
manner.

As to the nature of these heavenly bodies, the fathers of the Chris-
tian Church were divided. Origen thought them living creatures pos-
sessed of souls, and the belief was thought warranted by the beautiful
Song of the Three Children which the Anglican communion has so
wisely retained in its liturgy. Other fathers of the Church thought
the stars abiding-places of the angels, and that shooting-stars were
moved by angelic hands. Philo Judseus believed the stars benefi-
cent spirits, and this belief was widely held by Jews, Greeks, and
Christians. Among the Mohammedans we have curious examples of
the same tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors,
in the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers
are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out
of the sky.#

As to eclipses, they were regarded in a very different light, and
were supposed to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities.
The Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the

* As to traditions regarding stars at the births of Moses and Abraham, see Calraet's
" Fragments," part viii ; also, the Rev. Baring-Gould's " Legends of Old Testament Char-
acters" (London, 1871), chap, xxiv; also, Farrar's "Life of Christ" (American edition),
chap. iii.

f For the general subject, see Higgins's " Anacalypsis " ; also, Ilooykaas, Ort and
Kuehnen (the Bible for learners), vol. iii.

X For similar appearances in Greece and Rome, see Bell's " Pantheon," article " JEs-
culapius"; also, Luc. i, 529; Suet. Ca?s., 88; Seneca, "Nat. Qusest.," i, 1; Virgil's "Ec-
logues," 9, 47.

* As to movement of stars by angels, see Leopardi, " Errori Popolari."

As to the feeling of the fathers, see Origen's " De Principiis," vol. i, p. 129 ; also
Philo Judaeus.

As to meteoric showers caused by struggles between good and bad angels, see Watson
and Guillemin on Comets.

For Atreus, et aL, see Cox's "Tales of Ancient Greece," pp. 41, 61, 62; Higgins's
" Anacalypsis," vol. i, p. 322 ; Bell's " Pantheon," article " Atreus."

For the legend regarding darkness at the death of Romulus, see Higgins, vol. i, pp.
616, 617.

For legends regarding portents at the birth, death, and downfall of the Caesars, see
Suetonius, Vit. xii Ca3S., cap. xxxvi ; also, Josephus, book xiv, chap, xii, and note.

Also, for these and similar cases, see Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, and other Roman historians
and poets; also, niggins, as above; Gibbon's "Rome," vol. i, pp. 159, 590; Farrar's
" Life of Christ," p. 52.

On Nero, see Tacitus's " Annals," book xiv, chap. xxii.

For portents at the death of Charles I, see sermon preached before Charles II, cited
in Lecky's " History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i, p. 65.

For the belief in general, see Leopardi, " Errori Popolari," cap. xi.

For eclipses, Phra Rahu, et aL, see Alabaster, " Wheel of the Law," p. 11.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 723

deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, iEsculapius, and Alexander
the Great. The Roman legends held that, at the death of Romulus,
there was darkness for six hours. The lives of the Csesars give por-
tents of all three kinds ; for, at the death of Julius, the earth was
shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star,
and the downfall of Nero by a comet. Nor has this mode of think-
ing: ceased in modern times. A similar claim was made at the exe-
cution of Charles I, and Increase Mather thought an eclipse in Massa-
chusetts an evidence of the grief of Nature at the death of Presi-
dent Chauncey, of Harvard College.* Traces of this feeling have
come down to our own times. The beautiful story of the sturdy Con-
necticut statesman who, when his associates in the General Assembly
were alarmed by a general eclipse, and thought it the beginning of
the day of judgment, ordered in candles, purposing in any case to be
found doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy effect of
the old belief in the civilized world.

In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little cal-
culated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which is
the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with the
beliefs regarding comets. During many centuries they brought
terrors which developed the direst superstition and fanaticism ; the
ancient records of every continent are full of these. One great man,
indeed, in the Roman Empire had the scientific instinct and pro-
phetic inspiration to foresee that at some future time the course of
comets would be found in accordance with natural law.f But this
thought of Seneca was soon forgotten ; such an isolated utterance
could not stand against the mass of superstition which upheld the
doctrine that comets are " signs and wonders." The belief that every
comet is a ball of fire, flung from the right hand of an angry God to
warn the groveling dwellers of earth, was received into the early
Church, transmitted through the middle ages to the Reformation
period,^ and in its transmission and reception was made all the more
precious by supposed textual proofs from Scripture. The great fathers
of the Church committed themselves unreservedly to this doctrine.
Tertullian * declared that " comets portend revolutions of kingdoms,
pestilence, war, winds, or heat." Origen || insisted that they indicate
" catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds." The Ven-
erable Bede,A so justly dear to the English Church, made in the ninth

* He thought, too, that it might have something to do with the deaths of sundry civil
functionaries of the colony. See his discourse concerning comets, 1682.

•)• See Watson " On Comets," p. 46, with Glaisher's translation of Seneca's prediction.
\ For this feeling in antiquity see Guillemin, " The World of Comets," translated
by Glaisher, chaps, i and ii ; also Watson " On Comets," preliminary chapters.

* For Tertullian, see " Ad Scapul," 3.

|| For Origen, see " De Principiis," i, 754 ; also Maury, " Legendes pieuses du Moycn
Age," p. 203, and note.

A For Bede, see his " De Natura Rerum," chap. xxiv.

724 ■ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

century a similar declaration. St. Thomas Aquinas,* the great light
of the universal Church in the thirteenth century, whose works the
Pope now reigning commends as the center of all university instruc-
tion, accepted and handed down the same opinion. The sainted Al-
bert the Great,f the most noted genius of the mediaeval Church in
natural science, received and developed this theory.

By these men a science was developed out of scriptural texts and
the principles of morals, and so firmly rooted in Scripture and theology
that it flourished for seventeen centuries.

The main evils thence arising were two : First, the paralysis of
self-help, and the arousing of fanaticism ; and, secondly, the strength-
ening of ecclesiastical and political tyranny.

As to the first of these evils — the paralysis of self-help — instead of
wise statesmanship striving to avert war, instead of scientific observa-
tion and reason striving to avert pestilence, instead of social science
taking proper measures against famine, we constantly see, at the ap-
pearance of a comet, all Christendom, from pope to peasant, whining
before various fetiches, trying to bribe them to remove these signs of
God's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of God upon
misbelievers.

As to the second of these evils — the strengthening of ecclesiastical
and civil despotism — examples appear on every side. It was" natural
that hierarchs and monarchs whose births were announced by stars,
or whose deaths were announced by comets, should regard themselves
as far above the common herd, and be so regarded by mankind ; that
passive obedience should thus be strengthened, and that the most mon-
strous assumptions of authority by such men should be considered sim-
ply as manifestations of the divine will. Shakespeare makes Calphur-
nia say to Caesar :

" When beggars die, there are no comets seen ;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes." J

Galeazzo, tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his death-bed
that his approaching end was of such importance as to be heralded by
a comet, is a type of many thus encouraged to prey upon mankind. #

But, for the retention of this belief, there was a moral cause. No
doubt myriads of good men in the Christian Church, down to a recent
period, saw in the appearance of comets not merely an exhibition of
" signs in the heavens " foretold in Scripture, but also divine warnings
to repentance and improvement of life of vast value to humanity —
warnings, indeed, so precious that they could not be dispensed with

* For St. Thoauas Aquinas, see Maury, " La Magie et l'Astronomie," p. 181.

t For Albert the Great, see "Alb. Mag.," lib. i, tract, iii, chaps, x and xi ; also ibid.,
" Super sex principiis Gil berti Porretani"; also " Tractatus primus de causis impressio-
num," etc. The copy I have used is in the Cornell University Library.

% " Julius Caesar," act ii, scene ii.

* For Galeazzo, see Guillemin " On Comets."

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 725

without danger to the moral government of the world. Reasons, then,
partly scriptural, partly theological, led men to cherish the belief in
the portentous character of comets as absolutely essential, religiously
and morally. To say nothing of the many examples in the earlier
mediaeval period, comets in the tenth century strengthened the belief
in the approaching end of the world, and increased the distress and
terror of all Europe. The charters of that age constantly refer to
this. In the middle of the eleventh century a comet was thought to
accompany the death of Edward the Confessor, and to presage the
Norman Conquest ; the traveler in France to-day may see this belief
as it was then wrought in the Bayeux tapestry.*

Nearly every decade of years saw EurojDe plunged into alarm by
appearances of this sort ; but the culmination was reached in 1456.
At that time, the Turks, after ages of effort, had made good their
footing in Europe. A large statesmanship or generalship might have
kept them out ; but, while different religious factions were disputing
over petty shades of dogma, the Turks had advanced, had taken Con-
stantinople, and were pressing on to secure their foothold in Europe.
Now came the full bloom of this superstition. A comet appeared.
The Pope of that period, Calixtus III, was a man of more than ordi-
nary ability, but saturated with the ideas of his time. By virtue of
his position as the infallible head of Christendom, he publicly and
solemnly anathematized both the Turks and the comet, bidding all the
faithful beseech the Almighty to turn the monster in the heavens
away from the Christians and against the Turks. In the litany was
incorporated the prayer, " From the Turk and the comet, good Lord
deliver us." Thence, it is generally supposed, dates the midday An-
gelus, the bell calling the faithful to prayer against the powers of evil.

Never was the object of a papal fulmination more unfortunately
chosen ; for the Turk has held Constantinople from that day to this,
and the comet, being that now known under the name of Halley, so
far from heeding the infallible anathema, has returned imperturbably
at short periods ever since.f

* For effects of comets in the eleventh and following centuries, see " Chronicles " of
Raoul Glaber, William of Nangis, and others passim.

For the Bayeux tapestry, see Bruce, "Bayeux Tapestry elucidated" (London, 1856),
Plate VII, and text, p. 86 ; also Guillemin, p. 24 ; also Champion, p. 89. This tapestry,
wrought by the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, is now preserved in the
town museum of Bayeux.

\ The usual statement is that Calixtus excommunicated the comet by a papal bull. A
statement to this effect is made by such authorities as Arago, Guillemin, Watson, and
many others ; and this suggested the shrewd parallel made on a noted occasion by Presi-
dent Lincoln. An examination of various Bullaria has as yet failed to discover any
formal bull ; and, though this by no means proves that such a bull was not issued, it is
most likely that the utterance of the Pope was in the nature of a general anathema, an
appeal to Christian peoples against the comet, as stated in the " Historia B. Platinse de
vitis Pontificum, Colonise, MDC," p. 317, for which I am indebted to Dr. Gilette, Librarian
of the Union Theological Seminary, New York.

?26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But this superstition went still further. It became more and more
incorporated into what was considered " scriptural science " and
"sound learning." The encyclopedic statements exhibiting the sci-
ence of the middle ages and the Reformation period furnish abundant
proofs of this.*

Yet scientific truth was slowly undermining the structure : the in-
spired prophecy of Seneca had not been forgotten : even as far back
as the ninth century, in the midst of the " sacred learning " so abun-
dant at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar
protesting against the doctrine. f

So, too, in the sixteenth century we have Paracelsus writing to
Zwingle against it ; and, in the century following, men like De Gamon
and Pierre Petit taking similar ground. J

At first this skepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and
increased the vigor of ecclesiastics ; both asserted all the more strenu-
ously what they conceived to be scriptural truth. During the six-
teenth century France felt the influence of one of her greatest men on
the side of this superstition. Jean Bodin, so far before his time in
political theories, was as far behind it in religious theories : the same
reverence for the mere letter of Scripture which made him so fatally
powerful in supporting the witchcraft delusion led him to support this
theological theory of comets ; but with a difference — he thought them
the souls of men wandering in space, bringing famine, pestilence, and
war.*

In England, too, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
there was at least literary acquiescence in this received doctrine of
comets. Both Shakespeare and Milton recognize it, whether they
fully accept it or not. Shakespeare makes the Duke of Bedford, la-
menting at the bier of Henry V, say :

" Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;
And with them scourge the had revolting stars,
That have consented unto Henry's death."

Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says :

"... On the other side,
" Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
TJnterrified, and like a comet hurned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the Arctic sky, and from its horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."

* See Vincent de Beauvais, and the various editions of Reisch's " Margarita Philo-
sophica."

t See Champion, p. 156; also Leopardi, "Errori ropolari," p. 165.
\ For these exhibitions of skepticism, see Champion, pp. 155, 156.

# See Champion, p. 89 ; also a vague citation in Baudrillart, " Vie de Bodin,"
p. 360.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 727

Even as late as the end of the seventeenth century (1688) we have
English authors of much power battling for this supposed scriptural
view.

But it was in Germany that this superstition took its strongest
hold. The same depth of feeling which produced in that country the
most terrible growth of the witchcraft persecution brought supersti-
tion to its highest development regarding comets. In one of his Ad-
vent sermons, Luther had declared strongly in favor of it. A little
later Arietus declared, " The heavens are not merely given us for our
pleasure, but also as a warning for the correction of our lives, and of
the wrath of God." * Lavather showed that comets are signs of death
or calamity, and cited proofs from Scripture. Catholic and Protestant
strove together for the glory of asserting the doctrine, and in the same
seventeenth century Fromundus, the eminent Professor and Doctor of
Theology at the University of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the
rotundity of the earth, supported no less vigorously the prophetic
character of comets. So, too, as late as 1680, we have Voigt declar-
ing that the comet of that year clearly presages the downfall of the
Turkish Empire, and stigmatizing as " atheists and epicureans " all who
do not believe comets to be God's warnings.!

But the great efforts in behalf of this doctrine throughout Europe
were made in the pulpits, and especially in the Protestant pulpits.
Out of the mass of such sermons which were widely circulated, I will
select just one as typical, and it is worthy of careful study, as show-
ing the dangers of applying theological methods to scientific fact.
Conrad Dieterich was during the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the highest authority. His ability
as a theologian had made him Archdeacon of Marburg, Professor of
Philosophy and director of studies at the University of Giessen, and
finally "Superintendent," exercising functions of an episcopal char-
acter in the Lutheran regions of Southwestern Germany. In the year
1620, on the second Sunday in Advent, in the great Cathedral of Ulm,
he developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking
up the questions : 1. What are comets ? 2. What do they indicate ?
3. What have we to do with their significance ? This sermon marks
an epoch. Delivered in that center of Protestant Germany, and by a
prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed, prefaced
by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and sent forth to
drive back the scientific, or, as it was supposed, the " godless," view of
comets. The preface shows that Dieterich was sincerely alarmed by
the tendency to regard comets as natural appearances. His text was
taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter of St.
Luke : " And there shall be signs in. the sun, and in the moon, and in

* See Madler, " Geschichte der Astronomie," vol. ii.

f For Fromundus and Voigt, see Madler, p. 399; also Lecky, "Rationalism in Eu-
rope," vol. i, p. 28.

728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity ; the
sea and the waves roaring." As to what comets are, he cites a multi-
tude of ancient philosophers, and, finding that they differ among them-
selves, he uses a form of argument very common from that day to this,
declaring that this difference of opinion proves that there is no solu-
tion of the problem save in revelation, and insisting that they are
"signs especially sent by the Almighty to warn the earth." An addi-
tional proof of this he finds in the forms of comets. One, he says,
took the form of a trumpet ; another, of a spear ; another, of a goat ;
another, of a torch ; another, of a sword ; another, of an arrow ; an-
other, of a saber ; still another, of a bare arm ; and so on. From
these forms of comets he inf ers that we may divine their purpose. As
to their creation, he quotes John of Damascus and other great church
authorities in behalf of the idea that each comet is a star newly created
at the divine command out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath
and punishment of God. As to their purpose, having quoted largely
from the Bible and from Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as God
can make nothing in vain, comets must have some distinct object :
tfien from Isaiah and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark,
and Luke among the Evangelists, from Origen and St. John Chrysos-
tom among the fathers, from Luther and Melanchthon among the Re-
formers, he draws various texts more or less conclusive to prove that
comets indicate evil and only evil, and he cites Luther's Advent ser-
mon, to the effect that, though comets may arise in the course of nature,
they are still signs of evil to mankind.

In answer to the theory of certain naturalists, that comets are
made up of " a certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog,"
he declares, " Our sins, our sins ! they are the fiery heated vapors, the
thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the earth toward
heaven before God."

Throughout the sermon contempt was poured over all men who
simply investigated comets as natural objects, and special attention was
called to the fact that a comet then in the heavens resembled a long
broom or bundle of rods ; and Dieterich declared that he and his
hearers would only consider it rightly " when we see standing before us
our Lord God in heaven as an angry father with a rod for his chil-
dren."

In answer to the question, what comets signify, he commits him-
self entirely to the idea that they indicate the wrath of God, and there-
fore calamities of every sort. Page after page is filled with the
record of evils following comets. Beginning with the creation of the
world, he insists that the first comet brought on the deluge of Noah.
He cites a mass of authorities ranging from Moses and Isaiah to Al-
bert the Great and Melanchthon, in support of the view that comets
precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences, and every form of
evil. Page after page is filled with this sort of historical proof. He

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 729

makes some parade of astronomical knowledge as to the greatness of
the sun and moon, but relapses soon into his old line of argument.
Conjuring his audience not to be led away from the well-established
belief of Christendom and the principles of their fathers, he comes
back to his old figure of speech, insists that " our sins are the inflam-
mable material of which comets are made," and winds up with a most
earnest appeal to the Almighty to spare his people.*

It can be easily understood that such an authoritative utterance as
this must have produced a great effect throughout Protestant Christen-
dom, and in due time we see its working in New England. That
same tendency to provincialism which, save at rare intervals, has
been the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day to this, ap-
peared ; and in 1664 we have Samuel Danforth arguing from the
Bible that comets are "portentous signals of great and notable
changes," and arguing from history that they "have been many times
heralds of wrath to a secure and impenitent world." He cites es-
pecially the comet of 1652, which appeared just before Mr. Cotton's
sickness, and disappeared after his death, f Morton also, in his me-
morial, recording the death of John Putnam, alludes to the comet of
1652 as "a very signal testimony that God had then removed a bright
star and a shining light out of the heaven of his church here into
celestial glory above." \ Again he speaks of another comet, insisting
that "it was no fiery meteor caused by exhalation, but it was sent
immediately by God to awaken the secure world," and goes on to
show how in that year " it pleased God to smite the fruits of the
earth, namely, the wheat in special, with blasting and mildew, where-
by much of it was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and
much of it worth little, being light and empty. This was looked
upon by the judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking
providence against the unthankfulness of many ... as also against
voluptuousness and abuse of the good creatures of God by licentious-
ness in drinking and fashions in apparel, for the obtaining whereof a
great part of the principal grain was oftentimes unnecessarily ex-
pended." #

But in 1680 a stronger man than either of these seized upon the
doctrine and wielded it with power. Increase Mather, so open always
to ideas from Europe, and always so powerful for good or evil in the

* See "Ulmische Cometen Predigt, von dem Cometen, so nechst abgewischenen 1618
Jahrs im Wintermonat erstenmahls in Schwabensen lassen, Dannach folgende Gehalten
zu Ulm," etc. Durch Conrad Dicterich, Ulm, 1620.

For a life of the author of the book, see article, " Dieterich," in the " Allgeraeine
Deutsche Biographie."

f See S. Danforth (1664), " An Astronomical Description of the late Comet or Blazing
Star, together with a Brief Theological Application thereof." (Collections in the Massa-
chusetts Historical Society Library.)

% See Morton's "Memorial," pp. 251, 252.

* Ibid., pp. 309, 310.

73o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

colonies, preached his sermon on " Heaven's Alarm to the World, . . .
wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in the heavens are the
presages of great calamities at hand." The texts were taken from the
book of Revelation : " And the third angel sounded, and there fell a
great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp " ; also, " Behold,
the third woe cometh quickly."*

In this as in various other sermons he supported the theological
cometary theory, fully. He insists that " we are fallen into the dregs
of time," and that the day of judgment is evidently approaching. He
explains away the words of Jeremiah, " Be not dismayed at signs in
the heavens," and shows that comets have been forerunners of nearly
every form of evil. Having done full justice to evils thus presaged in
scriptural times, he begins a similar display in modern history by cit-
ing blazing stars which foretold the invasions of Goths, Huns, Sara-
cens, and Turks, and warns gainsayers by citing the example of Vespa-
sian, who, after ridiculing a comet, soon died. The general shape and
appearance of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and cites Ter-
tullian to prove them " God's sharp razors on mankind whereby he doth
poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down multitudes of sinful
creatures." At last, rising to a fearful height, he declares : "For the
Lord hath fired his beacon in the heavens among the stars of God
there ; the fearful sight is not yet out of sight. The warning piece of
heaven is going off. Now then if the Lord discharge his murdering
pieces from on high, and men be found in their sins unfit for death,
their blood shall be upon them." And again, in an agony of supplica-
tion, he cries out: "Do we see the sword blazing over us ? Let it put
us upon crying to God, that that judgment be diverted and not return
upon us again so speedily. . . . Doth God threaten our very heavens ?
O pray unto Him, that He would not take away stars and send comets
to succeed them." f

But even in the midst of all his arguments appears an evident mis-
giving. The thoughts of Newton in science and Bayle in philosophy
were evidently tending to accomplish the prophecy of Seneca. Mather's
alarm at this is clear. His natural tendency is to uphold the idea that
a comet is simply a fire-ball flung from the hand of an avenging God at
a guilty world, but he evidently feels obliged to yield something to
the scientific spirit ; hence, in the discourse concerning comets, pub-
lished in 1682, he declares : " There are those who think that, inas-
much as comets may be supposed to proceed from natural causes, there
is no speaking voice of heaven in them beyond what is to be said of
all other works of God. But certain it is that many things which
may happen according to the course of nature are portentous signs of
divine anger and prognostics of great evils hastening upon the world."

* Rev. viii, 10, and xi, 14.

f See "Ileaven's Alarm to the World," Boston, 1682. (In President Sparks's collec-
tion, Cornell University Library.)

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 731

He then notices the eclipse of August, 1672, and adds : "That year
the college was eclipsed by the death of the learned president there,
worthy Mr. Chauncey ; and two colonies, namely, Massachusetts and
Plymouth, by the death of two governors, who died within a twelve-
month after. . . . Shall, then, such mighty works of God as comets
are be insignificant things ? "

Vigorous as his argument is, we see skepticism regarding " signs "
continuing to invade the public mind ; and, in spite of his threaten-
ings, about twenty years after, we find a remarkable evidence of this
progress in the fact that this skepticism has seized upon no less a per-
sonage than that colossus of orthodoxy, his thrice illustrious son, Cot-
ton Mather himself ; and him we find, in 1726, despite the arguments
of his father, declaring in his " Manuductio " : " Perhaps there may be
some need for me to caution you against being dismayed at the signs
of the heavens, or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and
the like. ... I am willing that you be apprehensive of nothing por-
tentous in blazing stars. For my part, I know not whether all our
worlds, and even the sun itself, may not fare the better for them." *

Curiously enough, for this scientific skepticism in Cotton Mather,
there was a cause identical with that which had developed supersti-
tion in the mind of his father. The same provincial tendency to re-
ceive implicitly any new idea from abroad wrought upon both, plung-
ing one into superstition and drawing the other out of it. First among
the more important reasonings against the prevailing superstition
were those of Gassendi. Early in the seventeenth century, by strictly
scientific process, he arrived at the conclusion that comets are outside
the earth's atmosphere, and then made a strong argument from com-
mon sense that there is nothing to prove them hostile to the happi-
ness of mankind. f

But, toward the end of the same century, the subject was taken
up by Pierre Bayle. He attacked the old theory from the side of
philosophy. While professor at the University of Sedan he had ob-
served the alarm caused by the comet of 1680, and he now brought
all his reasoning powers to bear upon it. Thoughts deep and witty
he poured out in volume after volume ; Catholics and Protestants
were alike scandalized : Catholic France spurned him, and Jurieu, the
great reformed divine, tried hard to have Protestant Holland do like-
wise. Though Bayle did not touch immediately the mass of mankind,
he wrought with power upon men who gave themselves the trouble of
thinking. It was indeed unfortunate for the Church that theologians,
instead of taking the initiative in this matter, left it to Bayle ; for, in
tearing down the pretended scriptural doctrine of comets, he tore
down much else : of all men in his time, no one so thoroughly pre-
pared the way for Voltaire.

* See " Manuductio," pp. 54, 55.

f For Gassendi, see Miidler, ii, 397, and Champion, 93-95.

73 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The whole argument of Bayle is rooted in the prophecy of Seneca.
He declares, " Comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of nature,
and not prodigies amenable to no law." He shows historically that
there is no reason to regard comets as portents of earthly evils. As to
the fact that such evils occur after the passage of comets across the
sky, he compares the person believing that comets cause these evils to
a woman looking out of a window into a Paris street, and believing
that the carriages pass because she looks out. As to the accomplish-
ment of some predictions, he cites the shrewd saying of Henry IV, to
the effect that " the public will remember one prediction that comes
true better than all the rest that have proved false " ; finally, he sums
up by saying : " The more we study man, the more does it appear that
pride is his ruling passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his
misery. Mean and perishable creature that he is, he has been able to
persuade men that he can not die without disturbing the whole of
nature and obliging the heavens to put themselves to fresh expense in
order to light his funeral pomp. Foolish and ridiculous vanity ! If
we had a just idea of the universe, we should soon comprehend that
the death or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir the
heavens." *

This great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a
literary champion hardly less famous ; for Fontenelle now gave to the
French theatre his play of " The Comet," and a point of capital im-
portance in France was made by rendering the army of ignorance
ridiculous, f

But the heart of the position held by the so-called " religious " party
was not really touched until about the beginning of the eighteenth
century. Then it was that the announcement of Doerfel as to the
parabolic paths of certain comets, and the publication of Halley's "Sy-
nopsis" and "Tables" foreshadowed a final victory, and the complete
accomplishment of the prophecy of Seneca. This victory was fully
gained when Halley, observing the times of the comet which now
bears his name, made his calculations, predicted the period of its re-
turn, and the prediction was fulfilled.

Still more evident was this victory when Clairaut, in France, fore-
told the exact time when the coming comet would reach its perihelion,
and his prediction also proved true. Then it was that a Roman hea-
then philosopher was proved more infallible and more directly under
divine inspiration than a Roman Christian pontiff ; for the very comet
which the traveler finds to-day depicted on the Bayeux tapestry as
portending destruction to Harold and the Saxons at the Norman inva-

* For special points of interest in Bayle's argument, see Bayle, " Pensees Diverses,"
Amsterdam, 1749, pp. 79, 102, 134, 206.

For the response to Jurieu, see " Continuation des Pensees Diverses," Rotterdam,
1705 ; also Champion, p. 164 ; also Lecky, as above ; also Guillemin, pp. 29, 30.

•|- See Fontenelle, cited in Champion, p. 167.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 733

sion of England, and which was anathematized by Pope Calixtus as
portending evil to Christendom four centuries later, was found to be,
as Seneca had prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great laws of
the universe, and coming at regular periods. Thenceforth the whole
ponderous enginery of superstition, with its citations of proof-texts
regarding " signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to show
the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its ecclesiastical ful-
minations against the " atheism, godlessness, and infidelity " of scien-
tific investigation, was seen by all thinking men to be as weak against
the scientific method as Indian arrows against needle-guns. Coper-
nicus, Galileo, Newton, Cassini, Doerfel, Halley, and Clairaut had
gained the victory.*

And still even good men looked longingly back to the old belief.
It was so hard for them to give up the doctrine of " signs in the heav-
ens," seemingly based upon Scripture, and exercising such a healthful
moral tendency ! As is always the case under such circumstances,
votaries of "sacred science" appeared, and these exerted the greatest
ingenuity in averting the new doctrine ; but their voices gradually
died into silence, though far within our own century Joseph de Mais-
tre echoed them in declaring his belief that comets are special warn-
ings of evil.

There did, indeed, still linger one little cloud-patch of superstition,
arising from the supposed fact that comets had really been followed
by a marked rise in temperature. Even this poor basis for the belief
that comets might, after all, affect earthly affairs was swept away.
Science won here another victory, for Arago, by thermometric rec-
ords carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to 1781, proved that comets
had produced no effect upon temperature. Among multitudes of
similar examples he showed that, in some years when several comets
appeared, the temperature was lower than in other years when few or
none appeared. In 1737 there were two comets, and the weather was
cool ; in 1765 there was no comet, and the weather was hot ; through
the whole fifty years it was shown that comets were sometimes fol-
lowed by hot weather, sometimes by cool, and that no rule was dedu-
cible. The victory of science was complete at every point, f

But in this whole history there was one little exhibition so curious
as to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought
was small. Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they considered
sacred science, had determined that in some way comets must be in-
struments of divine wrath. One of them maintained that the deluge
was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth ; the other

* See Madler, as above ; also, Guillemin, Walson, and Grant's " History of Astrono-
my " ; also, Delambre, Proctor, article " Astronomy " in " Encyclopaedia Britannica," and
others.

f For the writings of several on both sides, and especially those who sought to save,
as far as possible, the sacred theory of comets, see Madler, ii, p. 384, et seq.

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

put forth the theory that comets are places of punishment for the
damned — in fact, " flying hells." Both these theories were soon dis-
credited.

Perhaps this theory can best be met by another which, if not fully
established, appears much the better based of the two ; namely, that
in 1868 the earth passed directly through the tail of a comet, with no
deluge, no sound of any wailings of the damned, with slight appear-
ances here and there, only to be detected by the keen sight of the
meteorological or astronomical observer.* In our own country super-
stitious ideas regarding comets continued to have some little cur-
rency ; f but their life was short. The tendency shown by Cotton
Mather, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, toward acknowl-
edging the victory of science was completed by the utterances of Win-
throp, professor at Harvard. In 1759 he published two lectures on
comets, and in these he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never
scoffing, but reasoning quietly and reverently. In one passage he
says, " To be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on ac-
count of the ill effects which some few of them might possibly pro-
duce, if they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness
unbecoming a reasonable being." J

The victory was, indeed, complete. Happily, none of the fears ex-
pressed by Conrad Dieterich or Increase Mather were realized. No
catastrophe has ensued either to religion or morals. In the realm of
religion, the Psalms of David remain no less beautiful, the great ut-
terances of the Hebrew prophets no less powerful ; the Sermon on the
Mount, " the first commandment and the second which is like unto it,"
the definition of " pure religion and undefiled," by St. James, appeal
no less to the deepest things in the human heart. In the realm of
morals, too, serviceable as the idea of fire-brands thrown by the right
hand of an avenging God to scare a naughty world might seem, any
competent historian must find that the destruction of the old theologi-
cal cometary theory was followed by moral improvement rather than
by deterioration. We have but to compare the general moral tone of
society to-day, wretchedly imperfect as it is, with that existing in the
time when this superstition had its strongest hold, to make ourselves
sure of this. We have only to compare the court of Henry VIII with
the court of Victoria, the reign of the late Valois and earlier Bour-
bon princes with the present French Republic, the period of the
Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the period of Leo XIII and
Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the Thirty Years' War with
the ennobling patriotism of the Franco-Prussian struggle, and the

* See Guillemin and Watson.

f See sermon of Israel Loring, of Sudbury, published in 1722 (Professor M. C. Tyler's
manuscript notes).

\ See Professor J. Winthrop on comets (Professor Tyler's manuscript notes, pp. 15
and 1G).

THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY

735

despotism of the miserable German princelings of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries with the reign of the Emperor William.

The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived at a clearer con-
ception of law in the universe ; not merely that thinking men see
more clearly that we are part of a system not requiring constant patch-
ing and arbitrary interference ; but perhaps best of all is the fact that
science has cleared away one more series of dogmas which tend to
debase rather than to develop man's whole moral and religious nature.
In this emancipation from terror and fanaticism, as in so many other
results of scientific thinking, we have a proof of the inspiration of
those great words, " The truth shall make you free."

--♦**--

THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY.

By Professor HENEY DEUMMOND, F. E. S. E., F. G. S.,

AUTHOR OF " NATURAL LAW IK THE SPIRITUAL "WORLD," ETC.

A FEW years ago, under the distinguished patronage of Mr. Dar-
win, the animal in vogue with scientific society was the worm.
At present the fashionable animal is the ant. I am sorry, therefore, to
have to begin by confessing that the insect whose praises I propose to
sing, although bearing the honored name, is not entitled to considera-
tion on account of its fashionable connections, since the white ant, as
an ant, is an impostor. It is, in fact, not an ant at all, but belongs to
a much humbler family — that of the Termitidce — and, so far from ever
having been the vogue, this clever but artful creature is hated and
despised by all civilized peoples. Nevertheless, if I mistake not, there
is neither among the true ants, nor among the worms, an insect which
plays a more wonderful or important part in nature.

Fully to appreciate the beauty of this function, a glance at an
apparently distant aspect of nature will be necessary as a preliminary.

When we watch the farmer at work, and think how he has to
plow, harrow, manure, and humor the soil before even one good crop
can be coaxed out of it, we are apt to wonder how Nature manages to
secure her crops and yet dispense with all these accessories. The
world is one vast garden, bringing forth crops of the most luxuriant
and varied kind century after century, and millennium after millen-
nium. Yet the face of Nature is nowhere furrowed by the plow, no
harrow disintegrates the clods, no lime and phosphates are strewed
upon its fields, no visible tillage of the soil improves the work on
the great world's farm.

Now, in reality there can not be crops, or successions of crops, with-
out the most thorough agriculture ; and when we look more closely
into nature we discover a system of husbandry of the most surprising

736

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kind. Nature does all things unobtrusively ; and it is only now that
we are beginning to see the magnitude of these secret agricultural
operations by which she does already all that man would wish to
imitate, and to which his most scientific methods are but clumsy ap-
proximations.

In this great system of natural husbandry Nature uses agencies,
implements, and tools of many kinds. There is the disintegrating

H

Z
■<

H

H

a

frost, that great natural harrow, which bursts asunder the clods by the
expansion during freezing of the moisture imprisoned in their pores.
There is the communistic wind which scatters broadcast over the fields
the finer soil in clouds of summer dust. There is the rain which washes
the humus into the hollows, and scrapes bare the rocks for further

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY.

737

denudation. There is the air which, with its carbonic acid and oxy-
gen, dissolves and decomposes the stubborn hills, and manufactures
out of them the softest soils of the valley. And there are the humic
acids, generated through decay, which filter through the ground and
manure and enrich the new-made soils.

But this is not all, nor is this enough ; to prepare a surface film,
however rich, and to manure the soil beneath, will secure one crop, but
not a succession of crops. There must be a mixture and transference
of these layers, and a continued mixture and transference kept up from
age to age. The lower layer of soil, exhausted with bringing forth,
must be transferred to the top for change of air, and there it must lie
for a long time, increasing its substance, and recruiting its strength
among the invigorating elements. The upper film, restored, disinte-
grated, saturated with fertility and strength, must next be slowly low-
ered down again to where the rootlets are lying in wait for it, deep in
the under soil.

Now, how is this last change brought about ? Man turns up the
crust with the plow, throwing up the exhausted earth, down the
refreshed soil, with infinite toil and patience. And Nature does it by
natural plowmen who, with equal industry, are busy all over the
world reversing the earth's crust, turning it over and over from year
to year, only much more slowly and much more thoroughly spadeful
by spadeful, foot by foot, and even grain by grain. Before x\dam
delved the garden of Eden these natural agriculturists were at work,
millions and millions of them in every part of the globe, at different
seasons and in different ways, tilling the world's fields.

"standing out against the sky like obelisks."

According to Mr. Darwin, the animal which performs this most
important function in nature is the earth-worm. The marvelous series
of observations by which the great naturalist substantiated his con-
clusion are too well known for repetition. Mr. Darwin calculates that
on every acre of land in England more than ten tons of dry earth are
passed through the bodies of worms and brought to the surface every
year : and he assures us that the whole soil of the country must pass
and repass through their bodies every few years. Some of this earth
is brought up from a considerable depth beneath the soil, for in order
to make its subterranean burrow the animal is compelled to swallow a
vol. xxvu. — 47

738

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

certain quantity of earth. It eats its way, in fact, to the surface, and
there voids the material in a little heap. Although the proper diet
of worms is decaying vegetable matter, dragged down from the sur-
face in the form of leaves and tissues of plants, there are many occa-
sions on which this source of aliment fails, and the animal has then to
nourish itself by swallowing quantities of earth, for the sake of the
organic substances it contains. In this way the worm has a twofold
inducement to throw up earth : First, to dispose of the material ex-
cavated from its burrow ; and, second, to obtain adequate nourishment
in times of famine. "When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse,"
says Mr. Darwin, " we should remember that its smoothness, on
which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the ine-
qualities having been slowly leveled by worms. It is a marvelous
reflection that the whole of the superficial mold over any such ex-
panse has passed, and will again pass, every few years, through the
bodies of worms. The plow is one of the most ancient and most
valuable of man's inventions ; but long before he existed the land was,
in fact, regularly plowed by earth-worms. It may be doubted
whether there are many other animals which have played so important
a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized
creatures." *

Now, without denying the very important contribution of the
earth-worm in this respect, a truth sufficiently indorsed by the fact

' SINGLY OR IN CLUSTERS.'

that the most circumstantial of naturalists has devoted a whole book

to this one animal, I would humbly bring forward another claimant

to the honor of being, along with the worm, the agriculturist of na-

* " Vegetable Mold and Earth-worms," p. 313.

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY. 739

ture. While admitting to the fullest extent the influence of worms in
countries which enjoy a temperate and humid climate, it can scarcely
be allowed that the same influence is exerted, or can possibly be ex-
erted, in tropical lands. No man was less in danger of taking a pro-
vincial view of nature than Mr. Darwin, and in discussing the earth-
worm he has certainly collected evidence from different parts of the
globe. He refers, although sparingly, and with less than his usual
wealth of authorities, to worms being found in Iceland, in Madagas-
car, in the United States, Brazil, New South Wales, India, and Cey-
lon. But his facts, with regard especially to the influence on the
large scale of the worm in warm countries, are few or wholly wanting.
Africa, for instance, the most tropical country in the world, is not
referred to at all ; and, where the activities of worms in the tropics are
described, the force of the fact is modified by the statement that these
are only exerted during the limited number of weeks of the rainy
season.

The fact is, for the greater portion of the year in the tropics the
worm can not operate at all. The soil, baked into a brick by the
burning sun, absolutely refuses a passage to this soft and delicate ani-
mal. All the members of the earth-worm tribe, it is true, are natural
skewers, and, though boring is their supreme function, the substance of
these skewers is not hardened iron, and the pavement of a tropical
forest is quite as intractable for nine months in the year as are the
frost-bound fields to the farmer's plowshare. During the brief pe-
riod of the rainy season worms undoubtedly carry on their function in
some of the moister tropical districts ; and in the sub-tropical regions
of South America and India worms, small and large, appear with the
rains in endless numbers. But on the whole the tropics proper seem to
be poorly supplied with worms. In Central Africa, though I looked
for them often, I never saw a single worm. Even when the rainy sea-
son set in, the closest search failed to reveal any trace either of them
or of their casts. Nevertheless, so wide is the distribution of this ani-
mal that in the moister regions even of the equatorial belt one should
certainly expect to find it. But the general fact remains. Whether
we consider the comparative poorness of their development, or the
limited period during which they can operate, the sustained perform-
ance of the agricultural function by worms, over large areas in tropical
countries, is impossible.

Now, as this agricultural function can never be dispensed with, it
is more than probable that Nature will have there commissioned some
other animal to undertake the task. And there are several other ani-
mals to whom this difficult and laborious duty might be intrusted.
There is the mole, for instance, with its wonderful spade-like feet, that
natural navvy who shovels the soil about so vigorously at home ; but
against the burned crust of the tropics even this most determined of
burrowers would surely turn the edge of his nails. The same remark

74o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

applies to those curious little geologists, the marmots and chipmunks,
which one sees throwing up their tiny heaps of sand and gravel on
the American prairies. And, though the torrid zone boasts of a strong-
limbed and almost steel-shod creature, the ant-bear, his ravages are
limited to the destruction of the nests of ants ; and, however much this
somewhat scarce animal contributes to the result, we must look in
another direction for the true tropical analogue of the worm.

The animal we are in search of, and which I venture to think equal

to all the necessities of the case, is the ter-
mite or white ant. It is a small insect (Fig.
1), with a bloated yellowish-white body and
a somewhat large thorax, oblong-shaped,
and colored a disagreeable oily brown.
The flabby, tallow-like body makes this
insect sufficiently repulsive, but it is for
quite another reason that the white ant is
the worst abused of all living vermin in
warm countries. The termite lives almost
exclusively upon wood ; and, the moment
a tree is cut or a log sawed for any eco-
nomical purpose, this insect is upon its

Pig. 1.— Worker White Ant (nat- t r\ j.t~ • *.

nrai size and magnified). track. One may never see the insect, pos-

sibly, in the flesh, for it lives under-ground ;
but its ravages confront one at every turn. You build your house,
perhaps, and for a few months fancy you have pitched upon the
one solitary site in the country where there are no white ants. But
one day suddenly the door-post totters, and lintel and rafters come
down together with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked
timbers and discover that the whole inside is eaten clean away. The
apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built are now
mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you could
push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers,
everything made of wood is inevitably attacked, and in a single night
a strong trunk is often riddled through and through, and turned into
match-wood. There is no limit, in fact, to the depredation by these
insects, and they will eat books, or leather, or cloth, or anything, and
in many parts of Africa I believe if a man lay down to sleep with a
wooden leg it would be a heap of sawdust in the morning. So much
feared is this insect now, that no one in certain parts of India and
Africa ever attempts to travel with such a thing as a wooden trunk.
On the Tanganyika plateau I have camped on ground which was as
hard as adamant, and as innocent of white ants apparently as the
pavement of St. Paul's, and wakened next morning to find a stout
wooden box almost gnawed to pieces. Leather portmanteaus share
the same fate, and the only substances which seem to defy the ma-
rauders are iron and tin.

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY.

74i

But what has this to do with earth or with agriculture ? The most
important point in the work of the white ant remains to be noted.
I have already said that the white ant is never seen. Why he should
have such a repugnance to being looked at is at first sight a mystery,
seeing that he himself is stone-blind. But his coyness is really due to
the desire for self -protection, for the moment his juicy body shows itself
above-ground there are a dozen enemies waiting to devour it. And
yet the white ant can never procure any food until it comes above-
ground. Nor will it meet the case for the insect to come to the sur-
face under the shadow of night. Night in the tropics, so far as ani-
mal life is concerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding-time, the
great fighting-time, the carnival of the carnivores, and of all beasts,
birds, and insects of prey from the least to the greatest. It is clear,
then, that darkness is no protection to the white ant ; and yet without
coming out of the ground it can not live. How does it solve the diffi-
culty ? It takes the ground out along with it. I have seen white ants
working on the top of a high tree, and yet they were underground.
They took up some of the ground with them to the tree-top ; just as
the Esquimaux heap up snow, building it into the low tunnel huts in
which they live, so the white ants collect earth, only in this case not

'ALL SORTS OP FANTASTIC SHAPES

from the surface but from some depth underneath the ground, and
plaster it into tunneled ways. Occasionally these run along the
ground, but more often mount in endless ramifications to the top of
trees, meandering along every branch and twig, and here and there
debouching into large covered chambers which occupy half the girth
of the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are thus fantastically
plastered over with tubes, galleries, and chambers of earth, and many

742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pounds weight of subsoil must be brought up for the mining of even
a single tree. The building material is conveyed by the insects up a
central pipe with which all the galleries communicate, and which at
the downward end connects with a series of subterranean passages
leading deep into the earth. The method of building the tunnels and
covered ways is as follows : At the foot of a tree the tiniest hole cau-
tiously opens in the ground close to the bark. A small head appears
with a grain of earth clasped in its jaws. Against the tree trunk this
earth-gram is deposited, and the head is withdrawn. Presently it re-
appears with another grain of earth, this is laid beside the first, rammed
tight against it, and again the builder descends underground for more.
The third grain is not placed against the tree, but against the former
grain ; a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth follow, and the plan of the founda-
tion begins to suggest itself as soon as these are in position. The
stones or grains, or pellets of earth, are arranged in a semicircular wall,
the termite, now assisted by three or four others, standing in the mid-
dle between the sheltering wall and the tree and working briskly with
head and mandible to strengthen the position. The wall in fact forms
a small moon-rampart, and as it grows higher and higher it soon be-
comes evident that it is going to grow from a low battlement into a
long perpendicular tunnel running up the side of the tree. The work-
ers, safely ensconced inside, are now carrying up the structure with
great rapidity, disappearing in turn as soon as they have laid their
stone and rushing off to bring up another. The way in which the
building is done is extremely curious, and one could watch the move-
ments of these wonderful little masons by the hour. Each stone as it
is brought to the top is first of all covered with mortar. Of course,
without this the whole tunnel would crumble into dust before reaching
the height of half an inch ; but the termite pours over the stone a
moist, sticky secretion, turning the grain round and round with its
mandibles until the whole is covered with slime. Then it places the
stone with great care upon the top of the wall, works it about vigor-
ously for a moment or two till it is well jammed into its place, and
then starts off instantly for another load.

Peering over the growing wall one soon discovers one, two, or more
termites of a somewhat larger build, considerably longer, and with a
very different arrangement of the parts of the head and
especially of the mandibles (Fig. 2). These important-
looking individuals saunter about the rampart in the
most leisurely way, but yet with a certain air of busi-
ness as if perhaps the one was the master of the works
and the other the architect, but close observation sug-
Fio. 2.-SoLT5iEB costs that they are in no wise superintending oper-

WhiteAnt. . . . ,. . , •! ,. .^ .v„

ations, nor in any immediate way contributing to tne
structure, for they take not the slightest notice either of the workers
or the works. They are posted there, in fact, as sentries, and there

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY. 743

they stand, or promenade about, at the mouth of every tunnel, like
Sister Ann, to see if anybody is coming. Sometimes somebody does
come in the shape of another ant — the real ant this time, not the
defenseless Neuropteron, but some valiant and belted knight from
the warlike Formicidce. Singly or in troops, this rapacious little in-
sect, fearless in its chitinous coat-of-mail, charges down the tree-trunk,
its antenna? waving defiance to the enemy and its cruel mandibles
thirsting for termite blood. The worker white ant is a poor defense-
less creature, and, blind and unarmed, would fall an immediate prey
to these well-drilled banditti, who forage about in every tropical forest
in unnumbered legion. But at the critical moment, like Goliah from
the Philistines, the soldier termite advances to the fight. With a few
sweeps of its scythe-like jaws it clears the ground, and, while the attack-
ing party is carrying off its dead, the builders, unconscious of the fray,
quietly continue their work. To every hundred workers in a white
ant colony, which numbers many thousands of individuals, there are
perhaps two of these fighting-men. The division of labor here is very
wonderful, and the fact that besides these two specialized forms there
are in every nest two other kinds of the same insect, the kings and
queens, shows the remarkable height to which civilization in these com-
munities has attained.

But where is this tunnel going to, and what object have the insects
in view in ascending this lofty tree ? Thirty feet from the ground,
across innumerable forks, at the end of a long branch are a few feet of
dead wood. How the ants know it is there, how they know its sap has
dried up, and that it is now fit for the termites' food, is a mystery.
Possibly they do not know, and are only prospecting on the chance.
The fact that they sometimes make straight for the decaying limb
argues in these instances a kind of definite instinct ; but, on the other
hand, the fact that in most cases the whole tree, in every branch and
limb, is covered with termite-tunnels, would show perhaps that they
work most commonly on speculation, while the number of abandoned
tunnels, ending on a sound branch in a cul-de-sac, proves how often
they must suffer the usual disappointments of all such adventurers.
The extent to which these insects carry on their tunneling is quite
incredible until one has seen it in nature with his own eyes. The tun-
nels are perhaps about the thickness of a small-sized gas-pipe, but there
are junctions here and there of large dimensions, and occasionally
patches of earth-work are found embracing nearly the whole trunk
for some feet. The outside of these tunnels, which are never quite
straight, but wander irregularly along stem and branch, resembles in
texture a coarse sand-paper ; and the color, although this naturally
varies with the soil, is usually a reddish-brown. The quantity of earth
and mud plastered over a single tree is often enormous ; and when one
thinks that it is not only an isolated specimen here and there that is
frescoed in this way, but often the whole of the trees of a forest, some

744

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

idea will be formed of the magnitude of the operations of these insects
and the extent of their influence upon the soil which they are thus
ceaselessly transporting from underneath the ground.

In traveling through the great forests of the Rocky Mountains or
of the Western States, the broken branches and fallen trunks strewing
the ground breast-high with all sorts of decaying litter frequently
make locomotion impossible. To attempt to ride through these West-
ern forests, with their mesh-work of interlocked branches and decaying
trunks, is often out of the question, and one has to dismount and drag

"useful to the sportsman."

his horse after him as if he were clambering through a wood-yard.
But in an African forest not a fallen branch is seen. One is struck at
first by a certain clean look about the great forests of the interior, a
novel and unaccountable cleanness, as if the forest-bed was carefully
swept and dusted daily by unseen elves. And so, indeed, it is. Scav-
engers of a hundred kinds remove decaying animal matter — from the
carcass of the fallen elephant to the broken wing of a gnat — eating it,
or carrying it out of sight, and burying it in the deodorizing earth.
And these countless millions of termites perform a similar function for
the vegetable world, making away with all plants and trees, all stems,

THE WHITE ANT : A THE OB Y

745

Fig. 3. — a, tunnel ; b, earth ; c, shreds of outer bark ;
d, remains of branch.

twigs, and tissues, the moment the finger of decay strikes the signal.
Constantly in these woods one comes across what appear to be sticks
and branches and bundles of fagots, but when closely examined they
are seen to be mere casts in mud. From these hollow tubes, which
preserve the original form of the branch down to the minutest knot or
fork, the ligneous tissue is often entirely removed, while others are met
with in all stages of demolition.
There is the section (Fig. 3) of
an actual specimen which is not
yet completely destroyed, and
from which the mode of attack
may be easily seen. The insects
start apparently from two cen-
ters. One company attacks the
inner bark, which is the favorite
morsel, leaving the coarse outer
bark untouched, or more usu-
ally replacing it with grains of
earth atom by atom as they
eat it away. The inner bark is
gnawed off likewise as they go
along, but the woody tissue beneath is allowed to remain to form a pro-
tective sheath for the second company who begin work at the center.
This second contingent eats its way outward and onward, leaving a
thin tube of the outer wood to the last as props to the mine till they
have finished the main excavation. When a fallen trunk lying upon
the ground is the object of attack, the outer cylinder is frequently left
quite intact, and it is only when one tries to drag it off to his camp-
fire that he finds to his disgust that he is dealing with a mere hollow
tube a few lines in thickness filled up with mud.

But the works above ground represent only a part of the labors of
these slow-moving but most industrious of creatures. The arboreal
tubes are only the prolongation of a much more elaborate system of
subterranean tunnels (Fig. 4) which extend over large areas and mine
the earth sometimes to a depth of many feet or even yards.

The material excavated from these underground galleries and from
the succession of domed chambers — used as nurseries and granaries —
to which they lead, has to be thrown out upon the surface. And it is
from these materials that the huge ant-hills are reared which form
so distinctive a feature of the African landscape. These heaps and
mounds are so conspicuous that they may be seen for miles, and so
numerous are they and so useful as cover to the sportsman, that with-
out them in certain districts hunting would be impossible. The first
things, indeed, to strike the traveler in entering the interior are the
mounds of the white ant, now dotting the plain in groups like a
small cemetery, now rising into mounds singly or in clusters, each

746

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

thirty or forty feet in diameter, and ten or fifteen in height, or again
standing out against the sky like obelisks, their bare sides carved
and fluted into all sorts of fantastic shapes. In India these ant-
heaps seldom attain a height of more than a couple of feet, but in
Central Africa they form veritable hills, and contain many tons of

Fig. 4.— Galleries in White Ants' Nest.

earth. The brick houses of the Scotch mission-station on Lake Nyassa
have all been built out of a single ants' nest, and the quarry from
which the material has been derived forms a pit beside the settlement
some dozen feet in depth. A supply of bricks as large again could
probably still be taken from this convenient depot, and the missiona-
ries on Lake Tanganyika and onward to Victoria Nyanza have been
similarly indebted to the labors of the termites. In South Africa the
Zooloos and Caffres pave all their huts with white-ant earth ; and during
the Boer war our troops in Praetoria, by scooping out the interior from
the smaller beehive-shaped ant-heaps, and covering the top with clay,
constantly used them as ovens. These ant-heaps may be said to abound
over the whole interior of Africa, and there are three or four distinct
varieties. The most peculiar, as well as the most ornate, is a small
variety from one to two feet in height, which occurs in myriads along
the shores of Lake Tanganyika. It is built in symmetrical tiers, and
resembles a pile of small rounded hats, one above another, the rims
depending like eaves, and sheltering the body of the hill from rain.
To estimate the amount of earth per acre raised from the water-line
of the subsoil by white ants would not in some districts be an impos-
sible task, and it would be found probably that the quantity at least

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY.

1M

equaled that manipulated annually in temperate regions by the earth-
worm.

These mounds, however, are more than mere waste-heaps. Like
the corresponding region underground they are built into a mesh- work
of tunnels, galleries, and chambers, where the social interests of the
community are attended to. The most spacious of these chambers,
usually far underground, is very properly allocated to the head of the
society, the queen. The queen-termite (Fig. 5) is a very rare insect,

Fig. 5.— Thk Queen White Ant.

and as there are seldom more than one, or at most two, to a colony,
and as the royal apartments are hidden far in the earth, few persons
have ever seen a queen, and indeed most, if they did happen to come
across it, from its very singular appearance would refuse to believe that
it had any connection with white ants. It possesses, indeed, the true
termite head (Figs. 6, 7), but there the resemblance to the other mem-
bers of the family stops, for the size of the head bears about the same
proportion to the rest of the body as does the tuft on his Glengarry bon-
net to a six-foot Highlander. The phenomenal corpulence of the
royal body in the case of the queen-termite is possibly due in part to
want of exercise, for once seated upon her throne she never stirs to
the end of her days. She lies there, a large, loathsome cylindrical
package, two or three inches long, in shape like a sausage, and as

Fig. 6.— Head of Queen
(magnified).

Fig. 7.— Undeveloped Winged
Female.

Fig. 8.— Eggs.

white as a bolster. Her one duty in life is to lay eggs (Fig. 8), and
it must be confessed she discharges her function with complete suc-
cess, for in a single day her progeny often amounts to many thou-
sands, and for months this enormous fecundity never slackens. The
body increases slowly in size, and through the transparent skin the long-
folded ovary may be seen, with the eggs, impelled by a peristaltic mo-

748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion, passing onward for delivery to tbe workers who are waiting to
carry them to the nurseries where they are hatched. Assiduous atten-
tion meantime is paid to the queen by other workers, who feed her
diligently, with much self-denial stuffing her with morsel after morsel
from their own jaws. A guard of honor in the shape of a
few of the larger soldier-ants is also in attendance as a last
and almost unnecessary precaution. In addition, finally,
to the soldiers, workers, and queen, the royal chamber has
also one other inmate — the king. He is a very ordinary -
^Vhite"anNG ^00^mg insect (Fig. 9), about the same size as the soldiers,
but the arrangement of the parts of the head and body
is widely different, and like the queen he is furnished with eyes.

Let me now attempt to show the way in which the work of the
termites bears upon the natural agriculture and geology of the trop-
ics. Looking at the question from the large point of view, the gen-
eral fact to be noted is, that the soil of the tropics is in a state of per-
petual motion. Instead of an upper crust, moistened to a paste by
the autumn rains, and then baked hard as adamant in the sun, and an
under soil, hermetically sealed from the air and light, and inaccessible
to all the natural manures derived from the decomposition of organic
matters — these two layers being eternally fixed in their relation to one
another — we have a slow and continued transference of the layers al-
ways taking place. Not only to cover their depredations, but to dis-
pose of the earth excavated from the underground galleries, the ter-
mites are constantly transporting the deeper and exhausted soils to the
surface. Thus there is, so to speak, a constant circulation of earth in
the tropics, a plowing and harrowing, not furrow by furrow and clod
by clod, but pellet by pellet and grain by grain.

Some idea of the extent to which the underlying earth of the tropi-
cal forests is thus brought to the surface will have been gathered from
the facts already described ; but no one who has not seen it with his
own eyes can appreciate the gigantic magnitude of the process. Oc-
casionally one sees a whole trunk or branch, and sometimes almost an
entire tree, so swathed in red mud that the bark is almost completely
concealed, the tree looking as if it had been taken out bodily and
dipped in some crystallizing solution. It is not. only one tree here and
there that exhibits the work of the white ant, but in many places the
whole forest is so colored with dull-red tunnels and patches as to give
a distinct tone to the landscape — an effect which, at a little distance,
reminds one of the abend-roth in a pine-forest among the Alps. Some
regions are naturally more favorable than others to the operations of
the termites, and to those who have only seen them at work in India
or in the lower districts of Africa this statement may seem an exag-
geration. But on one range of forest-clad hills on the great plateau
between Lake Nyassa and Tanganyika I have walked for miles through
trees, every one of which, without exception, was ramified, more or

THE WHITE ANT : A THEORY. 749

less, with tunnels. The elevation of this locality was about five thou-
sand feet above the sea, and the distance from the equator some 9° ;
but nowhere else have I seen a spot where the termites were so com-
pletely masters of the situation as here. If it is the case that in these,
the most elevated regions of Central Africa, the termite colonies attain
their maximum development, the fact is of much interest in connec-
tion with the geological and agricultural function which they seem to
serve ; for it is here precisely, before the rivers have gathered volume,
that alluvium is most wanting ; it is here that the tiny head-waters of
these same rivers collect the earth for subsequent distribution over the
distant plains and coasts ; and, though the white ant may itself have
no power, in the first instance, of creating soil, as a denuding and
transporting agent its ministry can scarcely be exaggerated. If this
is its function in the economy of Nature, it is certainly clear that the
insect to which this task is assigned is planted where, of all places, it
can most effectively fulfill the end.

The direct relation of the termites' work to denudation will still
further appear, if we try to imagine the effect upon these accumula-
tions of earth-pellets and grains of an ordinary rainy season. For
two or three months in the tropics, though intermittently, the rains
lash the forests and soils with a fury such as we, fortunately, have
little idea of. And though the earth-works, and especially the larger
ant-hills, have marvelous resisting properties, they are not invulner-
able, and must ultimately succumb to denuding agents. The tunnels,
being only required for a temporary purpose, are made substantial
enough only to last the occasion. And, in spite of the natural glue
which cements the pellets of earth together, the structure, as a whole,
after a little exposure, becomes extremely friable, and crumbles to
pieces at a touch. When the earth-tubes crumble into dust in the
summer season, the debris is scattered over the country by the wind,
and in this way tends to increase and refresh the soil. During the
rains, again, it is washed into the rivulets and borne away to fertilize
with new alluvium the distant valleys or carried downward to the
ocean, where along the coast-line it " sows the dust of continents to
be." Herodotus, with equal poetic and scientific truth, describes
Egypt as " the gift of the Nile." Possibly had he lived to-day he
might have carried his vision farther back still, and referred some of
it to the labors of the humble termites in the forest slopes about
Victoria Nyanza. — Good Words.

7So THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE EAKLT STUDY OF PLANTS.

By ELIZA A. YOUMANS.

IN the interesting articles, in previous numbers of " The Popular
Science Monthly," entitled "An Experiment in Primary Educa-
tion," by Dr. Mary Putnam-Jacobi, she makes courteous reference to
my " First Book of Botany," while dissenting from certain points of
its method. The objections, I think, indicate a partial misunderstand-
ing of this method, and, as some of them have been made before and
as I have just reissued the plan of study as a volume of "Descriptive
Botany," in which the matters criticised remain unchanged, it seems
desirable that the erroneous impressions should be corrected. This is
the more needful, because of the weight of Mrs. Jacobi's authority in
what may be called human science, and because her objections, though
briefly stated, come as results of fresh study tested by careful and pro-
longed experiment. The chief points she makes are contained in the
following passage, which is quoted from pages 618 and 619 of the
September " Monthly " :

" I suppose that most persons seriously interested in education are
acquainted with Miss Youmans's admirable little ' First Lessons in
Botany,' and the plea she makes for this science as a typical means of
training the observing powers of children. According to her plan,
the first object studied is the leaf — and the pupil is brought at once,
not only to draw the leaf, but to fill out a schedule of description of
it. Much may be said in favor of this method, which proceeds from
the simple to the complex form, but it is by no means the only pos-
sible one ; the writing part of the scheme is, moreover, impossible
for a child who has not yet learned how to write. There is another
method which consists in seizing at once upon the most striking
aspect of the subject, and which shall make the most vivid impres-
sion upon the imagination. For this purpose the leaf is the least
useful, the flower the most. The earliest botanical classifications are
based upon the corolla, and, in accordance with a principle already
enunciated, a child may often best approach a science through the
series of ideas that attended its genesis. The conditions are different
for an adult, who requires to get the latest results ; the child's mind
is always remote from these, but often singularly near to the concep-
tions entertained by the first observers. Again, it is unnatural to enter
upon the beautiful world of plants by the study of forms and outlines
— which is much better pursued when abstracted from all other cir-
cumstances, as in models of pure mathematical figures. But with
plants comes a new idea — that of life, of change, of evolution. It is
fitting that this tremendous idea make a profound impression on the
child's mind ; and this impression may be best secured by watching the

THE EARLY STUDY OF PLANTS. 751

continuous growth of a plant from the seed. The study of life is a study
of events, of dynamics, of catastrophes. The earliest observation per-
ceives the extraordinary influence of the surrounding medium upon
the destinies of the living organism. It is not difficult to surround
these destinies with such a halo of imagination as shall impress on
the mind a sense of the mystery, sanctity — I may acid, the necessary
calamities of life — before it has become absorbed in the consideration
of living personalities."

The first statement here made contains an error, which, though
apparently trivial, involves a serious misunderstanding of the plan of
study adopted in my book. Mrs. Jacobi says that, according to the
method, " the first object studied is the leaf, and the pupil is brought
at once, not only to draw the leaf," etc. This is a mistake. I have
not included drawing as a part of the exercise in the study of leaves,
have purposely avoided it, and have always insisted that it is a waste
of time and a hindrance to the object I had in view. Instead of facili-
tating, it impedes the work of observation. The aim is, by the ob-
servation of real objects, to form the habit of intelligent discrimina-
tion, and such a habit can only be formed by numerous and ideated
and continued mental exercises, which, with the young beginner, should
be as simple and uncomplicated as possible. The method is one of
self-instruction, in which the pupil is put upon a search to find out
things for himself, and he has to inspect a great number of objects to
identify, compare, and describe their special characters. Plants were
chosen because of the almost endless detail of varying structure which
their parts present, and which can only be made familiar by the ex-
amination, comparison, and contrast of a great many of them. This
forbids the delay entailed by the drawing of specimens, and to insist
upon the practice would defeat the method. The pupil could not draw
one specimen in a hundred of those with which it is necessary that he
should become familiar.

The idea that the parts of plants must be drawn has been the stum-
bling-block of teachers in using my books from the outset. It is a mode
of evading out-of-door work, the collection of multitudes of plants,
and their direct and constant observation and comparison. Mere book-
science is now condemned, at least nominally, even in the schools ; but
in place of it we have what is no better, blackboard - science and
teacher's talk. My books were made simply for the learner's imme-
diate use as a guide in the direct study of plants, and they have not the
slightest value when used in any other way. Yet some teachers have
set children to copy their illustrations- with chalk upon the blackboard,
while others have themselves copied them for their classes, the books
being withheld from the pupils. One eminent superintendent of edu-
cation gravely assured me that my " First Book of Botany " was a
book for teachers and not for pupils ; and, in exemplification of this
idea, I know an instance of a large school for which one hundred

75 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

copies were purchased, but in which the contents of the book were
doled out by the teacher from the blackboard to a room full of pupils,
while ninety-nine copies of the purchased volume remained unopened
in the cellar ! The most inveterate obstacle to the method is the per-
vasiveness of the teacher with her drawing, oral instruction, and other
school-room processes. They make impossible that training in self-
instruction which it was the prime object of the book to secure.

In the plan of the book, leaves were chosen to begin study with, in
order to make the first steps easy and effective. Of all the organs of
plants, leaves are the simplest and most varied in structure, and are
most readily obtained throughout the longest period of the year.
With these we are able to begin early the work of self -education,
which may be continued along a course of inquiry and discovery that
increases in difficulty as by exercise the mind increases in ability. Mrs.
Jacobi objects to this. She says, " For the purposes of the beginner
the leaf is the least useful, the flower the most." She thinks it better
" to seize at once the most striking aspect of the subject, and make the
most vivid impression upon the imagination " — adding that " the ear-
liest classifications were based upon the corolla, and a person may often
best approach a science through the series of ideas that attended its
genesis." Is it the flower or is it only the corolla that Mrs. Jacobi
thinks most useful ? If the latter, I can only say that, while the co-
rolla is the simplest element of the flower, it is less simple than the
leaf, compared with which its forms are few, and not readily classifi-
able by beginners. If she means the entire flower, we are met by the
fact that all its other parts are complex, and often so small as to re-
quire the use of a glass in studying their forms. It frequently hap-
pens that much strength of judgment is needed in fixing their bounda-
ries and interpreting the appearances they present. Yet, if we are to
begin with the flower, it is this complex portion of the plant that Mrs.
Jacobi would offer first for the uncultivated attention of the child.
The flower was early used in artificial classification, and it is true that
the education of the individual must have a general correspondence
with the evolution of the race, but this principle can have only a very
partial application in primary education, and in this instance its appli-
cation violates an important law of mental development. It is a fun-
damental principle of mental growth that the relatively simple and
easy shall come before and lead on to the relatively complex and diffi-
cult, and to contravene this law is certainly bad education. Nor can
I see how the showiness of flowers can in any degree compensate for
this total inversion of mental processes. The sensuous interest in
flowers is trivial in comparison with the deeper intellectual interest of
the child, when discovering for himself the features of plants, and the
resemblances of various parts by which relations and affinities are de-
termined. I have found in a long experience with children that the

THE EARLY STUDY OF PLANTS. 753

curiosity, the pleasure, and even the excitement that come from a con-
nected course of observations upon simple leaves are all-sufficient as a
stimulus to continued effort, and the concurrent testimony of able
teachers who have practiced the method abundantly justifies my own
results.

This objection, that I begin with leaves in the study of plants, has
been often made before. Of course, there may be various points of
approach to the subject ; but I had to adopt one, and I chose that
which is unquestionably most favorable for beginning the work of
self-instruction. None of the objections that I have seen have any
force against the proved advantage of the plan pursued.

In further criticism of the method Mrs. Jacobi says, " Again, it is
unnatural to enter upon the beautiful world of plants by the study
of forms and outlines — which is much better pursued when abstracted
from all other circumstances, as in models of pure mathematical fig-
ures." I am at a loss to understand this. Does Mrs. Jacobi regard
me as attempting to teach geometry by the forms and outlines of
leaves ? I certainly have made no other use of forms and outlines
than results from the inevitable relations of the mind to its environ-
ment. Forms and outlines are properties by which objects are known.
The properties of bodies revealed to us through sensation are used
by the child in the study of plants in exactly the same way that they
are earlier used in the study of household and all familiar objects.
The only difference is that, in descriptive botany, these observations
are made with more precision, have a logical unity, and a conscious
purpose. I am the more puzzled to understand in what the unnatural-
ness of the study of forms and outlines of leaves consists, because Mrs.
Jacobi tells us (p. 472) that, " before the child has a clearly intellectual
life on any other subjects, it attains a very definite power to distin-
guish the square, the oval, the spiral." If this be true, how can the
study of forms of any objects be considered unnatural ? If, as she
relates, a child may describe bits of cake as squares and cubes, " make
pentagons and octagons with knife and fork," characterize onions as
" oblates," without being unnatural, why does she become so when
she describes leaves as round, oval, oblong, etc., as the case may be ?

But perhaps Mrs. Jacobi means that " it is unnatural to enter upon
the beautiful world of plants by the study of forms and outlines," be-
cause the most beautiful and attractive parts should receive attention
first. This might accord with the dictates of aesthetic feeling, but there
is no reason why it should be regarded as especially the natural way.
The truth is, this point has been settled by the history of botanical
method. The flower, the most conspicuous and beautiful part, was for
a long time taken alone as the basis of a classification which depended
upon the number and mode of arrangement of its essential organs, to
the neglect of the remaining plant-characters ; but that is now recog-

TOL. XXVII. — 48

754

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nized as the artificial system. Afterward the flower was deposed
from its supremacy, and all the characters of plants, of which forms
and outlines are leading ones, were taken into account in grouping
them, and this is named the natural system. I should rather say that
to make a fanciful idea predominant in a method of study is unnatu-
ral, while the truly natural method is that which conforms to the re-
quirements of the mind and the progress of the science to he studied,
and which will therefore lead to the best acquaintance with the truth
of nature.

Again, after objecting to the early study of plants in their most
simplified forms by children, Mrs. Jacobi says : " But with plants
comes a new idea — that of life, of change, of evolution. It is fitting
that these tremendous ideas make a profound impression on the child's
mind ; and this impression may be best secured by watching the con-
tinuous growth of a plant from the seed." I confess to having read
this passage with no little surprise. It may be well at times to strike
o^it from the beaten track, and take independent views, but some
things are, nevertheless, established. Mrs. Jacobi here ignores the
latest progress in the methods of botanical study for minds of all
grades. The plan of beginning the study of the vegetable kingdom
by inquiries concerning life-processes is now discredited and aban-
doned by the best botanical authors and teachers. It is the old method
of studying physiological botany before descriptive botany, or the
inner mysteries of plant organization before the external characters
and relations of plant-structures by which they are known and classi-
fied. In his botanical text-book, published more than forty years ago,
Professor Gray began with the idea of life and growth, but, in the
series of botanical text-books he is now preparing, the first volume is
devoted to the study of the external aspects of plants. He recognizes
that this should come first, saying, " It will furnish the needful prepa-
ration to those who proceed to the study of vegetable physiology
and anatomy." The reasons for adopting this order are conclusive,
but they are strongest in the case of beginners ; and yet Mrs. Jacobi
adopts the old plan condemned by experience, in the case of a child
five years old. If there is any truth in mental science, or any value
in the experience of practical teachers, there is in childhood a special
intellectual fitness for acquiring a knowledge of the external characters
of organisms, and an unfitness for grasping and comprehending the
obscure and difficult operations of life as manifested by these organ-
isms. Nor can the reason which Mrs. Jacobi offers for the course
taken be for a moment accepted as sound. She would introduce a lit-
tle child to the study of plants through the grand gateway of evolu-
tion, to impress it at the start with the tremendous conception of
unfolding life. It is proper, and I have recommended it in my little
book for beginners, to make the germination of seeds an experimental

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 755

exercise in observation ; and this is as far as the juvenile capacity can
go. It is neither fitting nor possible that tremendous ideas should
make a profound impression upon a child's mind. It has no capabil-
ity either to appreciate or to receive them. Savages are incapable of
wonder ; they do not know enough to wonder. Said Professor Grove,
in his address before the British Association at Nottingham, " If the
primitive inhabitants of Britain could emerge and behold the wonder-
ful triumphs of art and science in our civilization, it is doubtful if
they would know enough to be astonished." And so with children.
We may teach them to say of the stars, " How I wonder what you
are ! " but they do not wonder in the least. Only minds highly culti-
vated and widely informed are capable of appreciating the tremendous
idea of evolution so as to be deeply impressed by it. We are not
to suppose, because the young readily acquire terms and phrases, and
seem in a way to understand them, that they are therefore in posses-
sion of their real and full meanings. There are stages in the process
of assimilating ideas which the pupil reaches one after another in the
slow course of mental unfolding. Before the period of its formal edu-
cation, in the natural development of mind, the child never leaps for-
ward into the complex and difficult, but insensibly grows into greater
and greater strength through its spontaneous interest in simple things.
This is the safest course to follow, because we are here on the solid
ground of Nature's own method.

ON" THE SOLAE COKONA.*

By WILLIAM HUGGINS, F. E. S.

IF it were usual to prefix a motto to these evening discourses, I might
have selected such words as " Seeing the Invisible," for I have to
describe a method of investigation by which what is usually unseeable
may become revealed. We live at the bottom of a deep ocean of air,
and therefore every object outside the earth can be seen by us only
as it looks when viewed through this great depth of air. Professor
Langley has shown recently that the air mars, colors, distorts, and
therefore misleads and cheats us to an extent much greater than was
supposed. Langley considers that the light and heat absorbed and
scattered by the air and the particles of matter floating in it amount
to no less than forty per cent of the light falling upon it. In conse-
quence of this want of transparency and of the presence of finely
divided matter always more or less suspended in it, the air, when the
sun shines upon it, becomes itself a source of light. This illuminated

* A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Friday evening, Feb-
ruary 20, 1885.

75 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aerial ocean necessarily conceals from ns by overpowering them any
sources of light less brilliant than itself which are in the heavens be-
yond. From this cause the stars are invisible at midday. This illu-
minated air also conceals from us certain surroundings and appendages
of the sun, which become visible on the very rare occasions when the
moon coming between us and the sun cuts off the sun's light from
the air where the eclipse is total, and so allows the observer to see the
surroundings of the sun through the cone of unilluminated air which
is in shadow. It is only when the aerial curtain of light is thus with-
drawn that we can become spectators of what is taking place on the
stage beyond. The magnificent scene never lasts more than a few
minutes, for the moon passes and the curtain of light is again before
us. On an average, once in two years this curtain of light is lifted
for from three to six minutes. I need not say how difficult it is from
these glimpses at long intervals even to guess at the plot of the drama
which is being played out about the sun.

The purpose of this discourse is to describe a method by which it
is possible to overcome the barrier presented to our view by the bright
screen of air, and so watch from day to day the changing scenes tak-
ing place behind it in the sun's surroundings.

The object of our quest is to be found in the glory of radiant
beams and bright streamers intersected by darker rifts which appears
about the sun at a total solar eclipse. The corona possesses a struct-
ure of great complexity, which is the more puzzling in its intricate
arrangement because, though we seem to have a flat surface before us,
it exists really in three dimensions. If we were dwellers in Flatland
and the corona were a sort of glorified catherine-wheel, the task of
interpretation would seem less difficult. But, as we are looking at an
object having thickness as well as extension, the forms seen in the
corona must appear to us more or less modified by the effect of per-
spective. This consideration tells us also that the intrinsic brightness
of the corona toward the sun's limb is much less than its apparent
brightness as seen by us, of which no inconsiderable part must be due
to the greater extent of corona in the line of sight as the sun is ap-
proached. The corona undergoes great and probably continual change,
as the same coronal forms are not present at different eclipses.

The attempts which have been made from time to time to see the
corona without an eclipse have been based mainly upon the hope that
if the eye were protected from the intense direct light of the sun, and
from all light other than that from the sky immediately about the
sun, then the eye might become sufficiently sensitive to perceive the
corona. These attempts have failed because it was not possible to
place the artificial screen where the moon comes, outside our atmos-
phere, and so keep in shadow the part of the air through which the
observer looks. The latest attempts have been made by Professor
Langley at Mount Whitney, and Dr. Copeland, assistant to Lord

OJV THE SOLAR CORONA. 757

Crawford, on the Andes. Professor Langley says, " I have tried
visual methods under the most favorable circumstances, but with
entire non-success." Dr. Copeland observed at Puno, at a height of
12,040 feet. He says, " It ought to be mentioned that the appear-
ances produced by the illuminated atmosphere were often of the most
tantalizing description, giving again and again the impression that
my efforts were about to be crowned with success."

There are occasions on which the existence of the brighter part of
the corona near the sun's limb can be detected without an eclipse.
The brightness of the sky near the sun's limb is due to two distinct
factors, the air-glare and the corona behind it, which M. Janssen
considers to be brighter than the full moon. When Venus comes
between us and the sun, it is obvious that the planet, as it approaches
the sun, comes in before the corona, and shuts off the light which is
due to it. To the observer the sky at the place where the planet is
appears darker than the adjoining parts, that is to say, the withdrawal
of the coronal light from behind has made a sensible diminution in
the brightness of the sky. It follows that the part of the sky behind
which the corona is situated must be brighter in a small degree than
the adjoining parts, and it would perhaps not be too much to say that
the corona would always be visible when the sky is clear, if our eyes
were more sensitive to small differences of illumination of adjacent
areas. My friend Mr. John Brett, A. R. A., tells me that he is able to
see the corona in a telescope of low power.

The spectroscopic method by which the prominences can be seen
fails because a part only of the coronal light is resolved by the prism
into bright lines, and of these lines no one is sufficiently bright and
co-extensive with the corona to enable us to see the corona by its
light, as the prominences may be seen by the red, the blue, or the green
line of hydrogen.

The corona sends to us light of three kinds : 1. Light which the
prism resolves into bright lines, which has been emitted by luminous
gas. 2. Light which gives a continuous spectrum, which has come
from incandescent liquid or solid matter. 3. Reflected sunlight, which
M. Janssen considers to form the fundamental part of the coronal light.

The problem to be solved was how to disentangle the coronal light
from the air-glare mixed up with it, or in other words how to give such
an advantage to the coronal light that it might hold its own sufficiently
for our eyes to distinguish the corona from the bright sky.

When the report reached this country in the summer of 1882 that
photographs of the spectrum of the corona taken during the eclipse in
Egypt showed that the coronal light seen from the earth as a whole
is strong in the violet region, it seemed to me probable that if by some
method of selective absorption this kind of light were isolated, then
when viewed by this kind of light alone the corona might be at a suffi-
cient advantage relatively to the air-glare to become visible. Though

758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this light falls within the range of vision, the eye is less sensitive to
small differences of illumination near this limit of its power. This
consideration and some others led me to look to photography for aid,
for it is possible by certain technical methods to accentuate the ex-
treme sensitiveness of a photographic plate for minute differences of
illumination. [A cardboard, on which a corona had been painted by
so thin a wash of Chinese white that it was invisible to the audience,
had been photographed. The photograph thrown upon the screen
showed the corona plainly.] This cardboard represents the state of
things in the sky about the sun. The painted corona is brighter than
the cardboard, but our eyes are too dull to see it. In like manner the
part of the sky near the sun where there is a background of corona is
brighter than the adjoining parts where there is no corona behind,
but not in a degree sufficiently great for our eyes to detect the dif-
ference.

A photographic plate possesses another and enormous advantage
over the eye, in that it is able to furnish a permanent record of the most
cojnplex forms from an instantaneous exposure.

In my earlier experiments the necessary isolation of violet light
was obtained by interposing a screen of colored glass or a cell contain-
ing potassic permanganate. The possible coming of false light upon
the sensitive plate from the glass sides of the cell, as well as from
precipitation due to the decomposition of the potassic permanganate
under the sun's light, led me to seek to obtain the necessary light-selec-
tion in the film itself. Captain Abney had shown that argentic bro-
mide, iodide, and chloride, differ greatly in the kind of light to which
they are most sensitive. The chloride is most strongly affected by
violet light from h to a little beyond K. It was found possible by
making use of this selective action of argentic chloride to do away
with an absorptive medium. To prevent reflected light, the back of
the plate was covered with asphaltum varnish, and frequently a small
metal disk a little larger than the sun's image was interposed in front
of the plate to cut off the sun's direct light.

The next consideration was as to the optical means by which an
image of the sun, as free as possible from imperfections of any kind,
could be formed upon the plate. For several obvious reasons the use
of lenses was given up, and I turned to reflection from a mirror of
speculum metal. My first experiments wrere made with a Newtonian
telescope by Short. With this instrument, during the summer of 1882,
about twenty plates were taken on different days, in all of which coro-
nal forms are to be seen about the sun's image. After a very critical
examination of these plates, in which I was greatly helped by the kind
assistance of Professor Stokes and Captain Abney, there seemed to be
good ground to hope that the corona had really been obtained on the
plates. [One of these negatives, obtained in August, 1882, was shown
upon the screen.]

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 759

In the spring of the following year, 1883, the attack upon the co-
rona was carried on with a more suitable apparatus. The Misses Lassell
were kind enough to lend me a seven-foot Newtonian telescope made
by Mr. Lassell, which possesses great perfection of figure and retains
still its fine polish. For the purpose of avoiding the disadvantage of a
second reflection from the small mirror, and also of reducing the aper-
ture to three and a half inches, which gives a more manageable amount
of light, I adopted the arrangement of the instrument which is shown
in the following woodcut :

K

a

ne
K

2 a

'SUNS I MACE
a \ ^SHUTTER

TUBE WITH O/APHRAGM

The speculum b remains in its place at the end of the tube a, a,
by which the mechanical inconvenience of tilting the speculum with-
in the tube as in the ordinary form of the Herschelian telescope is
avoided.

The small plane speculum and the arm carrying it were removed.
The open end of the tube is fitted with a mahogany cover. In this
cover at one side is a circular hole,/! three and a quarter inches diame-
ter, for the light to enter ; below is a similar hole over which is fitted
a framework to receive the " backs " containing the photographic plates,
and also to receive a frame with fine-ground glass for putting the
apparatus into position. Immediately below, toward the speculum, is
fixed a shutter with an opening of adjustable width, which can be
made to pass across more or less rapidly by the use of India-rubber
bands of different degrees of strength. In front of the opening f is
fixed a tube, c, six feet long, fitted with diaphragms, to restrict as far as
possible the light which enters the telescope to that which comes from
the sun and the sky immediately around it. The telescope-tube a, «,
is also fitted with diaphragms, which are not shown in the diagram,
to keep from the plate all light, except that coming directly from the
speculum. It is obvious that, when the sun's light entering the tube
at/" falls upon the central part of the speculum, the image of the sun
will be formed in the middle of the second opening at d, about two
inches from the position it would take if the tube were directed axially
to the sun. The exquisite definition of the photographic images of
the sun shows, as was to be expected, that this small deviation from
the axial direction, two inches in seven feet, does not affect sensibly
the performance of the mirror. The whole apparatus is firmly strapped
on to the refractor of the equatorial in my observatory, and carried
with it by the clock-motion.

760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The performance of the apparatus is very satisfactory. The pho-
tographs show the sun's image sharply defined ; even small spots are
seen. When the sky is free from clouds, hut presents a whity appear-
ance from the large amount of scattered light, the sun's image is well
defined upon a uniform background of illuminated sky, without any
sudden increase of illumination immediately about it. It is only when
the sky becomes clear and blue in color that coronal appearances
present themselves with more or less distinctness. [Several negatives
taken during the summer of 1883 were shown on the screen.] In our
climate the increased illumination of the sky where there is a back-
ground of coronal light is too small to permit the photographs which
show this difference to be otherwise than very faint. A small increase
of exposure, or of development, causes it to be lost in the strong pho-
tographic action of the air-glare. For this reason, the negatives should
be examined under carefully arranged illumination. They are not,
therefore, well adapted for projection on a screen. [A negative taken
with a whity sky showed a well-defined image of the sun, with a sen-
sibly uniform surrounding of air-glare, but without any indication of
the" corona. In the case of the other negatives exhibited, which were
taken on clearer days, an appearance, very coronal in character, was
to be seen about the sun.]

On May 6th the corona was photographed during a total eclipse
at Caroline Island by Messrs. Lawrence and Woods. This circum-
stance furnished a good opportunity of subjecting the new method to
a crucial test, namely, by making it possible to compare the photo-
graphs taken in England, where there was no eclipse, with those taken
at Caroline Island of the undoubtedly true corona during the eclipse.
On the day of the eclipse the weather was bad in this country, but
plates were taken before the eclipse, and others taken later on. These
plates were placed in the hands of Mr. Wesley, who had had great
experience in making drawings from the photographs taken during
former eclipses. Mr. Wesley drew from the plates before he had any
information of the results obtained at Caroline Island, and he was
therefore wholly without bias in the drawings which he made from
them. [Photographs of Mr. Wesley's drawings were projected on the
screen, and then a copy of the Caroline Island eclipse photograph.
The general resemblance was unmistakable, but the identity of the
object photographed in England and at Caroline Island was placed
beyond doubt by a remarkably formed rift on the east of the north
pole of the sun. This rift, slightly modified in form, was to be seen
in a plate taken about a solar rotation period before the eclipse, and
also on a plate taken about the same time after the eclipse. The gen-
eral permanence of this great rift certainly extended over some months,
but no information is given as to whether the corona rotates with the
sun. For from the times at which the plates were taken, one about a
rotation period before and the other a rotation period after the eclipse,

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 761

it is obvious the rift might have gone round with the sun, but there is
no positive evidence on this point.*]

As the comparison of the English plates with those taken at Caroline
Island possesses great interest, I think it well to put on record here a let-
ter written by Mr. Lawrence to Professor Stokes, dated Sept. 14, 1883 :

"Dr. Huggins called upon Mr. Woods this morning and showed us
the drawings Mr. Wesley has made of his coronas. He told us that
he particularly did not wish to see our negatives, but that he would
like us to compare his results with ours. We did so, and found that
some of the strongly marked details could be made out on his drawings,
a rift near the north pole being especially noticeable ; this was in a
photograph taken on April 3d, in which the detail of the northern
hemisphere is best shown, while the detail of our southern hemisphere
most resembles the photograph taken on June 6th ; in fact, our nega-
tives seem to hold an intermediate position. Afterward I went with
Dr. Huggins and Mr. Woods to Burlington House to see the negatives.
The outline and distribution of light in the inner corona of April 3d
are very similar to those on our plate which had the shortest exposure ;
the outer corona is, however, I think, hidden by atmospheric glare.
As a result of the comparison, I should say that Dr. Huggins's coronas
are certainly genuine as far as 8' from the limb."

Though the plates which were obtained during the summer of 1883
appeared to be satisfactory to the extent of showing that there could
be little doubt remaining but that the corona had been photographed
without an eclipse, and therefore of justifying the hope that a success-
ful method for the continuous investigation of the corona had been
placed in the hands of astronomers, yet, as the photographs were taken
under the specially unfavorable conditions of our climate, they failed
to show the details of the structure of the corona.

The next step was obviously to have the method carried out at
some place of high elevation, where the large part of the glare which
is due to the lower and denser parts of our atmosphere would no longer
be present. I ventured to suggest to the Council of the Royal Society
that a grant from the fund placed annually by the Government at
the disposal of the Royal Society should be put in the hands of a
small committee for this purpose. This suggestion was well received,
and a committee was appointed by the Council of the Royal Society.
The committee selected the Riff el, near Zermatt in Switzei'land, a sta-
tion which has an elevation of 8,500 feet, and the further advantages
of easy access, and of hotel accommodation. The committee was
fortunate in securing the services, as photographer, of Mr. Ray Woods,
who as assistant to Professor Schuster had photographed the corona
during the eclipse of 1882 in Egypt, and who in 1883, in conjunction
with Mr. Lawrence, had photographed the eclipse of that year at
Caroline Island.

* See Plates XI and XIa, "British Association Report," 1S83, p. 348.

76z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Mr. Woods arrived at the Riffel in the beginning of Jnly, 1884,
with an apparatus, similar to one shown in the woodcut on a former
page, constructed by Mr. Grubb.

Captain Abney, who had made observations on the Riffel in former
years, had remarked on the splendid blue-black skies which were seen
there whenever the lower air was free from clouds or fog. But un-
fortunately during the last year or so a veil of finely divided matter
of some sort has been put about the earth, of which we have heard so
much in the accounts from all parts of the earth of gorgeous sunsets
and after-glows. This fine matter was so persistently present in the
higher regions of the atmosphere during last summer, that Mr. "Woods
did not get once a really clear sky. On the contrary, whenever visible
cloud was absent, then instead of a blue-black sky there came into
view a luminous haze, forming a great aureole about the sun, of a faint
red color, which passed into bluish white near the sun. Mr. Woods
found the diameter of the aureole to measure about 44°. This appear-
ance about the sun has been seen all over the world during last sum-
mer, but with greatest distinctness at places of high elevation.

The relative position of the colors, blue inside and red outside,
shows that the aureole is a diffraction phenomenon due to minute
particles of matter of some kind. Mr. Ellery, Captain Abney, and
some others, consider the matter to be water in the form probably of
minute ice-spicules ; others consider it to consist of particles of vol-
canic dust projected into the air during the eruption at Krakatoa ;
but whatever it is, and whencesoever it came, it is most certainly mat-
ter in the wrong place so far as astronomical observations are con-
cerned, and in a peculiar degree for success in photographing the
corona. We are only beginning to learn that, whether in our persons
or in our works, it is by minimized matter chiefly that we are undone.
So injurious was the effect of this aureole that it was not possible to
obtain any photographs of the corona at my observatory near London.
This great diffraction aureole went far to defeat the object for which
Mr. Woods had gone to the Riffel, but fortunately the great advan-
tage of being free from the effects of the lower eight thousand feet of
denser air told so strongly that, notwithstanding the ever-present au-
reole, Mr. Woods was able to obtain a number of plates on which the
corona shows itself with more or less distinctness. [Three untouched
photographic copies of the plates taken at the Riffel were shown upon
the screen.] From the presence of the aureole the negatives show less
detail than we have every reason to believe would have been the case
if the sky had been as blue and clear as in some former years. This
circumstance makes great care necessary in the discussion of these
plates, and it would be premature to say what information is to be ob-
tained from them.

[As an illustration of the differences of form which the corona has
assumed at different eclipses, photographs taken in 1871, 1878, 1882,

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 763

and 1883 were projected on the screen. Attention was called to the
equatorial extension seen in the photograph taken in 1878, and to the
suggestion which had been put forward that this peculiar character
was connected with the then comparative state of inactivity of the
sun's surface, at a period of minimum sun-spot action, especially as an
equatorial extension was observed in 18G7.]

It is now time that something should be said of the probable na-
ture of the corona.

Six hypotheses have been suggested :

1. That the corona consists of a gaseous atmosphere resting upon
the sun's surface and carried round with it.

2. That the corona is made up, wholly or in part, of gaseous and
finely divided matter which has been ejected from the sun, and is in
motion about the sun from the forces of ejection, of the sun's rotation,
and of gravity — and possibly of a repulsion of some kind.

3. That the corona resembles the rings of Saturn, and consists of
swarms of meteoric particles revolving with sufficient velocity to pre-
vent their falling into the sun.

4. That the corona is the appearance presented to us by the un-
ceasing falling into the sun of meteoric matter and the debris of
comets' tails.

5. That the coronal rays and streamers are, at least in part, mete-
oric streams strongly illuminated by their near approach to the sun,
neither revolving about nor falling into the sun, but permanent in
position and varying only in richness of meteoric matter, which are
parts of eccentric comet orbits. This view has been supported by
Mr. Proctor, on the ground that there must be such streams crowding
richly together in the sun's neighborhood.

6. The view of the corona suggested by Sir William Siemens in
his solar theorv.

It has been suggested, even, that the corona is so complex a phe-
nomenon that there may be an element of truth in every one of these
hypotheses. Anyway, this enumeration of hypotheses, more or less
mutually destructive, shows how great is the difficulty of explaining
the appearances which present themselves at a total solar eclipse, and
how little we really know about the corona.

An American philosopher, Professor Hastings, has revived a prior
and altogether revolutionary question : Has the corona an objective
existence ? Is it anything more than an optical appearance depending
upon diffraction ? Professor Hastings has based his revival of this
long-discarded negative theory upon the behavior of a coronal line
which he saw, in his spectroscope, change in length east and west of
the sun during the progress of the eclipse at Caroline Island. His
view appears to rest on the negative foundation that Fresnel's theory
of diffraction may not apply in the case of a total eclipse, and that
at such great distances there is a possibility that the interior of the

764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shadow might not he entirely dark, and so to an observer might cause
the appearance of a bright fringe around the moon.*

Not to speak of the recent evidence of the reality of the corona
from the photographs which have been taken when there is no inter-
vening moon to produce diffraction, there is the adverse evidence
afforded by the peculiar spectra of different parts of the corona, and
by the complicated and distinctly peculiar structure seen in the photo-
graphs taken at eclipses. The crucial test of this theory appears to
be that, if it be true, then the corona would be much wider on the
side where the sun's limb is least deeply covered, that is to say, the
corona would alter in width on the two sides during the progress of
the eclipse. Not to refer to former eclipses where photographs taken
at different times and even at different places have been found to
agree, the photographs taken during the eclipse at Caroline Island
show no such changes. M. Janssen says, " Les formes de la couronne
ont ete absolument fixes pendant toute la duree de la totalite." The
photographs taken by Messrs. Lawrence and Woods also go to show
that the corona suffered no such alterations in width or form as would
be required by Professor Hastings's theory during the passage of the
moon.

We have, therefore, I venture to think, a right to believe in an
objective reality of some sort about the sun corresponding to the ap-
pearance which the corona presents to us. At the same time some
very small part of what we see must be due to a scattering of the
coronal light itself by our air, but the amount of this scattered light
over the corona must be less than what is seen over the dark moon.

That the sun is surrounded by a true gaseous atmosphere of rela-
tively limited extent there can be little doubt, but many considera-
tions forbid us to think of an atmosphere which rises to a height
which can afford any explanation of the corona, which streams several
hundred thousand miles above the photosphere. For example, a gas
at that height, if hundreds or even thousands of times lighter than
hydrogen, would have more than metallic density near the sun's sur-
face— a state of things which spectroscopic and other observations
show is not the case. The corona does not exhibit the rapid conden-
sation toward the sun's limb which such an atmosphere would present,
especially when we take into account the effect of perspective in in-
creasing the apparent brightness of the lower regions of the corona.
There is, too, the circumstance that comets have passed through the
upper part of the corona without being burned up or even sensibly
losing velocity.

There can scarcely be doubt that matter is present about the sun
wherever the corona extends, and further that this matter is in the
form of a fog. But there are fogs and fogs. The air we breathe,

* Report of the Eclipse Expedition to Caroline Island, May, 1883. Memoir of the
National Academy of Sciences, Washington.

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 765

when apparently pure, stands revealed as a dense swarming of mill-
ions of motes if a sunbeam passes through it. Even such a fog is out
of the question. If we conceive of a fog so attenuated that there is
only one minute liquid or solid particle in every cubic mile, we should
still have matter enough, in all probability, to form a corona. That
the coronal matter is of the nature of a fog is shown by the three
kinds of light which the corona sends to us — reflected solar light
scattered by particles of matter, solid or liquid ; and, secondly, light
giving a continuous spectrum, which tells us that these solid or liquid
particles are incandescent ; while the third form of spectrum of bright
lines, fainter and varying greatly at different parts of the corona and
at different eclipses, shows the presence also of light-emitting gas.
This gas existing between the particles need not necessarily form a
true solar atmosphere, which the considerations already mentioned
make an almost impossible supposition, for we may well regard this
thin gas as carried up with the particles, or even to some extent to be
furnished by them under the sun's heat.

It will be better to consider first the probable origin of this coronal
matter, and by what means it can find itself at such enormous heights
above the sun.

There is another celestial phenomenon, very unlike the corona at
first sight, which may furnish us possibly with some clew to its true
nature. The head of a large comet presents us with luminous stream-
ers and rifts and curved rays, which are not so very unlike, on a small
scale, some of the appearances which are peculiarly characteristic of
the corona.* We do not know for certain the conditions under which
these cometary appearances take place, but the hypothesis which seems
on the way to become generally accepted attributes them to electrical
disturbances, and especially to a repulsive force acting from the sun,
possibly electrical, which varies as the surface, and not, like gravity, as
the mass. A force of this nature in the case of highly attenuated
matter can easily master the force of gravity, and, as we see in the tails
of comets, blow away this thin kind of matter to enormous distances
in the very teeth of gravity.

If such a force of repulsion is experienced in comets, it may well
be that it is also present in the sun's surroundings. If this force be
electrical, it can only come into play when the sun and the matter sub-
jected to it have electric potentials of the same kind, otherwise the
attraction on one side of a particle would equal the repulsion on the
other. On this theory the coronal matter and the sun's surface must
both be in the same electrical state, the repelled matter negative if the
sun is negative, positive if the sun is positive.

The grandest terrestrial displays of electrical disturbance, as seen
in lightning and the aurora, must be of a small order of magnitude
as compared with the electrical changes taking place in connection
* See " Comets," Koyal Institution Proceedings, vol. x, p. 1.

766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the ceaseless and fearful activity of the sun's surface ; but we do
not know how far these actions, or the majority of them, may be in
the same electrical direction, or what other conditions there may be,
so as to cause the sun's surface to maintain a high electrical state,
whether positive or negative. A permanence of electric potential of
the same kind would seem to be required by the phenomena of comets'
tails.

If such a state of high electric potential at the photosphere be
granted as is required to give rise to the repulsive force which the
phenomena of comets appear to indicate, then, considering the gaseous
irruptions and fiery storms of more than Titanic proportions which
are going on without ceasing at the solar surface, it does not go be-
yond what might well be, to suppose that portions of matter ejected
to great heights above the photosphere, and often with velocities not
far removed from that which would be necessary to set it free from
the sun's attraction, and very probably in the same electric state as
the photosphere, might so come under this assumed electric repulsion
as to be blown upward and to take on forms such as those seen in the
corona : the greatest distances to which the coronal streamers have
been traced are small as compared with the extent of the tails of com-
ets, but then the force of gravity which the electrical repulsion would
have to overcome near the sun would be enormously greater.

It is in harmony with this view of things that the positions of
greatest coronal extension usually correspond with the spot-zones where
the solar activity is most fervent ; and also that a careful examination
of the structure of the corona suggests strongly that the forces to
which this complex and varying structure is due have their seat in the
sun. Matter repelled upward would rise with the smaller rotational
velocity of the photosphere, and lagging behind would give rise to
curved forms ; besides, the forces of irruption and subsequent electri-
cal repulsion might well vary in direction and not be always strictly
radial, and under such circumstances a structure of the character
which the corona presents might well result. The sub-permanency of
any great characteristic coronal forms, as, for example, the great rift
seen in the photographs of the Caroline Island eclipse, and also in those
taken in England a month before the eclipse and about a month after-
ward, must probably be explained by the maintenance for some time
of the conditions upon which the forms depend, and not by an unal-
tered identity of the coronal matter ; the permanency belonging to
the form only, and not to the matter, as in the case of a cloud over a
mountain-top or of a flame over the mouth of a volcano. If the
forces to which the corona is due have their seat in the sun, the corona
would probably rotate with it ; but if the corona is produced by con-
ditions external to the sun, then the corona might not be carried round
with the sun.

We have seen that the corona consists probably of a sort of incan-

ON THE SOLAR CORONA. 767

descent fog, which at the same time scatters to us the photospheric
light. Now, we must bear in mind the very different behavior of a
gas, and of liquid or solid particles in the near neighborhood of the
sun. A gas need not be greatly heated, even when near the sun, by
the radiated energy. Heated gas from the photosphere would rapidly
lose heat ; but, on the other hand, liquid or solid particles, whether
originally carried up as such or subsequently formed by condensation,
would absorb the sun's heat, and at coronal distances would soon rise
to a temperature not very greatly inferior to that of the photosphere.
The gas which the spectroscope shows to exist along with the incan-
descent particles of the coronal stuff may therefore have been carried
up as gas or have been in part distilled from the coronal particles
under the enormous radiation to which they are exposed. Such a view
would not be out of harmony with the very different heights to which
different bright lines may be traced at different parts of the corona
and at different eclipses. For obvious reasons, gases of different
vapor density would be differently acted upon by a repulsive force
Avhich varies as the surface, and would to some extent be winnowed
from each other ; the lighter the gas the more completely would it
come under the sway of repulsion, and so would be carried to a greater
height than the gas more strongly held down by gravity. The rela-
tive proportions, at different heights of the corona, of the gases which
the spectroscope shows to exist there (and recently Captain Abney and
Professor Schuster have shown that in addition to the bright lines al-
ready known the spectrum of the corona of 1882 gave the rhythmical
group of the ultra-violet lines of hydrogen which are characteristic of
the photographic spectra of the white stars, and some other lines also)
would vary from time to time, and depend in part upon the varying
state of activity of the photosphere, and so probably establish a con-
nection with the spectra of the prominences. This view of the corona
would bring it within the charmed circle of interaction which seems
to obtain among the phenomena of sun-spots and terrestrial magnetic
disturbances and aurora?.

Many questions remain unconsidered ; among others, whether the
light emitted by the gaseous part of the corona is due directly to the
sun's heat, or to electrical discbarges taking place in it of the nature
of the aurora. Further, what becomes of the coronal matter on the
theory which has been suggested ? Is it permanently carried away
from the sun, as the matter of the tails of comets is lost to them ?
Among other considerations it may be mentioned that electric repul-
sion can maintain its sway only so long as the repelled particle remains
in the same electrical state : if through electric discharges it ceases to
maintain the electrical potential it possessed, the repulsion has no more
power over it, and gravity will be no longer mastered. If, when this
takes place, the particle is not moving away with a velocity sufficient-
ly great to carry it from the sun, the particle will return to the sun.

768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Of course, if the effect of any electric discharges or other conditions
has been to change the potential of the particle from positive to nega-
tive, or the reverse, as the case may be, then the repulsion would be
changed into an attraction acting in the same direction as gravity.
In Mr. Wesley's drawings of the corona, especially in those of the
eclipse of 1871, the longer rays or streamers appear not to end, but to
be lost in increasing faintness and diffusion, but certain of the shorter
rays are seen to turn round and to descend to the sun.*

It is difficult for us living in dense air to conceive of the state of
attenuation probably present in the outer parts of the corona. Mr.
Johnstone Stoney has calculated that more than twenty figures are
needed to express the number of molecules in a cubic centimetre of
ordinary air ; and Mr. Crookes shows us in his tubes that matter, even
when reduced to one-millionth part of the density of ordinary air, can
become luminous under electrical excitement. [A glass bulb about
four inches in diameter, kindly lent to me by Mr. Crookes, was ex-
hibited, in which a metal ball about half an inch in diameter formed
tlje negative pole. Under a suitable condition of the induction-cur-
rent, this ball was seen to be surrounded by a corona of bluish-gray
light which was sufficiently bright to be seen from all parts of the
theatre.] Yet it is probable that these tubes must be looked upon as
crowded cities of molecules as compared with the sparse molecular
pojmlation of the great coronal wastes.

I forbear to speculate further, as we may expect more information
as to the state of things in the corona from the daily photographs
which will be shortly commenced at the Cape of Good Hope by Mr.
Ray "Woods under the direction of Dr. Gill.

THE RELATIONS OF RAILWAY MANAGERS AND

EMPLOYES.

By Dr. W. T. BARNARD.
[Concluded.]

IN the United States it has not been an uncommon practice for rail-
road corporations, looking to their own immediate immunity from
prosecution, to aid their servants in securing, in various ways, some
protection from or indemnity for the effects of injuries received in the
performance of duty ; but such efforts, being usually spasmodic, and
always conditioned upon releasing the company from all liability, have

* For a history of opinion of the nature of the corona, see papers by Professor Nor-
ton, Professor Young, and Professor Langley, in the "American Journal of Science";
also "The Sun," by Professor Young ; and "The Sun the Ruler of the Planetary Sys-
tem," and various essays, by Mr. R. A. Proctor.

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 769

not generally received the cordial recognition and support of the em-
ployes themselves ; have been ephemeral, and at best have only
partially afforded the contributing companies protection from legal
responsibilities. Objection has frequently been made to the writer
that the conditions under which railroads are operated in the United
States differ so widely from those of other countries as to render the
experience of the latter of little practical value to us for purposes of
comparison and guidance, and this belief seems to be wide-spread.
The best possible answer to such an objection may be obtained from
an inquiry into the results of the efforts of those American railroads
(and there are several conspicuous examples) which, following English
and Continental precedents, have systematically united with their
employes in establishing societies like those which have proved so
prosperous abroad. Reference has been made in a previous paragraph
to an association of this character inaugurated five years ago by a
prominent Eastern trunk line. From the first publication of its pro-
spectus the Baltimore and Ohio Employes' Relief Association attracted
marked attention, not only among railroad managers of advanced
thought, but very generally among students of social and industrial
science and prominent educators, and that interest has been well sus-
tained by frequent reports in the public press of its growth and work.
Having in the five years of its existence a sustained membership ex-
ceeding 18,400 ; having, under its various features, distributed over a
wide territory more than $929,940.14, in 42,930 separate payments ;
and combining within itself, in one harmonious system, provision for
the relief of the sick, injured, superannuated, and for their families
after death ; a savings-bank, a building association, a circulating
library, and other features of less importance ; being a leader in rail-
road sanitation ; and, in short, representing, on the largest scale in the
United States, the most popular foreign friendly and aid societies —
this Relief Association will best serve for purposes of restoration.

A general review of its theory and provisions is necessary for a
proper understanding of the results it has attained, but any specially
interested in the details of its organization and management are re-
ferred to the secretary of the association at Baltimore.*

In a circular dated May 1, 1880, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company announced that, on the petition of a number of its em-
ployes, after a very thorough examination and study of benevolent
railway organizations in Great Britain, France, and Germany, having
a full appreciation of the advantages which experience has uniformly
shown may be enjoyed by the employers and employes of railroad
and other large corporations where benevolent relief societies have

* The writer was induced, some years ago, to publish in the Chicago " Railway Age "
an account of the features of this association, then in operation, but to which important
additions have since been made. Having but a limited circulation, among railroad peo-
ple only, that paper has been utilized in the preparation of this article.
vol. xxvii. — 49

77o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been put into operation, it thereby inaugurated an Employes' Relief
Association, which was subsequently incorporated by special act of the
Legislature of Maryland, June 3, 1882.

The Baltimore and Ohio board of directors, by a resolution guar-
anteeing the absolute fulfillment of all the promises and provisions of
the constitution of the association, made the following announcement :

" To give further force and effect to this plan, and as an earnest of
its solicitude for their comfort and welfare, the company has con-
tributed $100,000 as the nucleus of a fund from which its employes
can derive pecuniary relief in the event of becoming incapacitated for
earning their livelihood, or by means of which, in the event of death,
they may leave some provision for their families, upon condition that
they will second its endeavor to promote their welfare by making such
contributions to the fund as will secure its permanency and effective-
ness.

" The company will also, without expense to the fund, give the
services of its staff in conducting the clerical and other business neces-
sary to its proper management ; office-room for its records, etc. ; and,
whenever it is necessary or desirable to employ females or children for
such work as they are qualified to perform, preference will be given
to the widows, wives, sisters, and children of its faithful contributing
employes over other applicants in the order above named.

" It will also make arrangements by which the children of those
contributing to the fund, under sixteen years of age, shall travel free
when going to or returning from school, over all its lines for distances
under ten miles, and will give half-fare transportation to contributors,
their wives and children traveling over its lines.

"Also, having learned of the pecuniary necessities of persons for-
merly in its service, and being anxious and solicitous that its present
and future employes, although escaping accidents and sickness while in
the discharge of duty, shall not find themselves without means of sup-
port whenever, through approaching old age or the contraction of
infirmities, they become unable to perform the services assigned them
or to earn a livelihood in other pursuits, it has added to the indemnity
features of the plan its superannuation or annuity provision, which it
commends to their consideration and adoption."

Subsequently this superannuation feature was elaborated under a
further endowment which nets the association $25,000 per annum, and
later on its savings, building, and free circulating library features were
guaranteed by and received the liberal support of the company, which
is also taking measures to establish a sanitarium and home for its dis-
abled and aged employes and their families, for which a beautifully
located and healthy site has already been purchased.

In the preparation of this scheme the selecting and classification of
risks were among the earliest and most embarrassing of the questions
to be settled. All legitimate life and accident insurance companies,

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 771

and indeed all the most solvent co-operative associations, select their
risks, upon which they place a limit, imposing their own standard of
physical qualifications. Railroads, however, can make no such invid-
ious distinctions against, perhaps, their most deserving servants, and
hope to succeed in any insurance scheme they inaugurate. Such a
plan must embrace all, if any. In considering percentages of railroad
accidents the physical condition of employes is a comparatively small
factor — entering but little into cause and effect — because in active rail-
roading, as in army campaigning, the weak and diseased are soon elimi-
nated, and the fittest only survive the exposure and physical strain to
which they are constantly subjected. In the five years of this associa-
tion it has been uniformly found that the standard of health and lon-
gevity of railroad operatives is remarkably high, far exceeding that
which the insurance tables assign as the average for people of equal age
but of unselected occupations. On the other hand, age is a potent factor
in determining liability for sickness and death from other causes than
violence. Besides the statistics of accidents at its command, the Balti-
more and Ohio Company were able to ascertain with approximate ac-
curacy the ages of its employes; and it was thereby enabled to estimate
with a reasonable degree of certainty the risks to be incurred and pro-
vided for. Then, after allowing the employes a reasonable time within
which to enter the association without questioning their age or physi-
cal condition, it adopted and has since rigidly enforced the policy of
employing for its service none over forty-five years of age, and who
can not pass a strict medical examination. Among other immediate
results of this measure, the average age of many thousands of employes
has been reduced to twenty -eight years, and the standard of their
physical strength and activity perceptibly advanced, to the company's
obvious gain and the lessening of the liabilities of the relief associa-
tion, which were predicated upon the average age and health of the
company's employes when the average of age was much higher and
their standard of health lower than now. This has resulted in largely
increased benefits without increasing premiums, and has rendered the
company's guarantee, as regards the relief features, practically a nul-
lity. The premiums and benefits under the relief feature of the asso-
ciation were predicated upon a simple classification of the employes
according to hazard of occupation and accustomed compensation. It
was recognized that the laboring classes of this country are familiar
with larger sums of money than are foreigners, and are therefore apt
to regard with indifference the net earnings of premiums that would
be deemed considerable abroad ; and because adequate protection
against the wants of life affords great security against harassing and
costly litigation with the employers, it was thought desirable to fix the
standard unit sufficiently high to give substantial relief, while yet not
allowing such large benefits as would require oppressive taxation of
the employes, or as would offer temptations to practice fraud or deceit

772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by pretended disablements. The benefit must also be tangible and
fixed, to obviate discontent ; for, as a rule, the people engaged in man-
ual labor are suspicious of indefinite insurance, and dread being taxed
for unknown quantities — the employes of the company were there-
fore divided into two classes — the first class containing those engaged
in operating trains and rolling-stock, and the second containing all
those not so engaged ; and the unit of premium was fixed at twenty-
five cents per month per rate, for each feature, or seventy-five cents
for the three features of the lowest rate, increasing in the ratio as
given in the table on page 773.

Members may now secure insurance under this feature to the ex-
tent of thirty rates, or six thousand for a premium of twenty-five cents
a rate for death under benefit 5 only.

It was provided that, while no employe could take the benefits of a
lower class than those to which his salary assigned him, he could take
as many more rates (up to the limit) as he chose. Also that such of
those employes in the service at the time of the inauguration of the as-
sociation as did not desire to take the three, could yet, as they elected,
enjoy the benefits of one or more features ; which brought within the
reach of all, on a uniform and simple scale, protection commensurate
with what they could spare to secure it.

The manner of collecting premiums next demanded consideration.
As no initiation fee could, with propriety, be exacted of those newly
seeking employment for a livelihood, so none could properly be col-
lected from those already in the service ; and as, for obvious reasons,
it was undesirable to ground the plan upon a capital stock company,
it became necessary to mainly depend for assets upon the payment of
premiums. By the simple expedient of requiring premiums to be paid
in advance, there would always be on hand the maximum sum required
to pay for the casualties of the following month, and this was also
thought to be the least onerous and therefore the best form of sub-
scription.

The liabilities and benefits of members being well known, premi-
ums could be deducted from their wages on the monthly pay-roll, and
thus all risk through the handling of funds by irresponsible parties
was avoided, and the Baltimore and Ohio Company became responsi-
ble for the collection — the association being credited on the company's
books with the premiums which remain in its custody until withdrawn
by legitimate warrant. No large sums are allowed to accumulate, the
surplus not needed for immediate wants being invested by the com-
mittee of management from time to time in first-class securities. It
was believed, and the result has fully proved, that premiums thus col-
lected, while subject to the scrutiny of every interested person, would
be paid with less reluctance than after the money had passed into the
actual possession of members, and in many cases they would not be
conscious of having made any contribution at all.

HAIL WAT MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES.

773

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7 74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A much graver matter was that involving the question whether
membership should be made compulsory upon employes of the com-
pany, and, if at all, to what extent. It is believed to be a fact that
neither abroad nor in this country has an accident railway association

although some have carried heavy endowments — been successful for

a lone term of years except where membership has been made compul-
sory. Many have been organized, and have lived for longer or shorter
periods, but their sphere of usefulness is always very limited, and they
gradually become inefficient and fall into disrepute or have to be reor-
ganized at the sacrifice of good faith to old members.

It was urged upon the management that they should use all proper
means to induce membership on the part of those already in the serv-
ice, and that the company should adopt such measures as would at
least insure a thoughtful consideration of the benefits offered its em-
ployes. It was finally determined to adopt a modified compulsory
policy, the ultimate effect of which would be to bring within the asso-
ciation every employe of the company. It is this compulsory feature
which makes the association unique, and which guarantees its per-
manency and continuous success. It is undeniably within the strict
bounds of propriety for the management of a railway or any other cor-
poration to specify the conditions upon which it will employ, and to
decline the services of those who show no disposition to protect them-
selves and families against the vicissitudes of the service they seek to
enter. But to inaugurate such a policy at that particular time was to
trespass upon very delicate ground, and required no little determina-
tion, for the railroads of the country were just recovering from the
prostrating effects of the strike of 1877, and were cautiously re-estab-
lishing the status quo. This new departure from preconceived ideas
and practices of dealing with labor was watched with great interest by
railroad officials and others accustomed to dealing with the grave
issues constantly arising from the employment of large bodies of men,
and it was amid many predictions of failure that the announcement was
made that the company would thereafter require as a condition prece-
dent to employment that those seeking service should enter the insur-
ance organization. It started a very lively discussion as to the merits
of the scheme, and forced those to examine its provisions who would
otherwise have passed them by with indifference.

Upon careful examination of the foregoing tabulated statement it
will be noted that contributions are, in all cases, deducted monthly
from the members' wages, so that payments are required of them only
when they have earned wages, and the allowance is, in all cases, pro-
portioned to the monthly contributions paid by each person in the sev-
eral classes into which the contributors have been divided.

In cases of disablement the allowance is paid not less than once
every month ; before each payment, whether for temporary or perma-
nent disability, satisfactory evidence of its existence being required.

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 775

The notification of disablement, which precedes all applications for
temporary or permanent allowance, is made upou and in consonance
with forms furnished for that purpose ; when it is the duty of the head
of the department, or supervisor of division or section, under whom
the member serves, to certify whether the disablement was received in
the discharge of duty and in the company's service, and to forward a
certificate to that effect to the secretary of the association, accom-
panied by a similar certificate covering the clinical facts from the so-
ciety's surgeon called to attend the member.

The managers, from time to time, adopt such measures to secure
the proper visitation of contributors on the allowance list as they
think proper, and no member refusing to submit to an examination by
such visitor is entitled to receive any benefits from the fund during
the continuance of such refusal.

To constitute a lawful claim for accident indemnity, there must be :

1. Exterior or patent evidence of injury, and satisfactory testimony
that it resulted from accident while in the discharge of duties assigned
the contributor by the company, and incapacitates him from earning a
livelihood.

2. In case of death, that the injuries sustained by such accident
were the sole and direct cause of death ; or —

3. Not resulting from accidents while performing the company's
service, that it was not caused by injuries received while engaged in
unlawful enterprises or riots. The managers are the exclusive judges
as to whether the injuries have been so caused and received, and their
decision shall be final and conclusive.

All legitimate claims for death-allowance are paid in full, irrespect-
ive of any previous payments which may have been made under the
head of temporary disability allowance, but the managers have power
to require such information and particulars as they deem necessary to
establish the validity of the claim of any person applying for allow-
ance.

In urgent cases the managers have power to pay part of the death-
allowance within a shorter period than sixty days, but the whole is
always paid within that time.

In the event of a contributor, who has been injured while in the
line of duty and in the company's service, resuming work and after-
ward dying from the effects of such injury, the fund is liable for the
payment of the accidental death allowance, according to the scale,
should death occur within a period of six months from the date of
injury ; but, after that interval no further liability attaches to the
fund with regard to the payment of the accidental death allowance.
Any contributor, who, by reason of continued sickness from natural
causes, or resulting from accidents incurred while not on duty, is un-
able to work, is entitled to death-allowance according to the scale and
provisions relating thereto ; if death occur no later than one month

776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

after the time for -which payments have been made, and if it can be
shown to the satisfaction of the committee of management that such
person has not worked elsewhere during any part of the intervening

time.

Each contributor is given a certificate setting forth his rate of con-
tribution, and the measure of relief to wbich he is entitled ; which is
valid during the period the holder remains employed by the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad. Company, or by other companies to whose employes
the benefits of the fund may be extended ; which certificate is to be
exchanged or modified from time to time, so as always to represent
the grade or standing of its holder in the fund.

The death-allowance is paid to the person designated by the con-
tributor in his application ; but, if there be no such designation, then to
the legal representative of the deceased.

The several subscriptions to the fund are deducted monthly, or
whenever salaries are paid by the company's paymasters in advance,
and are held subject to investment or disbursement as the managers
may decide.

In order to secure to the railroad company that immunity from
prosecution which its liberal contributions for the protection of its
employes' interests entitle it to enjoy, it was further announced that it
was not contemplated to give double benefits in those cases of disa-
bility or death resulting from accidents ; the promised benefits would
not be paid when the contributor or any person entitled to damages
because of the accident to him, whether resulting in death or not,
claimed damages against the company ; and requiring the filing with
the managers of the association of a release satisfactory to them, signed
by all persons in interest, releasing the company from all liability ; but
it was left optional with the employe to accept the benefits offered by
the association, or to institute other measures to secure indemnity for
injury sustained.

Every applicant for membership is required to state in his applica-
tion his age and length of service with the road, or its branches, which
is held to be conclusive evidence in respect to any subsequent claim
presented by him or his representative.

Before any accident allowance can be paid to any member, the
surgeon of the association must certify that he is totally unable to
labor ; and the supervisor or chief of division or department in which
he served before the accident must certify that his injuries were
received while in the discharge of duty and in the company's service.

In cases of illness or diability not thus incurred, the allowance is
paid only after cei'tificates, satisfactory to the managers, have been
received from a duly registered medical practitioner, corroborated by
the contributor's superintendent, or the head of department, that sick-
ness or injury had caused total disability for labor for the time spe-
cified in the certificate.

RAILWAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 777

The moneys belonging to the funds of the association not required
for immediate use are invested by the managers in United States bonds,
Maryland State and municipal bonds, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bonds
or obligations, or other first-class securities. All securities and the
moneys necessary to meet current expenses are intrusted to the official
custody of the Treasurer of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company,
to be held subject to requisition of the committee of management.

The managers are chosen partly by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company, on account of its interest in the fund, and partly by the con-
tributors to it ; the company choosing four and the contributors five
— the majority of those selected. .

Any differences arising between claimants for the benefits set forth
in the constitution and the committee of management are submitted
to arbitration.

The condition of the fund is annually investigated and reported on
by a proper and competent person, to be selected by the managers for
that purpose, and any surplus remaining at the end of each year is de-
voted to the reduction of the rates of contributions of members, or in
such other manner disposed of as in the judgment of the committee
will best subserve the interests of the association.

The association utilizes, under judicious contracts, those hospitals
located, and those physicians and surgeons residing, along the com-
pany's lines, and this service has been economical and agreeable to its
members. While it is responsible for surgical expenses only in cases
of injury arising from the discharge of duty, its members have the ad-
vantage of reduced prices obtained under its contracts when they are
otherwise disabled or sick. There are besides, as a part of the staff of
the society, a corps of salaried physicians designated as medical in-
spectors, to each of whom is assigned territorial limits, which they are
constantly traversing, investigating cases of disability, methods of
treatment, the sanitary condition of the lines, etc. It is also their duty
to afford prompt relief to sufferers from casualties of travel, whether
they be members of the association or other employes, or passengers ;
to examine applicants for admission to the company's service as to
physical qualifications, and to exercise a rigid censorship over the sani-
tary conditions of grounds, buildings, coaches, baggage, etc.

The rigid sanitary supervision exercised by the association through
its medical inspectors over every portion of the line enables it to check
and control many disorders before they have assumed grave propor-
tions. Thus, some years ago, when small-pox was prevalent at many
points tapped by the Baltimore and Ohio system, over twelve thousand
employes (and in dangerous localities their immediate families) were
vaccinated by the medical inspectors at association expense, and, though
many employes were greatly exposed to contagion, less than a dozen
were affected, and but two died from the disease. It is somewhat re-
markable that nearly eighty-five per cent were successful vaccinations

778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or revaccinations. When diarrhceal, dysenteric, and typhoid disorders
become prevalent at any point, they are immediately checked by ap-
propriate remedies placed at the disposal of the medical inspectors,
master-mechanics, and supervisors, with explicit directions for use.
Malarial disorders, especially, have been kept well under control by
the distribution of large quantities of approved anti-periodic remedies,
which are at the command of every member, and thereby much em-
barrassment and inconvenience to the service has been prevented.

Another and popular feature recently inaugurated is the free cir-
culating library, which already has nearly five thousand volumes, se-
lected with special reference to the wants and tastes of the employes
and their families, and purchased from private subscription of officers
of the company.

Many of the employes reside at points remote from towns, and
have no opportunities for procuring literature adapted to their tastes,
and when thrown out of their accustomed occupation by sickness or
accident, without resources for entertainment, the minds of many men
brood over their misfortunes to an extent that seriously retards re-
covery. To such, anything that diverts the mind from care or trouble
is unquestionably of therapeutical value. Other employes also are fur-
nished with educational and technical works, especially adapted to the
requirements of engineers, mechanics, firemen, road, and all other classes
of workmen, and those who wish to improve their leisure hours, by
studying such works as will increase their professional business knowl-
edge, are supplied under conditions which do not necessitate their
leaving the society and comforts of their homes, and many employes,
therefore, avail themselves of this chance for qualifying themselves for
promotion and advancement in life, while at the same time their children,
wherever located, have at command facilities for study, and instruct-
ive reading matter seldom obtainable outside large cities. The library
also undertakes to purchase for members stationery, school, text, and
other books at cost price, giving them the benefit of discounts on large
orders and free transportation. The plan under which this library is
operated is very simple, inexpensive, and effective, and could be put
into operation on all our roads at nominal expense. Inexpensive but
carefully prepared catalogues are printed ; also cards on which to
make requisitions for books, so distributed that every employe can se-
lect, order, receive, and return literature without delay through the
company's train-service. Library committees, composed of employes,
are organized at divisional and all other large stations, and through
them, direct or by the aid of officials of the company, any workman, or
any member of his family, however isolated, is readily supplied.

In pursuance of the policy of the company to improve the secular,
moral, and intellectual welfare of its forces by every means in its
power, well lighted and heated reading-rooms have been provided at
several principal stations where employes may assemble for social in-

BAIL WAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 779

tercourse, or for reading and writing, and these rooms are well fur-
nished with the principal daily and monthly periodicals, as well as
with weightier matter. It is in contemplation to provide them at
other divisional stations.

Like the relief features the savings-fund and building features are
operated under fixed laws by a board, the majority of whom are con-
tributing members, and are equally fostered and guaranteed by the
railroad company.

Among the inducements offered by the savings feature are :

Facilities to members and their wives, no matter how isolated their
location, to invest savings or to make temporary deposits in the fund ;
and they may make deposits in larger sums and with more frequency
than allowed by other savings-banks.

Avoidance of loss of time and of trouble in reaching places for de-
positing and withdrawing money, depositories being located at inter-
vals along tbe line, averaging less than twenty miles.

Allowance of interest, generally greater than, and always equaling,
that given by other savings-banks.

Ability to draw checks against balances, as in other banks, wherever
on the line a depositor may be ; to obtain, in place of deposits, checks
of the Baltimore and Ohio Company negotiable anywhere, and to with-
draw deposits, wholly or in part, with accrued interest, with prompt-
ness and certainty, under the legally binding promise of the Baltimore
and Ohio Company.

Participation in all profits earned by the operations of the fund —
every permanent depositor being substantially a stockholder, without
liability or any of the legal responsibilities usually attaching thereto —
and under the most favorable conditions for the economical, faithful,
and wrise administration of the fund through the offer of the Baltimore
and Ohio Company of the services of its bonded and other officials, and
the designation of experienced, able, and conservative directors to in-
vest its moneys, and generally to manage its affairs.

Under the building feature : Opportunity for every member of the
association, not only those who can provide collateral for loans, but
also those who have no real estate or other security to provide or to
improve homes for their families, by borrowing from the savings fund
at the uniform rate of six per cent interest, and upon the easiest terms
as regards repayment of principal, viz. : in monthly installments of one
dollar upon every hundred dollars borrowed, with the option to bor-
rowers of making larger repayments.

Payment of interest, not upon the whole sum borrowed until all
the loan is repaid, but only the payment of six per cent per annum
upon so much thereof as, at the commencement of each year, remains
unpaid — an advantage over most building societies.

Certainty of securing valid titles and conveyancing, searching
records, recording deeds, etc., at minimum cost, through the employ-

78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ment of tbe company's numerous counsel resident in various lo-
calities.

Free and complete possession of property purchased with loans
from the savings fund during the repayment of the loan ; thus substi-
tuting the repayment of loans for the payment of rents, and acquiring
ownership of homes at little or no additional monthly payments.

Ability to purchase materials at large reductions upon current rates,
through contracts made by the association with wholesale dealers for
building and otber material in large quantities.

Opportunity to utilize, free of cost, the officers of the association
as agents in negotiating real estate and other transactions, such as
securing fire and life insurance at reduced rates, prompt payment of
taxes, water-rates, etc., etc.

Reduced transportation for all materials entering into the construc-
tion or improvement of homesteads.

For those who have nothing to offer as security for loans, a plan for
enabling them to secure homes by simply insuring their lives for the
ultimate benefit of their families is provided.

Those leaving the company's service can continue their payments
as before, or can dispose of their interests to the best advantage, as
can also those unable to meet their payments.

Many other minor provisions, all looking to the comfort and wel-
fare of its members, have been added to this association from time to
time, but their enumeration is unnecessary here. To summarize briefly
the beneBts conferred by this institution under its relief features :

It enables employes to avoid selecting insurance organizations un-
worthy of confidence, and to avoid forfeiture of their moneyed inter-
ests, as premiums are only deducted from month to month, and are
monthly expended in giving immunity to the well and indemnity to
the disabled. The plan of periodical deductions enables them to make
payments of premiums with definiteness, certainty, and regularity, in
such small installments as not to be felt, and on a scale which the com-
pany has obligated itself shall not be increased. They have the com-
pany's guarantee that all benefits promised shall be faithfully paid.
The premiums are so graduated that the poorest can enjoy member-
ship and advantages proportioned to their contributions. It relieves
employes from all necessity of soliciting contributions, prevents rest-
lessness, discontent, and hardship resulting from inability to earn wages
under bodily infirmity ; and the knowledge that when in distress they
get their dues promptly, and not through charity, and that their fami-
lies are adequately provided for against immediate want in case of
their death or disablement, makes the men more cheerful, efficient, and
contented. On the other hand, it does away with all appeals to the
personal or official charity of the management, and with claims for
indemnity for accident, and relieves the company from nearly all the
costs and embarrassments of suits instituted by employes.

BAIL WAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 781

The library exerts an elevating and educating influence on the em-
ployes of the service, and particularly upon their children, the value
of which can only be estimated by those acquainted with the dearth of
school facilities, and the ignorance prevailing in the mountain-regions
of Maryland and Virginia, and generally throughout West Virginia.

The effect of the savings and building features in inculcating and
encouraging prudence and thrift will be readily recognized by us all,
who know by experience that there is more need to learn the art of
saving money than of earning it. By their means the humblest laborer
can provide against seasons of adversity, or if he pleases may provide
a home for himself and family and take that rank and independ-
ence among his fellows that attach everywhere to freehold and free-
dom from debt ; and all this, under circumstances of convenience,
cheapness, and absolute security that none but — and not many of — our
metropolitan cities can offer. As illustrating the avidity with which
the employes of the Baltimore and Ohio Company are utilizing these
new features, it is reported that the savings fund had received in de-
posits $273,132.59, of which $159,440.88 have been loaned under its
building feature, and only 26T3¥5ir per cent of deposits have been with-
drawn since the bank was opened.

The benefits accruing to the Baltimore and Ohio Company through
the formation of this association were early demonstrated to be mate-
rial and important. Though at first there was opposition from some
employes caused by a misapprehension of its provision, and unjust,
harsh, and ignorant criticism from newspapers inimical to the Balti-
more and Ohio management, the end of its first year showed a mem-
bership excelled by few if any benevolent societies in the United
States, and at the end of its fourth fiscal year ninety-five per cent of
all the company's employes — other than clerks, telegraphers, and
agents, non-hazardously employed — were enrolled.

While before its establishment the Baltimore and Ohio, like all
other railroads similarly situated, directly or indirectly, yearly dis-
bursed large sums for damages to its employes, and was subjected to
much annoyance and loss by the angry feelings engendered by litiga-
tions with its people and their friends, since 1880 it has not had a
dozen such suits, and this almost total immunity from vexatious litiga-
tion with its employes has of itself been a saving of several times the
entire expenditure on the association's behalf.

Through the system of medical examination of applicants, through
the improved sanitary condition of its shops, through the considera-
tion and care and compensation paid employes when disablement ne-
cessitates cessation from labor, and through the prompt payment of
sufficiently large death insurance, the standard of the service has been
perceptibly raised, and it is securing a much more efficient and desira-
ble class of labor, skilled and unskilled, and has, in some places, drawn
the best material from competitive works, and holds its force with

782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

less difficulty and loss. It is the bond of closer friendly relationship
between employer and employe, and has fostered a feeling that the
interests of both are identical. It has done away with all pretext for
joining organizations inimical to labor, as well as with all justification
for seeking charitable assistance from the company or from fellow-
employes.

It is the almost unanimous testimony of the railroad company's
officials that it would now be most difficult, if not impossible, to in-
augurate a general strike among the members of this association.

Personal appeals to the managers of the company for pecuniary
assistance on behalf of unfortunate employes are now unknown in this
service, and this relief from solicitation has reacted favorably upon
the morale of the force by inducing independence and contentment.
Besides the many patent advantages accruing to the company from
the savings fund and building features, is the important one of con-
verting a proverbially migratory force into a permanent one, which
is gradually locating itself at points where the company's interests will
best be subserved and protected.

Under the pension feature the provision made for the support
during life of its aged and permanently disabled employes enables the
company to dispense at will with many old servants, who. though
incapacitated by mental or bodily infirmity, often the effect of inju-
ries received in the service, must, under ordinary conditions, through
sheer humanity, be borne on the rolls, though, as all administrative
officers know, to the disadvantage and frequently to the endangering
of the company's interests.

In brief, the best possible testimony of the good results attained
lies in the fact that, as the result of two years' trial of the plan, such a
conservative corporation as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Com-
pany undertook further obligations on its behalf which, if capitalized,
would amount to over a half a million dollars, and is contemplating
still further donations to the same cause.

Railroading is rapidly advancing beyond the boundaries of a mere
business, and into the dignity of a profession requiring extensive
knowledge of many branches of science, technical training of a high
order, and already requires a devotion to corporate interests from its
staff-officers and many subordinates that necessitates the sacrifice of
their independence, and all opportunity of securing competence in other
channels, while it has not branches or departments in which intelli-
gence, energy, and scrupulous honesty are not required. And, as of
the great armies of railroad operatives only a few, comparatively, can
gain wealth or competence, the great majority who give to their work
equal devotion and their full measure of ability yearn for recognition
m their sphere, and in no more effective or acceptable way can they
be rewarded than that in which the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has
recognized the self-abnegation and faithfulness of its servants.

BAIL WAY MANAGERS AND EMPLOYES. 783

Let other railroads follow their example. Let them do away with
nepotism in employment and promotion ; accept the services only of
those found to be expert workmen, physically as well as mentally
qualified to fill responsible positions ; then surround those selected
with such material protection and attractions as will annul migratory
instincts and anchor them by chains of self-interest, and they will have
made safe provision against such disasters as that which overtook
some of our Eastern lines in 1877. The motive of a railroad in thus
meeting its employes more than half-way need not be concealed. It
is far better to have it at once understood that self-interest is to be
the governing consideration on both sides ; that as the employe ex-
pects to profit by his participation in such a scheme, so does the rail-
road, from its participation therein, not at the expense but through
the promotion of its workmen's interests. The latter, by yielding a
small percentage of their pay, can secure to themselves all the benefits
derivable from the most judiciously prepared scheme of insurance and
mutual benefit that the light of the present age can afford ; the former,
through the annual investment of a reasonable sum, probably to the
saving of larger expenditures in other directions, will profitably secure
itself against the annoyance of lawsuits and other ill results, while
also reaping other advantages and forwarding the philanthropical
work of the age. The student of railway benevolent institutions abroad
will be struck by the disparity of growth between those in which in-
surance against accident, old age, and death is by the employer made
compulsory upon the employe, and others where such action is
optional in favor of the former. In old settled countries, where the
labor market is overstocked and competition for place most active, lit-
tle difficulty is experienced in enforcing such a prerequisite to employ-
ment ; but in this country, where the rapid development of railroad
interests usually creates a constant demand for labor, and where the
dissatisfied employe of one road has only to step across the field, as it
were, to be welcomed with perhaps increased pay by rival interests, it
takes nerve to enforce such a provision. There are few intelligent
railroad managements that will not fully admit that, as the result
of proverbial improvidence, their employes are, as a class, discontented,
migratory, and exceptionally difficult to reach with moral and eco-
nomical teachings ; and they must clearly perceive, in the words of a
recent writer, that " there is marked tendency to trust to luck in the
future for themselves and their families, instead of making provision
ahead, which exercises a demoralizing effect upon the whole character,
and directly affects the interests of their employers." Yet, though
they are prepared to admit that this fact makes it both right and a duty
of the employer to interfere to correct the evil, as far as it is possible
to do so, and that " if men need to be made provident, and to guard
against adversity in sickness and old age by compulsion, then compul-
sion should be used," they are naturally slow to force an issue not

784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

absolutely vital, and which they fear may deprive them of help at time
of need. The danger is, however, more imaginary than real, for no
one will deny the right of a corporation, or any employer contracting
for labor, to impose such conditions as a precedent to employment as
its interests and judgment dictate, and to select preferably those will-
ing to help protect themselves and dependents from the effects of a
hazardous service. The great success of the Baltimore and Ohio Em-
ployes' Relief Association lies in the fact that the managers of that
company " had the courage of their convictions," and made it a con-
dition precedent to employment in its service that the men should sign
an agreement to protect themselves and families against the vicissi-
tudes of a hazardous service.

The proverbial conservatism and timidity of capital make it slow
to realize the logical sequence of experiments which have a vital bear-
ing on its invested interests. The uniform success and increased pros-
perity which have attended industrial partnerships between capitalists
and their workmen — practiced more extensively on the Continent of
Europe than in England, and little or not at all with us — show to the
disinterested, thoughtful mind that herein, more than in efforts in all
other directions combined, excellent though their effect may be, lies
the true solution of the gravest and most important question pending
before the world — i. e., how to equitably adjust the relations between
capital and labor. Probably the serious contemplation of a division,
no matter how minute, of their profits with those whose labor made
them, would incite in the minds of our railway share and bond holders
such alarm and opposition as would displace any management advanc-
ing such a proposition ; yet on one or more of the most important rail-
ways in France judicious action in this direction has resulted in the
employes becoming the majority owners of the securities of the prop-
erties they operate, and those corporations and firms in whose profits
their workmen are allowed to participate have experienced increased
prosperity and decreased migration and irregularity in attendance of
the workmen, whose general standard of efficiency has been raised by
the competition to share such benefits, and this unity of interests has
entirely isolated them from the effects of labor agitations and tur-
moils. That the managers of such great interests as those of our rail-
roads and mammoth manufacturing establishments who pioneer a re-
form of this character must possess great nerve and resolution as well
as influence, goes without saying ; but the constant strife and compe-
tition now prevailing, necessitating most rigid economies, which almost
always result in curtailment of wages and in strikes, must of themselves
gradually force corporations to concert measures for securing perma-
nent control of their forces, and none can be so effective as those
that look to a community of financial interests. The manager who
first succeeds in applying to his service the principle of industrial part-
nership will prove a Napoleon in the railroad world and a dictator to

RECLAMATION OF MALARIOUS COUNTRIES. 785

all competitors. That some one competent, and of influence sufficient
to direct sucli a movement, may shortly arise, is not altogether improb-
able, for already the president of one of the great Eastern trunk lines,
when recently recapitulating what his board of management had done
to cultivate such attachment in its employes, said :

" I hope to see the day when this society will be extended into a
great co-operative association ; when the men in this service will indi-
vidually have pecuniary interests in this vast property ; when the men
who run the trains and operate the machinery, and all others having
steady employment, will be part owners in this great corporation ;
when they will in every sense be identified with and form a part of
this company."

■♦«»

TOMMASI-CKUDELI ON MALAKIOUS COUNTRIES,
AND THEIR RECLAMATION.*

DISMISSING from scientific terminology the words " marsh miasm "
and " marsh soil," and replacing them by " malaria" and " ma-
larious soil," the author traces the fever-poison thus indicated to " an
agent which can infect the soil of any country, however that soil may
differ from other soils in hydrographical and topographical conditions
and geological composition."

This agent is a living organism inferred to exist long before mi-
croscopy. That its character should remain uniform in soils the most
diverse proves that it can not result from the chemical reaction of
these soils. This persistent uniformity is easily understood on the ad-
mission that malaria is due to a fermentative organism which finds
conditions favorable to its life and its multiplication in soils the most
various, as is the case with thousands of other organisms much higher
than the rudimentary vegetations which constitute living ferments.

The increasing intensity of the poison in malarious soils abandoned
to themselves is especially demonstrable in Italy. Etruscan and Latin
cities — Rome herself — arose in malarious regions, and they flourished
mainly on account of the soil reclamation, which in the course of cent-
uries diminished the production of the poison, without, however, suc-
ceeding in wholly suppressing it. The abandonment of the reclaim-
ing processes led to the redevelopment of the poison — first during the
Roman domination in the conquered and devastated Etruria, after-
ward in Rome herself on the fall of the empire, and finally in Southern
Italy. This redevelopment of malaria in the Roman Campagna has
been witnessed in times not very remote from ours, localities where it
was possible to enjoy summer residence (villeggiatura) having at that
season become uninhabitable. In these localities the physical condi-

* Abstract by the " Lancet " from an article published in the " Nuova Antologia."
vol. xxvii. — 50

786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions of the soil have not varied for centuries ; how, then, can the
enormous increase of malaria be due to progressive alteration in the
chemical constitution of the soil itself ? Admit that malaria consists
in a living organism whose successive generations infect to an ever-
increasing extent the soil which contains it, and the explanation is
easy.

Again, in regard to the malarious contents of the atmosphere. If
the malarious ferment (fermento malarico) were composed of gaseous
emanations from the soil, or of a chemical ferment formed in the soil
and raised into the air together with watery vapor, the malarious con-
tents of the atmosphere ought to reach their maximum in those hours
when the soil is most warmed by the sun's rays, and in which the
evaporation of the water it contains and the chemical processes occur-
ring within it are at their greatest intensity. But it is not so. The
malarious contents of the local atmosphere are less in the noonday
hours than at the beginning and close of the day — that is, after sun-
rise and, above all, after sunset. Now, it is exactly at these two peri-
ods of the day that the difference between the temperature of the
l^wer strata of the atmosphere and the temperature of the surface of
the soil is greatest, and that the currents of air which ascend ver-
tically from the soil into the upper atmosphere are at their strong-
est. Admitting that the malaria is formed of solid particles of low
specific gravity (such as are the germs of the inferior vegetations),
we see at once how it ought to accumulate in the lower strata of the
atmosphere, especially in those two periods of the day.

The tendency among investigators has always been to attribute this
specific poisoning of the air to a living organism which multiplies in
the soil; but, unfortunately, the "palustral prejudice," as Dr. Tom-
masi Crudeli calls it, has led them to examine only the lower organ-
isms which haunt marshes. In 1879 the author, in conjunction with
Dr. Klebs, discovered the cause of malaria in a " schizomyces bacilla-
ris," and recently Drs. Marchiafava and Celli have demonstrated that
this parasite attacks directly the globules of the blood and destroys
them after having determined in them a series of characteristic altera-
tions, which indicate quite certainly the existence of a malarious infec-
tion. " Many observations," says the author, " just completed in
Rome, would tend to demonstrate that this parasite does not inva-
riably assume the bacillary form described by Klebs and myself ; but
this purely morphological question need not concern the practical hy-
gienist. For him it is essential to know that he has to deal with a
living ferment which can flourish in soils the most diverse in compo-
sition, and without the presence of which neither marshes nor pools of
putrescent water are capable of producing malaria."

Having incidentally shown that soils may contain this parasite in
an inert state and not produce malaria till the circumstances favorable
to its activity have arisen, Dr. Tommasi-Crudeli proceeds to demon-

RECLAMATION OF MALARIOUS COUNTRIES. 787

strate that among the conditions which assist the development of the
malarious ferment contained in the soil and the excessive air accumu-
lation of that ferment in the air, there are three of primary importance,
as their concurrence is indispensable to the production of malaria.
These are (1), a temperature not lower than 20° C. ; (2), a moderate
degree of permanent humidity in the malarious soil ; and (3), the di-
rect action of the oxygen of the air on the strata of the soil which
contains the ferment. If one only of these three conditions be want-
ing, the development of malaria becomes impossible. Now, this is an
important point in the natural history of malaria, as giving us the key
to the chief part of the soil reclamation attempted by man.

First, let us take Nature's amelioration of the malarious countries,
suspending as she does for a longer or shorter time the production of
malaria. Winter, for example, causes in all these countries a purely
thermic amelioration — that is, it suspends the production of malaria
simply by making the temperature fall below the minimum required
for the development of the poison. In fact, there are often, even in
winter, sudden outbreaks of malaria when a sirocco-wind raises the
temperature above this minimum. Again, during a very warm and
dry summer, malaria is not developed, because the sun's rays have ex-
hausted the humidity of the soil, so producing a purely hydraulic
amelioration, Avhich, as in the Roman Campagna, in 1881-'82, may
last for a considerable time ; easily to be dissipated, however, by one
steady shower. Finally, there may occur in nature purely atmospheric
ameliorations, when the surface of the malarious soil is withdrawn
from the direct action of the oxygen of the air by means of natural
earth-coverings formed by alluvial deposits of healthy soil, or by
means of the " earth-felt " wrought up from the soil by the roots of
herbage in a natural meadow.

In their various attempts to suspend the development of malaria
from the soil, men have tried to imitate Nature — to eliminate, that is to
say, one of the three conditions indispensable to the multiplication of
the specific ferment contained in that soil. Naturally enough, they
have never attempted thermic ameliorations, such as Nature effects in
winter, because it is not in their power to control the sun's rays. They
have had to restrict their efforts to either hydraulic or atmospheric
ameliorations ; but sometimes they have succeeded in happily com-
bining the one and the other — that is, in eliminating at once the
humidity of the soil and the direct action of the oxygen of the air
upon it.

Hydraulic amelioration has assumed many forms, according to the
nature and site of the malarious soil. Drainage, in which the ancient
Romans excelled us, has been practiced in Italy both in deep and fri-
able soils and in subsoils compact and almost impermeable, in which
latter the "cunicular" drains of the Etruscans, Latins, Volscians, and
Romans might even nowadays be studied with advantage.

788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Sometimes a twofold drainage of the upper, as well as the under
aspect of the soil may be practiced — that is, draining the subsoil and
increasing the evaporation of the surface water. The cutting down
of forests in malarious countries has often proved an excellent means
of amelioration ; because, by removing every obstacle to the direct
action of the sun's rays on the surface of the soil, its humidity during
the warm season is sometimes entirely exhausted. In spite of univer-
sal experience of this fact, a school originating with the great Roman
physician, Lancisi, has sustained the contrary, counseling the mainte-
nance and even the extension of forests in malarious countries. Lan-
cisi was completely possessed with the " palustral prejudice," and be-
lieved that the malaria generated in the Pomptine Marshes, and
attacking such townships as Cisterna, was intercepted, if only partially,
by the forests between, and he therefore opposed the cutting down of
the trees and recommended increased planting. He did not know that
the malaria was already in the soil and covered by the forest in ques-
tion. Some thirty years ago the Caetani family, to whom Cisterna be-
longs, cut down the forest, and twenty years thereafter Dr. Tommasi-
Crudeli was able to show that the health of the neighborhood had
greatly improved in consequence. A commission appointed by the
Minister of Agriculture investigated the whole subject of the coexist-
ence of woods with malaria, and in its report issued in 1884 completely
disproved the theory of Lancisi and confirmed that of Dr. Tommasi-
Crudeli.

Absorbent plants have been suggested and used as a means of
drawing humidity from the soil, not without success in certain coun-
tries really malarious. The prejudice that the malaria is due to the
putrescent decompositions of the soil has, in Italy, led to the choice
of the Eucalyptus globulus as the tree best adapted to combat the
poison, the idea being that the eucalyptus, which grows very rapidly,
dries the humid earth, and at the same time by the aroma of its leaves
destroys the so-called miasmata. No genuine instance of the eucalyp-
tus having succeeded in its allotted task is yet known to Dr. Tommasi-
Crudeli, though he does not say that its success is impossible. Had
its Italian patrons studied its action in its native Australia, where it
flourishes much better than in Italy, they would have known that there
are eucalyptus forests in those latitudes where malaria is very preva-
lent, as has been shown by Professor Liversidge, of the University of
Sydney. The cultivation of the tree at the Tre Fontane, near Rome,
which it was thought would prove entirely successful in combating the
local malaria, disappointed expectations, for in 1882 that hamlet was
the scene of a severe outbreak of the fever, while the rest of the Cam-
pagna was unusually exempt from it. The eucalyptus, in fact, is a ca-
pricious tree in European soil ; while in full leaf, during the winter,
it is often killed by nocturnal frost, and even by the late frosts of
spring, to say nothing of humid cold and other adverse influences not

THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION. 789

yet formulated by the botanist ; again, when the winters are mild and
the soil deep, it often shoots up rapidly, only to be snapped asunder
by winds of moderate strength. Eucalyptus plantations, moreover,
are very costly. If the ground is watery, it has to be drained, other-
wise the roots rot ; if the ground is heavy, trenches must be dug in it
to make room for the long roots of the trees, and often these trenches
have to be drained, as is done in the case of olives, in order to prevent
the filtration water from stagnating and the roots from rotting. Hy-
draulic amelioration must have recourse to means less uncertain ; and
should the conditions of any locality counsel a trial of an absorbent
plantation, it should be done with trees of our own hemisphere. The
expense is smaller, and the trees are sure not to die.

At best, hydraulic amelioration is never certain, because the slight
humidity of the soil necessary to develop malaria may easily be re-
stored to it, even during the warm season. Combination of atmos-
pheric with hydraulic amelioration has therefore been tried : to with-
draw, that is to say, the humidity from the soil, while at the same time
preventing the direct contact of the air with its malarious strata.
Leaving the soil with layers of sound earth spread over it either allu-
vially or by the hand of man, and also draining the soil itself, was last
year, at the instance of Dr. Tommasi-Crudeli, practiced on the grounds
of the Janiculan Hill, near the Palazzo Salviati, in the Lungara. The
entire area, having been thoroughly well drained and then covered
with a dense coating of meadow soil in all those places which could
not be paved with street rubble, has since remained without a single
case of fever in the numerous personnel of the Military College occupy-
ing the Palazzo Salviati, while in the Palazzo Corsini, on the same
side of the Lungara, but looking on the grounds of the Janiculan
which are still exposed to the air and sun, there have within the same
period been not a few cases of fever, some of them fatal.

-+++-

THE ENEKGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION, AND HOW IT

HAS ACTED.

By Professor EDWAED D. COPE.

HAVING pointed out in a previous essay the lines of descent of
vertebrata which have been brought to light by paleontological
investigation, I propose to produce in the present article some evidence
as to the nature of the forces which have been actively at work in
effecting those changes of structure which constitute the evolution of
one type of animal from another. We can obtain this evidence by
comparing the successive steps of each line with one another. We
thus learn the nature of the modifications, and can, as the case may be,

79o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

surmise or demonstrate their causes. It is evident that, without the
o-enealogical lines which paleontology presents, it is impossible that
our hypotheses on this subject can rest on any solid basis. With these
lines completed, we will be able, on the other hand, ultimately to
reach a demonstration in most if not all the cases which present.

In the first place, there has long been before the world a theory to
account for these changes, and that is the doctrine of use and disuse,
propounded by Lamarck. He believed that the use of a part of an
animal caused it to grow larger, and that in consequence of disuse a
part would grow smaller or become extinct. Another theory is fre-
quently spoken of, as though it accounted for the origin of changes,
and that is the Natural Selection of Darwin. While naturalists are
generally agreed as to the importance of this principle in modifying
the results of the creative energy, but few of them regard it as ex-
plaining in any way the origin of the changes with which it deals. In
the very nature of things, " selection " can not act until alternatives
have been presented. And Mr. Darwin and others, who treat of nat-
ural selection as though it were a cause of new structures, always pre-
mise by admitting that " there is in organic beings a natural tendency
to variation." It is in accounting for this variation that the Lamarck-
ian hypothesis is useful, and probably expresses a great law of organic
nature. In the same way most of those who write of the " influence of
the environment" (which Lamarck, by-the-way, fully considered), as
though it embraced the causes of evolution, forget that the energy
which impresses an animal from this source could have no effect unless
the animal possess some impressibility or capacity for response. And
they also often forget that an animal capable of free movement is able
to modify its environment very materially.

There is one element of weakness in the Lamarckian theory of use.
This is that use implies the presence of something to use, or the exist-
ence of a usable part or organ. It is thus incompetent to explain the
origin of such a part ab initio, although it may account for the details
of its structure, as its segmentation, branching, etc. So I have added
to use the energy of effort, and the Lamarckian theory, completed, can
be characterized as the theory of the origin of species, by effort, use,
and disuse. A prominent cause of change of structure may be here
referred to ; and that is, change in consequence of excess or diminu-
tion of growth-energy, due to the action of use and effort in disturbing
its equilibrium. That is to say, that excessive growth in one place
has caused diminished growth in another, and vice versa. This deriva-
tive hypothesis explains the origin of many structures wdiich are not
useful to the possessor, and of others which appear to be positively
injurious. Such characters can not, of course, be accounted for by the
direct action of effort and use, which are necessarily directed toward
beneficial ends. There are also numerous characters, chiefly of an
ornamental nature, as color, etc., which are the direct result of the

THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION.

79 1

physical impress of the environment, as temperature, light, humidity,
movements of the medium, etc., which are only influenced by the ani-
mal as it places itself, by its movements, within or without the
range of their influence. In spite of these facts, I believe the move-
ments and habits of animals to lie at the foundation of their principal
characters, and that the superstructure, be it due to whatever cause
it may, rests upon that foundation. It will now be well to take a
look at the evidence in favor of or against these theories, as pre-
sented by the science of vertebrate paleontology. A few examples
will suffice.

In the first place, I will select an illustration of the effects of use
on the articulations of the limbs and feet of the mammalia. I take
first the ankle- and wrist-joints. In the ruminating animals (ox, deer,
camel, etc.) and in the horse, among other living species, the ankle-
joint is a very strong one, and yet admits of an extensive bending of
the foot on the leg. It is a treble tongue-and-groove-joint ; that is,
two keels of the first bone of the foot, the astragalus, fit into two
grooves of the lower bone of the leg, the tibia, while between these
grooves a keel of the tibia descends to fill a corresponding groove of
the astragalus. Such a joint as this can be broken by force, but it
cannot be dislocated. Now, in aH bones the external walls are com-
posed of dense material, while the centers are spongy and compara-
tively soft. The first bone of
the foot (astragalus) is narrower,
from side to side, than the tibia
which rests upon it. Hence the
edges of the dense side-walls of
the astragalus fall within the
edges of the dense side-walls of
the tibia, and they appear to have
pressed into the more yielding
material that forms the end of
the bone, and pushed it upward,
thus allowing the side-walls of
the tibia to embrace the side- ;-
walls of the astragalus. Now, }-■
this is exactly what would hap- '••-
pen if two pieces of similar dead
material, similarly placed, should
be subjected to a continual
pounding in the direction of Fig. i— Hind-foot of Coryphodon elephanto-

,.,.,, . . , pus, 6howing flat astragalus for ankle-joint.

their length tor a long period (From Eocene bed of New Mexico.) One half

j. • , • a j j. natural size.

of time. And we can not as-
cribe any other immediate origin to it in the living material ; but the
probability of such origin is more probable in such substance, because
of the perpetual waste and repair which are going on, and because of

792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the wonderful power which we so often see in growth, in repairing
damages, and in providing for new conditions in cases of accidents.
This inclusion of the astragalus in the tibia does not occur in the rep-
tiles, but appears first in the mammalia, which descended from them.

The same active cause that produced the two grooves of the lower
end of the leg produced the groove of the middle of the upper end
of the astragalus. Here we have the yielding lower end of the tibia
resting on the equally spongy material of the middle of the astragalus.
There is here no question of the hard material cutting into soft, but
simply the result of continuous concussion. The consequence of con-
cussion would be to cause the yielding faces of the bones to bend
downward in the direction of gravity. If they were flat at first they
would begin to hollow downward, and a tongue above and groove
below would be the result. And that is exactly what has happened.
Without exception, every line of mammalia commenced with types
with an astragalus which is flat in the transverse direction, or without
median groove. From early tertiary times to the present day, we can
trace the gradual development of this groove in all the lines which
have acquired it. The upper surface becomes first a little concave ;
the concavity gradually becomes deeper, and finally forms a well-
marked groove.

The history of the wrist-joint is similar. The surface of the fore-
arm bones which joins the fore-foot is in the early tertiary mammalia
uniformly concave. In the ruminating mammals it is divided into
three fossae, which are separated by sharp keels. These fossae cor-
respond with the three bones which form the first row of the carpus
or palm. The keels correspond to the sutures between them. The
process has been evidently similar to that which has been described
above as producing the side-grooves in the end of the tibia. The
dense walls of the sides of the three bones impinging endwise on the
broad yielding surface of the fore-arm (radius) have gradually, under
the influence of countless blows, impressed themselves into the latter.
On the contrary, the surface above the weaker lines between the bones
not having been subject to the impact of the blows, and influenced by
gravity, remains to fill the grooves, and to form the keels which we
observe.

There is another striking instance of the same kind in the feet of
mammalia ; that is, in the development of the keels and grooves which
appear at the articulation of the first set of bones of the toes (meta-
podials) with the bones of the second set (phalanges). These keels
first appear on the posterior side of the end of the first set of bones,
projecting from between two tendons. These tendons, in many
mammals, contain two small bones, one on each side, which act like
the knee-pan, and resemble it in miniature, which are called sesamoid
bones. These tendons and bones exercise a constant pressure on each
side of the middle line, when the animal is running or walking, and

THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION.

793

this pressure, together with the concussion with the ground, appears
to have permitted the protrusion of the middle line in the form of a
keel, while the lateral parts have been supported and even compressed.
The reptilian ancestors of the mammals do not possess these keels.

Fig. 2. Fig. 3. Fig. 4.

Fig. 2.— Hind-foot op Primitive Cameloid Poebrotherium labiattim, showing grooved
astragalus and first toe-bones without keel in front at lower end. (From Colorado.)

Fig. 3. — Hind-foot of Three-toed Horse (Protohippus sejvncfvt) (from Colorado), showing
grooved astragalus, and trace of keel on front of lower end of first bone of middle toe.

Fig. 4.— United First Bones of Two Middle Toes of Deer-Antklope (Cosoryx furcatus),
showing extrusion of keel on front of lower end. (From Miocene of Nebraska.)

Now, the lines of mammalian descent displayed by paleontology
are characterized, among other things, in most instances, by the gradual
elevation of the heel above the ground, so that the animal walks on
its toes. It is evident that in this case the concussion of running is
applied more directly on the ends of the bones of the foot than is the
case where the foot is horizontal. As a consequence we find the keel
is developed farther forward in such animals. But in many of these,
as the carnivora, the hippopotamus, and the camels, there is developed
under the toes a soft cushion, which greatly reduces this concussion.
In these species the keel makes no further progress. In other lines,

794

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as those of the horse, the pig, and of the ruminants, the ends of the
toes are applied to the ground, and are covered with larger hoofs,
which surround the toe, and the cushion is nearly or quite dispensed
with. These animals are especially distinguished by the fact that their
metapodial keels extend entirely round the end of the bone, dividing

the front, as well as the end and back,
into two parts. This structure would
seem to be a result of the greater force
of the impact resulting from use of the
legs, experienced by the end and front
of the bone, which receives the blows.

I cite one more instance of the effect
of use on the structure of the skeleton,
and this time from the vertebral col-
umn. In a certain order of Batrachia
"- from the Permian formation (the Kha-
« chitomi), the bodies of the vertebras are
curiously segmented. Instead of a solid
slightly modified from a cylinder, as in
most vertebrates, we have three pieces.
One of these is of nearly the form of a
segment cut from an apple or orange
having a crescentic outline and wedge-
shaped section. The sharp edge is con-
cave and is directed upward. On one
side of each of the horns of this cres-
cent a rhombic piece is applied, which,
widening upward, supports the separate
arch of the vertebra. These three pieces
when together leave a central vacancy,
which becomes, when all the vertebras
are placed end to end, a canal or tube.
This was occupied by what is known as
the chorda dorsalis, which is the cen-
tral axis of the body of the simplest
vertebrates, and is present in the early
embryonic stages of all. In the growth
of a reptile or mammal this flexible
chorda is replaced by the bony verte-
bral bodies. The osseous material ap-
pears in the membranous sheath which
covers it, and, gradually encroaching
on it, first cuts it into segments and
then fills it entirely. In the rhachito-
mous batrachia this process is not com-
pleted, as the chorda remains more or

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THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION.

795

less entire ; and the ossification of its sheath and substance is laid
down in the three segments already described.

The two segments visible from one side of the column form two
wedges with their apices together, and their bases one up and the
other down. Now, if a person who wears a coat of rather thick mate-
rial will examine the folds of his sleeve as they are produced on the
inner side of his arm, he will see a figure nearly like that of the seg-
ments of the vertebral column described. The folds will correspond
to the sutures, and the interspaces to the bony segments. He will find
that the spaces are lens-shaped, or, when viewed in profile, wedge-
shaped, with the apices together. This arrangement results from the
necessary mechanics of flexure to one side. In flexure of a cylinder
like the sleeve, or like a vertebral column, the shortest curve is along
the line of the greatest convexity of the cylinder. Here is the closest
folding of the sheath, and here, consequently, the lines of fold in soft
material, or fracture in hard material, will converge and come to-
gether. That is just what they do in both the sleeve and the rhachi-
tomous vertebral column, the only difference being that in the animal

Fig. 6.— The Folds on the Inner Side op a Coat-sleeve, which correspond with the lines
separating the segments of the vertebrae of the Eryops. The letter i is the basal segment or
intercentrum ; the p corresponds with the lateral segment, the pleurocentrum ; and n repre-
sents the basal part at the upper or neural arch, which rests on p and i.

it is exhibited on both sides, and on the sleeve on only one side. This
difference is, of course, due to the fact that the animal can bend him-
self in both directions, while the arm only bends in one direction.

It results from the above observations that the structure of the
rhachitomous vertebral column has been produced by the movements
of the body from side to side, as in swimming, during the process of
the deposit of mineral material in and around the chorda dorsalis.*
Here we have another convincing proof that use and effort have pro-
duced animal structure.

Instances like the above can be cited from many departments of
zoology wherever paleontology has pointed out the lines of descent.
I will not cite them further, but will draw some conclusions which are
necessary and which are of general. interest.

It is evident that use and effort imply some kind of movement on
the part of the animal which puts them forth. Hence I have called

* This subject is more fully treated of in the " American Naturalist " for January,
1884.

796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the theory which holds that the structures of animals are the results of
their movements the theory of kinetogenesis (from kineo, I move, and
genesis). This theory is supported not only by the class of facts
which I have adduced, but by another large class of a different kind,
which demonstrate the alternative proposition, viz., that disuse is fol-
lowed by loss and extinction of parts. This may be inferred from the
very degenerate character of most animal parasites taken in connec-
tion with their embryology. The absence of limbs, of segments, of
sense-organs, and even of more important vital organs observed in
various parasites, is very remarkable. It is equally remarkable that
the history of the development of such animals shows that in their
earlier stages they are not parasitic, and possess many organs which
are wanting in the adult. This brief history, condensed into the life
of each individual parasite, no doubt, as in all growth-history, merely
repeats that of the species as a whole. It teaches us that the ances-
tors were active, independent swimmers or fliers, as the case may have
been, and that by the adoption of parasitic habits they ceased to use
the many parts, which consequently dwindled and disappeared. This
conclusion is sustained by paleontology wherever evidence can be ob-
tained from that source. This is most evident in the history of the
reptiles. Many forms of lizards of the present period are known to
display curious defects. Such are the absence of some or all of the
toes ; of some or all of the limbs ; of the eyelids ; of the dermal folds
about the eyes ; and, finally, of the eyes themselves. Paleontology
shows that these are not ancient or primitive types which survived,
but that they are modern. Now, nearly all such lizards have habits
which involve the least possible use of the limbs and of the sense of
sight ; they are subterranean, and many of them inhabit ants' nests
and devour those insects for food. It is evident that here is a kind of
parasitism, and its consequences are of the most marked character.

The nature of animal movements may now claim our attention.
These, we know, are referred to two general divisions, the automatic
and the voluntary. The popular definition of these classes of move-
ments is that, in the latter case, choice or preference, and therefore
will, is supposed to be exercised, and that in the former there is no
such quality displayed. The automatic movements are called mechani-
cal, and may be performed unconsciously, as the movements of the
heart and digestive system, etc. Rigorously, however, the so-called
voluntary acts do not proceed from any freedom or will proper on the
part of an animal. They appear to do so, because they display intel-
ligence of a higher order than the automatic acts, although it is true
that intelligent design is not wanting from the latter either. More-
over, the so-called voluntary acts may be unconsciously performed, and
the automatic may be consciously performed, as in the winking of the
eyes and breathing, when attention is directed to them. So, then, the
classification into conscious and unconscious is quite independent of that

THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION. 797

into voluntary and automatic. As the term voluntary is misleading,
the word ratiocinative has been substituted for it.

The relations of animal acts may, then, be considered as follows :
Automatic acts display design for the well-being of the animal, but
are invariable in their action, not changing immediately in adaptation
to new or modified needs. Ratiocinative acts, on the other hand, are
performed in accordance with circumstances as they arise, and are not
rhythmical or invariable in their action. Their existence implies the
presence of a certain development of mind, which the automatic acts
do not so obviously display. Ratiocinative acts are very common in
animals, as those who observe them can always testify. The auto-
matic acts increase in relative importance as we descend the scale of
being, but as they also display a general beneficial design it is not
possible to draw the line between them and the ratiocinative. In fact,
the one passes into the other by the well-known process which I call
cryptonoy, as will presently be explained. If acts affect structure, it
is evident, that if the acts are beneficial, the structure they produce
must be so also. From what has preceded, it is also evident that the
more intelligent acts will produce correspondingly more beneficial
structures than the less intelligent. But since these changes are only
effected by long-continued movements on the part of an animal, it is
clear that an act is likely to become automatic before it can become an
important cause of evolution of animal forms. The history of animal
movements has probably been as follows :

Fig. 7. — Sktjxt. op Coryphodon elephantoptjs, two ninths natural size ; a corner removed from
the skull so as to display the small brain-cavity at the base, (from New Mexico.)

Protoplasm presents certain movements, of which contractility is
one, which will respond to certain stimuli under proper conditions of
nutrition and temperature. It may perform movements which cause a
simple mass of it to change its location in a fluid medium. Such acts,
however, lack the element of design, or adaptation to the needs of the

798

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animal, whether they be constant or temporary ones. In order to dis-
play this property it is necessary that sensation should exist, and that
this should be pleasurable or painful, in order to produce a determinate
movement to increase the one or escape the other. This is the basis of all
design, for without consciousness there can be no design. Just where
this consciousness first displays or displayed itself in living things it is
not possible to know at present with certainty, but its first exhibition
was probably in the pain of hunger. The first designed act was, then,
the taking of food. The first structure was, therefore, also some kind
of arrangement for seizing and surrounding food. This having been
performed, another set of functions had its birth, one which was destined
to follow all new experiences, and in turn to dominate all later acts.
This is the memory of the act and of its consequences, which remains
as the basis of mind. An impress once, made on consciousness is not lost,

because it has modified the molecular
structure of some part of the living
material in a way as yet unknown to
a us. The movement which results from
this memory is the first designed act,
and this also affects structure, and
produces the first motor link between
mind and body, as the first stimulus
& perceived produced the first sensory
link. From this time onward the law
of use and effort has its way. Its first
result is to build a mind-machine, or
nervous system, or its equivalent. This
kind of building has evidently preced-
ed all others in time, and its latest and
highest product is the human brain.
The evidence of vertebrate paleon-
tology places this statement beyond
the stage of mere hypothesis. We
have learned that, with a few minor
exceptions, the brains of the verte-
brata, and especially of the mammalia, have greatly increased in
complexity and in size with the lapse of geological time. This is il-
lustrated by the accompanying figures of the brain-chambers or casts
of brain-chambers of two ancient and one late Tertiary mammals. The
Coryphodon elephantopus is the largest animal of the three, and the
Phenacodus primcevus, of which the skeleton was figured in the pre-
ceding article, is a little smaller than the Procamelus occidentalis, the
third species. The last is the latest species in time, and is one of the
ancestors of the existing camels and llamas. The much greater size
and complexity of the brain, and especially of the cerebral hemispheres,
as compared with the two other species, are striking.

Fio. 8. — Cast of Bkain-Cavttt of Phena-
codus riiiM^Evus, showing small hemis-
pheres : a, side ; b, from above ; c, from
below. One half natural size. (From
Wyoming )

THE ENERGY OF LIFE EVOLUTION.

799

We have now the beginning of an explanation of the element of
design in the movements of animals. But, first, the explanation is
necessary to account for the long-continued automatic acts which have
changed the hard and appa-
rently fixed structures of so
many of the higher forms of
life.

Automatic and uncon-
scious ratiocinative acts are
the product of conscious ra-
tiocinative acts by the pro-
cess of cryptonoy already re-
ferred to. This process is
one of the most wonderful
which the field of science
presents to our contempla-
tion. It is simply this : that
when a brain, or other organ
of consciousness, has once
acquired an habitual move-
ment, consciousness disap-
pears from that act, and it
enters the unconscious and
generally automatic stage.
This demonstrates two
things : First, that conscious-
ness is not necessary to a
designed act which has be-
come a habit, no matter how
complicated that habit may
be ; second, that conscious-
ness does reside in matter
which has not acquired habits, and which therefore does not yet pos-
sess the structure which makes such habits possible.

We now have a true theory of the influence of the environment on
an animal. Sensation being understood, the animal proceeds to adapt
itself to its surroundings by the adoption of appropriate habits, from
which appropriate structures arise. Without such response on the
part of the animal, the greater part of the world would have remained
uninhabited by all but the lowest forms of life, and these too might
have been extinguished. From the simplest temporary methods of
defense and protection, animals have developed the habits of laying
up stores, of building houses, of the arts of the chase, of migrations
over wide territories. There can be no doubt that the constant exer-
cise of the mind in self-support and protection has developed the most
wonderful of all machines, the human brain, whose function is the most

Fig. 9.— Cast of Brain-Cavity of P ocamklus occi-
dkntalis, one half natural size : a, profile ; b, above ;
c, below. (Prom New Mexico.)

800 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wonderful of phenomena, the human * mind. And the acts of other
parts of the organism, which have been the outcome of this process,
have produced the varied structures which to-day constitute the ani-
mal kingdom.

It is thus shown to a demonstration, by means of the principle of
kinetogenesis, that evolution is essentially a process of mind. The
source of the consciousness, which is back of it, is at present an un-
solved problem. That it has existed and does exist, there can be no
question, and there is no sufficient reason for supposing that it will not
continue to exist.

■***

"THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY."

A REMINISCENCE.

By E. H. HUTTON.

TN the autumn of 1868 Mr. Tennyson and the Rev. Charles Pritch-
|__L ard — Savilian Professor of Astronomy — were guests together in
my house.

A good deal of talk arose on speculative subjects, especially the-
ology, and in the course of it the idea was suggested of founding a
Theological Society, to discuss such questions after the manner and
with the freedom of an ordinary scientific society.

I volunteered to endeavor to bring such a body together if Mr. Ten-
nyson and Mr. Pritchard would promise to belong to it, and I then con-
sulted other friends, beginning with Dean Stanley, Dean Alford, Arch-
bishop Manning, the Rev. James Martineau, the Bishop of Gloucester
and Bristol, Dr. Ward of the " Dublin Review," Mr. R. H. Hutton of
the " Spectator," and one or two more, finding them all willing to join.
I next went to " the opposition," and, explaining our plan, found Pro-
fessor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, Mr. Froude, Mr. Walter Bagehot,
Sir John Lubbock, and others, equally ready to co-operate.

The originally intended name of Theological Society was dropped
in favor of " Metaphysical Society," under which full discussion of the
largest range of topics from all points of view could be better insured,
and on the 21st of April, 1869, we held our first meeting at Willis's
Rooms.

I remember Mr. Froude — who was among our first members — say-
ing that, if we hung together for twelve months, it would be one of
the most remarkable facts in history. But we " hung together " for
nearly twelve years, meeting once a month, usually at an hotel, where,
after dining together, a paper was read by some member, and after-
ward discussed. Mr. Tennyson's remark at an early meeting seemed

* The word human is emphasized because it is not yet proven that protoplasm is the
only possible physical basis of mind.

" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY."

801

always borne in mind — that "modern science ought, at any rate, to
have taught us one thing — how to separate light from heat."

"When the list of members and the character of the subjects dis-
cussed are considered, many will agree that it is matter for congratu-
lation, and a pleasant sign of the times, that such a society should have
lived its full life in London in entire harmony. It came to an end be-
cause, after twelve years of debating, there seemed little to be said
which had not already been repeated more than once. The members
were as follows :

Mr. Tennyson.

Mr. Gladstone.

The Duke of Argyll.

Dean Stanley.

Archbishop Manning.

The Bishop of St. David's.

The Archbishop of York.

Prof. Huxley.

The Bishop of Peterborough.

Prof. Tyndall.

Mr. Frederic Harrison.

Lord Selborne.

Prof. Clifford.

Father Dalgairns.

Sir James Stephen.

Dr. Ward.

The Bishop of Gloucester and

Bristol.
Dean Alford.
The Dean of St. Paul's.
Mr. Ruskin.
Mr. Froude.
Mr. Grant Duff.
Mr. Robert Lowe.
Rev. Prof. Maurice.
Rev. Prof. Pritchard.
Prof. Robertson.
Sir Alexander Grant.
Lord Arthur Russell.
Rev. Canon Barry.

Rev. James Martineau.

Prof. Seeley.

Mr. Walter Bagehot.

Sir John Lubbock.

Rev. Mark Pattison.

Dr. Carpenter.

Prof. Lushington.

Mr. Shadworth Hodgson.

Dr. Andrew Clark.

Mr. Leslie Stephen.

Mr. John Morley.

Sir William Gull.

Dr. Gasquet.

Prof. Fraser.

Mr. George Grove.

Rev. Dr. Mozley.

Mr. James Hinton.

Prof. Sylvester.

Dr. Bucknill.

Prof. St. George Mivart.

Prof. Barnes Upton.

Mr. Henry Sidgwick.

Mr. R. H. Hutton.

Rev. Robert Clarke.

Mr. W. R. Greg.

Mr. Matthew Boulton.

Mr. Frederick Pollock.

Dr. Acland.

Hon. Roden Noel.

Mr. James Knowles.

Among our chairmen — appointed annually, but sometimes serving
for two years successively — were Sir John Lubbock, Cardinal Man-
ning, Professor Huxley, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Ward, Dr. Martineau,
Lord Selborne, and Lord Arthur Russell.

The character of the subjects brought forward may be gathered
from the titles of some of the papers, and, as the discussions were ab-

VOL. XXVII. — 51

802 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

solutely confidential and unreported, they were almost always of much
animation and interest. They suggested to myself (as honorary sec-
retary to the society) the idea of the " Modern Symposium " which
several times appeared in this Review. The following were among
the papers read before the society :

The Theory of Causation.

The Theory of a Soul.

Is God unknowable ?

What is Death ?

Will and Responsibility.

The Scientific Basis of Morals.

The Nature and Authority of Miracle.

Has a Frog a Soul ?

On the words Nature, Natural, and Supernatural.

The Ethics of Belief.

What is Matter ?

The Soul before and after Death.
* What is a Lie ?

How do we come by our Knowledge ?

The Personality of God.

The Verification of Beliefs.

The Emotion of Conviction.

Memory as an Intuitive Faculty.

The Relation of Will to Thought.

Matter and Force.

The Absolute.

The Nature of Things in Themselves.

The Nature of the Moral Principle.

The Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrection.

The Arguments for a Future Life.

Hospitals for Incurables from a Moral Point of View.

Double Truth.
The subjoined article, kindly volunteered by Mr. Hutton, was
suggested by him, not as a portrait of any actual meeting, but as a
reminiscence of the sort of debate which used to go on. Its faithful-
ness is remarkable, except for the omission of his own valuable part
in the discussion. — Editor Nineteenth Century, .]

The following attempt to give an impression of a typical meeting
of the once rather famous "Metaphysical Society," of which I was
throughout a member, must not be regarded as in any sense contain-
ing an historical report of an individual debate. No such reports were,
so far as I know, ever taken. But to a rather diligent member of
the society there were plenty of opportunities of learning the general
views of the more eminent members on such a subject as was discussed
at the meeting here selected for treatment ; and though it is likely

" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 803

enough that none of them, except of course Dr. Ward, whose paper
was really read (though he may have made no final reply), spoke on
this particular occasion, as I have imputed to them ; and though sev-
eral of those to whom I have attributed remarks may not have been
present at this particular discussion at all, yet I do not think I shall
be found to have misrepresented any of their views.* If I have, the
responsibility and fault are mine.

At the meeting of the Metaphysical Society which was held on
the 10th of December, 1872, Dr. Ward was to read a paper on the
question, " Can experience prove the uniformity of Nature ? " " Mid-
dlemarch " had been completed and published a few days previously.
On the day following the meeting the Convocation of Oxford was to
vote upon the question raised by Mr. Burgon and Dean Goulburn,
whether the Dean of Westminster (then Dr. Stanley) should be ex-
cluded for his heresies from the List of Select Preachers at Oxford
or not. The " Claimant " was still starring it in the provinces in the
interval between his first trial and his second. Thus the dinner itself
was lively, though several of the more distinguished members did not
enter till the hour for reading the paper had arrived. One might have
heard Professor Huxley flashing out a skeptical defense of the use
of the Bible in board-schools at one end of the table, Mr. Fitzjames
Stephen's deep bass remarks on the Claimant's adroit use of his com-
mittal for perjury, at another, and an eager discussion of the various
merits of Lydgate and Rosamond at a third. " Ideal Ward," as he
used to be called, from the work on the " Ideal of a Christian Church,"
for which he had lost his degree nearly thirty years earlier at Oxford,
was chuckling with a little malicious satisfaction over the floundering
of the orthodox clergy, in their attempts to express safely their dis-
like of Dean Stanley's latitudinarianism, without bringing the Estab-
lishment about their ears. He thought we might as well expect the
uniformity of Nature to be disproved by the efforts of spiritualists to
turn a table, as the flood of latitudinarian thought to be arrested by
Mr. Burgon's and Dean Goulburn's attempt to exclude the Dean of
Westminster from the List of Select Preachers at Oxford. Father
Dalgairns, one of Dr. Newman's immediate followers, who left the
English Church and entered the Oratory of St. Philip Neri with him,
a man of singular sweetness and openness of character, with something
of a French type of playfulness in his expression, discoursed to me
eloquently on the noble ethical character of George Eliot's novels, and
the penetrating disbelief in all but human excellence by which they
are pervaded. Implicitly he intended to convey to me, I thought, that

* Whenever those views were actually given in the words here used, though occurring
in the reading of other papers, I have always placed them in inverted commas. When-
ever no inverted commas are used the words and thoughts are mine, though I believe
them to represent faithfully the views of the speakers to whom they are attributed. —
R. H. H.

8o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nowhere but in the Roman Church could you find any real breakwater
against an incredulity which could survive even the aspirations of so
noble a nature as hers. And as I listened to this eloquent exposition
with one ear, the sound of Professor Tyndall's eloquent Irish voice,
descanting on the proposal for a " prayer-gauge," which had lately
been made in the " Contemporary Review," by testing the efficacy of
prayer on a selected hospital ward, captivated the other. Everything
alike spoke of the extraordinary fermentation of opinion in the society
around us. Moral and intellectual " yeast " was as hard at work mul-
tiplying its fungoid forms in the men who met at that table as even
in the period of the Renaissance itself.

I was very much struck then, and frequently afterward, by the
marked difference between the expression of the Roman Catholic
members of our society and all the others. No men could be more
different among themselves than Dr. Ward and Father Dalgairns and
Archbishop Manuing, all of them converts to the Roman Church.
But, nevertheless, all had upon them that curious stamp of definite
spiritual authority which I have never noticed on any faces but those
of Roman Catholics, and of Roman Catholics who have passed through
a pretty long period of subjection to the authority they acknowledge.
In the Metaphysical Society itself there was every type of spiritual
and moral expression. The wistful and sanguine, I had almost said
hectic idealism, of James Hinton struck me much more than anything
he contrived to convey by his remarks. The noble and steadfast but
somewhat melancholy faith which seemed to be sculptured on Dr.
Martineau's massive brow, shaded off into wistfulness in the glance of
his eyes. Professor Huxley, who always had a definite standard for
every question which he regarded as discussable at all, yet made you
feel that his slender definite creed in no respect represented the crav-
ings of his large nature. Professor Tyndall's eloquent addresses fre-
quently culminated with some pathetic indication of the mystery which
to him surrounded the moral life. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's gigantic
force, expended generally in some work of iconoclasm, always gave
me the impression that he was revenging himself on what he could
not believe, for the disappointment he had felt in not being able to
retain the beliefs of his youth. But in the countenances of our Roman
Catholic members there was no wistfulness — rather an expression which
I might almost describe as a blending of grateful humility with invol-
untary satiety — genuine humility, genuine thankfulness for the au-
thority on which they anchored themselves ; but something also of a
feeling of the redundance of that authority, and of the redundance of
those provisions for their spiritual life of which almost all our other
members seemed to feel that they had but a bare and scanty pasturage.

Dr. Ward, who was to read the paper of the evening, struck me as
one of our most unique members. His mind was, to his own appre-
hension at least, all strong lights and dark shadows. Either he was

" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 805

absolutely, indefensibly, "superabundantly" certain, or he knew no
more " than a baby," to use his favorite simile, about the subjects I
conversed with him upon. On the criticism of the New Testament,
for instance, he always maintained that he knew no more than a baby,
though really he knew a good deal about it. On the questions arising
out of Papal bulls he would often say that he was as absolutely and
superabundantly certain as he was of his own existence. Then he was
a very decided humorist. He looked like a country squire, and in the
Isle of Wight was, I believe, generally called " Squeer Ward " ; but, if
you talked to him about horses or land, he would look at you as if you
were talking in an unknown language, and would describe, in most ex-
travagant and humorous terms, his many rides in search of health, and
the profound fear with which, whenever the animal showed the least
sign of spirit, he would cry out, " Take me off ! take me off ! " He
was one of the very best and most active members of our society, as
long as his health lasted — most friendly to everybody, though full of
amazement at the depth to which skepticism had undermined the creed
of many among us. A more candid man I never knew. He never
ignored a difficulty, and never attempted to express an indistinct idea.
His metaphysics were as sharp cut as crystals. He never seemed to
see the half-lights of a question at all. There was no penumbra in his
mind ; or, at least, what he could not grasp clearly, he treated as if he
could not apprehend at all.

When dinner was over and the cloth removed, a waiter entered with
sheets of foolscap and pens for each of the members, of which very
little use was made. The ascetic Archbishop of Westminster, every
nerve in his face expressive of some vivid feeling, entered, and was
quickly followed by Dr. Martineau. Then came Mr. Hinton, glancing
round the room with a modest half-humorous furtiveness, as he seated
himself among us. Then Dr. Ward began his paper. He asked how
mere experience could prove a universal truth without examining in
detail every plausibly asserted exception to that truth, and disproving
the reality of the exception. He asked whether those who believe
most fervently in the uniformity of Nature ever show the slightest
anxiety to examine asserted exceptions. He imagined, he said, that
what impresses physicists is the fruitfulness of inductive science, with
the reasonable inference that inductive science could not be the fruit-
ful field of discovery it is, unless it rested on a legitimate basis, which
basis could be no other than a principle of uniformity. Dr. Ward an-
swered that the belief in genuine exceptions to the law of uniform
phenomenal antecedents and consequents does not in the least degree
invalidate this assumption of the general uniformity of Nature, if these
exceptions are announced, as in the case of miracles they always must
be, as demonstrating the interposition of some spiritual power which
is not phenomenal, between the antecedent and its natural consequent
— which interposition it is that alone interrupts the order of phenome-

806 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nal antecedence and consequence. " Suppose," he said, that " every
Englishman, by invoking St. Thomas of Canterbury, could put his
hand into the fire without injury. Why, the very fact, that in order
to avoid injury he must invoke the saint's name, would ever keep fresh
and firm in his mind the conviction that fire does naturally burn.
He would therefore as unquestioningly in all his physical researches
assume this to be the natural property of fire as though God had never
wrought a miracle at all. In fact, from the very circumstances of the
case, it is always one of the most indubitable laws of Nature which a
miracle overrides, and those who wish most to magnify the miracle
are led by that very fact to dwell with special urgency on the other-
wise universal prevalence of the law." There was a short pause when
Dr. Ward had concluded his paper, which was soon ended by Professor
Huxley, who broke off short in a very graphic sketch he had been mak-
ing on his sheet of foolscap as he listened.

Dr. Ward, said Professor Huxley, had told us with perfect truth
that the uniformity of Nature was only held, by even the most thor-
oughgoing of clear-minded physicists, as a fruitful working hypothesis,
the assumption of which had led to a vast number of discoveries,
which could not have been effected without it. If they could not as-
sume that under heat the vapor of water would expand one day as it
had expanded the previous day, no locomotive would be of any use ;
if they could not assume that under certain given conditions the ma-
jority of seeds put into the ground would spring up and reproduce
similar seed, no fields would be sown and no harvest would be reaped.
In innumerable cases where the same antecedents had apparently not
been followed by the same consequents, thinking men had taken for
granted that they must have been mistaken in supposing the ante-
cedents to be the same, and had found that they were right, and that
the difference in the antecedents had really been followed by the dif-
ference in the consequents. He, for his part, should not object at all
to examine into any presumptive case of miracle sufficiently strong to
prove that in a substantial number of cases Englishmen had been ena-
bled to thrust their hands into the fire without injury, by adopting so
simple a safeguard as calling on St. Thomas of Canterbury. But the
truth was, that asserted miracles were too sparse and rare, and too
uniformly accompanied by indications of either gross credulity or bad
faith, to furnish an investigator jealous of his time, and not able to
waste his strength on futile inquiries, with a sufficient basis for inves-
tigation. Men of science were too busy in their fruitful vocation to
hunt up the true explanation of cases of arrested miracle, complicated
as they generally were with all sorts of violent prepossessions and
confusing emotions. He, for his part, did not pretend that the physi-
cal uniformity of Nature could be absolutely proved. He was content
to know that his " working hypothesis " had been proved to be invalu-
able by the test of innumerable discoveries, which could never have

" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 807

been made had not that working hypothesis been assumed. Indeed,
what evidence has any man even for the existence of his own home
and family, better than that of a fruitful hypothesis, which has time
after time resulted in the expected verification ? No man can be
absolutely certain that the home he left an hour ago is standing where
it did, or that the family he left in it are still in life ; still, if he acts
on the hypothesis that they are there, he will, in innumerable cases,
be rewarded for making that assumption, by finding his expectations
verified, and in but a very few cases indeed be disappointed.

If, then, Dr. Ward asks, said Professor Huxley, whether or not
I hold that experience can, in a mathematical sense, prove the uni-
formity of Nature, I answer that I do not believe it ; that I believe
only that, in the assumption of that uniformity of Nature, we have a
working hypothesis of the most potent kind, which I have never found
to fail me. But further, if I might use the word " believe " loosely,
though with much less looseness than that with which men who are
not students of science habitually use it, I should not hesitate to avow
a belief that the uniformity of Nature is proved by experience, for I
should be only too glad to think that half the " demonstrated " beliefs
of metaphysicians are even a tenth part as trustworthy as the great
working hypothesis of science. The man of science, however, " who
commits himself to even one statement which turns out to be devoid
of good foundation, loses somewhat of his reputation among his fel-
lows, and if he is guilty of the same error often he loses not only his
intellectual but his moral standing among them ; for it is justly felt
that errors of this kind have their root rather in the moral than in the
intellectual nature." That, I suppose, is the reason why men of sci-
ence are so chary of investigating the trustworthiness of the soi-disant
miracles to which Dr. Ward is so anxious that we should pay an at-
tention much greater than any which in my opinion they deserve.
For the scientific man justly fears that, if he investigates them thor-
oughly, he shall wound many amiable men's hearts, and that if he does
not wound amiable men's hearts he shall compromise his own character
as a man of science.

As Professor Huxley's rich and resonant voice died away, Father
Dalgairns, after looking modestly round to see whether any one else
desired to speak, began in tones of great sweetness : Professor
Huxley has implied that to the scientific student the words " I be-
lieve " have a stricter and more binding force than they have to us
theologians. If it really be so, it is very much to our shame, for no
words can be conceived which are to us more solemn and more charged
with moral obligation. But I confess that the drift of Professor
Huxley's remarks hardly bore out to my mind the burden of his pero-
ration. It seems that " a working hypothesis " is the modest phrase
which represents even the very maximum of scientific belief, for
would Professor Huxley admit that he has any belief, except of course

8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

one resting on an immediately present consciousness, deeper than bis
belief in the uniformity of Nature ? I suppose not. Now, theolo-
gians are accustomed to assert, and I tbink with justice, that it is
impossible to entertain any belief — whether it be only a working hy-
pothesis or something more — in the uniformity of Nature, without
basing it on the irrefragable trustworthiness of the human faculties.
In one of our earliest discussions Dr. Ward proved his case that on
the irrefragable trustworthiness of memory, for example, for all facts
which it positively asserts, rests the whole structure of human knowl-
edge ; and this in a sense much deeper than any such expression as
" working hypothesis " will express. Without assuming this irre-
fragable trustworthiness, Dr. Ward has reminded us that I could not
now know that I am replying to Professor Huxley at all, or indeed
who I myself am, or who is Professor Huxley. Without absolutely
assuming the trustworthiness of memory, how should I have the least
glimmering of a conception of that expressive personality from whose
mouth the weighty utterances we have just heard proceeded ? Yet if
you grant me the trustworthiness of memory, when it speaks positive-
ly of a recent experience, can you deny me the trustworthiness of
other human faculties equally fundamental ? Is my "belief" in the
distinction between right and wrong, between holiness and sin, any
less trustworthy than my belief in the asseverations of my memory?
Did not Professor Huxley himself suggest in his closing remarks that
the moral roots of our nature strike deeper than the intellectual roots ;
in other words, that if memory be much more than a " working hy-
pothesis," if its trustworthiness be the condition without which no
working hypothesis would be even possible, there are moral conditions
of our nature quite as fundamental as even the trustworthiness of
memory itself ? I hold it, I confess, most irrational to have an abso-
lute and undoubting belief in the uniformity of Nature based on any
accumulation of experience, for no such accumulation of experience
is possible at all without an absolute and undoubting belief in the
past, and this no merely present experience can possibly give us.
And I hold such a belief in the uniformity of Nature, based on any-
thing but the trustworthiness of our faculties, to be irrational, for
precisely the same kind of reason for which I hold it to be irrational
to question the belief in God. The solemnity which Professor Hux-
ley attaches to the words " I believe," I attach to them also. More-
over, I could not use them in their fullest sense of anything which I
regard merely as a " working hypothesis," however fruitful. But I
deny that we theologians regard our deepest creed as a working hy-
pothesis at all. We accept the words " I believe in God," as we ac-
cept the words " I believe in the absolute attestations of memory," as
simply forced upon us by a higher intuition than any inductive law
can engender. When I say " I believe in God," I use the word be-
lieve just as I use it when I say "I believe in moral obligation," and

"THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 809

when I say " I believe in moral obligation," I use the word believe
just as I do when I say "I believe in the attestations of memory."
"God is not necessary only to my conception of morality. His exist-
ence is necessary to the existence of obligation." I know God by "a
combination of intuition and experience, which is Kant's condition of
knowledge. If there be a God, our imagination would present him
to us as inflicting pain on the violator of his law, and lo ! the imagi-
nation turns out to be an experienced fact. The Unknowable suddenly
stabs me to the heart." I believe in the uniformity of Nature only in
the sense in which I believe in every other high probability — for in-
stance, only in the sense in which I believe that the sun will rise to-
morrow. I believe in God in the sense in which I believe in pain and
pleasure, in space and time, in right and wrong, in myself, in that which
curbs me, governs me, besets me behind and before, and lays its hand
upon me. The uniformity of Nature, though a very useful working hy-
pothesis, is, as Professor Huxley admits, unproved and unprovable as
a final truth of reason. But " if I do not know God, then I know
nothing whatsoever," for if " the pillared pavement is rottenness,"
then surely also is "earth's base built on stubble."

There was a certain perceptible reluctance to follow Father Dal-
gairns, which lasted some couple of minutes. Then we heard a deep-
toned, musical voice, which dwelt with slow emphasis on the most
important words of each sentence, and which gave a singular force
to the irony with which the speaker's expressions of belief were freely
mingled. It was Mr. Ruskin. "The question," he said, " Can experi-
ence prove the uniformity of Nature ? is, in my mind, so assuredly
answerable with the negative which the writer appeared to desire,
that precisely on that ground the performance of any so-called mira-
cles whatever would be really unimpressive to me. If a second
Joshua to-morrow commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed
him, and he therefore claimed deference as a miracle-worker, I am
afraid I should answer : ' What ! a miracle that the sun stands still ?
— not at all. I was always expecting it would. The only wonder
to me was its going on.' But even assuming the demonstrable
uniformity of the laws or customs of Nature which are known
to us, it remains to me a difficult question what measure of
interference with such law or custom we might logically hold miracu-
lous, and what, on the contrary, we should treat only as proof of the
existence of some other law hitherto undiscovered. For instance,
there is a case authenticated by the signatures of several leading
physicians in Paris, in which a peasant-girl, under certain conditions
of morbid excitement, was able to move objects at some distance
from her without touching them. Taking the evidence for what it
may be worth, the discovery of such a faculty would only, I suppose,
justify us in concluding that some new vital energy was developing
itself under the conditions of modern life, and not that any interfer-

810 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ence with the laws of Nature had taken place. Yet the generally
obstinate refusal of men of science to receive any verbal witness of
such facts is a proof that they believe them contrary to a code of law
which is more or less complete in their experience, and altogether com-
plete in their conception ; and I think it is therefore the province of
some one of our scientific members to lay down for us the true prin-
ciple by which we may distinguish the miraculous violation of a known
law from the natural discovery of an unknown one. . . . However," he
proceeded, "the two main facts we have to deal with are that the his-
torical record of miracle is always of inconstant power, and that our
own actual energies are inconstant almost in exact proportion to their
worthiness. First, I say the history of miracle is of inconstant power.
St. Paul raises Eutychus from death, and his garments effect miracu-
lous cure, yet he leaves Trophimus sick at Miletus, recognizes only the
mercy of God in the recovery of Epaphroditus, and, like any uninspired
physician, recommends Timothy wine for his infirmities. And in the
second place, our own energies are inconstant almost in proportion to
their nobleness. We breathe with regularity, and can count upon the
strength necessary for common tasks, but the record of our best work
and our happiest moments is always one of success which we did not
expect, and of enthusiasm which we could not prolong."

As Mr. Ruskin ceased, Walter Bagehot, the then editor of the
" Economist," and a favorite among us for his literary brilliance,
opened his wide black eyes, and, gulping down what seemed to be an
inclination to laugh at some recollection of his own, said : Mr. Rus-
kin's remark that he had always been expecting the sun to stand still
was to me peculiarly interesting, because, as I have formerly told the
society, whatever may be the grounds for assuming the uniformity of
Nature, I hold that tbere is nothing which the natural mind of man,
unless subjected to a very serious discipline for the express purpose of
producing that belief, is less likely to assume. A year or two ago I
ventured to express in this room the opinion that credulity is the nat-
ural condition of almost every man. "Every child," I said, "believes
Avhat the footman tells it, what the nurse tells it, and what its mother
tells it, and probably every one's memory will carry him back to the
horrid mass of miscellaneous confusion which he acquired by believing
all he heard." I hold that children believe in the suggestions of their
imaginations quite as confidently as they believe in the asseverations
of tbeir memories ; and if grown-up men do not, it is only that their
credulity has been battered out of them by the hard discipline of con-
stant disappointment. What can be better evidence that there is at
least no a priori belief in the uniformity of Nature than the delight in
fairy tales, which, certainly in childhood, are accepted with quite as
much private belief that some great enchanter's wand will be trium-
phantly found at last, as are the dullest and most matter-of-fact of
histories? Indeed, you will find in almost every young person of any

" THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY." 811

promise the profoundest tendency to revolt against the law of uniform
succession as too dull to he credible, and to exult in the occasional evi-
dence which the history of their time affords that "truth after all is
strano-er than fiction." Is not the early love of tales of marvel, and the
later love of tales of wild adventure and hair-breadth escapes, and again,
the deep pleasure which we all feel in that "poetic justice " which is so
rare in actual experience, a sufficient proof that men retain, even to the
last, a keen prepossession against the doctrine that laws of uniform an-
tecedency and consequence can be traced throughout the most inter-
esting phases of human life ? Even in the city, where so many hopes
are crushed every day, the " Bull " goes on believing in his own too
sanguine expectations, and the " Bear " in his own dismal predictions,
without correcting his own bias as experience should have led him to
correct it. I believe it will be found that nothing is more difficult
than to beat into the majority of minds the belief that there is such a
thing as a " law of Nature " at all. So far as I can judge, nine women
out of ten have never adequately realized what a law of Nature means,
nor is the proportion much smaller for men, unless they have been well
drilled in some department of physics. Of course, I heartily agree with
Dr. Ward that experience can not prove the uniformity of Nature, and
for this very good reason, among others, that it is impossible to say
what the uniformity of Nature means. We can not exhaust the number
of interfering causes which may break that uniformity. I at least can
not doubt that, so far as mind influences matter, there may be a vast
multitude of real disturbing causes introduced by mind to break
through those laws of uniformity in material things, of which at pres-
ent we know only the elements. But of this I am very sure, that at
present we are much apter to accept superficial and inadequate evidence
of the breach of laws of uniformity than we ought to be ; that educa-
tion does not do half enough to beat out of our minds that credulous
expectation that there is some disposition in the governing principles
of the universe, either to favor us or to persecute us, as the case
may be, which springs, not from experience, but from groundless
prejudice and prepossession ; and that much greater efforts should be
made to set before young people the true inexorability of Nature's
laws than is actually made at present. It is quite true that no man
can say positively either that the sun will rise to-morrow, or that an
iron bar will fall to the ground if the hand drops it. We do not abso-
lutely know that the sun may not blaze up and go out before to-mor-
row, as it is said that some stars of considerable magnitude have blazed
up and gone out. We do not know that there may not be some enor-
mously powerful and invisible magnet in the neighborhood which will
attract the iron bar upward with more force than that with which
the earth pulls it downward. But we do know that in millions and
billions of cases expectations founded on the same sort of evidence as
the expectation that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the dropped

8i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bar will fall to the earth, have been verified, and that the imaginative
illusion which half-educated people still so often indulge, that excep-
tions will occur for the occurrence of which there is no rational evi-
dence, is a most mischievous one, which we ought to try to eradicate.
We ought to engage what I have ventured in this society to call the
" emotion of conviction," the caprices of which are so extravagant and
so dangerous, much more seriously on the side of the uniformity of
Nature than we have ever hitherto done. We should all try to distin-
guish more carefully than we do between possibility, probability, and
certainty. It is not as certain that the sun will rise to-morrow as it is
that I was cold before I entered this room ; it is not as certain that
Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be paid as it is that the sun will rise
to-morrow ; it is not as certain that Peel's Act will always be sus-
pended in a panic as it is that Messrs. Baring's acceptances will be
paid. And it is difficult for " such creatures as we are " to accommo-
date our expectations to these varying degrees of reasonable evidence.
But though experience, however long and cumulative, can never prove
£he absolute uniformity of Nature, it surely ought to train us to bring
our expectations into something like consistency with the uniformity
of Nature. And as I endeavor to effect this in my own mind, I
certainly can not agree with Mr. Ruskin that I have always been
" expecting " the sun to stand still. Probably as a child I was
always expecting things quite as improbable as that. But if I ex-
pected them now I should not have profited as much by the disillu-
sionizing character of my experience as I endeavor to hope that I
actually have.

There was a general smile as Bagehot ceased, but the smile ceased
as Mr. Fitzjames Stephen — the present Sir James Stephen — took up
the discussion by remarking, in the mighty bass that always exerted a
sort of physical authority over us, that while the society seemed to be
pretty well agreed upon the main question, namely, tLat the uniformity
of Nature could not be absolutely proved by experience, or, indeed, by
any other method, there was a point in Dr. Ward's paper, namely, the
challenge to examine seriously into the authenticity of miracles, which
had not been dealt with. For my part, he said, I am quite ready to
examine into the evidence of any so-called miracle, that is, into the
evidence of any unusual event which is offered to prove Divine inter-
ference in our affairs, when it comes before me with sufficient presump-
tion of authority to render it worth my while to investigate it ; though
I probably should not agree with Dr. Ward as to what constitutes
such a presumption. Certainly " a bare, uncorroborated assertion by a
person professing to be an eye-witness of an event is not sufficient evi-
dence of that event to warrant action of an important kind based upon
the supposition of its occurrence. When you are obliged to guess,
such an assertion may be a reason for making one guess rather than
another. Less evidence than this would make a banker hesitate as to a

« THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY." 813

person's credit, or would lead a customer to doubt whether his banker
was solvent ; but in such cases all that is possible is a guess more or
less judicious, and a guess, however judicious, is a totally different
thing from settled rational belief. As regards all detailed matters of
fact, I think there is a time, greater or less, during which the evidence
connected with them may be collected, examined, and recorded. If
this is done, a judgment can be formed on the truth of allegations re-
specting them at any distance of time. Such judgments are rarely abso-
lute ; they ought always or nearly always to be tempered by some de-
gree of doubt, but I do not think they need be affected by lapse of time.
If, however, this opportunity is lost, if no complete examination is made
at the time of an incident, or if being made it is not properly or fully
recorded, clouds of darkness which can never be dispelled settle down
upon it almost immediately. All that remains behind is an indistinct
outline which can never be filled up. Under certain conditions rare
occurrences are quite as probable as common ones. The main condition
of the probability of such an event is that the rare occurrence should,
from its nature and from the circumstances under which it occurs, be ca-
pable of being observed, and that the evidence of it should be recorded
in the manner which I have already described. If a moa were caught
alive and publicly exhibited for money, or if the body of a sea-serpent
were to be cut up upon the coast and duly examined by competent
naturalists, the existence of moas and sea-serpents could be proved
beyond all reasonable doubt. The reason why their existence is dis-
believed or doubted is not that they are seen, if at all, so seldom,
but because in each particular instance they are seen, if at all, in such
an unsatisfactory way that it is doubtful whether they ever were seen.
There are innumerable ghost-stories in circulation, but as far as I know
no instance has ever yet been even alleged to exist in which the exist-
ence of a ghost has been properly authenticated as readily and as con-
clusively as that of any other being whatever. Stories of the inter-
ference of unseen agents stand upon exactly the same footing, speak-
ing generally. Isolated instances occur in all ages and countries, but
the common characteristic of them all is to be unauthenticated. Ten
cases distinctly proved under the conditions referred to . . . would do
more to settle the question of the existence of miracles as a class than
innumerable cases depending on assertions which were not properly
examined when they were originally made, and which can now never
be examined. On the other hand, what reason can possibly be sug-
gested why the action of an invisible person upon matter should not
be ascertained just as clearly as the action of a visible person ? The
restoration of a dead body to life might, if it occurred, be proved as
conclusively and as notoriously as the death of a living person, or the
birth of a child. If such events formed a real class to which new
occurrences might be assigned, a large number of instances of those
occurrences would be, so to speak, upon record, established beyond all

8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

doubt, and the very existence of the controversy shows that nothing
of the sort exists."

Hereupon the Archbishop of Westminster, looking at Mr. Stephen
with a benign smile, said : Mr. Stephen's investigations into the evi-
dence of the interference of unseen agents in human affairs are hardly
on a par with some of those undertaken by the Church to which I be-
long. In canonizing, or even beatifying those who are lost to us, the
Holy See has long been accustomed to go into the evidence of such
events as those to which Mr. Stephen has just referred, and that with
a disposition to pick holes in the evidence, which, if he will allow me
to say so, could hardly be surpassed even by so able a sifter of evi-
dence as Mr. Stephen himself. Nor is it indeed necessary to go into
the archives of these laborious and most skeptically conducted investi-
gations. If there were but that predisposition among Protestants to
believe in the evidence of the unseen which Dr. "Ward desired to see,
there would, I am convinced, be many believers in miracles of the
most astounding kind, and of miracles that have happened in our own
time, many within the last year. Let those who choose, for instance,
look into the evidence of the most astonishing cure of varicose veins
which took place only last year in the south of France — a malady of
thirty years' standing, and of steady progress throughout that time,
attested on the positive evidence of French physicians, who had them-
selves repeatedly seen and prescribed for the patient. Yet they ad-
mitted that all they could do would be at most to alleviate his suffer-
ings by the application of mechanical pressure — and they nevertheless
declared the cure to have been effected in a single night, the only new
condition having been the believing application of the Lourdes water
to the body of the sufferer. Here is a case where all Mr. Fitzjames
Stephen's conditions are satisfied to the full. I do not, however, ap-
prehend that Mr. Stephen will sift the evidence, or even regard it as
worth his serious attention. He has hardly assigned sufficient force to
that strong predisposition to incredulity which is so widely spread at
this moment in the Protestant world, a predisposition which I can not
entirely reconcile with Mr. Bagehot's very striking remarks on the
universal credulousness of the natural man. Perhaps, however, there
may be such credulousness where there is no prejudice, and yet in-
credulity still more marked where there is. I have been a careful ob-
server of the attitude of Protestants in relation to the controversy
between the natural and supernatural. I have seen its growth. I
have watched its development. I am persuaded that Mr. Stephen is
quite wrong in supposing that the matter can be settled as one of evi-
dence alone. You must first overcome that violent prejudice in your
minds which prevents you from vouchsafing even a glance at the evi-
dence we should have to offer you. But I will, if the society permits
me, leave that part of the subject, and return to the principal question
before us — the impossibility of proving the uniformity of Nature from

"THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY." 815

experience alone. Now, how do we Catholics, who have a philosophy
the value of which we imagine that you believers in Spencer and Mill
and Bain greatly underrate, account for the uniformity of Nature
without trenching in any way on the supernatural basis of that Na-
ture ? I will show you. Aquinas says in his " Summa " — and the Arch-
bishop, of course, pronounced his Latin in the Continental manner —
" Tota irrationalis natura comparatur ad Deum sicut instrumentum ad
agens principale" — the whole of inanimate and irrational Nature
bears to the Divine being the relation of an instrument to the princi-
pal agent. That is to say, the Divine intellect conceives the law
which the Divine will sanctions and enforces by a great methodical
instrument. The natura naturans makes use of the natura naturata.
The law determines the instrument it is to use, and the instrument it
is to use determines the world. Why, then, should the law be regular
and not variable ? Why, because it is the instrument of a being who
is not variable. The schoolmen tell us that Nature has an appetite, a
desire to accomplish its ends. They say of Nature " appetit," " de-
siderat." Such are the phrases they use. And as no constant aim, no
true development can be attained by capricious, inconsistent, incon-
sequent action, by instruments incoherent, part with part — for the
gratification of Nature's appetite, for the fulfillment of her desire, and
the attainment of her purpose, a constancy and fixity of method are
essential which are never interrupted, save where the Divine power
modifies the instrument for its own good purpose. Thus the uniformity
of Nature is based upon the wisdom of God, and the wisdom of God
is manifested in the uniformity of Nature. St. Thomas has said,
" Proprium est naturae rationalis ut tendat in finem quasi se agens et
ducens ad finem." And again : " Necessitas naturalis inhaerens rebus,
qua determinantur ad unum, est impressio quaedam Dei dirigentis ad
finem, sicut necessitas qua sagitta agitur ut ad certum signum tendat,
est impressio sagittantis et non sagittae "; that is, the necessity, or may
we not say the uniformity of Nature, is a career impressed upon it by
the Divine archer, who never misses his mark ; it is not the arrow
which determines that career, but the archer who points and who dis-
misses the arrow in its flight. But St. Thomas goes on : " Sed in hoc
differt, quod id quod creaturae a Deo recipiunt est earum natura, quod
autem ab homine rebus naturalibus imprimitur praeter earum naturam
ad violentiam pertinet." Dr. Ward will correct me if I am wrong,
but I interpret this as meaning that if what men ingraft on lower
creatures is spoken of by the angelic doctor as doing them a certain
violence, altering, I suppose, their mere involuntary qualities by in-
fecting them with a certain human purposiveness not their own, how
much more is it evidently open to the Divine purpose to ingraft on
this uniformity of Nature a supernatural bent of its own, to open it, as
it were, to the power of miracle, to infuse it with the significance of
revelation !

816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. Ward, I thought, winced a little when this appeal was made
to him ; whether it was that he differed with the Archbishop as to
the drift of the passage quoted, or whether he regarded the society
as in general too little educated in philosophy to appreciate arguments
derived from the teaching of St. Thomas. As the Archbishop ceased,
a good many eyes were turned upon Dr. Martineau, as if we had now
got into a region where no less weighty a thinker would be adequate
to the occasion.

I think, said Dr. Martineau — speaking with a singularly perfect
elocution, and giving to all his consonants that distinct sound which
is so rare in conversational speech — I think that the course of this
discussion has as yet hardly done justice to the a priori elements in
human thought which have contributed to the discovery of the gen-
eral uniformity of Nature, and to the axiomatic character of the prin-
ciple which we are discussing. I should not entirely agree with the
Archbishop or with St. Thomas if I rightly apprehended the quota-
tions from him, that we ought to ground our belief on the uniformity
of Nature 'primarily on our belief in the constancy of the Divine
mind. Historically, I doubt whether that could be maintained. For
example, the Hebrew Scriptures, which are full of the praise of the
moral constancy of the Creator, appear to attach very little impor-
tance to the uniformity of Nature's methods, which they often treat
as if they were as pliant as language itself to the formative thought
behind it. Still less can I agree with Mr. Bagehot's view that every-
thing which rushes into the mind is believed without hesitation till
hard experience scourges us into skepticism. I should say rather that
the understanding is prepared to accept uniform laws of causation by
the very character of human reason itself. It is remarkable enough
that Aristotle fully recognizes the close connection between the neces-
sary character of human inference and the necessary relation of cause
with effect, that he treats the " beginning of change " {a-pyy\ Kivrjo-ews) a-J
either the cause which necessarily results in an effect, or the reason
which necessarily results in an inference. " An efficient cause, there-
fore, may be found in any beginning of change either in the physical
world or the logical. In both cases it has the same characteristics :
necessity, whether in the form of inevitable sequence or in that of
irresistible inference ; and consecutive advance, a step at a time, along
a determinate line, whether in outward nature or in inward thought.
Whatever is, it either acts out or thinks out what is next. So far,
therefore, as the universe is at the disposal of efficient causes, its con-
dition at each moment results purely from the immediately prior, with-
out the possibility of any new beginning. If an experienced observer
could compress into a formula the law of all the simultaneous con-
ditions, he would be able to foresee the contents of any future mo-
ment— not, however, to modify them, for his prescience depends on
their being in themselves determinate, and on his calculations em-

« THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY:' 817

bracing all the elements of the problem, including the states of his
own mind. This efficient causality can be denied by no one who
admits the dynamic idea at all ; and no phenomenon can dispense
with it."

Here we have, as I conceive, the clew to the principle of the uni-
formity of Nature. So far as Nature is purely dynamic, and so far as
force is measured by reason, we can not stray from the rigid logic of
fact and the equally rigid logic of thought. Doubtless it will be re-
plied that, as in the mind of man there is a free spring of force, which
is as yet undetermined, which is potential and not actual force, so
there is behind Nature a free spring of force which is as yet undeter-
mined, which is potential and not actual nature — in short, a power
above nature and capable of modifying it ; in other words, super-
natural. And that doctrine I should heartily accept. The uniformity
of Nature is the uniformity of force, just as the uniformity of reason-
in o- is the uniformity of thought. But just as the indeterminateness
of creative will stands behind the determinateness of the orbit of
force, so the indeterminateness of creative purpose stands behind the
determinateness of the orbit of thought or inference. I hold that man
is not wholly immersed in dynamic laws, that though our physical
constitution is subject to them, our mental constitution rises above
them into a world where free self-determination is possible. I do not
wonder, therefore, that we find it difficult to realize the rigidity of
the laws of efficient causation even so far as it would be good for us
to realize them. But I can not think that any one who has once con-
tracted the habit of even fixing his own attention can doubt for a
moment that cause and effect are connected together by efficient links,
nor that, if force outside us means the same thing as force inside us, the
relation of cause and effect is as necessary — unless some higher power
interfere to modify the cause — as the relation of premises to conclu-
sion. "With regard to Dr. Ward's invitation to us to examine more
carefully the credentials of miracle, I am inclined to agree with Mr.
Stephen that, if there were any tangible number of incontrovertible
miracles, there could be no controversy on the question whether or not
such things can be. But then I should not apply that remark to any
case of internal consciousness of supernatural influence, because, from
the very circumstances of the case, the evidence of the existence of
such influence can not be open to any mind except that which is the
subject of it, and in my view it is quite unreasonable to deny that
there are indirect but yet conclusive proofs in history that such super-
natural influences have transformed, and do still habitually transform,
the characters of the very greatest of our race. But it is one thing
to see the evidence of spiritual influence in every page of human his-
tory and quite another to attach importance to such preternatural
occurrences as the Archbishop has recently referred to, which are usu-
ally so mixed up with superstitions of all kinds, and so great a variety
vol. xxvii. — 52

818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of hysterical emotions, that I for one should despair of any good re-
sult from investigating minutely these curious conquests effected by
pretentious physical marvels over the gaping intellectual credulity of
moral coldness and disbelief.

Here the general discussion ended, but Dr. Ward, who had the
rifht of reply, exercised it with alertness and vigor.

I can not understand, he said, Dr. Martineau's position, that be-
cause the best testimony which we have in modern times to the inter-
ference of Divine power in the chain of physical causation is more or
less mixed up with what he would regard as superstition and hysteri-
cal emotion, therefore it is perfectly justifiable to leave such matters
uninvestigated, and to pass by on the other side. Surely the whole
character of modern civilization would be altered if we could prove
satisfactorily for ordinary minds that the Divine will is a true cause,
which manifests itself habitually to those who humbly receive the Di-
vine revelations. Is not Dr. Newman's celebrated assertion that Eng-
land would be in a far more hopeful condition if it were far more
superstitious, more bigoted, more disposed to quail beneath the stings
of conscience, and to do penance for its sins, than it is, at least plau-
sible for one who, like Dr. Martineau, believes profoundly that the true
worship of a righteous will is the highest end of all human life ? Can
anything be more superabundantly evident, more conspicuously and,
so to say, oppressively clear, than that ninety-nine men out of every
hundred live as if God were at most nothing more than a remote prob-
ability, which it is hardly worth while to take into account in the or-
dinary routine of life ? Suppose, if you please, that the majority of
men by studying the Lourdes miracles will be brought, if they are
convinced at all, to burn an immense number of wax tapers to the
holy Virgin, and to dress up a number of very gaudy dolls in the
churches dedicated to her, by way of showing their gratitude to her
for curing paralytics and other miserable sufferers by the application
of Lourdes water. Is that so much more superstitious, after all, than
attributing similar cures to the transit of St. Peter's shadow, or to
handkerchiefs taken from St. Paul's body, as the author of the Acts
of the Apostles certainly did ? Nor, indeed, is it a matter of the very
highest moment whether people show their faith foolishly or whether
it overshoots the mark, and attributes imaginary effects to a real cause.
What is a matter of the highest moment is whether or not they feel
or do not feel their religious faith in every action of their life. If
God is really ruling you, is it not better to feel his eye upon you, even
though you show your sense of that vigilance unreasonably and foolish-
ly, than to live on very much as you would do, if, as Isaiah said, God
were on a journey or had gone to sleep ? Can any one deny that any
awakening, however rude its consequences, to the reality of Divine pow-
er, would be infinitely better than the rapidly growing habit of living
as if behind Nature there were no God ? I do not of course say this to

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 819

any member of our society who doubts the reality of God's government,
but only to those who, with Dr. Martineau, regard it as the very first of
all truths. But to them I say, if miracles still exist, if they still exist in
the very form in which they are said to have existed in the Acts of the
Apostles, if they can be attested by men of science themselves, if, in
any Church, they happen not merely every year, but in considerable
numbers every year, and admit of all the tests to which Mr. Stephen
has referred us, then surely it can be nothing but a most reprehensible
and guilty fastidiousness to give the go-by to the evidence of these
things, simply on the groiind that they are mixed up with a great deal
of vulgar taste and of hysterical feeling. Is it not better to have a
vulgar belief in God than to have a fine susceptibility to scientific
methods ? Is it not better to have a feverish longing to do his will
than to have a delicate distaste for morbid devotion ? The uniformity
of Nature is the veil behind which, in these latter days, God is hidden
from us. I believe in the uniformity of Nature, but I believe in it far
more fervently as the background on which miracle is displayed than
I do merely as the fertile instrument of scientific discovery and of
physical amelioration. — Nineteenth Century.

A STUDY OF EECENT EARTHQUAKES.

By M. A. DAUBEEE.

SINCE communicat'i'on between the extremities of the earth has
become both easy and rapid, our ideas on many subjects have
been modified and have become more precise. Facts that formerly
appeared singular and extraordinary are recognized as frequent and
habitual. This is the case with reference to earthquakes. Numerous
telegrams, a few months ago, told in every part of the civilized world
of the shocks from which Andalusia, in Spain, was suffering. To the
astonishment and lively curiosity which these phenomena excited was
added a deep emotion which disasters of so dramatic and painful a
character would cause. The interest in the study of these things is
also enhanced by the additional knowledge it gives us respecting the
constitution of the crust of the earth — knowledge which, constantly
increasing, enables us the better to comprehend the different parts of
the mechanism of these subterranean perturbations.

Among the more recent earthquakes was the one that destroyed
most of the Island of Scio. On the 3d of April, 1881, about an hour
and forty minutes after noon, the city of Scio and thirty or forty
villages in the southern part of the island were disturbed with a vio-
lent trepidation. The shaken and cracked houses were still standing,
when, a few minutes afterward, a second shock, equally violent, came

820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on, and finished the work of the first. With it five thousand persons
were buried under the rubbish. A little while afterward four thou-
sand other persons were killed. Hardly had the people recovered
from the terror of one shock, than others came on, causing general
panic and stupor. Hardly a quarter of an hour would pass without a
new shock, and the wounded who had succeeded in extricating them-
selves from the rubbish were buried in it again. " Death," said an
eye-witness, " seemed to pursue its victims with fury. In less than an
hour Scio was an utter ruin." The agitations of the ground con-
tinued, with only short interruptions, for a year. During 1879 and
1880 Scio had suffered from frequent tremors, sometimes repeated as
many as ten times in a day. Mitylene and Smyrna were also similarly
affected, but none of the shocks were strong enough to cause great
anxiety. They were, as it were, the subterranean preparation for the
catastrophe that was to burst out a few months afterward.

The disaster that desolated the Island of Ischia two years afterward
excited no less of emotion. The main shock, on the 28th of July,
1883, was accompanied by a fearful rumbling, which was estimated
to last about twenty seconds. There was an extremely violent up-
ward movement that broke up the houses, followed by an undulatory
pulsation. The points most disturbed were aligned along the two
deep fractures of strata that traverse the island at right angles to one
another, crossing nearly under Casamicciola.

Less than a month after the shocks at Ischia followed the terrific
explosion of the volcanic Island of Krakatoa, near Java, with all its
unparalleled accompaniments : the planting of a deep sea where had
been a mountain ; the prodigious masses of pumice and stones from
the volcanic throat causing intense darkness for hours at long dis-
tances ; the finer particles scattering in the atmosphere and disturbing
its transparency and causing the red lights for months ; the marine
waves propagated to the ends of the ocean with the speed of the tides ;
the aerial waves making the circuit of the globe, according to baro-
metrical registrations, in two opposite directions ; the thirty thousand
human beings that perished ; and the villages and cultivated lands
which it blotted out — all caused a most vivid impression in all civil-
ized lands.

Now it is Andalusia, one of the finest parts of Europe, that is
struck with disasters. The shock that was felt on the 22d of De-
cember, 1884, on the western coasts of Spain and Portugal, and as far
as the Azores and Madeira, seemed to be a forerunner of the one, of
incomparably greater intensity, that took place three days afterward
in another part of the Iberian Peninsula. At about nine o'clock in
the evening of the 25th of December, the southern part of Andalusia
was so roughly shaken that fifty-six towns and villages in the prov-
inces of Malaga and Granada were devastated in less than ten seconds ;
and twenty of these places were nearly entirely destroyed. Among

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 821

them were Albania, Arenas el Rey, Albunuelas, Periana, Zaffaraya,
and Venta de Zaffaraya. These places, situated above the center of
the agitation, are scattered over a surface of which the principal di-
mension does not reach forty miles ; but the movements of the ground
extended far beyond this region, to Seville on the west, Cape Gadez
on the east, and Molena de Aragon. The movements provoked phe-
nomena of different kinds. Crevasses, several miles long and several
yards wide, were opened at various places. From one of them, near
Santa Cruz, exhaled fetid gases, having the odor of sulphureted hy-
drogen, and there burst from the same fissure a copious spring of
sulphurous water with a temperature of about 90° ; while at a short
distance from this point the thermal springs of Alhama, that have
been in use from antiquity, were heated to a higher temperature and
acquired a sulphurous character.

The districts near the Sierra Nevada and its ramifying spurs have
frequently been the center of subterranean commotions ; and it is an
important fact, not to be neglected, that the shocks have many times,
as in the present case, been repeated for several weeks in succession.

Among the movements which the ground undergoes during earth-
quakes, vertical shocks of great energy may sometimes be felt. Dur-
ing the earthquake in Calabria in 1783, houses were thrown up into
the air, as if by the explosion of a mine ; and at Riobamba, in Co-
lombia, in 1812, several persons were cast bodily upon a hill more than
three hundred feet high. These motions are called succussions, or
subsultory tremors. The most frequent movements, and generally
the most extended, are the undulatory ones, which are propagated
horizontally, like the waves which we can observe at any time on a
liquid surface. Like those waves, they may, when continued for some
minutes, cause a kind of sea-sickness. Sometimes the terrestrial un-
dulations are so strong as to bend over trees till their limbs touch
the ground. These two forms of tremor may be associated together,
or they may succeed one another at very short intervals. Various
instruments — seismographs or seismometers, analyzers, and pendu-
lums— are used to determine their intensity, direction, and duration,
and register their characters.

The intensity of the shocks is extremely variable. Sometimes they
are hardly perceptible, or marked only by low rumblings ; often they
are so strong that works of masonry are overthrown by them. For
this reason special modes of construction are employed in countries
subject to earthquakes, as adapted to oppose the least resistance.

In the most usual undulatory movement, the agitation is naturally
stronger at the top of buildings than at their base. Thus, in the
theatre at Madrid, on the 25th of December last, the upper gallery
was visibly shaken, while the parquette was unmoved. For the same
reason, the motions are incomparably less sensible in the interior of
mines than on top of the ground. M. Domeyko relates that he was

822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

once at the bottom of the silver-mines of Charnacillo, more than six
hundred feet underground, during an earthquake that destroyed his
own house and several others right above him, while he did not feel
the least agitation.

The duration of the shocks is generally very brief, sometimes not
more than a second or two. The undulatory movements are more pro-
longed. A few instants are sufficient to produce the most disastrous
effects. Three shocks, each of which was estimated to be not more
than four seconds long, destroyed more than 20,000 persons in and
around Caracas in March, 1812 ; and the convulsion at Pdobamba, in
1797, killed as suddenly 30,000 victims.

But, however overwhelming and disastrous in reference to our per-
sons and buildings earthquakes may be, it must be borne in mind that
the amplitude of their movements is wholly insignificant in propor-
tion to the dimensions of the globe whose epidermis they shake. The
phenomenon is rarely limited to a single shock. Generally, several
shocks follow one upon another at short intervals. In many cases,
the jnovements are repeated for months and years, with pauses of a
variable duration, so as to form as a whole, till they are totally extin-
guished, what might be called a seismic period. After the shock which
overthrew Thebes, on the 18th of August, 1851, the commotions con-
tinued in Boeotia for eleven months, occurring sometimes as often as
three times in twenty-four hours. Long series of shocks disturbed a
part of Scotland during the two years from the 20th of October, 1839,
to the 7th of December, 1841. Hundreds of similar examples might
be cited.

The chain of the Alps has furnished examples of seismic periods in
many of its parts. Series of shocks were felt at Pignerol, in Pied-
mont, from the 2d of April, 1808, till the 17th of May following, dur-
ing which time not a day passed but some movement was felt. Some-
times the tremors were noiseless, sometimes they were accompanied
with commotions preceding the destruction of buildings. The com-
motions were renewed on the 26th of September, the 28th of October,
and the 22d of November ; and in the next year on the 13th of March
and 2Gth of June. Similar periods of seismic action were observed in
le Valais in 1755, on Lake Gardo in 1866, on Monte Baldo in 1868,
and at Belluno in 1873. The present period in Andalusia is of the
same kind. The prelude of the 23d of December, which disturbed a
part of the Spanish Peninsula, the great earthquake of the 25th of De-
cember, and that long succession of shocks which still continued on
the 9th of March with sufficient violence to cause new ruins, belong to
the same series. As Humboldt has remarked, it is noteworthy that
series of this kind are produced more especially in countries distant
from volcanoes.

In the disturbed regions we may generally remark a tract of lim-
ited extent in which the movement is particularly energetic. It cor-

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 823

responds, without doubt, with the deep-seated center of impulsion,
and has been called the epicenter. Here is where the vertical shocks
or succussions are most usually felt. From these radiate the undula-
tory movements, the speed of propagation of which has been estimated
at from 1,100 to 1,500 feet per second, or about that of sound in the
air. Sometimes the area of disturbance is very limited, even when
the convulsion is most violent ; at other times it is very extensive, as
was the case in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which affected a sur-
face equivalent to one-thirteenth of that of the globe. Most frequently
the linear dimensions of the agitated surfaces are included within from
65 to 600 miles, or from one four-hundredth to one fortieth of the cir-
cumference of the earth.

The area of disturbance is usually irregular in form, and not cir-
cular, as was once supposed. Sometimes it is much lengthened in one
direction, following the lines of neighboring mountains or other im-
portant accidents of structure. During the earthquakes of 1783 and
October, 1876, the chain of the Apennines served as a protecting wall
to the eastern provinces of the Italian Peninsula. While one side of
the chain was assailed by thousands of shocks, which caused great dis-
asters, nothing whatever was felt on the opposite slope. In the Alps,
most of the earthquakes take place in the lateral, north and south
spurs, which are formed of sedimentary beds, while the central chain,
composed of crystalline rocks, is not disturbed. The Andes of South
America form a natural bulwark which the strongest convulsions of
the Pacific littoral, while they extend a long distance parallel to the
chain, hardly ever cross ; and, if occasionally a few shocks are propa-
gated beyond it, they become extremely weak.

The movements are very unequally perceptible within the area of
disturbances ; and between two points shaken by the same impulsion
there may be intermediate points that continue quiet. These are some-
times called bridges or arches. The shocks are frequently accompa-
nied by noises resembling heavily loaded wagons rolling over the
pavement, or subterranean thunders or roarings ; but their intensity
bears no kind of proportion to that of the agitation. The great earth-
quake of Riobamba, in 1797, was silent. But the sounds have relation
to the rocks that transmit them. Then there are subterranean rum-
blings that are associated with shocks like the bramidos of Guanajuato,
in Mexico, in 1784, continuing for a month, under terror of which the
inhabitants left the city. There were flashes as of lightning, alternat-
ing with long rollings, like that of distant thunder. This phenomenon
gradually passed away. The noises associated with earthquakes seem
to be of the same nature as those that accompany eruptions. The lat-
ter are propagated through the ground, not the air, for hundreds of
miles. But nothing else that is known of this kind reaches the pro-
portions of what took place on the 26th of August, 1883, at the erup-
tion of Krakatoa, the sounds of which were heard within the whole

82+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

area of a circle of 30°, or nearly 2,000 miles radius, or a diameter of
one sixth the circumference of the globe.

The ocean basins are also disturbed, as is proved by the shocks
suffered by ships on the deep, without any apparent external cause,
and which give an impression as though the vessel were running upon
a shoal. The movements of the littoral, also, however slight may be
their intensity, are transmitted to the liquid mass. The sea retires
from the shore, leaving the bottom dry, sometimes for several miles.
Then it returns swiftly upon itself, and, overleaping its normal limit,
precipitates itself with fury, and as if in assault, toward the interior of
the country, as an enormous wave, which has been frequently known,
as in Chili, to reach a height of 100 or 125 feet. Then it retires, car-
rying out upon the deep whatever it has gathered up in its passage.
This terrible oscillation is repeated three or four times with decreasing
energy, unless the movements of the ground persist. These invasions
of the sea, or tidal-waves, are often more dreaded by the people, who
have had experience of them, than the shocks on land. The huge
wave* are also propagated in the ocean to a very great distance from
the center of disturbance. Twelve hours after an earthquake that de-
stroyed the city of Simoda, Japan, in December, 1854, a formidable
wave was precipitated upon the Californian coast, 5,600 miles away.
In 1868 a wave of similar origin destroyed Arequipa and Arica, Peru,
and ingulfed 30,000 persons. It seemed to have come from Honolulu,
in twelve hom*s, or with a speed of 450 miles an hour. The most
striking example is that of the wave that followed the Krakatoa ex-
plosion, which traveled over a distance of 11,890 miles, or half-way
round the globe, in twenty hours and fifty minutes, or at the rate,
according to M. Bouquet de la Grye's estimate, of about 900 feet a
second.

Earthquakes may also effect permanent changes in the relief of the
land, not only in the shape of crevasses and the overturning of rocks ;
slight though appreciable elevations have also .been observed, as in
Chili, in 1822, 1835, and 1837. In the last case, marine shells, still alive
and adhering to the rocks on which they had grown, appeared above
the level of the sea, and served as indisputable witnesses of the change
of level which had been suddenly produced.

Movements of another class are extremely weak, and can not be
perceived without the aid of special and delicate instruments. In
1869 M. d'Abbadie, examining the surface of a mercurial bath in his
observatory at Abbadia, discovered very slight but frequent variations
in the situation of the vertical, from which he inferred that the ground
is not always motionless, even when it has all the appearances of being
so. The same fact has since been confirmed in many places. Abrupt
oscillations that have been frequently perceived in the astronomical
glasses at the observatory of Pulkowa, and were observed at Nice on
the 27th of November, 1884, are also revelations of disturbances in

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 825

the terrestrial crust. The French Academicians Bouguer and La Con-
damine had already come to a similar conclusion in 1741, when they
were measuring zenith distances of stars. It could hardly have been
anticipated that the observation of the stars would reveal processes
that were going on down in the interior of our planet.

These movements, not directly perceptible by our senses, are sub-
jected to an attentive daily study in Italy, at twenty-eight stations,
scattered from one end of the peninsula to the other ; and the results
of the obseiwations are centralized at the geodynamic observatory in
Rome under the direction of M. Rossi. The movements are distin-
guished as very rapid and prolonged tremors (fremiti), and microseis-
mic undulations, characterized by their extreme slowness. The ob-
servations of each day are depicted on a map of Italy by means of
conventional signs, so that they may be followed in all their details as
well as in the aggregate, at a single glance. Weak as these phenome-
na may be, they are well worthy of attention by reason of their con-
tinuous and general character ; for they reveal an internal labor under
the foundations of the ground, that never stops.

The crust of the earth also suffers displacements of a secular slow-
ness, unaccompanied by any sudden movement ; a class of phenomena
which would never have been made known, if the mean level of the
sea did not offer, at the shore, an invariable beach-mark by which to
measure them. Tracts, which have manifestly been submerged with-
in historical times, are now above the level of the sea, and consti-
tute what are called raised beaches ; while, on the other hand, forests,
described in history as partly submarine, are now, in consequence of
the depression of the soil, wholly under water. Such changes of level,
very numerous and well established in all parts of the globe, are some-
times repeated in an oscillatory fashion of alternate elevations and de-
pressions. They were formerly attributed to changes in the level of
the sea, but the movement is in the land. They are in continuance of
analogous changes which took place on vast scales during all the an-
cient geological periods. They are not to be confounded with superfi-
cial erosions and delta formations, which are quite different in charac-
ter as well as in cause.

In view of these facts we are justified in saying that the crust of
the earth is very far from being still. At every instant and in many
of its parts it is undergoing very pronounced and often violent shocks.
More frequently the movements are simply thrills, which can be dis-
covered and studied only by a kind of auscultation. They are really
continuous and of different kinds. It remains to inquire to what sub-
terranean causes they should be attributed.

Numerous as the observations on earthquakes maybe, they concern
merely the external manifestations of a phenomenon the source of
which is completely hidden from us, separated by a considerable thick-
ness of rocks. Hence we have no clear, certain data by which to sup-

826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

port an explanatory hypothesis. The phenomena have heen variously
ascribed to subterranean electric storms, to the influence of the sun,
supposed to be potent over the interior regimen of the planets as well
as upon their course in their orbits ; to thrusts of the liquid or semi-
liquid masses of the interior against parts of the solid crusts, which
may be caused by the same forces as produce the tides ; to sudden re-
ductions of atmospheric pressure ; or to the fall of immense masses of
rocks in vast interior cavities.

Numerous and exact studies, bringing into clear view the relations
of earthquakes with the geological structure of the countries subject
to them, have given us a better comprehension of their organic causes.
An important fact, developed by patient statistical research, is the
great inequality in the geographical distribution of the phenomena.
There are vast regions in which they are very rare and feeble, and
others where the agitations are frequent and often very violent. But
it is a significant fact in this connection that the frequency of the dis-
turbances is not so much associated with geographical position as with
peculiar characters in the constitution of the crust of the earth. Thus,
many earthquake regions are characterized by the presence of active
volcanoes. A striking example of such association is presented in the
narrow tract between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, in South
America, particularly in Colombia, Ecuador, and Chili. " On the
coasts of Peru," says A. von Humboldt, " the sky is always clear ;
neither hail nor stonns nor fierce lightnings are known ; the subterra-
nean thunder attending the earthquake-shocks takes the place of the
thunder of the clouds. By long habit and the general opinion that
only two or three destructive shocks are likely to occur in a hundred
years, the people of Lima are but little more afraid of earthquakes
than those of the temperate zones are of hail-storms." In this region,
between the sixteenth and twenty-fourth degrees of latitude, there are
eighteen volcanoes ; Chili, eminently subject to earthquakes, has thirty-
three active volcanoes, between 33° and 43° south. Very different con-
ditions prevail east of the Cordilleras, where vast countries like Bra-
zil have no earthquakes. Farther north, on the isthmus, there are re-
gions where the shocks are so frequent that one of them has been called
" Cuscuttan," or the hammock. The single state of Nicaragua has
twenty-four volcanoes. Along the coast of Asia is a zone of volca-
noes and earthquakes about 9,000 miles long. It begins at Barren
Island in the Bay of Bengal, crosses Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, and
the Philippines, bends around by Formosa and the neighboring archi-
pelagoes to Japan, and then to the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka, and
ends at last in the Aleutian Islands. Through all this zone the volca-
noes are numerous and active, and in some parts of it at least, as in
Japan and the Philippine Islands, the earth is never at rest. The seis-
mograph at Manila is always in motion, even when the ground seems
still, and a year never passes without a severe shock. The connection

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 827

between earthquake crises and volcanic crises is also shown by alterna-
tions in their activity. Every volcanic eruption is heralded by pre-
cursory tremors, whose violence is calmed down as soon as a volcanic
outlet is opened for the escape of the vapors. Now, the vapor of
water is the recognized cause of volcanic eruptions, and constitutes, iu
all parts of the earth, the most abundant and most constant emanation
from them. It is the agent that throws out from the depths to the
surface the lavas, which, despite their high temperature, hold it in-
corporated in their paste ; in the same way that carbonic acid, dis-
solved in water, forces the liquid impetuously out of a mineral-water
or a champagne bottle ; and it also shoots quantities of solid matter,
stones, lapilli, and cinders, violently into the atmosphere. It is logical
to believe that this vapor is likewise the cause of the agitations that
accompany volcanic crises. Agreeably to this idea, Kircher and Hum-
boldt regarded volcanoes as safety-valves against earthquakes.

Other countries, again, where there are no volcanoes, are disturbed
with no less energy and frequency, and that over great areas. Of
such is the southern part of the basin of the Mediterranean. Syria
with Palestine, Asia Minor, Turkey in Europe, Greece and the archi-
pelagoes, Italy, Sicily, the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula, and
,a part of its western coast around Lisbon, have shown evidences of
this predisposition within historical times. In each of these countries
are districts or places that have been associated with most disastrous
convulsions. In them we may discern a common and essential charac-
teristic in the shape of a dislocation of the constituent strata, which is
revealed for the most part in a mountainous relief.

In some whole countries the sedimentary strata, which form a nota-
ble part of the thickness of the earth's crust, have remained horizontal
or nearly so, as they were deposited. In other countries, and over
considerable areas, the corresponding strata are raised up, bent, and
contorted in different ways, having been subjected to dislocations
through enormous thicknesses. Such lifts and foldings can not have
taken place in solid masses without being accompanied by many and
important fractures. The principal classes of such fractures, which
are nearly vertical, are called faults. They crop out and cut the sur-
face of the ground, sometimes for tens and hundreds of miles, and are
of indefinite depth, or descend to below where it is possible for man
to penetrate ; whenever a fault is produced, the two sides are displaced,
and must rub hard upon one another ; and vast rocky surfaces are
thus engraved, striated, and polished : thence they are called mirrors in
the language of the miners.

The occurrence of these facts is not confined to mountain-chains,
but may be observed in countries that are marked by only slight
prominences, but which have undergone similar actions through all
their constituent strata. It is evident that the solid envelope of the
globe has undergone dislocations at many epochs in its history. The

828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

manifestations of gigantic force thus plainly registered are the effects
of ancient back-foldings and of lateral or horizontal pressures. It is
as if the crust of the earth had become too large for the supporting
nucleus, and had, to keep in contact with it, to shrink up and bend
upon itself. These foldings and fractures have given origin to chains
of mountains.

Now, the geological study of earthquakes has shown that their cen-
ters of impulsion are in relation with the ground-lines of fracture and
dislocation. The disturbed bands are usually longitudinally parallel
to the chains. A recent example of this linear disposition has been
added in the latest earthquake in Andalusia, the major axis of which,
according to M. Fouque, is parallel to the mountain-crests of the prov-
ince, as well as to the numerous faults that cut it up. Another im-
portant point to be noticed is that the countries in which the mount-
ains have most recently acquired their latest relief are the ones in
which these subterranean agitations are particularly frequent.

The Andalusian masses which have been so rudely disturbed within
a fewmonths partake of all the structural conditions that have just
been noticed. The Sierra Nevada is among the youngest chains of
mountains on the globe. The tertiary strata around it have been pow-
erfully lifted up, sometimes to more than three thousand feet above
the sea, without having their horizontality destroyed. According to
M. de Botella there are also, in different places at the foot of the chain,
strata regarded as quaternary that have been tilted into an inclination
of 65°. Furthermore, numerous faults furrow the country, while the
parts that have been most disturbed, according to Macpherson, are
upon the faults that terminate the crystalline mass of the Sierra Tejea
and Almijara. The numerous thermal springs of the region are fur-
ther evidences of the deep fractures that traverse it.

Similar conditions, dislocations, and recent age, are found in other
regions subject to subterranean perturbations. They appear notably in
that part of the Mediterranean basin which we have spoken of as espe-
cially agitated, although it is distant from volcanoes ; in the Apennines,
the Lebanon, and the mountainous masses of Dalmatia and Croatia bor-
dering on the Adriatic. The configuration of the northern coasts of
that sea, so exceptionally slashed and cut by deep indentations, results
from the complexity of the fractures that have determined the outlines
of their principal features. Even the chain of the Alps, where shocks
are felt nearly every year, acquired its final relief only at a compara-
tively recent epoch. It is conceivable under such conditions that the
interior masses are not yet at equilibrium nor wholly subsided, and
that they contain vacant spaces affording room for further sinkings.

According to what seems to be the dominant opinion of the day,
there are two kinds of earthquakes : those which are due to volcanic
actions, and of which the vapor of water is the prime mover ; and those
which are the effect of such ruptures of the equilibrium of the solid

A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 829

masses as we have just been considering. It is hard for the mind to
admit two causes so different for phenomena which in most of their
features so resemble one another. The demarkation between them is
hard to define. On the western coast of South America and in Vene-
zuela earthquakes facing volcanic ranges and those distant from such
phenomena present the same manifestations. The supposition that the
phenomena are due to the rubbing together of the solid parts of the
crust also encounters a serious objection in the remarkable repetition
of shocks during the same crises. In fact, this reiteration of shocks
by the hundred and the thousand, for weeks and months, is one of the
most characteristic accompaniments of earthquakes.

In view of these periods of disturbances, the cause, instead of
being exhausted by a few shocks at short intervals, as would happen
under the supposition that the first cause is the action of solid masses
upon one another, should be one that could re-enforce itself after hav-
ing been temporarily weakened. This is an essential fact, which any
proposed solution must explain. We first remark that water, con-
fined in a close space which it fills, will come, when it reaches a high
enough temperature, to have a power which it is hard to represent in
figures.

In nature, the tension of the vapor in the volcanic reservoirs is
exhibiting its energy at every instant ; for that which forces the lava
out of the crater of Etna, about ten thousand feet above the sea, can
not be less than one thousand atmospheres. The conditions necessary
to give such tensions can not fail to be realized in the crust of the
earth at a certain depth, beyond the domains of real volcanoes, and
principally under chains of mountains and dislocated tracts. It is an
ascertained fact that, whatever may be the constitution of the ground,
the temperature increases regularly as we descend to a lower depth.
At the same time water tends to descend, under the joint influence of
gravity and capillarity, and may continue to descend till it reaches
the deep and hot regions where it can acquire a temperature that will
render it capable of producing great mechanical and chemical effects.
Hence we can hardly doubt that waters from the surface reach the
internal regions, and then make us feel in the shape of tremors and
rumbling the power and explosive force which they gain there.

The depth at which the agency from which earthquakes originate
should be sought has been the subject of careful studies. The results
indicate that it is not seated in the central parts of the globe. This
is the inevitable conclusion from such cases as the earthquakes in Cala-
bria, in which the disturbed area was very small.

It is probable that the consolidation of the deep parts under the
dislocated regions and especially under chains of mountains of a rela-
tively recent age is not yet completed, and that there are still inter-
stices and interior cavities of high temperature which eventually be-
came filled with water by the action of capillarity. Hence we find the

830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

three conditions we have just been considering in the lower parts of
the dislocated regions : cavities, water, and a high temperature, all
constituting an agency capable of producing considerable dynamic
effects at any moment. Suppose a barrel of powder exploded in a
cavity situated a hundred metres underground. At the surface we
would hear a rumbling explosion, and feel a vertical shock within a
limited space, and an undulatory thrill over a wider circle. The phe-
nomenon will be much like that of an earthquake, except that the
essential element of repetition will be wanting ; for all will be over
with the first shock. But, in the majority of earthquakes, the shocks
come in succession, as if the cause of them were a regenerating one.

Many ways may be conceived in which these enormous tensions
may end in reiterated shocks, according to the hypothesis on which we
place ourselves. Thus the water in a cavity having in time reached
the temperature of explosion, suddenly displaces some of the walls of
its prison. Hence, a first shock, followed by an expansion into the
cracks and adjoining cavities, which have lower temperature and ten-
sion. Then, the pressure in the original focus of exjulosion having
fallen off, the walls which had given way return upon themselves to
their former position, to give way again when the primitive reservoir
has regained its lost tension. This flow from cavity to cavity, which,
instead of being continuous, is made by bursts and starts, may con-
tinue to be reproduced time after time till the principal reservoir is
exhausted. But the mechanism is not destroyed then. During the
period of calm, following the seismic period, it can be charged again.
Something analogous to this takes place in volcanic eruptions, which
are separated by the lapse of time necessary to recharge their appa-
ratus by a slow alimentation. Furthermore, reservoirs of water may
be suddenly displaced under the effect of contractions of the crust,
and may thus be brought into contact with masses having a high tem-
perature.

If we suppose a sea of melted matter to exist beneath the crust of
the earth, we should have analogous effects whenever hydrated rocks,
broken off from the shell, fall into the ignited masses.

The theory of the agency of vapor is also supported by the rum-
blings and subterranean thunders which sometimes continue for
months and even for years without being attended by shocks, and for
which it is difficult to imasrine anv other causes than sudden condensa-
tion, or a flow of gaseous matter at very high tension through a nar-
row orifice. The vapor, having escaped from its prison, must in many
cases resume the liquid state very quickly, on account of the enormous
expansion it undergoes. It also has to traverse miles of relatively cold
rocks, more or less water-charged and full of cracks. It may thus con-
tribute to the production of thermal springs. Examples are on record,
too, of earthquakes, remote from any volcanic point, in which both hot
water and gaseous matter have been seen to issue from crevasses.

THE TRADING-RAT. 831

Thus, the motive force of these formidable disturbances is always
active under the feet of the inhabitants of many regions. Against the
permanent danger that menaces them, men have at least the remedy of
forgetf ulness. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue des Deux Mondes.

-♦*♦-

THE TRADING-KAT.

By Mrs. E. D. W. HATCH.

THESE interesting rodents are dwellers in the Rocky Mountains
and adjacent hills, and are known among us by various significant
names, as mountain-rat, timber-rat, and trade-rat. The first, of course,
refers to their native home ; the second to the sound of their gnaw-
ing, scarcely to be distinguished from the sawing of timber ; and the
last to their peculiar system of barter or exchange, so curious a habit
that it is doubtful if any other animal has ever been known to prac-
tice it while in a wild or untamed state.

These animals are much larger and stronger than the ordinary
house-rat — so much so that cats are apparently afraid of them, and
can not be induced to attack them. They are pretty, well formed,
have very bright black eyes, prominent, beautifully shaped, pointed
ears, and soft gray fur. Their tails are not rat-like, but are more like
a squirrel's, only less bushy, being covered with fur.

Such keen, intelligent-looking little creatures are they that, but for
our instinctive dislike to the name of rat, we should be sti*ongly tempted
to tame them as attractive and teachable pets. Until they learn that
they have an enemy in man, they are quite unsuspicious, and will allow
any one to walk up to them.

One of these rats being caught in the house, attracted by his size,
I measured him • body, eight inches long ; tail, eight inches ; around
his body, under his fore-legs, seven inches ; ears, an inch and a half ;
fur beautifully fine, gray, with a darker shade, nearly black, running
lengthwise down his back. He was very plump and fat, but I omit-
ted getting his weight.

They haunt houses and camps near the hills, but seldom, if at all,
those a few miles away. The peculiar trading characteristics natural
to this little merchant, its habit of exchanging goods without a " by
your leave," wise ways, and queer tricks, seem far more like reason
than instinct. A few incidents which came under my own observa-
tion will illustrate this characteristic. Some men, passing through the
country, camped in a deserted cabin, and, before wrapjaing themselves
in their blankets for the night, they placed their bread for breakfast
in a pan near the fire. On rising, to their dismay, not a crumb of

832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bread was left in the pan, but it was filled with old scraps of leather,
chips, bones, moldy beans, rags, etc. Searching, they found, high up
on a partly broken shelf, in an old tin can, their bread packed away
with old bacon-rinds, bones, rags, and other trash.

In the house of one of my neighbors these mischiefs carried away
a lot of Indian or corn meal, and in the meal-box deposited a quantity
of bird-shot, which, mixed with the remaining meal, caused the house-
keeper great dissatisfaction. In the same house a trunk was acci-
dentally left open one night ; in the morning a quantity of rice, bits
of dried fruit, and some oats, were found mixed with loose coral beads
and other small trinkets ; it was an exercise of patience to separate
the articles, as may be readily imagined.

With these traders exchange is no robbery, and distance small
hindrance ; they travel from their homes and go from barn to house,
from loft to cellar, and through living-rooms (noiseless when acting as
porters), with great speed and impartiality. A sheep-herder, return-
ing to his camp from a town thirty miles away, brought home a fine
new hat ; placing the box on his table, he went away for the night.
Returning, he found the box had been entered, the crown of the hat
eaten entirely round, and the box then filled with wool, flannel rags,
remains of food, wheat, and dried fruits. There was a sudden forced
abandonment of that unsurveyed " squatter's claim."

Some ranchmen were gone haying for several days, camping away
from home. After their return they soon learned that their quarters
had not been unoccupied during their absence. A nest composed of
wool and rags filled the flour-sieve left upon a shelf ; next beside the
sieve stood the coffee-box, in it had been left about a pound of good
coffee ; now the box was filled to the top, mixed with the coffee, moldy
crusts, bones, and rinds, that had been scattered about the place.
" When I threw it all out," said the man, who was telling me, " pro-
voked as I was, I could not help noticing how prettily the nest was
made up of gnawings of an old blue army-overcoat, red flannel shirt,
and many white rags, put together so nicely and made so soft within."
This morning, going to the store-house for a lamp-chimney, I found
an ordinary glass chimney packed close with straw, grains of rice,
oats, wheat, a few beans, and chips.

The mischief these rats can do in a single night is almost incredi-
ble. One, getting into a lady's room, stripped her house-plants of
every leaf and blossom, and hid himself behind the wardrobe, where
he was found next day, with a most singular accumulation of goods,
among them many bits of paper, a quantity of raisins, a box of
matches, some candle-ends, gnawed postage-stamps, and a lot of odds
and ends. Nothing seems to come amiss, and they are particularly
fascinated by anything that glitters ; often carrying off knives, spoons,
watches, and silver, and hiding them effectually.

They are " good providers," and in the fall build their nests, and

THE TRADING-RAT. 833

fill them with stores of eatables, the result of persevering foraging
expeditions for their families before winter is on them. Under a large
cotton wood-tree on a side-hill, partly underneath a fallen trunk, a
party of us found a mountain-rat's nest. It was built up nearly two
feet in height, the top or roof covering it sloped on all sides to shed
rain or snow ; tearing it to pieces, we found it was built closely of
grass, moss, chips, bones, and many leaves of the cactus (which grows
plentifully among the rocks) ; how they could cut off and convey this
thorny stuff, working it up with the other material, in the close cover-
ing, is hard to understand. Away down, running in almost under
the log so well built around, out of the reach of any possible moisture
or cold, a clever little bed of wool was found, made for the young
rats ; this wool, of which there was a quantity, must have been col-
lected bit by bit from the weeds through which the sheep passed, and
from their corrals.

To reach this nest in the rat's house, there was quite a long, circu-
itous passage, entrance close to the ground, on the south side — a little
den or hole to crawl through. In a little heap outside, not yet carried
in among their provisions, but lying close by, we found more than a
quart of fine, fresh-looking potatoes, brought from our own garden,
and it is an unsolved mystery how the potatoes were taken there ;
with not a scratch or mar upon them, or the skin bruised or broken.
The garden was a hundred feet away, considerably lower down, and a
stream of water, an irrigating ditch, to be crossed to reach it. One
person suggested that the rats might have rolled them all the way,
and across some poles thrown over the stream.

Destroying this nest, a couple of rats darted up the standing tree,
and there we were surprised to find another nest had been commenced
in the forks of the tree. We destroyed this nest also ; but here comes
in another mystery, a puzzling question : How could the rats climb
that tree and carry up stores for the winter? This nest was probably
twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground.

I asked a ranchman a few days ago, who was talking about them,
if he was afraid of them (I meant of their bite). " No," said he, " and
they are not afraid of me ; they have waked me many a time, sitting
up on the floor of my cabin and rapping their tails like a dog ! "

A description in Appletons' " Cyclopaedia " seems in some respects
to tally pretty well, under the name of " The Florida Rat." It de-
scribes these rats as " very abundant in the Southern Atlantic and Gulf
States, and occasionally found in the West. The habits vary much in
different localities, living in some places in the woods, in others under
stones, or in the ruins of buildings ; in swampy districts they heap up
mounds, two or three feet high, of grasses, leaves, and sticks, cemented
by mud ; sometimes the nest is made in the fork or hollow of a tree ;
are very active, and excellent climbers ; their food consists of corn,
nuts, cacti, and crustaceous food, various roots, and fruits ; disposition

VOL. XXYII. — 53

834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mild and docile." Its most singular trait, its habit of barter, is appar-
ently, if the same, unknown. He is not a thief like the monkey, who
steals and makes no reparation, but, with a strange kind of honesty,
whenever he helps himself he puts something (to his mind, perhaps, as
valuable) in its place ; he adapts himself to circumstances ; there being
neither corn nor shell-fish in the Northwest, he does very well without,
and maintains a plump appearance upon something else. The habit of
building here is in dry haunts, where it can find seclusion and secrecy.
Since beginning this article, I have met with an extract from
Father Joseph Acosta's " Natural and Moral History of the East and
West Indies," published at Barcelona, in Spain, in 1591, translated and
printed in London in 1604, which seems a fair description of this little
animal. Again, in " The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knight,
in his Voyage into the South Sea, 1593," published in London, 1622,
and still another published by a Spaniard, " History of Chili," pub-
lished at Rome, 1646. In all these accounts there is a queer confusion
of names. Sometimes these animals are spoken of as rats, again
squirrels, then chinchillas ; the covering of their skins is named indif-
ferently, as it happens, wool or fur ; color generally said to be gray.

From a natural history of Chili, published at Bologna, in Italian,
1782, translated 1810, I give the following extracts :

" The chinchilla is another species of field-rat, held in great esteem
for the extreme fineness of its wool, if a rich fur, as delicate as the
silken webs of the garden-spiders, may be so termed. It is of an ash-
gray, and sufficiently long for spinning.

" The little animal which produces it is six inches long from the
nose to the root of the tail, with small, pointed ears, a short muzzle,
teeth like the house-rat, and a tail of moderate length, clothed with
delicate fur.

"It lives in burrows underground, in the open country of the
northern provinces of Chili, and is very fond of being in company
with others of its species.

" It feeds upon roots of various bulbous plants, which grow abun-
dantly in these parts.

" It is so docile and mild in temper that, if taken into the hands, it
neither bites nor tries to escape, but seems to take pleasure in being
caressed.

" If placed in the bosom it remains there, as still and quiet as if in
its own nest. As it is in itself peculiarly cleanly, there can he no fear
of its soiling the clothes of those who handle it, or of its communicat-
ing any bad smell to them, for it is entirely free from that ill odor
which characterizes the other species of rats."

And he adds, which to us seems odd enough, about a little creature
six or more inches in length, " For this reason it might well be kept in
the houses, with no annoyance, and at a trifling expense, which would
be abundantly repaid by the profits on its icool."

THE TRADING-RAT. 835

Another writer upon Chili, in 1824, speaks of the same animal and
calls it a woolly field-mouse, which lives underground, and chiefly feeds
on wild onions, saying that its fine fur is well known in Europe ; that
that which comes from Upper Peru is rougher and larger than that
from Chili, but not always so beautiful in color. Still another writer,
speaking of the same, calls it chinchilla ; says that it usually sits upon
its haunches, and is even able to raise itself up and stand upon its
hinder feet ; that it feeds in a sitting posture, grasping its food and
carrying it to its mouth by means of its fore-paws, and adds, " The
ancient Peruvians were a very industrious people, and they made of
this fur wool coverlets for beds and valuable stuffs." A lady, who
was presented with a living specimen from Peru, kept it for many
months, feeding it upon hay, clover, and succulent roots. She then
presented it to a zoological society, with the information that her pet
was good-tempered, mild in its disposition, and, when allowed to run
about the room, very tame and playful, delighting in feats of agility,
often leaping to the height of the table.

These descriptions, written many years ago, with others at hand not
necessary to repeat, apply well to the trade-rat of the Rocky Mount-
ains, save that they do not mention the creature's curious habit of
barter.

I have already spoken of their great strength and celerity of move-
ments. To an observer these traits are a never-failing surprise. If a
light is steadily burning and all is quiet, they are easily watched,
darting back and forth, carrying goods each way — round trip, so to
speak, and often long trips. I have known them to bring nails, bits
of iron, screws, and other things left about the sheds, quite a distance
to the house, place them on shelves, boxes, or kegs, just as they fan-
cied, but all in some selected spot, carrying back from cellar and store-
house dried prunes, apples, rice, and all kinds of eatables. If, working
in the dark, the drawing of a match, a slight noise, or sudden light
will cause them to vanish like a flash.

They seem, too, to have a fancy for certain colors, particularly
bright red, and will soon make away with garments of this color, and
attach them to their nests. There may be something attractive in
the dye, but, knowing their partiality for glittering, shining objects, I
am inclined to think they have also an eye for color.

With all their curious and often annoying tricks, they are wonder-
fully ingenious and persevering, and certainly possess the attributes of
a good business man in their energy, industry, foresight, and a desire
to make provision against a time of need.

836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

TISSUE-SELECTION IK THE GENESIS OF DISEASE.

Br W. HENKY KESTEVEN, M. K. C. S.

IT has occurred to the writer that the adoption of the germ theory
of disease necessarily involves the application of the theory of
evolution, and that here may be found a means of accounting for the
genesis of the various forms of disease. Germs are living matter ;
they must therefore be under the influence of those laws and forces
which condition all living matter. The most important of these,
or the one that most interests us in the present connection, is the
law of natural selection ; and it must be that germs, in common
with other forms of life, are under the influence of this law in
some shape. Natural selection is a general term which embraces
all other modes of selection, or provision for the "survival of the
fittest." Among these is sexual selection, and, taking a broad view,
we may also include selection by man. In order, then, to the at-
tainment of greater exactness, may we not give a name to that form
of natural selection which has been potent in bringing about the varia-
tions in the characteristics of those germs to which the differences in
the forms of disease are due ? Such a term may be found, I would
suggest, in " tissue-selection," as indicating the special means whereby
the constitution of the germs has been modified. The actual origin of
the bodies which have received the names of germs is not at present
determinable, and to say that they do not originate de novo, in decay-
ing matter or elsewhere, is only to reaffirm the axiom now pretty
generally admitted, Omne vivum e vivo. The fact that meets us here
is that these germs, call them bacilli, vibriones, bacteria, or what we
will, are met with almost universally in the atmosphere that we breathe.
It is with the " why and the wherefore " of their existence that we are
concerned. In looking for this, it will be necessary to consider the
facts of the life-history of these germs, and to try to discover how
they have been and are influenced by their surrounding conditions.
We find that the conditions favorable to the full vital activity of
these germs are a moderate temperature, moisture, and a resting-place
or nidus in some organic matter whose chemical constitution enables
it to afford the pabulum necessary for the maintenance of their exist-
ence. On the other hand, the influences antagonistic to their well-
being are excessive heat or cold, the action of certain chemical bodies,
and a condition of dryness. The last is certainly prejudicial, as it
seems to hinder their full vital activity. At the same time it can not
be considered absolutely obnoxious, as it is the means which favors
their locomotion in the atmosphere. Putting aside, for the mean while,
the thermometric and atmospheric conditions, we shall see that the

TISSUE-SELECTION IN THE GENESIS OF DISEASE. 837

condition which most concerns us is that of a favorable nidus. A
favorable nidus is one in which the germ is enabled to carry on its full
vital functions, and to propagate its kind. It is therefore manifest
that the constitution of the nidus must be free from elements antago-
nistic to such vital functions. It must not be too hot, or too cold, or
too dry, and its chemical constitution must be favorable. Experiment
has proved that oxygen in excess is deleterious to these organisms ; its
absence, entire or partial, will then be one of the requisites in this
chemical constitution of the nidus. Is not such nidus best found in de-
caying or degenerating animal tissue ? Where there is full vital ac-
tivity in any animal tissue, the blood which nourishes it keeps it duly
supplied with oxygen. In healthy tissue, then, we have a condition
unfavorable ; but when from some cause the nutrition of the tissue is
interfered with and a condition of degeneration is induced, this antago-
nistic element is removed or at least diminished, and the tissue affords
the nidus favorable to the vital phenomena of the germs. These vital
phenomena are perhaps best studied in the analogous case of the spores
of yeast {torula cerevisice). "When this, which is to all intents and
purposes a germ, is placed in favorable circumstances, its activity
commences, it rapidly multiplies and gives rise to changes in the
surrounding material. In this case we call the process " fermentation."
A germ, bacillus, bacterion, or vibrio, when placed in relation to tissue
which affords a favorable nidus, assumes its full vital activity; it mul-
tiplies and gives rise to changes in the tissue with which it is in con-
tact. These changes we call " inflammation." In fact, it would appear
that these germs in one sense fulfill the part of Nature's scavengers,
and by setting up inflammatory changes in degenerate tissues lead to
their removal. Be this as it may, the diseases to which the germs
give rise are all more or less of an inflammatory nature.

Thus, then, it would seem that one of the chief vital functions of
these germs is to excite an inflammatory process in degenerate tissue.
Is it not conceivable that germs may have existed, or even do still
exist now, whose function is strictly limited to action on degenerate
tissue ? — that this may perhaps have been the limit strictly assigned to
them ? Let us suppose this to be the case, and see how, from this
limited condition, germs have acquired power to overstep these limits,
and thus to give rise to the protean aspects of disease that we now
meet with. What has caused variation in the animal world but the
influences of surrounding circumstances ? In the relationship of the
germs and the degenerate tissue, it is plain that in one sense the germs
are the active, and the tissue the passive, elements. But, looked at
from the tissue point of view, it will also appear that this passive con-
dition possesses considerable indirect influence on the germs ; that, in-
deed, " passive " is hardly the word to express the action which must
largely modify their constitution. It would be impossible for the
germs to live, to grow, to multiply on a certain tissue without be-

838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

comino- imbued with certain characteristics of that tissue. Hence
a difference, a variation, between the parent germs and their off-
spring.

Now, the one characteristic of the tissue which most strikes our
attention is its degeneracy, and this degeneracy must exert its influence
on the organisms which depend upon it for existence, so that in the
thus derived organisms we have the germ vitality and function, plus a
certain amount of degenerate tissue characteristic. Germs thus modi-
fied and brought into contact with tissue of the same kind, though
less degenerate, will, in virtue of this constitutional modification, stand
a better chance of establishment thereon, at the same time adding to
the degenerate condition with which they meet in the new tissue the
characteristics of the degeneracy of tissue they have left. The effects
thus produced will be more acute, the constitution of the germs further
modified, and their power increased. Hence it is possible to conceive
that if by any chance a condition of tissue which could be called per-
fectly healthy was to be anywhere met with, even this tissue might in
time become subject to the influence of these organisms. Of course
tissues may be more or less susceptible to their influence, more or less
healthy, but it is more than doubtful whether it can be positively said
of any one tissue that it is absolutely healthy, any more than it can be
said of the individual man or woman. It is therefore possible to con-
ceive that at some time or other there has existed only one kind of
germ, that variations from this one type have arisen in consequence of
the modification wrought upon different individuals by their chance
falling upon this or that degenerate tissue. Variation must lead to
specialization, and finally we find diseases all dependent upon the
action of germs, as different from one another as one species of animal
differs from another.

But there is another direction in which these germs must have been
modified fully to account for the differences we now see. Germs may
still exist which have only the power of exciting a simple inflammation
in any degenerate tissue. Others, a step more advanced, are found,
whose action is more potent, which have attractions for the one special
tissue in which they have been bred ; while others are capable of
exciting the special form of inflammation in which they have had their
origin, in tissues various in structure and composition. This power or,
rather, increase of power — in other words, further variation in consti-
tution— thus displayed is only to be accounted for by the supposition
that its acquisition is secondary to the act of establishment, and that it
is brought about by means of the blood itself receiving some of the
germs and conveying them to some other tissue, on which, in virtue of
its degeneracy, and possibly of a further modification, they have them-
selves received from the blood, they are enabled to effect a settlement.
It must also be remembered that their modification, which enables
them to select a tissue for their primary and more virulent action,

TISSUE-SELECTION IN THE GENESIS OF DISEASE. 8 39

does not deprive them of their original power of attacking degenerate
tissue. It is simply an additional power, rendering them more potent
when Drought into contact with tissue possessing certain character-
istics. These characteristics of the tissue originally attacked may
determine the character of the action of the germs on other tissues,
and thus enable us to recognize a relationship in the morbid influences
at work in different tissue — as, for example, in syphilitic disease. If
it is a fact that the tissue originally attacked modifies the constitution
of the germs, it is surely more reasonable to suppose that the special
characteristics thus impressed upon the germs are those which give
the family likeness to the descendants of these germs, rather than to
suppose that this morbid family likeness exists in the germs before ever
they have been brought into contact with any form of degenerate
tissue. In other words, may not a bacterion, pure and simple, by
being brought into contact with some form of degenerate tissue,
acquire or give rise to other bacteria which possess certain charac-
teristics which we recognize as being those of special disease, and
that those characteristics enable them to excite a similar form of
disease in the new nidus ? It is also conceivable that as different
diseases are more or less wide-spread or of older standing, so the germs
given off from tissues affected by these diseases will have more and
more power of affecting tissues less and less degenerate, even to the
point of a possible condition of actual health. So, for example, the
germs of scarlet fever or measles have actually acquired great power
over the tissue which they primarily affect ; whereas in the case of
tuberculosis it is more than doubtful whether the actual presence of a
tubercular condition of degeneration in the tissue, to a definite extent,
is not necessary before the germs can find a suitable nidus in that tissue.
Of course, germs derived from a tubercular origin will have more in-
fluence over tissue which is not so much affected than germs which
have not such tubercular origin. It is, in fact, simply a matter of
degree of degeneracy. May it not be this which enables persons free
from tubercular taint to brave the assaults of germs be they ever so
virulent ?

The above are only one or two examples showing the different
powers possessed by germs derived from the different forms of disease.
The list of examples might be almost indefinitely prolonged. But the
result would only be to show that different diseases have different
powers of affecting the animal body, a fact already well known. It is
the design of this paper to show that possibly these powers have been
acquired by the action of some form of natural selection, here proposi-
tionally called " tissue-selection," on the germs which inhabit the air
we breathe and the water we drink, such action in the course of long "
ages having given rise to germs possessing special powers, and being
now apparently unrelated to each other in any way. The intermediate
steps between a simple germ and such a highly modified one, as, for

840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

instance, the variolous or tubercular germ, may be difficult to trace,
for as we at present see these germs it is as though we were looking at
a picture or photograph of a family tree in which the greater part of
the trunk and larger branches have become obliterated, having only
the terminal twigs visible, with no apparent connection between them.
— Lancet.

•»»♦»

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR H. A. NEWTON.

THE President of the American Association for this year, Professor
Hubebt Anson Newton, of Yale College, is distinguished not
less for his researches in the higher mathematics, which mark a distinct
advance in the American study of that science, than by his .contribu-
tions to the determination of the orbit of the November meteors, in
which he was a pioneer.

Professor Newton was born at Sherburne, New York, on the 19th
of March, 1830. Having made his preparatory and academical studies
in the schools of his native town, he entered Yale College in the sec-
ond term of his Freshman year, and was graduated from that institu-
tion in 1850. He then spent two years and a half in studying mathe-
matics at home and in New Haven, and was appointed tutor in the
college in July, 1852. Entering this office in June, 1853, he had the
care of the whole department of mathematics from the first ; for Pro-
fessor Stanley was ill, and died in the spring of 1853. He was elected
Professor of Mathematics in 1855, and was given permission to spend
a year in Europe. Returning, he assumed the chair in 1856, and has
ever since been engaged in the active discharge of the duties of the
professorship.

His earlier works appear to have been principally directed to those
methods in higher geometry, the power and elegance of which, says
his biographer in the " History of Yale College," have been so highly
shown in the works of Chasles and others. Among the most conspicu-
ous of them is a memoir " On the Construction of Certain Curves by
Points," published in 1861 in the "Mathematical Monthly," which is
characterized as one of those contributions to abstract science which
have been, unfortunately, too rare in this country. A later, no less
remarkable paper was one of joint authorship in the Transactions of
the Connecticut Academy of Sciences on "Certain Transcendental
Curves."

His most important service to science, and the one by which he is
probably most widely known to the world of students, is the work
which he performed in the study of the November meteors. These
phenomena, which had been occasionally mentioned at previous periods
of their recurrence without apparently any adequate comprehension of

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR H. A. NEWTON. 84 1

their significance, were first carefully observed by Professor Denison
Olmsted in 1833, who gave much attention to the question of their
nature and origin. But, as Professor C. S. Lyman states in his biogra-
phy of Professor Olmsted, it was not till thirty years after his and
Professor Twining's studies of the subject "that the labors of Pro-
fessor Newton in this country, and of Professor Adams and others
abroad, made it possible to designate the precise orbit of the Novem-
ber stream, and to identify it with that of a comet having a period of
thirty -three and one fourth years." The phenomena continued to have
diligent observers at New Haven, prominent among whom was Mr.
Herrick, the librarian, and afterward, till 1862, the treasurer of the col-
lege. At the time of his death, the biographer in the " History of
Yale College " records, " Professor Newton was already engaged in
organizing combined and methodical observations on shooting-stars,
and in collecting and publishing in the ' Journal of Science ' the re-
sults of independent observers. Under his supervision a map of the
heavens was prepared, which was published by the Connecticut
Academy, and could be used by observers to mark down the appar-
ent paths of the meteors. A rich harvest of observations was thus
obtained by zealous laborers in various parts of the country, many of
whom had been interested and trained in the work by Professor New-
ton. The separation of the precious grains of truth from the chaff —
the perception of the constant amid the accidental, of fixed laws dis-
guised by the errors of observations made under circumstances which
precluded the use of instruments of precision — is, however, the more
difficult part of such investigations. The published results of Pro-
fessor Newton's studies in this direction are mostly to be found in the
' Journal of Science ' and in the ' Memoirs ' of the National Academy.
The memoir read to this Academy a few years ago is an almost ex-
haustive discussion of the phenomena exhibited by the sporadic shoot-
ing-stars. He has also contributed admirable summaries of what is
known in respect to the laws of meteors to the new edition of the
" Encyclopaedia Britannica " and to " Johnston's Cyclopaedia."

"But the investigation which has been followed by the most remark-
able results relates to the November meteoroids, and was based upon
researches into early records of remarkable star-showers. From such
records, Professor Newton showed that the period of revolution of
these bodies must have one of five accurately determined values.
From the same sources he determined the secular motion of the node
of their mean orbit. The five values of the period, with the position
of the radiant point, which had also been determined, would give five
possible orbits. The real orbit could be distinguished from the others,
as Professor Newton remarked, by the calculation of the secular mo-
tion of the node due to the disturbing influence of the planets for each
of the five orbits. This calculation was subsequently undertaken by
Professor Adams, of Cambridge, England, and the real orbit was ap-

842 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

parent from the coincidences of the early observations (the observed
and calculated values were 29' and 28' respectively). These calcula-
tions of Professor Adams, which fix beyond a doubt the position of the
mean orbit of the November meteoroids, were made shortly after their
appearance in 1866. The publication, about the same time, of the
orbit of the first comet of 1866 revealed the fact that that comet and
the meteors travel in nearly coincident orbits, and have an intimate
relation one with the other. To appreciate the rapid advance of this
department of astronomy, we must contrast this certain knowledge
with the conflicting views which prevailed at the time of their first
appearance, in 1833, with respect to the nature of the phenomenon of
which they were the cause. In recognition, presumably on his part in
these achievements of science, Professor Newton was elected, in 1872,
associate of the Royal Astronomical Society."

Professor Newton has been for more than a dozen years one of the
associate editors of the " American Journal of Science," and most of
his scientific articles have been written for its pages. He was one of
the fifjy members appointed by the act of Congress constituting the
American Academy of Sciences. In 1860 he was elected a corre-
sponding member of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science. He served in 1875 as Vice-President of Section A of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its Detroit
meeting.

His address on this occasion took the form of a strong plea for
more study of mathematics by American men of science ; not for the
sake of its place in education, but for the advancement of the science
itself, and for the assistance that might be derived from it in the
pursuit and enlargement of other branches of knowledge. Whatever
might be the reasons for it, he said, "the unpleasant fact is that the
American contributions to the science of quantity have not been large.
Three or four volumes, a dozen memoirs, and here and there a fruit-
ful idea having been selected from them, there is left very little that
the world will care much to remember. I refer, of course, to addi-
tions to our knowledge, not to the orderly arrangement of it. To
make first-rate text-books, or manuals, or treatises, is a work of no
mean order, and I would not underestimate it. In good mathematical
text-books we need not fear comparison with any nation. But so
few additions have been made to our knowledge of quantity that I
fear that the idea has been quite general among us that the mathemat-
ics is a finished science, or at least a stationary one, and that it has
few fertile fields inviting labor and few untrodden regions to be ex-
plored. Hence many bright minds, capable of good work, have acted
as though the arithmetic, the algebra, and the mechanics which they
studied covered all that is known of the science. Instead of going on
in some path out to the bounds of knowledge, as they had perhaps
the ability to do, they dug in the beaten highways, and with care

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR H. A. NEWTON. 843

planted seed there, hoping for fruit. How much such ill-directed
thought has been spent on the theory of numbers, on higher equa-
tions, on the theory of the tides, etc., which, if rightly expended on
some untrodden though humble field of the science, might have really
added to human knowledge ! And yet hardly any science can show,
on the whole, a more steady progress, year by year, for the last fifty
years, or a larger and healthier growth, than the science of quantity.
Here, too, as in every other science, the larger the field that has been
acquired, the larger its boundary-line from which laborers may work
out into the region beyond. An individual may wisely neglect one
science, in order to work in another. But a nation may not. For the
healthy growth of all, each science should be fostered in due propor-
tion. But the mathematics has such relations with other branches
that neglect of it must work in time wider injury, I believe, than neg-
lect of any other branch."

The view expressed in the last sentence of this extract was sus-
tained by the citations of instances and ways in which the questions
of quantity and proportion have to be dealt with at some stage in
almost every branch of scientific investigation.

Of the value of mathematics as an instrument of research in other
departments of knowledge, he says : "Again — I argue from a natural
law of succession of the steps of discovery in the exact sciences — we
first see differences in things apparently alike, or likeness in things
apparently diverse, or we find a new mode of action, or some new rela-
tion, supposed to be that of cause and effect, or we discover some other
new fact or quality. We frame hypotheses, measure the quantities in-
volved, and discuss by mathematics the relations of those quantities.
The proof or the disproof of the hypotheses most frequently depends
upon the agreement or discordance of the quantities. To discover the
new facts and qualities has sometimes been thought to be higher work
than to discuss quantities, and perhaps it is. But at least quantitative
analysis follows qualitative. It is after we have learned what hind,
that we begin to ask how much f "

Professor Newton is a member of several other learned societies
in this country ; he is a member of the Publication Committee of the
Connecticut Academy of Sciences ; is a trustee of the Winchester
Observatory ; and is the author, in Professor Kingsley's " History of
Yale College," of the sketch of Professor Alexander Metcalf Fisher,
one of his predecessors in the chair of Mathematics, who died by
shipwreck at an early age ; and of the account of Winchester
Observatory.

844

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

OFFICIAL SCIENCE AT WASHINGTON.

MUCH has been said in the news-
papers during the last few-
weeks about the mismanagement and
irregularities that have been disclosed
by official inquiries into the administra-
tion of the United States Coast Survey.
The superintendent of that branch of
the public service has been retired
from his office ; the assistant in charge
was also removed, and then restored ;
and charges have been made against
other parties. It is alleged that ex-
penditures are out of all proportion to
results, lhat the service is inefficient,
and the department much demoralized.
The first question, of course, in re-
gard to such grave accusations is, to
what extent are they true ? Is the case
as bad as alleged, or only an exagger-
ation of such defects as are always
incident to the administration of gov-
ernmental affairs ? It seems that a com-
mittee of investigation was appointed
by the Treasury Department to look
into the working of the Coast Survey.
A committee charged with so serious a
duty should certainly have made the
most careful and searching inquiry,
should have given the accused officers
the fullest opportunity of defending
themselves, and should have published
their results in an explicit and authen-
tic form. "We are not aware that this
has been done ; and if so, common jus-
tice requires that judgment should be
suspended until decisive evidence is
forthcoming, because innocence is to
be presumed until guilt is established.
Upon these points the following re-
marks from an excellent editorial in
" Science " are so appropriate and fair
as to be worthy of quotation :

Without the slightest disposition to screen

official mismanagement, if it has been dis-

. covered, we must caution our readers against

giving credence to insinuations and rumors.
All who are under implied censure have a
right to be fully heard, and to bring all the
facts which are explanatory of their conduct
to the eye of a qualified tribunal. They have
a right to protest against the arbitrary exer-
cise of personal authority, or against the ju-
dicial methods of a star-chamber or a drum-
head court-martial. No political purpose, no
personal dislike, no disbelief in science, should
be allowed, unquestioned, to throw discredit
upon a branch of the public service, or dis-
honor upon a corps hitherto regarded as ex-
emplary in all its official work.

The work of the Coast Survey, during its
long history, has been of the highest charac-
ter. For nearly seventy years it has been ap-
proved by successive Congresses and admin-
istrations, and by navigators, merchants, and
men of exact science. It has received the
highest encomiums of foreigners who were
qualified to judge of its merits, and were m->
terested in pointing out its defects. The five
superintendents — Hassler, Bache, Benjamin
Peirce, Patterson, and Hilgard — have each,
in different ways, improved its methods and
upheld its efficiency. The officers ju6t dis-
placed have grown up in the service, and
have won promotion by the ability and fidel-
ity with which they have discharged their
great responsibilities. The presumptions of
official rectitude are in their favor until posi-
tive faults are pointed out. They are enti-
tled by the principles of good government, as
well as by their individual services, to all the
opportunities they may desire for explanation
or defense ; and any premature opinion is un-
fair, especially if it is affected by personal
prejudices, or is based upon a lack of appre-
ciation for scientific researches.

In the conduct of such a bureau as the
Coast Survey, a large amount of discretion
must be left to the chief. He, and he only,
can determine a vast number of questions
which pertain to the selection of assistants
for different kinds of work, the choice of
fields of labor, the discrimination between
services which have an obvious relation to
some immediate want of the public, and those
which may be just as serviceable, but are rec-
ondite, and unintelligible to the uninformed.
It is impossible to mark out the duties of the
highest assistants by such rules as may be
applied to the clerical services of an ordinary

EDITOR'S TABLE.

845

counting-room. In order that the results of
the survey may be accurate and trustworthy
— the only results which are worth having —
costly instruments must be bought and used,
and must afterward be thrown aside, because
other instruments are better, or because their
work is done. Still larger outlays are requi-
site, in order that elaborate and important
fundamental inquiries may be prosecuted by
men who are trained to exact scientific meth-
ods. A staff of learned and experienced in-
vestigators is absolutely essential to the con-
duct of such a national undertaking as the
Coast Survey.

Nevertheless, all this scientific research is
appreciated by a very small number of per-
sons. Indeed, the more valuable it is, the
less obvious may be its merits. Every sea-
man knows the value of a good chart : not
every seaman, not every scholar, not every
statesman, knows the conditions by which a
good chart is produced. It is only the expert
who appreciates the subtile sources of error
which must be eliminated: he only knows
the infinitude of mathematical, physical, as-
tronomical, and geodetic problems, which are
involved in an endeavor to portray faithfully
such a coast-line as that of the United States,
and to keep the portrayal in accurate corre-
spondence with the changing sands.

There is undoubted weight in the
consideration here urged that much of
the work of the Coast Survey is of a
kind that can be but imperfectly judged
by the public, and must be left to the
men of science, who can best appreci-
ate its desirableness and its difficulties.
This is also the ground taken by the
American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science in reviewing the sub-
ject. At their recent meeting in Ann
Arbor, Professor S. P. Langley pro-
posed the following series of resolutions,
which, after discussion, were passed
unanimously :

Whereas, The attention of this Association
has been called to articles in the public press
purporting to give, and presumably by author-
ity, an official report of a commission ap-
pointed by the Treasury Department to in-
vestigate the condition of the United States
Coast-Survey Office, in which report the
value of certain scientific work is designated
as meager ; and

Whereas, This Association desires to ex-
press a hope that the decision as to the utility

of such scientific work may be referred to
scientific men :

Resolved, That the American Association
for the Advancement of Science is in earnest
sympathy with the Government in its every
intent to secure the greatest possible effi-
ciency of the public service.

Resolved, That the value of the scientific
work performed in the various departments of
the Government can be best judged by scien-
tific men.

Resolved, That this Association desires to
express its earnest approval of the extent
and high character of the work performed
by the United States Coast Survey, espe-
cially as illustrated by the gravity deter-
minations now in progress, and to express
the hope that such valuable work may not
be interrupted.

Resolved, That this Association expresses
also the hope that the Government will not
allow any technical rule to be established that
shall necessarily confine its scientific work to
its own employes.

Resolved, That in the opinion of the Amer-
ican Association for the Advancement of
Science the head of the Coast Survey should
have the highest possible standing among
scientific men, and should command their
entire confidence.

Resolved, That copies of these resolutions
shall be prepared by the General Secretary
and certified to by the President of the As-
sociation and by the Permanent Secretary,
and shall be forwarded to the President of
the United States, the Secretary of the Treas-
ury, and given to the press.

The subject was called up and acted
upon because of the recent arraignment
of the Coast Survey, as stated in the
first preamble. In the second the hope
is expressed that the decision in regard
to the utility of such work — that is,
Coast Survey work — may be left to sci-
entific men. But it will be observed
that the second resolution covers wider
ground, affirming that all " the scientific
work performed in the various depart-
ments of the Government can be best
judged by scientific men."

Now, certainly, nothing can be more
true than that scientists are the best
judges of scientific work; and, as be-
tween these and the officials that are
over them, the case may be stated still
more emphatically. The successful pol-

846

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

iticians who get possession of high gov-
ernment offices are apt to be especially
incompetent in all matters of science ;
and, consequently, they must, as a class,
be the worst judges of the technical
labors of scientific men. "What, tben,
is to be done ? The politicians impeach
a scientific department for inefficiency,
and the scientific men reply by a vir-
tual protest against their capacity to
judge of the conduct they condemn.
In tbis they are right ; but is it there-
fore inferable that the scientists are to be
left to themselves, and exempted from
scrutiny and criticism in the manage-
ment of their affairs ? This assuredly
will not do; for if scientific men are
qualified on one side, they are disquali-
fied on another and very important side.
Like other men, they are self-seeking,
ambitious, and have their personal ends
to gain. Can we assume that morally
they are any better than their neigh-
bors; or that, if they get possession of
place and power, they will not use and
pervert them to the promotion of their
selfish objects ? It is to be hoped that
in the future science will become so de-
veloped as to react upon character and
give us men morally as well as intel-
lectually superior ; but we are far from
any such happy result as yet. Govern-
ment has boundless wealth at com-
mand ; it is a mighty patron. Every-
body is tempted to get some private
advantage through its influence, and
scientific men are no exception to
their fellow-citizens in exemplifying
the general passion, and in desiring to
get a share of government patronage.
The " scientific politician " has made
his appearance in "Washington, and the
political element in him will dominate
the scientific. That he will be a lobby-
ist and intriguer, and become skilled in
the art of getting favors and appropria-
tions from Congress, is but to say that
he will work according to his oppor-
tunities, objects, and the nature of the
materials to be manipulated. An un-
supervised and irresponsible scientific

department at "Washington would be
run in the interest of its sharpest
managers, would be filled with sine-
cures, give the least results at the great-
est expense, while these results would
be aggravated by the sense of exemp-
tion from criticism.

"We draw a different conclusion from
the fact that scientific men are the best
judges of their own work, and the poli-
ticians who have got the national offices
the poorest judges of it. "We infer that
duties which those officers can not per-
form in a proper manner they should
not undertake. The policy of extend-
ing what may be called Government
science at "Washington is a bad one;
whatever is indispensable must be tol-
erated, but with this qualification the
less we have of it the better. The
Coast Survey is a work of undoubted
national necessity. Its investigations
are essential to the national defense;
it was begun long ago, in a small way,
with no reference to any Government
policy respecting the promotion of sci-
ence; and it has been systematically
prosecuted as a matter of unquestionable
public importance. But the modern ex-
tensions of Government science, as the
Department of Agriculture, for exam-
ple, stand upon no such ground. They
have not been called into existence by
any special or urgent needs of the state,
or to subserve any legitimate function
of Government; but they have come
through the agency of scheming and
ambitious scientific men who sought
official power for the advancement of
their own objects. Under such inspi-
ration the national Government has
entered into rivalry with the private
investigators of the country to promote
research, develop resources, and accu-
mulate useful knowledge for the people.
Millions of money are now spent on in-
vestigations of all kinds, on collections
and surveys, buildings, apparatus, sala-
ries, and publications made at extrava-
gant cost, and which are without that
warrant of necessity which should be

LITERARY NOTICES.

847

the sole reason of any scientific under-
taking by the state.

How the immense system of official
science at Washington, which Govern-
ment neither called for nor is compe-
tent to supervise, has gradually grown
up under outside management, is easily
explained. Alliance with politics has
been very sedulously and skillfully cul-
tivated by our leading scientific men.
The most decisive step in this direction
was taken a few years ago, in the or-
ganization of the National Academy of
Sciences, an institution copied after an
old French model. Through its act of
incorporation a limited and select num-
ber of men became scientific leaders by
national authorization. It was a spe-
cious and insinuating project, offering
itself as a kind of bureau of advice
to Congress on all scientific matters.
Money was not solicited: the savants
were to serve the state for nothing.
It was to be a Washington institution,
pledged to hold meetings at the capital
permanently. The headquarters of the
Coast Survey were already established
there. The United States Government
had accepted the magnificent bequest
of Smithson, and established a national
institution " for the increase and diffu-
sion of knowledge among men"; and
the newly instituted Academy of Sci-
ences became the agency for combining
the elements to secure the extension of
Government patronage to all kinds of
scientific undertakings. The tendency
to centralization and the enlargement
of Government powers, after the war,
greatly favored the accomplishment of
the work. The great extensions of state
education also favored it. A splendid
national university, with a twenty-mill-
ion endowment by the General Govern-
ment, was strenuously advocated. Ev-
erything was thus propitious to the mul-
tiplication and consolidation of scientific
departments, and to the general plan of
employing scientific men to carry on
their inquiries at the expense of the state,
and under the direction of Government.

For many and urgent reasons we
hold that our overgrown Government
science ought to be arrested and re-
trenched. That administrative officers
are bad judges of it is one of them.
But, even if this were not so, the
policy would still be thoroughly objec-
tionable. The promotion of science is
not an object for which Government
exists. The civil authority has its le-
gitimate duties, and can only perform
them by being confined to them. It is
the business of Government to maintain
the order of society and the rights and
liberties of individual citizens by the
establishment and enforcement of wise
laws ; and the sole condition on which
this can be accomplished is that the law-
makers and law-executors shall allow
nothing to interfere with this supreme
duty. By attempting to do everything
else this is neglected, and the multipli-
cation of government functions ends in
the defeat of the objects for which Gov-
ernment exists. We do not say that
Government denies the rights of for-
eign authors and leaves them a prey
to American plunderers because it has
gone into the promotion of science;
but we do say that its absorption in
business interests and enterprises has
deadened its moral sense so that it has
little care about a gross delinquency
which is a scandal to the American name
throughout the world. Justice between
man and man, the first condition of all
sound prosperity in communities, can
only be enforced by the civil authority;
but science can be advanced by private
enterprise, individual interest and effort,
and voluntary association, better than by
state regulation, and there it is better
that the Government should leave it.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Collected Essays on Political and Social
Science. By William Graham Sumner,
Professor of Political and Social Science
in Yale College. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. Pp. 173. Price, $1.50.
This volume consists of discussions upon

the following subjects : " Bimetallism " ;

8+8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" Wages " ; " The Argument against Pro-
tective Taxes " ; " Sociology " ; " Theory
aud Practice of Elections," Parts I and II ;
" Presidential Elections and Civil-Service
Reform " ; and " Our Colleges before the
Country." These are all "topics of the
time," dealing with questions not only of
great public moment, but which are being
much agitated in many quarters. The vol-
ume is therefore timely in its appearance,
and, more than this, it is the kind of book
that is greatly needed. In reading it, we
have been much reimpressed with the au-
thor's rare ability in handling economical
and social questions. A clear, logical, inde-
pendent thinker ; a sound theorist, because
he always defers to facts ; a practical man,
because he trusts in established principles ;
and withal a vigorous, pointed, and attract-
ive writer, Professor Sumner is the man to
do eminently valuable work in educating
the public mind on subjects of economical
and social science. And sound teachers
upon these subjects are none too numerous.
The propagators of error, in numberless
forms, have the field. Some are misled by
half-knowledge, some prejudiced by party
feeling, some perverted and blinded by self-
interest, some fascinated by specious hob-
bies, so that the press teems with magazine
articles, pamphlets, and books, not calcu-
lated, to say the> least, to strengthen scien-
tific conceptions, or to bring men into the
agreement of reason on the various topics
of public and social concern. Perhaps the
worst of it is that the effect of all this chaos
of opinion is to undermine confidence in
principles and all belief in the possibility of
anything like valid and trustworthy social
and political science. In the present state
of things, where great pecuniary interests
are involved, the temptation to favor this
view is strong. No service, therefore, is
more important to the community than to
strip away the multitudinous fallacies in
which these subjects are involved, and to
show that there are clear, comprehensive,
and solid principles governing social and
political phenomena which must be recog-
nized and trusted before society can realize
anything like permanent prosperity. This
is the kind of work which Professor Sumner
is eminently fitted to accomplish, and we
cordially welcome his present work, as we

have welcomed all his previous books, be-
cause it brings out and popularizes views
which it is of the utmost moment that our
citizens should understand and maintain.
We can here give no indication of the doc-
trines expounded in the varied discussions
of the work, and must be content to urge,
especially upon our young men, that this is
the kind of book to be thoroughly studied,
until its contents are assimilated and re-
duced to an established political and social
creed.

The Microscope in Botany: A Guide to
the Microscopical Investigation of
Vegetable Substances. From the Ger-
man of Dr. Julius Wilhelm Behrens.
Translated and edited by Bev. A. B.
Henry, assisted by R. H. Ward, M. D.
Boston : S. E. Cassino & Co. Pp. 466,
with Thirteen Plates. Price, $5.

According to the translator, this treatise
occupies a field almost entirely to itself in
the botanical literature both of Germany
and now of the English-speaking world,
and it is published with the hope that its
influence will be to stimulate in this country
investigations into the deeper problems of
plant-life. The study of the literature of
the subject shows that there is an open field
for American botanists, for existing works
almost exclusively involve the results of Ger-
man research, while a few are of French
origin, fewer still of English, and none what-
ever of American. The first purpose of the
work is to guide students in all those in-
quiries relating to the physical products of
cell-life in plants which may be conducted
under the microscope, by means of chemi-
cal and other reactions. While it deals with
the anatomical constitution of the cell, and
of plant - tissue, its inquiries relate much
more to physiological and biological pro-
cesses than to matters purely anatomical
and histological. The part of Dr. R. H.
Ward in the preparation of the work con-
sists in the revision of the two chapters
which deal with the microscope and its ac-
cessories ; and in these considerable changes
have been made, as is proper in a work of
the kind intended for American study, in
the omission of illustrations and descrip-
tions in the Continental style, which is com-
paratively unused and unavailable here, and
the substitution of American forms. All

LITERARY NOTICES.

849

the matter introduced by the American edit-
ors is distinguished by plain typographical
devices.

The Treatment of Opium - Addiction. By
J. B. Mattison, M. I). New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 49. Price, 50
cents.

This work embodies the substance of a
paper read at the last meeting of the Ameri-
can Association for the Cure of Inebriates,
and details the author's special method of
treatment, which he has successfully prac-
ticed for several years. The author main-
tains that opium-addiction is a disease, sel-
dom a vice, and should be treated as a dis-
ease. He advises against breaking off the
practice abruptly, while he finds the other
ordinary method of treatment, by gradual
decrease of the opiate with tonics, incon-
veniently slow. His own method is a mean
between the two extremes, and is based on
the power of certain remedial resources to
control abnormal reflex sensibility ; and he
claims for it the advantages of minimum
duration of treatment and maximum free- j
dom from pain.

The Field of Disease: A Book of Pre-
ventive Medicine. By Benjamin Ward
Richardson, M. D. Philadelphia : Henry
C. Lea's Son & Co. Pp. 737.

The author has written this work, he
says, " for those members of the intelligent
reading public who, without desiring to
trench on the province of the physician
and surgeon, or to dabble in the science
and art of medical treatment of disease,
wish to know the loading facts about the
diseases of the human family, their causes
and prevention. Any one, therefore, who
opens this book with the expectation of find-
ing in it receipts and nostrums will not have
that expectation fulfilled, and will discover
reference to no remedies except such as are
purely preventive in character." The old
historical terms are used in preference to
the new ; that classification of diseases is
preferred which has descended from the
best scholars in medical science and art, and
which is best known to the people at large.
Of the relative value of curative and pre-
ventive medicine, the latter " is not a science,
it is not an art separated neeessarily or prop-
erly from so-called curative medicine. On
vol. xxvii. — 54

the contrary, the study of cure and preven-
tion proceed well together, and he is the
most perfect sanitarian, and he is the most
accomplished and useful physician, who
knows most both of the prevention of dis-
ease and of the nature and treatment of
disease ; he who knows, in fact, the before
and the after of each striking phenomenon
of disease that is presented for his observa-
tion." The investigation of the subject is
directed to the tracing of diseases from their
actual representation, as they exist before
us, in their natural progress after their birth,
back to their origin, and, as far as is prac-
ticable, to seek the conditions out of which
they spring; and, further, to investigate the
conditions, to see how far they are remov-
able and how far they arc avoidable.

The Windmill as a Prime Mover. By
Alfred R. Wolff, M. E. New York:
John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 159. Price,
$.3.

There may have been a time when
windmills were considered antiquated and
of no further use, but it is so no longer.
These simple and economical sources of
power are quite generally employed in all
parts of our country, and their use is in-
creasing, and, according to Mr. Wolff, it is
now greater than at any other period in the
history of the world. " To place the num-
ber of windmills at work in America," he
says, " at s%vcral hundred thousand is to
give an estimate which those who have been
interested in this department of engineering,
and who have traveled along the main rail-
road lines of the country, must pronounce
as low." And we are further informed that
in some single cities of the Union over five
thousand windmills are manufactured, on
an average, each year. For those kinds of
work in which the power is not required to be
constant, but can be taken when it comes —
such as pumping and storing water, com-
pressing and storing air, and driving dyna-
mo-machines to charge electrical accumu-
lators— no machines can be cheaper than
windmills, and they are efficient enough.
American manufacturers have made great
improvements in the machines, and their
patterns are pronounced much better than
the European patterns, and destined to su-
persede them. Mr. Wolff's treatise is prac-
tical and a little literary, for it gives a very

850

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

interesting chapter on the " Early History
of Windmills." On the practical and eco-
nomical side it has chapters on " Wind, its
Velocity and Pressure"; "The Impulse of
Wind on Windmill-Blades " ; " Experiments
on Windmills " ; " The Capacity and Econ-
omy of the Windmill" ; and " Useful Data
in Connection with Windmill Practice " ;
with full accounts of the various European
and American machines.

Proceedings of the United States Na-
tional Museum. 1884. Washington:
Government Printing-Office. Pp. 661,
with Two Plates.

This is the seventh volume of the series
of papers established in 1878, which the In-
stitution publishes regularly in "signatures,"
as sixteen pages are accumulated from time
to time, in order to present the matter as
early as possible to the public. At the end
of the "year the sheets are gathered up and
embodied in a volume. The articles in this
series consist, first, of papers published by
the scientific corps of the National Museum ;
and, second, of interesting facts and memo-
randa from the correspondence of the Smith-
sonian Institution.

there has been a corresponding contraction
of the jurisdiction of its representative offi-
cer, and a diffusion of his powers among
many associates. When we recall the full
meaning of patria potestas, we are led to
exclaim, ' The fathers, where are they ? '
and the patriarchs, do they live forever?
Quite often the serfs have become the sov-
ereigns, and the sovereign has been reduced
to a subject. Could great Augustus have
seen the base uses to which the title ' em-
peror ' had been put by barbarians, his heart
would have died within him* And who
would recognize in the common hangman,
or in the distrainer of house-rents, the sher-
iff or the constable of the proud Norman
court ? Could the voice of prophecy have
told Charles Mart el, who ruled the ruler of
the Franks, that his title of major or mayor
would descend to administrators of petty
villages, he would have had additional rea-
sons for moralizing upon the deceits of hu-
man greatness."

Report or the Operations of the United
States Life-saving Service, for the
Year ending June SO, 1884. Washing-
ton: Government Printing-Office. Pp.
476.

Local Institutions of Maryland. By
Lewis W. Wilhelm, Ph. D. Baltimore :
N. Murray. Pp. 129. Price, $1.
This work is a triple number of the se-
ries of "Johns Hopkins University Stud-
ies in Historical and Political Science." It
presents a careful review of the course of
growth of the institutions of the Common-
wraith in question, including the organiza-
tion of the land system: the constitution
and functions of the hundred ; the forma-
tion of the county ; with the history of the
beginnings of each, and the more tardy
growth of the towns. In the last section
we meet the interesting and suggestive ob-
servation, which we quote, that "no student
of society can have watched the operations
of the vital processes of the social organism
and failed to notice the complex growth of
certain institutions, and the corresponding
decay in authority of officers associated with
their development. The brooding, in so-
ciety, of the spirit of democracy has tended
tf> develop the institution, to multiply its
organs, to strengthen its members, and fos-
ter its general growth, but at the same time

Five stations were added during the
year, and the number of stations at its close
was 201. Of these, 56 were on the Atlan-
tic, 37 on the lakes, seven on the Pacific,
and one at the Falls of the Ohio. The whole
number of disasters reported was 430, en-
dangering $10,607,940 of property, and the
lives of 4,432 persons. Of the persons, all
but twenty were saved, and only $1,446,-
586 of the property was lost. The number
of vessels totally lost was 64. The Service
has co-operated in scientific movements by
assisting investigations in marine zoology,
and by collecting " singing-sands " for ex-
amination by Professor II. C. Bolton. The
concluding statement in the summarized re-
port, regarding the character of the Serv-
ice's men, is very suggestive. It is : " It is
felt that seldom in the history of organi-
zations has a body of men been assembled

* Not only did the " sole power of constituting
and appoynting the Emperor of Pascattoway
reside with a subject of the English kins, the pro-
prietary of Maryland, but the " King of Ohoptico"
was presented for pig-stealing at a court-leet of a
Maryland manor.

LITERARY NOTICES.

851

so equal in qualification for the stern tasks
set them, and so splendid in their efficiency.
That they can have such a character col-
lectively is clearly attributable to their hav-
ing been selected for their posts solely on
professional and moral grounds, without
the slightest reference to their politics. The
constant purpose of the officers in charge
has ever been to obtain for station duty the
ablest and trustiest surfmen. Previous re-
ports of the Service have made apparent
how difficult it was, for years, to limit the
choice of these agents to the simple tests of
their ability and trustworthiness, and how
great and absolute a help in this regard has
been the statute of 1882, peremptorily ex-
empting the selection from political influ-
ences. It can be safely said that in no
instance have the requirements of that stat-
ute been disregarded, either in spirit or let-
ter."

A Catalogue of Scientific and Technical
Periodicals (1665 to 1882). Together
with Chronological Tables and a Library
Check-List. By Henry Carrington Bol-
ton. Washington : Published by the
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 776.
The mass of periodical literature has be-
come stupendous ; and the real importance
it has attained is hardly less striking than
its magnitude. The literature in some de-
partments embodied in periodicals has near-
ly overtaken in value that which has been
collected in books, and in the present course
and tendencies of publication bids fair, be-
fore long, to pass it. In science, especially,
is that which is comprehended in periodical
publications indispensable to the investi-
gator who would make real progress. A
large proportion of the experiments of the
past and of the details of results attained
can not be given in books, but must always
be sought for in the periodicals in which
the records first appeared. A perfect index
to this literature would lead the inquirer
directly to every experiment ; but such an
index can hardly be hoped for at present,
and would be of inconvenient bulk, if it ex-
isted. We must take it in parts. In this
work Professor Bolton has given a very im-
portant part — a list of scientific periodicals,
alphabetically arranged, with the cross-ref-
erences so necessary in every work of the
dictionary class ; classified according to the

subject ; with a chronological table show-
ing the date when each volume of each
periodical was published ; and an alpha-
betical index to that ; and a partial list —
as complete as it could be made for the
first issue — of the libraries in the United
States and Canada where the several peri-
odicals may be found. This catalogue and
the " Catalogue of Scientific Serials," pub-
lished by Mr. Scudder in 1879, complement
one another. Mr. Scudder's catalogue in-
cludes the transactions of learned societies
in the natural, physical, and mathematical
sciences, and technical journals only to a
limited extent ; the present work is confined
to scientific and technical " periodicals "
proper, excluding society proceedings and
transactions, but including periodicals de-
voted to the " applications " of science.
Medicine has been excluded, but anatomy,
physiology, and veterinary science, being
related to zoology, have been admitted. Of
the category of included subjects, it con-
tains the principal independent periodicals
of all branches published in all countries,
from the rise of the literature in question
to the close of the year 1882. The effort
has been made to give full titles and names
of editors. In some debatable cases titles
have been admitted, on the ground, as enun-
ciated by Buchold, that " in a bibliography
it is much better that a book should be
found which is not sought, than that one
should be sought for and not found." The
cross-references are from the later to the
first title of a periodical which has suffered
changes in title ; from short titles in com-
mon use to the accurate designations ; from
the names of the principal editors to the
journals conducted by them ; and, in the
case of astronomical publications, from the
places in which the observatories arc situ-
ated to the titles of the periodicals issued
therefrom. The library check-list has been
prepared from the data afforded in the an-
swers to circulars which were sent out to
two hundred libraries, of which one hundred
and twenty librarians responded. The mate-
rial for the work was gathered from all avail-
able bibliographies, personal examination
of the shelves and the catalogues of many
libraries in the United States, as well as of
important libraries in England, France, and
Germany, and from the answers to circulars

852

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sent to publishers asking for specimen num-
bers of their periodicals. The catalogue in-
cludes the titles of five thousand one hun-
dred and five periodicals in the English,
German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portu-
guese, Dutch, Scandinavian, Hungarian, and
Slavic languages, of which two thousand
one hundred and fifty are placed in the li-
brary check-list. Ninety-four subjects are
included in the classified list, in which peri-
odicals devoted to general science do not
enter. Of these subjects, the most numer-
ously represented is that of agriculture.

Geological and Natural History Survey
of Minnesota. By N. H. Winchell,
State Geologist. First Annual Report,
1872, pp. 112; Tenth do., 1881, pp.
254, with Fifteen Plates ; Eleventh do.,
1882, pp. 219; Twelfth do., 1883, pp.
387, with Map and Plates.

THE'first report includes an historical
sketch and list of publications relating to
the geology and natural history of Minne-
sota, beginning with Father Hennepin's
book, and a general sketch of the geology
of the State. The " tenth report " contains
descriptions of about four hundred rock
samples and notes on their geological re-
lations, continued from the previous report ;
a paper on the Potsdam sandstone, papers
on the Crustacea of the fresh waters of Min-
nesota, etc. The " eleventh report " in-
cludes a report on the mineralogy of the
State ; and papers on the crystalline rocks ;
rock outcrops in Central Minnesota ; Lake
Agassiz (a large, ancient lake, of which
traces are found in an extensive region) ;
the iron region of Northern Minnesota, etc.
The " twelfth report " is mainly devoted to
paleontology and the fauna and flora.

Life of Frank Buckland. By his Broth-
er-in-Law, George C. Bompas. Phila-
delphia : J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp.
433. Price, $2.

Few men have been privileged to do
more to popularize science, as represented
in natural history, and to spread abroad
love for animals, than the subject of this
memoir. His life was very largely devoted
to the study of animated nature, to the de-
velopment of its economical value, and the
collection and increase of information on
every aspect of it. The objects with which

he labored, and the principles by which he
was guided are well expressed in the coun-
sel he gave in the first number of " Land
and Water," in January, 1866 : "Let none,"
he said, " think himself unable to advance
the great cause of natural history. Thou-
sands of Englishmen and Englishwomen
have knowledge and experience, acquired
by their actual observation of useful facts
relating to animated beings, be they beasts,
birds, insects, reptiles, fishes, or plants.
Friendly controversy and argument are in-
vited on all questions of practical natural
history, and although the odium salmonicum
not unfrequcntly assumes more virulence
than even the odium theologicum of the
good old days of fagot and stake, no writer
need fear that his pet theory shall be ruth-
lessly set on fire, or that his arguments shall
be decapitated, without a fair and friendly
hearing." Mr. Bompas has given a very
picturesque and engaging story of a man
who was certainly one of the liveliest char-
acters in the history of science.

Fcrests and Forestry in Poland, Lithu-
ania, the Ukraine, and the Baltic
Provinces of Russia. Compiled by
John Croumbie Brown. Edinburgh":
Oliver & Boyd ; Montreal : Dawson
Brothers. Pp. 276.

Dr. Brown follows up his review of the
condition of the forests and of forestry in the
several countries of Europe with praisewor-
thy industry and devotion to the cause of
reclothing the waste places of the earth.
The present volume is like the others of
the series which we have noticed in plan
and style. It gives accounts of the coun-
tries and peoples, and their history so far as
it is connected with forestry, and detailed
information concerning the present extent,
use, and care of the forests.

Magneto- and Dynamo-Electric Machines ;
with a Description of Electric Accumu-
lators. From the German of Glaserde
Cew. New York : D. Van Nostrand.
Pp. 301.

This is the first volume of a new series,
called " The Specialist Series," to be edited
by Dr. Paget Higgs and Professor Charles
Forbes, the purpose of which is to impart
information on recent technical subjects in
a manner suited to the popular intelligence.
Concerning the immediate subjeet of the

LITERARY NOTICES.

853

present volume, after noticing the extrava-
gant views that were at first entertained of
the machines, the editors say : " Now the
dynamo is likely to take a fair stand in the
rank of useful machines ; for a time it was
a machine regarded as likely to revolution-
ize all the mechanical world ; now it is
coming to be considered in its true light as
a very valuable aid and auxiliary to steam
and other prime movers, extending their
sphere, and making more easy their appli-
cation. For these reasons, it is assumed
that the public interested in such technical
matters are desirous of a more intimate
knowledge of the principles of these ma-
chines, and this knowledge it is the object
of the present hand-book to supply."

Lectures on the Science and Art of Edu-
cation, with other Lectures and Essays
by the late Joseph Payne. Reading-
Club edition. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W.
Bardeen, publisher. Pp. 281.

Among the multitude of books that are
teeming from the press on the subject of
education, this is one of the soundest and
safest, and really the most advanced in its
spirit, and in the principles it labors to in-
culcate. Its editor says in his preface: "It
must be remembered that this volume was
not prepared by the author as a text-book,
but is simply a compilation of addresses and
papers delivered at different times and un-
der different circumstances. Hence the same
truth is often repeated, not only in different
expression, but with different application."
Only by an intelligent comparison of these
various statements can Professor Payne's
views be thoroughly understood ; and, for
this comparison, these analyses are almost
indispensable. The central principle of Pro-
fessor Payne's system stands out boldly, and
is reiterated at every opportunity, that the
pupil " knows only what he has discovered
for himself, and that in this process of dis-
covery the teacher is only a guide."

He thus closes his masterly lecture on
" The True Foundation of Science-Teach-
ing " : "I do not for a moment deny that
much is to be gained from the study of sci-
entific text-books. It would be absurd to
do so. What I do deny is, that the reading-
up of books on science — which is, strictly
speaking, a literary study — either is or can
possibly be a training in scientific method.

To receive facts in science on any other au-
thority than that of the facts themselves ; to
get up the observations, experiments, and
comments of others instead of observing,
experimenting, and commenting ourselves ;
to learn definitions, rules, abstract propo-
sitions, technicalities, before we personally
deal with the facts which lead up to them —
all this, whether in literary or scientific edu-
cation— and especially the latter — is of the
essence of cramming, and is therefore en-
tirely opposed to, and destructive of, true
mental training and discipline."

Lectures on Teaching, delivered in the
University of Cambridge, during the
Lent Term, 1880. By J. G. Fitch, M.
A., Assistant Commissioner to the late
Endowed Schools Commission, and one
of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.
New edition. With a Preface by an
American Normal Teacher. New York :
Macmillan & Co. 1885. Pp. 393. Price,
$1.

We have previously spoken in emphatic
praise of this able educational work, and
are glad to see that it has now been brought
out in a cheaper edition. Fitch is probably
the best authority on general education con-
nected with the English school system. He
is thoroughly informed and thoroughly prac-
tical, and his book should be in the hands
of every teacher who has capacity or liberty
to think upon the subject of teaching.

Talks Afield : About Plants and the
Science of Plants. By L. H. Bailey,
Jr. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 173.
Price, $1.

This little book has many pictures, and
contains many interesting explanations and
descriptions of vegetable processes and gen-
eral plant phenomena. It will interest all
who have botanical tastes, and will assist
to develop those tastes where they do not
exist.

Lessons in Elementary Practical Physics.
By Balfour Stewart, F. R. S., and W.
W. Haldengee. Vol. I. General Physi-
cal Processes. Macmillan & Co. Pp.
291. Price, $1.50.

This is a manual for the physical labo-
ratory, and is mainly devoted to instruments
and apparatus. It deals chiefly with experi-
mental determinations of length, angular
measurement, mass, density, elasticity, press-

854

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ure, gravitation, and kindred conceptions,
but is to be followed in due course by a
volume on " Electricity and Magnetism,"
and by a third work on " Heat, Light, and
Sound." The names of Balfour Stewart,
Professor of Physics in the Owens College,
Manchester, and of his assistant demon-
strator in physics, are sufficient guarantee
that the work is thoroughly done.

The Nature of Mind and Human Automa-
tism. By Morton Prince, M. D. Phila-
delphia : J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp.
173. Price, $1.50.

This is a closely reasoned discussion of
the essential issues of materialism. It first
took form several years ago as a graduating
medical thesis, which the author did not
publish at the time, as he preferred to wait
for further reflection and investigation of
the subject. It is predominantly polemic,
as Dr. Prince finds himself brought into col-
lision with the views of Tyndall, Eiske, Hux-
ley, and Spencer, which he controverts with
much acuteness. He ranks himself as a
materialist under his own view of what ma-
terialism is, and finds himself in more de-
cided harmony with the doctrines of Pro-
fessor Clifford than with those of any other
recent or contemporary thinkers upon this
subject. We can not undertake to expound
the view of the relations of body and mind
which seems to him most rational, but un-
hesitatingly recommends his work to all who
are looking for a vigorous and original treat-
ment of the profound problems to which the
volume is devoted.

Outlines op Psychology. Dictations from
Lectures by Hermann Lotze. Trans-
lated, with a chapter on " The Anatomy
of the Brain," by C. L. IIerrick. Illus-
trated. Minneapolis, Minn. : S. M. Will-
iams. Pp. 149, with Plates. Price,
$1.25. '

Much has been said of the claims of
Lotze as a philosopher, psychologist, physi-
ologist, etc., and, as his translator here re-
marks, he " is rapidly gaining recognition
even in America." It was time, therefore,
that he should be translated, and a good
beginning is here made in this little volume.
Those who can not read him in the original
may now judge of his claims, and get the
benefit of his contributions to philosophy.

On Teaching: Its Ends and Means. By
Henry Calderwood, Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Edin-
burgh. Third edition. Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 126. Price, 50 cents.

This book emanates from a distinguished
source, and, while Professor Calderwood
has a recognized prominence as a philoso-
pher, he is also a practical teacher of long
experience in every grade, and besides has
had much to do with the management of
the Edinburgh public schools. It would be
unjust to say that his book is without merit.;
there is much in it that is worth attending
to, but it is not of the high grade that we
should expect from the position and oppor-
tunities of its author. A better book was
due from him than any we have on the sub-
ject of moral education ; but he contributes
nothing new or of moment to that most im-
portant branch of the art of school manage-
ment. He seems to be steeped in the peda-
gogical idea, and is more dominated by the
old methods than becomes an original and
independent critic of the subject. The first
words of his introduction are, " Every one
recognizes that a person can teach oniy wuat
he knows " ; but this is so far from being
true, that the most successful study may
take the form of self-teaching, where the
teacher is ignorant of a subject and joins
the pupil as a student in pursuing it. Pro-
fessor Calderwood, however, guards against
such an interpretation of his dictum as
would imply that instruction is the sole end
of teaching ; but self-instruction has no such
leading place in his system as we think it
should have in any rational system of edu-
cation.

Properties of Matter. By P. G. Tait,
Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh :
Adam & Charles Black. Pp.320. Price,
$2.25.

Though the name of Black appears upon
the title-page of this work as publisher, yet
that of Macmillan & Co. is stamped upon
the back, and it is announced as one of Mac-
millan's " Manuals for Students." It is, of
course, a good book of its kind, for Tait
knows how to do good work. But, though
claiming to be an elementary book, it must
still be regarded as an advanced text-book,
and is intended for students who are " sup-

LITERARY NOTICES.

855

posed to hare a sound knowledge of ordi-
nary geometry and a moderate acquaintance
with the elements of algebra and trigonome-
try." The author adds in his preface, but
he (the student) "is also supposed to have —
what he can easily obtain from the simple
parts of the first two chapters of Thompson
& Tait's ' Elements of Natural Philosophy,'
or from Clerk Maxwell's excellent little trea-
tise on ' Matter and Motion ' — a general ac-
quaintance with the fundamental principles
of kinematics of a point and of kinetics of
a particle." It was the author's intention
to complete his series of text-books by simi-
lar volumes on " Dynamics," " Sound," and
" Electricity."

Theory and Practice of Teaching. By
Rev. Edward Turing. New and revised
edition. Cambridge: University Press.
Pp. 262. Price, $1.

We noticed the first edition of this spir-
ited book at the time of its appearance. It
is very readable, but full of English views
upon the subject, although many of them
are as applicable here as anywhere. We
are glad to see that it has been amplified
and improved.

Third Biennial Report of the Bureau of

Labor Statistics of Illinois. 1884.

John S. Lord, Secretary. Springfield.

Pp. 654.

The contents of this report are presented
in three parts, each of which is devoted to
some special fine of statistical inquiry on
the general topic of industrial affairs in
Illinois, and the relations which the differ-
ent classes engaged in them sustain to each
other and to the State. The first part con-
tains an investigation designed to ascertain
what proportion of the results of manual
labor in manufactures accrues to the pro-
prietor and what to the workman. In part
Becond are presented the results of special
investigations made by the bureau into the
economical and social condition of the in-
dustrial classes of the State ; and the third
part gives comprehensive statistics of coal-
mining and the manufacture of drain-tile in
Illinois ; with a report on the model indus-
trial community at Pullman, in which are
expressed the conclusions reached by a
number of representatives from the various
State Bureaus of Labor Statistics, after an in-
vestigation extending through several days.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Progress of Astronomy in the Year 16S4, by
Professor Kdward S. Holden, pp. 55; Progress in
Zoology in the Year last, by Professor Theodore
Gill, pp. 93; Progress in Yuleanology and Seismolo-
gy in the Years 1SS3, 1884, by Professor Charles G.
Rockwood, Jr., pp. 21 ; Antiquities at Pantaleon,
Guatemala, by Lieutenant, Charles E. Vreeland, U.
S. IN., and J. F. Bransford, U. S. N , pp. 12; Papers
relating to Anthropology, pp. 88. All trom the
Smithsonian Report for'lS.st. Washington: Gov-
ernment Printing-Office. 1SS5.

Crystallization, by Dr. Persifor Frazcr, pp.11;
The Tehuantepee Ship Railway, by E. L. Corthill,
C. E., pp. 33. Reprints from the -'Journal of the
Franklin Institute," Philadelphia. 1885.

Report of a Special Committee of the Franklin
Institute on the Efficiency and Duration of Incan-
descent Electric Lamps. Philadelphia : The Frank-
lin Institute. 1S85. Pp. 127.

Publications of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology of Harvard College, Mass. Pp. S.

Proceedings of the Illinois State Board of Health.
Quarterly Meeting, Chicago, July 2-3, 18S5. Pp. 2(3.

Notes on the Island of Jura, Scotland, pp. 5; and
Syenite and Gabbro in Massachusetts, pp. 3. By Dr.
M. E. Wadsworth.

An Olivine-bearing Diabase from St. Georges,
Maine. By Q. E. Dickerman and M. E. Wadsworth.
Pp.2.

Meteorology of the 'Mountains and Plains of
North America, as affecting the Cattle-growing
Industries of the United States. By Silas Burt.
St. Louis, Mo. 1S85. Pp. 7.

Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns
Hopkins University. Edited by II. Newell Mar-
tin and W. K. Brooks. Vol. Ill, No. 3. Baltimore:
N. Murray. June, 1885. Pp. 72. 75 cents.

Influence of the Proprietors in founding the
State of New Jersey. By Austin Scott, Ph. D.
Baltimore : N. Murray. August. 1S»5. Pp.26.

Niagara Park. Original and Selected Descriptions,
Poems, and Adventures, by Various Writers. Edit-
ed by Alice Hyneman Rhine. New York : Niagara
Publishing Company. 1885. Pp. 112. Illustrated.
50 cents.

A Canterbury Pilgrimage, Ridden, Written, and
Illustrated, by Joseph and Elizabeth Pobins Pen-
ned. New York: Charles Seribner's Sons. I&s5.
Pp. 78. £0 ceuts.

Creation. Man's Fall explained in the Light of
Modern Science. New York : Lawrence S. Benson.
18j5. Pp. 15. 15 cents.

The Modification of Plants by Climate. By A.
A. Crozier, Ann Arbor, Mich. : The Author. 1885.
Pp. 35. 25 cents.

The Song Budcret, for Schools and Educational
Gatherings. Compiled by E. V. De Graff, A.M.
Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen. 18s5. Pp. 76. 15
cents.

" The Black Diamond." Published in the inter-
est of the coal-trade industry, h. S. Jervis and 11.
A. Bischoff, Editors. Chicago : The National Coal
Exchange. Monthly. Pp. 12. $1 a year.

" The Hoosier Naturalist." A. C. Jones. R. B.
Trouslot, Editors and Publishers. Valparaiso, Ind.
Monthly. Pp. 8. 50 cents a year.

Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology
of Harvard College. Vol. XII. No. 1. Chlamydose-
lachus Anguineus Garm — A Living Species of Clado-
dont Stork. By S. Garman. Cambridge. 18S5. Pp.
35, and numerous Plates.

The Utilization of the Sun's Rays in heating
and ventilating Apartments. By Professor E. S.
Morse. Pp. 8.

The Attraction and the Figure of Equilibrium of
a Rotating Fluid Mass and the Interior Density and
Temperature of the Earth. By D. P. Blackstone.
Madison, Wis. 1885. Pp. 58.

Fiat Money. A Review of the Decisions of the

856

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

United States Supreme Court as to its Constitution-
ality. By Francis A. Brooks. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co. Ibb5. Jrp. 28.

Sanitary Engineering. A Course of Study re-
cently established at the tchool of Mines of Co-
lumbia College, New York.

Sibley College, Cornell University, Schools of
Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts. 18i>5.

A. Memoir of Charles Hilton Fogge, M. D. Phila-
delphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 7.

The Relation of Annual Eingsof Exogensto Age.
By D. P. Penhallow. From the " Canadian Record
of Science." 1S85. Pp. 14.

"Valdimir. A Poem of the Snow. New York:
H. Lockwood. 1SS5. Pp. 46. 25 cents.

Second Annual Report of the State Agricultural
Experiment Station at Amherst, Mass. 1884. Bos-
ton : Wright & Potter. 1885. Pp. 166.

Transactions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Annual Meetings of the Kansas Academy of Sci-
ences, with the Keport of the Secretary. Vol. IX.
Topeka : T. D. Thatcher. 1SS5. Pp. 146.

Success in Life physiologically considered. By
James T. Seavey, M. D. Tuscaloosa, Ala. Pp. 39.

Possibility of Errors in Scientific Researches
due to Thought Transference. By E. C. Pickering.
From Proceedings of American Society for Psychi-
cal Research. Pp. 43.

Contributions to our Knowledge of Sewage. By
William Ripley Nichols and C. R. Allen. Pp. 6.

" The Sun." A bi-monthly publication devoted
to Cooperation. Vol. I, No. 1. Subject : Prohibi-
tion. Kansas City, Mo. C. T. Fowler. Pp. 28.
10 cents.

The Story of Manitou. Denver, Col. S. K.
Hooper. Pp. 64. Illustrated.

" The Journal of Physiology." Vol. VI, Nos. 4
and 5. Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company.
July, 18S5.

The Minting of Gold and Silver, pp. 20; and Pla-
cer Mines and Mining Ditches, pp. 64. By Albert
Williams, Jr. From the Report of the Tenth Census
of the United States.

Zoologic Whist and Zoiinomia. Representing the
Orders of the Animal Kingdom. By Hyland C.
Kirk. New York : McLoughlin Bros. 1S65. $1.

Philosophic Series : No. I, Criteria of Diverse
Kinds of Truth as Opposed to Agnosticism, pp. 60;
No. II, Energy, Efficient and Final Cause, pp. 55 ;
No. Ill, Development, what it can do and what it
can not do, pp. 50; No. IV, Certitude, Providence,
and Prayer, pp. 46; No. V, Locke's Theory of
Knowledge with a Notice of Berkeley, pp. 77 ; No.
VI, Agnosticism of Hume and Huxley, with a No-
tice of the Scottish School, pp. 70 ; No. VII. A Criti-
cism of the Critical Philosophy, pp. 60; No. VIII,
Herbert Spencer's Philosophy as Culminated in his
Ethics, pp. 71. By James McCosh, D. D., LL. D.,
D. L, President of Princeton College, etc. New
York : Charles Scribncr's Sons. 1883-1885.

The America's Cup. How it was won by the
Yacht America in 1851, and has been since defended.
By Captain Roland P. Coffin. New York : Charles
Scribners Sons. 1S85. Pp. 155. $1.

Lawn Tennis as a Game of Skill. By Lieutenant
9. C. F. Peile, M. S. C. Edited by Richard D. Sears.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 18S5. Pp. 90.
75 cents.

The Stndent's Manual of Exercises for trans-
lating into German. By A. Lodemon, A. M. New
York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1S85.
Pp. 87. 50 cents.

Chemical Problems. Rv Dr. Karl Stammer.
From the German, bv W. S. Hoskinson, A. M.
Philadelphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 18S5. Pp.
112. 75 cents.

Ballooning. A Concise Sketch of its History
and Principles. Bv G. May. New Yrork : D. Van
Nostrand. 18S5. *Pp. 04.

The Chroniclo Fire-Tables for 1S85. A Record

of the Fire-Losses in the United States, by Risks,
States, and Causes during 1SS5, with Exhibits of the
Monthly. Annual, and Aggregate Fire-Losses in the
United States and Canada during the Years 1875-
1884. New York: " The Chronicle." 1885. Pp
150.

Barbara Heathcote's Trial. A Novel. By Rosa
Nouchette Carey. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott
Company. 1&85. Pp. 503. 5u cents.

The Will. A Novel. By Ernst Eckstein. From
the German, by Clara Bell. New York: W. S.
Gottsberger. 1885. 2 vols. $1.75.

Modern Molding and Pattern-Making. By Jo-
seph H. Mullin, M. E. New York : D. Van Nos-
trand. 1885. Pp. 257.

Malthus and his Work. By Joseph Bonar, M. A.
London : Macmillan & Co. 1S85. Pp. 432. $4.

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Inftitution for 1SS3. \\ ashington :
Government Printing-Office. 1885. Pp. 959.

Paleontology of the Eureka District. By Charles
Doolittle Walcott. Vol. VIII. Monographs of the
United States Geological Survey. Washington :
Government Printing-Office. Is85. Pp. 298, and
Twenty-four Plates.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Malaria and the Eucalyptus. — The ex-
periment of preventing malaria by planta-
tions of eucalyptus-trees at Tre Fontaine,
near Rome, has failed. While the euca-
lyptus-trees thrive, the malaria continues.
Fevers prevailed there in 1880, and even
during the season, exceptionally healthy at
Rome, of 1882, and under circumstances
which made the epidemic seem largely local.
A government commission has been ap-
pointed to examine into the matter, on the
application of Professor Tommasi-Crudelli,
who suggests that, until the inquiry is com-
pleted, conjectures as to the cause of the
visitation be abstained from. The facts are,
however, he says, practically instructive,
"proving as they do once more to what
risks of mistake we expose ourselves if we
hold a priori that the methods which have
resulted in a permanent improvement of one
malarious locality can be usefully applied
to all. The condition of permanent im-
provement is that of so modifying the physi-
cal conditions and the chemical composi-
tion of the soil as to render it incapable of
producing the malarial ferment. If all ma-
larious soils were similarly situated and had
the same chemical composition, we should
be certain of obtaining a permanent im-
provement in them by the adoption of a
system of cultivation by which this result
has been brought about in any one of them ;
but, unfortunately, malaria is produced in
soils whose situation and chemical composi-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

857

tion are most various, so that the system by
which some have been improved may fail
entirely when applied to others. So with
the plantations of eucalyptus, they succeed
in one place and not in others. We know
nothing precisely about the nature of the
cultivation which should be adopted in order
to produce in a given species of malarious
soil a final modification of its physical condi-
tions and chemical composition which shall
render it incapable of producing the poison-
ous ferment. At present we are feeling our
way, with the result that often we obtain
useful results by means of high cultivation,
and as often not." Dr. Tommasi-Crudelli
recommends arsenioua acid and the alkaline
arseniates as the most efficient protective
agents against malaria.

Changes at Niagara Falls. — A reference
to the earliest published accurate account of
Niagara Falls — that of Kalra, the Swedish
traveler, in the "Gentleman's Magazine"
for January, 1751 — shows that changes are
going on there more rapidly and on a grand-
er scale than has been estimated. Kalm
describes a fall of one hundred and thirty-
seven feet, with " a series of smaller falls,
one under another," for two and a half
leagues below. Much of this series has now
disappeared, and the main fall has been raised
to one hundred and sixty feet. He describes
the horseshoe as only slightly concave, and
adds : " Above the fall, in the middle of
the river, is an island, lying also south-south-
east and north-northwest, or parallel with
the sides of the river ; its length is about
6even or eight French arpents (an arpent
being one hundred and twenty feet). The
lower end of this island is just at the
perpendicular edge of the fall. . . . The
breadth of the island at its lower end is two
thirds of an arpent (eighty feet) or there-
about." This can not be Goat Island, which
is ten times as large, but must refer to
Luna Island, which, if the description is
correct, has been greatly reduced since it
was written. Goat Island appears not to
have been touched by the falls at that time.

Social Life in Masai Land. — Mr. Joseph
Thomson states that the most remarkable
distinctions characterize the various epochs
in the life-history of the Masai people of

East Africa. The boys and girls up to a
certain age live with their parents, and feed
upon meat, grain, and curdled milk. At
the age of twelve with the girls and between
twelve and fourteen years with the boys,
they are sent from the married men's kraal
to one in which there are only young un-
married men and women. There they live
in a very indescribable manner till they are
married. At this stage the men are war-
riors, and their sole occupation is " cattle-
lifting" abroad and amusing themselves at
home ; the young women attend to the cattle,
build the huts, and perform other necessary
household duties. Both sexes are on the
strictest diet. Absolutely nothing but meat
and milk passes their lips. Spirits and beer,
tobacco, and vegetable food, are alike es-
chewed. So peculiar, indeed, are they in
their notions, that they will not even eat the
meat of any wild animal. Moreover, the
meat and milk are never taken together.
For several days the one is their sole diet,
to be followed by the other after partaking
of a powerful purgative. On killing a
bullock, they drink the blood raw, which
doubtless supplies them with the necessary
salts. In eating meat they always retire
to the forest in small parties accompanied
by a young woman. So pleasant docs the
Masai warrior find this life that he sel-
dom marries till he has passed his prime,
and begins to find his strength decline.
The great war-spear and heavy buffalo-hide
shield, the sword and the knob-kerry, are then
laid aside. For a month he dons the dress
of an unmarried woman, and thereafter be-
comes a staid and respectable member of
Masai society. He goes no more to war,
but devotes himself to the rearing of a
brood of young warriors. His diet changes
with his mode of life, aud he may indulge
in vegetable food, drink beer or spirits, and
smoke or chew tobacco. At death, the body
is simply thrown out to the hyenas and vul-
tures.

Fndcrgronnd Wires and Atmospheric
Electricity. — M. Blavier remarks, in a note
to the French Academy of Sciences, that
while it is only in exceptional cases that the
influence of storms is observed on under-
ground telegraphic lines, there are neverthe-
i less sometimes produced, in offices connected

858

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by underground wires, electric discharges
which fuse the fine wires of the lightning-
guards. These accidents are much less fre-
quent and less severe than in the cases
where the wires are aerial, and they do not
seem to be of such a nature as to interfere
with the transmission of dispatches. They
correspond always to storms which occur in
the country, at some distance from towns
where the underground wires are protected
by the net of water and gas pipes below
which they are placed. If the wire is buried
only at a slight depth in a badly conduct-
ive soil, the coating, under the influence of
storm-clouds, takes a more or less consider-
able electric charge, even when the internal
wire remains in a neutral condition. At the
moment when the lightning flashes, this
charge is suddenly liberated, at least in
part, and escapes into the earth, following
the metallic coating in two opposite direc-
tions.

Coal-Dnst and Mine-Explosions. — We

have already given an account of the ex-
periments of the Prussian Fire-Damp Com-
mission at Neunkirchen, with reference to
explosions in coal-mines, and of the conclu-
sion of Mr. W. Galloway, from the observa-
tion of some of them, that the explosions
are chiefly or very largely promoted by coal-
dust. A French commission has reported
upon this subject that they consider it es-
tablished that " coal-dust in the absence of
fire-damp does not constitute an element of
danger," although it may play an important
part in aggravating the consequences of
an explosion. Mr. Galloway is now able to
cite, in support of his view of the impor-
tance of the agency of coal-dust, the expres-
sion of Ilerr Hilt, in the official preliminary
report of the Prussian commission, who,
speaking of the dust from Pluto mine, in
Westphalia, says that "there can be no
doubt that with this kind of dust the flame
could be lengthened out to any desired ex-
tent, provided the gallery and the layer of
dust on its floor were made equally long ; "
also the statement that "the dust of New
Iserlohn behaves in the same way." Mr.
Galloway further cites a table of dusts of
different degrees of fineness, published in
the same report, to show that the explosive
property of coal-dust increases with its fine-

ness. Ee believes that the French commis-
sion were not accurate or thoroughgoing
enough in their experiments. We mention
also, as bearing on this subject, and going
to confirm Mr. Galloway's viuws, that the
Clifton Hall colliery, near Manchester, Eng-
land, where a fatal explosion occurred in
June last, was at the time dry and dusty,
and very free from fire-damp.

Mutilations of the Teeth. — The practice
of filing the teeth is still in vogue among the
Mohammedan Malays. The individual may
choose, according to his fancy, among three
fashions : that of simply rubbing away the
front surface of the tooth ; that of filing
away the sides so as to leave the front of
the tooth standing out in a triangular re-
lief ; and a sharpening of the tooth — for all
of which styles considerable variety in pat-
terns exists. As all the Mohammedan isl-
anders set much store on having their teeth
properly " improved," the tooth-filer is an
important personage among them. His out-
fit includes a hammer, a bracing-stone or an-
vil, chisels, files, and saws. The person to be
operated upon prepares his teeth for the pur-
pose by chewing raw rice and turmeric, and,
prostrating himself on the ground, lays his
head, blindfolded, upon the operating-bench.
The operator demonstratively repeats an un-
intelligible incantation phrase, and, wedging
the subject's mouth open, performs his work.
The filing done, the teeth are blackened, and
the pain is quieted with cocoanut-water in
which an iron, inserted red-hot, has been
standing for several days. For some time
after the operation, the patient must avoid
eating things unpleasant to sore teeth. As
a recompense, he has come into full credit
in society, and may marry. The legendary
origin of the custom is a miraculous escape
Mohammed is said to have once had from
the pursuit of a redoubtable antagonist.
After having eluded his pursuer by being
overshadowed by a swarm of bees, he was
nearly overtaken again, and hid in a dry
well. Some of the pursuing party thought
he might be in the well, and threw stones
into it. He was looking up at the time, and
the stones knocked out four of his upper
teeth. The fashion of filing down the teeth
is, however, probably older than Mohammed-
anism. M. E. T. Hamy has made a study of

POPULAR MISCELLANY

859

the perforations of the teeth by the aborigi-
nes of Central America and Yucatan which
are mentioned by various authors. Mota Pa-
dilla says the Indians cut their teeth down
to sharp points and bored holes in them,
which they filled with a black cement. A
statuette dug up at Tejar has the upper front
teeth thus bored with cylindrical holes ; and
a fragment of an upper jaw dug up at Cam-
peachy, during the French occupation, shows
the real teeth marked with precisely similar
perforations. The holes appear to have
been filled afterward with bluish-green
stones. The operation of boring these
holes can hardly have been practiced on
living persons, and the evidence indicates
that it was done after death. No similar
mutilations are known to be practiced now
anywhere.

Iacrease of Temperature in Tunnels. —

Professor G. A. Koch, of Vienna, has been
prompted, by the experience of the work-
men in the St. Gothard Tunnel, to make re-
• searches into the phenomenon of increase
of temperature which is observed in exca-
vating under mountains. Dr. F. M. Stapff,
geologist of the St. Gothard Railway, had
already published a paper covering the ques-
tions of the highest temperature at which
it is possible for men to work in subter-
ranean galleries, and the depth under the
mountain-mass at which this temperature
is reached. Assuming that work begins to
be dangerous at the temperature of the
blood, 98° Fahr., and that the limits of the
vital endurance in animals lie between the
temperature at which albumen thickens (60°
C, or 140° Fahr.) and that at which it coag-
ulates (75° G, or 167° Fahr.), he deduced
that in an extremely dry atmosphere men
may keep at work at 50° C. (122° Fahr.),
while labor would be impossible at such a
temperature in an atmosphere saturated
with moisture. The answer to the other
question is difficult, because the conditions
vary. Descending into the earth from a
level surface, the temperature increases at
the rate of about 1° C, or 1-8° Fahr., for
every thirty-three metres in depth ; but the
rates fluctuate greatly when the surface
is a mountain and the excavation is hori-
zontal, and are governed not only by the
height of the overlying mountain above the

crown of the tunnel, but also by what is the
shortest distance between any point of the
tunnel and the nearest point on the surface
of the mountain. In the Mont Cenis Tun-
nel the highest temperature in the stone
(29-05° C, or 85° Fahr.) was reached at a
depth of 1,607 metres and a distance of
6,448 metres from the southern portal, in-
dicating an increase of about a centigrade
degree for every fifty metres. Other obser-
vations give rates ranging from 1° C. in
twenty-four to 1° in fifty-one metres, and an
average of 1° in 37-75 metres, the varia-
tions being governed by local influences as
well as by the form of the surface. The
operation of local influences was very plain-
ly observed in the St. Gothard Tunnel, where
abundant evidence was gathered that the
temperature curves are greatly distorted un-
der mountain-peaks. The average rate of
increase in the St. Gothard Tunnel, accord-
ing to Dr. Stapff, was 1° C. to 48 -4 metres ;
but this rate was considerably exceeded un-
der the valleys and the plain surfaces, while
it was greater than the increase observed
under the crests of the mountains. The
temperature of the spring-water must evi-
dently conform to the general law of in-
crease. Dr. Stapff observed that the tun-
nel-water is cooler than the stone when the
temperature is less than 24° or 25° ft, but
warmer than the stone at above 25° ; and a
prediction which he based on this observa-
tion, that springs of a decidedly unpleasant
temperature would be met at a certain point
in the excavation, was fulfilled to the letter.
The fact is an important one, in view of the
impossibility of working in a moist and hot
atmosphere. The temperature of the air in
tunnels is also affected by similar laws, and
some very curious facts bearing on this
point were noticed in the St. Gothard Tun-
nel. To the natural increase of temperature
in the advance of the excavation must be
added the additional heating from the men
and animals at work, and from the lights
and the explosions, which considerably in-
creased the difficulties in some parts of the
excavation. All these things must be taken
account of in forming the plans of tunnels
and estimating their cost ; for the expense
of labor must be increased in such places,
in proportion as it becomes more difficult
and dangerous. If these principles are cor-

86o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rectly worked out, we have to draw the con-
clusion that not all the projected great tun-
nels are practicable. Dr. Stapff calculates
that the Simplon Tunnel, as projected by
Favre and Clo, will develop temperatures
of 46-9° C. in the stone, 45-85° in the air,
and 54-3° in the water, which will be unen-
durable unless the air is perfectly dry. A
shorter tunnel, projected by Clo, Varetz, and
Jacquemin, will be more feasible. A pro-
jected tunnel under Mont Blanc will prob-
ably have to be made in an extreme tem-
perature of 51° C, and this will be impos-
sible. It follows from these observations
that while we may generally be able to over-
come the difficulties imposed in tunnel-mak-
ing by length and geological structure, we
are not always competent to contend against
those imposed by temperature.

Interesting Finds in Pompeii. — In enter-
ing Pompeii, says a recent visitor, writing in
" Chambers's Journal," " we descend a slop-
ing path to the silent city, which stands
between two enormous embankments of
ashes, like a very deep railway-cutting, and
enter by the great gateway, with arches and
pillars in perfect preservation. Through a
small arch at the side, intended for foot-
passengers, we pass into the deserted streets;
from the high, narrow footway we see the
tracks of wheels on the paved street below ;
and the great stepping-stones are still there,
as in the days of old. Everywhere stand
the remains of sculptured fountains — at
the street corners, in every house, in every
square. A number of converging streets
lead into the Forum. Here arc the perfect
remains of beautiful temples with their mar-
ble columns and sculptured altars, on which
the inscriptions may still be read. On some
are delicate carvings representing sacrifice,
in high-relief, with every detail clear and
sharp as when first chiseled. We go through
the street of the soap-makers and visit the
large soap-works, where the huge iron cal-
drons are still left. Another street is full
of wine-shops, with the large red jars still
inserted in the marble counters. Then we
pass the city bake-houses, where ovens were
found full of charred bread, which is now
in the Naples Museum, the baker's name
stamped upon each loaf. Close by are the
splendid public baths, with every appliance

for hot, cold, and vapor baths, the pipes
and cisterns still remaining. Near the en-
trance-gate is a small museum containing
the skeletons found in the city — a mother
and daughter clasped in each other's arms ;
a sentinel found at his post ; a man evi-
dently knocked down by the cloud of ashes ;
and several others. Some of them have
been injured in the process of excavation.
When a skeleton is found, hot plaster-of-
Paris is immediately poured into it, so that
while preserving the skeleton intact, it gives
also, by filling up the impression or mold of
the body that had lain there, the form and
features of the living man. A large col-
lection of surgical instruments greatly in-
terested a celebrated physician who was
one of our party, and who expressed un-
bounded surprise at the very slight differ-
ence between these relics of the infancy of
medical science and the instruments in use
at the present day. Some large cases of
dentists' tools caught our eye also. ... A
great number of paint-boxes are displayed,
which still contain the same bright, 6oft
colors that we see on the walls of Pompeii ;
and case after case of jewels, some found
in the house, others evidently dropped
in hurried flight from the burning city, or
fallen from the necks and arms of the skele-
tons."

Life on Coral Islands. — The Chagos Ar-
chipelago, the southernmost island of which,
Diego Garcia, has been made a coaling-sta-
tion for steamers, may be taken as typical
examples of coral islands. Diego Garcia
is nearly in the longitude of Bombay, and
7° south of the equator. It is an island of
the " atoll " type, fully thirty miles in cir-
cumference— " a lake with a shore and noth-
ing else." The shore, in some places a few
feet, in others a few yards, but never so much
as a quarter of a mile wide, is entirely cov-
ered with trees, which are chiefly cocoanut-
trees, with various kinds of tree-ferns, and a
few flowering shrubs. The archipelago con-
sists of several groups, among which are the
Six Islands, which lie in a ring, and are linked
together by coral reefs that approach the
surface of the sea, but do not rise above it.
South of these is the Pitt Bank, a very dan-
gerous atoll, that nowhere rises above high-
water mark, and near it some thirty islands,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

861

and at least an equal number of banks, and
rocks, and shoals, and reefs, all of the same
coral formation. There is often a difficulty
in distinguishing one atoll from another.
A ring of coral surrounds a lagoon, the en-
trance to which is on the northwest side.
Where the coral is a foot or two above the
tide, a thick, green robe of clematis covers
the white rock, and tall palms flourish over-
head. Outside, the sea is in most cases at
least two hundred fathoms deep, and inside
it varies from three fathoms in some atolls
to an almost unfathomable depth in others.
Diego Garcia is situated in one of the hot-
test places in the world, where fierce sun-
shine alternates daily with heavy showers,
and the temperature is between 80°and 90°
all the year round. For scenery, there are
the three million palms and the varying blue
of the inland sea. The island furnishes, in
the names of its several points, suggestions
for a romance like that of " Paul and Vir-
ginia." " But all such tales fail, in leaving
out the realities. There is nothing about
fleas in any of them ; nothing, or very little,
about centipeds. The misery of life on a
coral island can hardly be exaggerated. . . .
It rains every day. The mosquitoes are un-
equaled for size and ferocity. The only
food is an occasional fresh fish, with tinned
meat and vegetables from England. The
monotony of existence is only broken by
the visit of an occasional ship, or by a gale,
■which unroofs the house. To the lonely in-
habitants it is nothing that beautiful shells
and branching coral are to be found on the
beach ; that strange, bright birds come across
the ocean to build their nests in the cocoanut-
trees, or that the sea over the reef is an ethe-
real blue such as no one can imagine who has
not seen it."

Restoration of Life. — Dr. Richardson
has started the question whether life may
not be restored after actual death, and re-
lates some facts that point to the answer as
being in the affirmative. By combining
artificial circulation with artificial respira-
tion, a dog was restored to life an hour
and five minutes after having been killed by
an overdose of chloroform, when the heart
had become perfectly still and cold, and was
passing into rigidity. Animals that have
been killed by suffocation and partially dis-

sected were brought to such a state of mus-
cular irritability that the experiment was
stopped for fear that they would return to
conscious sentient life. Frogs poisoned by
nitrate of amyl were restored after nine
days of apparent death, in one case after
signs of putrefactive change had com-
menced. The action of peroxide of hydro-
gen in reanimating the blood and restoring
heat in a really dead body is quite startling.
From these observations, Mr. W. Mattieu
Williams thinks the conclusion is justified
that " a drowned or suffocated man is not
hopelessly dead so long as the bodily organs
remain uninjured by violence or disease, and
the blood remains sufficiently liquid to be
set in motion artificially and supplied with a
little oxygen to start the chemical movements
of life."

Peat-Smoke as an Antiseptic. — Dr.

Morgan, of Manchester, England, has re-
marked upon the healthy condition of the
Highland crofters, who live in " bothies "
the atmosphere of which is impregnated
with peat-smoke, and are yet not troubled
by disease, being particularly free from
consumption and other lung infections.
Their rooms are warmed by a peat-fire kept
constantly burning in the middle of the
floor ; and, there being no means of escape
for the smoke except a hole in the corner of
the roof, the atmosphere is often pungent
enough to make the eyes and nostrils smart.
Yet the inhabitants are well and vigorous,
and are liable to lung-diseases only when they
go to live in houses with chimneys. The
explanation of the phenomenon is not hard
to find. Peat-smoke is heavily charged
with antiseptics — with tar, creosote, tannin,
and various volatile oils and resins — and the
salutary influence of these more than makes
up for the adulteration of the air.

Blondes and Brunettes. — Reports have
been published of the "complexion-cen-
suses " of the school-children of Germany,
Belgium, Cisleithan Austria, and Switzer-
land. They show that more than one half
of those enumerated are of mixed type.
The distribution of the pure types — blondes
and brunettes — is very different in different
countries. The blondes predominate in
Belgium, and still more in Germany, while

862

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the brunettes predominate in Austria, and
in Switzerland with greater disparity. The
predominance of fair complexions in Ger-
many is greatest in the north, and grows
less and less in going to the south. This
appears to show the incorrectness of the
theory of the French anthropologists that we
must seek the real Germans in South Ger-
many, and that North Germans are a dark
race, a mixture of Finns and Slavs. The
deep-brown color of the south and middle
Germans, as well as of the Swiss, is traced
by Herr Virchow to the Romans, Rhsetians,
and Illyrians, and especially to the remnants
of the Celtic or pre-Celtic inhabitants, which
have now become mixed with the Germans.

Contraction of Plant-Tissnes by Cold. —

Mr. Thomas Meehan has reported some ob-
servations which contradict the prevalent
idea that the sap in vegetable tissues ex-
pands in freezing, and is capable of burst-
ing the organs. Of a number of vigorous
trees measured at temperatures of 40° and
at 10° above zero, none showed any sign of
expansion, but one, a large maple, appeared
to have contracted a half-inch. In hardy
succulents, including several plants of the
cactus family, live-forevers, and stone-crops,
a marked contraction was observed ; and
opuntias showed no traces of congelation at
10°, and were as easily cut with a penknife
as at a normal temperature. Plants which
contract so much as to shrivel in the cold
expand again after a few days of temperature
above the freezing-point. Expansion under
freezing, however, was evident in dead wood
soaked with water ; and the bursting of
trees, which has been noticed, may result
from the freezing of liquid in the less vital
parts of their trunks. Assuming, from the
facts brought forward, that the liquid in
plants which are known to endure frost
without injury does not congeal, a question
arises as to what power they owe their suc-
cessful resistance. It is probably a vital
power, for the sap of plants, after it is
drawn from the tree, congeals easily.

Celtic Superstitions. — Many primitive
superstitions of great interest to the an-
thropologist still linger among the Celtic
populations of the British Islands. "The
Celt," says a writer who has made much

study of his character, " has turned every-
thing to supernatural uses ; and every ob-
ject of Nature, even the unreasoning dream
of sleep, is a mirror which flashes back
death upon him." Yet these people have
nearly lost the fear of death, and it is a
common salutation to wish one a decorous
and peaceful departure. The ancient Gaels
and Cymri believed in intercourse with fair-
ies, whom they called by any other name
than their own ; hence, the designation of
" the men of peace," " the hunters in
green," " the good people," etc. Then-
aversion to naming these beings was great-
er on Friday than at any other time, for
on that day their powers were greatly
increased. To wear their favorite color,
green, was an unpardonable insult. Rites
of a complex nature were gone through to
protect the unbaptized infant and its moth-
er from their clutches. Stories were often
current of persons who had been detained
by fairies for many years. The urisks
were a sort of intermediary race between
spirits and mortals ; if kindly treated, they
might render service to the family to which
they had joined themselves. Witches were
consulted and believed in in Wales so late-
ly as 1826. The Cymri also had their giant,
the good Foulkes Ty Du, who was always
helping them ; but, when evil was about to
overtake them, the Tybiath, or presenti-
ment, foreboded it. The Highlanders put
great faith in messages from the unseen ;
and a hundred little incidents, which oth-
ers would let pass unheeded, are for them
fraught with the most solemn meaning.
The cock which crows at midnight conveys
the intelligence of a death in the neighbor-
hood. Itching of the nose or ringing in the
ears bears the same message. If the High-
lander's cattle die, the evil-eye has gazed
upon them. The boat that drifts empty
out to sea has been pushed from its moor-
ings by the fairies.

A Chinese View of Epilepsy. — In China,
it is said, when a man is seized with an epi-
leptic fit, those about him rush away for a
few blades of grass, which they put into his
mouth. They believe that during an attack
of this kind the spirit leaves the body, and,
there being a vacancy within, it is immedi-
ately occupied by the spirit of an animal,

NOTES.

863

generally a sheep or a pig, and the sound in
the person's throat, as he begins to revive,
is taken for the bleating of the one or the
grunting of the other. Under these cir-
cumstances, they attempt to propitiate the
animal by putting grass into the man's
mouth, possibly under the impression that
they can entice the animal's spirit in the
man to remain till his own returns ; and
on no consideration will they remove him
till the fit is over, for, if they did, they be-
lieve his own spirit would not be able to
find him again, and he would die.

NOTES.

The American Association, recently in
session at Ann Arbor, Michigan, elected the
following officers for next year's meeting :
President, E. S. Morse, Salem, Massachu-
setts ; Vice-Presidents, J. W. Gibbs, New
Ilaven, Connecticut ; C. F. Brackett, Prince-
ton, New Jersey ; H. W. Wiley, Washington,
D. C. ; 0. Chanute, Kansas City, Missouri ;
T. C. Chamberlin, Washington, D. C; H. P.
Bowditch, Boston, Massachusetts ; Horatio
Hale, Clinton, Ontario ; Joseph Cummings,
Evanston, Illinois ; Permanent Secretary,
F. W. Putnam, Cambridge, Massachusetts
(holding over) ; General Secretary, S. G.
Williams, Ithaca, New York ; Assistant
Secretary, W. II. Pettee, Ann Arbor, Michi-
gan ; Treasurer, William Lilly, Mauch
Chunk, Pennsylvania. Buffalo, New York,
was selected as the place for holding the
meeting in 1886.

M. Tacchini mentioned to the French
Academy of Sciences, July 27th, that red
sunsets, like those of 1883-84, though less
intense, had appeared again ; and said that
the present phenomena couid not be con-
nected with the eruption of Krakatoa. At
the same session of the Academy, M. Jans-
sen read a paper by M. Landerer on the reap-
pearance of the glows. This author thought
them of cosmical origin, and suggested that
they might be caused by the passage of
Biela's comet.

Professor Peter T. Austen has inves-
tigated the relation of aluminic and ferric
salts to plant-life. He finds that these salts
have the property of precipitating dissolved
organic matters, and causing the coagula-
tion of suspended inorganic matters. The
substances thus deposited are of high value
as plant-food, and are placed in the most
available state and most assimilable condi-
tion. " Thus we see that when the soil is
unable directly to bind the plant nutriment,
the acid products of the death of the plant,
and probably also of the bacterial fermen-

tations, supply agents which precipitate these
plant-foods in such a state that mere me-
chanical filtration will remove them, and
leave them stored up for future use by the
plants." These processes also serve animal
life by purifying the water.

Dr. R. Harvey Reed, of Mansfield,
Ohio, after a study of the subject as it af-
fects his own State, concludes that among
the results of the destruction of the forests
and the drainage of the land are more wind,
more humidity, more rainfall, more dust,
more sudden dashes of rain ; more sudden
changes from one extreme to the other of
temperature and moisture ; more rapid trans-
mission of water from the periphery to the
great basins ; robbery of the natural regu-
lators of distribution; and diminution of
the common supply of springs and wells.
These changes have been followed by a de-
crease of all forms of malarial diseases, and
an increase of typhoid fever, catarrh, deaf-
ness, and chronic pulmonary troubles, and
the increase in wind and dust favors the
spread of zymotic and contagious diseases.

A correspondent, noticing our reference
in a recent sketch of M. Chevreul to the dis-
crepancy in the age of the distinguished
chemist's father at his death, as given in
Larousse's " Cyclopaedia " (ninety -one years),
and by the " Lancet " (one hundred and ten
years), calls attention to another equally
curious mistake respecting M. Chevreul in
Schaedler's " Teehnologie der Fette und
Oele." In the historical introduction to
this work occurs a passage which we trans-
late thus : " Only thirty years after the dis-
covery of glycerine, in the year 1813, began
the researches of Chevreul (born 1786, at
Anders, died 1840)." On page 1105, the
author appends the correction : " The infor
mation was given me privately that Chev-
reul died in 1 840 ; but I have received from
M. J. Bang, of Marseilles, under date of May
11, 1883," the following literal statement:
' I can assure you that Chevreul is still very
active, and continues his course at the Mu-
seum, and is present every Monday at the
Academy of Sciences. He is now ninety-
seven and a half years old, but is, they say,
livelier than ever.' "

The authorities of Albany, Georgia,
have efficiently drained a troublesome pond
by boring a well-hole through the ground to
a deep subterranean stream. An outlet for
the sewerage of a large Western university
has been found in one of the numerous
" sink-holes " with which the cavernous
limestone of the country is marked, where
a similar underground stream carries the
stuff to parts unknown. Such expedients
are good, provided the subterranean stream
selected for the sewer-outlet is not a source
of supply for some well.

864

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The State Board of Health of Massa-
chusetts continues to follow up the use of
arsenic in manufactures under all its dis-
guises. They still tind the poison in dan-
gerous proportions in papers of various
colors, particularly in the glazed papers of
fancy boxes, cornucopias, confectionery-
boxes, etc., concert tickets, and playing-
cards, and iu children's toys and articles of
clothing. " German fly-paper " is soaked in
arsenite of sodium, and is dangerous in more
ways than one. The "Buffalo Carpet Moth
Annihilator" contains 6-7l26 per cent of
crystals of white arsenic, and " Rough on
Hats " contains white arsenic crystals.

Paper bedclothes are made at a factory
in New Jersey. They are doubled sheets of
manila paper, strengthened with twine, and
valuable by reason of the peculiar proper-
ties of paper as a non-conductor of heat.
They have a warmth-preserving power far
out of proportion to their thickness and
weight.

The Swedish papers report that a crane
was shot at Orkened, in Scania, on the 19th
of June, which bore a card containing the
verse —

" I come from the burning sand,
From Soodan, the murderers' land,
Where they told the lie
That Gordon would die."

The bird had previously been wounded in
the wing, and was much exhausted.

The Aberdeen (Scotland) "Journal"
records a remarkable instance of the effect
of atmospheric influences on the visibility
of lights at night. In March, 1885, the
captain of the steamer City of Aberdeen
saw the Girdleness light in Aberdeen Bay,
at the distance of more than thirty-six miles,
and the Buchan-Ness light when it was thir-
ty-two miles off. The distances at which
these lights are considered ordinarily visi-
ble are nineteen and seventeen miles re-
spectively.

The " Lancet " publishes a list of facts to
show the dangerous character of foot-ball.
In its casual examinations of the papers, it
has, without making special search for them,
recorded some dozen or more instances of
serious accidents — in which bones were bro-
ken— one of which resulted in death, that
occurred in the course of games. While
the "Lancet" thinks it would be unwise
and undesirable to abolish the game, which
is the principal winter amusement of thou-
sands of young people, it calls for a reform
in the rules and practice, with such regu-
lations as will reduce the number and se-
verity of accidents, which, being secured, it
believes the sport is capable of far more
good than harm.

M. J. C. IIouzEAtr, in examining some
old astronomical manuscripts at Brussels,

has met the works of three Belgian astron-
omers whose names were previously un-
known. Henry Selder observed at Tournai
in the fourteenth century. In 1340 he had
compared Ptolemy's catalogue of the stars
with the sky, to ascertain what stars had
disappeared and what changed magnitude
since the catalogue was compiled. He also
compiled a second series of observations in
1367. Eustache de Eldris, who styled him-
self an astronomer of Liege, made tables of
the planets ; and Henri of Malines wrote a
treatise on astrology.

Mr. Pi. A. Mullan, an Irish solicitor,
mentions the singular observation during a
hailstorm in County Down, that some of the
hailstones — perhaps one in a hundred — were
of a decided red color. Taking up some of
them, he found that the color was not mere-
ly superficial, but pervaded the substance of
the hailstones, and, on melting, they stained
his fingers.

OBITUARY NOTES.
Ms. N. W. Posthumus, Director of the
Higher Burgher School, at Amsterdam, who
died recently, was one of the founders of
the Dutch Geographical Society, its secre-
tary from the beginning, and one of the
editors of its journal. He was forty-seven
years old.

Dr. Barius, surgeon - general to the
French army in Tonquin, died in Haiphong
June 10th. He was known to the scien-
tific world by his meteorological writings,
of which the principal essay embodied his
researches on the climate of the Senegal.
He kept a regular series of observations at
Haiphong.

Dr. Emil Riebeck, a distinguished trav-
eler, recently died suddenly at Feldkirch,
Germany, where he was preparing for a
five years' journey. Besides being a traveler
himself, he was a liberal patron of explor-
ers. He had borne the expense, among
other enterprises, of Dr. Schweinfurth's re-
cent researches in Socotra.

Mr. W. S. W. Vaux, F. R. S., a numis-
matist and Oriental scholar, and Secretary
of the Royal Asiatic Society, is dead, at the
age of sixty-seven years.

M. Henri Tresca, an eminent French
physicist and engineer, died in June, in the
seventieth year of his age. He filled the
chair of Industrial Mechanics in the Con-
servatoire des Arts et Metiers, and was the
author of works on "Applied Mechanics"
and the "Flowing of Liquids." He was
elected a member of the French Academv in
1872.

Professor A. W. Eklund, a distin-
guished Swedish physicist, has recently
died at Lund, aged ninety years.

INDEX.

PAGE

Abbott, Charles 0 , 308

Aerial Navigation 696

Aerial Navigation, Eecent Progress in 296

Africanized, Are we to become ? 145

Aged, Hygiene of the 389

Air-Breathers, The Oldest 395

Allen, J. Antisell 117

Alloys, Coinage 137

American Air, Alleged Nerve-exciting Properties of. 141

Animals, Arctic, Color of 423

Ant, The White 735

Antipathies 137

Arch geological Frauds 308

Arctic Exploration and its Object 78

Aryan Origins 138

Association, The American 423

Association, The British 423

Astronomers, Some Self -Made 340

Banking, National, The Future of 491

Bark Dresses 566

Barnard, Dr. W. T 577, 768

Barr, James, M. D 503

Barre, M. L 544

Bathing, The Objects of 431

Beecher on Evolution 412

Beet-Sugar, Sorghum and, in the United States 425

Behrens, Dr. W. J 595

Benedict, W. R 66» 15°

Berthelot, Pierre E 113

Biology, Recent Progress in ""*

Birds' Nests, the Edible, Structure of 431

Blondes and Brunettes 861

Boaz, Dr. Franz t8

Book, Concerning the Suppressed 433

Book Notices :

" American Political Ideas " (Fiske) 122

" The Nature and Reality of Religion " (Spencer, Harrison, and

D'Alviella) 123

" Land-Laws of Mining Districts " (Shinn) 124

866 INDEX.

Book Notices : page

" Mining-Camps " (Shinn) 124

" The Jukes " (Dugdale) 124

" A Popular Exposition of Electricity " (Brennan) 124

" The Care of Infants " (Jex-Blake) 125

" Climatic Maps of the United States " (Denison) 125

" Controlling Sex in Generation " (Terry) 125

" The National Dispensatory " (Stille and Maisch) 125

" Occult Science in India " (Jacolliot) 126

" The Sanitary Engineer " (Meyer) 126

44 Johns-Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science " 127

" One Hundred Years of Publishing " 127

" The Mentor " (Ayres) 127

" The Next Step of Progress " (Keyser) 127

" School-Keeping " (Orcutt) 127

" Diluvium ; or, The End of the World " (Pidgeon) 127

" Ingglish az She iz Spelt " (Federheld) 128

" Practical Work in the School-Room " 128

4i Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and through the Looking-Glass "

'(Carroll) 128

" Serapis" (Ebers) 128

" The Wane of an Ideal " (Colombi) 128

" The Canadian Eecord of Science " 128

M Shadows " (Wetherbee) 129

44 Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United. States "

(Adams) 129

" Egypt and Babylon " (Rawlinson) 129

" Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine " 129

" Proposed Plan for a Sewerage System " (Gray) 130

" Tables, Meteorological and Physical " (Guyot) 130

" The Ornithologist and Oologist " 130

" Our Bodies ; or, How we live " (Blaisdell) 131

" Stories by American Authors " 131

44 Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish, and Sea-Urchins " (Romanes) 272

" Geology and the Deluge " (Argyll) 273

44 The Rescue of Greely " (Schley and Soley) 273

44 In the Lena Delta " (Melville) 273

44 Mind-Reading and Beyond " (Hovey) 274

44 The Patriarchal Theory " (McLennan) 275

14 United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries," Report, 1882. . . . 275

44 United States Life-Saving Service," Report, 1883 276

44 Researches on Solar Heat," etc. (Langley) 276

44 The Stars and Constellations " (Hill) 276

44 The 4 Quincy Methods ' illustrated " (Partridge) 277

44 Mortality Experience, Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company " 277

44 Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations " (Cope) 277

44 The Ten Laws of Health " (Black) 278

14 Observatorio Nacional Argentino, Resultados " (Gould) 279

14 Distribution of Products " (Atkinson) 280

44 Paradise Found " (Warren) 280

44 The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences " (Clifford) 415

INDEX. 867

Book Notices : page
" Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College "

(Pickering) 41 5

" The Chemistry of Cookery " (Williams) 417

" The Text-Book of Hygiene " (Robe) 417

" The Microtomist's Vade-Mecum " (Lee) 417

" The Diamond Lens " (O'Brien) 418

" The Life of Society " (Brown) 418

" The Limits of Stability of Nebulous Planets " (Kirkwood) 418

" Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station," Report, 1884 (Lazenby). . . 418

" Introduction to the Study of the Compounds of Carbon" (Remsen). 419

" Geology of the Virginias " (Rogers) 419

" Introduction to Practical Chemistry " (Bowman) 419

" Fallacy of the Present Theory of Sound " (Mott) 420

" School Bulletin Year-Book " (Bardeen) 420

" Obiter Dicta " 420

" The Sun and his Phenomena " ("Webb) .... 420

" A Catalogue of Chemical Periodicals " (Bolton) 421

" Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington " 421

" How should I pronounce ? " (Phyfe) 421

" The Lenape Stone " (Mercer) 421

" Transactions of the New York State Medical Association," 1884

(Flint) 55©

" Representative American Orators " (Johnston) 557

" Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute " (Rodenbough) 557

" An Inglorious Columbus " (Vining) 558

" Assyriology " (Brown) 558

" Local Institutions in Virginia " (Ingle) 559

" Geology of the Oomstock Lode and the Washoe District" (Becker). 559

" Comstock Mining and Miners " (Lord) 559

" Contributions to the Fossil Flora of the Western Territories "

(Lesquereux) 560

" Madam How and Lady Why " (Kingsley) 560

" Photo-Micrography " (Malley) 561

" The Occult World " (Sinnett) 561

"Russia under the Tzars " (Stepniak) 561

" Report of the United States Geological Survey," 1881, 1882 (Powell) 561

" Tables to facilitate Chemical Calculations " (Dittmar) 562

" Contributions to North American Ethnology " 562

" The Lenape and their Legends " (Brinton) 563

" Humboldt's Philosophic Grammar of American Languages " (Brinton) 563

" The Protestant Faith " (Olmstead) 563

" Man's Birthright " (Clark) 564

" Hegel's ^Esthetics " (Kedney) 564

" The Invalid's Tea-Tray " (Brown) 564

" Materials for German Prose Composition " (Buchheim) 564

" On Oxygen as a Remedial Agent " (Wallian) 565

" Scientific Culture and other Essays " (Cooke) 701

" The Religious Aspect of Philosophy " (Royce) 702

" The French Revolution " (Taine) 704

" The Morals of Christ " (Bierbower) 704

868 INDEX.

Book Notices : page

" The History of the Present Tariff" (Taussig) 704

" The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837 " (Bourne) 705

"Proceedings of the Colorado Scientific Society for 1883 and 1884".. 705

" The Museum " 705

" Symbolism and Science " (Smith) 705

" Lessons in Hygiene " (Cutter) 705

" Christian Thought " (Deems) 706

" Account of the Progress in Zoology in 1883 " (Gill) 706

" Archaeological Institute of America," Report, 1884, 1885 706

" Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America," 1884 . 706

" Notes on the Literature of Explosives " (Munroe) 706

" Elephant Pipes " (Putnam) 707

" Mushrooms of America " (Palmer) 707

" A Course of Practical Instruction in Botany " (Bower and Vines) . . 707
" The Basic Pathology and Specific Treatment of Diphtheria," etc.

(Ziegler) 707

" Theory and Practice of Topographical Surveying " (Johnston) 707

" Lineal Measures of Semi-civilized Nations " (Brinton) 708

" Magnetism of Iron and Steel Ships " (Lyons) 708

" The Religion of Philosophy " (Perrin) 708

" Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 1882 to 1884 " 709

" Sanitary Suggestions on Disinfection " (Palmer) 709

" The Filth Power " (Olcott) 709

" Mind in Nature " 709

" Remarks upon Chipped Stone Implements " (Putnam) 709

" Contagiousness of Tuberculosis '* (Webb) 709

" Foul Brood " (Jones) 710

" Bulletins of the United States Geological Survey " 710

" Ethical Culture " (Weston) 710

" The Sanitary Monitor " (Winn) 710

" Architectural Studies " 710

" The Abdominal Brain " (Bedell) 711

" A New Philological Theory " (Mogyorosi) 711

" Collected Essays on Political and Social Science " (Sumner) 847

" The Microscope in Botany " (Behrens) 848

" The Treatment of Opium- Addiction " (Mattison) 849

" The Field of Disease : Preventive Medicine " (Richardson) 849

" The Windmill as a Prime Mover " (Wolff) 849

" Proceedings of the United States National Museum," 1884 850

" Local Institutions of Maryland " (Wilhelm) 850

" United States Life-Saving Service," Report, 1884 850

" Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals " (Bolton) 851

" Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota " (Winchell). . . 852

" Life of Frank Buckland " (Bompas) 852

" Forests and Forestry in Poland," etc. (Brown) 852

" Magneto- and Dynamo-Electric Machines " (De Cew) 852

" Lectures on the Science and Art of Education " (Payne) 853

" Lectures on Teaching " (Fitch) 853

" Talks Afield " (Bailey) 853

" Lessons in Elementary Practical Physics " (Stewart) 853

INDEX. 869

Book Notices : page

" The Nature of Mind " (Prince) 854

" Outlines of Psychology " (Lotze) 854

" On Teaching " (Oalderwood) 854

" Properties of Matter " (Tait) 854

" Theory and Practice of Teaching " (Thring) 855

" Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois," Report, 1884 855

Brazilian Oranges 429

Brehm, Dr. Alfred E 234, 263, 625

Bronzes, Modern 536

Brooks, Professor W. K 15

Building and Ornamental Stones of the United States 520

Butcher's-Meat and Headaches 428

Canada, The Mediterranean of 222

Cardinal Pitri on Scientific Studies 283

Carpets, Persian 428

Chaldean, The, Lunar Cycle 143

Champagne, Making 137

Chemistry, The, of Cookery 81, 259

Chevreul, M., Sketch of. 548

Cholera, Prevention of. 25

Climate and Vegetation 430

Clothes-Question, The, Another Side to 428

Coal-Dust and Mine-Explosions 858

Coal-Dust in Fire-Damp Explosions 714

Coal, the, Question, A Scientific View of 63

Coinage Alloys 137

Colonies, Lost, of America 40

Color and Flavor, Relation of, in Fruits and Vegetables 140

Color of Arctic Animals 423

Colors, Photographing 430

Colors, The Physiology of 683

Conductors, Do Insulated, attract Lightning ? 574

Continents, Denudation of the 430

Cookery, The Chemistry of 81, 259

Cope, Professor Edward D 605, 789

Coral Islands, Life on 860

Corn, Hulled, and Samp 118

Corona, On the Solar 755

Correction 566

Correspondence 117, 696

Corrupt Legislation 425

Crickets and " Hair-Snakes " 136

Crime, Madness and 425

Currency of the Cannibal Islands 137

Curtis, H. H 96

Darwin, The, Memorial 532

Daubree, M. A 819

De Laveleye, A Rejoinder to M 188

870 INDEX.

PAGE

De Laveleye, Emile 165

Denudation of the Continents 430

Development Theory, The, Ethics and 368

Diet in Relation to Age and Activity 322, 509

Disease, Tissue-Selection in the Genesis of 836

Disinfectants, Comparative Value of 285

Disinfectants, Sulphurous, Use of. 218

Dogs' Tongues, Medical Virtues of 715

Drummond, Professor Henry 735

Duk-Duk, The 572

Dusts, Industrial, Dangers from 570

Dust, Was it Volcanic or Cosmic ? 575

Earthquake Phenomena 356

Earthquakes, A Study of Recent 819

Earthquakes, Effect of, on Buildings 134

Edible Birds' Nests, The Structure of 431

Editor's Table 118, 268, 410, 553, 696, 844

Education, An Experiment in Primary 468, 614

Education, Liberty in 268

Education, Officialism in 554

Eels, The Mystery of 569

Electricity, Atmospheric, Source of 134

Emigration from the Old World 569

Energy, The, of Life Evolution 789

Epilepsy, A Chinese View of .' 862

Eskimos in Ancient New Jersey 567

Essex Institute, Fifty Years of the 132

Ethical Science, Training in 96

Ethics and the Development Theory 368

Eucalyptus, Malaria and the 856

Evolution, Beecher on 412

Experiment, An, in Primary Education 468, 614

Facts, The Study of 699

Fallacies about Mines 566

Fauna, The, of the Sea-Shore 623

Felts, Why Wool 133

Fernald, F. A 360, 638

Fig, Fructification of the 117

Fire, How Yakuts make a 427

Floras, How, are changing 423

Flour, " Whole Wheat," Food- Value of 718

Flowers, Insect Fertilization of 595

Flower, W. H., F. R. S 195

Frankland, Professor Edward, M. D 289

Franklin, Selim M , 661

Frauds, Archaaological 308

Frazer, James G 668

Fruit, Value of, as Food 715

Fuel, The, of the Future 207

INDEX. 871

TAGE

Gambling at Monte Carlo 571

Gannett, Henry 145

Gas-Wells, Natural, The Pittsburg 712

Genius and Insanity 447

Germ-Life, Pasteur's Researches in 86

Ghost, The Primitive, and his Eelations 668

Gitzycki, Georg von 368

Glacial Period, The, Temperature of 573

Gore, G 63

Grote, Augustus E., A. M 246, 377

Gutter-Stones, The Vegetation of 717

Hair, Changes in the Color of the 138

" Hair-Snakes," Crickets and 136

Haliburton, R. G 40

Hanging, The Mechanics of 503

Harp-Seal, The, in the St. Lawrence River 140

Hatch, Mrs. E. D. W 831

Headaches, Butcher's-Meat and 428

Health, The Weather and 141

Hens and Eggs, British 426

Herbs, Poisonous and Medicinal, in India 718

Herzog, Herr C 311

Highway, A, in the Himalayas 139

Holden, Edward S 401

Huggins, William 755

Hutton, R. H 800

Huxley, Professor 532

Hygiene of the Aged 389

lies, George 51

Illiteracy as a Source of National Danger 118

India, Poisonous and Medicinal Herbs in 718

Industrial Education in Common Schools 712

Inebriety, Religion and 427

Insanity, Genius and 447

Insect Fertilization of Flowers 595

Iridium, The Manufacture and Applications of 142

Iron-Ore Bed, How an, was formed 135

Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam- 468, 614

Jules Verne as a Scientific Authority 135

Keen, William W., M. D 1

Kerosene, Concerning 252

Kesteven, W. Henry 836

King Country, The, and the Maoris 567

Kinley, Isaac 117

Lagrange, E 340

Lancaster, 1 696

872 INDEX.

3PAGE

Langley, Professor S. P 401, 643

Lankester, E. Ray , 664

Laughlin, J. Laurence, Ph. D 31

Laveleye, A Rejoinder to M. de 188

Laveleye, Emile de 165

Leaves, On 344, 479

Legislation, Corrupt 425

Leland, E. R 491

Liberty in Education 268

Life Evolution, The Energy of 789

Life, Restoration of 861

Literary Notices 122, 272, 415, 556, 701, 847

Locust, How the, lays its Eggs 696

Lubbock, Sir John 344, 479

Lubricants, Theory of 139

Madness and Crime 425

Malaria and the Eucalyptus 856

Malarious Countries, Tomruasi-Crudeli on 785

Man and the other Vertebrates, Origin of 605

Man, can he be modified by Selection ? 15

Maple-Sugar, Early Mention of 287

Masai Land, Social Life in 857

Mascart, M. E 683

Master, A very Old 103

Medical Educati n, The Present Aspect of 589

Medico-Legal, The, Society 282

Mediterranean, The, of Canada 222

Memorial, The Darwin 532

Merrill, George P 520

" Metaphysical, The, Society " 800

Miue-Explosions, Coal-Dust and 858

Mines, Fallacies about 566

Mole, The, a Friend to Man . 284

Monkeys, The "Ways of 234

Morality, The Science of 661

Morton, S. T 334

Moseley, Professor H. N 623

Moths and Moth-Catchers 246, 377

Mussulman Industries, Decline of. 138

Mystery, A, of the Growth of Trees explained 424

Nachtigal, Dr. Gustav, Sketch of 691

Navigation, Aerial 696

Navigation, Aerial, Recent Progress in 296

Nervous System, The, and Consciousness 66, 150

New Guinea, Arts and Customs in 573

New Jersey, Ancient, Eskimos in 567

Newton, Professor II. A., Sketch of 840

Niagara Falls, Changes at 857

INDEX. 873

PA6E

Notes 143, 287, 432, 575, 719, 863

Nursey, Perry F., 0. E 536

Obesity 284

Official Science at Washington 844

Officialism in Education 554

One Hundred Years, How to live 574

Opium, An Experience with 334

Oranges, Brazilian 429

Oranges in Palestine 575

Origin of Man and the other Vertebrates 605

Origins, Aryan 138

Oxley, J. Macdonald 222

Pacific Coast Panthers 286

Paint, " Anti-fouling," for Ships 571

Palestine, Oranges in 575

Palmer, Charles B 696

Panthers, Pacific Coast 286

Pasteur's Researches in Germ- Life 86

Peat, Formation of 716

Peat-Smoke as an Antiseptic 861

Peckham, Professor S. F. 252

Pettenkofer, Max von 25

Persian Carpets 429

Philosophy, A Test of. 121

Photograpbing Colors 430

Pigments, Spectro-photometric Study of 142

Pitri, Cardinal, on Scientific Studies 283

Plants, The Early Study of 750

Plant-Tissues, Contraction of, by Cold 862

Poisoning, Deaths by 140

Political Economy, Methods of teaching 31

Political Tendency, a Pernicious 410

Pompeii, Interesting Finds in 860

Popular Miscellany 132, 282, 423, 566, 712, 856

Races, American, The Identity of 568

Races, Evolution of Warlike and of Peaceful 283

Railroads, Telegraphs, and Civilization 311

Railway Managers and Employes, The Relations of 577, 768

Rats, A Story of Two 713

Rat, The Trading- 831

Recess, The Value of 285

Refuse, Household and City, Cremation of 286

Religion and Inebriety 427

Religion without Dogma 51

Research, Private Encouragement of. 567

Richardson, Dr. B. W 541

8 74 INDEX,

PAGE

Sahara, Observations in the 715

Samp and Hulled Corn 118

Sanitarium, A Great Winter 289

Scholarships, The New Tyndall 553

School-keeping, Suggestions on 134

Schools of Fifty Years ago and of To-day 282

Science, English Board-School 713

Science, New Chapters in the Warfare of 721

Science, Official, at Washington 844

Science versus Immorality 696

Scientific, A, Commonplace-Book 716

Sea-Shore, The Fauna of the 623

Selection, Can Man be modified by ? 15

Sewage, Water Purification of 568

Sharp-Shooting, Savage 569

Ships, " Anti-fouling " Paint for 571

Siberia and the Exiles 625

Sirup, Water-Melon 424

Sleep, How to, well 431

Smoking, Toxic Effects of 136

Socialism, De Laveleye on 270

" Society, The Metaphysical " 800

Soil-Ferment, The 283

Sorghum and Beet Sugar in the United States 425

Spelling, How, damages the Mind 638

Spencer, Herbert 188

Star-Fish Life, Curiosities of 360

Spreading it too Thin 413

State, The, versus the Man 1 65

Stevens, Professor W. Le Conte 296

Stones, Building and Ornamental, of the United States 520

Sully, James 447

Sun and Moon, Enlargement of the, at the Horizon 717

Sunlight and the Earth's Atmosphere 643

Superstitions, Celtic 862

Tarr, Ralph S 356

Teak-Tree, The, and its Timber 572

Teeth, Mutilations of the 858

Telephony, Underground, Difficulties of 717

Temperature of the Glacial Period 573

Thompson, Sir H 322, 509

Thompson, William Gilman, M. D 589

Time-Reckoning, Curiosities of 544

Tissandier, G 218

Tissue-Selection in the Genesis of Disease 836

Toads, Spade-Foot 133

Tommasi-Crudeli on Malarious Countries, and their Reclamation 785

Trees, A Mystery of the Growth of, explained 424

Tunnels, Increase of Temperature in 859

INDEX. 875

tage

Tyndall, John 86

Vegetation, Climate and 430

Vegetation, The, of Gutter- Stones 717

Vital Tenacity, Measures of 541

Vivisection, Our Recent Debts to 1

Von Pettenkofer, Max 25

Wales, The Prince of. 532

War, Curious Excuses for 555

Wardman, George 207

Water-Melon Sirup 424

Water-Purification of Sewage 568

Watson, L. H., M. D 389

Weather, The, and Health 141

Whales, Past and Present 195

White, Andrew D 721

Williams, W. Mattieu 81, 259

Winter Sanitarium, A Great 289

Wires, Underground, and Atmospheric Electricity 857

Wool, Why it felts 133

Yakuts, How, make a Fire 427

Youmans, Edward L 433

Youmans, Eliza A 750

END OF VOL. XXVII.

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